Shizophrenia Clue

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I once had a shizophrenic friend, and when we went to visit her mother, I noticed that the mother was in the habit of making ambiguous statements. You would think that after thirty years, a kid would be able to guess the correct meaning most of the time. Even a stranger should be able to hit 50%. My friend was getting zero. Obviously, her mother was changing her mind to always make her daughter wrong. Her favored child, a son, was an MD who was also into extreme spirituality - it had been a high-pressure house.

Ambiguous statements are not black or white, they are not 50/50 because they are not coins.
As you said,

Yep, my mother does the same thing. She says she "misunderstood me, due to my 'issues' (autism)" last part implied, which my dad had to tell me about. The other excuse is she forgot...

Isn't this behavior called gaslighting in psychology?

I think that gaslighting refers to controlling all of a person's sources of information, not just one channel.

I don't see how that person's mom constantly changing her mind to convince her daughter that she's always wrong would have caused her to develop schizophrenia. However, it does make sense that her son is into extreme spirituality because genes for schizophrenia run in families, and many people with schizotypal traits can be involved in things such as spirituality.

The term is called "Schizophrenigenic Mothering", and this was the leading hypothesis for what causes schizophrenia 60 years ago. According to Robert Sapolsky of Stanford University there is not suffienct evidence to support that it causes schizophrenia, but it is possible that mothers are hurt by believing they're responsible.

Well, if it doesn't cause schizophrenia, what is the name of the madness it would typically cause? Most mothers don't abuse the truth so consistently.

It's hard to imagine what response if any it would cause. I imagine it would just cause anger and detachment. I often wonder if this kind of psychological mode of analysis is useful in any sort of way of predicting behavior or development of a psychological condition.

It feels right that treating someone this way would cause some sort of insanity. It also felt right that the earth was flat, and it felt right that ore in caves grew back after being mined.


The only way to really know is do your own schizophrenigenic parenting say adopt a pair of identical twins treat one schizophrenigenically and the other not. and see what the result is. Of course you probably are not going to do that because it would be immoral to subject a child that had any chance at all of causing a debilitating illness like schizophrenia. So we must focus on what we know.

Observe statistics of what causes schizophrenia.

If one identical twin has schizophrenia, the chance the other child will be diagnosed is around 50% which is puzzling because its not 100% which would indicate it is not purely a genetic disease, and its significant because it is much higher statistical incidence than say if two non identical twin brothers where one has the disease. So it seems to be a combination of both genetic and developmental factors.

Positive correlations include.
Family history.
Paternal and Maternal Age effect. The older the father and mother are at time of conception through childbirth can increase the incidence of Schizophrenia.
Developmental problems in the womb. I haven't read the statistics but this I heard that this was the most positively correlated of all factors.
psychological trauma.
Certain Physical features (of the arms).
(That's all I remember)

Studies have also been linking toxoplasma gondii a parasite in mice and cats that can be transmitted to humans. In mice toxoplama gondii have a mind altering effect that cause mice to run up to cats and get eaten, where they reside in the cat and can be transmitted to humans through cat saliva and feces.

I have my own speculation from my own experience the idea goes like this: A thought experiment
What if we were gods of our own minds?
When we interact with the world we get certain rewards, for instance we get fulfillment words strung together with the right pattern and intonation cause us to laugh.
But what if you could cause yourself to laugh without the need of a joke? Your mind would not need humor it could cause spontaneous laughter whenever you wanted.
What if you could entertain yourself almost as if by a push of a button? You wouldn't need social interaction. and the part of the brain responsible for that would atrophy.
What is the most powerful form of entertainment? Love, humor, curiosity, fear?
You get all the stimulation, (i.e. dopamine serotonin) without ever interacting with the world.