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On Tulpa and Schizophrenia


Ayre

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I have been around this community for a few weeks now, mainly on IRC, and I feel the need to clear up some misconceptions concerning mental illness. As a former psychology major and someone who has actually studied mental illness and the brain, what I have read from some people surprise me. I want to apologize ahead of time for any possible condescending, and ranting tonal elements in this post, and add that I do have a tulpa. In this post I will cite credible sources to back up my arguments and not mention Wikipedia after this sentence; really people, do not use Wikipedia. I would also like to apologize for the impending wall of words, and quotes; this is too complicated of a subject matter for a simple post.

 

The main reason for this post is to address this question, “Is a tulpa self induced schizophrenia?” There are many issues with this question in and of itself. First, I would like to give some information about the actual disorder. “The term schizophrenia, which means ‘split mind,’ was first used in 1911 by Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler to categorize patients whose thought processes and emotional responses seemed disconnected. Despite its name, the condition does not cause a split personality,” according to the University of Maryland Medical Center. Schizophrenia is now used as an umbrella term referring to a broader spectrum of mental illness. According to M. Bengston, M.D. from psychcentral.com, there are five subtypes of schizophrenia: paranoid, disorganized, catatonic, undifferentiated, and residual. I will let Dr. Bengston’s own words summarize these subtypes. Disorganized, “As the name implies, this subtype’s predominant feature is disorganization of the thought processes,” which “At times, their speech can become virtually incomprehensible, due to disorganized thinking.” Catatonic, “The predominant clinical features seen in the catatonic subtype involve disturbances in movement. Affected people may exhibit a dramatic reduction in activity, to the point that voluntary movement stops, as in catatonic stupor.” Undifferentiated “is diagnosed when people have symptoms of schizophrenia that are not sufficiently formed or specific enough to permit classification of the illness into one of the other subtypes.” Finally residual, “This subtype is diagnosed when the patient no longer displays prominent symptoms,” in other words regression of a previous subtype’s symptoms.

 

“But wait, you missed the first subtype!” There is a reason for that; this is the subtype that gets confused with tulpa the most, from what I have seen, and would like to address this more in depth than the others. Paranoid schizophrenia, defined by Dr. Bengston, “The defining feature of the paranoid subtype (also known as paranoid schizophrenia) is the presence of auditory hallucinations or prominent delusional thoughts about persecution or conspiracy.” Most people hear “auditory hallucinations” and jump straight to a tulpa talking by form of audio imposition, while completely ignoring the rest of the sentence. According to the Mayo Clinic Staff from mayoclinic.org, “In paranoid schizophrenia, a common delusion is that you're being singled out for harm. For instance, you may believe that the government is monitoring every move you make or that a co-worker is poisoning your lunch.” In other words, people with this disorder believe that everyone is “out to get them” or conspiring behind their back. Now, what the clinic’s staff says regarding the voices it this, “The voices are usually unpleasant. They may make ongoing criticisms of what you're thinking or doing, or make cruel comments about your real or imagined faults. Voices may also command you to do things that can be harmful to yourself or to others.” Does this sound like a host-tulpa relationship to you? In short people with paranoid schizophrenia don’t always have voices and when they do they are almost never “friendly,” and are accompanied with these types of delusional thoughts and/or actions.

 

Now to finally answer the question, “Is a tulpa self induced schizophrenia?” The National Institute of Mental Health explains there are three factors thought to cause schizophrenia: genetic inheritance combined with environmental factors, and one’s brain chemistry and structure. NIMH explains, “Recent research has found that people with schizophrenia tend to have higher rates of rare genetic mutations. These genetic differences involve hundreds of different genes and probably disrupt brain development.” And, “Many environmental factors may be involved, such as exposure to viruses or malnutrition before birth, problems during birth, and other not yet known psychosocial factors.” Finally, “Scientists think that an imbalance in the complex, interrelated chemical reactions of the brain involving the neurotransmitters dopamine and glutamate, and possibly others, plays a role in schizophrenia.” In short the reasons thought to cause these disorders are in place before birth, and caused by a physical disease, or a chemical imbalance of the brain. It would be reasonable to assume that because of this, if a person is not already at risk for (or has) this mental disorder, they cannot induce it via mental manipulation of one’s self.

 

The answer to the aforementioned question, “Is a tulpa self induced schizophrenia?” would be a resounding NO. The two are as related as waking up with a headache and thinking you are hung-over, despite the fact you did not drink the night before. They may share a similar symptom but the causes are different. Schizophrenia is the result of physical issues causing mental problems that don’t even relate to having a tulpa in the first place. So please spread this information around if you have read it, and (you know who you are) do some research before answering any questions in the future.

 

EDIT: In the process of re-writing/editing, will post ASAP. Hell, I might just submit the revised edition for an article when I am done; Thank you for moving to General Discussions for me.

 

Sources:

http://psychcentral.com/lib/types-of-schizophrenia/000714

http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/paranoid-schizophrenia/basics/symptoms/con-20029040

http://umm.edu/health/medical/reports/articles/schizophrenia

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/schizophrenia/index.shtml?utm_source=publish2&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=www.kpbs.org

Host: Ayre

Tulpas: Coda and Segno

 

Shameless Progress Report Plug:

Ayre's Opus 1: Informal informative index of inhabitants in an invisible inner-world.

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I like your reasoning, and I don't believe that it is simply that I look for comfort that I don't actually have a mental illness. The startling lack of Wikipedia is really comforting too. What I am curious about is why exactly you wrote this article? I didn't think there was many people in the community that think we are all schizophrenics with imaginary friends.

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I like this article. It reminded me of what I was reading in my psychopathology textbook for uni. While it is comparing schizophrenia with DID rather than tulpas, it mirrors quite a few points that this post made (in reference to why people think of many personalities/voices when they think of schizophrenia). Anyone interested in the segment can see it here.

Spoiler

An image in a signature behind a hidden tag! 

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@Argentum Thank you, and I'm not trying to say that most people here think tulpamancers are schizophrenic at all. My reason for posting this was because this is a question I have seen a few times on the #newbies.info channel. The answers they received were usually "no" but they had no real proof that this was not the case. I also got into a short debate with someone on the IRC channel about why this question made no sense. So in short, I made this post to raise awareness of what this disease actually is, and try and give a more concrete answer to anyone that does have this question. Also, I was bored.

 

Edit: Pleeb, thank you and I'll have to check that article out.

Host: Ayre

Tulpas: Coda and Segno

 

Shameless Progress Report Plug:

Ayre's Opus 1: Informal informative index of inhabitants in an invisible inner-world.

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The answers they received were usually "no" but they had no real proof that this was not the case.

 

Love that you actually supported your claims with research. Precious few do that here.

 

Also, I was bored.

 

Please get bored more often.

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Probably Resources for this if you wanted it in Guides at all.

 

 

My main gripe with this post is basically that I think you've done it wrong. Despite what you said I don't think it's a complicated question to answer. But you've gone about it a weird way.

 

Your main reasoning is that "You can't give yourself schizophrenia", on the strength that it's currently not seen. There's no strong evidence that it's not possible at all, not least because the causes of schziphrenia in general aren't well understood. What this means is that, working backwards, if tulpas were a form of schizophrenia then that would just evidence your assertion incorrect; it doesn't strongly evidence that tulpas can't be a form of schizophrenia.

 

Perhaps that's a bit nitpicky, but I think there's a much better way to go about it. You don't have to talk about not-so-sure cause stuff; correct-by-definition diagnostic criteria are much better. I'd mention the DSM's section on psychotic disorders, like so:

The holy bible of psychiatry says that the key diagnostic features of psychotic disorders are

  • Delusions
  • Hallucinations
  • Disorganised Thinking (Speech)
  • Grossly Disorganised or Abnormal Motor Behaviour (Including Catatonia)
  • Negative Symptoms

Having a tulpa doesn't have to fit any of those, and advanced cases will probably only fit the hallucination one. So clearly having a tulpa won't count as a psychotic disorder.

 

 

 

You do mention some symptomatic differences, but as far as I'm concerned the thrust of your reasoning is as above. So I guess I'll disapprove for your reasoning being too weak when much stronger and more obvious reasoning is available.

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Wouldn't applying reasoning that would seem more certain, rather than unsure, but weighing in circumstances make it seem like there should be further experimentation and studying to support the correlation with tulpas and schizophrenia? In other words, it's still a presumption, and even if it becomes stronger, that's just based on ad hoc claims that have yet to be introduced in to method of inquiry.

 

The same could be considered for lucid dreaming in general, and whether or not the hallucinations experienced in dreams, and basically talking to thought-forms within the dreaming state would "induce," or "trigger" schizophrenia. And with lucid dreaming, it's a scientifically proven phenomenon compared to tulpas obviously, but I guess it would be highly implausible to "induce/give yourself/get schizophrenia", rather than making claims of it being impossible. Of course, there's potential for dissociative experiences in dreams (e.g. struggle distinguishing between waking life and dreaming state), but those are usually cleared out after practice.

 

It's understandable to consider the rudimentary aspects of features of psychotic disorders, but it would be stronger to focus on the criterion of Schizophrenia. But of course, since evidence for this is apparently weak, it seems kind of futile to add further reasoning when individuals can just look it up for themselves, I guess. Though what is "weak" and "strong" seems to be a matter of disposition.

 

Maybe it could be nice to link to some resources on your end, waffles, as to why you feel any peer-reviewed experimentation, or even theories deriving from that on Schizophrenia isn't strong enough (especially any claims on how "inducing" schizophrenia would require complete changes in biological composition). If the justification is pertaining to questions about consciousness in general, and how it would be difficult to objectively measure what consciousness is (beyond the functional level), then I stand down.

 

In short, I felt your premises seemed to support the line of reasoning in OP, but you came to a negative conclusion either way. And of course, semantics with burden of proof just makes it more convincing for OP to just add a disclaimer, I guess.

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Wouldn't applying reasoning that would seem more certain, rather than unsure, but weighing in circumstances make it seem like there should be further experimentation and studying to support the correlation with tulpas and schizophrenia? In other words, it's still a presumption, and even if it becomes stronger, that's just based on ad hoc claims that have yet to be introduced in the method of inquiry.

Maybe, but like I said, the DSM is the psychiatric Bible so its circumstances are pretty strong ones even if unsupported. That the diagnostic criteria of schizophrenia are indicative of schizophrenia is a presumption, yes, but I don't think I can really be faulted for making it in any case.

 

 

Maybe it could be nice to link to some resources on your end, waffles, as to why you feel any peer-reviewed experimentation on Schizophrenia isn't strong. If the justification is pertaining to questions about consciousness in general, and how it would be difficult to objectively measure what consciousness is (beyond the functional level), then I stand down.

I don't think that recent studies are bad, necessarily, only that understanding of the causes isn't far advanced enough to say that it can't be self-caused with some strength. UMM and PsychCentral of the OP's links agree with me there.

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I see, thanks for the clarification, waffles. It's just that I felt that Schizophrenia doesn't really have a sound framework with etiology, i.e, studies of causation, and origination. Because it would raise questions on whether or not we're born with said disease, and if there's a cause-effect behavior correlation with lucid dreaming, and tulpas, it would imply that an individual would be bound to suffer from the mental illness at some point, which seems highly implausible.

 

Anyway, approved for Resources if OP can reconsider what waffles and I mentioned above.

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