Milton Rokeach's 1964 classic, The Three Christs of Ypsilanti, has been reprinted by New York Revew of Books Classics. It comes with a pedestrian foreward by Rick Moody, and a mea culpa afterword of sorts that Rokeach wrote a couple of years before he died. The premise of Rokeach's two year experiment is to the challenge the primitive (foundational from the perspective of the Self) belief of three men who all think they are the Christ/God. Rokeach believed that the cognitive dissonance created by confronting this primitive belief might point a pathway towards altering the delusions of the psychotic.
There are great laughs a-plenty, and hilarity reminiscent of Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. In fact, it would be difficult to dismiss intertextuality if Kesey hadn't been composing his novel at the same time Rokeach was still running his experiment. But the laughs prove a guilty pleasure, and the pathos that is mostly borne out of the experimenters interference in the lives of the three Christs offers no catharsis. Rokeach understood this twenty-two years after the fact in his Afterword. The experiment was a failure. Primitive delusions were merely exchanged for other primitive delusions. The Virgin Mary was deposed by a Yeti Woman. The ethical lapses that are glaring to the sensitive reader, but not, apparently, to Rokeach at the time, pile up one on the other until you wonder who is the real Dr. Dung (the youngest Christ, Leon Gabor, after altering his Christ delusion, however impermanently, starts referring himself as Dr. Dung).
But it is Leon Gabor who propels the narrative forward to the bitter end. Despite his delusion, there is still a moral center buried under all those psychotic defenses. He alone of the Christs knows what Rokeach is doing is wrong. He alone speaks far truer than he knows when he calls Rokeach the High Priest Caiaphas. Rokeach glosses it, hearing everything with his tape recorder, but never understanding. To those outside Christ was fond of speaking in parables.
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Some interesting facts about the treatment of schizophrenia can be found at:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.madinamerica.com/madinamerica.com/Home.html
Here's one little example from Mad in America:
Twenty-Five Years of Confirming Evidence
Since 1980, there have been a number of long-term outcome studies that confirm the fact that antipsychotics increase the likelihood a person will become chronically ill.
8. The World Health Organization Studies.
a). The International Pilot Study of Schizophrenia. Leff, J. Psychological Medicine, 22 (1992):131-145.
The first World Health Organization study that compared schizophrenia outcomes in "developed" and "developing" countries was called The International Pilot Study of Schizophrenia. It began in 1968 and involved 1202 patients in nine countries. At both two-year and five-year follow-ups, the patients in the poor countries were doing much better. The researchers concluded that schizophrenia patients in the poor countries "had a considerably better course and outcome than (patients) in developed countries. This remained true whether clinical outcomes, social outcomes, or a combination of the two was considered." Two-thirds of the patients in India and Nigeria were asymptomatic at the end of five years. The WHO investigators, however, were unable to identify a variable that explained this notable difference in outcomes. See pages 132, 142, 143.
b) Schizophrenia: Manifestations, Incidence and Course in Different Cultures. Jablensky, A. Psychological Medicine, supplement 20 (1992):1-95.
The second WHO study was called the Determinants of Outcome of Severe Mental Disorders. It involved 1379 patients from 10 countries, and was designed as a follow-up study to the International Pilot Study of Schizophrenia. The patients in this study were first-episode patients, and 86% had been ill fewer than 12 months. This study confirmed the findings of the first: two-year outcomes were much better for the patients in the poor countries. In broad terms, 37 percent of the patients in the poor countries (India, Nigeria and Colombia) had a single psychotic episode and then fully recovered; another 26.7% of the patients in the poor countries had two or more psychotic episodes but still were in "complete remission" at the end of the two years. In other words, 63.7% of the patients in the poor countries were doing fairly well at the end of two years. In contrast, only 36.9% of the patients in the U.S. and six other developed countries were doing fairly well at the end of two years. The researchers concluded that "being in a developed country was a strong predictor of not attaining a complete remission."
Although the WHO researchers didn't identify a variable that would explain this difference in outcomes, they did note that in the developing countries, only 15.9% of patients were continuously maintained on neuroleptics, compared to 61% of patients in the U.S. and other developed countries.