The first-rank symptoms include various hallucinations or delusions in which patients lose a normal sense of owning or controlling their actions, sensations, or thoughts-as when patients feel that all their inner experiences are under the control or scrutiny of some other being, or even that someone other than themselves is actually thinking their thoughts or looking out through their very eyes.

"Then I realized why I was studying his face so closely," writes Barbara O'Brien in Operators and Things, an autobiographical account of her schizophrenic illness. "Hinton was tuned in on my mind and was studying the analyst's face through my eyes."

Schizophrenic patients may also believe, for instance, that what appear to be other human beings are really phantoms or cleverly designed machines quite devoid of any real consciousness, or that the entire universe is responding to each peristaltic movement of their intestines.

Jaspers speaks of "metaphysical delusions" that reflect experience of a shattering of the self, or a sense that the universe itself is in some imminent danger or has even ceased to exist. Schizophrenics may believe that they have invented everything they encounter-that, for example, they themselves have invented the story they have just read.

One patient claimed that he used to be a drawing in a book but had finally escaped and come to the hospital. Another declared that he contained within his own body all the heavenly bodies while also maintaining that these heavenly bodies simultaneously existed in the outer world. Such delusions are not explicable as wish-fulfillment fantasies-at least not readily so-for even if they do, at some level, involve intense wishes, the wishes themselves seem in need of considerable elucidation before they can be empathically understood or can play an explanatory role.

Nor is the characteristic tone or atmosphere of many such delusions consistent with the psychoanalytic interpretation of regression to a primitive or Dionysian form of consciousness. For one thing, the famous "flat affect" observed in so many schizophrenics, as well as the devitalized and derealized quality that often permeates their experiential world, hardly suggests a regressed state charged with the energy and vitality of the primary process.

According to Eugen Bleuler, "schizophrenics can write whole autobiographies without manifesting the least bit of emotion. They will describe their suffering and their actions as if it were a theme in physics.'

For those of you new to this, Dionysus is one of the main 12 gods of Olympus and the god of wine and parties in the woods. I imagine if he were to exist in modern times, he would be the eternally high homeless guy who manages to enrage a Karen every day. Like:

* Once he promised a mortal to have intercourse with him when that was asked of him in return for a favour. (He needed to cross the river Styx to bring his mom back from the dead) Imagine the grape boy’s shock when he learned that by the time he came back from his adventure, the guy had already died. Instead of just saying ‘Welp! This holy booty is hard to come by anyway!’, Dionysus proved he was a man of his word… By carving a wood phallus (if you know what that means, you’re either a perv or just well read—welcome to the club) and using that (you also know how, you filthy scholar) on top of the guy’s grave. Wow.

* His mom actually died when Dionysus was in the womb. To save the child, Zeus sewed the unborn child into his thighs. (I KNEW sewing was handy!)(or leggy-)

Dionysus: God of Wine, Madness and Ecstasy

Dionysus kids 🍇Don’t care what other people think 🍇Excellent cooks 🍇Commit to the bit 🍇Will randomly drop off the face of the earth with no explanation

Xmas time is coming ✨

This is my first piece in my gods and skulls series!! This is a jaguar for Dionysus (if you couldn’t tell) 🍇