“So you also make yourself complicit in the sexual abuse of children.”
Slightly off topic, but related: a family member suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.
She read law books, and thought the legal code was “coded language” that was all about herself, and no one else. She watched football games on TV and thought the numbers on players’ jerseys were related to the legal code, and also conveying some sort of message about her.
She thought characters in television sitcoms were talking about her in coded language; everything they said had hidden meanings and was somehow connected to everything else.
Eventually the family had her hospitalized for treatment when she became “a danger to herself and others,” which is the legal standard for involuntary commitment.
After she was “treated and streeted” she took to filing lawsuits against the hospital, and various local public officials and celebrities, accusing them all of being involved in a conspiracy against her.
None of these people even knew her, much less conspired against her, and their connections to one another were entirely ordinary and anecdotal. They were people whose names were in local news, or attended cocktail parties together, or supported charities or the arts together.
Every time a judge threw out her case, or when various attorneys, media people, public officials or celebrities refused to join her imaginary crusade, she would then add those people to her list of defendants, and she would hire a private detective who’d take her money and find no evidence to support her wild claims. So she’d sue them all, and the private detective too.
They weren’t with her, so they were all part of the conspiracy.
Wherever she looked for clues and connections between these people to support her claims, she of course found them.There was no dissuading her.
My point: trying to speak rationally to an irrational person is a losing endeavor.
“Wherever she looked for clues and connections between these people to support her claims, she of course found them.There was no dissuading her.
My point: trying to speak rationally to an irrational person is a losing endeavor.”
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Point well taken. I think many of us have probably known someone (or known of someone) with a similar issue - it’s kind of “confirmation bias on steroids” mixed with some ego-centric mental issue.