#being delusional is my most skilled clinical condition

[cruelnemothesis]

[kindergarchy]

A Philosopher’s Madness by Lishan Chan Finished this slim volume on my way back to Singapore. Unlike accounts on anxiety which in their nature are anxiety-inducing (like Smith’s Monkey Mind), Chan’s A Philosopher’s Madness is not something that upon reading, will make you go crazy. It’s unapologetically calm in describing the state of crazy, in which you are out of touch with reality. Her language reminds me of my writing for philosophy modules in uni - squeaky clean, precise, almost clinical, without any need for garnish or embellishments. Lishan Chan studied politics and subsequently philosophy in UK. Upon returning to Singapore, she took up a research scholarship program offered by NUS in philosophy. The book aims to explore the possible relationship between philosophizing and her psychotic episode, just like how many have tried to connect existentialism with depression. I have read probably quite a considerable number of accounts on depression and anxiety, which are more common. It is very easy to fall on a spectrum when it comes to depression/anxiety, and this has a few consequences: 1) You don’t always have to label them as a mental illness 2) It doesn’t have to be a diagnosis/condition that you have to carry with you throughout your life 3) People might understand, relate, and say that it’s just a human response to a number of stressors in your life 4) People think that it is a testament to your lack of life skills, and this can be improved over time, and coming out of the rut of anxiety/depression, you’ll come out stronger 5) It will all pass (“tough times don’t last, tough people do”) 6) You pose no danger to anyone. Number 2 means that, when you are filling in a job or school application form, you don’t have to tick the history of mental illness column. It’s pretty hard to get your schizophrenic episode go by undetected, it’s easier with depressive or anxious episodes, unless in severe cases. Number 3 means that there is a fair amount of understanding for depression or anxiety. Number 4 means that, in the long run, the experience is somehow good for you. Number 6 means that you probably realize that depression and anxiety don’t have to be contagious, and the worst case scenarios are self-harm and self-sabotaging (whose consequences might bleed into other people’s lives, but it’s more likely for the sufferer to hurt herself than she to hurt others). But when you have to face the mad, you don’t know what the worst case scenario is - simply because you don’t understand why, and how, they do what they do. Everything seems possible. In normal cases, my previous sentence is motivational, in this case, not so much. It goes to show that the discomfort you experience in the presence of the mad, stems from a complete absence of understanding. It makes you wonder, are they the truly mad ones - or are you? Maybe you see yourself, your occasional nervous tics reflected in them, only tuned a few decimals louder in terms of intensity and frequency. It’s like holding a hazy mirror. You don’t want to think about this, in case understanding breeds empathy, and empathy leads you down to the path of metamorphosis - so you avoid seeking an explanation even more fervently. It’s a vicious cycle. So we see that, without ignoring the existing social stigma attached to depression and anxiety, we can safely say that schizophrenia does not get to enjoy the same amount of social sanction reduction in comparison. We call anxiety/depression patients the depressed, the stressed out, the melancholic ones. We call the schizophrenic mad, crazy, shen jing bing. This is because, I think, you can fairly reason with the anxious. Schizophrenia completely reverses and fragments your thought process - it does not start as a matter of obsessions with worries or a shift in focus. Perhaps I should blame Descartes. As a result of taking his advice in Meditations to ‘doubt as much as you can’, I attempted to do exactly that; doubt as much as I could. I questioned every statement, challenged every perception. It was the beginning of a relentless road to mental illness. You turn not just the value of truth, but also the approach to truth upside down. Inevitably, your trust in the world erodes - all that make up the world that we live in - other people, social roles, belief systems, the way the world is run. If you take thinking to its extreme, I think you can see how shaky all mechanisms we base our judgment of truth on are. Funnily enough, I think, the schizophrenics doubt everything but themselves. But should they? Does psychosis automatically render their experience invalid, once they come out of it? But the things that make sense to me when I am unwell make sense to no one else. This is what it means to be out of touch with reality. Today, I still wonder what it all means. If I had been brought to God through a period of madness rather than because of suffering and madness, would it follow that my current belief in God is delusional? If I were mad and had a religious experience, does it count as a genuine religious experience? Chan mentions at least three times in the book that she still “fears relapse”. I read a recent article on her by T Singapore a few days ago and news has it that she has not had any relapse for the past 10 years. During remission, ex-patients like Chan usually have to disseminate a relapse plan to their closest, because when you are mad, you don’t realize that you are mad. You need an observer to be there to realize that you are mad, a little bit like Schrodinger’s cat problem, or maybe a tree falling in the forest would make a better analogy. So if you don’t have an observer to say to you that you are mad, are you still mad? This leads to the gray categorization of the schizophrenia, stated in the book: Who is right? Is psychosis a mental condition or a physical condition? Is psychosis a sickness or a ‘condition’? (...) I summarize what I see as the possible positions as follows: - If psychosis is a physical disease, then the chemicals in the brain or a particular brain structure are identified with the experience of psychosis (extreme stress resulting in delusions). - If psychosis is a physical condition, then stress (for instance) is a physical rather than a mental entity. Chemicals in the brain or brain structure are not identified with the experience of psychosis, although we might recognize that there are patterns or correspondence between the two. - If psychosis is a mental disease, then psychosis would as a consequence be a mental disorder. A theory of psychosis would involve explaining the experience of beliefs that are false. The word ‘disease’ emphasizes the absence of wellness. The brain takes back stage here. - If psychosis is a mental condition, then there is no disorder or absence of wellness. Rather, experience of psychosis is simply a different and aberrant experience, one that can be explained with recourse to the individual’s perceptions and state of mind. It’s probably never one or the other. Now, no account on mental illness is complete without mentioning its undeniable correlation with creativity: This raises a question - is creativity and productivity in the arts somehow linked to emotional turmoil or unstable mental states? If so, are we losing something valuable to society by medicating anyone who shows evidence of unstable mental illness? Something that I can’t help but question though, can be found in the middle of this paragraph: Secondly, chemical imbalance might well be a parallel event alongside the conscious experience of mental illness without a necessarily causal relationship. It is commonplace scientific practice to equate correlation with causation, but philosophically speaking, there is a gap which needs to be acknowledged. As far as I’m concerned…. conflating correlation with causation is cardinal sin in any field of science. It’s fallacy. Lastly one fascinating yet slightly worrying part of the book is the appendix. This consists of Chan’s “thoughts at various stages of (her) illness.” Fascinating and slightly worrying because I think a lot of it actually make sense? E.g. Truth can only be found by slowly thinking through things. If you wish to be the sort of person who finds the truth, be prepared to accept the consequences. A person who finds the truth, or a person who is at least aware of the truth, is a person who refuses to join in the pretense. People who refuse to join in the pretense must lose the game. But have they really lost, if they fall out of the game? Have they really lost, if they move out of the periphery of the game? Without pretense, reality becomes clearer to one’s line of vision. Without pretense, it is possible to detach oneself from the various games that people play. Without pretense, it is possible to become an observer, as opposed to a spectator. One might argue that this is impossible, for there is at least one perspective that is detached observer cannot escape. This perspective is the perspective of the detached observer. To be a detached observer of yourself being a detached observer seems to lead to an infinite regress? What does it amount to? Personally, I think, if the most arduous pursuit of truth costs one’s mind, I would rather keep my mind please. I hope I’m not choosing ignorance when I say that sometimes… it gets tiring and the end justifies the means