Posted on 08/14/2007 7:07:09 AM PDT by SkyPilot
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In his treatise, titled "The Presence of Spirits in Madness," Van Dusen provided a window into the inner experience of his patients' "hallucinations." Note that these were not criminally insane people who had perpetrated violent acts, but rather were simply "mentally ill" individuals who had been committed to the institution. So their condition was not as serious or dangerous as that of the criminal perpetrators referenced earlier.
"Out of my professional role as a clinical psychologist in a state mental hospital and my own personal interest, I set out to describe as faithfully as possible mental patients' experiences of hallucinations," he wrote:
The average layman's picture of the mentally ill as raving lunatics is far from reality. Most of these people have become entangled in inner processes and simply fail to manage their lives well.
After dealing with hundreds of such patients, I discovered about four years ago that it was possible to speak to their hallucinations. To do so I looked for patients who could distinguish between their own thoughts and the things they heard and saw in the world of hallucinations. The patient was told that I simply wanted to get as accurate a description of their experiences as possible. I held out no hope for recovery or special reward. It soon became apparent that many were embarrassed by what they saw and heard and hence they concealed it from others.
Also they knew their experiences were not shared by others, and some were even concerned that their reputations would suffer if they revealed the obscene nature of their voices. It took some care to make the patients comfortable enough to reveal their experience honestly. A further complication was that the voices were sometimes frightened of me and themselves needed reassurance. I struck up a relationship with both the patient and the persons he saw and heard. I would question these other persons directly, and instructed the patient to give a word-for-word account of what the voices answered or what was seen. In this way I could hold long dialogues with a patient's hallucinations and record both my questions and their answers.
One consistent finding was that patients felt they had contact with another world or order of beings. Most thought these other persons were living persons. All objected to the term hallucination. Each coined his own term such as The Other Order, the Eavesdroppers, etc.
For most individuals the hallucinations came on suddenly. One woman was working in a garden when an unseen man addressed her. Another man described sudden loud noises and voices he heard while riding in a bus. Most were frightened, and adjusted with difficulty to this new experience. All patients describe voices as having the quality of a real voice, sometimes louder, sometimes softer, than normal voices. The experience they describe is quite unlike thoughts or fantasies. When things are seen they appear fully real. … Most patients soon realize that they are having experiences that others do not share, and for this reason learn to keep quiet about them. Many suffer insults, threats and attacks for years from voices with no one around them aware of it. Women have reported hearing such vile things they felt it would reflect on them should they even be mentioned.
… Lower order voices are as though one is dealing with drunken bums at a bar who like to tease and torment just for the fun of it. They will suggest lewd acts and then scold the patient for considering them. They find a weak point of conscience and work on it interminably. For instance, one man heard voices teasing him for three years over a ten-cent debt he had already paid. They call the patient every conceivable name, suggest every lewd act, steal memories or ideas right out of consciousness, threaten death, and work on the patient's credibility in every way. For instance they will brag that they will produce some disaster on the morrow and then claim honor for one in the daily paper. They suggest foolish acts (such as: Raise your right hand in the air and stay that way) and tease if he does it and threaten him if he doesn't. The lower order can work for a long time to possess some part of the patient's body. Several worked on the ear and the patient seemed to grow deafer. One voice worked two years to capture a patient's eye which visibly went out of alignment. Many patients have heard loud and clear voices plotting their death for weeks on end, an apparently nerve-wracking experience. One patient saw a noose around his neck which tied to "I don't know what" while voices plotted his death by hanging. They threaten pain and can cause felt pain as a way of enforcing their power. The most devastating experience of all is to be shouted at constantly by dozens of voices. When this occurred the patient had to be sedated.
All of the lower order are irreligious or anti-religious. Some actively interfered with the patients' religious practices. Most considered them to be ordinary living people, though once they appeared as conventional devils and referred to themselves as demons. In a few instances they referred to themselves as from hell. Occasionally they would speak through the patient so that the patient's voice and speech would be directly those of the voices. Sometimes they acted through the patient.
Do these people commit crimes BECAUSE they are on these medications, or are they on these medications because they are already nutz?
The article says the medications dull their sense of reality further, and they cannot feel remorse any longer.
The Pharmaceutical companies and physcians who give these drugs to people should be locked up. Psychologist would rather give you a pill than talk to you.
“Why so many Americans today are ‘mentally ill’”
???
How could it be otherwise?
Later Read
Also fascinating....”The Varieties of Religious Experience” by William James
An oldie but goodie
Everyday in America, we are inundated with drug ads on TV , telling us who wonderful they are, that the pill will cure you, then at the end of the commercial, they are made to tell the side effects. The Brainwashing of America for money. Does anyone pay attention to the evils of presciption drugs???
Demon possession. “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Ephesians 6:12)
Why are so many Americans so gullible, and trusting of physicians???
NO ONE takes a drug without it having some negative side effect, even if it helps the immediate problem. Thank God I do not have any mental illness.
There are people for whom these types of drugs do wonderful things. But there are others for whom the drugs were prescribed, and when things went wrong, no one noticed, or they failed to inform the doctor, or the doctor was stupid (or uncaring) enough to just prescribe more drugs.
Side effects of Paxil
Most common
Weight loss or gain (most often gain rather than loss)
Headache
Nausea
Dry mouth
Increased sweating
Drowsiness/Somnolence or Insomnia
Increased or decreased appetite
Constipation or diarrhea
Inability to achieve orgasm
Partial or complete loss of libido (sexual desire)
Erectile dysfunction
Tremor
Vertigo/Dizziness/Motion sickness
[edit] Less common
Check with your doctor if these continue or are bothersome.
Increased feelings of depression and anxiety (initially)
Apathy
Loss of empathy
Flattening of emotional response
Nocturnal salivation
Nocturnal bruxism (teeth grinding)
Pupil dilation
Asthenia or muscle weakness
Muscle ache
Pruritis
Rash
Nightmares or change in dreams
Change in sense of taste
[edit] Rare
See your doctor if you have any of these symptoms.
Myoclonus (involuntary muscle twitching)
Sodium depletion
Severe restlessness or akathisia
Uncharacteristic levels of aggression (especially in children and teens)
Uncharacteristic risk taking
[edit] Very rare but serious
Suicidal ideation and Suicide
Serotonin syndrome
Bipolar mania or hypomania
Schizophrenia (unverified)
Jaw, neck, and back muscle spasms
Fever, chills, sore throat, or flu-like symptoms
Yellowing of the skin or eyes (Jaundice)
Black, tarry stools (this can indicate upper GI bleeding)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paxil#Side_effects
An excellent point. The premise of this article is that evil pharmacteutical companies are over-prescribing drugs that make sane people psychotic. There may be some of that.
I think the exact opposite is more correct: a lot of behavior in some "irritating" or "hot-tempered" or "forgetful" people, for example, is explained away as "that's how he is" or "yeah her mom is the same way", etc., and in fact these are symptoms of organic mental illness that can be treated medicinally.
I personally know this to be the case in at least two people who had a whole list of seeminingly "normal" problems who were "going through a lot of things at the time". In fact they were about to crack -- one did -- and under medication have recovered from a more or less decades-long mental "fever", if you will.
or a Personal overwhelming problem that would cause you to go to a physciatrist who gladly gives you these precriptions
Sounds like your typical Code Pink meeting.
I know this is not the main point of the article, but why do people allow 12 year olds unfettered access to guns? This makes no sense even with a perfectly sane child, much less a child the grandparents already knew had problems.
The sanity of the grandparents (and parents and relatives in other similar stories) is called into question.
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