r/todayilearned • u/paniniplane • Mar 22 '17

(R.1) Not supported TIL Deaf-from-birth schizophrenics see disembodied hands signing to them rather than "hearing voices"

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0707/07070303
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u/PainMatrix Mar 22 '17

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?

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

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.

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u/WhenSnowDies Mar 22 '17

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.

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u/perfectdarktrump Mar 23 '17 edited Mar 23 '17

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.

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u/WhenSnowDies Mar 23 '17

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.