"The Truman Show" delusion

It is really unfortunate that the story is behind a paywall, but if you have a subscription to the New Yorker, enjoy. Otherwise, the synopsis is that these days, a huge amount of schizophrenics suffering from delusions believe that they are starring in a reality television show, just like in the 1998 Jim Carrey movie. The piece is a tremendous read if you have any interest in abnormal psychology or psychiatry. I hope the guy featured as the main conduit for the phenomenon turns out to be OK. It seems like he's doing well for now.

I thought it was a particularly pertinent piece in light of the Aaron Alexis information coming out. Alexis wasn't suffering from this particular delusion, but it seems like a lot of mass shooters are delusional.

A link to the start of the story, at least:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/09/16/130916fa_fact_marantz

 

Welcome back!

 

NYT op-ed mines some of the same ground today. As mentioned in the New Yorker piece, delusions seem to reflect the culture they arise in. Here, an anthropologist has studied voices in the United States, which are quite violent, with those in India, which are usually sexual or just gross. But mostly harmless to others.

Interesting stuff, particularly in light of the New Yorker piece's revelation that mainstream psychiatry largely no longer catalogs delusions by type:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/20/opinion/luhrmann-the-violence-in-our-heads.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0

Describing his own voices, an American matter-of-factly explained, “Usually it’s like torturing people to take their eyes out with a fork, or cut off someone’s head and drink the blood, that kind of stuff.” Other Americans spoke of “war,” as in, “They want to take me to war with them,” or their “suicide voice” asking, “Why don’t you end your life?”

In Chennai, the commanding voices often instructed people to do domestic chores — to cook, clean, eat, bathe, to “go to the kitchen, prepare food.” To be sure, some Chennai patients reported disgusting commands — in one case, a woman heard the god Hanuman insist that she drink out of a toilet bowl.

 

A $69-a-year subscription certainly isn't that cheap. But if you have the time, the New Yorker is a great read week in and week out.

 

Damn I need to find me a schizophrenic Indian woman.

 

Did Dick Whitman get suspended?

 

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/connecticut-woman-shot-dead-feared-obama-stalking-report-article-1.1476189

 

I wonder if the NSA spying revelations have played upon the fears of folks who were already paranoid.

If you think people are watching you, and then this comes out, it would naturally justify your fears.

 

No question.