Insanity

Zero · Post by **Zero** » 2006-04-06 07:15pm

If you actually actively know that you occasionally experience delusions and hallucinations, and antipsychotics don't work for you, how can you actually tell what's fantasy and what's reality? If you know that your perceptions of the world around you are flawed, how can you actually tell what's right and what's wrong, what's rational and what's irrational? Is there any way, knowing that you have a flawed sense of the universe, to actually know anything about it?

CarsonPalmer · Post by **CarsonPalmer** » 2006-04-06 07:25pm

Well, I suppose if you still possess the ability to think logically about things, you can attempt to reason out what is real and what is not.

Zero · Post by **Zero** » 2006-04-06 07:32pm

CarsonPalmer wrote:Well, I suppose if you still possess the ability to think logically about things, you can attempt to reason out what is real and what is not.

How?

LongVin · Post by **LongVin** » 2006-04-06 07:32pm

CarsonPalmer wrote:Well, I suppose if you still possess the ability to think logically about things, you can attempt to reason out what is real and what is not.

Wasn't that the plot behing the movie "A beautiful mind"?

TheBlackCat · Post by **TheBlackCat** » 2006-04-06 07:36pm

It probably depends on the nature of the hallucinations. Some would probably be so fantastical that, if you knew you couldn't trust your senses, you wouldn't believe them. On the other hand, there might be other hallucinations that are really not that out of the ordinary, those would be much harder to identify.

Post by **Surlethe** » 2006-04-06 08:32pm

Presumably, you could ask people, or find someone you're sure is real (e.g., a parent). The way you reason out what is real and what is not is by finding a source you are sure is real and then asking him if other things are real.

For example, in A Beautiful Mind, after Nash realizes he's hallucinating, he has a huge argument with the CIA dude (I forget his name) in front of a whole crowd of people over whether or not the guy exists. All he had to do was grab someone out of the crowd and ask, "Do you see him?"

Zadius · Post by **Zadius** » 2006-04-06 08:38pm

In the movie, he also realized that the little girl never aged, which was illogical. So I suppose finding inconsistencies in the delusions would be another way of sorting it all out.

Ryushikaze · Post by **Ryushikaze** » 2006-04-07 02:59am

Having experienced the occasional auditory hallucination (It's like getting a song stuck in your head, only much much clearer) as my brain starts prepping itself for sleep/ telling me to do so, a decent check is to make sure that your senses are in agreement. For example, occasionally the noises will be so clear that I might suspect that they were actually coming from an outside source, not from within, until I realized that it had no regard to direction and that my ears were not actually vibrating as one would expect they would.

I also had a 'feeling' of something happening in my brain (yes, I know, none there, which is why I used quotes), so generally looking for inconsistencies and keeping alert for things somehow feeling... off. Sorry, it's the best way I can put it.

Korvan · Post by **Korvan** » 2006-04-07 02:28pm

In a half-wake daze, I once saw a 2 foot glowing transparent spider on my bedroom wall. Although initially startled, I successfully disbelieved the illusion since two foot glowing transparent spiders do no exist.

Steel · Post by **Steel** » 2006-04-07 04:10pm

Zadius wrote:In the movie, he also realized that the little girl never aged, which was illogical. So I suppose finding inconsistencies in the delusions would be another way of sorting it all out.

The problem there is, how do you know the inconsistency/hallucination is not that you are not perceiving the changes in appearance?