[butterfinger]

Another point that this article does not discuss is that in many of the "less coercive" societies, schizophrenia or related diseases are not seen as a disease or problematic at all.

McKenna writes: "A shaman is someone who swims in the same ocean as the schizophrenic, but the shaman has thousands and thousands of years of sanctioned technique and tradition to draw upon. In a traditional society, if you exhibited “schizophrenic” tendencies, you are immediately drawn out of the pack and put under the care and tutelage of master shamans. You are told: “You are special. Your abilities are very central to the health of our society. You will cure. You will prophesy. You will guide our society in its most fundamental decisions.”" [0]

[0]: http://www.scribd.com/doc/12470230/Eros-and-the-Eschaton-rou...

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_construction_of_schizop...

[jessriedel]

I'm willing to bet that the welfare of the average schizophrenic is quite poor essentially everywhere in the world, a handful of tribes supporting them for myth-related reasons notwithstanding.

[sillysaurus3]

While this may be true, hearing that you're useful is important.

As someone that society has basically forgotten about, realizing that I won't be useful has recently crushed me.

I would not presume to speak for schizophrenics. My quirks are bad, but not that. But the welfare of a person is greatly improved by the feeling that they'll be useful.

Deluding yourself into thinking you're useful is much easier when there aren't external forces making it entirely clear that this is false. I can see that in a society without too much coercion, people with problems would be much happier simply because they aren't called out to prove themselves on a daily basis.

I say "called out" rather than "asked," because it fits much better. The feeling that you have to do something very important is so pervasive. If you're not doing that, then what are you doing?

Which is why it feels like you're called out to prove you're useful, rather than requested.

I hypothesize that in a society that doesn't do that, schizophrenics' welfare would be much improved.

[meowface]

Excellent point. Many schizophrenics have poor quality of life, but support from friends, family, and society and large can prevent it from degrading further, and even make it a lot better. Some people with schizophrenia can even be relatively functional, even without medication, if they have a good social structure. I could be wrong, but from what I've heard, with therapy and decent support, they can basically recognize their hallucinations and most of their delusions as internally generated and try to ignore them. That's still a terrible way to live, and they also still have the negative symptoms (which even most serious medication can't treat very well, if at all), but schizophrenia isn't necessarily a doom sentence.

And especially with medication, it can be manageable. John Nash, for example.

[alexbecker]

John Nash fairly famously refused medication (although this is not portrayed in the movie).

[meowface]

You're right. That makes the case even more interesting.

He claims he was able to eventually rationally reject all delusions and voices.

[Alex3917]

> I'm willing to bet that the welfare of the average schizophrenic is quite poor essentially everywhere in the world

Actually schizophrenics in the developing world do significantly better than those in the US. That said, McKenna's models of shamanism weren't actually valid across cultures -- shamans actually played completely different roles in different societies.

[mercer]

My experience in a developing nation is that schizophrenics, provided they were not actively dangerous to their surroundings, were well cared for by family and their general environment. The 'village idiot' (even in the big city where I lived) - their words - was free to roam the city and generally watched out for by everyone.

Of course, the flip-side was that those with mental illnesses (or other disabilities) who had no family would generally have a miserable existence.

Edit: the equivalent I've found here in the West has been Evangelical churches. I strongly suspect some of the 'prophet' or otherwise 'specially anointed' characters to be (mildly?) schizophrenic.

[astazangasta]

You lose your bet. Outcomes for schizophrenia (recovery) are substantially better in developing countries compared to developed ones, sometimes called the WHO paradox. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26640277

[api]

I love McKenna's raps but I really disagree with him here. I doubt he had much experience with actual schizophrenia, which is horrific and debilitating, and I doubt shamans present or past actually had it. Psychedelic drugs induce a superficially schizophrenia-like state but it's transient and may not actually be much like schizophrenia at all. Visionary, trance, and highly imaginative states are not schizophrenia or even indicative of mental illness.

Real schizophrenia is a hell of paranoia and anxiety and I doubt anyone with a severe case could heal or make art or any of the other things a traditional shaman might do.

[dikdik]

There's some really interesting research out there on schizophrenia.

"Stanford anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann found that voice-hearing experiences of people with serious psychotic disorders are shaped by local culture – in the United States, the voices are harsh and threatening; in Africa and India, they are more benign and playful." http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/july/voices-culture-luhrm...

[taurath]

The implications are huge - if you are more prone to actively resist or think that its wrong it will actively trigger panic, PTSD, anxiety and paranoia. If you think of them as spirits and your society values them its not a big deal, sometimes even possible helpful?

[interesting_att]

It seems intuitive to me. People who often do psychedelic drugs routinely state that 'resisting' the experience often leads to temporary mental distress.

[benbreen]

Agreed completely. I was sympathetic to arguments like his right up until the time when my brother began acting weird and fell into a downward spiral that ultimately led to a schizophrenia diagnosis. What really sticks out to me is the brain damage-like effects of the disease - not just paranoia and delusions but a total breakdown in verbal and reasoning abilities. What my brother suffers from really is more comparable to Alzheimers or even forms of brain damage or post-stroke states than other mental illnesses I've encountered - it's not so much a visionary state as it is a crippling disability. Really grim stuff, and I suspect that many people who glamorize it don't have firsthand experience with the destruction it can cause.

To end with a somewhat more positive note, the late Oliver Sacks has written beautifully and with great sympathy and humanity about his brother's battle with schizophrenia - I think it's mainly in his "chemical memoir" Uncle Tungsten. I've often wished that he wrote a whole book on the subject but I guess it hit a little too close to home for him.

[api]

> What really sticks out to me is the brain damage-like effects of the disease

Absolutely... there's an incoherence to true (not armchair diagnosed) schizophrenia. The mind falls apart.

Traditional shamans and modern ones like McKenna himself might hold ideas that some might find irrational, but their thought patterns are coherent and their reasoning ability is there. They're lucid and can think. McKenna's brilliant wordsmithing is the polar opposite of what you see with degenerative mental illness.

[petra]

It might not even have to with traditional shamans, it could be simpler than that, from an article by a psychologist:

" I once was lucky enough to spend time in an Egyptian village in the late 1970s, before technology or even electric lights had arrived there. One of the villagers had long, impassioned conversations with people no one else could see. He also had a way of seeing through everyone’s pretensions. He could tell jokes no one else could get away with.

Village life was not utopia. It was difficult in many ways. But this one man, who would almost certainly be diagnosed with schizophrenia if he lived in the developed world, had a secure, safe place in his village. He could wander the wide-ranging mysteries his perceptions opened to him, and if he forgot to feed himself along the way, sooner or later someone would feed him and give him a gentle push toward the door of his home.

Contrast his life with that of a typical client in a mental-health agency in Seattle. I remember one man, early in my training, who gave me the most baffled, hurt look when he asked me, “Why do people on the radio lie to us?”

“I can tell that the woman who’s talking about Macy’s isn’t really happy,” he went on, “but she’s pretending to be happy. Why?”

He felt injured by the woman’s lies, and I could see why, because he had a point. He was accurately perceiving the incongruence in her voice. All of the lying we do to each other in the name of advertising can’t be good for us. But most of us, whose brains aren’t quite as strongly bathed in dopamine in certain places where my client’s brain was constantly overstimulated, can tune advertising out. He couldn’t. "

It's from a fascinating article: http://crosscut.com/2014/05/our-indiviualist-society-breeds-...

[joe_the_user]

Given this is on the level the speculative, one thing to consider is that the initial condition of the schizophrenic might be delusion, hallucination and the disintegration of one's sense of reality - and when that happens, the result in a modern society with no support for the phenomena could be massive stress, stress being a factor which many are today blaming for much mental illness.

That is to say that shamanic rituals and such might be a way to prevent those on the cusp of the classical symptoms of schizophrenia from progressing to full-blown schizophrenia.

[Mz]

As someone who has dealt with some mental health stuff ("crap in my head" /technical term), I can testify firsthand that a) how it gets framed and b) how others around me respond to it make a really huge difference in how it impacts me -- anywhere from "weird, but functional" to "odd source of useful insight" to "losing my shit and I think I shall go play in traffic now."

[mercer]

Indeed! I've been able to compare friends with similar issues either deal with them as a problem to fix or suppress (therapy, medication, etc.), or as a 'weird, but functional' state to 'live with'. The latter, assuming they were functional enough and assuming they found a place, social group and general environment where their 'issues' were accepted, always were much better off.

That's not an argument to avoid therapy or medication, far from it, but at the very least it's should make one pause and think about finding a balance between 'fixing the person with the issues to fit in his current environment' and 'finding an environment/approach for that person to be happy with their issues'. Too often I feel that we err on the side of 'fixing'.

It reminds me a bit of the way bloodletting was once a solution to many things. Turns out that it often made things worse, and only in specific cases actually helps. Let's try to not make that same mistake.

(Also, more recently I've experienced this phenomenon personally, and I notice the same thing. The more I focus on 'fixing' or 'fitting in', the worse I'm off and the worse my problems are. On the other hand, the more I focus on finding a way to be accepted as I am, the better I am able to actually counteract my problems')

[pekk]

> McKenna's brilliant wordsmithing is the polar opposite of what you see with degenerative mental illness.

But then there are also people like Philip K. Dick, no "armchair diagnosed" schizophrenic.

This might again raise the old issue of whether there are really multiple things we call schizophrenia.

[mtdewcmu]

It's doubtful that schizophrenia is all nurture, but it seems conceivable that coercive circumstances could aggravate a case of schizophrenia, taking a subclinical case and making it floridly symptomatic. Coercion could possibly tip the scales into psychosis.

[Mz]

From what I gather, it is not unusual for schizophrenics to be hospitalized, get better, be sent home to their effed up family and promptly get worse again.

My life experience strongly biases me towards believing that how it gets handled absolutely makes a difference ("it" = any mental health issue).

[harryjo]

It's also not unusual for schizophrenics to be hospitalized, get worse, get over-medicated and locked up.

[hoorayimhelping]

>I doubt anyone with a severe case could heal or make art

Makes me think of Wesley Willis [1] who was diagnosed with schizophrenia and found the only way he could manage it was by making music. Just such a sad and shitty disease.

1)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_Willis

[DanBC]

> and I doubt anyone with a severe case could heal or make art

...or create an OS?

[threatofrain]

I'd say that firstly, these are anthropological case studies without much quantification; there can't be. It's meant to provide rich account or potential insight, and that's how it's taken.

Secondly, I think the general professional narrative about those accounts is that those shamans were schizotypal, and that severe marginalization of the schizophrenic population is a cross-cultural phenomena.

Every culture has its idea of what is acceptable, including what's acceptable magical or religious thinking (we don't think that Christians who pray to Jesus for cancer relief, whether effective or not, are schizophrenic). But if you step outside of those realms, you will be mistreated. If you tell Christians that you have a personal relationship with Jesus, they'll think that's normal. If you tell them that you actually hear the voice of Jesus, they'll be conspiculously polite but suspicious.

[krapp]

>In a traditional society, if you exhibited “schizophrenic” tendencies, you are immediately drawn out of the pack and put under the care and tutelage of master shamans.

This is a form of coercion in and of itself. And as there's no such thing as prophecy, or magical cures, it turns out to be a profoundly unhelpful kind of coercion, both for the "shaman" and the society in general.

[butterfinger]

But is it any more coercive than putting those kids into psychiatric care and putting them on drugs that just make them not feel anything anymore?

I'm schizotypal myself and I can say those methods of coping with this have not helped me at all. By now, I understand most of my paranormal thoughts are just windows into the unconcious mind. I think that having a centuries old tradition of identifying and using these thoughts would have helped me better than talking to psychiatrists that don't have the slightest clue about what goes on in my mind.

[krapp]

>By now, I understand most of my paranormal thoughts are just windows into the unconcious mind.

Probably because a scientific framework of mind exists which you have access to, which allows you to accept that what goes on in your mind doesn't always correspond to reality. In a shamanistic society, you might still be led to believe you had magic powers, and that it was all real, and that you had to follow certain rituals to purify yourself or to interpret the signs from the gods, or whatever. Is that useful? Do shamans really know anything more about what's going on in a person's mind than doctors?

Both are coercive, though, which was my point. "Non-coercive" societies are still coercive, they just draw the lines in different places than modern societies do.

[meric]

Stanford anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann found that voice-hearing experiences of people with serious psychotic disorders are shaped by local culture – in the United States, the voices are harsh and threatening; in Africa and India, they are more benign and playful.

What if these voices are reflective of the emotional state of the people around them, as this quote suggests?

In that case, that is a kind of "magic", a special ability only you possess, that is real, and if you followed certain rituals your own emotional state could stabilise to such a point where you have the ability to detect what people are feeling.

And if this is true, then yes, a shaman would know more about what's going on in a person's mind than a doctor.

If you close your eyes, it doesn't mean the world isn't real. Just because you can't see something with the scientific framework, yet, does not mean it cannot be true.

Anyway, I don't see what coercion has got to do with shaman's in particular. There was plenty of people captured as slaves, in conflicts between prehistoric tribes, and that's a lot more coercion happening than in a schizophrenic being picked out as a shaman. There's probably less mental illness in prehistoric societies, because people probably didn't care much about a slave going crazy, it's likely unsurprising that happens, and you just kill them off.

I think coercion comes in cycles. Just after U.S. independence from Britain was probably less coercion than before U.S. independence. Today there is probably more coercion in U.S. than in 1850. There is less coercion today in Shanghai than in 1960, but probably more than in 1925.

[MawNicker]

It's all as real as humans are real. Every person has a mind that exists partially beyond the objective reality we all share. Those experiences are real even if they don't represent reality. They affect reality to the extant that humans do. Schizophrenia is dissociation from objective reality. A mind that is disproportionately subjective. An echo-chamber of thought. Even as a disability and not a "magical power" it does inspire a compensatory inclination. Like lip reading for deaf people. They have a mind that is desperately seeking the truth they know they are without. Truth as simply the coordination of thought and reality. A society able to mediate this inclination would be a treat to live in. It is, unfortunately, certainly not the one I live in. No one has time for that shit. Isn't there some way to just "fix" these people? They're obnoxious. Don't tell them I said that I don't want to be blamed for making them worse.

We've internalized a world of psychic war and we see nothing but liabilities. If we had the same reverence for wackos that we do for other victims we may be far better off. The wackos certainly would be. Is that coercion? Can you see anything else?

[krapp]

I can see for miles and miles.

But i'm arguing specifically against the shamanistic point of view in the gp. Should we treat mental illness exactly the same as any other? Absolutely. The stigma behind mental illness, I believe, is a vestige from the days when most people thought such things were the work of demons. People can't accept that someone who thinks and sees the world so differently is just as human as they are. But reverence? No. Being told that you've been touched by God can be a prison of its own.

[MawNicker]

I didn't say anything about God. They aren't like other people. It can be distinctly useful. They just need to be respected. Maybe that would have been a better term than revere. The respect does two things. It helps them exist; They need it and we ought to help them. In doing so we learn useful things about ourselves. They're exaggerations of a part of us. I think this is the point of the GP. A society fit for a shaman is a better society for everyone else. This is congruent with your idea that they're just wackos. They have no idea how they're being helpful.

[butterfinger]

Yeah, you're right. We're probably on the same page about both of these methods being coercive.

My initial point was just that there's probably a big number of cases of mental illness in traditional societies that we can't diagnose because our ways of coping with these are so different that they manifest in completely different ways.

[malka]

Both are coercitive, but one locks the individual away, and the other one gives him purpose.

[krapp]

false dichotomy - "locking someone away" is not the only way modern society deals with the mentally ill.

[Apocryphon]

Alright, one accords the mentally ill special, positive status, and the other assigns them negative stigmas

[mercer]

But repression (medication) or fixing (therapy) is closer to 'locking away' than it is to giving purpose or providing acceptance.

[zappo2938]

This is the same with children who are ADHD. Also, in France children who had symptoms of ADHD and were disruptive were made apprentices in kitchens usually around the age of 14 or 15. This might have changed in the last 20 years. It's why a lot of French chefs are notoriously psychotic, many of them were troubled children given a chance to put their energy to good use in a kitchen. [citation needed]

[hderms]

Yeah, but what if it was substituted with art, or something similar. It's possible to produce a society which values mentally ill people without necessarily coercing them.

[krapp]

What if they don't want to make art? Being mentally ill doesn't necessarily grant one creative insight. What if they exhibit antisocial or violent behavior?

[dmix]

You mean what if they don't fit into our status-quo middle class concept of society? Well then we ostracize them... and parade the ones of that do fit the fantastical ideal as unappreciated genius.

[aranazo]

> ...as there's no such thing as prophecy, or magical cures...

Isn't that quite a strong claim?

[snowwrestler]

No stronger than the claim that such things do exist.

It seems fair that an assertion offered without proof can be dismissed without proof.

[krapp]

If it is, it's backed up by quite a bit of evidence.