1) INTRODUCTION
 
Close to all professional psychiatrists and psychologists today have been trained/educated in modern colleges and universities. This is not exclusively a good thing. For – close to all these institutes of higher learning have in the modern era become cesspools of Kantianism. I.e. close to all today´s psychiatrists and psychologists have been indoctrinated with the irrational philosophical premises which were perpetrated on the world back in the late 18th century by Immanuel Kant. It stands to reason that said fallacious philosophical premises have “screwed up” the thinking of most of today´s psychiatrists and psychologists.
 
It is my conviction that the science of psychology today is deeply flawed – this, as a consequence of, Kant´s influence. Four fallacious philosophical premises, in particular, amount to major flaws in the science of psychology today: determinism, materialism, subjectivism and altruism.
 
Fortunately, I have myself rejected Kantian philosophy. For – I never went to college. I am fortunate to be a high school dropout! And – in addition, after I recovered from my psychosis at the age of nineteen, I devoted many years to serious study of the one truly consistently rational philosophy. The philosophy whose content corresponds to the facts of reality – from start to finish. In other words – I am a long-time student of Objectivism. This informs my thinking about the causation of both my fall into psychosis and the causation of my recovery from my psychosis.
 
2) CONSCIOUSNESS EXISTS – MATERIALISM IS A FALLACY
 
Since I am too smart to believe in the outrageous ideas of Kant, I reject all “explanations” of mental health which are predicated on determinism and materialism. The idea that mental health is caused by a disturbance of the chemical balance of the neurotransmitters in the subject´s brain alone is ludicrous - says I. To be sure - such a disturbance might very well occur, and might play a role, in cases of mental illness. But there must be a cause of said physical disturbance which involves the subject´s thinking. For – people´s psychologies are an issue of the health of their consciousness – not just of the health of their physical brains. Consciousness – and therefore psychology – cannot be reduced to matter. Consciousness exists. It is real. And – consciousness is causally efficacious!
 
There is a massive amount of empirical evidence that a subject´s physical brain causes effects in the subject´s consciousness – and vice versa. Men´s respective consciousness cause events “out there” in the physical world – all the time! Materialism is a philosophical fallacy. Both matter and consciousness exist. And - both are causally efficacious – on each other!
 
First an example of an aspect of a man´s physical brain causing an effect in the man´s consciousness. This is “upward causation”. I.e. causation from the physical realm up to the realm of consciousness. Scientists have determined that the physical state of a man´s brain gives rise to his memories. Namely – when a man commits an item of knowledge to his memory – the connections between the neurons in the man´s brain are then reconfigured in a certain way. The memory is “fixed” and “stored” in the pattern of the physical connections between the neurons in a certain region of said man´s brain. The physical neurons give rise to (“cause”) the memory – which is an attribute of the man´s consciousness.
 
And now “downward” causation: Here is an example of an event in a man´s consciousness causing an effect in the physical realm. A man wakes up at 6:00 AM in the morning. He remembers that he is supposed to arrive at work at 7:00 AM. He thinks to himself that he really does not want to lose his job. So, he wills himself to promptly carry out the physical action of getting up out of bed and preparing himself for going to work. This is an example of a series of events in the man´s consciousness (i.e. the man having the thought that he wants to keep his job) causing an effect (the man´s getting out of bed) in the physical realm. In other words, “downward causation” – causation from consciousness “down” to the realm of the physical. The conscious mind is efficacious!
 
3) MY PSYCHOSIS
 
So – I have directly perceived – by means of introspection combined with memory – that my descent into psychosis was a long, drawn-out process which consisted mostly of a slow deformation of my consciousness. This “slow deformation of my consciousness” consisted of the indoctrination/brainwashing with nihilism which was foisted on me over a period of slightly more than two years by the prep school, Milton Academy - beginning in the summer of 1967, when I was just thirteen years old.
 
The “vehicles” by means of which nihilism was conveyed to me in the prep school consisted primarily of the “classics” of modern literature which I was required to read in English class. I described in detail said indoctrination on pages 4, 5, and 6 in chapter One of this book. Because I made the mistake of assuming that those “classic novels” would not have been made required reading by a prestigious prep school unless they said something valid about reality – the reading of those “classics” convinced me that the reality I lived in was a hell on earth. And - so began the prep school´s process of gradually and patiently “pushing” the focus of my mind away from “reality out there” into the inner world of my own consciousness.
 
This process was obviously not healthy. For – a healthy human being focuses his consciousness on “reality out there” – for the sake of dealing with it successfully. Any person whose mind is preoccupied with its own content rather than the outer world will naturally become incompetent deal with reality. Well, Milton Academy had to work hard for the sake of succeeding at inducing me to turn away from reality.
 
And – Milton Academy did work hard on that task! Close to everything about the prep school was designed to break down the minds of their students [Note 1]. The content of the curriculum, the methods of teaching the curriculum, the regimentation of the students´ daily prescribed schedule (the students had almost no free time of their own during the weekdays – the entire weekdays consisted of a long series of scheduled and obligatory activities) – just about everything in the typical school life at Milton was aimed at breaking the students´ inclination to develop the habit of independent thinking about reality.
 
So – the prep school Milton Academy was a sufficiently potent causal factor to be capable of taking a healthy thirteen year-old boy and setting him on the road to a psychosis! But – Milton Academy did not drive me insane all by itself. On page 3 in chapter One I relate how my own mother contributed to the destruction of my mental health by means of undermining my confidence in the judgment of my own rational faculty. Also – the content of America´s general culture – and the totality of depressing world current events - during the late 1960s contributed to my depression and therefore to my loss of confidence in my future. And – most importantly of all – I made some bad, and truly unfortunate, choices - the consequences of which reinforced the degeneration of my mind. On pages 6, 7 and 8 in chapter One I give a detailed account of some of those choices.
 
4) CONCLUSION
 
So – the causation of my psychosis consisted essentially of:
 
1) One environmental factor which subjected my consciousness to a “sudden deformation” (like a bolloid impact on the surface of the earth) – namely the traumatic experience which my own mother perpetrated on me in the early summer of 1967. Said traumatic experience consisted of an intense – and even violent (figuratively speaking) assault on my confidence in my own rational faculty.
 
2) One environmental factor which subjected my consciousness to a “slow, gradual deformation” (like the slowly moving tectonic plates just under the earth´s surface) – namely the indoctrination/brainwashing with nihilistic, Kantian-derived philosophy which Milton Academy´s “education” consisted of during the two-year period fall of 1967 to fall of 1969. [Note 1]
 
3) The volition factor. This factor consisted of the circumstance that I chose to default on the responsibility of independent thinking. I chose to “take the bait” which Kant foisted on me via the prep school. I chose to swallow Kant´s intellectual poison. I simply did not work up the will-power to be as strong as I needed to be for my mental health to survive the abuse it was subjected to while I was at Milton.
 
Most importantly of all, I chose to disregard the voice inside my mind which was screaming at me that I was hurting myself when I tried to practice the morality of altruism consistently (see pages 6, 7 and 8 in chapter One for details – and see also, the entirety of chapter Eight). I should have questioned the morality of altruism as soon as I realized that being a consistent altruist equated with me hurting myself on purpose – and as an end-in-itself. But I was too weak to insist on going by the judgment of my own mind in the face of the massive consensus of “everyone” else around that one idea – namely the idea that altruism/self-sacrifice equated with moral virtue.
 
5) I HABITUATED INSANITY!
 
When my descent into psychosis began at the age of 13, in the year 1967, I most definitely possessed volition. I was in control of my own mind initially. But as the process of gradually losing my mental health proceeded it became progressively harder and harder for me to carry out purposeful trains of thought about “reality out there”. Eventually, at the age of eighteen, in the summer of the year 1972, I became so utterly inadequate when it came to focusing my mind on “reality out there”, that I evidently had become literally psychotic. Which meant, presumably, that an extreme degree of introversion had become “hard-wired” into my brain. So that I literally could not concentrate on “things going on out there in reality”
 
My conclusion is that the process of my gradually, over the course of roughly five years, going insane - was a process of habituating unhealthy types of thinking! I crossed the line over into psychosis when my successively more and more extreme introversion-style thinking finally became so fully second nature to me that I could not any longer volitionally resist it at all – because the physical functioning of my brain had been altered by the massive quantities of unhealthy thinking which I had engaged in over and over for the duration of five long years.
 
My hypothesis is that somehow, I had altered the delicate balance of the neurotransmitters in my own brain – by means of “downward causation. Downward causation consisting of repeated “bad thinking patterns” which I was pressured into choosing to engage in by the pernicious influence of my schooling. So, at least my case of going insane, involved both my conscious mind and my free will! Both consciousness and volition are real and causally efficacious. Psychiatrists and psychologists need to realize that both materialism and determinism are grave errors. As are also altruism and subjectivism.
 
6) MY PSYCHOSIS WAS PROBABLY NOT SCHIZOPHRENIA
 
To forestall misunderstanding I must make it clear that, as far as I can tell, my psychosis was not a case of schizophrenia – but must have been some other variety of psychosis. I was psychotic – for I could not survive in reality by means of my own devices. But I was not schizophrenic, specifically.
 
I am quite certain of this because all the time that I was committed to Ulleraakers Mental Hospital I was lucid. I remember very well, thank you, the contents of my consciousness during said time. And – therefore I know that I was totally devoid of many of the symptoms which typify schizophrenia.
 
For example – I never heard any voices. I never had any hallucinations. And – this is important – I always, the entire time that I was a patient in the hospital, knew full well that my fantasy worlds were not real. Notwithstanding the fact that they fascinated me so much that you could validly say that I was obsessed by them! The entire time I was psychotic I could, and did, tell the difference between my consciousness and reality. And I never suffered from the absurd notion – which many schizophrenics are supposed to suffer from - that my consciousness could “make things happen out there in reality”. [Note 2]
 
The problem with me was never that I confused my fantasies with reality. But instead “merely” that I valued my fantasies more than I valued any of the, to me boring, stuff “out there in reality”. My fantasies were dear to me. Reality wasn´t! That was why my consciousness was detached from reality – even though I was very much aware of the fact that I existed in the reality which I knew full well was all around me.
 
Note 1) See Ayn Rand´s essay, The Comprachicos, (Published in the essay collection Return of the Primitive, edited by Peter Schwartz.)
 
Note 2) See Dr. Leonard Peikoff´s essay Madness and Modernism (Published in the magazine The Intellectual Activist, Volume 8, Number 6, November 1994.)