Imagine

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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windhawk
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Imagine

Post by windhawk »

Can you imagine a mental disorder for which there is no antecedent awareness (diagnoses), e.g. an original manifestation of a "presumably" abnormal psychiatric state of being?

If not, why not?

If so, do tell...
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Imagine

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

What is a mental disorder but its formal diagnosis through established symptoms? That's how they are defined.

There's no "abnormal" psychiatric state beyond this. However, new symptoms or unusual combinations of known symptoms might exist. But a symptom is not a disorder and disease. Every human displays various symptoms associated with the established disorders but only to a certain degree. They form the make-up of human character and relating just as well. Often the only difference is if it's allowed to pass or if it's being clasped.

And then there's a Hypochondria for mental disorders: the fear or desire to suffer one when there's only mild anxiety and confusion at most. And the Münchausen syndrome...
windhawk
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Joined: Thu Aug 23, 2007 4:47 am
Location: Michigan

Re: Imagine

Post by windhawk »

I'm sorry, but you misinterpreted what I was up to.

The argument against psychology, that it wallows in symptomology is well taken. However, what I was driving at, is why is there a seeming likeness, a mendacity if you will, of psychiatric problems. Why is the range of illness proscribed (and I do believe in that), why are they limited to a set of recognizable symptoms.

If insanity is a psychic phenomenon, why are there no original manifestations of illness?

Is it, simply, materialism run riot? Can I not I go INSANE in my own fashion? Why the categories (diagnoses), why not transcendence? Why not an individual?
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Cahoot
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Re: Imagine

Post by Cahoot »

Usually the proscribed range of symptoms are those that render one dysfunctional in regards to living.

Your interest connects to Thomas Szasz, a psychiatrist who said that mental illness is a myth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Mental_Illness

*

Ram Dass (Richard Alpert) told an amusing story about his brother burning money.
“My reading of his materials showed me that he was tuned in on some of the greatest truths in the world that have ever been enunciated by some of the highest beings. He was experiencing these directly, but he was caught in a feeling that this was happening only to him. In other words, he had taken an ego with him into this other state of consciousness and he was experiencing it as unique to himself. And, therefore, he got into a messy predicament of saying, "I've been given this, and you haven't," you see. As we decided to share time and space, he noted that everything he said on this level I understood, and we could talk at this level together, although the psychiatrist sitting in the room was having a very difficult time dealing with this visitor who was obviously crazier than the patient, you know. And my brother often said to me, "I don't know," he says, "I'm a lawyer, I'm decent citizen, I've got a tie and a jacket, and I go to church, and I'm a good person, and I read the Bible. Me they've got in a metal hospital; you, you walk barefoot, you've got a beard, you've got a funny name, you really wear ... you, you're out, free. How do you explain that?" And I say, "Well, I'll show you how." I said, "Do you think you're Christ? The Christ in pure consciousness?" He says, "Yes." I say, "Well, I think I am too." And he looks at me and he says, "No, you don't understand." I say, "That's why they lock you up," you see. Because the minute you tell somebody else they're not Christ, they lock you up. The minute you say, "I am and you're not," then you gotta go. It's very clear. That's the way the game is played. As far as I'm concerned, we're all God. Here we all are. Now I don't go around forcing you to say "You are God, aren't you?" Because you only come to somebody else when you are caught in an ego drama, when you are caught having to "do" something. I said to him, "If you didn't have to do anything to anybody else, nobody would put you away." The funny play ... the reason they put him away, which was just so cosmically humorous, was that my father, a Republican, conservative, came into my bother's apartment and found him sitting there naked, surrounded by five or six elderly ladies who were worshiping him. And he was sitting there burning his money and his credit cards. In a Jewish middle-class family you can do everything, but you don't burn the money, I'll tell you ... so that anybody could see that he was obviously crazy.”

Ram Dass
The Only Dance There Is
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Imagine

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

windhawk wrote:However, what I was driving at, is why is there a seeming likeness, a mendacity if you will, of psychiatric problems. Why is the range of illness proscribed (and I do believe in that), why are they limited to a set of recognizable symptoms.
My opinion is that the likeness is caused by the common underlying cause being connected to a struggle with a failing subjective, internal sense of identity. Various coping mechanisms appear in response and many of them are not very sound strategies but as emergency they might still appeal as strategy for the mind. Since identity is the issue, attachment to this behavior and repeat of the strategy becomes vital, no matter how unsound the strategy might be. Naturally there will be resistance against any suggested inquiry since "survival" is seen at stake here. Only until there's a crisis of course.

This way of viewing might raise the question if a sound coping strategy to prop up a sense of identity really exists. Or if there are only more or less successful disorders, the ones responding to a minimal set of social duties being called "health". It would explain the often asked question "am I crazy or everyone else"?
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