PSYCHOSIS is remorselessly gray. It is like the border
I originally chose for this website (click here). It is intricate, but tediously
repetitive. Each riveted section interlocks with the next, in a
nightmare that goes nowhere.
It is a nightmare that is endured, day after day after day.
For there is no resolution, through either thought or
"talk therapy". Thought is integral to the problem, not a
detachable instrument to be employed against it. You can't think your way out of psychosis, however clever you are, just as you can't use a concave mirror
to correct the distorted image it creates.
Likewise, you can't talk a person out of psychosis. It
has its own, internal logic, but a logic that resists all reason
from the outside. You can talk to a person with schizophrenia for hours,
and end in a state of exasperation and exhaustion — at the point
at which you began.
Yet, paradoxically, it is almost impossible to stop
trying to "get through". Our faith in reason is so strong,
we press on. With irrepressible optimism, we go round and round
in circles in a crazy parody of the disease. Surely, somewhere,
there is some compelling argument, some magic key that will
unlock this madness.
Familiarity doesn't breed contempt, it breeds suspicion. If you
stick around for too long, you must be watching, making notes,
planning something sinister. You must be one of "them", or at
least in league with them.
"When did you last see them? Did they call you the day before
yesterday — the day you gave me a funny look while I was
opening the gate?"
"They" can be anyone or no one. But whoever they are, they
possess incredible powers, which are matched by an equally
incredible determination to pursue their victim. They are
omnicient: they, or their spies, are everywhere. They are
masters of subterfuge, who communicate by the most devious,
inscrutable means. Only the most painstaking analysis can
uncover their machinations, discern the secret meaning of that
car number plate, that street sign, that apparently innocuous
report on the weather in the television news.
Life is a serious business. It is extremely unfunny. A smile
is not a smile, it is a smirk. Laughter is the ultimate
indiscretion. It is also a giveaway: irrefutable evidence that
"something is going on".
"There is nothing going on? Then why are you always changing
the subject? Why are you trying to dodge the issue? God, I hate it
here. I think I'll go. I think I'll go tomorrow. . ."
Then there is a good day. The mood seems to be a little lighter.
There is tentative conversation about a movie, an escape from the
closed circuit of insanity. The gremlins appear to have
retreated. Perhaps they are on the run. Perhaps they will
never come back. Have we turned the corner? Have we bottomed
out? If we have bottomed out, things can only improve from now
on. . .
You are always wrong. The next day, he/she is sullen,
unresponsive, then explosive with accusations. The torrent of
denunciations is amazing, even frightening. Reason has the
strength of a straw against them, and is finally discarded.
There is nothing one can do now, except somehow try to survive
this.Free classifieds |
About this site
This website tells the story of my daughter's psychotic episode be- tween 1991 and 1996, and will eventually deal with her recovery. Some of the articles were first published in the Manawatu Standard, New Zealand. The site is also a gallery for the work of talented artists who have been touched in some way by mental illness. For their profiles, click here. Many thanks to the New Zealand Muslim community for its support during our crisis.
Latest news
This page, an updated version of the index page for nzsf.com, was created on October 21, 2007. Anyone who remembers my old index page will probably agree that this one is better. Maybe it will lift my Google page rank, which has gone from 4 to 2 during the past year. — Alan Ireland, PO Box 2052, Palmerston North, New Zealand. News blog.
Gallery I, by John Musgraves. © 
