ENERGY
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GAIN ENERGY
APPRENTICE
LEVEL1
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THE
ENERGY BLOCKAGE REMOVAL
PROCESS
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THE
KARMA CLEARING
PROCESS
APPRENTICE
LEVEL3
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MASTERY
OF RELATIONSHIPS
TANTRA
APPRENTICE
LEVEL4
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2005 AND 2006 |
PsychopathTHE MASK OF SANITYSection 3: Cataloging the MaterialPart 2: A comparison with other disorders30. The psychotic
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30. The psychotic For the sake of emphasis let us first contrast very briefly the psychopath with the general group of psychotic patients to which he is considered not to belong. These, if their disorder is well advanced, are usually recognized by the law as "insane" and by the man on the street as irrational, irresponsible, plainly unable to accept the general facts accepted by humanity at large, and, furthermore, unable to provide for themselves or to remain safely or conveniently at liberty among their fellows. Such people frequently have beliefs that are not only false but bizarre, inconsistent, and nearly always impossible to remove even by convincing demonstrations of their impossibility. Ready examples are the belief of a soda jerk that he is an emperor dead a thousand years ago, a belief still maintained although the patient admits he is living in the twentieth century and realizes that he is in a psychiatric hospital and that he grew up in the local slums, and the belief of an inconspicuous clerk that a worldwide organization has been formed to persecute him because of jealousy aroused by the fact that his testicles are pure radium. Many of these patients hear voices speaking to them and cannot be made to see that these are imaginary. To the layman they are plainly not people to reason with or to be relied on but are obviously "demented." It is apparent that they do and say foolish or fantastic things because their reasoning processes, not to speak of their perceptions, are gravely disordered or misdirected. Their general personality outlines are often distorted or sometimes even appear to be destroyed. Patients in whom a milder psychosis exists usually show some of these specific peculiarities and always show general personality deviations which enable the psychiatrist eventually to place them in their proper classification. These patients with a milder disorder often are able to get along without serious difficulty in the community, just as a patient with mild influenza may not even go to bed whereas one with a severe attack may be delirious, unable to sit up, and finally die. These milder degrees of psychosis, however, show the same type of disorder found in the more severe and obvious manifestations, just as the mild influenza attack is the same in type but not in degree as the serious one. 246 THE MASK OF SANITY It is perhaps worthwhile to add here that not all those suffering from a typical psychosis, even when the disorder is serious in degree, give an obvious impression of derangement. Severe paranoid conditions, particularly those of the most malignant type, may exist for years in persons who lack all superficial signs that the layman often feels should be apparent to establish psychosis (insanity).29,210 Sometimes such people appear not only normal but brilliant, and their powers of reasoning in all areas except those dominated by delusion are intact. The delusions themselves may even be withheld when the excellent judgment of the subject discerns that they will not be accepted by others or may interfere with psychotic plans toward which he is assiduously and ingeniously working. "Why, if I'd let the public in on these facts, a lot of fools might have thought I was insane," one such patient explained. Another patient, who had for years been hearing imaginary voices which he accepted as real, admitted that he denied this to the draft board because, "They might have thought something was wrong with my mind." He had been doing a satisfactory job and, on the surface, making a good social adjustment in his community. He was accepted for service in the army. Another man with clear-cut paranoid delusions prospered for years by selling stocks and bonds to opulent widows and to others in whom his enthusiastic optimism and shrewd reasoning powers worked marvelous conviction. He was indeed persuasive, To my definite knowledge he induced a friend to believe that serious mental disorder threatened him, or was perhaps already present. Offering to help the friend, who naturally became alarmed, the paranoiac made arrangements for his hospitalization and, accompanying the other, had him voluntarily admitted to a psychiatric institution. After a period of observation the friend was found to be free of any such trouble. Months later the real patient's delusional system was elicited and his commitment deemed necessary. Even today one often encounters popular misconceptions of what constitutes psychosis or seriously disabling "mental disorder" that seem to belong to earlier centuries. Even when patients are speaking frankly and continually about hearing voices from the next county (or the next world), relatives occasionally express surprise at the opinion that anything could be wrong with his mind," insisting that he had been running the store as well as ever, adding up the accounts without error, and showing his usual common sense in daily affairs. Fanatics and false prophets who show real but not so obvious signs of classic psychosis, as everyone must by now have learned, sometimes attract hundreds or thousands of followers who contribute large funds to projects founded on delusion. If news reports by many observers can be relied upon, CATALOGING THE MATERIAL 247 even those showing plain evidence of very serious disorder, persons as fully psychotic as many on the wards of the state hospitals, also succeed in appearing to large groups not only as sage leaders or men with supernatural powers but also as God.22,33 The psychopath, on the other hand, is free of all technical signs of this sort. There are no demonstrable defects in theoretical reasoning. At least he is free of them in the same sense that the general run of men and women are free. He carries out his activities in what is regarded as ordinary awareness of the consequences and without the distorting influences of any demonstrable system of delusions. His personality outline is apparently or superficially intact and not obviously distorted. The diagnostic formulation psychosis with psychopathic personality, listed in the nomenclature that was official until 1952, deserves attention. Such a psychosis was thus defined by the Outlines for Psychiatric Examinations (1943):225
The abnormal reactions which bring psychopathic personalities into the group of
psychoses are varied in form but usually of an episodic character. Most prominent are attacks of irritability, excitement, depression, paranoid episodes, transient confused states, etc... True prison psychoses belong in this group. A psychopathic personality with a manic-depressive attack should be classed in the manicdepressive group and likewise a psychopathic personality with a schizophrenic psychosis should go in the dementia praecox group. Psychopathic personalities without episodic mental attack or psychotic symptoms should be placed in the group "without psychosis." In agreement with Cruvant and Yochelson,62 I cannot see that anything was gained through such a classification. If a psychopath develops some other disorder such as schizophrenia or affective psychosis, the additional disorder can be listed properly without recourse to such an appellation as that just mentioned. So, too, if transient confusional states occur, they may be so classified in the psychopath as in others. Such a category promoted confusion by implying the presence of a specific psychotic illness different from, and in addition to, the psychopath's essential disorder and that this, even if it is correctly listed as schizophrenia, or paranoid psychosis, needed the further qualification, "with psychopathic personality." The transient confusional states considered by some as a characteristic reaction of psychopaths to imprisonment are usually trivial (minor) additions to or complications of the very serious, incapacitating disorder that is fundamental. Such manifestations might be compared with those of a schizophrenic patient who by chance also develops temporary delirium.
248 THE MASK OF SANITY If the psychopath develops major or minor disorder of a type classed among "the psychoses," it can be signified by addition of the usual term, just as it he had developed brain tumor or peptic ulcer. There seems to be neither need of nor warrant for a hybridizing concept which does nothing to clarify but a good deal to cloud the issues. I am not sure there was ever much more need for "psychosis with psychopathic personality" than for "psychosis with red hair" or "neurosis with a Ph.D. degree." The current nomenclature appears better designed to avoid unnecessary confusions of this sort.15 Influences of the older terminologies, concepts, and classifications, however, probably still play a part in serious misunderstandings about the psychopath that have not yet been satisfactorily resolved |
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Psychopath The Mask Of Sanity
Section 3, Part 2
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