Just wait till we're alone together. Then I will tell you something new, something cold, something sleepy, something of cease and peace and the long bright curve of space. Go upstairs to your room. I will be waiting for you... As a rare October blizzard drifts a blanket of white across the Northeast just before Halloween, what better time to settle in and read (or watch)
Conrad Aiken's most famous short story,
"Silent Snow, Secret Snow." About a small boy who increasingly slips into an ominous fantasy of isolation and endless snow, it could be viewed as a metaphor about autism, Asperger's syndrome, and even schizophrenia before such conditions even had names. In addition to the 1934 short story, the tale has also been adapted as a
creepy 1966 black-and-white
short film (also at
the Internet Archive) and as a
Night Gallery episode (
1,
2) narrated by Orson Welles. Or for a more academic take, see the essay
"The Delicious Progress" examining Aiken's use of white as a symbol of psychological regression.
posted by Rhaomi
on Oct 29, 2011 -
9 comments
A High-Profile Executive Job as Defense Against Mental Ills. “I feel my brain is damaged; I don’t know any other way to say it,” Ms. Myrick said. “I don’t know if it’s from the illness, the medications, all those side effects or what. I only know that I do need certain things in my life, and for a long time — well, I had to get to know myself first.” (Nytimes link). Keris Myrick is also on the board of
NAMI, National Alliance on Mental Illness.
posted by sweetkid
on Oct 24, 2011 -
71 comments
Metacognitive training is a useful
complementary treatment approach to schizophrenia. MCT aims at sharpening the awareness of patients for a variety of cognitive biases (e.g. jumping to conclusions, attributional biases, over-confidence in errors), which are implicated in the formation and maintenance of schizophrenia positive symptoms (especially delusions), and to ultimately replace these biases with functional cognitive strategies.
Researchers at the
Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf have developed
an MCT program, comprised of eight modules targeting common cognitive errors and problem solving biases in schizophrenia.
[more inside]
posted by aeschenkarnos
on Jul 2, 2011 -
16 comments
The winter of 1944–45 is known as the ‘Hunger Winter’ in The Netherlands, which was occupied by the Germans in May 1940. Beginning in September 1944, Allied troops had liberated most of the South of the country, but their advance towards the North came to a stop at the Waal and Rhine rivers and the battle of Arnhem. In support of the Allied war effort, the Dutch government in exile in London called for a national railway strike to hinder German military initiatives. In retaliation, in October 1944, the German authorities blocked all food supplies to the occupied West of the country.
Despite the war, nutrition in The Netherlands had generally been adequate up to October 1944. Thereafter, food supplies became increasingly scarce. By November 26, 1944, official rations, which eventually consisted of little more than bread and potatoes, had fallen below 1000 kcal per day, and by April 1945, they were as low as 500 kcal per day. Widespread starvation was seen especially in the cities of the western Netherlands. Food supplies were restored immediately after liberation on May 5, 1945.
But
for many, who weren't even born when it started, the
hongerwinter continues.
Why? In part because
"certain environmental conditions early in human development can result in persistent changes in epigenetic information" via
DNA methylation. Epigenetics seems like a little bit of
Lamarckism: environmental effects on a parent -- or even a grandparent -- can be passed to offspring,
even without permanent
changes to DNA. (
previously)
posted by orthogonality
on Sep 7, 2009 -
26 comments
Imagine if you were the only person on earth; if no one else could understand you except yourself. No matter how hard you tried, you could never make contact with the outside world, not for long at least. This is the life of a
Schizophrenic.
Here, in a simulation created to understand what a typical trip to the pharmacy is for a patient suffering from Schizophrenia [
previously], you will experience for a few minutes what life is all about for people afflicted with this disease.
(via) [more inside]
posted by hadjiboy
on Sep 11, 2008 -
53 comments
Louis Wain became one of the most famous British illustrators of the late Victorian and Edwardian era after trying to cheer up his wife Emily by drawing portraits of their pet cat,
Peter. In addition to publishing a popular
children's book about kittens, he was a
founder of the U.K's
National Cat Club who was instrumental in promoting the
Cat Fancy movement, which encouraged Britons of all classes to view cats as lovable pets instead of household pests. Unfortunately, after Wain's wife Emily died of breast cancer, Wain gradually went mad due to
psychosis and
late onset schizophrenia, ending up in London's notorious
Bethlehem Hospital (the etymological origin for the word
bedlam). While at Bedlam, Wain continued to draw, but his cat portraits transformed into pure
geometric abstraction and
psychedelic fractals, but some see harbingers of madness in cryptically titled works, such as
Early Indian Irish and
The Fire of the Mind Agitates the Atmosphere. For more insight on Wain, check out this
1896 interview and this
short film dramatizing the progression of Wain's schizophrenia through his art.
posted by jonp72
on Aug 12, 2007 -
25 comments
Welcome! This is The Manifesto of Forbidden Truth the most unique and dangerous web site on planet earth. Here, within these pages, all of your most sacred societal Myths, Dogmas, Doctrines, Delusions, Derangements, and Brainwashings will be stripped to the bone and torn asunder, to be replaced by the Forbidden Truths that I shall graciously reveal.
posted by stinkycheese
on Jan 5, 2006 -
64 comments
"I haven't been in a concert hall in 4 billion years". Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, 54, had been excited about an invitation to see the
Los Angeles Philharmonic in action at
Disney Hall. "The anticipation is horrible". He'd started showering daily at a shelter, to gussy himself up as much as possible. Nathaniel was a music student more than 30 years ago at the
Juilliard School when he suffered a breakdown. Today, as he continues to battle the schizophrenia that landed him on skid row, he plays violin and cello for hours each day in downtown Los Angeles, lifting his instruments out of an orange shopping cart on which he has written: "Little Walt Disney Concert Hall — Beethoven." After the Philharmonic's rehearsal, Ayers has played Disney Hall -- the real one, this time. Without the bow at first, picking the strings with his right hand, Bach's Cello Suite No. 1: Prelude. Several Philharmonic staffers heard the music and wandered over, peering in to see a man of the streets, tattered and elegant, close his eyes and drift into ecstasy.
posted by PenguinBukkake
on Oct 9, 2005 -
14 comments
Plancher de Jeannot: Jeannot moved his bed to the dining room, next to the stairs, and began carving the oak floor: 'Religion has invented machines for commanding the brain of people and animals and with an invention for seeing our vision through the retina uses us to do ill...
posted by R. Mutt
on Oct 3, 2005 -
12 comments
A LEVER TO MOVE THE MIND The project is fascinating, even though it is still in the rudimentary graphics stage. As someone who works with people with mental illness this interested me, how about the rest of you? What am I talking about? A way to model what schizophrenia is like.
posted by edgeways
on Sep 12, 2004 -
9 comments
Journal of a Schizophrenic
Over the next several weeks I heard the voice every once in a while, but always in the house, when I was by myself. I became used to it, looked forward to it on occasion. I started playing pool with it. We would play a regular game of eight ball, me with the right hand and the voice with the left. I had never shot with my left hand before, but the voice won as often as not.
posted by moonbird
on Feb 21, 2004 -
32 comments
The Air Loom Gang were undercover Jacobin revolutionaries, bent on forcing Britain into a disastrous war with Revolutionary France; operating a device hidden in a London basement, they beamed their diabolical rays directly into the brain of
James Tilly Matthews, who drew detailed technical diagrams of the device while confined at
Bedlam. The spiritual father of all paranoid schizophrenics since, he had a fascinating set of delusions. [More inside.]
posted by languagehat
on Sep 4, 2003 -
8 comments
... and the doctor says,
I can clearly see you're nuts.
A PRODIGY IN MANY FIELDS. Perhaps I rank historically among the 50 or 100 most intelligent and talented people in the most fields ever.And so begins the best resume ever.
posted by patrickje
on Nov 5, 2002 -
59 comments
Man missing since 9/11 found. Missing for almost an entire year, give or take... well, actually take exactly 14 days... a 46-year-old schizophrenic amnesiac is found to have been resting in a hospital since the day he went missing in the general area of the World Trade Center. No one knows where he went, why he was there, and how he ended up in a hospital.
Strangely, the mans' family's faith was so strong in his survival that they refused for an entire year to collect 9/11 compensation, or for that matter even obtain a death certificate.
Umm.... wow?
posted by XQUZYPHYR
on Aug 27, 2002 -
14 comments
The Nash equilibrium
So at the present time I seem to be thinking rationally again in the style that is characteristic of scientists. However this is not entirely a matter of joy as if someone returned from physical disability to good physical health. One aspect of this is that rationality of thought imposes a limit on a person's concept of his relation to the cosmos....from John F. Nash Jr.'s autobiography for the 1994 Nobel Prize for Economics.
posted by riley370
on Dec 12, 2001 -
8 comments
Journal of a guy recovering from schizophrenia. Interesting, he includes some stuff from his madness on the site.
posted by paladin
on Sep 25, 2001 -
5 comments
"the toothy smile is usually related to cannibalism" -- This 7 minute real audio NPR story on Russell Weston is a must listen. Three years ago Weston killed two capitol police officers, but he hasn't even been arraigned on the charges yet due to his paranoid schizophrenia. For a fascinating glimpse into his mind, listen to this story which includes audio excerpts from a 1997 interview with the CIA wherein he details his paranoid delusions regarding the "Ruby Satellite System" time machine and a conspiracy of cannibals.
posted by ericost
on May 15, 2001 -
16 comments
"I've been hit with ultrasonic bullets and ultrasonic lasers that can penetrate the human skull. A good name for the ultrasonic bullets and ultrasonic lasers that can penetrate the skull are 'Skull Penetrating Ultrasonic Bullets' and 'Skull Penetrating Ultrasonic Lasers'."
I thought I was up on my conspiracy theories, but a student of mine dug up this long testimonial by a guy who claims to have been targeted by UltraSonics, a "secret police force," after installing a booming sound system in his car. Supposedly the UltraSonics use "extremely advanced surveillance, harassment, and non-lethal weapons technology" to corral neighborhood undesirables into mental hospitals. (As would follow, both pharmaceutical companies and the Department of Housing and Urban Development are identified as co-conspirators.)
posted by jbushnell
on Mar 4, 2001 -
7 comments
