--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Joe" <geezerfr...@...> wrote: > > Right, my wife is a licensed behavioral therapist, not me, > so my terms might not be quite right. > > However, I really do wonder about this "fine line". Could > it be that "enlightenment" is nothing more than sanctioned > and approved paranoid schizophrenia? > > If so, did we pay a lot of money and spend a lot of time > "rounding" in hopes of programming ourselves into a > permanent state of paranoid schizophrenia?
Naah. Although if one were predisposed to it, I suspect it could be triggered by long rounding. On the other hand, it would probably develop at some point anyway. (Check with Peter on that--he's the professional.) But when you say "sanctioned and approved," that gets to an important issue--to what degree is what we call mental illness simply a different way of experiencing and responding to the world? To what degree is the dysfunction of individuals diagnosed with "mental illness" simply a matter of this difference in experience and response? Are people who experience the world differently but who function very well the ones we think of as enlightened? Should people who are perfectly happy wth the way they experience the world, even if it's starkly different from the way most people do, even if it appears dysfunctional, be considered mentally ill? Or are they mentally ill only if they're in distress? It gets all tangled up with philosophy and semantics and a person's subjective experience versus how the person appears to others. > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <jstein@> wrote: > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Joe" <geezerfreak@> wrote: > > <snip> > > > But you know, the whole episode brings up a topic that has > > > long fascinated me; and that is the very fine line that > > > separates so-called "enlightenment" from borderline > > > behavioral disorders such as paranoid schizophrenia. > > > > Paranoid schizophrenia is a psychosis, not a borderline > > behavioral disorder. Still can be a fine line, though.
