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James S Saint
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PostSubject: Schizophrenia   Schizophrenia Icon_minitimeThu Feb 09, 2012 8:24 pm

Wow, now there is a challenge. That problem is one of the toughest to deal with for many reasons, one of which is that what you can do is very dependent upon your situation in life, what tools and people with which you have to work.

The fundamental problem is one of the medical psychiatric world, not the psychology world (my greater expertise). Schizophrenia is the condition and result of a neurological ailment acquired after birth. The natural DNA/RNA develops a brain with certain capabilities. The schizophrenic condition comes about as the neurons that were intended to help distinguish a proposed thought, idea, or imagination from an actually experienced or verifiable thought are compromised or killed off. The end result is that the brain can no longer distinguish what was merely a possibility/idea/propositional thought from reality, verifiable experience.

An extreme case would be a person who when seeing the equation, "2+2=2" and asked if it really is correct, will not be able to be certain that it isn't. The possibility of it maybe being true cannot be distinguished from the probability that it isn't. Such people then have trouble discerning whether their dreamed imagery was actually real. They hallucinate.

As to what to do about it, as I stated, that gets tough. But as it does directly relate to my current project of a "unified behavior theory" and an "immutable bond", it is something that I am currently writing about and expect to be posting on. But I can already tell you that there will be much to explain long before any practical application could be realized.

Thus far, and not knowing what someone's detailed situation is, I would recommend a Buddhistic life style. Don't worry about the logic behind Buddhism, merely practice the methods along with a health diet that is designed to help reduce neurological problems although it can't entirely remove them.

The reasoning is that the issue is one of verification. The mind cannot function beneficially or rationally if it cannot verify thoughts before acting on them. Thus the need is to allow a very clear picture to form in the mind as often as possible concerning whatever is being thought about. In normal activities, such is very difficult due to the number of thoughts and concerns constantly aggravating the situation. In other words, CLARIFY any concerns as much as possible before acting or concluding.

In the process of meditation, the mind is calmed and thoughts are minimized. This calmed state allows for a more clear picture to form. From that clearer picture, the next necessary step is to VERIFY the probability that the picture is valid or sound. That is not always easy for the mind and that is why the calmness is needed. Verification comes from looking at the same picture from a different probably valid perspective and seeing if both perspectives reveal the same picture or truth. If they do, then the probability is much higher that the conclusion or picture is accurate. Allowing that probability to occur is the entire issue.

But as a practice, it is also important to utilize memory or documentation of prior thoughts. Thus it is a good practice to document why you came to believe something after you have gone through the verification. The practice of documenting such things becomes habitual and a part of your thinking process and your memory of details improves. Those details is typically where the invalidity will be caught when some proposed thought is actually invalid.

Thus you have 3 steps;
Clarify, Verify, and Remember/Instill.

Meditation and that diet I mentioned helps. But don't forget that the actual problem is medical and possibly permanent/unfixable. I personally seldom recommend psychotic drugs.

The diet;
Quote :
I had a friend that went down from 385# to 165# in 6 months. I wouldn't recommend doing what she did, but she did turn out very healthy and seriously beautiful (except for all of the loose skin). I had told her how to lose weight very quickly and safely (being supervised), but she took it all to a manic extreme (she was manic-depressive at the time).

The 3 week (only) method is thus;
1) Feast and famine; eat as per the following for 3 days, don't eat for 2 (except for simple vitamins and the water)
2) Drink only distilled water and 2 gallons per day while feasting, 1/4 gallon while fasting.
3) Soak in a very hot (skin should turn pink) tub for 20-30 mins every other day.
4) Eat only the simplest of foods appropriate for your condition
- rice if you are not diabetic, fresh salads, common fruits, very little meat
- avoid spices or pre-prepared (canned or restaurant) foods
- if you must use pepper, use only real Cayenne
- limit the amount of salt and sugar as much as you can tolerate (in America that can be tough)
5) Exercise by whatever means, preferably having fun, at least until you sweat, at least once every other day.
6) Either be in seriously deep love, or meditate deeply on a very serene atmosphere 3-6 times a day.
7) Get a ton of sleep, preferably in 8-10 hour shifts. If you can't sleep, exercise more until you can.

Many people will confidently argue with many of those rules, but each has a much deeper and more strategic reasoning behind them than the simple idea of trying to always have a balanced food intake. The body wasn't designed for a constant flow of even the good things.

If you lose less than an average of 2 pounds per day (assuming you weren't already skinny as a rail) then you are doing something wrong. Typically, merely the hot bath will cause a loss of about 3-5 pounds. The distilled water will cause an increase of 3-5 pounds until you dehydrate during the famine. Then you should expect to see a pound or more lost from what you had gained by the drinking. You should expect to be urinating about once an hour or so until the famine period.

That method is only intended for the beginning of a weight and health correction program. It is not recommended as a constant way of life although it should merely be tailored down. After a few weeks, slowly explore what other foods you can consume for your particular condition, but the general method should not be abandoned - Feast and famine; get dirty then clean, exercise then rest, be alert and aware then asleep. The cycling between the extremes is an important part of giving the bad things that find there way into your life cause to get back out of your life.
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PostSubject: Re: Schizophrenia   Schizophrenia Icon_minitimeFri Feb 10, 2012 5:57 am

"The schizophrenic condition comes about as the neurons that were intended to help distinguish a proposed thought, idea, or imagination from an actually experienced or verifiable thought are compromised or killed off. The end result is that the brain can no longer distinguish what was merely a possibility/idea/propositional thought from reality, verifiable experience."



Maybe this involves a derangement of the brain's memory production. A person may imagine something and be unable to tell if what they just imagined was a remembrance, or just an imagination in real time. Some studies have linked schizophrenia with hippocampal damage... Perhaps in the most severe case, the whole process is actually reversed, and experiences no longer enter into the storehouse of memory, but rather the storehouse of memory, which now contains misinterpreted imaginations, enters directly into experience. Time "comes out of joint." This reversing of the brain's normal narrative would gradually lead to the complete disintegration of mental processes. One could even venture the hypothesis that dreaming is very much analogous to this reversing of the brain's memory-based narrative, intended to disintegrate rigid psychological and neural structures, keeping the brain somewhat plastic so to speak, somewhat capable of new adaptation and learning, capable of making new and more robust connections. Schizophrenia would be this process carried out throughout waking life and in a manner very much out of control.
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PostSubject: Re: Schizophrenia   Schizophrenia Icon_minitimeFri Feb 10, 2012 3:00 pm

Thinking in terms of value ontology, I see schizophrenia as an inability to consistently self-value in the terms at hand. A person may acquire different identities in different circumstances. Such an 'inner politics' is always at play, people adapt to their situation, but if a person is gifted with a strong imagination, the different adaptions may run out of control, and lose contact with each other -- come to exist in entirely different contexts.

I a going out on a limb here, but if I would be put to the task of curing schizofrenia, I would attempt to create/evoke/enable/find a field of reference that is sufficient in its capacity to reflect all the individuals different tendencies to self-value. Such a field of reference must be in part symbolic in nature, a symbolic universe under which terms an individual may 'regroup', re-orient itself as itself. It must also be physical in nature -- in medical terms, it must re-arrange the individuals its chemical traffic. Of course to attain such a rearranging, a great deal of energy is required, concentrated in strong directed effort -- no substantial change is possible without it being forged, making use of the maximum available energy. In other words, the libido must be involved.

What I am proposing then is a kind of sexual alchemy -- re-arranging dispersing chemical tendencies into one new 'mainstream', making use of the libidos capacity to orient itself toward a purpose/value. But to evoke such a value/symbolic universe requires the same type of imagination that is, by my definition, at root of schizofrenia -- so there must always be a strong element of self-healing.
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James S Saint
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PostSubject: Re: Schizophrenia   Schizophrenia Icon_minitimeFri Feb 10, 2012 4:32 pm

It is difficult to be schizophrenic and not have a schizoid personality also (except when they declare that to be schizoid one must be shy). They are both caused by the same fundamental concern of not being able to validate thoughts or imaginings.

It would be great to be able to present a map or picture of an ideal behavior so that such a person could readily compare and contrast themselves with the picture and thus easily see when they are tempted to behave foolishly. But seriously, really?

An individual with any kind of mental dysfunction, regardless of cause, is in the position of being like a computer processor that is malfunctioning. Is the PC to simply detect that it isn't operating properly and thus run some verification program to verify its behavior? Granted if that process could be done by an independent processor, there could be certain benefit and redundancy schemes are often used for that exact purpose. But how is an individual to accomplish such a thing? Have a separate redundant brain tucked in the back of their skulls?

One cannot ask the mentally infirmed to mentally check themselves and expect to get much improvement. Some improvement might occur if the individual has a low amount of the symptoms, but even at that, are they correcting the problem or merely temporarily getting around it by instituting a process that slows them down and reduces their capacity to cope in merely a different way?

The proposal to have an ideal picture of how one should behave is great except for the fact that not only can the afflicted not recognize it, but neither can those attending. Thus such a scheme would merely cause the end result of someone trying to adhere to a formulated behavior that was itself merely another, different psychotic behavior, but perhaps more socially acceptable, more fitted. Is that really the goal by any but those who invariably are the ones who created the problem in the first place? It is an easy way to force behavior as per governing rules via drugs and scrutiny, but honestly when in the past have such schemes ever produced more than another rebellion against the soon to be seen as "oppressors"?

If the individual, proclaimed as mentally afflicted or not, cannot clearly see why they should do something, they should not be asked to do it. That doesn't mean that nothing can be done. It merely means that proposing to the afflicted to just behave this "better way" is a bit pointless, never mind the low probability of the adviser actually knowing what a better way really is. It is only of any true help if it is agreed to by the individual and for only as long as it is agreed.

What that means is that a rather complex scheme must be invoked dealing with the very first act of the adviser that leads to the agreement of the advised to do something that clears their ability to see what might be actually good from bad behavior within themselves. If it doesn't accomplish that, it is the adviser that has miss stepped.

Thus any proper behavior advised must in itself be a behavior that clarifies and enhances the mind toward that self-valuing in an accurate way. I have recently been composing the concept of "Neutral Perception", specifically for that purpose; to allow for a mind to more clearly see both the good and bad of a situation or proposal by their own standards (self-values) regardless of that mind's already infirmed state.

A healthy mind requires many subtle understandings, where to start onto a path is always determined by where one is standing when THEY CHOOSE to walk it. Realize that if the adviser free to choose isn't walking the same path, although perhaps on a different segment, the path isn't a fundamentally rational path.





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PostSubject: Re: Schizophrenia   Schizophrenia Icon_minitimeFri Feb 10, 2012 4:52 pm

I don't like this word schizophrenia. There are so many forms of madness, and people use the word schizophrenia as a catch all for them. Each form of madness has a peculiar pathology.
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PostSubject: Re: Schizophrenia   Schizophrenia Icon_minitimeFri Feb 10, 2012 4:58 pm

"The schizophrenic condition comes about as the neurons that were intended to help distinguish a proposed thought, idea, or imagination from an actually experienced or verifiable thought are compromised or killed off."



Think of your favorite food. Is your mouth watering? You just confused a proposed imagination with an actual experience, causing the physiological reaction of salivation as if you had actually taken a bite of food. Why? Why does that happen? There is a world outside of us, to which we have no access save through our senses, then there are these senses themselves, and finally there is our post-reflective apprehension of this sensory world, wherein we find ourselves capable of speech. My mouth waters when I think of the food because the reflexive chain coordinating these three stages has been broken. I fail to bridge the connection between the second stage, my senses, and the first and third stages, things on the outside world and post-reflective cognition. Sanity is this reflexivity, the continuous relationship drawn between these three "realities." To fail at any stage of this process would lead to the inability to distinguish the imagined from the real and from the experienced.


Every mental illness would share one common feature: they arise from such "broken chains" between the spheres of experience, sensation, and post-reflective, linguistic cognition.
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PostSubject: Re: Schizophrenia   Schizophrenia Icon_minitimeMon Feb 13, 2012 6:30 am

Quote :
I fail to bridge the connection between the second stage, my senses, and the first and third stages, things on the outside world and post-reflective cognition. Sanity is this reflexivity, the continuous relationship drawn between these three "realities." To fail at any stage of this process would lead to the inability to distinguish the imagined from the real and from the experienced.

Every mental illness would share one common feature: they arise from such "broken chains" between the spheres of experience, sensation, and post-reflective, linguistic cognition.
This may be the best basic definition of in/sanity I've seen.
We can immediately see how easily human life is driven insane by an abundance of virtual stimuli.

Insanity is a short-circuiting of one end of the chain with itself. I think that this illustrates why most of us who are present on internet fora are i one way or another dealing with insanity. Philosophical fora are a safe-house for the insane, where feedback loops may be kept in effect, alleviating suffering, at least to the extent that they do not demand a real constructiveness of the postings.


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