BULLSHIT! There is not one damn thing redeeming about psychosis. That is like saying a heart attack does you physically good! BULLSHIT! Psychosis is a heart attack of the brain, coming on without any provocation, leaving damage to the brain like a heart attack to the heart. There is no ounce of reason during an acute bout of psychosis to where one can make sense of anything. Clearly these psychologist do not have a clue as to what the hell they are talking about.

Before I get into the subject area of the article, one note. In North Carolina a suicide by police involving a disturbed University of North Carolina student and the Archdale N.C. police, is a matter being assessed and reviewed by the state authorities and on its way to court in the state in the months ahead. The incident occured within the last three weeks (late August early September 2009), and alcohol and drugs were believed to be involved in the incident though I could not get further info. whether neuropleptics were present or influential in the student's bizarre and psychotic behaviour, that led to the tragedy. Its a relevant story unfolding in North Carolina with mental health issues and priorities inherent to its content. Think I'll leave it at that.

So all psychosis is the result of trauma? It can't possibly be "caused by chemical imbalances or genetic dynamics" because that would "turn human beings into random organisms who have no control over their behavior"? Sorry, but the brain doesn't work like that just because you think it should.

To everybody who like tony above wants Al Galves piece to be bs: If you are or have been at some point in your life "psychotic", and it helps you to believe you suffered a "heart attack of the brain", or that you have some sort of chemical imbalance, or whatever else the bio-deal of your choice might be: be my guest! But PLEASE!!! don't tell everybody else how to view their experience! And if you haven't ever had the experience yourself, I'm sorry, I don't think your qualified to judge it.

You're spot on, Philip. There's nothing in nature that doesn't serve the purpose of survival. If "psychosis" didn't, it would have been eradicated by evolution a long time ago.

My problem with psychotic is that it just seems to be a fuzzword to describe any behavior that the doctor doesn't approve of. It also seems to be used interchangeably with the word psychopathic and these two conditions are on completely different ends of the spectrum.

Tony Said: "Psychosis is a heart attack of the brain, coming on without any provocation, leaving damage to the brain like a heart attack to the heart."

Please show us this so called physical damage Tony?

I would have little doubt some altered states brought on by chemicals such as "crack", "PCP" and "anti-psychotic" drugs do cause actually physical damage to the brain.

But saying psychosis is a reaction to trauma is really nothing new; since we know prisoners, prisoners of war, and others that have been placed in isolation under some fairly harsh circumstances exhibit psychotic systems without prolonged brain damage as in the heart attack scenario you pro-tray and profess here.

I have also conversed with countless patients in deemed psychotic states and have found they though at times have fragmented and disturbed thinking and communication patterns. There are also times they are quite rational in their perceptions and expressions.

Of course there is not a one size fits all formulla for psychosis; since the intrusiveness and extent tends to be varied and individual.

I do happen to know quite a few survivors of psychiatry and psychosis that function quite exceptionally without your so called brain damage thought.

Would you like to explain why this is so for us Tony?

re"BULLSHIT...There is no ounce of reason during an acute bout of psychosis to where one can make sense of anything."

Myself, as a person who hears voices 24/7 I think you could call me functionally psychotic.
Unless everyone is hearing voices and pretending not to hear them.

Precrime judgement of psychiatry might stop crime from happening, but we are supposed to have the freewill to do wrong or right.

I have done plenty of stupid things in the past listening to voices in the past, but thats life.

I now can question with logic (when hearing a voice) "is that a sane thought and/or action?" and for the most part do well.

Szasz wrote/said "sane behavior is attributed to reasons (choices), insane behavior to causes (diseases)."

Interesting the folks that need psychosis to be a medical disease caused by a chemical imbalance. Galves piece is, unlike the posts of Evelyn and tony, scientifically accurate. And he defines what he means by psychosis, "The key symptoms of psychosis are hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech and bizarre behavior such as talking to people who don’t appear to be there."

The thing is bizarre behavior is culturally relative and thus cannot exist as an illness. A heart attack is behavior, if you will, caused by heart disease but there's nothing bizarre about it. We understand the biology of a heart and there's pretty much only one way a heart should act. Fever is a symptom of many things and there's a normal temperature. Bizarre behavior is a sane response to abuse.

This doesn't mean behaving bizarrely, suffering from unwanted delusions or hallucinations, should be forced on someone or left untreated but it means that it's the abuser, not the abused, that should be forcibly punished, the person whose abuse caused the delusions, not the deluded that should be isolated from society, in other words people who appear completely normal are the dangerous ones.

Sometimes trauma is unintentional and caused unintentionally, there's not always wrong doing, but blaming and labeling the person with the psychotic label always causes harm. I suspect this is why cultures that honor journeys from "reality" don't have lifetime psychotic behavior, because they see the whole person. I do think western civ is backwards in this way.

As for disorganized speech, again the word disorganized has no objective meaning, it's a value judgment, not a symptom...you get the picture.

Again, still, I agree with Galves that what may appear inexplicable to others must have some purpose as psychosis has been reported for as long as there's been anyone to report, as a value judgment, not a disease. What purpose does non criminal behavior that is so different from the norm that it disturbs people serve? There are lots of answers.

Still psychosis is a label that can be used in very bad and inaccurate ways. As Will Hall writes in a previous piece on Beyond Meds:

"I remember telling my hospital psychiatrist I was reading existentialism and Marxist philosophy, and later I found out he had put this down in my medical record as a form of bizarre behavior. My ‘treatment plan’ instructed me to give up my passion for activism and organizing. When I tried to talk about my sexuality and being bisexual, they told me that my feelings were part of my disorder."

My psychosis was an unbelievably beautiful experience. Very intense and very awe-inspiring. Not all of it was pleasant, but it made me see the world differently.

And to the doubters: there is NO concrete evidence that psychosis is brain-damaging, and that's not what we see in the developing world, where neuroleptics are not used with frequency.

I was hospitalized and told I heard voices, although I didn't. Sure my thinking was disorganized and off the rails, but as a reflection of my environment.

The doctors kept insisting everything I felt and thought was a part of a "psychosis" or false memory, although I had much reason to believe it wasn't.

Psychiatry itself when used like this can be accused of the same thing. It's ironic they needed to create some of my symptoms.

If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; if God talks to you, you are a schizophrenic... If you talk to God, you are praying. If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.
-- Thomas Szasz

"The bottom line here is that all states of being which are experienced by human beings have survival value and can help the person become healthier. Even though they are painful, bizarre, scary and unwanted, they are there for a reason. Therefore, we would do well to help people pay attention to them, experience them in a safe place and go through them rather than cut them off and extinguish them through the use of drugs and psychosurgery."

This is what make some people say it's bullshit. If he wrote the same article and said:

"...and go through them with the help of psych-drugs..." I'm sure bullshit would not be at this thread.

I don't know what is the purpose of psychosis but I know some great people who left a great work in many fields and were psychotic.
I wonder what will be the consequence of genetic choices for those parents who have money to pay for a psychotic-free baby.

"... there's got to be a reason for why psychosis exists in the human makeup or evolution would've corrected it out of humanity's psychological genome eons ago."

Thank you Phil! I'm glad there is someone else of such intelligence and insight. I strongly feel the same way about cancer, that there must be a positive purpose to it or it would have been driven out of our genome millions of years ago as well.

You wouldn't believe the personal attacks I've had to put up with for stating something so obvious.

Further thoughts on psychosis; I suffered emotional abuse around 2 to 5 years old. And secondly I have a metabolic syndrome profile, where a genetic and biological basis for psychosis could be apparent. My distrubed thinking, as of today, at times, has these two areas as roots for psychosis I suffered. A third area, that is overlooked is past life energy snags and entrapments, that can web the mind into neurotic states also, as well as near psychotic frames of thinking. And as phenomena as such does not seem to have much of a relevance to genetic factors and bilogical characteristics, per se, for creating psychotic and neurotic states of mind. Humanistic psychology has stated that psycosis is demonism, and thus the spiritual dimension for understanding psychosis and psychological behaviour of malignant essence, inherent in the humanistic definition, is still a viable avenue for exploring in order to uncover the roots for mental illness. Two web sites that can add more information on past life negative energies, (karma) that carry over into present day life--ostensibly for working or straigthening out the negative demonsistic psychologlical energy that comprises such past life phenomena--the two web sites are (1) Eckankar; and Eckankar's centering on past life phenomena (2)Past Forward. THis second web site relates quotes and thus sources of past life phenomena issues, and the energy currents of the human psyche, that contribute to neurosis and psychosis. Psychosis has always been viewed as a more aggravated and thus extreme form of neurosis. Historically in some psychology circles.

Vistor,

Not completely out of line. Cancer certainly signals that a change of lifestyle may be necessary, that there are serous problems with society, environmental toxins, much as psychosis shows that someone, the one with the label, is being abused, that society is malfunctioning in a way that is causes non criminal behavior to be labeled aberrant. If you go with Sontag or Szasz, mental illness is a metaphor for real physical diseases like cancer.

I suspect it's your tone, not your views, that expose you to personal attacks, a choice you make, a personality trait, not a disease.

re: Good cancer by TheVisitor
As I understand it cells in our body are dying and being replaced day to day, month to month or year to year. A cell without a death code in the DNA is cancer as it does not die and continues to grow.

How you can compare this physical reality to a persons thoughts, I don't know.
I could bring in male circumcision, outside of a religious practice. Saving 1 in 100,000 by removing a possible cancer, when 99,999 will not get cancer and will infact be harmed by the medical proceedure. Harmed by infection , a bad cut leading to removal, pain to brain and psychology of a newborn mind, blood loss, blood loss leading to death.
But circumcision is still done because of tradition.
And psychosis will be drugged because it has always been drugged.
Never mind the drugging doesn't work in the long run , and Pharma Co makes billions off the "necessary" drugs.

I will speak as a PhD scientist who performs cutting edge research at a major university. Get one thing straight: not everything that happens in nature is for your own good/own advantage. Traits occur in a population in a normal (bell-shaped) distribution, be it intelligence, height, or mental function. The tails of that distribution just might extend into traits that do not lead to survival (i.e. those people will most likely not be able to reproduce). Those traits die. But you might ask, if people with unfavorable traits like psychosis (hallucinations and delusions) are not likely to have children, shouldn't that trait have died out in the population? Well, the short answer is no: mutations happen prior to conception in those who's families are susceptible to mutations leading to mental illness. It is through such mutations why major mental illnesses persist and are not weeded out through selection.

As one who has suffered from psychosis (both hallucinations and delusions), it did not teach me anything about said past traumas. There were none in my life. I did suffer from severe asthma and when I was a kid; I just took it in stride, like most kids. The only treatment doctors had back then was cortisone. For those who don't know what that is, it is a pretty potent corticosteroid. Could have being exposed to it be a source of my mental problems, there is an outside chance? But I would chalk it up more to genetics: this sort of thing runs in the family. I don't see it as bad brain chemistry as much as bad brain wiring. One suggested cause for psychotic bipolar disorder and schizophrenia is that the sufferer is overly sensitized to outside stimuli. If you want to talk about distribution of traits, being very sensitive to the local environment can be advantageous; but take it too far, you have an illness. Same for anxiety: being a little anxious keeps you from being eaten; being excessively anxious and you don't take the time from always running away to eat and drink. Traits follow a bell-curve: the extremes happen but will be weeded out. But the "normals" due to genetic drift will continue to have offspring which might have traits in the extremes. That's just nature and natural selection at work.

For the uninitiated, what does acute psychosis feel like? Imagine someone is pointing a loaded gun in your face and you have every reason to believe he/she is going to pull the trigger. Your mind is in a panic and your thoughts are all over the place. Where is the lesson in that? I never found one. I was too busy keeping myself from punching out the mother-fuckers who were crawling around in my brain making me constantly feeling on edge. Again, what lesson?

As for psychosis causing brain damage: I have undergone a battery of tests by a neurologist to see how well my brain functions. Well, after 20 years of recurring psychosis, my brain has serious deficits in executive functioning (like working memory). This made reading nearly impossible (a bad problem for someone in scientific research). I receive treatment to overcome those deficits. It has fortunately been successful.

BE VERY CAREFUL IN SAYING THAT TRAITS WHICH OCCUR IN NATURE ARE ALWAYS FOR YOUR OWN GOOD. A simple survey of a freshman biology textbook will show you that there are a lot of BAD traits. Nature will cruelly get rid of them eventually. But nature is cruel enough to dish them out as well.

it's pretty simple, society in general want people to be in the "normal box" way of thinking, attending school, college, work/job, etc. when someone is full-blown psychotic they are in fact in another realm, while present here. Not many people understand that psychosis is a place people are in both worlds, they can still hear and think, and often tell of the stories later.

to be caught in limbo, where there is no "normal box" or back and forth into the world as most ppl know it, can be awful depending on who is judging what awful is.

watching my daughter in another realm isn't a comfortable place most ppl want to see or witness, that's why psychosis makes ppl uncomfortable and want to drug it away.

until psychotic ppl can be accepted and appreciate and enjoyed for who they are in their own realm, the vast majority of society will continue to label and drug it down, mostly into a stupor, a silenced world where it's convenient for society to forget them.

how do i feel when i see my daughter caught in this world most don;t understand? well she makes me happy, she gives others joy and adds smiles to faces, so she counts, yes she does. her mind works like no other, is swift and fast thinking. remembering facts among her thoughts, there's no reason to want her any other way.

unless i were to want her in the 'normal box', working, college, driving a car. let that go and enjoy the people for who they are, don't diminish them any further than they are by doctors and drug companies.

every person's experience is different, so why anyone would argue about it is beyond me.

people DO NOT like psychotic ppl walking around their neighborhoods or in stores, that's reality. face it psychosis can be a pretty safe place from the shit given in the form of discrimination, bad care and stares. life with psychosis IS traumatic trying to live in the world like a cookie cutter person.

I'll be more to the point, then.

That psychosis has a purpose is based what evidence?

Tony said:

"I will speak as a PhD scientist who performs cutting edge research at a major university."

I don't think I need to read any further because I'm sure he has not a new approach and works like scientific methods we all know.

1) Experience shows that the drugs available are not helping and are causing much harm to those who are psychotics or neurotics or... whatever.

2) Many people here are exactly to get in tuch with those who experienced the same problems with these drugs;

3) If I wanted that a psychotic person received same help from a drug? Yes. But it's far from happening.

Funny! PhD or not PhD - PhD means "doctor in Philosophy, how ironic - we, other patients and blah blah blah

are ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE.

There was an interesting account by Rollo May, possibly in Love and Will, maybe another work of his, where he relates a psychotic woman in a hospital. She had built up a whole structure of bizarre and essentially delusional mythological Gods, a phantom God structure, of various dieties, good or bad. The whole framework was totally not based in factual reality, but was essentially the essence of psychosis. However the fragile mental structure gave her life meaning and some psychological strength in an otherwise failed metnal condition. A young intern doctor who did not really know what he was doing was assigned her case. And after a few meetings with her, he tried to breakdown the psychotic structure, or this God oriented design or framework of hers. THe result was disastrous. She tried killing herself, evidently after being cast into the abyss of overwhelming anxiety and a fragile mental state, and suffered even more psychotic trauma from the attempted demolition of her mythological creation by the doctor. But the example is interesting in that not only does psychotic energy and delusions, offer esseence of some oreientation in the world for the woman while at the same time keeping her from more dangerous actions such as suicidal actions---likewise, the issue of myth, as a means of orienting mankind to the world around them, (in order to not be overwhelmed by anxiety as destructive as it is) was another fascinating by product of the example May related. How much of peoples lives, like, for example, is there anything really called the success myth as we know it today, in business and education ect. the Horatio Alger individualistic spirit paradigm of the framework of the mind--that is people go about their lives on such success beliefs that could in many respects be purely delusional and imaginary and yet no different as the woman in the example, yet they still derive meaning from their lives in some manner from the Alger myth. But like the woman with psychosis with her built up delusional mythological structure of the mind, built entirely from psychosis,----her example is in many respects no different from such a cultural myth of today called the success myth. The essence of the Alger success myth too might as well be a pipe dream of delsuional essence, simply because it is a myth. No different than the hospitalized psychotic woman. ANd that myth has long been held in question by all sorts of thinkers--Kenneth Galbraith just to name one. But thats another area to go into.

RE:"That psychosis has a purpose is based what evidence?"by TheVisitor

Purpose is not how I would define it, I agree.

If authority can say there is "no reason" or no purpose for this psychosis, then you can say let us stomp this disease down.
But there is a reason, a purpose for the psychosis to the psychotic, and beating it down with force , will, in my opinion only encourage its strength and construction. The psychotic has to willingly put down his/her delusion for a sucessful intergration into a "normal" world.

Normal is entirely subjective. If I magically placed you back in the Roman era, you would likely not fit in with the philosophy of Roman theater where people were entertained by acts of cruelty and murder. You would be considered psychotic at objecting.

I am going to die one day, you are going to die one day.
We have to live with this knowledge .

For a purpose to psychosis here is one.
Sane psychosis is finding the ability to feel enjoyment in our life still with the horror/burden of knowledge of our and our loved ones deaths.

"I will speak as a PhD scientist who performs cutting edge research at a major university."

I'm sorry, but after the research exposed here ala ghostwriting, buried data, skewed data, pharma money non disclosures by say, Charles Nemeroff at Emory or Joe Biederman at Harvard's Mass general---those words just don't impress me anymore, Tony.

Mental illness and it's symptoms such as psychosis can range from severe to minimal, from horrific to sublime, it's like trying to share what chocolate feels like as it melts across your tongue, and what flavor and sensation it gives while experiencing it. (for example)

It's all abstract, that is why doctors cannot medicate the hell out of it! it is a pure part of the human condition for good or bad, it exists and chemical compounds do not work, at best they subdue and restrain a person, but even in silence they are still there.

I always take offense at doctor-types coming into a discussion about things like souls and psychosis, because they just want to give it all a science base and there isn't one.

Just my opinion!

Tony said:

"For the uninitiated, what does acute psychosis feel like? Imagine someone is pointing a loaded gun in your face and you have every reason to believe he/she is going to pull the trigger."

I gather this was your personal experience you are using here to brush stroke this issue. This really in no way capsulizes the totality of psychosis.

It's also quite likely cancer tumors growing it various parts of the brain can stimulate activity and perceptual/conceptual abnormalities which could been termed psychosis also.

It's likely/possible brain trauma could also induce an altered state of perception.

Yet, those limited examples also would be a poor measure and explanation of the totality of the lived experience called psychosis. As a PhD and researcher I would hope you would not generalize your personal experience as the end all, and concrete definition for psychosis. That sample appears to fairly limited in scope to be drawing grand conclusions.

You have avoided or ignored answering the question I asked above after your self ordaining "BULLSHIT" rant?

Let's try again. How do you explain that many (if not the vast majority) who have experienced the broad terminology "psychosis" have not suffered actual brain damage (as in your heart attack example/theory), and have gone on to live normal/significant/exceptionally lives without prolonged debilitating negitive effects.

I would certainly not use my personal termed breaks from perceptual reality as the coined complete works on psychosis.

They were just what they were; as life has moved on with those experiences just being what they were in memory "Glimpses of a mosaic altered reality, a ripple of time across the waters of my life without all the psychiatric and scientific ignorance and judgment cast upon them".

Last time I checked the recognized authoritative text, "tony" was still not the unchallenged example used to define the term "Psychosis".

Stephany:

While I certainly understand your skepticism of doctors/scientists, I don't remember Tony saying one word extolling medication as a treatment for psychosis. And I certainly don't think he was dismissing your and your daughter's experiences.

Rather, he was simply explaining his own experience and his beliefs based on his training about how and why it happened.

Obviously, many if not the majority of people on FS disagree with Tony. To me, what he says is common sense.

Some on here have described altered consciousness as beautiful. Those who trip on LSD sometimes describe it as beautiful as well, but I can't imagine what higher purpose it serves for the individual, let alone the species. Not in the least to denigrate the humanity of those who suffer from psychosis through, of course, no fault of their own.

Tony: "I will speak as a PhD scientist who performs cutting edge research at a major university."

What distinguishes "good" from "bad" science? Basically, humility. That is, the "I may be wrong"-acknowledgement that is so totally absent especially in your first comment here.

"20 years of recurring psychosis": ah, I see. I do understand that it must be extremely frightening to you to watch someone suggesting a purpose with something, you in 20 years haven't figured that very purpose with. Just as it must be a severe threat to your scheme of things to witness others figuring it out on their own behalf: What does others' figuring out the purpose of their "psychotic" experiences turn your universal truth that there is no purpose into? Well, a not so universal truth...

No trauma in your life? Hm, leaves two possibilities: a) you don't reside on planet Earth, and have never visited, and b) you're not a human being.

Genes: well, turns out, also genes react to their environment. No such thing as randomly "dished out" mutations. "Bad" traits are nature's response to a "bad" environment. (No, you won't find this in any freshman biology textbook yet. It's not regarded "politically correct" knowledge by the Social-Darwinist establishment, by the major universities...)

Brain damage: did you take drugs during those 20 years? On another note, it's true. Our bodies, the brain included, reflect what is going on in our minds. Trauma has shown to alter both neuronal pathways in the brain and genes. And dysfunctionality does run in families, yes. Needs a whole lot of awareness to break well-established patterns of dysfunctional communication and behavior when you grew up right in the middle of them, expected to accept them as "normal" and adjust, rather than to realize and break the patterns. Usually, it needs some kind of "wake-up call".

"You have avoided or ignored answering the question I asked..."

Ms Piggy,
This is the way all of those who advocates for the pharmas behave:
they don't discuss and avoid answering questions. When they answer they use your own words against yourself and come up with another question that has nothing to do with what you have said but it's not a good use of the Socratic method.
It's only war on words.
For me this thread is over.

"I always take offense at doctor-types coming into a discussion about things like souls and psychosis, because they just want to give it all a science base and there isn't one."

Thank you Stephany and I feel the same because I'm one of those many at the WWW who can claim: "These drugs have destroyed my life."

This is the first time I say it aloud even to myself.

{But these drugs have saved many lives... blah blah blah... good for them.}

Have to agree with Tony his summary of BULLSHIT!

It's just wrong to ascribe every human characteristic or behavior as being adaptive and forged by natural selection. Harmful traits can persist if it's a small percent of the population -- especially if it occurs after puberty. You just have to get old enough to cause pregnancy to pass on your traits. After that, you may be of service for child rearing. Old age is only a result of humans getting control of death (via medicine).

The article is not even wrong.

In terms of psychosis as delusional, illusory, demonic or thinking that is bizarre and not anchored in reality. The following quote comes from Shakespeare's Tempest:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and melted into the air, into thin air;
And -- like the baseless fabric of this vision---
The cloud capped towers, the gorgeous palaces
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind, we are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
is rounded with a sleep.

Psychosis has been characterized as psychological energy, that is bizarre, delusional, hallucinatory, that is thinking that has no basis in reality, of the world around us. What is interesting about the above Shakespearian Tempest excerpt, is that the quote states that all the world is nothing but illusion and subject to melting into air, people included. That is the fabric of the world and we as people are part of the illusionary fabric of worldly existence, whose essence is no different than the essence of the delusional realm of psychosis. So how can one treat psychosis as delusional and hallucinatory, in a world that is already lillusory. Leaving the question where does solid, clear thinking, consciousness of the present, actually exist---in the world around us?