Not to bash schizophrenia in any way, but posts like that make me wonder where the dividing line is between supernatural mania and untreated schizophrenia. Their ghost friend, who they attract because they're special, is telling them that there's a conspiracy of strangers masturbating to them. There isn't an underlying substance to it or an externally coherent narrative, just a sense of paranoia and persecution mixed with religious imagery and self-importance within the conspiracy. Swap out masturbating for another verb and it's any r/gangstalking post.
Schizophrenia is pretty noticeable if a person has it, It can't be mistaken for a couple of mystic or inspirational beliefs, and it's a lot more than just actual delusions or psychosis. A person with schizophrenia is unlikely to be able to function on a day to day basis.
Certainly you can say some people have simple hallucinations, or bad reasoning systems, or have accidentally employed Golden Dawn Style mental techniques and mistaken it for spiritual naturalistic events.
On the other hand you have people like Joan of Arc, where study of the symptoms and events makes you think there might be something to mysticism after all because what the hell was that?! Someone found the debug menu for reality!
I don't mean the beliefs themselves so much as the way they're structured. There's a fairly distinct way to how they present online, or at least it's something I can almost always pick up on when it's more overtly expressed/not in a single post. There's an object of fixation which sometimes reflects a personal pathology, in this case something sexual. That thing becomes the focal point of an increasingly vivid conspiracy with some kind of fantastical element to it, and as the person with special knowledge of that thing their own paranoia becomes a sense of persecution for associating with it. The conspiracy is wholly logical and consistent to them but because it's just grasping at straws to build some correlative pattern it's word salad to people outside of it. The words are arranged in the right order but the characters and themes seem madlibbed. In her case I distinctly get that impression because my first question is "why is there a masturbation ghost and why does it care about this particular thing so much as if you're torturing yourself over it?". It's disjointed and abstract compared to normal religious beliefs which reflect some material or social condition that the group is trying to mediate.
It's hard to say. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if a lot of historical supernatural beliefs came from some or another of delusions or schizophrenia or whatever else. Someone who would nowadays be dismissed as "mentally ill" for believing they were Jesus might have in the past been taken as a local prophet. Maybe some of the monsters and creatures people imagined came from something like sleep paralysis and the weird visions they had during it. See something weird in the forest and don't understand it? Obviously it's Bigfoot. After all no one else saw it, it must be an elusive beast hiding.
The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James included a couple passages of people testifying about religious experiences that were like textbook sleep paralysis. He also speculates a little bit on possible naturalistic explanations for certain types of experiences, overall its a fantastic book for understanding the value religion holds for people.
Not to bash schizophrenia in any way, but posts like that make me wonder where the dividing line is between supernatural mania and untreated schizophrenia. Their ghost friend, who they attract because they're special, is telling them that there's a conspiracy of strangers masturbating to them. There isn't an underlying substance to it or an externally coherent narrative, just a sense of paranoia and persecution mixed with religious imagery and self-importance within the conspiracy. Swap out masturbating for another verb and it's any r/gangstalking post.
Schizophrenia is pretty noticeable if a person has it, It can't be mistaken for a couple of mystic or inspirational beliefs, and it's a lot more than just actual delusions or psychosis. A person with schizophrenia is unlikely to be able to function on a day to day basis.
Certainly you can say some people have simple hallucinations, or bad reasoning systems, or have accidentally employed Golden Dawn Style mental techniques and mistaken it for spiritual naturalistic events.
On the other hand you have people like Joan of Arc, where study of the symptoms and events makes you think there might be something to mysticism after all because what the hell was that?! Someone found the debug menu for reality!
I don't mean the beliefs themselves so much as the way they're structured. There's a fairly distinct way to how they present online, or at least it's something I can almost always pick up on when it's more overtly expressed/not in a single post. There's an object of fixation which sometimes reflects a personal pathology, in this case something sexual. That thing becomes the focal point of an increasingly vivid conspiracy with some kind of fantastical element to it, and as the person with special knowledge of that thing their own paranoia becomes a sense of persecution for associating with it. The conspiracy is wholly logical and consistent to them but because it's just grasping at straws to build some correlative pattern it's word salad to people outside of it. The words are arranged in the right order but the characters and themes seem madlibbed. In her case I distinctly get that impression because my first question is "why is there a masturbation ghost and why does it care about this particular thing so much as if you're torturing yourself over it?". It's disjointed and abstract compared to normal religious beliefs which reflect some material or social condition that the group is trying to mediate.
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It's hard to say. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if a lot of historical supernatural beliefs came from some or another of delusions or schizophrenia or whatever else. Someone who would nowadays be dismissed as "mentally ill" for believing they were Jesus might have in the past been taken as a local prophet. Maybe some of the monsters and creatures people imagined came from something like sleep paralysis and the weird visions they had during it. See something weird in the forest and don't understand it? Obviously it's Bigfoot. After all no one else saw it, it must be an elusive beast hiding.
The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James included a couple passages of people testifying about religious experiences that were like textbook sleep paralysis. He also speculates a little bit on possible naturalistic explanations for certain types of experiences, overall its a fantastic book for understanding the value religion holds for people.