Matching Double-Psychosis

MATCHING DOUBLE-PSYCHOSIS: COLLECTIVE - INDIVIDUAL

(Arizona social context - Loughner shooting Giffords: his craziness mirrors America's)

Loughner described in contradictory ways


1. CRAZY -- nutcase; paranoid schizophrenic; madness => D. Brooks; involuntary tests for mental illness based on bizzare behavior => Giuliani. (cf. Hitler: madman...or genius, flip your coin))

NOT CRAZY -- executed rational coherent complicated plan, achieving apparently pre-calculated effect.

E.g., when arrested, he had documents intended for police in a zip-lock bag in his hip pocket, in addition to other indications of long-term planning.
Actual clinical paranoia, as opposed to pop-cult pot head freakiness, or right-wing 'everything is dangerous' political mind-set, is focused, loud, and rare. (cf. "paranoid of government") (note: the DSM is group-think psychosemiotic concensus, confabulating 'syndromes' to evidence pop culture terms of personal self-reference.)

Thus, many said Loughner was "obsessed" with Giffords. Is that what it is? An 18 yr old male visits attractive, powerful poliical woman, gets dissed for asking the (highly intelligent) question "what is government, if words have no meaning?", and, perhaps peripherally, retains that as psychic rejection while going through many changes. No more "obsessed," I'd say, than a high school senior boy with the Coach's wife, or Catholic boys of that age with nuns.

"Paranoid", used of Loughner, fits this analysis: "..paranoia is an identity which can be taken on or used to position the Other which leads to the de-legitimisation of their views.."*. http://www.criticalmethods.org/thesis0.htm It is no more associated with violence than belief in the Devil :-))

So used, paranoid is what society is/was toward Louchner. Therefore, by projection-reversal (he, the parent; it, the child), paranoid killer of THEM is what HE is. It is psychotic co-dependency of violently incompatible opposites.

-- Here is Bill Clinton on MLK day, squaring* (illustrating by commenting on), Loughner's analysis of 'government mind control by grammar'. "While no one intends their words or actions to incite the violence we saw in Tucson – and it’s wrong for anyone to suggest otherwise – we live in a world where what we say and how we say it can be read, heard, or seen by those who understand exactly what we mean and by those whose inner demons take them to a very different place."

One would be hard put, I think, to make any sense whatsoever out of that, without spinning the conscious-unconscious limbo-top in their mind. It's function is to lace these two systems of the psyche together without saying anything.

He continues: " That’s not an argument against free speech, but a reminder that, as with all freedoms, its use carries with it responsibility. Therefore, we should follow the example Dr. King set and exercise our freedom of speech in ways that both clarify our honest differences and nurture the best of us rather than bring out the worst. We must not let our political differences degenerate into demonization. Our opponents are just as convinced they’re right as we are. And we must constantly reaffirm the conviction that our common humanity is more important than our differences."

Thus one begins to catch an intimation, perhaps, of the morbid idea that may have pervaded Loudner's mentality. "This shit has got to stop."

HE HAS TO BE BOTH, BECAUSE 'WE' ARE BOTH (<-using 'we' in group-delegate sense of "all of us": the personal/transpersonal position of consciousness).

His "madness" mirrors the madness of America's Collective Unconscious. As recently as last century, Loughner would not have been considered insane, but as having 'morbid beliefs'. "Delusions", and "paranoid delusions" belong to early 20th century psychosemiotics, based on increasingly differentiated content of consciousness, which depth psychology fostered (mainly Freud, Jung). With the psychedelic 60's, and afterward, talk was of 'altered states' *cf. C. Tart), but lack of distinction between consciousness and thought (<-obscured by 'belief', 'faith', etc.) prevented systematic elaboration.

(Notes on use of "paranoia" as an identity-condition: (paranoid of Loughner's paranoia)
http://www.criticalmethods.org/thesis0.htm

"I analyse discourse about paranoia in popular culture and look at how paranoia is an identity which can be taken on or used to position the Other which leads to the de-legitimisation of their views.."

.5.1 The historical and philosophical context of paranoia
books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told
Eco (1985, p.20)
A history of paranoia is, to some extent, a history of delusion. We have seen above how paranoia can be traced back to the 19th century and delusion back to the 15th century. However, Lewis's account (in common, it should be said, with most of the other histories of paranoia cited here) largely ignores any of the intellectual context (both inside and outside of psychiatry) of the development of paranoia as a term. Many histories of psychology and psychiatry examine developments in ideas as if writers were not influenced by other texts. Berrios (1991) has provided a historical and philosophical corrective to such a view by arguing that current conceptions of delusions (of which paranoia is currently seen as a sub-set within most psychiatric texts) are based on 19th century views of belief and that although Jaspers is often credited with the commencement of the 'received view' of delusions, he, in fact, borrowed terms and concepts in common use -- particularly by philosophers -- in the 19th century. Berrios (1991) suggests that the philosophical underpinnings of later psychiatric theories of delusions can be traced back to 17th century debates. For example, both Hobbes and Locke, in their different ways, propounded views that helped develop intellectualist notions of insanity whereby delusions were seen to be almost synonymous with insanity.
Berrios notes that it was only by the 1820s that delusions and hallucinations were conceptually separated. Through the 19th century a number of philosophical developments laid the foundations for current conceptions of delusions. These included the displacement of Lockean associationism by faculty psychology; the separation of knowledge and belief; views of delusions as conceptions and of hallucinations as disturbances in perceptual processes; a concentration on the form rather than the content of individual symptoms (which Berrios, 1988, terms the 'anatomo-clinical' model of disease); the viewing of delusions as 'morbid beliefs'; and the growth of theories of personality. However, Berrios' agenda is to argue that since current conceptions of delusions are based on 19th century views of belief, newer ideas about beliefs should be used to re-conceptualize delusional phenomena:
Such conceptual bases include an obsolete theory of language, the epistomology of introspection sponsored by classical psychology, and views of intentionality that did not allow for the existence of 'empty' speech acts. Progress has since been made in all three areas, but little effort has been made to update the conceptual structure of delusion: indeed, it may well be the case that such updating could precipitate its disintegration.
Berrios (1991, pp.6-7)
Berrios argues that delusions are not really beliefs anyway and are, instead, 'empty speech acts that disguise themselves as beliefs' (1991, p.8) since they do not fulfill certain abstract criteria for belief. It is possible to challenge such a view since such criteria do not take account of discourse analytic work suggesting that essentialist notions of 'attitudes' and 'beliefs' are problematic (Harper, 1992). However despite the existence of a presentist agenda Berrios's paper is interesting in making links between psychiatric and philosophical theories. Moreover, he makes a number of interesting points about the linguistic differences between psychiatric terms hiding conceptual differences (eg the English delusion referred to a solely intellectual condition whereas the French délire involved emotional and volitional elements as well).
Both Berrios (1991) and Walker (1991) view Jaspers as the main historical figure behind current conceptions of delusions. Lewis (1970) does not address any of his paper to developments in the history of delusion although it is clearly a related phenomena that would have influenced how paranoia was viewed. Moreover, it is noteworthy that some historians, like Walker (1991), argue that although current texts cite Jaspers as the main proponent of the view that it is the form (eg bizarreness, conviction and falsity) of the delusion which is important rather than its content (eg persecutory themes), he actually suggested it was instead the relationship between the origins of the delusion and the person's personality which was important. This suggests that the citing of Jaspers in support of the view that delusional form is central is another example of the use of history as a warrant to give current conceptions of delusions authority and legitimacy.
1.5.2 The nosological context of paranoia
A history of paranoia is also a history of nosology, or classification. Lewis discusses the variations in the use and definition of paranoia as if it were an isolated problem. However, the difficulties with diagnosis and classification are general and have a long history. Moreover, psychiatric classification is not an unproblematic scientific endeavour. Commentators like Widiger & Trull (1991) and Robins & Helzer (1986) note how diagnostic classifications serve a number of (often opposing) purposes and that they reflect a consensual, rather than a straightforwardly empirical, view of diagnosis. Indeed, within the APA, committee decisions are sometimes voted on (American Psychiatric Association, 1987, p.xx). In 1973 the APA Board of Trustees voted to remove homosexuality per se from the DSM although a related category was retained (Wilson, 1993). Moreover, there is evidence both of exceptionally stringent acceptance criteria for some new diagnoses and of establishment duplicity (Caplan, 1991). Wilson (1993) has provided a useful history of the DSM-III, placing it in its professional, political, social and intellectual context.
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2. GUILTY -- in factual terms
NOT GUILTY -- in punisment terms (by reason of insanity)

3. MORAL -- (in its own terms->) to attack the duplicitous system felt as poisoning his blood, in Dream-level 3
NOT MORAL -- (abominable) in social terms.

4. JEWISH <= his Myspace 'religion' entry. "Putz" <-blogger). Genetic thread traced through his mother's side (se 'doted' on him, NYT's 1.16.11 article said)
NOT JEWISH (in sanity terms) Use of the J-word has, most terribly, become poison; at dream level 3, it goes too directly to the I/me/my personal memory fantasies. But that is the level to which the marriage of ultimate psychic opposites pushes it (<=the group-delegate collective process).

THE 3rd DREAM LEVEL CAN ONLY BE RECONSTRUCTED BY CONSCIOUS INITIATION OF ACTIVE IMAGINATION, DIRECTED TOWARD "WHAT THE COLLECTIVE READS INTO LOUGHNER'S MIND: 'OUR' GROUP-DREAM OF HIS DREAM (what his unconscious is dreaming of us -- what was he looking at that made him want to shoot?). THIS IS WHAT CANNOT BE FACED, BUT MUST KEEP RETURNING UNTIL IT IS.