We are all pretty familier with tinfoil hats and CIA brain implants. From what I know (correct me if I am wrong) a lot of these beliefs can be attributted to schitzophrenia. I havn’t really studied up on schitzophrenia, so please correct my misconceptions.
Why is it so common for the CIA and mind reading beams etc. to be a theme in schitzophrenic delusions? It is almost downright predictable. Is it the influence of others, or do beliefs about the CIA and that sort of thing appear spontaniously? What do schitzophrenics in other cultures (and in the past, when technology wasn’t so prominent) get worried about? Does schitzophrenia even exist in “primitive” cultures?
One way to think about your questions might be to consider that when people exhibit these behaviors, we use those behaviors to classify them as schizophrenic. People aren’t simply schizophrenic by some nature, and then all seem to exhibit the same symptoms. When people hear voices in machines, we call that a symptom of a condition which we call schizophrenia. In other words, your question is similar to asking what’s up with the coincidence of people with colds ALL saying that their eyes itch. Why do people with colds all seem to report the same phenomenon? And why that one, for cripes sake? See what I’m sayin?
Well, if you have a natural tendency to be paranoid who would you most likely be paranoid of? Seems to me the CIA and gov’t in general are the most likely targets. Even non-paranoid people are often mistrustful of the gov’t.
Aliens (i.e. extra-terrestrials) seem to also be a likely area of paranoia for people in general.
My completely unprofessional opinion is that what you describe is a result of the symptom of hearing voices and hallucinating. To the schizophrenic, those voices are very real, and naturally, the person wants to put an explanation to the voices. Thus, it must be aliens or the government putting the voices there.
Off the subject (sort of), have you seen the latest research that smoking marijuana early in life can lead to a higher chance of schizophrenia and depression? I wonder if it isn’t just that that type of person is likely to self-medicate.
Not all schizophrenics are paranoid, only those who suffer from paranoid schizophrenia. By definition, schizophrenia is a psychosis, which means that the afflicted individual has lost contact with reality. The usual symptom I’ve seen is that God is communicating to the person, sometimes through a radio, sometimes just through his mind. This is a common defense, that God told him to kill. You may want to read this.
I’ve never worked with schizos and my recollection of this diagnosis is a bit hazy but I’ll take a stab at this.
Someone mentioned that the CIA etc. is an easy target. Though this is sensible enough, it’s not the only factor. The CIA paranoids are used as a text book example of symptomology. It’s not that this is an obligatory target, but rather, a good example of one. That said, there could be a better that chance occurrence of gov’t paranoia but of the top of my head, I can’t remember reading about it*.
This is a somewhat awkward question couched in a bit of theory. It’s my impression that schizo. is widely thought to be biological in origin. Thus, symptoms are manifest from the individual and are not the result of external input. However, there was (and perhaps still is) a good deal of research that points to the dynamic interaction of the individual + environment as the trigger for the onset of illness.
To address your question more directly. Though the indiv.+env. hypothesis (the diathesis-stress model?) accounts for the onset of illness, it does not mean that environmental influence determines the actual symptoms, just that it brings them out. My opinion, FWIW, is that the symptoms arise a as function of the illness. In the context of your question this means no, paranoia does not arise spontaneously. However, the actual target for the paranoia (eg. CIA) originates from the individual and though stereotypes exist, this can vary from patient to patient.
As for people who would have been given a diagnosis of schizo. before the advent of gov’t. Well, there are other plenty of other targets for paranoia. God’s a good one, the devil or other demons were pro’ally pretty popular back then, and in a pinch, I suppose even your neighbour would do (admittedly, the last of these doesn’t really have the same sense of grandiosity, but hey, I did say in a pinch). Additionally, I’ve heard that many of those considered shamans, soothsayers, etc. would earn themselves a diagnosis or two if you were to take the DSM back in time.
*By no means does this discredit the assertion, it simply means I don’t rember reading of it.
Not all people suffering from schizophrenia are paranoid, infact just yesterday I was talking to someone suffering from catatonic schizophrenia, who told me how he had gone into a catatonic state for some period of time and had also believed he was Jesus. He had no more paranoia than someone not suffering from schizophrenia.
The key thing here is that schizophrenics do not really recognize that they are unwell.
put yourself in the mind of a schizophrenic:
you are hearing voices in your head that are not part of you, what are the possible explanations for this (given that you do not recognize you are unwell)?
Basically the explantions of God, the Devil, Jesus, Aliens, the CIA are all attempts to rationalize a situation that cannot truly be rationalized.
I’ve seen an old article about “mental ray” complaints from the 1940s. It seems that police departments usually knew of a few loony types who were convinced that their neighbors were trying to control their actions with “mental rays.” Maybe they got the idea from pulp science fiction magazines?
Hey, maybe in the distant past it wasn’t “the CIA using mind-control technology,” instead maybe it was your evil neighbors “using witchcraft” to control your actions, or sending invisible demons to torment you with voices.
Therfore, the examples above of for example are infact the most rational explantions in this situation and this is why so many schizophrenics choose one of them.
On the contrary, many schizophrenics do know that they are unwell. There are also those who are too far gone to know that they’re nuts, but IIRC, they’re in the minority (although maybe not by a substantial amount).
Oddly enough, delusions (under which paranoia, belief that one is god, etc.) are considered a “postive” symptom, along with such things as inappropriate emotions and acting silly.
“positive” in this context means that something’s there that shouldn’t be. Look at the “negative” symptoms–they’re all the absence of behaviors that normal people exhibit.
I think it is interesting that people associate these things as being an indicator of schizophrenia. I have known and worked with many schizophrenics in my life, both medicated and not, and I have only met one person who would even have delusions that come close to these. I think these are more the stereotypes that have been used in popular culture and media to indicate a schizophrenic, and therefore it has perpetuated a not so common symptom as being more of a norm.
As for other cultures and pre-technology schizophrenia. I worked with a girl at an adult foster care for the mentally ill who was from Kenya. We worked with mostly schizophrenic patients, and she found it interesting that we classified these people as mentally ill. Back home, people would say that these people are demon possessed. There is also a theory that people as far back as Biblical times who were labeled as demon possessed were really suffering from schizophrenia. Delusional behavior will always come from what is known, and so different societies and times would have different types of delusions and it will have many different norms in each culture.
I don’t know that somebody with that level of severity of the disease would be aware that they’re nuts.
I guess low-grade schizophrenia would be given other names, like schizotypal personality disorder, or various other ones. But it is very possible to have the symptoms of schizophrenia and be aware that hallucinations and delusions are what they are.
I’ve experienced every symptom over the course of the last four and a half years, and at no time was I ever under the impression that those experiences were based on the external world. But I’m not anywhere near as far gone as Nash was.
The movie A Beautiful Mind is a completely unreliable guide to the life of John Nash. Nash didn’t have any visual hallucinations, and he had few auditory ones. Most of his schizophrenia was in his imagining grand conspiracies.
It is virtually impossible to reason a Schizophrenic out of there dellusions because they don’t recognize them as dellusions and telling them won’t dissuade them, just upset them.
In my experince schizophrenics recognize that other people think they are unwell but do not truly recognize this themselves.
I saw a documentary that filmed a group therapy session and one member of the paranoid delusional group was claiming that “witches” were inflitrating her brain.
So I agree. WHen you are extremely pranoid, but don’t now why, you probably try to fill in the blanks with whatever make sense to you at the time, so CIA, Aliens, Witches, voice of God, etc.
By definition, schizophrenia is a psychosis, which means that the afflicted individual has lost contact with reality. The usual symptom I’ve seen is that God is communicating to the person, sometimes through a radio, sometimes just through his mind. This is a common defense, that God told him to kill. You may want to read