Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Vol. II No. 8

I began experiencing visual and auditory hallucinations shortly after I went to jail for the first time in 1987. Not knowing any better at that time, I believed the “visions and voices” proceeded from God, the Holy Spirit, angels, and demons. Naturally that sort of thing has a great influence on your worldview. I had already been pushed toward religion by my reading of Franny & Zooey. With the visions and voices I gradually became completely obsessed with – I guess you’d call it a messianic complex.

Many years later, in 1999 as a matter of fact, I was reflecting upon how the onset of the visions and voices corresponded with my behavior in jail of laying around on my bunk practically all day, every day for several weeks. (It’s such a shockingly barren environment – 4 walls of cement and steel, a mattress and a sink-and-toilet fixture – that in my case at least I felt near-total despair. Hence all the laying around.) And it occurred to me that the visions and voices are very similar to dream images, so that perhaps they could be explained as waking dream images resulting from a partial-sleep condition brought on by all that laying around.

It has made a great difference in my life to know that visions and voices do not emanate from some absolute authority outside of one’s self, but rather that they are a manifestation of the semi-dormant unconscious mind.

I believe it is misunderstanding in this regard that leads some people to do terrible things. You read about them in the news sometimes: “the voices made me do it.” It would be good if these sufferers were aware that the voices do not come from a chorus of angels and demons, but rather from their own subconscious.

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