Psychosis ~What is it?

Mountain Fire77,
A very interesting post and one I can fully relate to how ever I wonder if you have considered that possibly it isn´t spirituiality in the usual demon, God and angel sense but simply the experience of what is God sense. Let me explain a little.
Assume for a moment that telepathy is a reality and that the experience of such communications is felt to be a part of the infrastructure that makes up consciousness and meaning. Assume also that when one experiences such a realm that one must inevitably consider that God is involved simply because of the over whelming nature of such experiences. That when the experience is positive it is angels and when it is not positive it is demon etc. That in essense it is simply our imagination that is interpreting these experiences in the light of such overwhleming amazement and complexity of that which is God more importantly the physics of God.

It is not hard to understand that when a voice tells you to do bad things it is a demon and if a voice tells you to do good things it is an angel or God himself. But if one considers those voices to be a reflection of our fears we can see that both good and bad are simply a manifestation in reflection of those fears.
 
I think that psychosis is a manefestation of evil desires/evil. A person can have a psychosis and only when classed as a psychosis is it considered to be psychosis.

When is it classified as a psychosis?
When the doctor sees that you have symptoms that are psychotic or evil or beyond the norm.

What else is missing from our description of psychosis?


Therefore there are manefestations of things which allow psychosis to be.

What these are I don't know.
Good thread though.
 
It has been awhile since this thread was started amongst a heated discussion with another poster.
A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then and yet to be honest a good understanding of what psychosis is still elludes me. Apart from medical evaluation definitions it seems evasive and intractible.

A bit like defining insanity I guess. What is insanity and does it exist?
Certainly irrationality exists or so it seems.

Deep research has suggested that what is perveived as insane is actually a sane reaction to experiences of a sensory nature that fail to make sense in our pre-existing conceptions of what is reality and what isn't.

In other words Insanity is a rational reaction to that we fail to understand.....understand, and no longer is insanity a valid description.

Psychosis I tend to feel can be treated along similar vein.
Unfortunately both words are rapt up in slang and common ridicule that their use as diagnosis is virtually ruined.

Years ago floating in a vacuum weightless would have been considered as a psychotic experience yet of course this is not the case.

Feeling weightless on the ground may be considered as extreme sensory activity but is it psychosis or simply an extreme sensory or empathic experience. Labeled psychosis only because of it's novalty and fear based reactions it inspires.

any ways....
 
sisyphus__ said:
I think that psychosis is a manefestation of evil desires/evil.
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Its an impairment of reality,sometimes with catastrophic consequences.
When is it classified as a psychosis?
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With the understanding thats someones perception (understanding of reality)
has become grossly distorted yet the person in psychosis would be oblivious to this distortion, in extremes incapable of functioning to a norm which they may have done beforehand.


When the doctor sees that you have symptoms that are psychotic or evil or beyond the norm.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't have thought many people who suffer from this go to the doctor and say i'm psychotic,evil or hey doc i'm beyond the norm...


I would have thought they would probably be quite isolated socialy from friends and family, perhaps while their 'mental impairment of physical placement' took place gradual withdrawral from what you could call an inner social circle to the point of singularity this can be quite sad and not as you say 'evil' they may not be able to look after themselves properly,they could be alchoholics who think reality kicks in after a bottle of gin.
I think they would almost certainly be a depressive of some sorts maybe happy to others but depressed when alone, and with this mental impairment would also come emotional problems so they could suffer from mood swings ranging to irrational violence........This is only in relation to what you (and 14th centuary godbods)might call 'an evil manifestation'. This is not taking into account other minor forms of psychosis,
What else is missing from our description of psychosis?
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There is no way i'm gonna read all this thread,i'm having trouble building myself up to read the mind portal and thats only about 150 posts, to read this would be like sitting down to eat a herd of steaks.

I feel I feel its such a sisyphean (I jus love that word) task of a shrink to get someone to leave their mental comfort of the realm of superhero's where everyone is a superman,hitman,omni-potentman to the exciting reality of till worker in wallmart...lol
 
Quantum Quack said:
Does having a halucination automatically attract the label of psychosis?
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Not if the person realises what he is seeing is an halucination, If the person does not realise he is halucinating then problems with psychosis would arise (imo)
Could having a dream be considered as a psychotic episode?
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I think again as long as you know the difference between a 'dream state' and your 'normal physicality' it is ok, otherwise your view of reality is impaired.

How would we determine that a person is psychotic? Is it just because of his beliefs or is it because of his actions based on those belief?
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.........:scratchin:.....i'd have to say action or potential action
 
Pinocchio's Hoof said:
Not if the person realises what he is seeing is an halucination, If the person does not realise he is halucinating then problems with psychosis would arise (imo)
I think again as long as you know the difference between a 'dream state' and your 'normal physicality' it is ok, otherwise your view of reality is impaired.

.........:scratchin:.....i'd have to say action or potential action
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I can see i think that you are attempting to state that if a person acts blindly of his her incorrect premise. In other words if a person fails to recognise an imaginary construct and acts on the basis that it is real then we have a classic case of psychosis in action? yes? hmmmmm...

An interesting thought experiment comes to mind.

Assume that a person (A) has formed a belief that every purple sports car with a soft top roof with a number plate that starts with the letter B is owned by a terrorist and should be attacked and killed if at all possible.
However the person lives in a country town that has only trucks and utilities / half cabs in the main with an occassional tourist passing through.

For thirty years everything is fine until one day a car fitting the above description comes into the town and the person (A) pulls out his gun and shoots the driver based on his belief held for over 30 years. The man is sentenced to capital punishment for murder. [ he has appeard to be normal and rational for thirty years.

Question:
Even though there was no apparent sign of psychosis for thirty years could it be said that the person was psychotic for all that time, or only when he pulls out the gun and shoots the driver of the said car?
The answer has significant ramifications regarding all sorts of scenarios so I am not prepared to answer it myself just yet..
How ever it points to how a mistaken belief held, any belief that is, can be a considered as a dormant psychosis.
 
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I tend to believe that what I am asking is an impossible vexation to clarify.
"Is having a dream a psychotic episode? This questions the condition at the time of the dream and not later. Most would say that this would be an absurd proposition. And I woud tend to agree. however hmmmmm.....

The same could be said for our person (A) in the above scenario in that he has held a mistaken belief for over 30 years and if the car never turned up would die with that belief never triggered.
Yet because the action he will take is so strong if the car turns up but never does one could quite reasonably state that he is psychotic yet maybe add the qualifier "dormant" However this woud mean that every one could be a "dormant psychotic" as we would never know until the psychosis was triggered. [ as a psychosis is defined as a "blind" belief with no ability to discriminate the reality of it with the unreality of it]
Hypnosis, programming and subliminal suggestion techniques come to mind....


'tis a tough one this, to work out what position to take....IMO
 
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I would want to question how he came to this belief,you may come up with something that can shed light on the four points which trigger this act.

1) convertible sports cars,
2)purple,
3) the letter B,
4)and terrorist's
Is it that he will only react if all four, or three of the four are present...

It may well be that he seemed perfectly 'unpsychotic', until it was triggered..
It may well be that 30 years ago he misunderstood something, and what started of as being slightly impaired has over the years become more and more ingrained as it started of slightly wrong down the line it is majorly wrong and of great impairment.....I'm having difficulty trying to explain what I mean,lol, If you take a compass bearing north and walk for a 1000 miles if you started a few degrees out you would be a long way of the expected destination, the longer it goes on the more distorted the perception is to what the action maybe to the outside of the psychotic bubble
 
Pinocchio's Hoof said:
Its an impairment of reality,sometimes with catastrophic consequences.
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Basically what I said.
I agree with that defination of psychosis. And feel that we could restart the conversation of psychosis here. Psychosis is obviosuly different for everyone in their understanding of it as this thread has shown. It has been a deep discussion, and many off topic posts, but a gradual understanding has built and so I feel more at home in this thread than most. But, as I said I agree with your defination there. I feel that mine is equally important.

We could get real with it, and discuss it from there, teasing QQ.

With the understanding thats someones perception (understanding of reality)
has become grossly distorted yet the person in psychosis would be oblivious to this distortion, in extremes incapable of functioning to a norm which they may have done beforehand.
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when the understanding that someones perception (their understanding of reality) has become grossly distorted; yet the person in psychosis would be oblivious to this distortion, in extreme cases incapable of functioning to a norm which they may have done before hand.

:wtf:

I wouldn't agree that psychosis is anything remotely similar to that. My post highlighted the importance of clarification:


When psychosis is considered psychosis is a sort of time line so to speak to scale the type of psychosis. Psychosis therefore is not when someone has become "oblivious to the distortion". Instead, it is when someone firstly has a psychosis.

That should be a simple enough task to tackle.


I wouldn't have thought many people who suffer from this go to the doctor and say i'm psychotic,evil or hey doc i'm beyond the norm...
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You never know. Psychotic symptoms are something of (of which I am very specialized in) the case that a person suffering psychotic symptoms has a variety of different experiences. A variety of different arrays of abilities to be psychotic. It is considered psychosis to be multiple personality disorder and the person who is killing the person or trying to is considered as having a psychosis. Psychosiese would be different.

Psychosis then is not something that you would just not go to a doctor for, as not all people are psychosiese to the extent that they'd go to a doctor. In my opinion this is a very easy to answer thread and deserves to be answered immediately.

I would have thought they would probably be quite isolated socialy from friends and family, perhaps while their 'mental impairment of physical placement' took place gradual withdrawral from what you could call an inner social circle to the point of singularity this can be quite sad and not as you say 'evil' they may not be able to look after themselves properly,they could be alchoholics who think reality kicks in after a bottle of gin.
I think they would almost certainly be a depressive of some sorts maybe happy to others but depressed when alone, and with this mental impairment would also come emotional problems so they could suffer from mood swings ranging to irrational violence........This is only in relation to what you (and 14th centuary godbods)might call 'an evil manifestation'. This is not taking into account other minor forms of psychosis,
Click to expand...

There is no way i'm gonna read all this thread,i'm having trouble building myself up to read the mind portal and thats only about 150 posts, to read this would be like sitting down to eat a herd of steaks.
Click to expand...

I feel I feel its such a sisyphean (I jus love that word) task of a shrink to get someone to leave their mental comfort of the realm of superhero's where everyone is a superman,hitman,omni-potentman to the exciting reality of till worker in wallmart...lol
Click to expand...
 
sisyphus__ said:
Basically what I said.
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No you said you thought it was a manifestation of evil.
I wouldn't agree that psychosis is anything remotely similar to that. My post highlighted the importance of clarification:
.
Click to expand...

The question was 'when is it classed as Psychosis'. As it is an impairment of reality, then I would have thought once you understood someones Psychosis, then you could class the Psychosis..yet they themselves are oblivious to it.

LOL I was agreeing with your statement..
Quote..Sisyphus...A person can have a psychosis and only when classed as a psychosis is it considered to be psychosis.
Click to expand...
 
Pinocchio's Hoof said:
I would want to question how he came to this belief,you may come up with something that can shed light on the four points which trigger this act.

1) convertible sports cars,
2)purple,
3) the letter B,
4)and terrorist's
Is it that he will only react if all four, or three of the four are present...
Click to expand...
Well according to our fictional scenario all 4 have to be present. Possibly however if only two are present he may only half kill the terrorist...:D

No I think you worked it out before I posted this but I have to post any ways...to be sure...

The thing is it has been proven to some extent that psychosis can be induced in a person using hypnosis, suggestion and subliminal techniques.
In these cases what is classically being referred to is a state of blindness and total ignorance that the behaviour they are exhibiting has been deliberately induced by someone else...[alien to that persons being]

hypnotists: "ha I made that persons believe he is a duck!"
person: "I believe I am a duck but I don't know why when I look human"
hyptostist: "Aah but some ducks look like human and some humans look like ducks!"
person: " I see your point so a duck I am "

So..with the above I am tending to want to include the notion that within the patients mind another alien perspective [ imaginary] has convinced the patient that he is a "duck" with out the patient knowing of the alien perspectives influence [ imaginary - for context]

As Sisyphus had indicated continuity and persistance have relevance as well.

If a person had continuity of memory in that he could remember all the episodes or shifts then psychosis would not necessarilly develop as the person has now got inisight into his "blindness" due to the ability to compare states sequencially.

As an aside:

In the interviews I have done the ability to remember prior states and later states seems key to the outcomes.

If you have ever had a conversation where the line of thought jumps incredibly from one topic to the next with out any apparent associations...
ie.:
"when I was a boy I used to have a dog and during the war I was shot by a soldier," "When mom died I creid for hours but the TV was tuned to the luna landing."

The lack of memory of what was said prior to what is intended to be said seems to be important...
What I am attempting to suggest is that "immediate memory" or memory of the "present moment" is seriously affected leading to the "blindness" effect.
Thus a person believing himself to be a "duck" can only do so because he cannot remember being a human. Therefore does not have the need to question his belief in being a duck.
 
Also it may be worth noting that in the case of Paranoid Schizophrenia a person will subscribe to the notion that the alien perspective may be "God " or the "Devil" or something in betweeen.
Either way as with hypnosis the patient or client must have an ability to have significant faith in the hypnotist authority or the "alien" perspectives authority to allow their influence to be so profound.

So "the devil made me do it" is generally a statement of "buck passing" to a higher authority even if that may be imaginary. [ or in most cases the persons own self who is superior to his existential self - another thread perhaps]

Actually this ties in with other studies on different types of self esteem and how one type is vulnerable to alien perspective "authority influence" more so than another. Thus hypnosis tends to only work or be effective on those persons with a specific type of self esteem.
 
Yeah seriously. Without firstly having a psychosis, you don't really have much of anything.

That's a pretty important point. I'd say. Without having a psychosis we can't say what psychosis is. Afterall, not every individual in existence has a psychosis or is psychotic. Therefore, once a psychosis is given to the individual who does not have a psychosis, that person then is having psychotic symptoms.

This would seem some pretty basic knowledge.

I could go on, but I am having psychotic symptoms due to power issues and exchanges being drawn out to the extreme. Am I psychotic?
Irregardless, back to what I was saying.

Psychosis is only psychosis when the person has

god damnit fuck it god damnit fucki t i am being bothered.
 
Never mind, the obvious defination to psychosis has alaready been given in a response to Quantum Quacks question:


How would we determine that a person is psychotic? Is it just because of his beliefs or is it because of his actions based on those belief? ”

..............i'd have to say action or potential action
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He is actually asking a question in earnest.
How would we determine that a person is psychotic?


We would determine a person is psycohitic by their actions, a person usually is not psychotic. A person is not born psychotic. A person is not raised psychotic until perhaps we find a defination suiting what a psychosis would consist in. (how obvoius!) :eek:

More than likly improper behavior, in adequate behavior, imprecise habbits, things of this nature which determine psychotic symptoms. Nothing less.

However if you can counterpart this then we would have an accurate thread; without this we have absolutely nothing.
 
It is worth keeping in mind that for a psychosis to be diagnosed it takes a second perspective to do so.
A memory by proxy so to speak where by another persons memory of events is used to provide insight into anothers condition.

In most cases a psychiatrist who keeps notes etc provides this function. In others it is family and friends or even society at large, but by virtue of the blindness factor the patient himself can not discern his own psychotic state during the episode but only if he is fortunate afterwards in hindsight. [ with the help of othe perspectives. ]

So for you sisyphus to say that you are having a psychotic episode by being "bothered" is not necessarilly correct in that you are at least aware of being bothered. There for not blind to what is happening.

This is a very important distinction and worth serious consideration.
In your case Sisyphus you are dealing with your reality and not avoiding it.
Is this psychosis...my guess... no... it isn't but simply a person seriously struggling with sensory data that provides trauma.
 
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