I have focused, in my discussion of stigma in Part 1, on mainly schizophrenia. The last thing I want is to give the impression of excluding from such a discussion people who have other mental illnesses. Stigma affects us all; we have all been mistreated in the past and continue to be, to a degree. Many people, in fact a very large minority, suffer to some level the effects of stigma. One of my friends recently told me he was taking Prozac. "Don’t tell anyone I’m taking it," he told me. He was ashamed of needing medication for depression. He is perfectly normal other than being depressed. How many people are out there, who consider themselves completely normal, but take medication for depression or anxiety, and feel a need to keep this confidential, as if it were a subject of shame? These people too would benefit from less stigma in society, so that at a party there would be as little shame in saying, "I have to take Prozac," as there is in saying, "I have to take insulin."

I realize, when discussing "the schizophrenic", "the individual", or other singular, and yet generalized, nouns, using almost exclusively pronouns such as "he" instead of "he or she" or ever even "she", that this excludes certain female readers. I do not intend this. I fully understand that many people will read this and say, "He’s writing to only men," and feel like what I say excludes their cases as individuals, or does not consider their cases as important. My only defense is to explain that I used such constructions so much that it was simply not practicable to write "he or she" and "his or her" in every case, and maintain a logical progression that was as clear and concise as possible. As to writing simply "she" instead of "he", whenever I read this in the work of others, it strikes me as just as exclusive, this time to the other sex. I have opted for the good old, conventional, androgynous "he" that grammarians assure us really means both sexes.

There is a solution to this problem, though I am not willing to employ it. People in the spoken word now generally accept a singular "they" and "them", and whenever people speak this way to me, it does not sound incorrect. It sounds, actually, perfectly natural. It even shows up in TV and radio commercials. But as long as writers like myself are not willing to sound like sloppy, ungrammatical writers, and employ this technique in the written word, we will remain stuck with the problem. I suspect that in the future, eventually, the singular "they" will gain acceptance for written language; but I am not about to be the first to try it.

I hope to have given an explanation of psychosis to people who cannot comprehend what convinces a schizophrenic of absurd beliefs. This, I believe, will be useful to families of schizophrenics, as well as possible ideas for interpretation for psychologists who are gathering data in the field. I hope also to have provided an interesting concept of madness to philosophers, as well as some digressions that will interest them. Philosophers have typically considered madness akin to "idiocy" or simply having a mind that produces "nonsense".

There is a danger in applying the conceptual framework I have offered for understanding schizophrenia to all cases or with too broad an approach. As I suggested earlier, not all schizophrenics may even have the same disease as I, not to mention the fact that all schizophrenics have different personalities that may be affected in different ways, and through differing manifestations, of the illness. From my experience of being treated by different psychologists and hospitals with completely different approaches to mental health, each school of psychology tends too often to feel that its way is "right" for everyone. The abusive hospital I mentioned in Part 1 was of the behavioral school. Their approach says all mental illness really is, is behavior that is out of the societal norm. Correct the behavior, and the illness is under control. There is no need to delve into the jungles of psychological therapy that deals with issues of upbringing and emotional makeup. Thus, they put their patients into hospitals where it is a completely controlled environment in which they can punish undesirable behavior physically or psychologically, and reward desirable behavior with privileges and freedom. In my case, however, my problem to begin with wasn’t behavior: I was never physically out of control when in society and psychotic, or got into trouble with the law for abnormal behavior. But when put into such a totalitarian environment, I rebelled with undesirable behavior, as a manifestation of my anger at being so controlled. The more they punished me, the more I rebelled, until, after I had been there much longer than anyone else I knew there, they gave me up for a lost cause who would have to remain in institutions the rest of his life. The behavioral approach is certainly useful and productive with some disorders and personalities, but it was completely unsuitable for my particular case. On the other hand, when I got a cooperative therapeutic approach, which did deal with upbringing and my emotional makeup, this helped me to become a functional member of society. Neither is this approach for everyone, however. Some people (and I can remember some examples), when dealing with emotional issues relating to childhood, will become "righteous victims" of their parents, and spend so much time blaming their upbringing for everything, that they will become less and less functional, more of an "emotional mess". Certainly sexually or physically abusive parents will make a person an emotional mess once that person starts to deal with it psychologically, and this is not what I am talking about. But others who do not have such clear abuse issues will "discover" issues relating to their upbringing that allow them to blame their parents for everything, and will get so lost in such an emotional jungle that they will forget the issues at hand they need to deal with in order to be happy and productive. Certainly many in the psychological community realize that each approach is suitable only for certain disorders and personalities, but all too often the adherents of one approach will think theirs applies to all cases. This is my way of warning the reader, whether he or she is a parent of a schizophrenic, or a psychologist with a schizophrenic patient, not to read too much into another schizophrenic’s beliefs or behavior, based only on my own analysis.

We know more about how the brain works than we think, simply by having one. I have made a study of the mind only through my experience of having one, like most philosophers do. As to actually getting in a lab and studying the brain under microscopes, we cannot study, and interpret, anything new we learn about the brain, except by means of it. Our first task, then, is to see in what ways, and to what degree, those functions of the brain can deceive us. If we study the gray matter itself first to find out, the brain may deceive us even in this endeavor.