Do You Mind?

What would it be like to spend some time inside someone else's mind? If you could listen-in to their innermost thoughts, feel their emotions fully whether you liked it or not, experience their sensate, nonverbal lives as they do, would it change you as a person?

Would it be like going to the Moon--an astronaut in catharsis--and you'd return better and wiser than you left?

More on Gene Ray later...

Don't laugh, there are stranger things undreamt of in your Philosophy.

There are myriad mental disorders around these days, and schizophrenia cases have been steadily rising for decades now. Other disorders like D.I.D. (Dissociative Identity Disorder) and what some call Multiple Personalities embody the idea--in fact--of separate identities in one head.

You may doubt all this, but someone speaks to you in a clear voice, you hear it. It's as real as you are, mainly because you can't prove that your "self" is real, either. Nor can any Psychoanalyst on Earth prove he really exists.


I stumbled on this book yesterday because I was drawn to its cover. Additionally, mental health--and illness--is a recurrent interest of mine. My own brain, scarred and battle-weary, is more precious to me than ever and I want to keep it hummin' in spite of plentiful war-wounds.

Without giving away the whole story, it's a woman's overnight descent into schizophrenic delusions and then later safely out of them. Being a good writer with a fine mind helped in producing this book, which reads like a novel and which I found fascinating.

Barbara O'Brien's (a pen name) system of delusions and hallucinations is complex, logical and even somewhat believable--especially if solid beings appear to tell you so. The "Operators" control the "Things", which could stand for the subconscious and the conscious minds. Her hierarchy is enriched with regulations, a currency, and even a bus line--run by the Operators. Operator regulations vary state-to-state. They have meetings and conferences. "Things", like you and I, are bought and sold. Such details abound, due to the fertile mind of Barbara O'Brien.

Researching online leads to booksellers (the book is rare and quite valuable) and to websites dealing with Schizophrenia, and of course the nature of the internet has determined many will be "entertainment based".

In other words, they ridicule the Schizophrenic.

The core tenet of Gene Ray's delusions.

You wouldn't laugh at a broken leg, but a broken mind is funny to some people. Let the sister, wife or best friend go mad and they'd probably change their tune, but that's another subject. Heck, some people think all "crazies" are just faking to get out of work, anyway.

Protective Mimicry at a sculpture garden.

On a related note, we went to Brookgreen Gardens yesterday, one of the few cultural landmarks to recommend in South Carolina. It's all sculpture and gardens, and most of the work is from the 30s to the 60s and has what I call "Universal qualities".

Universality imbues a piece of art with a timelessness so that it will alway be appreciated by someone. Using current events, politics, trends, fads, fashions and jargon usually will doom Art to a limited lifespan. We may still know John Held, but his career ended along with the movement of a hemline.

Jeremy Davis' award-winning sculpture.

We saw, at Brookgreen Gardens, the winners of the National Sculpture Society's 76th Annual Exhibition. They've been doing these a long time, which makes it hard to stop. Some of the work was quite good, but much of it showed no Universality at all.

More inspired sculpture at Brookgreen, presented by my current girlfriend Lydia.

The worst culprit was one of the biggest winners--"Soft-Serve" by Jeremy Davis. Accompanying the work was an artist's statement I can only describe as emotionally and intellectually immature. We're told the ice-cream man represents our consumer culture's trend towards obesity, which, in spite of being a horrific oversimplification of a complex problem, shows a total ignorance of the nature of obesity itself.

Just as it might the nature of schizophrenia.

In other words, they are both illnesses.

Doctors these days are actually being trained in Empathy and to listen more closely to patients' stories. The patients get better a lot faster with doctors who listen and feel.

You can probably take it from here.