Home | Art | Writing | Travel | ShopTechnophobic Delusions in Schizophrenia -The Intrusion of Schizoid Thought into the Consensus RealityThoughts on the Influencing Machine By David DrexlerCopyright 2005 by David Drexler |
This
is a work of fact. Any resemblance to persons or systems, living or
dead, is intended as a libelous denunciation of their lamprey-like,
sub-bethonic, scum sucking, degenerate nature.
He
conversed a great deal on electricity, said that it was the moving
power of the earth, that people might be made mad by it, but that he
could not be played on by it, as he was in the secret. He said that he
could prove from the scriptures, that people could be made mad by
electricity, that they could converse by means of it at any distance,
and that, by it he had heard voices from heaven. –
A case of Oinomania American Journal of insanity, July 1851
A belief that technology is being employed for coercive purposes
has long been noted as an interesting characteristic of the delusions
of the insane. Classical descriptions of schizophrenia include mention
of the belief that “the most devilish, modern, technical
apparatus ever invented has been put up and is used to speak from a
distance, to project pictures, to electrocute” (Bleuler 114), or
a fixation on “maleficant machines, rays, electrical zaps, and
engines” (Glass 52). Such harassments are usually
perpetrated by “gangs”, mobs, or other ill-defined
operatives. Frequently, these electronightmares are connected with
“a delusional system…around the idea that the patient is
persecuted because of his ideology, philosophy, or religion”
(Glass 36). The first clear and reliable description of schizophrenia
was given by John Haslam, curator of London’s Bedlam Hospital, in
1809 (Seller in Howells 52) in his Observations on Madness and
Melancholy. Haslam, a sort of 19th century Oliver Sacks, has also given
us the most complete and fascinating account of the malevolent
“influencing machine” in his 1810 Illustrations of Madness,
long a hard to find underground psychology classic. This is the
notorious “Air-Loom,” operated by a gang of vicious
underworld “pneumatic chemists”. It seems that
schizophrenics latched onto ideas of mechanics and electromagnetics
very early, as perfect vehicles for their delusions of persecution and
harassment. Similarly, the scientific discovery of microbes played well
into the fixations on pollution, poisoning, and excessive washing that
had already long been features of deranged thought. A central study of
the influencing machine in schizophrenia mentions that “patients
endeavor to discover the construction of the apparatus by means of
their technical knowledge, and it appears that with the progressive
popularization of the sciences, all the forces known to technology are
utilized to explain the functioning of the apparatus” (Tausk 33).
Throughout the 19th century, schizophrenics continued to
incorporate advances in electromagnetic technology into their
delusions. Developments such as radio, X-rays and radioactivity proved
fertile ground for paranoid phantasy. Today, an internet search for
“electronic harassment” will unleash a vast deluge of
verbiage relating to contemporary experiences of the phenomenon. One
can read day-by-day accounts of electronic attacks, and there even
appears to be one company devoted to the production of very expensive
and mysteriously undescribed “custom devices” to defend the
victims, presumably if the traditional tin-foil hat fails to be
effective.
More frighteningly, there appears to be some evidence that
semi-secret government organizations have at least investigated the
possibilities of electromagnetic attack. The microwaving of the US
embassy in Moscow, and of nuclear protesters in the USA, are frequently
cited examples. Investigation of this shadowy world, where lunatic
paranoia merges into documented reality, suggests some fascinating
possibilities. There is an apparent convergence between schizophrenic
delusion and consensus reality, an intrusion of the schizophrenic
worldview into the realms of technology and government control. In
advanced industrialized society, the nightmares of the insane have
begun to manifest in such phenomena as electronic wiretapping, nuclear
radiation, industrial pollution, beam weaponry, and satellite spying.
I suggest that there is a parallel development between technology and
mental illness, which began with Descartes’ 17th century
conception of the universe, and all beings in it, as clockwork
mechanisms. A belief that one is “dead” or is a
remote-controlled mechanism, is commonly reported in schizophrenics
(Arnold 139). There is observable a certain mania for vivisection, or
the experimental cutting up of animals, among scientists and doctors,
which is analogous to the childhood murder of cats and small animals so
often noted among those who later become psychopaths or mass murderers.
The incredible explosion of the formerly obscure and undescribed
illness termed autism, may also be part of this process. The autistic
are often said to “react to people as objects”, be
rational, hyper-scientific, and unable to deal with human relationships
(Paluszny 21). In an interesting example of feedback, or the circular
influences between mental states and external reality, the autism
“epidemic” may be caused by environmental factors
consequent on the prevalence of technology itself (Kirby). Technology,
a mindless, viral force, may be actively breeding humans especially
adapted minister to, reproduce and exalt it.
The schizophrenic phantasy of the “influencing machine”
should be considered a parallel to the influence of technology, and the
Cartesian mechanist world view, on consciousness. In tracing the
congruent histories of technology and schizophrenia, we can observe a
curious interplay between them, in which delusions appear among the
insane before manifesting in, or intruding into, the consensus reality.
The current state of the industrialized world, with its ubiquitous
wireless devices, televisions, CTV surveillance, microchip tracking
etc…, could well be seen as a flourishing garden of schizoid
delusions erupted into reality. Indeed, when cell phones first became
common, many commentators wryly noted that someone using such a device
was frequently indistinguishable from a lunatic. Seen in this context,
that observation is extremely meaningful.
The
history of technological progress is well known, but its parallels in
mental illness are largely hidden and unrecognized. It is the purpose
of this study to throw this connection into light, and to ultimately
reveal and expose technology itself as an active, autonomous force,
which has parasitized human beings for its own ends. Those familiar
with the operations of DNA and genes should have no difficulties in
recognizing yet another extremely cunning, inventive, persistent and
autonomous force which is yet wholly unconscious, unliving,
“dead,” and requires other beings, or “survival
machines” to manifest itself in the world.
Before tracing these contemporary manifestations further, it will be
illuminating to lay out a brief history of mental disease, and how it
relates to technological and electronic developments, from the
obscurities of antiquity, through the galvanic and voltaic pursuits of
the 19th century, to the writings of Ken Kesey and Philip K. Dick, and
the explosive profusion of techno-paranoia that now flourishes on the
net.
History
What forms did madness take in pre-industrial times? Information on
this subject is largely and perhaps
tellingly absent. There are
scarcely any case histories before Haslam in the early 19th century
(Sedler in Howells 52), and the bits of information we have suggest
only an indefinite raving. This has led some to believe that
schizophrenia is largely a disease of civilization, and that it did not
even exist until relatively modern times, being entirely dependent on,
and resulting from, industrial civilization itself. There is indeed
conclusive evidence from large, repeated studies that the incidence of
schizophrenia is linked to being born and raised in urban areas, with
rates diminishing with distance from the city center (Boydell 50). Yet
there clearly were mad people in classical and medieval times as well.
The absence of early case histories is probably attributable less to a
lack of incidence, than to the regrettable custom of ancient authors to
discourse at vast and overwhelming length on humors, biles, effluvia,
elemental forces, phlogisthonics and their whole agglomeration of
useless, unsupported, empty, pompous and bombastic theorizing, without
stooping to the lowly expedient of providing any evidence at all. We
must wait for the advent of the scientific method for more detailed
accounts, unobscured by theories, which almost inevitably appear vain
and risible to persons of later eras.
The only suggestive evidence I could find from classical times is the
observation of Hippocrates (460-377 BC) that mad people “take an
interest in subjects of which they are obviously ignorant, often in
things which only interest scholars” (Roccatagliata in Howells
9). So, there is at least some evidence that lunatics have been
attracted to scholarly, and thus scientific thinking for over 2000
years. Horace mentions an otherwise normal fellow who believed himself to hear tragedies in empty theaters (Horace, Epist. Lib ii v.128ff). Evidence of
lunatics in medieval times is abundant but indefinite (Howells 29). It
is only right as the industrial revolution got underway in the early
19th century that we are presented with a flood of evidence detailing a
condition we can clearly recognize as schizophrenia.
To what degree this is the result of changes in medical thought and
practice, or a consequence of industrialization itself, is an
interesting question which at this point can probably never be
resolved. Aside from Haslam’s clear description of schizophrenia
in 1810, we also have the English physician Thomas Arnold’s
Observations on the Nature, Kind, Causes and Prevention of Insanity,
issued in 1806. Here we learn of symptoms and delusions recognizable in
more recent and contemporary schizophrenic thought, such as patients
feeling “dead”, being “deprived of their proper
nature as human beings”, having no soul, believing their food is
poisoned, raving, “a gloomy silence and reserve”, hearing
voices, and “thinking one is a king, prince, hero, orator,
tragedian, or a man endowed with wonderful science and extraordinary
learning” (Arnold 113 ff). An erudite English quasi-lunatic is
described, who would “compare himself to DEMOCRITUS, who for his
admirable discoveries in anatomy was reckoned distracted by his fellow
citizens, till HIPPOCRATES cured them of their mistake” (Arnold
115-6). The idea that one is possessed of advanced scientific or
technological knowledge that is unknown to the present is common to
lunatics and scientists.
Many of these same themes from the early 1800s were noted by the first
theorists of schizophrenia like Kraepelin, in the early 1900s,
and Bleuler in the 1950s. Bleuler mentions patients who feel
“dead”, who believe that their internal organs are decayed,
or that their food has been poisoned (Bleuler 96). The belief that one
is dead, that ones food is poisoned, and that one is pursued and
harassed by a gang or mob of vague, underworld characters, are all
typical symptoms of schizophrenic delusion. Although individual
patients would not realize it, we can see how all these symptoms
parallel the development of industrial technology and centralized state
control. Feeling “dead” or totally alienated from ones
surroundings sounds like Cartesian rationalism gone just a little too
far. The idea of being poisoned or contaminated would certainly not be
far fetched in heavily industrialized nations in the 19th century, when
no emissions controls existed, and massive, extremely toxic pollution
was rampant. The belief that one is being poisoned by one’s
environment manifests in the contemporary epidemic of allergies and
toxic shock syndrome, which are unheard of outside the West. The amount
of toxic pesticides and herbicides in industrially produced foods is
well known. Here we can perceive the schizophrenic world invading the
consensus reality.
Furthermore, the classic schizophrenic delusion of being harassed,
pursued, and observed by vaguely defined gangsters, mobsters or some
sort of secret agency parallels the development of secret intelligence
forces in the political reality of Industrialized nations. Independent
spies have perhaps always been a feature of monarchies and governments,
but it was only in the 19th century that extensive, hierarchically
organized secret police organizations came into existence. The world of
high ranking courtiers, or top government officials offers an
intriguing parallel to the schizophrenic worldview. Here everyone must
be on guard for treasonous seditions, deep cover spies and advanced
electronic gadgetry, and it is essential to perceive the hidden,
implied meanings behind mundane aspects of behavior. A secret agent is
like a schizophrenic immersed in his own world of dissemblance,
distrust, spying, and exotic secret weaponry, be it nuclear arms, or
space based laser arrays.
Indeed, schizophrenics often believe that they themselves are very
important figures, such as monarchs, politicians, etc… This
delusion of one’s own importance is perhaps the clearest
connecting linkage between the “leaders” of large scale,
hierarchical, industrial political systems, and the mentally ill. The
dreadlocked, shopping cart pushing lunatic, ranting about electronic
harassment, gangs of spies, and his own central importance in world
affairs, arises ultimately from the same causes that produce the
secretive top government official, wary of bugs and infiltration, and
convinced that he is among the central, moving powers in the world.
Both of these realities largely result from an alienated, mechanistic
worldview reflecting the dominance of technology. These are realities
based on coercion, violence, inflicted death and domination. Paranoia
rules the minds of courtiers and lunatics. The current state of the
industrialized world, characterized by incessant war, informants,
spying, pollution and toxicity, is the full emergence of hubristic
paranoid lunacy into mainstream reality.
It may even be feasible to trace the beginnings of this alienated
worldview back to the emergence of civilization, which is based on the
domination and control of plants and animals, and to early theologies
that stressed man’s separateness from the rest of
“creation”. But we need not drift off into such vast
speculations. An examination of more recent history abounds in examples
of the congruency of schizophrenic thought and technology. It was only
in the 19th century that some real understanding of electricity was
gained, and that electrical era was to prove especially fertile for the
schizophrenic imagination.
Mesmeric Revelations and the Air Loom
At the end of the 18th century, and for decades at the beginning of the
19th, the idea of mesmerism (hypnosis) was commonly confused with and
connected to the latest advances in the sciences of electricity and
magnetism. The mesmeric effects were believed to occur by means of
something called “animal magnetism,” which the operator
conveyed across space to his subjects. This was popularly conceived as
a sort of invisible ray, wave or occult emanation. Engravings show wavy
lines emanating from the mesmerist’s hands, and intersecting with
the lower anatomies of his female subjects. Electricity was thought of
as a fluid, the “electrical fluid,” which raised the
possibility that it was related to the various fluids or animating
spirits of the human body.
It
was in this intellectual atmosphere that the earliest case of the
schizophrenic influencing machine was recorded, the famed Air Loom of
Bedlam inmate James Tilly Matthews. The account appears in
Haslam’s 1810 Observations of Madness. This is also probably the
most fully realized and lavishly documented case, and thus deserves
special attention. Matthews was a highly intelligent man, trained in
various arts. Significantly, he was also deeply involved in secret
negotiations that preceded the French revolution. It was from this
environment of spying and mesmeric intrigues that the Air Loom phantasy
developed. Haslam wrote this book to prove that his patient Matthews
was indeed insane, as there was continual litigious disputation over
the matter. Despite this motive, Haslam should really be given immense
credit for publishing the first detailed case history of a
schizophrenic person. Prior to this time, there are no real records of
anyone actually listening to what a madman had to say. The tone is one
of deliciously ironical gravity. The account shows a sort of Joycean
relishment in the obscene foulness and minute intricacies with which
the delusion was described and developed. In many of these elements, we
can trace themes and details that appear repeatedly in the delusions of
later schizophrenics.
The idea of the vaguely defined gang of harassing, lowlife persons is
an almost inevitable adjunct of schizoid technophobic delusions, and
appears here for the first time, and in unusual detail. In
Matthew’s case, the gang consisted of seven vile personages, each
fully described, though “of their general habits little is
known” (Haslam 20). Appearing on the street, they would be taken
for “pickpockets or private distillers” (20). At home,
“they lie together in promiscuous intercourse and filthy
community” (21). “Mr. Matthews insists that in some
apartment near London wall, there is a gang of villains profoundly
skilled in Pneumatic Chemistry who assail him by means of an Air
Loom” (19). The Air Loom itself, described and illustrated in a
“curious plate” is a sort of prototype of the directed-beam
electromagnetic weaponry that appears again and again in the
literature. The curious plate, with its beam of assailing radiation, is
a clear example of a technology that showed up in schizophrenic
delusion long before manifesting in reality. The Air Loom is described
as operating by means of magnetic and mesmeric influences, which were
at the time considered part of a single electrochemical hypnotic
phenomenon. It is fueled by a list of substances or
“preparations” that deserves to be transcribed in its
glorious totality-
Preparations which are employed in the Air Loom by these Pneumatic Chemists for the purpose of Assailment
Seminal
fluid, male and female-Effluvia of copper-ditto of Sulpher- the vapors
of vitriol and aqua fortis- ditto of nightshade and hellebore-
effluvia of dogs-stinking human breath- putrid effluvia- ditto of
mortification and of the plague- stench of the sesspool- gaz from the
anus of the horse- human gaz- gaz of the horses greasy heels-Egyptian
snuff, (this is a dusty vapor, extremely nauseous, but its composition
has not hitherto been ascertained)- vapor and effluvia of
arsenic-poison of toad-otto of roses and carnation.(28)
This fixation on seminal fluids, poisons, effluvia, metals and
involuntary bodily functions appears repeatedly, but seldom in such
livid detail, in later accounts of schizoid misery. The effects of the
Air Loom are described with a similar primal gusto-“Fluid
locking, Cutting soul from sense, Stone making, Thigh talking, Bomb
bursting, Kiting, Lobster cracking, Stomach skinning, Apoplexy working
with the Nutmeg grater, Lengthening of the brain, Thought making, Laugh
making, Pushing up of the quicksilver, Bladder filling, Gaz-plucking,
Spark-exploding, Eye screwing, etc, etc…(30). The natures of
these assailments are individually described.
| This is John Haslam's curious plate depicting the Airloom. Note barrels of effluvia and pneumatic chemist. |
The
account also contains the earliest description of a “Manchurian
Candidate” type scenario. Matthews explained that his assailants
also influenced a certain Hadfield and “by means of magnetic
impregnations… compelled him to fire the Pistol at his Majesty
in the theater” (22). The whole confused mass of secret agents,
mobs, spies, gangs, political conspiracies, toxic effluvia, hypnotism,
machines, occult influences and paranoia represents a summation of
themes that appear repeatedly in both schizophrenic thought and the
realities of fascist and totalitarian governments. Throughout the 19th
century, the growing intrusion of electromechanical devices was only to
increase this toxic brew.
The Nineteenth Century
Looking through publications from the 1800s, one can see that a
thriving trade was carried on in things like electric invigorators,
vibrators, magnetic collars, belts and rings, electrified suppositories
and the like. Later, intentional ingestion of radioactive substances
proved a popular diversion (de la Pena 7). Some obscure remnants of
this trade in medico-electric and magnetic devices are still being
quietly pursued to this day. This was also an era when spiritualism,
table turning and séances became increasingly popular. Itinerant
mesmerists wandered the rural areas, hypnotizing audiences with
mysterious influences (de la Pena 4). Those who scoffed at electrical
technologies were consistently proved wrong, as successive inventions
erupted to great success, such as telegraphs, phonographs, electrical
lights and so on. Few dared to question the amazing powers of
electricity. According to one investigator, “by the late 19th
century, it was possible to believe that external energies could alter
the physical body” (de la Pena 4). The delusions of James Tilly
Matthews, ensconced in Bedlam asylum, had become common knowledge
decades later. By the 1870s, US congressmen were voluntarily
electrocuting themselves in the “engine room” of the
capitol building, seeking re-invigoration (de la Pena 89). Electricity
and its powers were common subjects of discussion on the streets, and
of unbounded ranting in the madhouses. In 1851, one American lunatic
opined “that a whole workhouse might be mad by
electricity… and that people could converse by means of it at
any distance, and that, by it, he had heard voices from heaven
(American Journal of Insanity, July 1851). The idea that “a whole
workhouse might be mad by electricity” is extremely suggestive. I
think I have encountered a few such workhouses myself.
In general, the schizophrenic hearing of voices in the head was a
precursor and parallel development to the invention of telephones,
radio, microphones and speakers. Photographs of American cities in the
late 1800s often show huge tangled masses of wires stretching
everywhere. Electrical machines were invading all aspects of the visual
and mental environments. Words formerly used in technical applications
were applied to human bodies and relations (a twist in ones
transmission, etc…(de la Pena 23-4)). This was a time when
the popular imagination seethed with occult electromagnetic phantasy.
Ideas of rays, radiations, influences, fields and ethers pervaded
thought and discourse. The actual technology lagged behind, but by the
20th century, all these dim visions had fully emerged into the
consensus reality, as radio, X-rays, atomic radiation, radar and
eventually television, that most effective and enslaving of all
influencing machines.
The idea of the body as a machine, first promoted by Descartes in the
17th century, came to produce some interesting developments in the
19th. People began to strap themselves into machines in efforts to
obtain good health. Aside from the electrical belts, trusses, rings and
suppositories already mentioned, a growing mania for exercise equipment
began to take hold. These devices were often employed as a cure for
“neurasthenia,” a vaguely defined illness which, like
chlorosis or ptomaine poisoning, has long since been superseded by more
popular and equally vague complaints (de la Pena 25). The first
exercise machines were heavy, crude devices, which perhaps recalled to
contemporary minds the Jesuitical devices of the Inquisition like the
rack, the wheel, and the thumbscrews. These machines were part of an
effort to make the human body itself more hard, resilient and
machine-like. Our bodies’ natural tendencies to frailty,
sensitivity, and softness were to be rigorously counteracted by
entering mechanical devices and flailing away therein.
Rigidity, uprightness, and hard, armored tightness were also promoted
by the legion corsets, trusses, stays etc… which fill the pages
of all advertising publications throughout the entire 19th century.
This was a time when it was considered indecent for women to appear in
public without what would now be considered hard-core sadomasochistic
bondage gear. This whole emphasis on inflexibility, rigidity, muscular
strength and reliability were all parallel developments to the
intrusion of machines into all aspects of public and inner life.
It
is in this context that the delusions of Daniel Paul Schreber, one of
the most celebrated and studied lunatics of the 19th century, become
extremely interesting and suggestive. Schreber was a prominent German
judge in the late 1800s who came from an illustrious family
(Niederland). The fact that he was a highly intelligent and cultured
man gave his phantasies a depth and richness seldom seen among the
insane. He wrote a wonderful book of Memoirs, finally published in
1911, detailing the history and nature of his mental illness. This book
was read by Freud, who was to use Schreber to bolster his own theories
in his “Psychoanalytic notes upon an autobiographical case of
Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides)”published shortly after the
memoirs appeared. Schreber was clearly schizophrenic, reporting classic
delusions like hearing voices, imagining putrefaction of the gut,
feeling dead and rotten, and developing one of the most rampant and
florid cases of total paranoia ever documented. The Memoirs detail a
series of delusional racking tortures which he termed
“miracles.”
“The most abominable of all miracles was the head-being-tied-together machine (die Kopfzusammenschnurugsmaschine)…which
compressed my head as though in a vice by turning a kind of screw,
causing my head to assume an elongated, almost pear-shaped form. It had
an extremely threatening effect, accompanied by severe pain. The screws
were loosened temporarily but only very gradually, so that the
compressed state was usually continued for some time (in Neiderland
76).”
What is of particular interest here is Schreber’s unusual
childhood. His father, Daniel Gottlieb Schreber, was an early and
fervent promoter of exercise machines, fresh air walks, cold water
immersions, rigid posture, orthopedics and the like. He composed
something like 20 books on these subjects and was considered “a
giant among his contemporaries” (Niederland 77). His father was
an important promoter of the sort of proto-fascist Teutonic fixation on
fresh air, immersion in frigid, Hyperborean waters, health, exercise
etc… that was to be very important in the early history of the
Nazi movement in the following century. He strapped his offspring into
numerous iron contraptions of his own devising. “In order to
ensure a proper growth of the skull, he constructed a helmet-like
device” (Niederland 77). This was of course later to appear in
his son’s delusions as die Kopfzusammenschnurugsmaschine.
The father’s much celebrated books advocate, in oft repeated
passages, “use of a maximum of coercion and pressure during the
earliest stages of a child’s life,” and that “an
absolutely rigid
posture be maintained at all times, even in bed” (51). For this
latter purpose, he devised a sort of rack, “made from iron
throughout” to ensure total rigidity in sleeping children. He
advised detailed rules for every action during every minute of a
child’s life, and wrote that “passions and softness”
are to be met with “direktes Niederkampfen”
or crushing opposition (56). The life of this eminent figure was
regrettably terminated when a heavy iron ladder fell on his head
“in the course of his regular gymnastic exercises” (58).
While Daniel Gottlieb Schreber may appear to be a sort of parody of
Teutonic sadism, his writings were immensely popular and influential in
his own period, and wholly in keeping with the general current of
thought. His Pangymnastikon was translated into English and published
in Boston in 1863 as The New Gymnastics for Men, Women and Children. In
this whole subject, we may clearly trace the relations between
schizophrenia, human-machine interactions, and fascism.
As machines and electrical devices intruded into the popular
consciousness, they produced and promoted an ideal of the body as a
rigid, hard, well-exercised machine, and the mind as something allied
to magnetism and electricity, subject to influence by currents, waves
and occult emanations acting at a distance. The result of all this was
the emergence in the 20th century of, on the one hand, electrical
machines that conveyed thought and language, and on the other, mass
fascism and total state control. There had always been tyrants, and
human propensities for evil, but it was only with the introduction of
technology and the machine virus that these forces were able to gain
absolute control over all aspects of human thought and behavior, by
means of machine guns, flying bombs, gas chambers, secret police,
barbed wire, listening devices, tanks, poison gas, mines, atomic
weapons, surveillance cameras, flame throwers, grenades, wiretaps,
cattle prods, intercontinental ballistic missiles, infrared vision,
napalm, television, phosphorus bombs, torpedoes, etc, etc… By
means of these improvements, the fascist and totalitarian states that
emerged in the 20th century embodied the total intrusion of the
techno-schizoid nightmare into full reality.
As a sort of culmination of these developments, an unusual medical
practice appeared in Mussolini’s fascist Italy in the late 1930s.
Electroconvulsive “therapy”, or ECT, grew out of earlier
methods of treating mental illness by inducing “shock”,
like immersion in freezing water and chemically induced comas. These
are all variants of the one, single therapy that was and is practiced
on lunatics, namely, beating them until they shut up. Whether this is
carried out with rods and iron chains, or powerful pharmaceuticals, is
really only a matter of degree of refinement. Carletti, the inventor of
ECT, first experimented on animals, by attaching electrodes to the
mouths and anuses of dogs. Half died (Kalinowsky in Abrams 2).
Presumably, the others were able to continue in their loyal efforts
assisting Carletti in his investigations, despite charred anuses.
The first human subject of ECT was considered cured when he returned to
work after a long series of induced convulsions. The therapy soon
became popular among those charged with treating, or maintaining, the
mentally ill. American psychiatrists were especially enthusiastic.
Until the 1950s, ECT was conducted without anesthesia, resulting in
frequent fractures of the vertebrae, and breakage of other bones such
as the femur and pelvis (Kalinowsky in Abrams 2). Aside from these
salutary benefits, early research concluded that ECT could produce
massive memory loss and severe and permanent brain damage (Breggin
36-8). These reports were suppressed, and the treatment continued, and
continues. One patient, admitted for depression, described the horrors
experienced while waiting in line for a session of ECT:
“…and then those who got the shock ahead of me, I’d
hear them on their cots choking and gurgling like water going through
their nose and mouth and gasping and other horrible sounds”
(Breggin 35). These accounts of ECT bear a curious resemblance to the
“lobster cracking” and other torments experienced by
Matthews, when at the mercy of the nefarious Air Loom gang.
Although
ECT can be seen as a logical development of the historical torments
dealt out to those deviating from the consensus reality, it is
especially interesting in that it involves a massive application of the
“electrical fluid” which features so prominently in the
delusions of the insane. There is even some evidence that exposure to
electrical shock can produce a liability to hallucinations and episodes
of deviant perception in later life. The affinity of UFOs for high
voltage power lines in well known. Some investigators have advanced the
theory that many supposedly paranormal events are actually
hallucinations induced by exposure to electromagnetic fields. One
schizophrenic reported being struck by lightning as a child.
“…a lightning bolt between Monterey and Nuevo Laredo
struck me and our car, some few inches on the highway” (Moroz 49).
Contemporary Manifestations of the Influencing Machine
Only a few years ago, those carrying out research on the influencing
machine in schizophrenia would have been limited to poring through
illimitable dusty volumes in university libraries, diligently seeking
out a few scraps of information from the scattered case histories in
the mass of technical and theoretical verbiage that fills almost all
books on psychiatric subjects. But the introduction and pervasion of
the internet has at a stroke provided us with an almost unimaginable
profusion of exactly the sort of first person delusional narratives we
might search scholarly books for in vain. There is so much material
here, and it is so transient, that I’ll not provide detailed
footnotes with web addresses. A search for “electronic
harassment” will provide ample fodder for those so inclined.
There is even a fairly extensive “gang-stalking community”
on the net. It is fascinating to see the same precise and obscure
delusions mentioned in the traditional literature on the subject
multiplied and reflected many times in a luxurious abundance of
paranoid phantasy on the net.
A brief search turned up victims of “electromagnetic
torture” suffering from many Air Loom type effects. One victim
complains that the machines “can inject air from inside the upper
lip when the lips are firmly closed…resulting in a loud noise
like flatulence.” Another victim describes symptoms almost
identical to those mentioned in Tausk’s 1919 paper on the
Influencing Machine in Schizophrenia. She explains “I’m
literally connected by remote control to a very high-tech but basic
voodoo doll of some sort.” The main subject of
Tausk’s study had the same delusion, although unembellished with
information on “EMF/ microwave gadgetry that someone managed to
get their hands on, and teach many others how to use.”
Particularly striking are the many accounts of persecution by
“gangs,” mobs, underworld characters etc…, which
seem to be an inevitable feature of machine paranoias. In fascist and
totalitarian forms of mass schizophrenia, these have their unique
correlates. For the Nazis, jews and gypsies, for Stalinists, spies, and
for contemporary American republicrat fascists, dark, vaguely defined
and shadowy “terrorists.” In previous periods of incipient
American fascism, these enemies took the form of lurking anarchists
from Southern Europe, and communist spies from Russia. Saco, Vanzetti,
and the Rosenbergs were all treated to complimentary electrotherapy in
a gruesome protrusion of schizoid reality into daily life. In various
nations today, crypto-fascist political movements typically rail
against immigrants in classical schizoid fashion. Racism, and in
particular anti-Semitism, are almost inevitable topics in fringe and
paranoid discourse.
One recent account on the net details harassment by Mexican gangsters,
as well as by satellite based beam weaponry and microwave attack. In
these sorts of cases, we run into some deep and fascinating
difficulties in disentangling paranoid delusion from political reality.
The fact is, that technological advancement and government control have
reached such a state of dominant perfection and pervasiveness that
paranoid schizophrenics now have ample hard, documented evidence to
back up their claims. Most contemporary accounts of the influencing
machine now include links to real technological developments in
projected sound, microwave attack, and actual evidence of interference,
infiltration and spying by govern-mental agencies such as the FBI and
CIA. What has happened is that the schizoid, paranoid realities of
governments, engineers, and corporate powers have grown to such a
degree that they interweave seamlessly with the schizoid, paranoid
realities of many private citizens.
A corollary development is the introduction into psychiatric discourse
of the concept of “borderline personality” and paranoid
disorders. This is an effort to bring many fairly sane, but essentially
deluded persons within the power and compass of medical
diagnosis. While the full-blown, wholly irrational and
disorganized schizophrenic is quickly recognizable by “word
salad” speech, manifestly absurd beliefs, and inaccessibility to
reason, there also exists a wide range of persons not clinically
insane, who nevertheless manifest in a lesser degree, many
characteristics of the extreme lunatic. Recent works from the past few
years attempt to classify these persons into various
“borderline” states (Kantor 34 ff). One text from 2004
includes schizoid, sub clinical behaviors like “grandiosity,
illogic, withdrawal, tendency to collect injustices, feuding, and
litigious delusions” (Kantor). These all are, and always have
been, well within the normal, accepted, and fully explored range of
human folly and stupidity. Activists and vegetarians are included in
this silly author’s attempt to medicalize the whole spectrum of
human behaviors which do not conform to his ideal of total and abject
submission to consensus reality.
Persons deeply sunk in schizophrenia are generally too far gone to
develop their ideas into fully realized and documented forms. Their
word salads, while often novel and suggestive, are too confused to be
interpreted, and too transient to be developed. Those suffering from
influencing machinery seem often to belong to a different category of
intelligent and high functioning schizophrenics, able to develop a
complete and internally coherent delusion that ingeniously incorporates
aspects of modern political and technical reality. Such certainly was
Matthews. Some might include the celebrated American Sci-fi author
Philip K Dick in this category. His later works dealt with, and he
apparently experienced, a “reality generator” operating
from an artificial satellite in space. His accounts involve pink laser
beams projecting holograms and conveying information. He called this
VALIS (Vast Active Living Intelligence System). Those familiar with PK
Dick’s works will recognize many themes involving schizophrenia
and the influence of machines. Those unfamiliar with them need to get
reading.
Another
prominent public figure whose writings dealt with themes of machine
control and paranoia was the inimitable Francis E Dec esquire. This man
was capable of producing the sort of prose that the standard human
neurological apparatus is hopelessly unable to replicate, and at which
it can only reel in staggered, awestruck amazement. A few sentences
from one of Dec’s stream of consciousness rants basically just
blow the collected works of Joyce out of the water. Phrases like
“Frankenstein earphone radio control, Frankenstein eyesight TV,
Communist computer god parroting puppet gangster slaves, Lifelong
constant threshold brainwash radio” have a condensed forcefulness
which adheres in the mind like Shakespearian wit. At the risk of
rendering this essay a mere vestigial appendage to a work of far
greater perspicuity, power, and relevance, I have decided to attach a
selection from the oeuvre of Francis E Dec esquire as an appendix.
Psychiatrist James Glass documents a recent patient who not only
“believed that she was being observed all the time by way of TV
sets, radios, and other types of listening and spy devices,” but
“refused to believe that machines were inanimate and incapable of
thought or sexual desire” (Glass 73-4). She was of the opinion
that “all machines want to have sex with me” (Glass 75).
“Her conception of how machines work, and of the machine-like
nature of human responses and feelings, animated all aspects of her
life” (Glass 74). Writing of the general influence of machines on
schizophrenic thought, Glass notes that “when technology appears
in delusional imagery, it provokes torment and fear. ‘I am being
electrocuted,’ ‘My brain is being burned with
X-rays.’ …Technical functions and activities become
persecuting instruments” (Glass 52-3).
Surveying
the whole progression of this parasitic electromechanical delusion,
from Matthew’s time to the present, unveils and mirrors the
insidious effects of technology and mechanistic thinking on political
and social reality. Certain modern manifestations deserve special
attention.
The “television” device is basically a classical
schizophrenic influencing machine that has totally infested almost
every aspect of the consensus reality. The projection of sound and
vision directly into the brains of couch bound, apparently mesmerized
subjects, by means of cunning manipulations of electromagnetic
energies, is so similar to the ubiquitous schizoid delusion of the
influencing machine as to be almost laughable. The total pervasiveness
of the television, and its apparently banal content, disguise its
essentially alien, schizoid nature. Televisions are the Air Looms by
which the machine virus enforces obedience, spurs consumption, and
blocks out competing realities.
While inventions such as telegraphy, radio, and telephone also clearly
represent schizoid intrusions from the machine virus, the introduction
of the cell, or mobile phone, has taken the development to a new and
unmistakable level. We’ve already noted the difficulties
distinguishing cell phone users from schizophrenics, as they walk
around, waving their arms, and apparently contending with voices in
their heads. Another schizoid feature of cell phone users is the
palpable and immediate drop in their awareness that occurs as soon as
their cell rings. People become paralyzed while blocking doorways, or
clog up narrow corridors as their awareness is visibly siphoned off.
The effect is particularly notable in cell phone users driving cars.
Riding my bike through American cities, I frequently note sudden,
random manifestations of incompetence in the behavior of the mechanical
pods that surround me. Peering inside, I inevitably see the driver
talking into a mobile phone. The effect of lost awareness, or not being
“all there” is typical of schizophrenia. In the intrusion
of these technologies into daily life, we can observe the unmistakable,
though unconscious efforts of the schizoid machine to engineer a
population of mesmerized drones, wholly devoted to fostering the virus
that parasitizes them. They are like dazed, shambling, suppurated
forms, loaded down heavy with bloated, glutted parasites, of whose true
nature they are wholly unaware, and which they indeed consider as
desirable and modish appurtenances.
To gain an understanding of the real forces at work behind the
stunning, horrific developments of recent centuries, requires that we
look outside the mundane, accepted realities of normal persons, to the
visionary delusions of great inventers and dictators like Tesla,
Stalin, Edison, Hitler, and his devotee Henry Ford. These are the
intellects that most clearly manifest the emergent forces that have
latched onto and invaded our collective social conscious. The paranoid
conspiracy theories which abound in our world seem absurd, yet
strangely relevant. This is because most contemporary conspiracy
theories are incisively accurate except for one thing. They vainly seek
agency in gangs, cabals, secret government organizations, black
projects, or the vile plottings of high ranking officials, CEOs and
vice presidents, when in reality, the perpetrator of these wicked
developments is not a group, or even a human being, but a mindless
viral force, arising out of the interactions of persons who have
surrendered their autonomy, their energy, and their genius to the
mechanisms and technologies that their ancestors created.
We
have a new type of rule now. Not one man rule, or rule of aristocracy
or plutocracy, but of small groups elevated to positions of absolute
power by random pressures, and subject to political and economic
factors that leave little room for decision. They are representative of
abstract forces that have gained control through surrender of self.
…The rulers of this most insecure of all worlds are rulers by
accident, inept, frightened pilots at the controls of a vast machine
they cannot understand, calling experts to tell them what buttons to
push.
–WS Burroughs Interzone-Lees Journals p. 71
Lo, man has become the tool of his tools. –Henry David Thoreau
Things are in the saddle and ride man. –Ralph Waldo Emerson
Those who have any difficulty in believing that technology itself is an
active, controlling force in human affairs, not being used by people so
much as enslaving and parasitizing us for its own mindless, viral,
destructive, cancerous purposes of endless reproduction, might be
instructed by a perusal of Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene.
This popular book clearly demonstrates how very simple, apparently
“dead” material, mere alignments of repeatable molecules in
the genetic code, can give rise to amazing developments in the
interaction of living organisms. The crux of the matter is, that the
idea of life itself is false, and bears no true relation to the actual situation
in our universe. Life is notoriously impossible to define, because it
does not exist. Just because we have a word in our language does not
mean that it represents an existent reality in the universe. There is
no alive, there is no dead. The animist of the Amazon, and Descartes at
his parlor fireside, have two partial views of the same reality.
Everything is both alive and dead, mechanical and spiritual at once.
Those who would deny agency to technology, claiming it is not
“alive,” forget that all organisms are but super-complex
arrangements of molecules and atoms, extrusions into macroscopic
reality of the life force expressing through energy/matter at the
atomic level.
Another approach to the idea of technology as a living or viral force
might be sought in the perennially irresolvable issue of the nature of
consciousness. How is it that you, a pile of meat, are able to have
conscious experience and awareness of the world? How does awareness or
feelings (qualia) arise from matter? This is another case of a
convenient but false distinction in our language producing an
unsolvable philosophic problem. The simplest way to clear up the whole
matter at once is to recognize that consciousness in inherent in
matter. This was probably common knowledge throughout most of human
history, and survives in contemporary belief systems termed
“animist”. Excellent and rigorous work on this subject has
been done by University of Glasgow chemist A.G. Cairns-Smith. Two of
his books are recommended: Evolving the Mind (1996) and Secrets of the
Mind (1999). Many naturalists and thinkers have speculated on a sort of
rudimentary consciousness pervading all matter. The growing forms of
crystals and ice have always proved suggestive to pansophists and the
alchemically inclined. The “rationalist” delusion that
matter is dead serves to blind us to the rampant viral parasitism of
technological systems.
Technology, like all other arrangements of matter/energy, has a sort of
living essence which seeks to grow and reproduce itself. What is
important is for us to recognize that technology is not “just a
tool”. Far from it. Technology is more properly thought of as a
rudimentary but powerful life form that we have created. It has no
conscious, centralized mind, or single source of agency, but it
nevertheless seeks to grow and reproduce like any other organism.
Because of its viral nature, it must rely on parasitical relations to
produce copies of itself. It may be compared to common “invasive
species” or “weeds” such as purple loosestrife,
Himalayan blackberry, Marine toads, humans, bindweed etc…There
is no cabal of underworld figures promoting the growth of crabgrass,
nor is there such installing CCTV cameras everywhere. Both are examples
of organized, living systems seeking to expand and dominate their
environment. The difference is that technology requires a host species.
Should we embrace technology as a new life form on our planet, or seek
to violently extirpate it as a parasitic,
viral, cancerous growth that
enslaves and controls us, preying with mindless avidity on our
energies? I incline to the latter view. Currently, our society seems to
be totally unaware of the living, autonomous nature of the machine
virus, although hints abound in certain parts of popular culture. This
life form, technology, is about at the level of a virus. It can
reproduce only with the aid of much more complex organisms
(industrialized, domesticated humans), and the process of its
reproduction is extremely toxic to its host. Cancer, extremely rare in
the preindustrial world, now strikes nearly everyone, should they live
long enough. Pollution, schizophrenia, autism, monstrous deformities,
appalling environmental pollution, destruction and degradation, the
mass extinction of species, and tragic impoverishment, are all symptoms
of total infestation by the machine virus. It has caused us to
reproduce far beyond our natural limits, spamming the environment with
redundant copies, while attendant wars and atrocities inevitably ensue.
Furthermore, almost all our waking hours are devoted to ministering to
and fostering it. The entire urban environment has become a macrocosmic
reflection of a circuit board or a cancerous growth. Monoculture and an
autistic intolerance for novelty are characteristic of the fascist,
impoverished, schizophrenic, star-trek machine reality. People travel
around in huge exoskeletal, insectoidal armored pods, filled with
explosive supercarcinogens extracted from deep underground. Children
and newborns sprout horrific, squamous, festering growths, gnarled
masses of confused tissue, teeth and boneless hairballs. They sit
staring at clothes tossing in the dryer, memorizing phonebooks. The sad
and paltry improvements that technology affords us are but the poisoned
bait it uses to extend its mindless tentacles into every aspect of our
mental and physical reality. These swiftly discarded baubles, and
their voluminous packaging, are soon reduced to mountainous
undifferentiated piles of useless trash which surround us like the
gruesome, putrescent remains of a zombie feast.
Anything created exerts a compulsive and fascinating influence on its
creator. Through a sort of feedback, technology exercises a vampiric
effect, whereby its creators are enthralled into its service. Technical
metaphors invade current speech, and the whole of society is engineered
to encourage the total technodomination of leisure and wildness.
Walking at night, one sees hard-bodied, skinny persons treading away,
strapped into exercise machines in the brightly illuminated interiors
of suburban gyms, their transport pods parked outside. The stars and
galaxies, once visible from the dark hearts of great cities, are no
longer to be seen. The effective removal of the stars from human visual
experience is perhaps the cruelest and subtlest trick of the machine
virus. Black exhaust spews everywhere, illuminated by lamps of metal
halides and mercuric vapors. An incessant, inescapable vibration
pervades everything, emanating from florescent lights, computers, leaf
blowers, jet skis, refrigerators, ventilation systems, lawn mowers,
industrial vacuum cleaners, traffic and manifold devices. Listen. Can
you hear it now?
Those who argue that technology is merely an inert, neutral thing, to
be used as we see fit, could not be more sadly, pathetically and
totally deluded. The toll of homage that machines exert is paid in the
form of the energy and the attention that we exert while ministering to
their needs, or when being supposedly “entertained”.
Machines are energy vampires. Almost all of the work we perform goes to
support the machines and technologies that render the work necessary in
the first place.
Taking all of this into consideration, what I thus advocate is not so
much a random, destructive rampage against all technological devices,
as the dawning of a clear understanding of what they really are.
Consider that parasitism is a universal, ubiquitous phenomenon in
Biology, arising in diverse profusion everywhere systems interact. With
this in mind, perhaps try taking a machine apart. Explore its innards
and see how lifelike it is. Play with it. Make art from wreckage.
How much of your time is spent with machines? How often, and in what
contexts, do you ever set foot on a surface which has not been
constructed or extruded by a mechanical device?
As a human being, you are heir to an innate joy in freedom and wildness
deriving from spiritual exaltation and vast potentials of awareness.
Technology and its gangs of thuggish minions, -enslaved, cubical bound
drones, administrators, mobsters, functionaries, teachers, doctors,
police and politicians are all operating against that inheritance in
you. The most effective way to fight them is not to mail them
explosives, but to simply refuse to enter their reality. By removing
your thought and personal energy, the real nature of which is immense
and unknowable, you inflict more damage on the machine virus than boxes
of bullets, or the cunningest of bombs.
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Bleuler, Eugen. Dementia Praecox, International University Press, 1950.
Breggin, Peter. Electroshock-Its brain Disabling Effect. Springer, 1979
Cairns-Smith, A.G..Secrets of the Mind, Copernicus, 1999.
Cairns-Smith, AG. Evolving the Mind. Cambridge, 1996.
De la Pena, Carolyn Thomas. The Body Electric. NYU Press, 2003.
Glass, James. Delusion. University of Chicago Press, 1985
Haslam, John. Illustrations of Madness, 1810.
Haslam, John. Observations on Madness and Melancholy, 1809.
Howells, John. The Concept of Schizophrenia, Historical Perspectives, American Psychiatric Press, 1950.
Kantor, Martin. Understanding Paranoia. Praeger 2004.
Kirby, David. Evidence of Harm-Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic. St. Martins Press, 2005.
Moroz, Marvin. An experimental Study of the Understanding of Schizophrenic Language. University of Oregon Thesis, 1962.
Niederland, William. The Schreber Case. Anylitic Press, 1984.
Paluszny. Autism. Syracuse University Press, 1979.
Tausk, Viktor. On the Origin of the Influencing Machine in Schizophrenia. 1919
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