# PSYCHOLOGY: Poetics in Schizophrenia



## Revelation_old (Aug 9, 2004)

*PSYCHOLOGY: Poetics in Schizophrenia*

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He felt a tragic loss in his father?s death; a deep emotional hurt from the behaviour of his brother, and a profound sense of betrayal by his mentor. The traumatic events were more than enough to trigger a dormant mental disease _

The earliest and the most-widely-accepted classification of mental diseases was that done by Emil Kraeplin in 1913. Kraeplin, a psychiatrist, divided mental illness into two categories, namely neurosis and psychosis. The former is a relatively mild form of mental disease and the latter a severe one.

One manifestation of psychosis described by Kraeplin is called ?functional psychosis?. The patient is seen to be clearly disturbed without an apparent cause. One form of functional psychosis, namely schizophrenia, is characterised as a split between personality and immediate reality. The patient suffers from hallucinations and delusions and lives in his own reality which may be totally alien to his surroundings. Hallucinations are perceptions without sensation as, for instance, hearing voices when there is no source of sound, or seeing things when actually there is nothing to see. Delusions are false ideas as, for instance, a person thinking that he can fly, or lift a ship with his bare hands or that a damsel in distress needs him to rescue her.

Mental diseases were characterised on the basis of presence or absence of such ideas and images. Modern classification of these diseases owes much to the work done by Kraeplin. The most recent of these classifications available to professionals today, describes schizophrenia as having a wide range of cognitive and emotional dysfunctions, including hallucinations and delusions.

Typically, functioning is appreciably below that achieved before the onset of the disease. One such symptom is anhedonia, a loss of interest or lack of pleasure; another is dysphonic mood, characterised by anxiety, depression or anger. A third one is a sleep pattern disturbance ? sleeping during the day and night-time activity or restlessness. Fourthly, there may be a lack of appetite or refusal to eat due to delusions. Yet another symptom is depersonalisation that may accompany apathetic immobility, a loss of sense of the self, and confining oneself to a room or a quarter.

Recent research shows that the onset of schizophrenia occurs typically between late teens and the mid-30s. The median age at the onset is the early twenties. The onset is abrupt, at times insidious, and family members may find the person?s behaviour difficult to interpret. More recent studies show that some patients show remission within one to six months, whereas others may not. Complete remission ? that is becoming ?normal? again ? is rare but has been observed.

The ancient practices of control and cure of ?madness? included use of natural herbs, hot baths, and long brisk walks. More drastic measures included confinement to a room and starvation. Even more drastic ones included tying up the patient with ropes, or chaining him and flogging. Inflicting cuts on head and forehead to let blood flow was another ?treatment?. Trephination or drilling a hole in the head to let madness or evil spirits flow through was one of the most drastic ?cures?.

When all these ?treatments? failed, some unfortunate psychotics were declared witches or wizards and were burnt to death. The medieval Europeans and the sub-continentals practiced some of these ?cures? for mental illnesses for centuries. The shocking and surprising thing is that some of these practices are resorted to in the sub-continent, including Pakistan, even today. (But more on that perhaps some other time.)

To return to our case, young Taqi was confined to a room, chained at one stage, and head and forehead cuts were inflicted on him with a sharp blade to let blood flow freely to rid him of his madness. A somewhat fleeting description of the mild, and not-so-mild, efforts at treatment is available in some of his writings.

From the description of the symptoms and with our modern knowledge of the disease, we can now be quite certain that he suffered a bout of schizophrenia ? more specifically, its sub-class described as the ?single episode in full remission?. In his case, the criteria for schizophrenia are adequately and obviously met. It seems that there were no clinically significant residual symptoms after the recovery.

Looking at the psychodynamics of Mohammad Taqi?s disease, it is obvious that apart from his vulnerable age, which we now know is a contributing factor; three other traumatic events may have been the exciting causes of his disease leading to the schizophrenic episode. First, the death of his father whom he calls ?dervish?; second, his elder brother?s dissociation from familial and financial responsibilities, and third the renege of the man whom he considered his teacher and mentor (?ustad-o-pir-o-murshid-i-banda?). He felt a tragic loss in his father?s death; a deep emotional hurt from the behaviour of his brother, and a profound sense of betrayal by his mentor. Any one of these traumas may have caused a severe reaction in a young and a sensitive soul. In this case the traumatic events following each other in succession were more than enough to trigger a dormant mental disease to flower in full bloom in the shape of a schizophrenic episode.

Consider the mental state of a young man in the pre-industrial, sub-continental society, when he loses the benefit of the support of his father, elder brother and his mentor one after the other. For him to drown into psychosis would be no surprise.

The good thing, however, for him, for Urdu, and for the world of literature at large, was that he recovered completely from his malady. He then went on to write superlative poetry, and gave Urdu literature his immortal ghazals. Born in 1723, he died in 1810 at the ripe old age of 87 years. Remember Mir Mohammad Taqi?s explanation of his genius:

_?Hum ko shair na kaho Mir keh sahib hum nay
Dard-o-gham kitnay kiyay jamaa tau diwan hua?._

(Do not consider me a mere versifier; compiling this collection involved a lot of suffering).

_Humair Hashmi is a professionally certified psychotherapist who teaches at Imperial College Lahore. This is the concluding episode in a two-part article. The first part was published on February 24, 2005

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News Source: http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.as ... 2005_pg3_4

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