Psychosis isn't that different from Big Brother. Both involve sitting around the house, waiting for an ethereal being who nobody else has yet met to set you tasks. Why is Big Brother seen as a semi-reasonable pursuit instead of peculiar behaviour? Because there's a cash prize and a few video cameras thrown in and because it is nigh on impossible to miss its presense.
We are taught to fear psychosis but it is all around us, one cannot walk down the street without being bombarded by its codes and language. Most people see psychosis as something that happens to other people but we are all in the grips of it every day. The only difference is that it's consensual, societal psychosis.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines psychosis as, "a mental disorder in which a person's perception of reality is severely distorted." What is reality though and how do you gauge it, whose job is it to gauge it, what makes their objective reality more realistic that somebody else's?
I open up a magazine and I am bombarded with images of high-end fashion, celebrity debauchery, dieting tips. I open up the newspaper and am presented with notions of a dark ages, an economy and a society that is on its knees. Never mind that this season's fashion trends were decided three years ago and that the classification system for crimes has changed. The reality of the situation is lost in interpretation; how many people look at a weather forecast instead of looking out the window? Which would you trust more?
This constructed consensual reality is sending messages to all of us through the television and hidden within newspaper articles - if you buy things you will be happier, if you listen to this band you will be more cultured, if you do as we say then we will protect you. We are all imprisoned in a narrow vision of what is possible and what is not.
So what happens when people break out of that vision of consensual reality? They are marginalised, medicalised, even criminalised. After all, delusions tend to be defended with the utmost rigour. The pot lambasting the kettle, now that is the last bastion of madness.
We are taught to fear psychosis but it is all around us, one cannot walk down the street without being bombarded by its codes and language. Most people see psychosis as something that happens to other people but we are all in the grips of it every day. The only difference is that it's consensual, societal psychosis.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines psychosis as, "a mental disorder in which a person's perception of reality is severely distorted." What is reality though and how do you gauge it, whose job is it to gauge it, what makes their objective reality more realistic that somebody else's?
I open up a magazine and I am bombarded with images of high-end fashion, celebrity debauchery, dieting tips. I open up the newspaper and am presented with notions of a dark ages, an economy and a society that is on its knees. Never mind that this season's fashion trends were decided three years ago and that the classification system for crimes has changed. The reality of the situation is lost in interpretation; how many people look at a weather forecast instead of looking out the window? Which would you trust more?
This constructed consensual reality is sending messages to all of us through the television and hidden within newspaper articles - if you buy things you will be happier, if you listen to this band you will be more cultured, if you do as we say then we will protect you. We are all imprisoned in a narrow vision of what is possible and what is not.
So what happens when people break out of that vision of consensual reality? They are marginalised, medicalised, even criminalised. After all, delusions tend to be defended with the utmost rigour. The pot lambasting the kettle, now that is the last bastion of madness.
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