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CONFERENCE CONTRIBUTION:

American Society for Cybernetics
ASC 2002 Conference
June 13-16, Santa Cruz 
 


 
  Biology, Conversation, Schizophrenia

Larry Richards

Transcription from presentation slides
 

 
 

The Schizophrenic Experience

  • Change in personality (loss of affect)
     
  • Anxiety -- restless, talks louder or remains silent, unsure of self
     
  • Loss of interest in daily life
     
  • Obsession with things religious or sexual
     
  • Alcohol or drug abuse to dull pain

The Schizophrenic Experience (continued)

  • Lost in thought -- preoccupied
     
  • Voices from "nowhere" or from "inside"
     
  • Confusion of realities
     
  • Paranoia -- world as game / conspiracy
     
  • Unusual behavior -- as though a "cry" for help or attention (delusions of grandeur, self-deprecation)

Biological Explanation

  • Sensitivity to neurotransmitters
     
  • Genetic influences
     
  • "Physical" risk factors
     
  • Physiological collapse in the brain
     
  • Approach: Medication(s)

Social Explanation

  • Inability to adjust to an insane society (Szasz)
     
  • Absent or conflicting affect in family -- "double bind" (Bateson)
     
  • Separation of self observed by others (role) from "inner self" (Laing)
     
  • Approach: "Dialogic" therapies

Conversation

  • Dynamics of interaction
     
  • Source of perturbation
     
  • Stimulus for thinking
     
  • Resolution / dissolution of conflict
     
  • Medium for "expressed emotion"
     
  • Everyday conversation vs. "designed" conversation

Cybernetic Ideas

  • Two-value vis-à-vis multi-valued logic (world as right / wrong, good / evil, taking sides)
     
  • Dynamics vis-à-vis causality (separation of rationality / emotionality, mind / body)
     
  • Autonomy vis-à-vis control (confusion of self-projection / self-observation)
     
  • Self as object vis-à-vis process (obsession with self depreciation / aggrandizement)

Concluding Thoughts

  • Orientation to dynamics
     
  • Personal logics: coping with ambiguity
     
  • Partners in language
     
  • Soceity: participation vs. self-esteem
     
  • Prospects / pitfalls of cognitive therapy
     
  • Role for medication

 
 
 
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HTML transcription: Randy Whitaker, October 2002