Well, we all feel a sense of abandon when we examine the conscience, right? I mean it’s not rooted to us, but it is a force that takes on its own design. I wouldn’t suggest you feel guilty, but rather find a reward that we are not perfect.
If I got it right, its the phenomenon which egyptologists Jan and Aleida Assman (along with Hobsbawn) call cultural memory.
And as my English is not yet able to paraphrase that, here is a citation where is
emphasized its essential ritual character.
“The cultural memory is based on fixed points in the past. Even in the cultural memory, the past is not preserved as such but is cast in symbols as they are represented in oral myths or in writings, performed in feasts,and as they are continually illuminating a changing present. In the context of cultural memory, the distinction between myth and history vanishes. N o t the past as such, as it is investigated and reconstructed by archaeologists and historians, counts for the cultural memory, but only the past as it
is remembered.
Here, in the context of cultural memory, it is the temporal horizon of cultural memory which is important. Cultural memory reaches back into the past only so far as the past can be reclaimed as “ours.” This is why we refer to this form of historical consciousness as “memory” and not just as knowledge about the past. Knowledge about the past acquires the properties and functions of memory if it is related to a concept ofidentity. While knowledge has no form and is endlessly progressive, memory involves forgetting. It is only by forgetting what lies outside the horizon of the relevant that it performs an identity function”
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I get that, but I tend to feel guilty on things that aren’t my fault, like my cats gone missing for example. They’re cats, they have a backyard sometimes they come back sometimes they don’t. I don’t have reasons to feel guilty, other than things I said during psychosis, which I know they aren’t my fault. If my mother was indeed being controled by a demon I would make perfect sense lol
Completly agreed than.
Bingo. The automation that induces the particular thinking style that becomes the theme of the verbal hallucination.
That’s helpful, thanks 
You’re definitely not guilty for psychosis, don’t ever think that. when we have certain feelings that attribute to mental illness we are very vulnerable to such interpretations, but you are heightened in sensitivity and can’t always see the big picture. If we did, then we wouldn’t need meds and therapy. I have felt many feelings of remorse from my failings, but I soon gained an understanding that much was beyond my control.
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You mean this:
Cultural memory is acting like an institution, an exteriorized symbols and sights of gestures, which are stable and situation-transcendent: They may be transferred from one situation to another and transmitted from one generation to another. External objects as carriers of memory play a role already on the level of personal memory. Our memory, which we possess as beings
equipped with a human mind, exists only in constant interaction not only with other human memories but also with “things,” outward symbols. With respect to things such as Marcel Proust’s famous madeleine, or artifacts, objects, anniversaries, feasts, icons, symbols, or landscapes, the term
“memory” is not a metaphor but a metonym based on material contact between a remembering mind and a reminding object. Things do not “have” a memory of their own, but they may remind us, may trigger our memory, because they carry memories which we have invested into them, things such as dishes, feasts, rites, images, stories and other texts, landscapes, and other “lieux de memoire.” O n the social level, with respect to groups and societies,the role of external symbols becomes even more important,
because groups which, of course, do not “have” a memory tend to “make” themselves one by means of things meant as reminders such as monuments, museums, libraries, archives, and other mnemonic institutions.
Thanks for that, Daze. I know all that and sometimes I still feel guilty. Not because of a higher power punishing me, but because I hurt people that didn’t deserve it.
yes, it’s a burden to feel that, I do it too, like when this kid wanted to come over to my kids birthday party and I said he couldn’t because he always fought with my daughter, and he even had a gift, and I turned him away. He is an awesome kid now, but just growing pains. Why would I do that?
Ah, well. We do crazy stuff, just can’t let those things define us.
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Precisely. We have an illness. But we are not the illness.
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I find this a very interesting discussion - great posts by many people.
Just wanted to add this reference to the list:
The Evolution of Insanity
By Claire Suddath Thursday, Nov. 06, 2008
Today’s schizophrenic may believe that terrorists are beaming radio transmissions into his brain; 50 years ago, however, Communists were the culprits. And a century ago, before radio was invented, it might have been a simple case of “hearing voices.”
In a paper published last spring, three Slovenian psychiatrists examined the ways in which insanity has historically manifested itself, and whether “crazy” has always been the same. Borut Skodlar, Mojca Dernovsek and Marga Kocmur studied 120 records of schizophrenic patients admitted to the Ljubljana (Slovenia) psychiatric hospital between 1881 and 2000 to see if psychotic delusions are affected by contemporary culture. As it turns out, they are.
Highlights:
- Religious and magical delusions were the least prevalent during 1941-1980, during which time Slovenia was part of Yugoslavia — a communist dictatorship. The Yugoslavian government suppressed religion, and the less people practiced or thought about it, the researchers theorize, the less frequently it appeared in schizophrenic delusions. From 1981 and 2000 — as communism crumbled and Slovenians were allowed to find God again — reports of people claiming to be possessed, haunted or tormented by spirits rose.
Full story here:
http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1857325,00.html
and some other related readings - the first of which is very relevant to what @notmoses is say:
Hallucinatory ‘voices’ shaped by local culture, Stanford anthropologist says
Stanford anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann found that voice-hearing experiences of people with serious psychotic disorders are shaped by local culture – in the United States, the voices are harsh and threatening; in Africa and India, they are more benign and playful. This may have clinical implications for how to treat people with schizophrenia, she suggests.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/july/voices-culture-luhrmann-071614.html
Culture and Hallucinations: Overview and Future Directions
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Im just curious. When modern “hearing voices” groups claim that people of all ages has heard the voice of god as a hallucination is this true?
Were these people whom they often mention: Jean D’arc, Jesus, Moses and so on, actually hallucinating, or were they just intuitive, claiming connection and conversation, with “god”.
Im just wondering how normal it is to attribute voices to “god” or the paranormal.
You might find interesting to read a “History of Madness” by Michael Foucault.
Same ‘archeological’ method of questioning the constructed - therefore- historical and changing nature and treatments of ‘madness’.
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http://fantastic.library.cornell.edu/imagerecord_xl.php?record=114
My disease. Portrayed very plainly and clearly. This is what has happened to me.
Yeah; these old tintypes and carved printing plates from the 1200s to 1500s describe very much what Dr. Alice Miller found in her digging through the great libraries of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc. in the '70s and '80s.
Her books are verbal descriptions of the horror stories of Holy-Roman-era, Germanic authoritarianism and the astonishing child abuse and crazy-making of successive generations that led to the madness perpetuated by the Hohenzollerns and Hitler.
Not at all.
Those are the types that did this to me and it portrays it very plainly, thats exactly what happened to me in the picture and it still is to this day.
These assholes are out there with me in the night bending my spine back and ■■■■.
Seriously, the picture is it.