I was once as ignorant about the nature of schizophrenia and mental illness as the most ignorant of the general public. This may have been part of the reason why, when I first became psychotic just before my 17^th birthday, I never suspected that I was going insane. My major psychotic symptom, which was with me twenty-four hours a day for months, was what psychiatrists call "thought broadcasting". Imagine that you are sitting in a high school classroom, with all the insecurity of a seventeen-year-old, firmly believing that every thought and image that passes through your mind is simultaneously experienced by everyone else in the room, and that they all know you are the one in whom the thoughts originated. I won’t dwell on the anguish this caused me. My point is that I thought schizophrenia was a disorder involving multiple personalities. In my mind, I did not have schizophrenia. My problem was spiritual. I had opened the door to spiritual powers that I could no longer control, and the mission of my life would be to contend with these forces and master them, finally to become enlightened and spiritually powerful. When I see homeless mentally ill people now, I wonder if any of them are on a spiritual quest such as I would still be on had I not gotten help. I wonder if their homelessness is actually a small issue compared to the magnitude and importance of the journey they are on.

Most people have only a vague notion of what it is to be psychotic. The most educated of the general public believe it is "a break from reality", though it is unclear what it means to break from reality, how it happens and what it is like. Even psychiatrists are at a loss to explain what exactly convinces the schizophrenic of his or her delusions on such obviously flawed evidence and reasoning. Their explanations usually involve things like "excess of dopamine in the brain" and "the misfiring of neurons". But the brain is the seat of consciousness, so while everything we are conscious of, even belief in God, may have to do with brain chemistry, brain chemistry seems irrelevant when you ask a Christian or Muslim why he or she believes in God. Just as there are sociological explanations for why a culture does what it does, and believes what it believes, without referring to the brain chemistry of its members (which, though no doubt involved, seems irrelevant), so too are there psychological explanations of psychosis that involve things like the nature of belief, and the internal consistency of false belief systems. This might be called the philosophy of schizophrenia. It is not psychiatry. Leave the issues involving brain chemistry to the ones developing the medications. If we want to understand schizophrenia, we will necessarily have to deal with issues involving the nature of belief. I hope that, being one who has dealt with paranoid psychosis all his adult life, I may be able to offer such an analysis.

But this book is not only philosophy of schizophrenia in the sense that it is an analysis of what goes on in the schizophrenic mind. It is also a political philosophy, the philosophy of schizophrenia in the sense that feminism is the philosophy of woman. The schizophrenic has to deal with the fact that he is irrational, and somehow reconcile this with the definition of a human being, which started with Aristotle, and continues on in modified forms today, as a rational animal. The schizophrenic, since he is not rational, is merely an animal in human form, according to this definition. This is something the philosophy of schizophrenia must deal with.

You might think I am the last one, being a schizophrenic myself, to offer such an explanation. No one can be an anthropologist studying his or her own culture, because he or she will not be able to question all the things that culture takes for granted. Furthermore, if I am constantly fooled by psychosis, how am I to be aware of it if these ideas become psychotic?

As to being too much of a "native" in the territory I am exploring, I can only say that the only alternative is for someone who has never experienced psychosis to write about it. This would be the other extreme: the anthropologist who does all his study of a particular culture without ever immersing himself in it, but always being a complete outsider. I have experienced being in both belief systems, both psychotic and "normal", the "normal" only thanks to antipsychotic medication. So I think I am more qualified than a complete outsider to write the present work.

And as to the prevention of psychotic ideas working their ways into this text, I can only explain that, even at my most psychotic, I have always been aware of reality. I know at these times what "a conventional view of reality" is, though I don’t believe in it; it is like a book I have read, and know everything about, but which I simply do not believe. This is why many schizophrenics, though firmly believing their delusions, will not act on them, or express them to anyone. I myself have learned to do this over the years. The schizophrenic understands what sorts of beliefs constitute what the non-schizophrenic believes is "reality"; the schizophrenic, always a good actor, usually will choose to act on these beliefs, though he or she thinks they are false. You will say, "People act on what they believe; if the schizophrenic really believed his or her delusions, he or she would act on them." But it is not so simple. The motivations for our actions are not always clear even to us, and there are many levels of ourselves, both conscious and unconscious, that are involved in all our actions. There are also many levels of belief, both conscious and unconscious. An atheist who all his life does not believe in hell or God, will suddenly become terrified as he is dying, and ask for a priest. The priest, though proclaiming all his life that we will go to a better place after death, when he is dying will suddenly find himself terrified that there is no God, that there is nothing after death. My feeling is that on some level the schizophrenic realizes that if he or she expresses to just anyone, or acts on, these delusions, something bad will happen, even if he or she isn’t consciously sure exactly what. But this isn’t true of all schizophrenics. I myself find it cathartic to express my delusions to a person with whom it is safe to do so, and this often helps the delusions go away. But the point is that I always know what conventional reality is, even if I no longer believe in it. And right now, as I write this, I do believe in it. Should I get psychotic ideas when I write this, I will easily be able to spot them; and even if I believe in them, I will take them out. You ask, "If you can spot them, and know they’re psychotic, why do you believe in them?" I hope this book can help answer that difficult question.

The philosophy of schizophrenia, in the sense that it is for the schizophrenic what feminism is for the woman, will necessarily require more than what philosophers call philosophy. It will involve more like what Martin Luther King called philosophy, observations based on personal experiences, interwoven with autobiography. The present work will begin in this vein, and then move on to the challenge traditional political philosophies give the schizophrenic, and also a philosophical explanation for what convinces the schizophrenic of his or her delusions on flawed evidence. In the autobiographical sections, I will explain my experience of being a psychotic in a culture that excludes the psychotic, and the things this society does to increase the suffering of the schizophrenic that it need not do.

Ever since the agricultural revolution, with the onset of urbanism and the complex societies that came with it, schizophrenics have not been helped, but positively hurt and punished, for being sick. The New Testament presents a view of the mentally ill as demon-possessed, and though the Jesus of the Gospels had only kindness for these "demoniacs", in the Middle Ages they were tortured, burned as witches, and murdered in inquisitions. In the 20^th century they were given a more technologically advanced brutality: the frontal lobotomy. But things are changing. There are medications now that lessen psychotic symptoms to an amazing degree. Finally, in certain ways, society is beginning to help, instead of hurt further, those suffering from the disease. But the general public still needs to be educated about schizophrenia and mental illness, and leave behind the myths of Hollywood’s staple "psychotic killer". I still cannot tell a stranger I meet on a bus that I have schizophrenia as easily as he tells me he has diabetes without distancing him from me, making him uncomfortable, or simply making him want to avoid me altogether. This needs to change. The gays are out of the closet now; it’s time we let the mentally ill out too. They have no reason to feel ashamed.

The whole of our culture, it seems, is at least aware of the past (and some say present) oppression of African Americans, Native Americans, women, Jews, and gays and lesbians. But the general public still has only a vague notion of even the causes, symptoms, and suffering of the mentally ill. There are some who believe the mentally ill, if they were stronger, could simply snap out of their disease; others believe sinful behavior or moral deficiency are causes of schizophrenia. Many still believe schizophrenia has to do with multiple personalities, so many in fact that the film Me, Myself, and Irene, which portrayed a "schizophrenic" with multiple personalities, was not even questioned by the general public. You would think such a flawed portrayal would make people scratch their heads and say, "Who made that film? Didn’t they bother to look up the word ‘schizophrenia’ in the dictionary?" But this did not happen. With all this ignorance, it is hard for the public to realize that we are a group that has been subjected throughout history to every bit as much persecution as any other minority.

There seems to be even a view of the mentally ill as somehow deserving of being locked up in hospitals all their lives. Gabriel Garcia Márquez wrote a short story called, "I Only Came to Use the Phone" about a perfectly mentally healthy woman who gets locked up in a mental hospital by mistake. She has her freedom taken from her and is subjected to sexual and physical abuse by the staff. Why does this strike a chord with the public? Because she is mentally healthy. Had she been mentally ill, she would have "belonged there", and there would have been no story. Only with a portrayal of a mentally healthy person being abused in a hospital can a "normal" reader relate. The whole reason the story reaches out to people is that they think, "This could happen to me," but as for the mentally ill people being abused in the hospitals, that is no concern. That is what hospitals are for.

One in a hundred adult Americans with schizophrenia, and many more with other mental illnesses, is perhaps too small a minority to get much attention. More likely, schizophrenics throughout history have been too poor, powerless, and disabled to speak up for themselves. But that is changing. As long as these medications are available, we will never let society imprison, torture, or murder us again. We are still mostly poor and powerless. But we have our reason back. Certainly we are intelligent enough to speak our minds.