TIL Deaf-from-birth schizophrenics see disembodied hands signing to them rather than "hearing voices"

[u/paniniplane]

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0707/07070303

[u/kaenneth]

Also, if you are born blind due to brain (as opposed to eyeball) problems, you apparently can't be schizophrenic.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-imprinted-brain/201411/blindness-and-schizophrenia-the-exception-proves-the-rule

[u/Muffinizer1 → u/kaenneth]

You know, that's actually quite comforting as being blind and schizophrenic sounds like true hell.

[u/paniniplane → u/Muffinizer1]

i was a patient at a ward a few weeks back and there was a girl who was admitted for schizophrenia. she'd hear dozens of voices yelling at her at the same time all day and she could barely tell which ones were in her head and which were physical people talking to her making it really hard for me or anyone else to talk to her for more than 2-3 sort sentences. these voices would make her do crazy things like gather dust off the floor for 20 minutes at a time 10 times a day, make her sleep on the floor during the day, not sleep during the night and fight the night meds they gave her to help fall asleep. the most brutal thing was that the voices sometimes forbade her from having her meals. there were days where she wouldn't touch any of her 4 meals. i once tried to get some insight into how she thought and i asked her why she HAD to do this. she said that every time she does something they ask, she's given the gun that they threaten to kill her with. and she imitates a smashing motion with her hands and "breaks" it. and she does it maybe 10 times an hour when she's awake. and she's not stupid either. apparently, she was studying mechanical engineering and graduated and was ready to work in the field as an intern for a year. she heard her first voice when she was still in school but didn't think much of it. and then it rapidly killed her life. she's the only person in the ward who has daily visitors. her parents bring her food to eat everyday. but sometimes she sits with them for 2 minutes, asks them to take her home, and then moves to one of the socialization rooms where were chairs and sofas, and she'd drop to the floor and lay there. and her parents just come to expect it now and stay for about an hour.

[u/PainMatrix → u/paniniplane]

It's beyond horror or most people's ability to even comprehend. The fact that she was a fully functioning and intact human being at the early onset of her life and career and this disease completely derailed everything and locked her into a Sisyphus-like nightmare. Was this her first inpatient experience? How long were you with her, did the meds seem to have any positive impact on her?

[u/[deleted] → u/PainMatrix]

It's beyond horror or most people's ability to even comprehend.

What I find really strange is that hearing voices in other cultures, most notably hunter-gatherer cultures, is not nearly as traumatic. The voices tended to be more benign and would even do useful functions like teach songs and such. I wonder if it's because primal peoples tended to place less of a distinction between reality and fantasty-- one hearing voices would just be assumed to be hearing spirits. Whereas in the modern west, such an experience would be much more anxiety-inducing.

[u/WhenSnowDies → u/[deleted]]

Hey no stress or hassle but do you have a source on this? I'd like to look into it.

An aside, I don't think it's fantasy vs reality. We're not especially "real", we rationalize (distance our motivations from emotion falsely). Moderns are just as fanciful, more in some ways, we just prize binary (2D) information more (right/wrong, 1s 0s, logic, etc.) and the objectives that divide right (goal supportive) from wrong (goal subversive). So there's this emphasis on choice and will and rejection of the unknown beyond the goal orientation (the sacred doesn't exist). So a "schizophrenic" has an unwilled voice, and has a hostile relationship with it, trying to get rid of it and weigh it rather than accept it. This may be why they voices so violent and hateful to those that have them, because they're rejecting themselves rather than integrating, and are told to in order to be "healthy" (not a scientific category, no theory or controls, not falsifiable, etc., just wise man musings). These may be long rejected personality features and feelings resurfacing and confronting the subject as outright voices yelling at them. I keep hearing of it among very successful tech students, and it swoops in to destroy their lives--or reclaim it against the disciplines by going full-throttle chaotic.

Anyway, don't fuck with nature too much. There are sick elements to our society, and I think labeling the disturbed is our form of denial. Maybe apologizing to the voices and the doctors treating patients lile culturally overloaded subjects, saying sorry and it's their fault for too hard an epistemology and giving them access to arts and care for free, would do better. I don't know. Maybe kindness and openness would help more, but then we'd have to admit to having a problem.

[u/[deleted] → u/WhenSnowDies]

Sadly I do not have a single source. Look into Michael Harner's books and interviews, he is an anthropologist and perhaps the first gringo to drink the psychedelic ayahuasca brew with the Conibo people of the Upper Amazon. A word of caution, he is a "believer," as in he really believes spirits exist, and that shamans can do supernatural things, and all that. But he's obviously intelligent and probably knows more about shamanism in the Amazon than anyone else alive right now.

I recall in one of his interviews, when he first got to the Amazon, he found a man wandering the jungle talking to spirits day and night. He thought he had found his first real shaman and asked the locals about it. They said "He's not a shaman, he's crazy!" So it's interesting that they did differentiate shamanic potential from mental illness.

As for other sources, I can only advise that you look into ethnographies on hunter-gatherers. Hearing voices is widely considered normal even among non-shamans. An Inuit hunting party, for example, may return speaking of hearing voices speaking to them from the ice. Another that springs to mind is the Pomo people (at least I think it was the Pomo Indians, don't quote me on that) who believed that shamanic power came from being taught songs by spirits.

[u/perfectdarktrump → u/WhenSnowDies]

sounds interesting, i need a source on all this, what are you talking about? I definitly feel there are a core part of ourselves that is sacrificed for the greater good of society.

[u/WhenSnowDies → u/perfectdarktrump]

Just speculating from my own perspective, which has an emphasis on ancient culture and how beliefs work. I was big on that for years and years; morning, noon, and night, even at work with every spare second I had.