posted
I'm putting in a brief scene in a story where the viewpoint character is abducting (lots of abducting going on in the story) a very minor character who is schizophrenic. The abductee believes the viewpoint character is a hallucination. I'd like the character's behavior to have some credibilty.
Does anyone know how schizophrenics are told to react when they have hallucinations? ----------------------------------------- So far I have (the driver is the schizophrenic): “You’re not real,” the driver said.
Madoc frowned. “What?”
“I must acknowledge you for what you are— a hallucination.”
“I think... it’s probably best you assume this is for real,” Madoc said. “This gun isn’t a hallucination.”
posted
From what I've heard they are told not to aknowledge the hallucination at all. They aren't supposed to even say "you're not real" because if your talking to them they must be real. When someone new comes to them they will usually ask someone else that they know is real if they also see the person. Although I can understand the reaction your char gave.
Posts: 1895 | Registered: Mar 2004
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That will make a big difference in how they respond to the stranger. If they are being kidnapped and miss taking their meds as a result, it would also affect the situation in a different way.
Unfortunately I don't know enough about the condition to say much more than that.
posted
I have had interaction with schizophrenics, schizo-effectives, and chemically induced psychotics. They are not able to recognize a hallucination. To them it is absolutely real and physical. The same part of the mnd that controls reason also is the same part that tells you these events are. The character would believe the abductor to be real. How they respond to the person will be based more on their delusions or paranoia they normally carry around. ie is the abductor one of THEM? More so than is he real.
As noted earlier if the person is on their risperdal or whatever then they would have weaker delusions and should not be having hallucinations at all.
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Discussing A Beautiful Mind with a local psych prof ... he said, visual hallucinations are NEVER as detailed as a person. You might see some roiling around of your image of the carpet, and conclude it's crawling with man-eating bugs, but that nobody ever has a clear and detailed visual hallucination. (But people DO hallucinate hearing voices.)
So I said, why is it people sometimes believe they've met people they haven't? That's delusions, he said. I think the difference is that you may THINK you saw Queen Elizabeth in your basement, AFTERWARDS, but at the time, you didn't have that image in front of you.
I'm not sure how much I'd want to be limited by this, though. Talking with imaginary people sounds like a fun literary device, and it worked great in A Beautiful Mind.
posted
This is difficult because real schizophrenics are much more sophisticated about their symptoms than the stereotypes would lead you to believe. And it is nearly impossible for them to have simultaneous visual/auditory/tactile hallucinations. Such would be more common in temporal lobe partial complex seizure disorder.
Basically what you have put together is not believable. A real schizophrenic would have known the person is real and would have reacted in one of several fairly predictable ways, none of which would have been what your story suggests. I can tell you more if you can answer some additional questions about the character. How old is the schizophrenic? Are they in the midst of an active psychotic episode or are they just prone to residual hallucinations? First episode or one of many (in other words, how naive are they about their disorder)? Do they have mood symptoms as well as pure thought symptoms? How well is their disorder controlled?
In general people with schizophrenia are told that hallucinations will reduce in severity if they perform a task which competes for brain processing power, such as reading aloud, listening to music, performing a manual task (which is why in the days before medications therapists recommended gardening or basket weaving) or engaging in a conversation with a caregiver.
The list of Schneiderian symptoms may help you a little bit.
How old is the schizophrenic? 29. Are they in the midst of an active psychotic episode? No. Or are they just prone to residual hallucinations? No.
First episode or one of many (in other words, how naive are they about their disorder)? They gone through therapy, medication.
Do they have mood symptoms as well as pure thought symptoms? Probablly.
How well is their disorder controlled? Controlled now.
Hopefully this doesn't sound hokey, but the character is one of a number of "clones" of the protagonist. The protagonist doesn't have schizophrenia but some of the clones do. This particular clone took drugs in his teens, and that triggered the condition.
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Once, after staying up for almost 48 hours, I was driving home and saw a child run across the road. I swerved to avoid hitting him but as it turned out he had not been real at all. Everything had been right though, from the pace of his running to the colors of his clothes. If anything I would describe it as having been more real than real, because the fact is that if the boy had been real I would not have had time to notice as much detail as I did. I don’t know if that applies here, but that was my experience with hallucinations and it sure as heck seemed fully developed and convincing to me.
Posts: 95 | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
There's something not quite realistic about this situation that I can't quite put my finger on.
First of all, no two schizophrenics are alike. There is a large umbrealla of symptoms that can lead you to the classification of schizophrenia and they can be as diverse as hallucinations and catotonia, which are rather mutually exclusive. Hallucinations are merely the favored of authors, especially authors who have obviously not done their homework.
Schizophrenics can be perfectly normal if their disorder is being controled. Here's the basic stat: 1/3 of schizos get better on their won; 1/3 with drugs; and 1/3 are SOL. Some of them have "episodes" in between which they can be as normal as you and me.
Here's the thing, if this character is in between episodes he will not think that his kidnapper is a hallucination. Actually, I am tempted to say that if he was in the middle of an episode he wouldn't think so either.
There are two types of hallucinations: auditory and visual. Most hallucinations are auditory. The reason: they are simple. When they are visual, they are simple visual images. Now, don't get me wrong, they can REALLY mess a person up....this is not a fun disorder or even something to joke about as happens so often in fiction, but hallucinations simply aren't that detailed.
And yet, a schizophrenic *can* know what's happening to them. It really depends upon how severe their particular schizophrenia is. This is not a one size fits all disorder which is part of the reason that drugs have thus far been so ineffective against it. There are few generalizations that can be made. The ones who do not know they are hallucinating don't tend to nkow much of anything else either.
I rememberin psychology class watching a video with a schiozphrenic woman. They were showing her story and in between episodes, asking her questions. She was a college student who wanted to be a lit professor and maybe write a book. In between episodes two things were true: She was amazingly normal but also incredibly scared. You could just see it. This was back to back to another video in which the person was so far gone that he couldn't make an coherent sentece put two words together that really belonged there.
My suggestion, honestly: find another gimick. I mean, I can see why you're doing this from what little you've revealed of your plot and it's interesting, but frankly there are even easier disorders if you want to make it mental. Bipolar comes to mind. Well, it's not easier to live with necessarily but it's easier to write about. The symptoms are fairly straight forward and the people given the label fit a much more predictable pattern.
Why not schizophrenia? Because short of falling back on stereotypes you're going to have difficulty even showing the disorder in your story. And then if you do, and do it realistically (after doing some good research) the readers might not even be able to identify the schizophrenia due to so many years of seeing the stereotypes. (What a cruel joke, really.)
I guess the bottom line about the plot is that the antagonist has delusions of granduer. His mental condition also gave him an awareness to sence things beyond the range of human awareness. This led to a discovery of becoming "superhuman" and leading others down this road.
The antagonist believes he's God. And due to his ability to imaprt certain abilities to others, he has ardent followers who believe his delusions also.
But one of his followers begins to realize that the antagonist has a mental condition. He has never met the antagonist personally, but this realization of course has impact on the plot...
[This message has been edited by ChrisOwens (edited March 18, 2005).]
posted
Couldn't you go along the track of his hearing voices instead then? I am not sure why he needs to see from what you mention here of the story plot. If he is taking a mild medication he could still hear voices. They might only be subdued in this case (I knew someone who reacted this way-- the voices "receeded" according to him but they were not gone). If you do it right, The superhuman stuff could work with schizophrenia as well from what I understand.
Posts: 85 | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
From what's been said already, I think I see a better path. Madoc's revelation that the clone has delusions of grandeur, creates doubt in regards to the person he follows.
Posts: 1275 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Chris, from the info you've given about the demographics of the 29 year old schizophrenic person I'd say they would not be at the stage where they are misreading reality to the point of mistaking its nature. I would doubt that a person of this description would be noticable from normal except by negative symptoms. Negative symptoms would be along the lines of of decreased complexity of thought, ambivalance, apathy, affective blunting and sparsity of speech. Negative symptoms may be subtle and so he would appear normal to anyone except his mother and his shrink.
Considering delusions of grandeur, these can occur in schizophrenia but more often in bipolar mood disorders, delusional disorders, substance intoxication and some personality disorders, as well as in malingering (i.e. faking). Of these the longest lived grandiosity would be associated with personality disorders and the most transient would be associated with episodes of cocaine intoxication.
Most common substances which induce such delusions would be stimulants such as cocaine, amphetamines (crystal meth, dexadrine, mixed amphetamines). Of the personality disorders the most common association would be with narcissistic personality.
There are also shared delusions which can occur with small groups or cults, such as the Heaven's Gate cult or Jim Jones' Peoples Temple. These are more a result of learned reenforcement of delusional memes than individual psychopathology. I would think this direction might be most amenable to ease of writing. We see it all the time in real life in everything from football crowds to politics to advertising for hygiene products.
Good luck on your story. I think it has definite potential. Good library resources might be 'Case Studies in Abnormal Psychology' by Thomas F. Oltmanns or 'A Casebook in Abnormal Psychology' by Halgin and Whitbourne.
[This message has been edited by keldon02 (edited March 18, 2005).]
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