Moreno,
I concede on your points well taken. I admit that the neuroscience/reductionist model, coupled with psychology is naive, or at best inadequate.
My concern is where do we go from here?
I admit that schizophrenia is a personality disorder. As such, it involves not only brain chemical malfunction, but also a lifetime of interface between self and culture, self and society and self and family. Culture evolves over centuries and offers little hope of immediate change. Society is primarily concerned with its own preservation, not with that of individuals whocannot contribute to it. Family is torn between hope and despair over the quick fixes or lengthy therapy currently offered. Self is the victim.
i dont think schizophrenia is a personality disorder…
Wait, I haven’t said that I hope.
I’m not going to go to Wiki to get an ‘accepted’ definition of ‘multiple personality disorder.’ I think schizophrenia and MPD co-exist, because that’s the way some people present their MI. In either case, the ‘monad,’ the oneness of the self, has disintegrated. Reintegrating the ‘self’ can’t always be done, if the compartmentalizing of ‘feeling’ is too strong. On the other hand it might be understood and accepted–even played with by the patient. “Get out of my mind, Josie, you’re nothing more that a fear I may never understand, but I don’t need you any more for protection.”
At least, that’s how I look at multiple personalities.
Turtle, Moreno Liz, et.al.,
Turtle you are right in that current literature does not describe schizophrenia as split personality but as a schism in ability to communicate on a rational basis with others. “Personality” may be the wrong word. Let me clarify with a living example. Below is a message J. wrote on the morning of 8/3/11.
“enternal (SIC),
my own left for years in a dream. Over try everyone dies if taken in (the) spirit fond of God every day salute (the) president”
So, who wrote that message? One person? Two or more persons? The word “internal” and the phrases "over try"and “left for years in a dream” suggest a writer whose message most people can understand. They suggest a writer who is aware of her own mind. I suggest that the person who wrote those phrases is the executive aspect of “personality” or personhood, if you will. It seems that this part supervises its constituents, keeps them in line and more or less united in a communicable sense of reality. Otherwise, these aspects appear to wander off, assert themselves as individual takes on reality and wreak havoc with memory and time.
J. cannot focus on watching a movie for over 20 minutes. She cannot write a complete sentence. Yet she can describe movies she has seen and can speak in complete, coherent sentences.
Now J. admits to affective schizophrenia. And, you are right. Who am I to challenge her defenses. Yet, on the other hand, who am to deny her excusions into common reality?
That does not sound like D.I.D.
In DID the person shifts between clearly distinguishable personality types who often have different ages and even sexes and certainly voices and vocabularies. Some personalities may be aware of some or all the others, often some, including the main one, are not aware. These people generally have gone through catastrophic abuse. There are not many of them.
Schizophrenia is not clearly tied to trauma and there are no extra personalities. The split is from reality, it is not a split in the mind. At least that is how the term was constructed. Here you generally have hallucinations and delusions and the person is likely to have incredible problems functioning.
I really hate separating J. from the real to the impersonal. I think of her as a person rather than as a subject of dispassionate discussion. As a ‘person,’ given center stage by ier, J. has become the symbol of MI and the ‘poster child’ for the need to continue trying to find some sort of relief–or cure–for MI. This should be as important as the need to find an answer to the energy crisis or global warming.
Look at the number of philosophers who, according to society, ultimately succumbed to MI.
I’m sorry you feel this way. We humans are stuck with objective/subjective takes on reality. And hopefully, these balance. If you love someone who has an illness, you will try to learn everything you can about that illness from any source possible. I present my friend here, not in the insulting position of MI poster child, but as a real, live person with needs. If you can’t see that, please refrain from insults or avoid this thread. Your take here would discredit such remarkable people as Oliver Sacks, who publicizes his personal experiences with persons, including himself, who have mental problems.
Moreno makes sense.
Currently, I’m reading Michael Robbins’ “Experiences of Schizophrenia” (1993). Robbins’ work is a bit stuffy and contains outdated neuroscientific references, but it provides a decent summary of the history of medical descriptions of schizophrenia. The work thematically alligns with a concern shared by many of our contemporary psychotherapists.
The shared concern is that research into a complex matter such as schizophrenia should incorporate ideas from a wide range of disciplines such as neuroscience, genetics, sociology, psychology, etc. The concern is with the concept of parsimony. While this may offer a standardized tool for clarification in the mathematical/philosophical sense, it may not offer understandings of many interconnections necessary for comprehending the complexity of living. thinking humans. As A. Huxley put it, a complex problem may not have a simple solution.
I think we are recognizing here, with our difficulties in arriving at common definitions for such terms as normalcy, personality, reality, identity, etc., that some models for diagnosis and therapy are, as Moreno notes, inadequate. One size fits all descritions omit too much relevant information. Holistic approaches to therapy, provided that they are grounded on respect for individual human dignity, are sorely needed.
Until your last post, Ier, I thought your intent was to help J. Now it seems your intent is to increase your knowledge of MI–not to help J. I’ll do as you ask, and avoid this thread from now on. But I’ll always wonder about J. You made her very real to me.
Liz,
I really don’t want you to leave. I want you to understand that there is no conflict in my mind about gathering helpful information and seeing J. as a real live human being. I wish you could understand that. It was your “poster child” assertion that prompted my negative reaction. I could just as well have presented this thread with reference to my best friend C. who died of Huntingtons and whose reality was, to me at least, weird.
Moreno,
What prompted me to consider DID is J.s description of herself from the POV of someone else. She also tells me that other people, such as her mother, possess her mind.* I asked her once, when she was the “other” what her name was. She responded with nonsense syllables.
- These are her descriptions. I do not impose my opinions on her.
Typing through tears. Thanks to those who offered genuine support and tolerated my excursions into the safe, comforting realms of academic discussion.
Bye.
I can see why you went there. And none of us are in direct contact with this person so everything is speculative - and hell, even with direct diagnosis with a psychiatrist we are still dealing potentially with a lot of speculation. I used to work professionally in the field, not as a psychiatrist, and even what your wrote above does not make me think DID, which is extremely rare, in any case. But obviously no decisions should be made based on people guessing via the internet.
Listen, mister, just exactly what do you mean by this post?! Take 10 minutes in your “time-out” chair and listen for a minute–or 10.
If you recall at the beginning of this thread, I warned you against it. I urged you, instead, to find a support group of real people who’d gone through what you’re now going through. I asked you not to rely on people here who only have what they’ve learned and not necessarily any actual experience with MI in any of it’s varied forms. The “safe, comforting realms of academic discussion” are fine if everyone starts on the same page, but none of us is a psychiatrist, clinical psychologist, or trained psychological counselor–as far as I know. A lot of us haven’t read the same books or articles. Mainly, we only see you and J. through what you write. We can’t experience the full range of your communications–we don’t have your tone of voice, your facial expressions, hand gestures, body language, whether or not you get up and pace the room when you talk about certain things, whether or not you’re close to tears–nothing like that.
You’ve gotten conflicting ‘advice.’ I’ve suggested you take J. for a walk on a pretty day, only to have my suggestion countered by someone who said, “Don’t bombard a schizophrenic mind with too much stimulation.” I think everyone who’s taken time to even respond in this thread has done so out of an attempt at genuine support for both you and J.
You were upset when I said “poster child,” so upset, you don’t seem to have read my entire sentence. I’d love to be the “poster child” for Deep Brain Stimulation Surgery, as a way of relieving the symptoms of Parkinson’s, essential tremor and/or dystonia. I’ve gone through 3 such surgeries. Being a ‘poster child’ means nothing other than calling attention to a little-known condition and bringing the public up to date on what science has so far achieved and what it hopes to achieve in the future. One of my nieces has scleroderma, another has lupus–I’d love to be able to draw the world’s attention to these two conditions since most people have never even heard of them. No one knows what causes any of these conditions and there is, so far, no cure, but they’re thought to be possibly linked to genetics. The same is true with Huntington’s.
The problem, it seems to me, is that these conditions, including ‘real’ MI, don’t affect tens of thousands of screaming millions among the populations of the world. What you’ve attempted, imo, is to bring awareness to some of those people in a possible attempt to ensure continued research support. That’s an admirable thing to do–and not to be taken on lightly.
And now, you’re just going to chuck it all away and leave! What in heaven’s name happened between Mon Aug 08 at 12:59 pm and Tue Aug 09, 2011 at 2:11 pm?
Apologies if I misinterpreted you. I’m aware of your warnings. Do you think someone with MI, such as I experience, can heed such advice? A week or so ago, I proposed to J. She said yes. For some time after that she has decided not to be around me. I went to a net support group, but it would not allow me to register–computer problems I can’t afford to fix. Maybe I’m expecting too much support and understanding at a philosophy forum, as Morena suggests.
That still doesn’t explain your penultimate post. Why the tears, why the thanks, and why the leave-taking?
Also, is your mobility impaired to the extent you cannot find a support group with real live people? Are you and J. in hospital?
An internet support group is no better than a forum group. Just as we can’t ‘see’ you, you can’t see us. Part of the ‘support’ in a support group is that the group is comprised of real, live people.
Yes, I think that someone with MI can listen to and heed advice. Especially an articulate someone who tries to find answers through reading and writing; someone who is able to write coherent sentences complete with punctuation, grammar and spelling. If you can do that, your thoughts are also coherent. If your thoughts are coherent, doesn’t it follow that you can sift through them, arrange them, sort them into what’s beneficial and what isn’t and throw away what isn’t?
You’ve mentioned your MI–and your former wife’s–before. You, very early on, talked about how fortunate you’ve been in the choice of psychiatrists, etc., etc. But you’ve never mentioned what form of MI you have. This leaves all sorts of things up in the air.
Why not talk aboutit?
Liz,
Yes, some explanations are due and may elucidate the “penultimate” post.
J. is back! She had gone for a spell into the sense of reality mental isolation affords. In response to her absence I went to the same place of confinement. Suffering from major depression, I tend to see all distances and absences between people from the bleakest possible perspective. Without some jolt into shared senses of reality, I would stay there.
J. is back! Apparently her escape world is beginning to lose its protective power. "I can’t marry you, she said. “My other wouldn’t allow it.” "Just think, "I responded, “I’ll be getting two for one!” She melted like soft candle wax beneath the flame of meaningful contact. For hours she was One.
I believe that sufferings expressed here, J.'s, WWIII Angry’s, those of others and those of myself yield to the deep need for meaningful mental and physical interaction with real live other people. Although we may kick and scream about intrusions or violations of personhood, we really need the jolt into shared realities that only caring others are willing to give.