Anti-Schizophrenia

introbert

I've thought about the best way to approach this topic without being confined to talking about one particular author or setting myself up for an epic narration that will inevitably be mediocre. I think the best way is to simply discuss the topic in reference to the dialectical oppositions that are present, without much statement of historical facts. Nevertheless, this topic is as much about history as it is about philosophy, and it is largely in the recent history of Modernity that there has been a prevailing antischizophrenic ethos.

I'd like to call attention to Descartes' Demon as an object for inducing extreme doubt. This kind of idea suggests schizophrenia as it is a kind of odd, delusional and paranoid idea; however, the nature of it is antischizophrenic as a schizophrenic lacks the capacity to doubt. Just as anticapitalism, for instance, requires capitalism to exist, anti-schizophrenia must start with a schizophrenic premise. Wishing to proceed from this point, I'll simply state that Descartes, apart from separating mind from body, reimagines many Platonic ideas from dualism, to 'the demon' equivalent to cave allegory, but my bias in interpretation, stated plainly, is that he is not continuing an ironic tradition but commencing one of rationalization. These are dialectically opposed as ironic encompasses subjective, irrational and individual qualities and rationalization are objective, rational, and social qualities.

So anti-schizophrenia begins in the modern era as a process of rationalization. Schizophrenia is an irrational degenerative state and rationalization is a rational progressive state, so the dialectical argument of these two opposing phenomena's convenience in text is proof of its veracity in the world. This direct conflict is manifest as the most obvious form of anti-schizophrenia, the psychiatric aim of controlling, treating and ending schizophrenia. Ironically, this discussion of the topic is not going to be about psychiatric anti-schizophrenia, but sufficient proof of a modern anti-schizophrenia can be found in the history of psychiatry which is indelibly linked to Modernity.

If I am not going to talk about the anti-schizophrenia of psychiatry, what else is there to talk about? The position taken here is that schizophrenia possesses myriad essences NATURAL vs artificial, IRRATIONAL vs rational, INDIVIDUAL vs social, CREDULOUS vs doubtful or skeptical, IRONIC vs concordant, DISABLED vs able and so on, ad nauseum. Therefore, the discussion will address how a broader antischizophrenia is actually a dominant modern ethos.

My interest in this topic stems from an interest in the year 1968 and the events that unfolded in Europe and North America, mainly. In France were the student and labor demonstrations, in Ireland the beginning of the Troubles, and in USA a liberalizing social and academic movement. It is a difficult topic to research due to the immense noise of information on the topic, but where I can I glean information on the connection between the Orange and that hypothesized influence on rationalization from Calvin to Descartes and the importance of this sect/ regime in the history of all three stated countries.

Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari wrote Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia inspired by the events of '68 in France, suggesting that these events had a schizophrenic essence. The antifascist (INDIVIDUAL v collective, LIBERTARIAN vs communitarian, INTROSPECTIVE vs watching others, CONFINED IN TOTALITY vs totalitarian, DISORGANIZED vs confederate, and so on, ad nauseum) essence of schizophrenia was in direct conflict with the fascism of Capitalism.

I look at that writing as important to my worldview, but I don't want this general discussion to be about that book which fails to state a thesis in the plain terms I now attempt. There are other writings that are important, mainly postmodern ones, but I also find the work of British literature 1984 by George Orwell interesting. It calls attention to the antischizophrenic conflict inherent in modern technologies, such as the telescreen that watches you, as suggestive of the premise of schizophrenia. However, it poses the real question that sorts every-one-of-us who is faced with it: to be unaffected by the paranoia of a possible totalitarian regime, and be a healthy conformist -OR- be affected, becoming a sick and delusional antitotalitarian schizo analog (that ironically fuels totalitarianism).

Anyway it's 7:00pm, I've got other things to do, any questions, comments and/or concerns are welcome.

Paine

↪introbert

I think you misrepresent the role of the 'demon' in Descartes's arguments. He does not conclude that the environment was set up to fool us. In fact, his confidence that such was not the case troubled many who read him afterwards.

Gregory

Religion seems to me to be schizophrenia trying to cure a misdiagnosed schizophrenia. Someone can certainly doubt if they are schizophrenic, they doubt themselves and others. Maybe in a different way though. I think the problems in the world are due to people who do wrong things and it's not just about psychosis and chemicals

Gregory

↪introbert

I do agree that Descartes may have had some genuine level of dissociation

Shawn

It would be incredible to point out and even conclusively think that schizophrenia is actively negated by a rationalist attitude of modernity, as you describe.

introbert

↪Paine

I havent actually misrepresented I just drew a comparison and you inferred I was comparing two incongruent aspects. The similarity is that both are objects of doubt. My contention is that the cave allegory is ironic for the very reason that the world you observe is a confinement but the world is actually opposing. The demon is a schizo object that rationality challenges.

introbert

↪Gregory

Religion has some schizo essences yes. Rationalization is divorced from Calvinism according to Weber. What I attempted here is not to talk about the medical or scientific 'reality' of schizophrenia, but the opposition of its essences to the essences of the dominant ideas of rationalism.

Hanover

I agree with @Shawn. It seems the OP is equating schizophrenia with doubt and then saying Descartes and those that followed him were anti-schizophrenic because they tried to resolve that doubt.

Schizophrenia isn't describable as a disorder that causes great doubt. It's a complex psychiatric disorder, where there may be varying degrees of hallucinations and paranoia, some of which the person may know aren't real.

Descartes' demon wasn't the creation of paranoid schizophrenic. He didn't run helplessly in fear of pursuit. He didn't wear a tin foil hat or look beneath his bed for demons. It was a thought experiment.

introbert

↪Shawn

Not surprising as it is concordant that your argument against the idea presented here is an expression of an antschizophrenic essence: incredulity/ doubt/ skepticism. I understand, you disagree with a critical belief in antischizophrenia.

introbert

↪Hanover

Not just doubt, my contention is that Descartes reinvents Platonism in a new spirit. Doubt is only one aspect.

Sorry if the post is not clear but I dont intend in any way to imply Descartes was schizo. I meant the premise is schizo and his idea challenges or opposes it.

introbert

Going to bed. Good night.

Gregory

"When Descartes wished to assure himself of the truth of knowledge, he said : Cogito ergo sum; that is, he ceased to look at the cogitatum which is abstract thought and looked at the cogitare itself, the act of the ego, the centre from which all rays of our world issue and to which they return. And then he no longer found in thought the being which is only a simple idea, a universal to be realized.." Giovanni Gentile, The theory of Mind as pure Act, ch. 8

jgill

I doubt many think of schizophrenia unless it appears in their lives and becomes something with which they must cope, either personally or by acquaintance. To have to deal with the condition is not pleasant and might make one antischizophrenic , or not. It's not an issue that impacts much of society - like racism does - and so the expression "dominant ethos" could be misleading.

I like sushi

↪introbert

I would honestly like a clearer definition of this ‘political/social schizophrenia’ … I will read around a bit but in the OP there is not a definition I can see that has any real clarity.

introbert

↪I like sushi

I will spend more time elaborating on this idea little by little, so for now one way of thinking about it is to think of a hyper-calvinist who hates schizos. Schizos are damned, object of his faith, totally depraved, lazy, abnormal, all the signs are there, opposed to the rationality of his religion, predestination manifest most clearly. To this hypercalvinist anything that that is even a little bit like schizo is schizo. This hypercalvinist works hard, methodically, with intent, and purpose and rationality and so builds values into social institutions that are meant to discriminate against anything schizo. These provisions are not directly antischizophrenic so that someone can form resistance against it but indirect and diffuse and each insular so this complex is irresistible.

unenlightened

I think I should really read Anti-Oedipus first, and I may start doing that, but I'll risk a brief description of my fantasies about the issues. Large pinches of salt all round.

I imagine sanity as mental wholeness, and that means the integration of emotion, imagination, reason, and so on.

I don't have to imagine, I clearly see society as a whole as profoundly sick, dangerously sick, addicted to violence against itself, detached from reality in all sorts of ways, behaving irrationally and incoherently, and talking nonsense.

It follows, I suppose, that the diagnosed schizophrenic manifests individually the whole of the fragmentation of society. To be sane is to be sensitive, and the sensitive among us have projected onto them, the repressed negativity of those around them, in the same way that any oppressed group does; whatever is unacceptable to me, I make that you. You are mad, because I cannot possibly be.

Here is a song about how to fit in to this fragmented society :

I like sushi

↪introbert

If you cannot offer a reasonably concise definition when asked I am not really interested. Sorry.

introbert

↪I like sushi

Reasonably concise is in the realm of oppositions of AS as it is diametrically opposed to the kind of extraneous, pressured speech that is characteristic. The political/ social schizophrenia is a complex of many essences that are literally, symbolically and analogously schizophrenic. It is not one thing that can be easily and curtly described. I have begun, in the OP, to describe the kind of essences involved. There are hundreds.

I like sushi

↪introbert

You could have probably started by saying ‘political/social schizophrenia’ and then stated that you meant this ‘figuratively, symbolically and literally’ … but then the problem would be you cannot use it ‘literally’ because it is LITERALLY not a term used to cover human beings on a ‘social/political’ spectrum’. It is a psychological term used to describe a particular brain disorder/state where the sense of self is loosely described as being ‘shattered’.

If you are just using the term ‘analogously’ to describe modern human society at large then it is not particularly hard to say so … because I just did so. To say it is a complex matter is also not really much of an excuse. Many things are complication that can be summed up in an ad hoc manner to begin with.

All you appear to have presented up to now is a list of terms used in polarity without exposing why, how or why I or anyone else should care.

If it merely boils down to political and social institutions and methodologies approaching human life as something that is either highly structured or essentially chaotic … then again, you can just say so.

Joshs

↪I like sushi

↪introbert I would honestly like a clearer definition of this ‘political/social schizophrenia’ … I will read around a bit but in the OP there is not a definition I can see that has any real clarity. — I like sushi

I’ll give you a taste of the notions of schizophrenia and ’schizo-analysis’ that Deleuze and Guattari introduced, since it seems to be the main inspiration of introbert’s OP. He says he doesn’t want to link his ideas exclusively to D-G, but I think it would
help if he could lay out in some detail what they wrote and contrast his arguments with theirs.

In his first mentions of schizophrenia, Deleuze distinguishes between a clinical psychopathology and a metaphorical use of the word.

“…when Kant puts rational theology into question, in the same stroke he introduces a kind of disequilibrium, a fissure or crack in the pure Self of the 'I think', an alienation in principle, insurmountable in principle: the subject can henceforth represent its own spontaneity only as that of an Other, and in so doing invoke a mysterious coherence in the last instance which excludes its own - namely, that of the world and God. A Cogito for a dissolved Self: the Self of 'I think' includes in its essence a receptivity of intuition in relation to which I is already an other. It matters little that synthetic identity - and, following that, the morality of practical reason - restore the integrity of the self, of the world and of God, thereby preparing the way for post-Kantian syntheses: for a brief moment we enter into that schizophrenia in principle which characterizes the highest power of thought, and opens Being directly onto difference, despite all the mediations, all the reconciliations, of the concept.”

Deleuze argues that philosophy has been under the burden of a dogmatic image of thought that swallows differences within formal logic and propositional rationality.

“It is not a question of opposing to the dogmatic image of thought another image borrowed, for example, from schizophrenia, but rather of remembering that schizophrenia is not only a human fact but also a possibility for thought - one, moreover, which can only be revealed as such through the abolition of that image. It is noteworthy that the dogmatic image, for its part, recognizes only error as a possible misadventure of thought, and reduces everything to the form of error.”

Deleuze is using his peculiar notion of schizophrenia in service of a radical concept of becoming influenced by Nietzsche.

Julie Van der Wielen writes:

“In Anti‐Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari describe what they call the schizophrenic process. Their aim is actually ethical‐philosophical and socio‐political; it transcends a merely clinical point of view on schizophrenia.1 Nevertheless, one can also distinguish here a description of schizophrenia as a mental condition, in a positive manner: according to them, if the schizophrenic individual seems confused and unable to operate within meaningful structures, this must not be explained negatively, as a failure to interiorize such structures. Instead, one must explore the way in which the schizophrenic functions and try to understand his “logic” without preconceptions.”

introbert

↪I like sushi

It's difficult to boil down because it represents a regime that sanctions all behavior and thought. Even in this thread the proposed AS is exercised through the kind of replies being made. Nobody has to care, that is opposed to the apathy of schizos, but if you are so inclined it is a possible reality that you can situate yourself in, become antagonistic and reactive to, as a dialectical conflict with modernity if you have maladaptive desires, a vendetta, or want to think something unconventional.

I like sushi

↪Joshs

Thanks for insight. I might look into it one day. As is my initial impression is that this is probably something that will not appeal to me as it looks like an obscurantism.

I have no problem with wacky analogies and bizarre ideas, but when they have no real anchor and concatenate into analogies of analogies of analogies … nah thanks :)

I like sushi

↪introbert

Sounds like convoluted rubbish. I think I have the gist though. It is a tail-eating-snake kind of problem. In a highly ‘structured social environment’ the non-conformists appear as disorientated and confused. In a social structure far less rigid the ‘highly structured’ lives lived appear as disorientated and confused.

The main problem with taking this to any extreme, in any aspect of human sociopolitical make up, is that ‘society’ is necessarily a concept of ‘structures’ not a concept of ‘non-structures’.

I have said for many, many years now that if I was to venture out and write a philosophical work it would be titled something like “Dichotomies & Magnitudes” … I would not waste time with layers of analogies though and use the term ‘schizophrenia’ as a means of describing society (be this in terms of economics or any other societal category of thought).

Note: I actually believe that what is psychologically framed as ‘schizophrenia’ is basically unconscious contents spilling onto the conscious sphere. I believe that everyone had ‘episodes’ it is only that some recall them and others do not - but I am mostly referring to psychosis here rather than the specific brain-disorder of ‘schizophrenia’.

introbert

At the time of Descartes, schizophrenia was still undefined, yet to call it antimadness would be to deny the modern conceptualization that has defined the category. It is clearly this category of madness, which at the time of his writing was likely not zeroed in on, but known as a fascinating oddity likely associated with demonic possession and infrequent but likely panic inducing immoral acts. This demon in Descartes writing that presents the possibly false reality, has a rational remedy of doubt.

Below are some point form notes on antischizophrenia:

-schizo is subjective or 'intrasubjective' whereas modern rationality is intersubjective ex. a typical academic paper is a conglomeration of citations as if to make an intersubjctive appeal "this is what many people think"
- schizo defies predictability and control and features a breakdown in routines, these are characteristic of modern society
-schizo is prone to religious delusion, rationalization has separated from its religious influences
-schizo rebels against being watched, and watching in terms of surveillance and popular spectacle are part of modernity
-schizo is prone to solipsism which is extreme indirect realism whereas the modern view of reality is objective to the point of direct realism, even though ironically the neuroscientific view is indirect, the former is the standard schizos are held to in psychiatry
-schizo interprets reality as if they are not watching, and acts as if they are not thinking which is against modern standards of rational thought and behavior
-schizo is a materal condition (biological) that gives rise to antithetical ideas to status quo kind of like dialectical materialism
-schizo has a philosophical repertoire existential, phenomenological, irrational, nihilistic, cynical, pessimistic, subjective, transcendentalist, individualist, solipsism, indirect realism etc. These are argumentative to prevailing philosophies
-schizo is ironic as it is discordant with reality, expectation, codes, modernity, etc.
-schizo is predominantly introvert whereas extrovert is more in line with modern social agenda
-schizo is absurd this offends modern meaning as an objective truth of objects
-schizo presents possibility that human consciousness is fundamentally illusory which offends the modern view of objective truth
-schizo can create moral panics which can be used to increase communitarianism, a modern quasi-fascist agenda.

introbert

↪I like sushi

The presented antischizophrenia is a paranoid speculation that aims to promote the shared delusion that there is a kind force of thought and action that organizes a will that persecutes schizos and forms a society in opposition to schizo essences. It is not to advocate for it. The motive for such a position is compassionate and with the ironic intention of connoting something against the rational expectation: "antischizophrenia is something good" as schizophrenia is something bad. This is a transvaluation that identifies schizophrenia as the embodiment of essences that reflect values that are under siege by encroaching modernity. However it is not a position that can be easily overtaken. It is a force of nature that recruits into its resistance from everyone on all sides. It is a pathology at one extreme and on the other it is a range of functional dispositions that are hard to oppress. It could be called anti-individualism, antisubjectivism, antinihilism etc. but antischizophrenia is a single entrenchment that covers all positions.

Jack Cummins

↪introbert

What seems to me to be a problem with your post is that it seems to misrepresent schizophrenia as being equal to lack of rationality. Schizophrenia is a recognized clinical condition. I am not denying that it may have some aspects which go beyond the medical model. Even though the tradition of antipsychiatry has faded one important work, which may still have some useful insights is RD Laing's, 'The Divided Self'. This looks at the existential splits in thinking often presenting in families, involving conflicting messages.

Generally, I think that your topic area is an interesting one and my main objection is to your title. This is based on my experience of knowing and working with people who have been diagnosed and living with psychosis. However, the whole idea of what is madness is an interesting one for reflection, as written about by Michael Foucalt. The whole antipsychiatry movement was important too, incorporating the social and political aspects of the labelling of mental illness.

The topic which you have raised is a large one, especially as you link it to philosophy and consciousness. Your outpost tries to cover so many aspects, all of which are important. However, it is a bit jumbled and I probably needs to involve some research, in order for it not to come across as a philosophy based on the label of schizophrenia. I do wonder how much knowledge do you have of the condition and experience of schizophrenia as a basis for starting a philosophy discussion on 'Anti-Schizophrenia'.

introbert

↪Jack Cummins

That schizo is a recognized clinical condition is not a quality of the phenomenon. That is a modern development. Saying schizo is lack of rationality, even though I didn't say that exactly, is kind of a crude delineation for efficient communication. It is undeniable that psychosis is an irrational state to be in, but this is not exclusively about rationality, however you define it. It is about a complex of modern values that, yes, include rationality that are opposed to schizo essences. You can stand the modern ground that schizo is a clinical diagnosis, but that is the most threatening antischizo front as what is considered healthy (not schizo) is a major contemporary force of rationalization. This rationalization is an extension of Cartesian rationalization, but is not about philosophical rationality directly. Health rationalization is extensive and involves sets of rules, recommendations and scientific 'truths' that are compelling on thought and behavior. It is a simple thesis that none of these will rationalize schizo thoughts and behaviors, in fact it's the opposite. These rationalizations are not necessarily universally correct. Such things as overthinking, being alone, talking to yourself, encouraging paranoia, not sleeping, having grandiose ideas, childlike imagining into adulthood, daydreaming, neglecting body due to focus on mind, critical of medical authority/ knowledge, not following routines etc. are just some of things that are actively sanctioned. I don't advocate for these things, but I contend that the rationalized society they form is more hostile to schizo essences than a society without them.

As for your other comments about the quality of the post or my own expertise/ experience of schizo, both can be addressed by the admission of amateurishness. I am not a professional philosopher or academic. I am university educated, but I work in the skilled trades. Much of what I know about philosophy is from prior to 2010 and I am going off of increasingly diminishing memory. I don't have time or energy to give philosophy the attention I would like. As for schizophrenia, I obviously have no clinical experience with it, it is just my belief that the premodern world was more schizo than the modern world, which is increasingly antischizo.

trogdor

As for schizophrenia, I obviously have no clinical experience with it, it is just my belief that the premodern world was more schizo than the modern world, which is increasingly antischizo. — introbert

Then your should not be basing your entire string of thought on it.. It becomes confusing and comes of as a bit dumb/ignorant.

This reminds me of the Table in Anti-Oedipus. It has so much stuff on it that has been placed there for no reason. It is complex yet simple, and can no longer be used as a table. Like in a so called schitsofrenicis drawing it has had things added until there is no more to add and no longer has any clear use or describable properties. It has become more of a plie. You wouldn’t know how to grasp it physically or mentally. Me, I guess you could find some pleasure in taking things of the table (in case of the drawing bring out an eraser).

introbert

↪trogdor

Your criticism makes analogy between my humble post to schizophrenic production, but far from a criticism this is appropriate for the nature of the idea.

comes of [sic] as a bit dumb/ignorant. — trogdor

I'm guilty as charged. However, having no clinical experience doesn't put a gag order on me from talking about something I have a sense of in the contemporary world.

introbert

The origins of this idea comes from a sort of preoccupation I had with being an "introvert", and the social stresses and traumas that are associated with that. I felt that Capitalism and Modernism sort of made a type of person that is detached from social reality, more about thinking than acting, prone to fatigue from the social nature of enterprise and having a tendency to cynical, apathetic and maladaptive thoughts about society and work determined the kind to be unfit. I had a suspicion that Jungian psychology had influenced the National Socialist regime of Germany in the 1930s on. In the absence of verifiable facts about this anti-individual agenda, beyond the known collectivism of fascism and ultra-nationalism, I sort of became aggravated by the Cartesian standard of epistemology of only believing what ego could absolutely not doubt. This aggravation, ultimately led me oppose Cartesian philosophy in my thinking and with post-modernists such as Foucault and Deleuze, an appreciation of irrationalism.

The National Socialist regime of Germany, can be considered sort of a synthesis of Orange Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, but a modernization of those belief systems. Germans at that time adopted elements of Roman fascism, the salute and the social structure, and the ethos was a derivative of the protestant belief that there were signs (blonde, blue eyed, rational etc) that indicated they were blessed by God. There is also Weber's thesis of the importance of this protestantism to German history. But that is not really here nor there, but simply provides a segue back into Rene Descartes, who was another combination of Catholic and Orange. Being highly critical of the triad of Modernism, Roman Catholicism and Orange-ism, I came to look at this complex of embodying essences: in modernism, rationality; in Orange-ism, the predestined blessed and damned nature of opposing kinds; and in Roman Catholicism, fascist collectivism, totalitarianism and authoritarianism. This is all simplification and generalization.

It didn't take much of a leap to connect my anti-introvert hypothesis to anti-schizophrenia. It became evident that schizo is an extreme that covers all the bases of the anti-introvert hypothesis, and as a further extreme is better for dialectical theorizing. Not only that, schizophrenia has a history of persecution/ treatment that is well documented. So appropriately, as a a rejection of Cartesian doubt, I persist in my belief in a complex that renders certain types of people unfit and that this orders and sorts people socially, determines how they are treated, the kinds of social interactions they have, whether they thrive, commit suicide, otherwise die, and succeed or fail. I call it antischizophrenia, but schizophrenia is one extreme in a bipolar conflict that everyone is either opposing or analogous to.

Mark Nyquist

↪introbert

Maybe introversion and psychosis are an adaptation to the political ideologies you mentioned. They (ideologies) seem to universally take the form of pyramid schemes and those in the higher levels of the hierarchy are most benefited. Could be denying them some of your patronage is your way of winning. Also applies to financial, religious and social hierarchies.

Anti-Schizophrenia

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