As someone who's had acute psychosis, I think the discussion here is profoundly silly.
This remark got my goat in particular: "So you're saying that people who say things that are obviously not true, also happen to often report having hallucinations. What if maybe, just maybe, reports of hallucinations are one of the obviously not true things." This is like the musings of a ten-year-old flat-earther. Who needs to learn medicine or neuroscience when you can just speculate about how the brain works?
Great post. Honestly don't understand why the hallucinations and delusions are so difficult for people to understand. Psychiatry gives them fancy names like delusions or hallucinations, but they are really just self-reported imaginings. People report seeing weird things all the time, ghosts, goblins, UFOs, Jesus, aliens. It's so frequent that it really needs to be considered a normal part of the human experience. And when people are polled, typically more than half of the people polled openly admit to seeing things that other people don't see or to hearing things that other people don't. Look up Jim Van Os and his research on schizophrenia on YT. These are just normal human experiences that other people find annoying.
Typically the problem is not with the schizophrenic but it's the problem is the schizophrenic family. They get sick of hearing the annoying stuff the "schizophrenic" does and says that are weird and outside of social norms.
"What if maybe, just maybe, reports of hallucinations are one of the obviously not true things."
Hallucinations are not unique to schizophrenia, bipolar disorder etc. There are plenty of patients with neurodegenerative and other disorders who have hallucinations. They are often are embarrassed to admit having them. Family members need to be asked to leave the exam room to make the patient feel more comfortable disclosing these things to their doctor. Patient with severe visual impairment may often have visual hallucinations (Charles Bonnet). Patients with severe hearing loss may have auditory hallucinations (musical ear syndrome). Patients with temporal lobe seizures may have olfactory hallucinations. None of the above patient types usually have delusions (unless there is a coexisting psychiatric comorbidity). Patients with dementia with Lewy bodies have profound hallucinations (visual and, less commonly, auditory). Saying that reports of hallucinations are not true is simply not true...
WIth all due respect, this post so thoroughly misunderstands the nature of psychosis it is difficult to know where to start.
I invite you to spend time talking with someone who has schizophrenia and then tell me that the main or only problem is a deficient respect social rules for some reason. Many of my patients with schizophrenia are in fact desperate to be able to better follow social rules because they know that is how you get along in the world. It is obviously a brain illness, and if you want to be consistent then you should also arguing the epileptics just love to thrash around on the ground from time to time.
I suggest you go and meet more people with chronic, serious mental illness and see if your views change.
hallucinations and delusions somewhat similar to those in psychosis are also seen in anticholinergics like benadryl or datura. ive suffered from acute psychosis (before trying any psychotropic drugs) and the states these substances induce felt pretty similar, in fact i got even more delusional and experienced more "coherent" hallucinations than in acute psychosis.
The mental illness deniers remind me of my childhood, before I knew about evolution. What was Szasz opinion about evolution? It seems to me that he believed in creationism.
OK, so let's consider that people with schizophrenia report that medication works for them sometimes, yet with unpleasent side effects. So how does this square with a extreme preference model? If schizophrenics just have an extreme preference for some anti-social behavior, then what happens when they take medication and such behavior decreases?
That would seem to imply their extreme preference became less of a preference hence they choose to engage in less anti-social behavior. But then why take the medication with its side effects? If their preferences shifted, they could just behave better without taking the medication. Do they want the medication despite what seem to be side effects? Is the medication altering their preferences? But if preferences can be altered externally, are they really preferences as that implies a person is simply a deterministic system.
you can simply look up the disorders I mentioned earlier to learn about them. Visual hallucinations in those cases may include seeing persons or groups of people engaged in various activities. I had a patient with lewy body dementia seeing people having sex in his bed that was quite disturbing to him to say the least...
The most influential modern philosopher, Kant, split mind from reality. "I have denied knowledge therefore, in order to make room for faith." This is an intellectual, not psychological, split. Psychiatrist, Louis Sass, in _Madness And Modernism_, says there has been a big increase in schizophrenia since Kant. Interesting "coincidence." There is some effect to a long-term evasion of focusing onto reality. Philosophy provides the intellectual context, inc/method, that science necessarily uses. Most scientists in Pragmatist America, are too poorly educated to know this.
Szasz may be correct in saying that scientific fraud has been used to persecute people. However, mental illness is real.
It's worth mentioning that this was my update on an earlier message. I hope I can write IT here:
Second thing I wanted to tell you is another quite plausible argument for schizophrenia, particularly supposed hallucinations, not existing. It's supposed to be the last stand in this battle on the side of psychiatry, even people who get your arguments on addiction/ADHD believe in this one little "illness" (BTW, it would be really awkward if it turned out that there exists only one illness in the entire field of psychiatry). The real problem is that we can't get into peoples' heads, but we still can use some Bayesian rule of thumb (or if we couldn't, we would have to bite the bullet and not believe anyone on all their internal impressions, or believe literally everyone). But...
1 If it's really brain MALFUNCTION of the supposedly ill, then shouldn't we expect some random shit appearing in front of the eyes of the sick. From what I know it's always some weird, but generally coherent like a secret agent talking to you or some shadow people, but rarely or never some random colors appearing, some random shapes, non-existing toasters, blue pancakes on the ceiling, etc. Why?
(Also, wouldn't that, including secret agents and shadow people hallucinations, have to be classified as a particularly complex vision impairment, and not a mental illness? Because where do we draw the line between some random non-existent red point jumping in front of your eyes, and some random non-existent cluster of points shaped like a talking man?)
Just as with other brain malfunctions, induced by psychedelic drugs or in dreams? Yeah, some of them are surprisingly coherent, but it's like 5 percent of that.
You might make an argument that people who see a random non-existent pancake in their home don't have their lives ruined because of this hallucination and don't want to be condemned and forcibly drugged. So they usually just don't talk about that to anybody. But wouldn't this go for people with more complex hallucinations, to an even greater extent? It's more likely that people will laugh at or avoid a guy who sees imaginary people than a guy who sees random stuff in front of their eyes. It's more likely that the former will be forcibly drugged. So wouldn't this simply imply that the hallucinating guys are just drama queens who crave attention?
Your argument of schizophrenics actually being figurative wasn't convincing for me. The whole schizophrenia type of stuff, though, still seemed quite fishy to me. I was inclined to believe that it does exist, but shouldn't be classified as a mental illness, but a vision impairment or neurological malfunction. But now I'm 99 percent sure that hallucinations exist almost exclusively in dreams, and under the influence of drugs. But, hey, the world has 8 billion people in it. Claiming that there's no, not even one, that there's literally zero actual schizophrenics would be even more insane. So clearly there must be some such instances. So here you have it, psychiatry, you won! Most of the illnesses invented by you don't exist, but one actually does, and it has probably like five guys suffering from it. You're clearly a useful and necessary and important branch of medicine!
As someone who's had acute psychosis, I think the discussion here is profoundly silly.
This remark got my goat in particular: "So you're saying that people who say things that are obviously not true, also happen to often report having hallucinations. What if maybe, just maybe, reports of hallucinations are one of the obviously not true things." This is like the musings of a ten-year-old flat-earther. Who needs to learn medicine or neuroscience when you can just speculate about how the brain works?
Great post. Honestly don't understand why the hallucinations and delusions are so difficult for people to understand. Psychiatry gives them fancy names like delusions or hallucinations, but they are really just self-reported imaginings. People report seeing weird things all the time, ghosts, goblins, UFOs, Jesus, aliens. It's so frequent that it really needs to be considered a normal part of the human experience. And when people are polled, typically more than half of the people polled openly admit to seeing things that other people don't see or to hearing things that other people don't. Look up Jim Van Os and his research on schizophrenia on YT. These are just normal human experiences that other people find annoying.
Typically the problem is not with the schizophrenic but it's the problem is the schizophrenic family. They get sick of hearing the annoying stuff the "schizophrenic" does and says that are weird and outside of social norms.
"What if maybe, just maybe, reports of hallucinations are one of the obviously not true things."
Hallucinations are not unique to schizophrenia, bipolar disorder etc. There are plenty of patients with neurodegenerative and other disorders who have hallucinations. They are often are embarrassed to admit having them. Family members need to be asked to leave the exam room to make the patient feel more comfortable disclosing these things to their doctor. Patient with severe visual impairment may often have visual hallucinations (Charles Bonnet). Patients with severe hearing loss may have auditory hallucinations (musical ear syndrome). Patients with temporal lobe seizures may have olfactory hallucinations. None of the above patient types usually have delusions (unless there is a coexisting psychiatric comorbidity). Patients with dementia with Lewy bodies have profound hallucinations (visual and, less commonly, auditory). Saying that reports of hallucinations are not true is simply not true...
WIth all due respect, this post so thoroughly misunderstands the nature of psychosis it is difficult to know where to start.
I invite you to spend time talking with someone who has schizophrenia and then tell me that the main or only problem is a deficient respect social rules for some reason. Many of my patients with schizophrenia are in fact desperate to be able to better follow social rules because they know that is how you get along in the world. It is obviously a brain illness, and if you want to be consistent then you should also arguing the epileptics just love to thrash around on the ground from time to time.
I suggest you go and meet more people with chronic, serious mental illness and see if your views change.
hallucinations and delusions somewhat similar to those in psychosis are also seen in anticholinergics like benadryl or datura. ive suffered from acute psychosis (before trying any psychotropic drugs) and the states these substances induce felt pretty similar, in fact i got even more delusional and experienced more "coherent" hallucinations than in acute psychosis.
As an admirer of the great libertarian and pseudoscience debunker Szasz, I await the response with excitement.
The mental illness deniers remind me of my childhood, before I knew about evolution. What was Szasz opinion about evolution? It seems to me that he believed in creationism.
OK, so let's consider that people with schizophrenia report that medication works for them sometimes, yet with unpleasent side effects. So how does this square with a extreme preference model? If schizophrenics just have an extreme preference for some anti-social behavior, then what happens when they take medication and such behavior decreases?
That would seem to imply their extreme preference became less of a preference hence they choose to engage in less anti-social behavior. But then why take the medication with its side effects? If their preferences shifted, they could just behave better without taking the medication. Do they want the medication despite what seem to be side effects? Is the medication altering their preferences? But if preferences can be altered externally, are they really preferences as that implies a person is simply a deterministic system.
you can simply look up the disorders I mentioned earlier to learn about them. Visual hallucinations in those cases may include seeing persons or groups of people engaged in various activities. I had a patient with lewy body dementia seeing people having sex in his bed that was quite disturbing to him to say the least...
I am not sure I understood that argument correctly, but why would a human brain malfunction in the same way as a simple electronic device?
The most influential modern philosopher, Kant, split mind from reality. "I have denied knowledge therefore, in order to make room for faith." This is an intellectual, not psychological, split. Psychiatrist, Louis Sass, in _Madness And Modernism_, says there has been a big increase in schizophrenia since Kant. Interesting "coincidence." There is some effect to a long-term evasion of focusing onto reality. Philosophy provides the intellectual context, inc/method, that science necessarily uses. Most scientists in Pragmatist America, are too poorly educated to know this.
Szasz may be correct in saying that scientific fraud has been used to persecute people. However, mental illness is real.
It's worth mentioning that this was my update on an earlier message. I hope I can write IT here:
Second thing I wanted to tell you is another quite plausible argument for schizophrenia, particularly supposed hallucinations, not existing. It's supposed to be the last stand in this battle on the side of psychiatry, even people who get your arguments on addiction/ADHD believe in this one little "illness" (BTW, it would be really awkward if it turned out that there exists only one illness in the entire field of psychiatry). The real problem is that we can't get into peoples' heads, but we still can use some Bayesian rule of thumb (or if we couldn't, we would have to bite the bullet and not believe anyone on all their internal impressions, or believe literally everyone). But...
1 If it's really brain MALFUNCTION of the supposedly ill, then shouldn't we expect some random shit appearing in front of the eyes of the sick. From what I know it's always some weird, but generally coherent like a secret agent talking to you or some shadow people, but rarely or never some random colors appearing, some random shapes, non-existing toasters, blue pancakes on the ceiling, etc. Why?
(Also, wouldn't that, including secret agents and shadow people hallucinations, have to be classified as a particularly complex vision impairment, and not a mental illness? Because where do we draw the line between some random non-existent red point jumping in front of your eyes, and some random non-existent cluster of points shaped like a talking man?)
Just as with other brain malfunctions, induced by psychedelic drugs or in dreams? Yeah, some of them are surprisingly coherent, but it's like 5 percent of that.
You might make an argument that people who see a random non-existent pancake in their home don't have their lives ruined because of this hallucination and don't want to be condemned and forcibly drugged. So they usually just don't talk about that to anybody. But wouldn't this go for people with more complex hallucinations, to an even greater extent? It's more likely that people will laugh at or avoid a guy who sees imaginary people than a guy who sees random stuff in front of their eyes. It's more likely that the former will be forcibly drugged. So wouldn't this simply imply that the hallucinating guys are just drama queens who crave attention?
Your argument of schizophrenics actually being figurative wasn't convincing for me. The whole schizophrenia type of stuff, though, still seemed quite fishy to me. I was inclined to believe that it does exist, but shouldn't be classified as a mental illness, but a vision impairment or neurological malfunction. But now I'm 99 percent sure that hallucinations exist almost exclusively in dreams, and under the influence of drugs. But, hey, the world has 8 billion people in it. Claiming that there's no, not even one, that there's literally zero actual schizophrenics would be even more insane. So clearly there must be some such instances. So here you have it, psychiatry, you won! Most of the illnesses invented by you don't exist, but one actually does, and it has probably like five guys suffering from it. You're clearly a useful and necessary and important branch of medicine!