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Schizophrenia: What it is and where it comes from.

  
  

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grant
14:58 / 08.02.02
I thought it'd be useful to have a thread for schizophrenia. It seems to come up a lot in different places on Barbelith.

Schizophrenia (the 295s in yer Diagnostic Statistical Manual) is defined as a disorder that significantly and persistently disrupts someone's social life or ability to work by afflicting hir with delusions, hallucinations, garbled speech patterns, chaotic behavior and/or flattened emotional responses.

Where does schizophrenia come from?

Nobody really knows.

New Scientist says it's the sunshine:

quote:Your chances of developing schizophrenia depend on how sunny it was months before you were even born, suggests new research.

Evidence is accumulating to support the theory that vitamin D deficiency during pregnancy, caused by a lack of sunlight, can alter the development of a child's brain in the womb. The data for a link with schizophrenia is still controversial, but potentially worrying because vitamin D deficiency is so common.

Vitamin D's role in building healthy brains had been largely ignored, until researchers began to spot some curious epidemiological trends. People who develop schizophrenia in Europe and North America are more likely to be born in the spring. And they are roughly four times as likely to be born to Afro-Caribbean immigrants living in England as they are to have parents of other ethnic origins living in the same areas.


----

Elsewhere on Barbelith, there've been references to studies linking schizophrenia to genes (sorry, mom & dad) and to marijuana use (sorry, officer).

All of these seem to have something to do with brain development.
 
 
grant
19:00 / 24.01.06
And on the other hand, some researchers believe it's related to brain parasites from kitty litter.

Brain parasites that have infected up to half the population, increasing feelings of insecurity. Thank you, feline friends. Thank you, Toxoplasma.

Some scientists believe that Toxoplasma changes the personality of its human hosts, bringing different shifts to men and women. Parasitologist Jaroslav Flegr of Charles University in Prague administered psychological questionnaires to people infected with Toxoplasma and controls. Those infected, he found, show a small, but statistically significant, tendency to be more self-reproaching and insecure. Paradoxically, infected women, on average, tend to be more outgoing and warmhearted than controls, while infected men tend to be more jealous and suspicious.

It's controversial work, disputed by many. But it attracted the attention of E. Fuller Torrey of the Stanley Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. Torrey and his colleagues had noticed some intriguing links between Toxoplasma and schizophrenia. Infection with the parasite has been associated with damage to a certain class of neurons (astrocytes). So has schizophrenia. Pregnant women with high levels of Toxoplasma antibodies in their blood were more likely to give birth to children who would later develop schizophrenia.

Other studies show that anti-schizophrenic drugs (especially haloperidol) are as effective at stopping Toxoplasma organisms from flourishing as parasite-specific medications.
 
 
Sekhmet
19:55 / 24.01.06
How very odd. I was researching schizophrenia online today myself, but I was specifically looking at Reichian analyses.

Schizophrenia has been a puzzle for psychiatry since it was first described by Kraepelin in 1898. Its origin has been acribed to diverse causes, each supported by a respectable following. Thus we have Kretschmer and the asthenic body types; Freud, Bleuler, and Jung and the psychological cause; Sullivan and the environmental or interpersonal relationships; Kallmann and genetics; Henry Cotton and the focal infection theory; Heath and the disturbance of metabolism; and Kety, who maintained the cause was a disturbance in transmethylation. Others have studied the endocrine glands, blood, and brain. None have fully explained this condition.
- Elsworth F. Baker, M.D., "Schizophrenia-Dynamics and Treatment", Journal of Orgonomy, Vol. 7 No. 1

Of course, from a Reichian perspective, it's an orgonomic issue brought on by armoring in response to repression of impulses and emotions at the (ocular,) oral, anal, and genital stages of development. In the article cited above, Elsworth F. Baker, M.D. specifies that schizophrenia results from rejection or trauma during the ocular stage, and that the type of schizophrenia may be determined by repression during the subsequent stages:

If development is unduly blocked at the oral stage, a simple schizophrenia will result; at the anal stage, a catatonic; at the phallic stage, a paranoid; and at the genital stage, a hebephrenic. All of these, of course, have the specific eye block of the schizophrenic.

He also states that there are genetic predispositions, and that the conditions experienced by the fetus during pregnancy played a role.


Depending on how one feels about Freud, Reich, or Dr. Baker, this may or may not seem a plausible theory, but since I had the material to hand, there it is.

  
 
kidninjah
10:59 / 25.01.06
Anyone know what the "eye block of the schizophrenic" is?

I've got a bunch of eye conditions and am intrigued by how they may inter-relate to various aspects of psychology.
 
 
Sekhmet
17:10 / 25.01.06
My understanding thus far - and I'm new to this, so somebody please correct me if I'm wrong - is that it refers to the cause of the remote, vacant gaze which typifies the schizophrenic. Reich considered it to be the result of some variety of birth trauma.

Reich added the ocular stage of libidinal development to the oral, anal and genital stages theorized by Freud. Trauma or repression at any of these developmental stages are considered to have specific adverse effects. The ocular stage comes first, very early, and Reichian therapists theorize that birth trauma, which can include poor eye contact, negative facial expressions, or hostile surroundings upon birth, may result in an "ocular block".

Reichians also consider that most people have an ocular block of some kind, so I suppose it can be more or less pronounced.

The therapy for it, as far as I can make out from what I'm reading, includes eye and facial exercises (rolling the eyes, wrinkling the forehead, opening the eyes wide, etc.).

I haven't seen anything about actual eye problems associated with an ocular block, but it would seem to make sense that there might be a correlation there.

Not sure where I stand on all this myself...
 
 
Ganesh
21:50 / 30.01.06
Gawd, this is a subject and a half. The seasonal theories are nothing new, but probably due a revival.

Schizophrenia seems to be so multifactorial - and so blurry at the edges - that we probably ought to talk about the schizophrenias plural...
 
 
Anthony
11:35 / 31.01.06
i think it comes as a purely natural and evolutionary reaction to the confusion and insanity of our inherited culture.
 
 
grant
14:43 / 31.01.06
Ganesh, could you name a few of the schizophrenias? Why do you think they should be considered as different conditions -- and why are they given the same name?
 
 
Ganesh
22:33 / 31.01.06
Because there's such a rag-bag of psychotic symptoms. Classically, there're hebephrenic, catatonic, paranoid and simple types of schizophrenia. Non-classically, I wonder if there might be a variety of types underneath the umbrella description.

I wonder also how we might go about recognising and defining a "purely natural and evolutionary reaction" when it hit us in the face.
 
 
Sekhmet
13:26 / 01.02.06
So if it's basically just a catch-all for psychotic symptoms, wouldn't that make it a syndrome?

I've read in several places that the onset of schizophrenia is usually at adolescence, which seems to me to point to a hormonal component. Could it just be a matter of bad chemistry?
 
 
Claris Dancers
15:50 / 01.02.06
I've read in several places that the onset of schizophrenia is usually at adolescence, which seems to me to point to a hormonal component. Could it just be a matter of bad chemistry?

Actually the most common age of onset is around the early to mid-20s if i remember right. There are childhood versions of some different kinds of scizophrenia (i cant remember exactly the name for these), but the kids usually grown out of them. There are also short term forms (less than 6 months the literature says) of adult schizophrenia called schizophreniform disorders.
 
 
Sekhmet
16:42 / 01.02.06
Eureka. Qwik, you just helped answer a question that's been worrying me for eighteen years.
 
 
Claris Dancers
17:48 / 01.02.06
*bows* We aims to please!
 
 
eye landed
09:47 / 04.02.06
like bipolar disorder, schizophrenia has creative pros and depressing cons. in bipolar, these are called mania and depression. in schizophrenia, these are called positive and negative symptoms (referring to presense of abnormal behaviors or absense of normal behaviors, rather than good and bad). my impression (as a student of such things, not an expert) is that in bipolar, symptoms are linked to a cyclic mood disorder, while in schizophrenia, the psychotic symptoms persist regardless of mood (though not regardless or everything). but how can psychotic apathy (a negative symptom) or grandiose delusions (a positive symptom) exist independently of mood?

another interesting feature is that men usually develop schizophrenia in their teens or 20s, while women usually develop it in their 20s or 30s. to me, this suggests particular stresses may 'activate' or 'aggravate' a disposition to schizophrenia. what stresses are common in men and women of these ages?

schizophrenia could easily be a plural word already. my o.e.d. tells me -ia is an abstract noun suffix (uncountable i presume), while the root would be 'schizophren', meaning split mind (which is a rather specious term at this point, but no matter). so schizophrenia is a (sociocultural) phenomenon, while an individual may suffer from a schizophren.
 
 
Seth
01:47 / 05.02.06
The Reichian eye exercises are really interesting to me from an NLP angle. In general terms the NLP model suggests that a practitioner assume that experience is sorted into areas accessed by eye movements, so that drawing a person’s eyes back to specific areas at which you’ve observed that they come to rest should result in visualisations of the experience that’s stored in those places.

I’ve wondered about the generally veiled quality in the eyes of people suffering from schizophrenia, in that it seems to be a withdrawal from the eyes as a means of engaging with the source of stimulus, and wondered whether it could almost be like what occurs when you aim the input of a sound source into its output, resulting in feedback. I think I’m right in saying that in bioenergetics (a Reichian offshoot) trauma at the ocular stage is leads to the development of very fast, darting eyes that seem to accompany thought processes that might seem quite hard to follow unless you know the individual. I’ve heard one bioenergetics practitioner refer to it as though the person is constantly seeking an escape route. Relating this to NLP ideas, this link between eye movements and thought processes seems explained by the linking of disparate parts of the individual’s experiences as they are accessed quickly and in combinations that may seem unlikely (try rapidly moving your eyes in many different directions next time you feel stuck to see what this is like).

It’s interesting then that the eyes of a schizophrenic (at least those that I’ve met) often seem very fixed but not necessarily focused on a point. I wonder whether this is almost a focusing on the trauma that causes the condition while the tendency for the eyes to dart around and link disparate experiences is repressed, and whether the combination of these phenomena reaches a tipping point at which the schizophrenia develops.

None of this has much basis outside of my own ideas, so take it as half-formed musings on a subject I don’t really understand. Please read as potentially interesting amateur guff. Interestingly I’m also currently reading Character Analysis in which Reich gives an account of therapy with a schizophrenic, so this topic is also quite timely for me.
 
 
illmatic
16:10 / 07.02.06
Anyone know what the "eye block of the schizophrenic" is?

I can have a go at this one, Not correcting anyone above, just adding to it. Basically, rather than locating our pathologies as solely existing in the psyche, separate from our somatic side, Reich believed that they were best addressed through the body, and that they led to distinct “symptoms”. He conceived of the body as having a series of “blocks” impeding the flow of energy, sensations and emotion, the eye block being one. Think about how we hold back tears, or the habitual expressions that some people hold (furrowed brows, unexpressive faces etc), or think about how hard it is to gaze into someone’s eyes without tensing, and you get an indication of what Reich is talking about.

I don’t disagree with what Sekhmet has written above, but I’ve always found those psychoanalytical maps of development very abstract and “cookbooky” and instead of approaching Reich’s stuff in this way, I think it’s best to go with one’s own experience of our bodies and sensations. (In fact, Reich might well say this abstract approach was a result of a very Western pattern of armoring in itself, pulling all our energy up into the head and approaching everything through the intellect). Eye armoring might be best thought of as our ability to reach out and make contact with the world through our gaze. In a situation where a child (or baby) is experiencing a lot of hostility towards them, it’s understandable to think of how one might block the gaze, and the quality of contact through the eyes. Think about times when you’ve really “seen” and felt connected with what one gazes at, and you might see what he means be being “unarmored”. Don’t know if this will make sense to anyone, but I hope so.

In this sense, the schizophrenic is someone who retreats from contact with the world (through no fault of their own, I might add – rather they are compelled to do so by their armoring). The tensions around the eyes and abstraction of the gaze are ways of avoiding further contact, as it stirs up sensations that this person cannot deal with. (Character Analysis for an amazing account of therapy which expands on this issues a lot better than I can.

The eyes are responsible for 70% of all our sensations, and play a big part in interpersonal communication and expression of the emotions – “windows of the soul”. A friend who worked as a therapist for many years said that they did seem to “bind” an incredible amount of emotion and experience.

The therapy for it, as far as I can make out from what I'm reading, includes eye and facial exercises (rolling the eyes, wrinkling the forehead, opening the eyes wide, etc.)

That’s correct as far as it goes, but the therapist would (hopefully) be looking for the quality of contact and openness, and any other emotions that came up (surressed rage etc) through working with the block. Just as an “exercise” it doesn’t make much sense, like most of Reich’s ideas.

I’ve done a little work with my own eye block, and found it very powerful. I do it as follows - while breathing in a very “free” manner, I’ve get my (long-suffering) partner to move a small torch or fingertip in an erratic pattern around my head, which I then follow with my eyes, the idea being the randomness of movement would break habitual patterns and tensions. This continues for 5-10 minutes or so. I found this produced alarming “leaps” in sensation for me, and the occasional rapid deepening of emotions. It served to “move” and mobilize feelings in my chest, in a way that hadn’t happened previously and break some of the unpleasant tensions I’d become aware of in my neck. Sorry, if this is a bit vague but it’s hard to describe. Anyway, chalk me down as a believer.

One final point – Reichian therapy isn’t just getting someone to breathe deeply and wiggle parts of their body around. I’m not saying what I’m doing is “proper” therapy. One would find, certainly with treatment of a schizophrenic, these physical techniques working in tandem with depth psychoanalysis.
 
 
kidninjah
11:25 / 08.02.06
Fascinating description Illmatic, thanks for that.

Your description makes perfect sense to me. I'm a beleiver (tho' I try not to firmly beleive anything..) in the kind of mind-body linkage you describe - at least as a good working model that allows for discussion, predicable results & further work.

You've rekindled my interest in Riech too.. thanks!
 
 
BlueMeanie
17:18 / 08.02.06
For those that are interested in a slightly 'alternative' take on schizophrenia, I can't recommend R. D. Laing's "The Divided Self" enough. I found it a very, very interesting book on the subject of schizophrenia, and how it can be seen as a 'coping mechanism' gone wrong, when the individual concerned is subject to certain unsolvable problems, demands and dilemmas. With this view, the actual content of the person's illness becomes important to understanding how to cure them (by overcoming the psychological causes), rather than being dismissed as a symptom of illness and effectively nonsensical.
 
 
illmatic
20:36 / 09.02.06
Cheers, happy to oblige. BTW I have the transcript of a talk I gave on Reich a couple of months back available. If you'd like a copy, PM me an email address. It's a bit long (6000 words) so I can't really send it via PM.

If anyone else would like a copy, feel free to PM as well.
 
 
E. Coli from the Milky Way
12:57 / 15.02.06
What do you think about linking schizophrenia to shaman's aptitudes? Mental activities that maybe we can't, as species, use yet ? Or maybe we've forgotten ...

What do you think about the fenomena of 'hearing voices'? Few years ago i was reading some testimonials of people who heared them, and it seems that there are two principal kinds: voices with destructive intentions, and others spirited;

There is a parapsycological researcher called Sinesio Darnell, who has been studying the transcomunication for decades, and he explains that he founded in his recordings those kind of voices: the ones, insulting, offending; the other kindly; he says that even the kindly ones helped him to adjust his equipment ...
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
21:20 / 15.02.06
But there are certain differences between the voices a 'shaman' hears and the voices that a schizophrenic hears, no? As I understand it, simply 'hearing voices' isn't enough to trigger an automatic diagnosis of schizophrenia; certain other symptoms need to be in place, such as a decline in self-care, speech-patterns becoming affected, ect.
 
 
astrojax69
22:42 / 15.02.06
hi s3r3bro, welcome aboard...

what do i think about linking schizoprenia with shamanic states? much! there is some interesting work in neuroscience about how such mental states are attained, what is happening in the brain, and the ways to invoke those states.

my director has some fascinating theories we are [fairly successfully!] testing regarding the hemispheres of the brain and the inhibition of those hemispheres giving rise to familiar psychopathologies, such as depression, autism, schizophrenia, etc. weird science, but true. one of allan's ideas, cited by other scientists in press, regards shaman cave art being linked in style, and so in kind regarding mindstate, to autistic savant art.

what insights do you have in this regard yourself?


[mods note: sorry if this is a second post - my machine corrupted after i hit the 'post' button, so i am posting again.... please delete this post if a repeat. ta]
 
 
astrojax69
02:51 / 16.02.06
ut there are certain differences between the voices a 'shaman' hears and the voices that a schizophrenic hears, no?

why would that be the case? presumably, the shaman seeks those states and is aware enough [i guess] that the voices are induced during the trance state and are not 'everyday reality' to him [or her? are there female shawomen?], whereas - and please correct my error if i'm misguided - a schizophrenic is not able to distinguish 'everyday reality' from the voices as manifested by the [persistent] psychopathology...


so the diagnosese - one a shaman, one a schizophrenic - are different, doesn't mean the mechanism for generating the voices is, does it?

be interested in what others say on this.
 
 
illmatic
07:16 / 16.02.06
I'd be wary of making easy comparisons here, particularly of "idealising" people who are struggling with a very difficult condition.

Another point is that a "shaman" - well, "shaman" is an inaccurate term in itself, as the processes described as shamanic covers a vast multitude of different practioners and cultures - is usually embedded in a whole cultural/community context, and trying to understand them without understanding this is a little fruitless, I think. Your average schizophrenic doesn't have this luxury.
 
 
E. Coli from the Milky Way
07:27 / 16.02.06
Only digressing:

Then you have that another illnes wich is considered as a "shamanic sign" is epilepsy, wich is, in fact, an overload of electric activity in the brain. People who make astral travels often describe a sense of electric current , it in their bodies. That invisible, maybe electrical body is described in a lot of ancient traditions, including shamanic.

So in some sense, we can intuite that all that shit of pleroma, astral realms , akashic fields, morfogenetic places, has something to do with electricity. Maybe the soul is an electrical reverberation, and so the spiritual disciplines (like qigong, that descends form chinese shamanism) are about it: to fix the electric reverberation.

Returning to schizoprenia, it is said by scientists that schizophrenic allucinations are not only visual, but in some way, 'informational' , or even 'cynescetics'. Einstein based his work on that kind of signals.

So the question i have for the forum is: There is somekind of theory linkink 'schizophrenic' states to electrophisiology ?
 
 
E. Coli from the Milky Way
07:34 / 16.02.06
Illmatic, yes, i absolutely agree with your position. It is hard to talk about this things and it's easy to de-emphatize with the suffering of million of schizophrenic. So if someone has been offended, and with reason, please excuse me. The only think i can say is that this is not a try to idealize the schizophrenia: it's a way to raise again the question from a spiritual point of view. I suppose is a question of take care of the appearances.
 
 
Sekhmet
19:49 / 16.02.06
(Thanks, Illmatic, for the clarifications on Reich - I've only just begun to actually read up on the man and his work and don't have a full grasp yet. Fascinating stuff, though.)
 
 
illmatic
20:46 / 16.02.06
(Sekhmet, try checking out Myron Sharaf's biography. It's brillant and really informative, yet with critical distance. Helps with reading the man himself, I've found)
 
 
Dr. Tom
10:09 / 17.02.06
Because there's such a rag-bag of psychotic symptoms. Classically, there're hebephrenic, catatonic, paranoid and simple types of schizophrenia. Non-classically, I wonder if there might be a variety of types underneath the umbrella description.

I seem to have come to this party fashionably late... Some observations:
The DSM diagnoses are derived phenomenologically. It's a chinese menu of observable symptoms that seem to come together in frequently seen syndromes. These diagnoses do not speak to mechanism because the state of the art of Psychiatry is simply not to that point (but may be creeping towards that goal). Thus, the subtypes- undifferentiated, paranoid, disorganized, the related personality types like schizotypal, the (muddy) overlaps with mood disorders, etc. have nothing to do with the mechanism either.

Toxoplasmosis, viruses, vitamin deficiencies, genetics, enmeshed mothering, Organon, evil spirits and electronic chip implants (along with many other putative explanations) have all been posited causal factors in schizophrenias.

Bleuler, recognising that the syndrome was likely a common final symptomatic pathway for a lot of problems referred to "The Schizophrenias."

Eye movement in schizophrenics seems to be different than in normal controls (http://www.optom.de/english/exe-sac.htm)
but I suspect that's something other than the "block" discussed here. Eye movement exercises (EMDR) are an emerging reatment for a myriad of emotional problems that orthodox shinks tend to look askew at...

I've got go to work now and shrink some heads. Caio!
 
 
grant
15:52 / 13.03.06
Update involving one of my favorite things:

Yale is looking for test subjects in an ongoing project looking into using rTMS -- that is, transcranial magnetic stimulation, or sticking big-assed magnets over your brain and messing directly with the brainwaves -- to treat schizophrenia.
 
 
astrojax69
20:53 / 13.03.06
not to treat schizophrenia, but for an experiment on the mind's hidden skills, i am likely to undergo tms today! will let you know later how it went.

i've been at the labs for the two years i've been here now to be a guinea pig. yay.
 
 
E. Coli from the Milky Way
15:32 / 23.03.06
Yesterday i saw a documental about toxoplasma. It is said that toxoplasma first infects mice, and then it manipulates their brain to force them to get on cat's mouth. Cats are the hosts needed by toxoplasma to develop). If toxoplasma on cats get on a human oorganism, and inmunitarie system is low on defenses, it maybe cause chemical reactions analog to LSD.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/060127.html

There's another microorganism who manipulates behavior of his host to get to his reproductive enviroment:

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7927

Can we link toxoplama cycle to an evolutionary trick, by, call it gaian mind, to contact with her two-leg-neurosomas?

who knows!
 
 
*
04:41 / 24.03.06
There isn't much evidence, s3r3. In fact, it seems more like an hypothesis than like a theory based on evidence. The article (if you can call "straight dope" an article) says that many schizophrenic people tested positive for both toxoplasma and LSD, and the researchers then concluded that toxoplasma produces LSD. Couldn't it be that exposure to both toxoplasma and LSD increases the likelihood of schizophrenia?

I'm not all that convinced by the idea that the microbe evolved to produce LSD by the sheer fact that hallucinating rodents are more easily caught by cats, either. It might just as easily have evolved to be more at home in rodents, it seems to me.

At any rate, theories about spirituality (and arguably gaian mind) probably belong in Temple more than Laboratory, so if you want to talk about schizophrenia as it relates to shamanism or the gaian mind you might try there instead. Just be warned that you may offend people— try to avoid exoticizing people with mental illness, and try to avoid reducing people's spirituality to organic disease.

There's this, too: How would it be if I said "All schizophrenic people are REALLY chosen by God to become celibate priests in the Catholic Church"? I'd be imposing a particular religion on other people against their will, which is wrong. It's the same if you say they're really chosen by Gaia to be her voice, or they're really chosen by the ancestors to be their vessels, or they're really chosen by the nature spirits to be their shaman, or they're really chosen by the Infinite Computer to be its Tech Support Monkey. Some people with schizophrenia may have a particular spiritual calling. Some of them just suffer from a debilitating illness which needs treatment. (This paragraph brought to you by the Head Shop, and the letter M.)
 
 
E. Coli from the Milky Way
11:08 / 24.03.06
Yes, (id)entity, you are true about what you say. i suppose i've to learn how to shut up my mouth (well, my fingers) better. Youre right about what you say about to imposse beliefs, and to idealize schizoprhrenia when people suffers it. In fact, it's second time in this thread i make this mess in this post.

Better i shut up
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
18:50 / 24.03.06
I lessthanthree (id)entity.
 
  

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