It’s a cliche in horror novels that a character can witness something so horrible that he will lose his sanity. Can this really happen? I know that people with a biological predisposition for something like schizophrenia can be pushed over the edge by stressful events, but what about a healthy person?
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is very real and would fit your criteria. Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder usually develop over time in a person’s late teens to early 20’s and shouldn’t be caused by a single traumatic event although that certainly wouldn’t help anything.
I guess PTSD is not exactly what I had in mind. It seems that people who suffer from this disorder have severe emotional problems, but most would not consider them “crazy” in the colloquial sense. I.e., they aren’t talking to walls or running in circles or claiming to be Jesus.
You’d likely only see this if the character in your fiction was ALREADY a little bit off.
A disturbing event can CERTAINLY help someone who is emotionally disturbed, but coping with their illness go into a state where their grasp on reality fails.
Well then you need to define what you mean by crazy.
The kind of horrible event you describe in your OP would be of a magnitude that would seriously compromise someone’s sense of reality–maybe more gore/agony/cruelty/noise/teror than they thought was possible: the gaze of Cthulu–with a lasting adverse effect. Surely some folks would be more predisposed to being reduced to a drooling shell of a person than others, maybe because of an underlying issue. So…wha choo mean by crazy?
An “otherwise healthy person” is dificult to identify given the large number of borderline nutjobs out there who unknowingly put on a pretty good show of normal.
I guess my definition of “crazy” involves delusions, halucinations, disorganized thinking, or loss of contact with the real world. So I suppose a person with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, or severe bipolar disorder would fit the bill. (Note: I realize this term can be derogatory and I’d try not to use it to refer to a person with one of these illnesses).
Have you ever closely known someone with PTSD? It can get pretty and cause some version of all the problems you list. Flashbacks are fairly common and a break from reality can also occur. I knew someone with PTSD that would wake up in the middle of the night and believe that he was in Vietnam with associated screaming and everything. He couldn’t be approached by anyone when he was in that state because he was violent and dangerous.
Ever wonder where the phrase “run amok” came from?
My 2 cents worth: An extremely hard life and hopelessnes can lead to such a thing.
Aside: There is a museum in Darwin that has a macabre device called an ‘amok catcher’ on display. This is a device made out of bamboo and wood which is essentially a long pole with a lyre shaped bow mounted at one end of the pole to the middle of the bow. The bow would fit around the amok persons neck to pin him to the ground. Here’s, the grisly bit: a sharp spiked rod is pushed down the centre of the pole into the back of the amok’s neck, thus rendering them non-amok.
I would say yes. I experienced two bad panic attacks in my life, and they involved intense delusions, disorganized thinking, paranoia, and dissociation (the feeling of being outside of myself looking at me as a character in a dream or something.) I don’t otherwise have any known psychological problems.
How about fugue states?
WWI soldiers definitely went crazy as a result of the cruel conditions particularly the days and days of heaving bombing. I’m actually surprised that more didn’t go crazy. Everyone has their own limits.