
How Culture Affects Hallucinations - mercer
https://priceonomics.com/how-culture-affects-hallucinations/
======
proksoup
> In our culture, people suffering from schizophrenia or other forms of
> psychosis are more likely than members of other cultures to recognize their
> hallucinations as a symptom of pathology, but they also tend to have
> hallucinations that are very violent and negative.

I can see how encouraging positive relationships could be beneficial for
anyone with such a symptom, regardless of figuring out if it's a symptom of
pathology (depending on the culture context.)

~~~
NathanKP
I wonder if this also has to do with the mythology of Western religion that
says humans are fundamentally flawed and bad. Western religion tends to
promote this idea that we are fundamentally bad and our only hope for
salvation lies in Jesus. With this mindset then of course if you hear a voice
coming from inside your head it must be bad and violent.

I grew up in an extremely fundamentalist Christian cult and I heard many talk
fearfully about demon possession and experiencing supernatural phenomena that
they attributed to the Devil. Of course later in life I realized that many of
those people were probably mentally ill, and not recognizing the symptoms for
what they were because they saw things through a different lens, which was one
of a world in which Satan was out to get you.

It makes sense that in a culture that reveres the ancestors one would tend to
attribute hearing voices to ancestors as well, and could have a more peaceful
relationship with their own abnormal experience.

~~~
HarryHirsch
That should be easy to study. Both Judaism and Islam don't know the concept of
original sin, that's a Christian idea. Judaism holds that humans have capacity
to do good and evil, and that everyone has a choice. Islam teaches that humans
are fundamentally good and have an innate capacity to follow the will of God.
Someone must already have looked at how schizophrenia manifests itself in
devout Jews and Muslims.

~~~
smokeyj
> Someone must already have looked at how schizophrenia manifests itself in
> devout Jews and Muslims.

That'd be an interesting study. If this exists I'd love to see it.

------
pavement
Reading about DMT hallucinations is pretty fascinating, but at some point it
conincidental to DMT's popularity, I became firmly convinced that a feedback
loop had developed.

More people took trips after hearing wild trip reports, and with those in
mind, either seemed to fixate on the reports they read, finding their version
what they imagined the report to be, or told tall tales to be cool.

Much like the guy who turned into a glass of orange juice while tripping on
LSD, the interdimensional elf gnomes seem to be this legend lore of the DMT
trip now.

Nonetheless, whatever the fad imaginary spirit animal is these days, it's
interesting to see clinical proof that most hallucinations require a priori
knowlege to envision. The mind doesn't seem capable of conuring concepts never
experienced.

~~~
NathanKP
Yeah it isn't so much conjuring new concepts as it is that the hallucinating
mind connects existing concepts in ways never experienced before. So someone
would never normally connect the concept of their self identity with the
concept of a glass of orange juice while sober, but while high on LSD this
could seem like a plausible scenario, and the synaptic connections made during
that trip can persist afterward and leave a lingering sense of bizarre
connection.

I read a very interesting piece on the use of LSD by creative people and how
some felt they benefited immensely from taking LSD precisely because of those
random connections that they formed between mental concepts that they had. The
basic theory was that creative people in these scenarios had minds full of
concepts that would tend to work well together and could benefit because there
was a high probability that the connections that formed were valuable and
useful ones.

