September 22, 2010

A Case Review of an Individual with Schizophrenia

This review covers 45 years of my son’s life. He is now 50 years old. Names have been changed to protect the identity of my son. I am a retired psychological counselor.

If you would like to vault out of obscurity in small town USA and into the number one position in the universe far beyond all your competitive humans, brothers and sisters, read on.

Ian, despite many painful episodes, has been given the formula and has lived by it. Briefly, it revolves around ten identifiable characteristics including:

1. A deep and unshakeable faith in “God” and a conviction that “God” is a super person
2. A strong self-centeredness with a selfish ego and no self-awareness.
3. A strong sense of punitive justice based on a black and white philosophical orientation.
4. An INTJ personality type (Carl Jung’s categories), heavily rooted in “introversion”, which is unbalanced “Instinctively”(given to fantasizing and dreaming about possibilities rather than “sensing” defined as truly seeing and appreciating literal facts of existence.)
5. A sharp mind and selective memory subservient to ego ambitions.
6. A subliminal sense of guilt, which reinforces a need to always have the final word from “God” about any action that he might take.
7. A very limited sense of empathy for people who do not share his “truths” (personal observations) about the nature of “God” and the universe.
8. A total commitment to the worldview that he believes has been given to him by “God”.

These characteristics appear to his father to be definitive in Ian’s life pattern from childhood, and through his schizophrenic experience to the present.

Ian is now happy and upbeat about the future after 20 some years of virtually every kind of misery, in and out of jails, mental institutions, churches, and private homes while never having laid a hand on anyone or committed a truly criminal act.

Picture a peace loving, extremely artistic, highly intelligent, truly sensitive, empathic and athletic individual who is convinced that he is destined to hear “God’s” voice clearly enunciating a new covenant for mankind to be realized through his (Ian’s) cooperation.

“God’s” Voice, identified Ian, as the scriptural White Horseman of the apocalypse and indicated that he would be prophesied in scripture the announcer of both the end of the world and of the New Covenant to be brought forth for all eternity.

For such news Ian was shocked, humbled, but also energized as the implications of such a prediction commandeered his imagination. Responding to the excitement in “God’s” declaration of his role in mankind’s future, he sough clarification in Holy Scripture. And he found it there with a little reinterpretation of prophetic sayings along with”God’s requirement that he begin to make the New Covenant known to all who would listen.

Midnight sessions before the altar at St. John’s church in his town to which he had a key reinforced his conviction that “God” had indeed chosen him to usher in the apocalypse, and to begin immediately by announcing his destiny in churches, on the street, and at the University, and to anyone who would listen.

Unfortunately,”God’s” projected design had no place in it for Ian’s wife June, who felt more and more isolated from his inner life to the point of seeking and obtaining an uncontested divorce from him in 1990.

In the 20 years since then they have lived apart, she happily remarrying and living a half a continent away with no ongoing touch, and he being faithful to his calling as defined by “God’s” daily verbal communications with him.

Since 1988 when Ian experienced his first auditory communications from “God”, his understanding of his role in the universe has changed. He explains that “God” made many promises to him, which He, “God” reneged on for the purpose of providing him with anxiety and emotional suffering to test his commitment and long-term reliability. Recently, Ian has been assured that he met the tests adequately. Specifically, “God” has informed him that he has suffered 100% of the pain that Jesus suffered on the cross, and is therefore, to be honored by “God” with a place in eternity relatively equal to the place assigned to Jesus. In fact, at the judgment scene where all persons, who have ever lived, come before the Almighty for assignment in some stage in Heaven or Hell, “God”, Jesus and Ian will do the judging. To make it into paradise all people will have to profess belief in “God”, in Jesus and in Ian as part of the godhead. His role has now been defined as the “wife of God” since he has been on such intimate terms with “God”. Why “God” needs a wife in eternity is not explained to mortals.

In His conversations with Ian “God” identified a number of different times and places that He, “God” would request Ian’s identity as the White Horseman to mankind. To Ian’s disappointment, all the promised events failed to materialize leaving him in great emotional pain. The “God” he put his trust in appeared to be lying to Ian. In each of those occasions he pulled himself together and prepared to believe in “God’s” next promise. “God’s” latest explanation to him is that this was part of the testing process to see if he could stand up under persecution.

The latest word now is that the testing is over and that “God” will reveal him as the White Horseman in the not distant future. Worldwide media will all be involved and the celebrations will be worldwide. Meanwhile, Jesus talks to him many times each day and reveals to him esoteric information which cannot be refuted.

When Ian first announced his new found mission in life his parents sought psychiatric help for him. Several psychiatrists agreed that Ian was schizophrenic and delusional with auditory hallucinations. He was given medication and a little personal counseling.

Believing himself to be perfectly normal, actually super-normal, he fought against taking the medication and became extremely hostile. A several month stay at a research hospital in the capital city followed. There, he was alternatively beaten by attendants and placed into segregation. He remembers those days as very painful.

His pattern changed very little during the ensuing years with periodic “normal” periods when he held jobs for months at a time. In 2002 he returned from California to live with his mother. All went well for a few months until he decided to go off his medication. Police intervened and jail followed where because of his wildness and uncooperativeness he was given a special kind of probation which required his compliance with the medication protocol. When that failed to produce and therapeutic results a move to his father’s house ensued. That also failed and a new regime was defined by the court which dispensed his medication dialed on schedule.

Today, Ian is happier than at any time during the preceding 20 years. The promised future of being transformed into a beautiful young woman through all eternity who is also the wife of “God” Almighty makes him smile. And smile he might when one thinks of what he has accomplished in life.

In attempting to locate a possible genetic referent for Ian’s condition his parents have checked both sides of his heritage. His mother’s side reveals no known mentally ill persons. His father’s side, however, shows a grandfather about whom little is known beyond his having been known to the family as a drunken glass blower who died young.

Ian’s wife had a sister whose daughter was a strange person who preached to small groups and who lived in her car with her dog because she was so nomadic. A review of his mother’s life during his nine month gestation period reveals no clues which might suggest a genesis for his illness. However, his first three months of life were painful. Colic kept him crying a good deal of the time and no doubt affected his personality to some degree. By the time he was a year old he developed an engaging smile and pleasant personality.

Early years in school revealed a considerably sharper than average mind which was destined to get all A’s both in grade school and high school from which he graduated as valedictorian without ever really trying. A scholarship to Earlham followed. The first year continued his scholarship pattern but the second year problems began to show themselves in Ian’s inability to get along with some teachers and his excessive interest in religion. The third year he left school, became more religious, got married and began to relate to family and friends as one who had the final definitive word on everything. It was difficult to have a conversation with him or relate to him in any way without assuming the role of student at the foot of the master.

Ian feels that his piano playing, singing, and drawing are being negatively affected by the psychotherapeutic drugs which are being forced upon him. To a degree, this seems to be true. His creativity is locked into patterns which he resorts to in both music and art so that everything he does is some type of replay of previous expression.

His parents, who have despaired at his condition in the past have rejoiced in his newfound position with its relative peacefulness. He seems almost happy that his earthly ordeal is almost over. His parents are afraid to hope for his becoming rational and rejoining the human race by finding love and fulfillment in this world, but they do none-the-less. No one is formally assessing the level of their irrationality or mental illness.

Jim Smith

Jim Smith [ a fictitious name used for privacy reasons. ]