Eye Soul Moon by Lap Le
Once in a blue moon, compelled by an overwhelming uneasiness with the “temper of the time”, a person will internalize and subsequently act upon a cultural schizophrenia. These acts can be attributed to a Social Anxiety Disorder as much as they can be considered delusions — the manifestation of which can be severe, depending on the depth of that internalization. More than just asynchrony, it is a deep and personal displacement of the ex psyche patriae, or well-adjusted ego.
As an example of a severe case, a 35-year-old man submitted himself to psychiatric evaluation, claiming that he suffered from delusions of being an animal -- or in fact became an actual animal, a wolf in his case. In the seven years before his evaluation he confessed to have experienced bouts of intense homosexual urges, abrupt and violent dispositions towards animal and human alike, and powerful compulsions toward sexual, often taboo, gratification. Some nights, he said, he would lay awake at staring at himself in the mirror in the darkness of his room. “I see the face of my shadow, lit by the moon—it is a long and evil face, with teeth and hair and sharp black ears. It snarls and licks its lips and my expression is overcome by an irresistible hatred for my body. Amidst the unintelligible noises I would make, I can hear myself say, ‘I am the devil.’”
In a less severe case, a woman of indeterminate age suffered from an anxiety so thorough that even the mere thought of communicating consumed her body in nervous convulsions. Submitting herself to a psychosocial pathological regimen design to alleviate her symptoms, she was finally able to function on a day-to-day basis. A painter, this regimen involved the therapeutic rituals of her studio practice where she would externalize her thoughts in the abstract. However, when forced to intellectualize the daily confrontations of the art world, or having to explain herself, she regressed to debilitating levels -- neither being able to externalize through paint or speech. Characterized by what she described as “chicken talk”, her speech wasn’t entirely incoherent, rather she was plagued by an intense fear of herwords “sticking in her throat”, that her “thoughts would never be understood.” The only remedy for her situation, a la The King’s Speech, came about in the purchase of an Iphone. In fact, the bombastic confrontations of advertisements on the web seem to be the only thing to give her reprieve from the internal dilemma of co-existence.
There are dormant issues here, and especially within the person, that are being manipulated to instigate a psychosocial displacement. Social engineering, for instance, exploits structural systems which are often discrete to impact a broad demographic of unassuming peoples into behavior not attuned to their natural or essential logick. For the most part, the effects of this on an ego is negligible.
But, as we’ve discussed, there are time where the darker side of these inconsistencies are made manifest and intercessions with some cosmic or un-essential force is the result. It is important to note that these people are in no way insane. Quite the opposite, they are self-aware and are perhaps debilitated by such, as this is accompanied by a very real distrust of the Self. Often these manifestations are marginalized and quarantined to the parts of the mind reserved for fairy-tales and rigorous rationalisms, but sometimes they can possess the person and reveal the limits of our schizophrenia. You can hear it if you listen, beneath the talk and tattle, between the waxing and waning of libidos.