Schizophrenia

 SCHIZOPHRENIA

Did it ever occur to you that those with Schizophrenia are the ones who have the best understanding of the world we live in?  It very well may be.  Having been a criminal defense attorney for more years than I want to admit, I will say that I have had a long and varied career with those so afflicted.  

Most live in a world we so-called normal people don't understand; a world of their own creation.  Unfortunately, a world that is often incompatible with our own - - a world of us normal people who go about our business daily without thought of the world we live in other than we are in it and need to comply with its requirements.  We accept our lot and attempt to deal with it as it is.  Not so our schizophrenic friends.

Our schizophrenic denizens do not accept the world we live in as we do.  This is considered abnormal and we incarcerate, medicate, and otherwise attempt to alter the understanding of those so suffering.  We find schizophrenia extremely troubling.  It is not those with schizophrenia that find it troubling, it is us, the normal people who find it troubling.

The requirement, long standing and inviolate, is that we all should be "normal" - - that is, like everybody else.  This is not specifically addressed in our constitutions, but simply assumed.  If you are not normal, i.e. schizophrenic, you are a problem.  We have defined it as a problem by the simple fact of it being different, thinking differently, and really, in engaging in an alternate reality that is substantially different from our own.

The schizophrenic person doesn't read the works of other schizophrenics; there is no standard schizophrenia.  Each schizophrenic is a universe unto his or herself, a unique person in every sense.  This again, is something that can not be tolerated.  Difference is troubling and we make serious efforts in reducing it.  There are various ways in dealing with these differences which includes medication and incarceration both of which we use regularly.  

Incarceration is used when medication fails.  Our jails are full of people with schizophrenia.  Since we have come to the conclusion that we can not tolerate those so suffering, we incarcerate them once they elude medication.  I know very few schizophrenics who much care for the meds they are required to take and sooner or later once again quit them and reject the world as we see it and create their own - - one to their own liking, and one they can understand.

I'm inclined to think that the number of our citizens who subscribe to schizophrenia will continue to increase as our world becomes more and more difficult to comprehend and to contend with.  If you can't cope with the world as is, make your own.  

Richard E H Phelps II

Mingo