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Books on fear, anxiety, psychic disorders

L

latenight

New Member
Hi all,

I’m writer and currently working on my project on how to deal with fear, anxiety and psychic disorder such as schizophrenia, panic disorder, compulsion disorder, etc. So any good authors and books, novels, fictions and non-fictions alike would be appreciated, particularly the authors who are or were experiencing those disorders. For example, how do you feel about Kay Jamison’s book of "An Unquiet Mind : A Memoir of Moods and Madness"? Did she talk about what reasons that have caused her disorder? And, particularly, did she mention any specific feelings and thoughts, images or moods, emotions, etc., in her mind, which caused her disorder?

Like Compulsion Disorder, the patient would experience strong impuls, feelings and/or some words, phrases in their mind that made them do something again and again and again, to avoid the negative consequences until they’re satisfied. And I suspected it’s those feelings and thoughts, and images that are silently occurred in their mind that make him harrassed. And those feelings and thoughts, and images were being manipulated by the illuminati, which is the evil forces and global orginazation behind the scene that are manipulating us now, before they’re coming into the conscious mind. (So the manipulated feelings and thoughts, words, images, voices silently coming into your consciousness are the key in my research now.)

Any suggestions?
 
For PDD (or rather Autism in Europe), I would recommend the novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. This book is in first person narrative so you can actually know what an autistic person thinks. It's a good read too.

I'm thinking of more books on psychotic disorders. Honestly, I don't remember if I've read much about Psychiatry and Pschology (I've read a lot about Philosophy, however). But I'll try to recommend more.

Best luck! :)
 
latenight said:
Like Compulsion Disorder, the patient would experience strong impuls, feelings and/or some words, phrases in their mind that made them do something again and again and again, to avoid the negative consequences until they’re satisfied.
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I had to go to stress management, and I know it may seem much less severe than what you're talking about, but Dr. Albert Ellis diagnosed my problems without ever meeting me. The phrases that you refer to were running rampant in my mind without me realizing that they were completely irrational. I realized after reading his book How To Make Yourself Happy (I know, the title is ridiculous and too good to be true.) I realized that I had tortured myself for the previous four years by expecting too much of myself and others. He focuses on phrases in your mind like, "That person doesn't treat me exactly the way I want to be treated, so they're terrible and deserve to die," "I'm not perfect, so I suck and hate my life," and "Things will never be perfect, so what's the point of living?" These were the irrational phrases that nearly drove me to the edge, and I can say that identifying them and attacking them helped a lot. Your character may be more severe, but I hope this helps you some with your character. Maybe you could see what else Ellis has written. I know he works with patients with more severe problems than mine.
 
latenight said:
Hi Infinity, what has interested to you in the book?
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The very unique way of a 15-year-old autistic boy who feels so confused and lost in the world of mystery and investigation around him. For example, when he first sees the death of a dog next door named Wellington, he immediately assumes that dog's life is as important as human's. This shows that he does not seem to really belong in the world. Not many people would think that dogs are as important as humans. Furthermore, since the boy is obsessed with Sherlock Holmes, one may find it funny when he tries to pull out some of Sherlock Holmes stories and comment on them. Notice his tone and mood. It almost sounds like he has no emotions whatsoever. This is shown whenever he talks about the human's mind that works like a machine. This assumption of his would constitute a perfect complementation for the Simulation Argument, of course.

I find him adorable sometimes. His mind is too innocent and naive that one may think he's a 10-year-old boy instead of a 15-year-old one. For example, he does not comment anything at all when he sees several pornography magazines in his father's bedroom. Another example is when he discusses about what he learns in his special school, especially lessons on Danger Stranger. That can be related to a little kid who receives a lot of warning about the risk of interacting with strangers. The fact that most of his neighbors are nice to him, except the people who take drugs who would probably not be nice to him, and his staying away from them show that he is isolated by his own self. That is to say, an autistic boy, he suffers from unusual imaginative and fantastic thoughts that cause him to be different from others. His course of actions, however, is more real than his thoughts.

The novel captures my attention to it because it does a wonderful job in revealing how the mind of a PDD/Austitic child works and thinks. Throughout the novel, you may notice that his brain does not function very well but when it functions, it functions beyond anyone else. For example, he can square numbers inside his head up to 2^35 ! This ability is of course amazing. But again, this ability may be one of the factors that make him unusual and isolated from the world.

One interesting fact about the novel is that we never see this autistic boy judges anything or anyone. He simply observes and thinks about the world around him. Frequently, he is lost in his own imaginations. Does this imply that most PDD/Austitic children live within their own world and interacts a little about the outside world?

It is a good read for everyone. I would strongly recommend it, especially for those who are studying the psychiatric disorder PDD.
 
Re: To Infinity

when you said "...that we never see this autistic boy judges anything or anyone," what do you mean? Doesn't he have any senses of good or bad on persons, things surrounding him? He'd only observe and doens't take any judgments on anything? Or he couldn't express those feelings and just wanted to explore further the thing, the person or the dog any fantastic or imaginative stuff in itself? So much so that the expression of feelings is replaced by the further explorations in his own terms?
 
latenight said:
when you said "...that we never see this autistic boy judges anything or anyone," what do you mean? Doesn't he have any senses of good or bad on persons, things surrounding him? He'd only observe and doens't take any judgments on anything? Or he couldn't express those feelings and just wanted to explore further the thing, the person or the dog any fantastic or imaginative stuff in itself? So much so that the expression of feelings is replaced by the further explorations in his own terms?
Click to expand...

There are quite a few examples that seemingly show that this autistic boy judges. The most lucid example is when he runs away from his father and finds his mother in London because he thinks his father is bad because he killed the dog. However, this example seems to show that this boy judges but in fact it does not. This is because of the fear he has. The fear of his father! For example, he thinks his father might kill him because he killed Wellington. We know that this would properly not happen but he thinks that way. This shows that he does not judge. He rather just thinks and further his thoughts and explores them to their greatest extents in his own imaginative and unrealistic way.
 
latenight said:
wait, his father killed the dog?
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Yes he did and he did so with a garden fork. He did that because he was furious about something else. The dog has done nothing wrong but however has to be killed just because of the father's temper.
 
Re:

So what you said is he imagined his father would kill him simply because he knows his father killed the dog? So that's his imagination.
 
latenight said:
Hi RitalinKid,

Are those phrases the phrases you reacted to the persons who had treated mean in your life?
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In my own case, they were either self imposed or somehow learned, and they applied to everyone in my life, including myself. Basically, everything was held to perfection as a standard. That creates a lot of problems in your life because nothing will ever be perfect. You can probably see how that would make interacting with others and life events in general really harsh. People don't always want to do what you want them to. They don't always think like you. Work hardly ever goes as planned. You inevitably screw something up, and at the end of the day, you're saying to yourself, "I can't live like this." Horrible scenarios are popping up in your head. You don't want to get out of bed. I had started sleeping about 14 hours a day when I went to the doctor. I tested higher for depression than I did for anxiety, but the anxiety was the real problem.
 
I second RitKid's rec for Albert Ellis, who offers a lot of insight on how we abnegate control of our own lives in the face of difficult hurdles, and how to deal with that.

Also, as literature about long-term serious depression, William Styron's Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness is very terse and powerful.

Girl, Interrupted is a memoir of a girl hospitalized for mental illness in the 60s. The situation is a little problematic, because whether she really needs to be there is open to question. But it might be of interest. Link below.



http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679746048/qid=1110896205/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/102-6921999-0861710

I think it's somewhat dodgy to research and write about mental illness without a professional's point of view. Particularly when you are looking at works of fiction, there is a very good chance that the experience you read about is deeply flawed in terms of accuracy and medical perspective.

Is this just an anecdotal project, or are you researching something in particular?

For instance, schizophrenia and mild neuroses are worlds apart in terms of disability and treatment.

There's much research and writing on Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), which is Ellis's approach to behavior disorders that focuses on action in the present, rather than on deep psychoanalysis or psychotherapy.
 
Re: to Ritalinkid

So, in your case, how the Doctor had treated you medically? For instance, like the thought popping up in your head, "Things will never be perfect, so what's the point of living?", how the doctor reacted to it in treatment?
 
Re: to novella

I myself was diagnosed as Schizophrenia and panic disorder but the treatments from the medical profession didn't do any good to help me. Along the way, I also found out our thoughts and feelings could be manipulated one and half seconds before it comes into our consciousness by the Illuminati. If this was true then most of the psychotic disorders could be manipulated to against your will, to cause your fears and anxiety. In my case, they use electromagnectic waves and beam it into people's head to make noises, car honks, for example, whenever I move, I type, or I finish my thought, etc. This is called Mind Control.
 
latenight said:
So what you said is he imagined his father would kill him simply because he knows his father killed the dog? So that's his imagination.
Click to expand...

Yes. His unrealistic thought is that his father would kill him because he killed a dog. This is absurd, of course, but theoretically this is possible.
 
REBT is exactly what is sounds like. You realize that you have a problem, and you rely on the rational part of your brain to overcome the irrational. For me, I judge my stress level. When I'm stressin', I have to start looking for what's wrong with the way I'm looking at things. If you have severe hallucinations though, REBT may be insufficient. Together with medication, it may help improve your quality of life.
 
Re: to Ritalinkid

So, what REBT responded to your negative thoughts & feelings, when you thought, say, "Things will never be perfect, so what's the point of living?", or "That person doesn't treat me exactly the way I want to be treated, so they're terrible and deserve to die" ?
 
Infinity said:
For PDD (or rather Autism in Europe), I would recommend the novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. This book is in first person narrative so you can actually know what an autistic person thinks. It's a good read too.

I'm thinking of more books on psychotic disorders. Honestly, I don't remember if I've read much about Psychiatry and Pschology (I've read a lot about Philosophy, however). But I'll try to recommend more.

Best luck! :)
Click to expand...

I just started this book and randomly came across this post. I had been talking to a co-worker about how the character seems like he may be autistic. I hadn't heard that much about the book before I started it, so I didn't realize it was fact that he was autistic. It means I don't have to wonder and wonder anymore. Woot!
 
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