Hallucinations are defined as perceptual sensing of non-existing objects, or shortly delusions of perception. So when someone hears, sees, or smells things that have no basis for existence, we call those people as delusional.
Imagine a place where "normal people" don't have dreams. And one day, a guy wakes up and tells his fellows about his visions while sleeping... It's a no-brainier: He is delusional... And we cannot change the fact that dreaming is an act of delusion.
So back to our earth where people dream at night. One has to ask: Why is the delusion of dreaming not getting intensive treatment by psychologists?! Guess we have generally accepted dreams as healthy delusions. What I am trying to say, is that medicine isn't treating cases of hallucinations because hallucinations are bad or anything, just because people have labeled certain people as lunatics, while overlooking the obvious hallucinations that people get almost every night.
There is another case of delusions that I experience on daily basis. Thinking. Yes, thinking is a delusion. When I think of some formula I see it forming in my imagination... I actually see a formula and manipulate that formula in my head... If thats not delusion, I dunno what is!!
So one has to ask the question: Based on what do we label people as lunatics?! Another question that comes to the surface is: Is medicine an objective science or is it simply based to enforce the normative view of a society?! - This latter question begs itself strongly. For example, in psychology we label pedophiles as mentally sick... Why mentally sick?! Is there a biological reason to consider them mentally sick?! Or is it simply because people don't like pedophiles so we label them as mentally sick?!
Medicine can make things work both ways... We can make a hallucinating person stop being delusional using some drugs. On the other hand, we can make a non-delusional person become hallucinating by prescribing other types of drugs... So we have drugs for both cases, so based on what we choose one but not the other?! Also a psychologist might be able to turn a non-pedophile into a pedophile, and might be able to turn a pedophile into a non-pedophile... Which one do we choose?! Based on what?!
Medicine has considered homosexuality as a mental illness, but now this is no longer the case... Based on what?! The normative view?!
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3 comments:
Hmm I kinda mangled the objectivity of the post i think, but regardless fact of the matter it made me think again thanks.
regarding dreams as hallucinations is somewhat logical, not being able to dream tends to clutter up the brain with all the stimuli that it recieve constantly they provide a function of priority sorting for storage kind of mechanism.
still the main difference would be that one is a waking one and the other is during deep sleep.
in general psychiatric drugs create an unreal perception of life as a side effect, so regardless of the symptoms and disorder being treated they will usually experience hallucinations to a varying extent.
describing visualization and thinking as dillusional is not really a dillusion since its neither false or illogical. day dreaming about being at the beach and feeling the salty breeze on your skin while ur sitting in a lecture is :D
On the other hand regarding normative role of medication.
medicine is a profit based industry not one of empathy and charity so its understandable they will need to create new markets after saturating the current ones. on an interesting note an awareness campaign was made for a fake disorder and drug and people flocked to the booth inquiring how they can get their hands on that drug.
So yes they do influence the acceptance of certain traits over others, for instance the shift in the tolerance for smokers in recernt decades compared to early 20th century.
as for the change of views regarding an issue over time thats just science its progrssive not static, tomatoes were vegetables, earth was flat, sun revolved around the earth and so on.
Things change based on evidence not preferance.
"on an interesting note an awareness campaign was made for a fake disorder and drug and people flocked to the booth inquiring how they can get their hands on that drug." - That is interesting and upsetting at the same time. I mean, an average Joe would follow the doctor's directions, but he cannot verify whether or not that doctor is being honest or is just making things up to collect some cash!!
"Things change based on evidence not preferance." - It would be good if evidence was the final arbiter, but as we seem to agree, money, politics, and the public do seem to have strong influences over "professional opinions"!!
tagged :) http://published-tala.blogspot.com/2007/03/observers-tag.html#links
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