HPAVC/HPAVC CD-ROM.iso/pc/HOMEWORK.ZIP/SCHIZO.TXT

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Date sent:        Mon, 29 Apr 1996 02:57:14 -0400


















                    Mike Ailed

          PRINCIPLES OF ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY

                   Professor Leaf

                  05 October 1995








                    ESSAY   ONE
























INTRODUCTION


     I. HISTORY OF THE PROBLEM

          The mystery of schizophrenia.  Why does the disease
happen?  Who does it happen to?  Where is the cause?  What is its
genesis?  And more specifically, what is the intrinsic nature of
this madness?  Questions like these have been raised by doctors
and shamans alike for nearly two centuries now, and, as of yet,
not one among the scientific community at large, or in the past,
has produced any definite universal answer, solution,or cure,


only vast quantities of indefinite research, a fat bog of
statistical data for the medical establishment(and the naive
student) to delve and sink into.
          The search for a remedy.  Where shall we start?  In the
beginning, of course, to carefully trace the past courses of
examination concerning schizophrenia by the various researchers
and authorities on the subject.  Perhaps then we can learn from
those attempts for a 'cure' and their subsequent 'failings' and
become the wiser insofar as obtaining some type of knowledge,
however limited, in knowing what to avoid in the future in order
to treat the victims of this bewildering, mysterious condition.
There is a good possibility that we might never per se find one
ultimate definitive solution to this medical dilemma, but maybe
we can come to terms with the disease of schizophrenia and cope
with it by fashioning some sort of moderate resolution.

          Since the age of the Greeks, madness, i.e. insanity,
has always had an established history in Western civilization.
And rightly so.  It's the one thing which classic society had to
take a stand against, for its own survival depended on the
affront.  Governments are empowered by the people in the quest
for human order.  Madness, of course, stands in direct opposition
to this organization.  People often fear what they do not know
of.  Consequently, the insane were brushed under the rug and
shipped to 'bins' which resembled, for all intents and purposes,
the dungeon-prison.  In the past, these 'defective' were forced
to live in squalor, in chains, in the most deplorable conditions
with no chance of ever seeing the outside world again. This was
one of 'Western' society's cruel secrets, just one of a
few(racism being one of them for example) where the old European-
man had to suppress that which was in contrast to his status-quo.
But this wasn't the case all over the globe. In fact, in North
America, the early tribe inhabitants considered the lunatic as a
person of poetic vision and prophecy. There the 'lunatic' was not
reviled, but revered. Now I'm not trying to praise and promulgate
the social protocol of the 'natural man' - at his finest. I'm
only attempting to make the point that insanity is a specific
Western notion. It can be only understood and realized in terms
of the Western individual in the Western world. For if we knock
away the surrounding walls of authority and order, insanity tends
to be something more along the lines of a simple behavioral


tendency, no different than the rest, as the mark of Nietzsche
may attest.

     II. GOALS OF THE PRESENT STUDY

          Schizophrenia is a unique form of madness insofar as
its time of entry into the course of European history. Below
marks the indelible evidence which demonstrates its rise and
prominence in society.





                              FIGURE  ONE
               640 -                         *
               625 -                               *
avg. rate
per million

               525 -             *
               510 -                   *
               500 -

               450 -        *

               400 -  *
                      |     |    |     |     |     |
                    1860  1870  1880  1890  1900  1910
                           year of admission



*FIGURE 1.  Insane asylum admission rates per one million
population in England and Wales for the period 1859 to 1914.
**[Adapted from Gottesman's adaption of Hare, p.3]

As anyone can see, the rise in admissions was unprecedented.
Schizophrenia was most definitely responsible for this onset and
the surge of insanity among the population, here being in London
and Wales. The symptoms as noted by puzzled doctors were various
and "writers in Europe did report an alarming, acute increase of
unmanageable insanity in their societies."  Was the society to
blame as the source of this functional psychosis? Gottesman
examines this theory as "a tendency toward this kind of mental
breakdown may have always been present in humans[i.e. a
propensity], but emerged as an incapacitating illness only under
the stress of losing personal space in increasingly urbanized and
industrialized societies." Gottesman also projects the theory
that schizophrenia was a new disease, perhaps the result of "a
mutated bacterium that appeared in France soon after the
Napoleonic wars and spread throughout the West."  Another
possibility also cited causally is the breakdown of cultural
traditions and the family unit, but this is, for all intents and
purposes, only a consequent of the presence of an industrial
society in the life of modern-man.  Therefore, it is most


probable the "assembly-line" society that mankind has created for
himself stimulated the disease of schizophrenia among the
populace who had a biological predisposition towards it. Perhaps,
this predisposition is within all of us and under certain key
environmental factors we are provoked and forced into the
condition. This dichotomy of the mental and the physical seem to
be the mystery behind the disease. If we could find the key-
elements, the internal-external combination which forces the
disease from the recesses of the mind into the forefront of the
personality, then - maybe - we might have something on the nature
of the beast.

METHOD

          The method of choice is psychoanalysis. The only way
possible for an individual to overcome schizophrenia is by
enolization. One-on-one examinations of the individual's
personality should be made by a specialist. Only a carefully
examined account of the mental and physical health history of the
patient can give us the answers we need in order to determine if
the patient can function within the guidelines of society's
norms, i.e. Law. But should we just permit the dysfunctional to
roam about the masses? Is there the possibility that the
schIzophrenic are going to cause harm to the other 'healthy'
members of society?  The answer tends to be 'not really'(that is
colloquially).  Research data out of London from Eve Johnstone
and colleagues has "provided unbiased information about the
disturbed behaviors of 253 schizophrenics who met the criteria of
the WHO studies." As noted by Gottesman, although six percent
had threatened the people's lives(and a further thirteen percent
had on one or two separate occasions), none had murdered. A
twenty-two percent patient total had been involved with the law
prior, but only for extremely bizarre anti-social behavior which
was in no way endangering the well-being of the general
population.
     As to the question of a cure. Do we really need one? Is the
problem of schizophrenia a problem for the individual or is it
just a problem for the society which surrounds the schizophrenic
individual? The answer might be the latter. Now I'm not affirming
that someone who is 'deranged' is enlightened and should do
whatever he wants to. The thing that we have to provide to the
patient is comfort. He has to learn coping mechanisms in order to
function in the everyday world.  We should not force a change in
the patient's personality which confronts and conflicts with his
individuality. In the past, with the advent of such harmful
measures which all claimed to be the 'wonder cure', like the
sedative drugs of the 1950's, or more bluntly and to the point,
the lobotomy and electric shock therapy, have been used by
specialists in the hope of improving the patient's lifestyle yet
to no avail. The results have often been dreadful(we know all to
well of what happened to Caroline Kennedy and the Jack Nicholson
character in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest").  The civil
liberty of the individual must be paramount. What boggles my mind
is the necessity of the majority to make everything different
the same, in of all places, a democracy.  The condition of
schizophrenia symptoms are for the most part as follows:

               "The Schizophrenic Five"
          1. hallucinations
          2. indifference
          3. withdrawal from others, i.e. 'excessive'
individuality(hereby known as "The Steppenwolf Syndrome")
          4. hearing voices
          5. delusional states(of both omnipotence and grandeur)

As a simple reading of the above can attest, the only possible
threat the schizophrenia can pose is one to himself.  Nothing
more.  It is not a societal concern - nor an institutional one.
Foremost, the schizophrenia should not be placed into some
bureaucratically-run institution.  Don't ever let the white walls
and the linoleum floors in those places fool you.  This
'dignified' asylum concept of Dorothea Dix is a proven failure(as
the in-class documentary so vividly pictured) and is in principle
no better than the prison-dungeon 'hospital' of long past.
Scizophrenes are shipped there because the bourgeoisie couldn't
stand the condition(a case can be made that this procedure is a
in fact a subtle form of eugenics).  For all intents and
purposes, they wanted to get rid of what they viewed as a
'problem' as soon as possible.  And the asylum was the medical


establishment's quick-fix solution for the public's uneasiness
about insanity in general.  There they pumped pills(another
quick-fix solution) and electrocuted their victims... patients,
maintaining them like animals in a zoo.

DISCUSSION

          We know very little about schizophrenia insofar as some
universal Aristotelian definition or outline. I can think of
nothing other than an analyst for the treatment of the
schizophrenia. Research is doomed to fail, no matter how
temporally extended it is or how solid the control of procedure.
There are no symptomatic treatments for the patients. We cannot
give them an aspirin and the fever will go away. The condition of
schizophrenia is more along the lines of problems like obesity or
the common cold. We all have a tendency to gain weight or get a
cold if we are interacting in a conflicting manner with outside
elements. The human body has such biological propensities as
defensive mechanisms. The symptoms are reactions to an unhealthy
environment or way of life brought about by outside elements that
man might not be able to handle, neither psychologically or
mentally. But just as the human has the propensity for
schizophrenia, it also has the propensity of getting rid of it,
or at least, putting into submission.  This resolution could
hopefully be attained by a change of environment and an
examination of that patients particular symptoms of psychosis.

And the specialists must focus on the particulars. It doesn't
make sense to treat every patient alike.  The only way we could
take this universal course is if schizophrenia had a scientific
basis, some sort of genetic link.




BIBLIOGRAPHY

     1.   Gottesman, Irving I., W.H. Freeman and Company, c.
1991.