Pyschosis, Narratives, and the Human Condition: An Admittedly Less Serious Exploration Than the Title Would Suggest
I'm one of the rare possessors of that greatest of nature's gifts: Bipolar Disorder. Even to say it's name evokes feelings of shame, as if it is some major defect of birth that destines me for the gutter. But in the time since being diagnosed I've found it to (non-ironically) be one of my favorite parts of who I am. But this post isn't just me trying to argue that what most people view as a huge obstacle to happiness is actually a huge asset (that shameless post will come later). Instead, I want to focus on one of the most interesting aspects of Bipolar: pyschosis. Bipolar is one of the few psychotic spectrum disorders, along with schizophrenia (which I'm given to believe is no longer even a thing and has now been split into several smaller classifications), and several others. But what does it mean to experience psychosis? When we think of psychosis we are flooded with depictions of mentally unstable people acting in scary, violent, and dangerous ways (than...