April 18, 2005
Everyday insanity: Psychosis and the mundane:
Psychosis is usually considered as the least mundane of mental states.
Occasionally however, the mundane and the psychotic collide, producing
uncanny and jarring contrasts that highlight the unreality of everyday
life.

* * *

Delusions and hallucinations, by definition, are atypical to the humdrum
of everyday mental life. The most spectacular episodes are clinically
described as 'florid' (literally 'covered with flowers'), a phrase meant
to capture the attention-grabbing, chaotic and sometimes colourful nature
of the thoughts and behaviour of someone experiencing a fundamentally
different reality from the rest of the work-a-day world.

In the experience of psychosis, the spectacular becomes commonplace and
the whole notion of the mundane is thrown into turmoil. The mundane
occasionally appears in psychotic episodes, but instantly becomes notable
because of its rarity. In psychosis, the mundane exists in a state of
duality where it is no longer wholly banal or conspicuous and yet
maintains the qualities of each.

Passivity phenomena, where people experience inserted thoughts and imposed
actions from an imagined external source, are often particularly
spectacular and can be embedded in complex delusional systems. A
nineteenth century account in the memoirs of German judge Daniel Paul
Schreber described how his highly excited mind was attracting 'rays' from
God causing him feminising sensations of 'voluptuousness', this he
believed, would eventually lead to a state of heavenly bliss which would
unite him and the Almighty in holy union.

Psychoanalyst Victor Tausk noted the phenomenon of the 'influencing
machine' in psychosis[1], where people believe themselves to be under the
influence of highly advanced mind control technology, usually operated by
secretive conspiratorial gangs attempting to control the object of the
supposed persecution.

Into this psychotic world of mind control and divine influence, steps the
tweed-suited host of This is Your Life[2]:

A 29 year old housewife said, "I look out of the window and I think the
garden looks nice and the grass looks cool, but the thoughts of Eamonn
Andrews come into my mind. There are no other thoughts there, only his. He
treats my mind like a screen and flashes his thoughts onto it like you
flash a picture."
This brief case study catches a glimpse of media banality intruding into a
world usually reserved for supernatural powers and sci-fi technology. The
appearance of media personalities in psychosis is not in itself unusual,
except appearances are usually restricted to the bold and the beautiful of
the media world. Numerous "rock and roll" delusions have been reported
involving famous singers and rock musicians[3], with the flamboyant David
Bowie seeming a popular guest in people's rock and roll psychoses (or at
least in the ones reported in the literature).

In contrast, inoffensive TV presenters stick out like a sore thumb. In
these alternate realities, the amiable Eamonn Andrews is strikingly
unfamiliar, flying the flag for the mundane in an otherwise kaleidoscopic
world.

But perhaps even here, the kitsch of front-room family television might be
too notable to be considered truly mundane. If so, a further case study[4]
pushes us firmly into the prosaic:

Margaret and her husband Michael, both aged 34 years, were discovered to
be suffering from folie ā deux when they were both found to be sharing
similar persecutory delusions. They believed that certain persons were
entering their house, spreading dust and fluff and "wearing down their
shoes".
The domestic nature of the delusions are thrown into stark relief by the
context of the rare and unusual syndrome (folie ā deux) in which they
occur, highlighting them as the ordinary out-of-place. As outside
observers, the logical implosion starts here. The ordinary becomes
remarkable, this makes it no longer ordinary, which means it is remarkable
in the remarkable world of psychosis, meaning it is ordinary once more
(and so on).

Here, the appearance of the mundane in the world of psychosis causes a
paradox in the rational world, making it a little more ambiguous and
difficult to understand; while the mundane leaks into psychosis, psychosis
is leaking back into the world of the mundane.

Part of the curiosity of this situation lies in that psychosis, once
thought of as a cut and dry categorical diagnosis, is now increasingly
believed to exist as a continuum, with some people simply experiencing
more anomalous experience than others. The people who have the most
intense unusual experiences tend to become distressed or behave oddly
enough to come to the attention of psychiatrists, whereas others may be
able to continue with daily living and never be considered of medical
interest.

The figures are striking, up to 40% of the general population have been
found to have experienced a daytime hallucination[5] and 10% of the
general population score above the average of psychotic inpatients on
measures of delusional thinking[6]. It seems ripples in consensual reality
are being recognised as common and we are forced to question what counts
as mundane reality.

The philosopher Charles Fort perhaps had the best grip on the situation.
He spent his life cataloguing the seemingly-fantastical phenomena that
science had "damned" as unworthy of explanation[7]. By amassing such a
catalogue of strange events, Fort demonstrated that the anomalous can be
commonplace. Strange phenomena are not considered strange because they
necessarily happen infrequently, but because we do not have an easy
explanation for them.

According to Fort, the mundane consists of those things that can be
explained away without a second thought, they go unmarked and unnoticed
because they do not challenge our preconceptions. When the mundane appears
in psychosis, the contrast can be jarring, challenging our ideas of the
everyday and the unusual.

From this perspective, anything can be lifted from the world of the
mundane simply by examining it closely and intently, or damned to the
everyday world by overlooking its importance.

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[1] Tausk, V. (1933) On the origin of the influencing machine in
schizophrenia. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 2, 519-56. Reprinted in
'Essential Papers on Psychosis'. ISBN 0814710972.

[2] Mellor, C.S. (1970) First rank symptoms of schizophrenia. I. The
frequency in schizophrenics on admission to hospital. II. Differences
between individual first rank symptoms. British Journal of Psychiatry, 117
(536), 15-23. [Summary]

[3] Glass, J., & Campbell, T.G. (1984) Rock and roll delusions. British
Journal of Psychiatry, 145, 95-6. [Summary]


[4] Enoch, D. & Ball, H. (2001, p181) Folie ā deux (et Folie ā Plusiers).
In Enoch, D. & Ball, H. Uncommon psychiatric syndromes (4th ed). London:
Arnold. ISBN 0340763884

[5] Ohayon, M. M. (2000). Prevalence of hallucinations and their
pathological associations in the general population. Psychiatry Research,
97(2-3), 153-164. [Summary]


[6] Peters, E. R., Joseph, S. A., & Garety, P. A. (1999). Measurement of
delusional ideation in the normal population: introducing the PDI (Peters
et al. Delusions Inventory). Schizophrenia Bulletin, 25(3), 553-576.
[Summary]

[7] Fort, C. (1919/1999) Book of the Damned. London: Prometheus Books.
ISBN 1573926833.

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