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Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

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Re: Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

#61

Post by taurath »

dikdik wrote: post #38
api wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love McKenna's raps but I really disagree with him here. I doubt he had much experience with actual schizophrenia, which is horrific and debilitating, and I doubt shamans present or past actually had it. Psychedelic drugs induce a superficially schizophrenia-like state but it's transient and may not actually be much like schizophrenia at all. Visionary, trance, and highly imaginative states are not schizophrenia or…

There's some really interesting research out there on schizophrenia. "Stanford anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann found that voice-hearing experiences of people with serious psychotic disorders are shaped by local culture – in the United States, the voices are harsh and threatening; in Africa and India, they are more benign and playful." http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/july/voices-culture-luhrm...

The implications are huge - if you are more prone to actively resist or think that its wrong it will actively trigger panic, PTSD, anxiety and paranoia. If you think of them as spirits and your society values them its not a big deal, sometimes even possible helpful?

Re: Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

#62

Post by petra »

api wrote: post #46
benbreen wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed completely. I was sympathetic to arguments like his right up until the time when my brother began acting weird and fell into a downward spiral that ultimately led to a schizophrenia diagnosis. What really sticks out to me is the brain damage-like effects of the disease - not just paranoia and delusions but a total breakdown in verbal and reasoning abilities. What my brother suffers from really is more comparab…

> What really sticks out to me is the brain damage-like effects of the disease Absolutely... there's an incoherence to true (not armchair diagnosed) schizophrenia. The mind falls apart. Traditional shamans and modern ones like McKenna himself might hold ideas that some might find irrational, but their thought patterns are coherent and their reasoning ability is there. They're lucid and can think. McKenna's brilliant…

It might not even have to with traditional shamans, it could be simpler than that, from an article by a psychologist:

" I once was lucky enough to spend time in an Egyptian village in the late 1970s, before technology or even electric lights had arrived there. One of the villagers had long, impassioned conversations with people no one else could see. He also had a way of seeing through everyone’s pretensions. He could tell jokes no one else could get away with.

Village life was not utopia. It was difficult in many ways. But this one man, who would almost certainly be diagnosed with schizophrenia if he lived in the developed world, had a secure, safe place in his village. He could wander the wide-ranging mysteries his perceptions opened to him, and if he forgot to feed himself along the way, sooner or later someone would feed him and give him a gentle push toward the door of his home.

Contrast his life with that of a typical client in a mental-health agency in Seattle. I remember one man, early in my training, who gave me the most baffled, hurt look when he asked me, “Why do people on the radio lie to us?”

“I can tell that the woman who’s talking about Macy’s isn’t really happy,” he went on, “but she’s pretending to be happy. Why?”

He felt injured by the woman’s lies, and I could see why, because he had a point. He was accurately perceiving the incongruence in her voice. All of the lying we do to each other in the name of advertising can’t be good for us. But most of us, whose brains aren’t quite as strongly bathed in dopamine in certain places where my client’s brain was constantly overstimulated, can tune advertising out. He couldn’t. "

It's from a fascinating article: http://crosscut.com/2014/05/our-indiviualist-society-breeds-...

Re: Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

#64

Post by threatofrain »

butterfinger wrote: post #14

Another point that this article does not discuss is that in many of the "less coercive" societies, schizophrenia or related diseases are not seen as a disease or problematic at all. McKenna writes: "A shaman is someone who swims in the same ocean as the schizophrenic, but the shaman has thousands and thousands of years of sanctioned technique and tradition to draw upon. In a traditional society, if you exhibited “sch…

I'd say that firstly, these are anthropological case studies without much quantification; there can't be. It's meant to provide rich account or potential insight, and that's how it's taken.

Secondly, I think the general professional narrative about those accounts is that those shamans were schizotypal, and that severe marginalization of the schizophrenic population is a cross-cultural phenomena.

Every culture has its idea of what is acceptable, including what's acceptable magical or religious thinking (we don't think that Christians who pray to Jesus for cancer relief, whether effective or not, are schizophrenic). But if you step outside of those realms, you will be mistreated. If you tell Christians that you have a personal relationship with Jesus, they'll think that's normal. If you tell them that you actually hear the voice of Jesus, they'll be conspiculously polite but suspicious.

Re: Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

#65

Post by sillysaurus3 »

jessriedel wrote: post #17
butterfinger wrote: post #14

Another point that this article does not discuss is that in many of the "less coercive" societies, schizophrenia or related diseases are not seen as a disease or problematic at all. McKenna writes: "A shaman is someone who swims in the same ocean as the schizophrenic, but the shaman has thousands and thousands of years of sanctioned technique and tradition to draw upon. In a traditional society, if you exhibited “sch…

I'm willing to bet that the welfare of the average schizophrenic is quite poor essentially everywhere in the world, a handful of tribes supporting them for myth-related reasons notwithstanding.

While this may be true, hearing that you're useful is important.

As someone that society has basically forgotten about, realizing that I won't be useful has recently crushed me.

I would not presume to speak for schizophrenics. My quirks are bad, but not that. But the welfare of a person is greatly improved by the feeling that they'll be useful.

Deluding yourself into thinking you're useful is much easier when there aren't external forces making it entirely clear that this is false. I can see that in a society without too much coercion, people with problems would be much happier simply because they aren't called out to prove themselves on a daily basis.

I say "called out" rather than "asked," because it fits much better. The feeling that you have to do something very important is so pervasive. If you're not doing that, then what are you doing?

Which is why it feels like you're called out to prove you're useful, rather than requested.

I hypothesize that in a society that doesn't do that, schizophrenics' welfare would be much improved.

Re: Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

#66

Post by dmix »

krapp wrote: post #29
hderms wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but what if it was substituted with art, or something similar. It's possible to produce a society which values mentally ill people without necessarily coercing them.

What if they don't want to make art? Being mentally ill doesn't necessarily grant one creative insight. What if they exhibit antisocial or violent behavior?

You mean what if they don't fit into our status-quo middle class concept of society? Well then we ostracize them... and parade the ones of that do fit the fantastical ideal as unappreciated genius.

Re: Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

#67

Post by altonzheng »

The author makes a good point about re-examining our approach to treating mental illness. I think the viewpoint that "Big Pharma" has psychiatrists in their hands is a bit too conspiracy-ist for me. What's really happening is mental healthcare is being excessively quantized and dehumanized. We're too concerned with the symptoms and we have studies that lump a variety of people under the ridiculously general label: 'depression'.

We're going too fast, the brain and human spirit is hopelessly complex, and it takes a holistic, humanistic treatment that doesn't reduce the patient to a set of symptoms to make a change. A book I recommend concerning this is "The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat" by neurologist Oliver Sacks.

Re: Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

#68

Post by MawNicker »

krapp wrote: post #58
MawNicker wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all as real as humans are real. Every person has a mind that exists partially beyond the objective reality we all share. Those experiences are real even if they don't represent reality. They affect reality to the extant that humans do. Schizophrenia is dissociation from objective reality. A mind that is disproportionately subjective. An echo-chamber of thought. Even as a disability and not a "magical power" it d…

I can see for miles and miles. But i'm arguing specifically against the shamanistic point of view in the gp. Should we treat mental illness exactly the same as any other? Absolutely. The stigma behind mental illness, I believe, is a vestige from the days when most people thought such things were the work of demons. People can't accept that someone who thinks and sees the world so differently is just as human as they…

I didn't say anything about God. They aren't like other people. It can be distinctly useful. They just need to be respected. Maybe that would have been a better term than revere. The respect does two things. It helps them exist; They need it and we ought to help them. In doing so we learn useful things about ourselves. They're exaggerations of a part of us. I think this is the point of the GP. A society fit for a shaman is a better society for everyone else. This is congruent with your idea that they're just wackos. They have no idea how they're being helpful.

Re: Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

#69

Post by Alex3917 »

jessriedel wrote: post #17
butterfinger wrote: post #14

Another point that this article does not discuss is that in many of the "less coercive" societies, schizophrenia or related diseases are not seen as a disease or problematic at all. McKenna writes: "A shaman is someone who swims in the same ocean as the schizophrenic, but the shaman has thousands and thousands of years of sanctioned technique and tradition to draw upon. In a traditional society, if you exhibited “sch…

I'm willing to bet that the welfare of the average schizophrenic is quite poor essentially everywhere in the world, a handful of tribes supporting them for myth-related reasons notwithstanding.

> I'm willing to bet that the welfare of the average schizophrenic is quite poor essentially everywhere in the world

Actually schizophrenics in the developing world do significantly better than those in the US. That said, McKenna's models of shamanism weren't actually valid across cultures -- shamans actually played completely different roles in different societies.

Re: Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

#70

Post by pekk »

api wrote: post #46
benbreen wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed completely. I was sympathetic to arguments like his right up until the time when my brother began acting weird and fell into a downward spiral that ultimately led to a schizophrenia diagnosis. What really sticks out to me is the brain damage-like effects of the disease - not just paranoia and delusions but a total breakdown in verbal and reasoning abilities. What my brother suffers from really is more comparab…

> What really sticks out to me is the brain damage-like effects of the disease Absolutely... there's an incoherence to true (not armchair diagnosed) schizophrenia. The mind falls apart. Traditional shamans and modern ones like McKenna himself might hold ideas that some might find irrational, but their thought patterns are coherent and their reasoning ability is there. They're lucid and can think. McKenna's brilliant…

> McKenna's brilliant wordsmithing is the polar opposite of what you see with degenerative mental illness.

But then there are also people like Philip K. Dick, no "armchair diagnosed" schizophrenic.

This might again raise the old issue of whether there are really multiple things we call schizophrenia.

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