...as I was recently in another post, I think they go into screaming fits because they lack the internal censor mechanism of ordinary people. Sensory input, unfiltered, then becomes unbearable to them, much like my migraines/TLE does. Like Huxleys Renee, it has all become horribly overwhelming. Like a glass shattering, the outside (atmosphere) pours in as though I was a colonist living in an Earth type environment bubble on another planet. I'm killed (overwhelmed) by its foreigness (The light is too bright. the sound is too loud - touch makes me cringe, smell makes me want to vomit and if I could eat, I'm sure taste would do the same.
I remember reading somewhere that the brain isn't there so much to process information as to censor it. This would explain Aspergers Syndrome sufferers difficulty with incoming sensory data and ordinary peopes ability to handle it.
I think Kim Peak (The character 'The Rain Man' was based on) is unique in this respect, in that having a bridge between both sides of the brain, means he doesn't have overwhelm problems.
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I am sure that least two members of this group (Its Cool To Care & Bloggerhead)may be very interested in your comments through personal experience. I will contact them and see if they would like to comment upon your very important observation)
You make some interesting references to shattered glass. I have been doing a lot of thinking about refracted light and crystals in the past few days in the context of schizophrenia, so thanks for contributing to the synchronicity. When my son was acutely schizophrenic he was fascinated by carved crystals. He was and still is, a big fan of fantasy books in which crystals figure heavily (think of Susan Cooper novels, Superman comic books, and magic in general. A friend's son, who has Aspergers and is a physics student, came to dinner one night. He stopped all conversation to stare at the crystal wine glasses during dinner. He held them up to the light and twirled them all around, oblivious to anything or anyone. To a layperson like me, parallel universes are like slipping through the facets of a crystal. In the end, it is going to be quantum physicists who will unlock the mystery of schizophrenia, temporal lobe epilepsy and autism. They are getting there. To paraphrase Freud's line about poets, which is since Fred Alan Wolf's line about science fiction writers, "everywhere I go, a quantum physicist has been there before me".
Now that I am warming to my favourite topic, schizophrenia, I wonder if anyone who posts on this blog can shed any light on what I am about to say. I recently attended a talk where the speaker proposed that autism (Aspergers) and ADD were nature's way of ensuring innovation in society. The extreme focus of Aspergers and the often off-beat but intense interest of ADD means that many of the children who were once labelled "hopeless" or complete "nerds" go on to single-mindedly achieve as adults, perhaps as scientists or business leaders, or sometimes both, in the case of Bill Gates. Now what about schizophrenia? Nobody seems to think that this so-called mental illness has any upside. My hypothesis about schizophrenia is that it has an evolutionary effect on culture. Many scientists question why similar cultures have arisen in geographically isolated regions of the world. The pyramids of Mexico and Egypt come to mind. The shared myths and gods of the ancient Hindus and the Celts are another example. Could this understanding of another culture come from the mind of the schizophrenic and the experience of parallel universes, truly experiencing that somewhere else there is a society that is almost identical to your own. Many schizophrenics report seeing aliens from another planet. Is this that much different from the Nazca lines or from cave paintings where the crudely drawn figures are often thought to represent aliens? The difference between now and then is that then, people hearing voices and having visions were elevated. Today they are medicated and told they are crazy.
But of course! I went out with a schizophrenic, a depressive (who was labelled schizophrenic but balked at the label but who had visions and apparent telepathic episodes which freaked her then husband and colleagues out, so they got her committed) plus a girl who might have had a Schizoid personality and another who deserted her husband and children, to come to Britain from New Zealand. All were under pressure for various reasons (pregnancy, boyfriend walking out, walking out of her marriage etc and it is this I believe that acted as a catapult for them, just as my migraines have for me, throwing us all into that other world: I had a psychic episode (mentioned elsewhere)when with the Chinese girl and she had an hallucination in the local church (she never elaborated what it was exactly) plus I had another one with the New Zealand girl, not to mention the first girl, that was a grand opera of events (psychic and otherwise) that I'd rather forget as an experience. I don't know if any of them have seen aliens but again as I said earlier in another post, I have (plus space craft and weird dreams).
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