the time has come...

 to speak of many things...

The time has come,' the Walrus said,

      To talk of many things:

Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —

      Of cabbages — and kings —

And why the sea is boiling hot —

      And whether pigs have wings.'

and why half a cabbage is $3:99?

and a small one at that!

anyway

todays topic is schizophrenia versus parnoia

the ancient Greeks knew the difference between the three main psychoses viz

manic depression, schizophrenia and paranoia.

In New Zealand it has become the fashion to designate any mental illness as

schizophrenia asa catchall for "PSYCHOLOGISTS" who have no real

understanding of mental illness except to check off any symptoms against the latest edition of the DSM. It saves them the trouble of actually doing any proper research into  the real nature of the illness and their professional qualifications give them weight when they testify in court.

The latest example is a man in yesterdays rag who murdered his mother and father and the next door neighbour.

This man is clearly a paranoid but has instead been labelled as schizophrenic and will later be released into the community when his hallucinations and delusions have subsided and he has been stuffed full of enough psychotropic drugs to make him harmless and ready for release into the community so the local dhb or whoever doesn't have to pay for their upkeep.

See here in new zealand we are a nation of instrumentalists who really dont care about the truth of any theory because it will be jettisoned just as soon as it becomes unfit for purpose.

Freud noted that paranoia was incurable but kiwis dont give a shit about that.

Didn't the little weasel Karl Popper tell us that pschoanalysis was a pseudo science and by extension so is Freud not to be believed.

The dynamic psychiatry initiated by psychoanlysis is the only real way to understand mental functioning but the psychologists and their training in the laboratories to determine this that or other reaction time to any stimulus in a rat  a pigeon or rabbut just doesn't cut it.