How the bullshit goes around.

A. A.,

I want to comment on your experience, when you almost asleep mixed your personal thoughts with that of a radio speaker. You said his voice felt as your private thoughts and you thought your brain did not differentiate.

I have many times had similar experiences. It has happened when I have had a condition of depression, and without being able and/or willing to feel, during the day, have entered into a sleepy / “relaxed” / off guard state. When I occasionally, under those conditions, have been listening to the radio / TV, then suddenly the speaker’s voice expressed my thoughts / feelings, and I “manipulated” his words and the tone of his voice. What I developed was a hallucinatory experience, which in my case relates to the field of psychogenic epilepsy.

In my case, these experiences happened when I was less able to feel my pain. They were a sign of leaky gates. My pain found a way out, and the hallucination happened in an off guard /drowsy stage when a word from the speaker had struck a cord in my mind, which was transmitted to my repressed pain, and the leak took place. Now, years later, when I have felt my horrific birth pain repeatedly, the tendency to need these releases of tension/pain has dissappeared.

No doubt it is interesting how my pain, when my mind was “off-line” /off guard could find an escape, which though in the beginning was confusing. Slowly, I learned that leaky gates have many alternative escape routes. Hallucination was but one.

I share your concern that uncritical minds, with repressed pain, might adopt their professors words. Fortunately, in a sane, healthy brain, able to feel the pain, I value the risk as low. However, in a neurotic, pain propelled world, there is risk that the bullshit goes around.

Jan Johnsson