It is a hard task to determine if an adolescent is just an adolescent or if in fact they are actually schizophrenic. It becomes frightening because early onset usually occurs late teens or early twenties, when so many other dramatic psychic changes are happening. Like getting ready to leave mother's breast. I have missed this about three times in my career and it has left me feeling responsible and guilty. So...today I have meeting number two with a student, who is a member of a group of students, that have been in my classes every semester for the last three years.
This is a kid who I know intimately, have had his other two sibs as students and I am friends with the family.
First, he is a phenomenal artist, and we (the culture) can still barely tell the difference between a great artist and a psychotic (ie Van Gogh).
His presenting complaint; he is feeling tremendous fear because he is beginning to experience how perfectly all things fit together. Like the moon and the song that is on the radio seem to mesh perfectly. Fear.
So is it a question of his being elevated to unity consciousness, or is he now crazy, and what is the difference?
I remember the 70's and the movement to see psychosis as a positive thing as the passage through a threshold. A new book is just coming out that was discovered in some one's attic, where Carl Jung journals about his own "psychotic break" and what was on the other side of the suffering (fear). And we know Carl turned out just to be a genius, no meds necessary. But as soon as meds became available (and profit) psychosis returned to disease status.
I hate these opportunities to feel guilty. I remember as a younger guy my own psychotic
phase and the fear, but in the end I would wish it on everybody.
I don't know should I call mom?
Fear.
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