SANITY AND MADNESS, meeting 1 (out of 2)

"you would never know..."

Seeing his son from a distance, Steiner thought, You would never know to look at him. The large, well-formed head, the curly hair, the handsome features ...The boy was bent over, absorbed in some object which he held. A geuninely good-loking boy, with eyes that shone sometimes mockingly, sometimes with glee and excitement ... and such terrific coordination. The wy he sprinted about, on the tips of his toes, as if dancing to some unheard music, some tune from inside his own mind whose rhythms kept him enthralled.

We are so pedestrian, compared to him, Steiner thought. Leaden. We creep along like snails, while he dances and leaps, as if gravity does not have the same influence on him as it does on us. Can he be made from some new and different kind of atom?

"why wait?"

Suddenly it came to him that he should kill himself. The idea appeared in his mind full blown, as if it had always been there, always a part of him. Easy to do it, just crash the copter. He thought, I am goddamn tired of being Norbert Steiner; I didn't ask to be Norbert Steiner or sell blackmarket food or anything else. What is my reason for staying alive? I'm not good with my hands, I can't fix or make anything; I can't use my mind, either, I'm just a salesman. I'm tired of my wife's scorn because I can't keep our water machinery going. - I'm tired of Otto who I had to hire because I'm helpless even in my own business.

In fact, he thought, why wait until I can get back to the `copter?

Kindly Dad

Kindly Dad said, "Little Jackie, it seems to me you've got a might heavy weight on your chest today. Am I right?"

"Today and every day." Jack clicked on his trouble-light and shone it up into the works of the Teacher. The mechanism seemed to be moving along its cycle properly so far.

"Maybe I can help you," Kindly Dad said. "Often it helps if an older, more experienced person can sort of listen in on your troubles, can sort of share them and make them lighter."

"O.K.," Jack agreed, sitting back on his haunces. "I'll play along; I'm stuck here for three hours anyhow. You want me to go all the way back to the beginning? To the episodes back on Earth when I worked for Corona Corporation and had the occlusion?"

"Start wherever you like, Kindly Dad said graciously.

"Do you know what schizophrenia is, Kindly Dad?"

prosopagnosia and the Capgras delusion

prosopagnosia:


Capgras delusion:

a "box-and-arrows" model of face processing

SCR as an indicator of covert recognition

Capgras delusion as a mirror of prosopagnosia

According to a dual-route model of visual recognition, one covert and one overt:
  1. prosopagnosia = interruption of the overt route

  2. Capgras delusion = interruption of the covert route

  1. mean SCR to familiar faces and unfamiliar faces for three groups of subjects

  2. SCR to repeated tones in Capgras patients and normal controls; the lack of familiar face differentiation in Capgras patients cannot stem from general lack of SCR responsivity

gross neuroanatomy of face processing

  1. normal processing - both routes operational
    • yellow: covert route

    • red: overt route

  2. prosopagnosia: overt route interrupted

  3. Capgras delusion: covert route interrupted

a proposed model

  1. an abnormality here will result in prosopagnosia

  2. an abnormality here will lead to a loss of the affective response and therefore to a Capgras delusion

  3. an abnormality here will lead to a loss of SCR, but no delusions [great for fooling a polygraph]

questions for future research

...and now back to schizophrenia...

schizophrenia: a glossary

symptoms of schizophrenia

"A key feature of the symptomatology of schizophrenia is pervasive cognitive impairment."

DSM   IV criteria:

  1. presence of two or more characteristic symptoms during acute phase

  2. evidence of social/occupational dysfunction

  3. continuous signs of disturbance for at least 6 months

  4. exclusion of schizoaffective/mood disorders

  5. exclusion of cause by a substance or medical condition

  6. if history of developmental disorder, (1) must persist for at least a month

positive and negative symptoms

WCST (Wisconsin Card Sorting Test)

Towers of Hanoi

regions implicated in schizophrenia

"what's a little schizophrenia?"

"I sure appreciate your going in my place, Doc. You psychiatrists really take a load off a man's back [...] ." He gazed with grateful awe at the man before him, skilled in the social graces, capable of treading the narrow, hazardous path of complex interpersonal relationships which had defeated so many union members over the years.

"Don't worry any further about it," Dr. Glaub said. For after all, he thought, what's a little schizophrenia? That is, you know, what you're suffering from. I'll take the social pressure from you, and you can continue in your chronic maladaptive state, at least for another few months. Until the next overpowering social demand is made on your limited capabilities....

Philip K. Dick, Martian Time-Slip, p.65

"The man was dead."

An then the hallucination, if it was that, happened. He saw the personnel manager in a new light. The man was dead.

He saw, through the man's skin, his skeleton. It had been wired together, the bones connected with fine copper wire. The organs, which had withered away, were replaced by artificial components, kidney, heart, lungs — everything was made of plastic and stainless steel, all working in unison but entirely without authentic life. The man's voice issued from a tape, through an amplifier and speaker system.

[...] the entire structure was there to deceive others. To deceive him, Jack Bohlen, in fact.

Philip K. Dick, Martian Time-Slip, p.79

"I know schizophrenia."

"Yes, Mister," Heliogabalus said. "I know schizophrenia; it is the savage within the man."
"Sure, it's the reversion to primitive ways of thought, but so what, if you can read the future?"

[...] "You ever been psychoanalyzed, Helio?" Arnie [Kott] said to him, feeling cheerful, now.
"No, Mister. Entire psychoanalysis is a vainglorious foolishness."
"How zat, Helio?"
"Question they never deal with is, what to remold sick person like. There is no what, Mister."
"I don't get you, Helio."
"Purpose of life is unknown, and hence way to be is hidden from the eyes of living critters. Who can say if perhaps the schizophrenics are not correct? Mister, they take a brave journey. They turn away from mere things, which one may handle and turn to practical use; they turn inward to meaning. There, the black-night-without-bottom lies, the pit. Who can say if they will return? And if so, what will they be like, having glimpsed meaning? I admire them."

Philip K. Dick, Martian Time-Slip, pp.92-93

"Could gubbish mean time?"

"There are so many bright, wonderful things he could see instead; why would he want to see that?"
"Perhaps he has no choice," Jack said. Gubbish, he thought. I wonder; could gubbish mean time? The force that to the boy means decay, deterioration, destruction, and, at last, death? The force at work everywhere, on everything in the universe.

Jack thought, And people talk about mental illness as an escape! He shuddered. It was no escape; it was a narrowing, a contracting of life into, at last, a moldering, dank tomb, a place where nothing came or went; a place of total death.

Philip K. Dick, Martian Time-Slip, pp.144-145
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas
from Collected Poems 1934-1952

supplementary material