Many people have speculated what the cause of schizophrenia and psychosis are. Some people think it may be a gateway to spiritual realms, demonic oppression/possession, and/or a chemical imbalance. These theories may have some merit, but after researching it quite a bit from a psychoanalytical lens, I have determined that something known as ‘self-disorder’, or more precisely, an ipseity disturbance is at the root of the immense suffering of a schizophrenic man or woman.
The Wikipedia article I have linked is somewhat dense and hard to understand, but what I have gathered from it is that the individual with an ipseity disturbance essentially has blurred boundaries between them and the world. I would compare and contrast it to depersonalization-derealization dissociation where both illnesses make one lose connection to themselves, but I have heard that schizophrenia in particular has been linked to a specific vulnerability and threshold that most people will never cross, even some people with the specific vulnerability.
More than 100 years after its conceptual definition as ‘Dementia Praecox’ by Emil Kraepelin, which was changed to schizophrenia by Eugen Bleuler, this is still a serious and debilitating psychiatric illness. The neurodevelopmental hypothesis of schizophrenia, introduced more than 30 years ago, states that schizophrenia is a consequence of failed neurodevelopmental processes leading to a dysfunctional neuronal network forming the basis for a psychosis proneness. Subsequently, significant research efforts were made to prove the neurodevelopmental or the neurodegenerative perspective. This review summarizes key arguments speaking for or against the two hypotheses leading to a concept with both aspects position side by side.
It’s why it’s often linked to genetics and why people with bipolar/schizophrenic family members are often strongly discouraged from taking substances like marijuana that could trigger the vulnerability.
So, what is that specific vulnerability? I believe it often starts off with a trauma that makes one not trust in people and slowly escalates/unravels the individual into not trusting in anything being real or having essential goodness or meaning at all. Sometimes people say that the negative/deficit (symptoms that are a loss of something in healthy-functioning people rather than an addition of something) symptoms of schizophrenia such as apathy and anhedonia are caused by their psychosis tiring them out, but I believe the root of this is deeper.
Many schizophrenic people, even those in the prodormal stage before psychosis symptoms start to arise have something known as ‘hyperreflexitivity’, an obsessive self-focus, especially about things related to the body that are automatic like breathing or blinking. This is a bit of a mystery, but it’s likely because the body is where we get our sense of meaning from. (Ask people who are deeply depersonalized if they have a strong connection to their body, they will likely say no, and ask people who feel deep responsibility and care towards nature and life, they will likely say yes.) This is not coincidence but that’s a thread for another time.
So, what could happen next, this going on indefinitely and the individual losing the meaning of meaning until they die? I believe that psychosis is what happens when the person has a latch-ditch effort into finding meaning, this is why people in a full psychotic episode are absolutely convinced in their delusions, the hypereflexitivity is trying to find meaning through the body and it not being able to be channeled correctly, because they have lost meaning and vitality otherwise; losing all sense of meaning would actually have you die and this has happened before, it’s called ‘psychogenic death’ where the body actually gives up. Essentially, psychosis is preventing death.
But why does the obsession with the body’s automatic processes lead to things like a schizophrenic being afraid they’re being stalked or about to be murdered by their family? It’s likely a manifestation of their extreme mistrust being made meaningful. All people want to have meaning in their life is something I’ve learned. And what we can learn from schizophrenia, is that nobody just “loses their mind” for no reason, everything has a reason, meaning, and rhyme to it because our purpose is to love and be loved, but sometimes fear and mistrust can throw a wrench in this. Schizophrenia can show us the meaning of life by being at the verge of losing it completely.
I may very well attempt a spinoff thread some time later about how this all shows that eternal conscious torment damnation would be a mercy compared to annihiliationism, but not right now. I’d also like to talk about other angles like separating it from extreme dissociative pathologies, other forms of psychosis, and Jacquis Lacan’s theory of joussiance and the Real, but first, what do you guys think?
I have some further reading books that are very insightful too, one is called “The Centre Cannot Hold” by Elyn Saks which is an autobiographical account of schizophrenia, and “The Divided Self” by R.D Laing, which is more psychoanalytic because he was a psychologist. I’d be very interested in your guys’s thoughts, and I may edit this thread later to make it more concise.