The intelligent nature of schizophrenia

The voices can apparently be aware of so many different things:

  1. your thoughts,
  2. your feelings,
  3. your memories,
  4. what you see,
  5. what you hear,
  6. what you taste,
  7. what you smell,
  8. what you feel,
  9. what you hear others say (speech recognition),
  10. what you imagine (your mind’s eye),
  11. and what you believe.

The voices apparently being intelligently aware of them (in other words understanding them) becomes apparent when they can comment on, or/and react in other ways to these things, or/and behave intelligently.
When comparing schizophrenia to a computer, those are the different things it can “read”.

In addition to “reading”, there are different faculties it can manipulate (or “write to”) to produce:

  1. inserted thoughts, (and possibly also intrusive thoughts,)
  2. strange feelings, or feelings caused/triggered by your schizophrenia,
  3. fake memories, recall (of memories) that is not caused by you trying to recall something,
  4. visual hallucinations,
  5. auditory hallucinations,
  6. gustatory hallucinations,
  7. olfactory hallucinations,
  8. tactile hallucinations,
  9. voices (speech production),
  10. images in the mind,
  11. and delusions (fake beliefs)

– respective to the 11 faculties it can “read”.

In addition, for some who have schizophrenia, it can also control:
12. the body, making “you” do things you wouldn’t do,
13. the dreams you see,
14. your sleep and waking,
… and other faculties.

That’s a lot of different faculties for schizophrenia to manage (intelligently) - to perceive, understand, and control (in computer terms “read”, “process” and “write to”).

That means one of two things:

  1. either schizophrenia is a very complex thing all over the brain,
  2. or there’s an intelligent “central processor” (or “CPU”) positioned somewhere where all faculties are connected together (to provide a complete conscious experience) - somewhere near the link that connects the brain (physical), the consciousness/soul (non-physical), and your will. (The ‘will’ part is there if schizophrenia is intelligently controlling things*1 against or irrespective to your will, in which case it apparently uses its will to do things. *1 - things that are normally controlled by your will, like your body)

If the 2nd case is true, the question is - on which side of the fence does this ‘central processor’ sit?

( The intelligently controlled faculties or symptoms become apparent in cases where

  • the voices behave in a complex or intelligent manner,
  • the voices recall things you did in the past,
  • the voices show you mental images,
  • the voices cause strange feelings in your body,
  • the voices appear in the dreams or when your schizophrenia controls your dreams,
  • the voices control your body,
  • the voices or sounds sound like they’re coming from a certain place,

or in any case where the symptoms appear in a controlled manner, or are related to what the voices say or other things, rather than appearing randomly. )

(I’d say a particular case of schizophrenia is intelligent, if it can produce voices that do more than simply repeat your thoughts (the theory of voices being “your own thoughts”) or produce a word salad.)

This does not cover/address certain types of schizophrenia, like catatonic schizophrenia, where the postures and movements of the body do not make sense, or are just repetitive in nature.

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Very interesting post @Rei26 thanks for sharing

You have really given a great summary of what the voices can be aware of and manipulate. These are the kinds of things I experience all the time.

Fascinating post @Rei26. I really enjoyed reading it and feel I learned something significant from the experience although I’m not sure what it was. I think I’ll have to read your post several times… It’s deep!

Absolutely great summary of what types of experiences I get personally. I always have a hard time trying to describe quickly the symptoms I experience from schizophrenia, but this narrows down so many of the things that occur, so thank you for this post!

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