I used to work with people with profound mental illnesses - schizophrenia, bipolar, addiction, personality disorders. It was quite easy to distance myself from my clients. I'm the sane one, they're the crazy ones. But it became clear pretty quickly that really it's a spectrum. Sometimes I'm paranoid, too. Sometimes I'm delusional. Sometimes I'm manipulative and unpredictable. Sometimes I'm depressed and sometimes I'm really happy. It's just not quite as extreme as with people who have been labeled with a mental illness. And, vice versa, sometimes these 'crazy' people have the same kind of clarity, insight, rationality and predictability as the 'sane'. It all exists at the same time. Reading about the particle/wave theory reminded me of the chaos of working with one's own and other's mental health/illness. It's uncertain and, simultaneously, pretty predictable.
Your comments on Causality:
Related to the above, labeling an individual with a mental illness changes behavior. I know that for myself and I've seen that in other people. Once observed we change our behavior as expected. And what the observer chooses to observe changes affects the behavior. As it says in the handout, "when measuring the properties of, say, a photon the physicist has to choose which of tehse two properties she is interested in measuring with higher accuracy but she cannot perfectly record a particle's momentum and position at one and the same time". Can we measure our sanity and insanity at the same time?
Is the Universe weird?
Of course. If it wasn't we wouldn't be so weird as we're made up of the same material as the universe.
In regards your post on Causality,
ReplyDeleteI agree and find it fascinating the way we adapt ourselves to expectations. Even when we become aware of what the expectations(judgements) of others are, it is not always easy to break or change from the psychic mold that has been cast. Have you ever felt the 'weight' of cultural (or family/peer/partner) expectations, recognized it as arbitrary and even contrary to freedom and life, and yet really had to struggle to remove yourself from the field of influence of those ideas.
I have, and as difficult as that may be for an individual, it leads me to dwell upon what a tremendous force these kinds of expectations can do to entire communities of persons, as in the broad swath of racism and sexism.
It also causes me to think about the idea (in psychology I guess?) that the one who rebels against something is equally as imprisoned as the one who acquiesces, becuase that which they define themselves by -for or against- is still the operant force in determining their choices.
So then how do we get free.
Thanks for the food for thought,'
Michael