Schizophrenia: Not a laugh a minute, but salvageable

My son Chris and I have tickets to see Jerry Seinfeld this week and consequently I’ve been giving some serious thought to the lighter side of life and what makes things funny. My first reaction many, many years ago to seeing a Seinfeld episode was, ‘But this show is about nothing!’ I was used to watching sitcoms and his show broke that formulaic mode. It wasn’t what I was expecting. But once I got it (whatever “it” was), I loved it.

In 2009, Benedict Carey wrote an article the New York Times titled, How Nonsense Sharpens The Intellect.  Carey wrote about experiences that violate all logic and expectation. Kierkegaard called it “…a sensation of the absurd.” The article goes on to say that “…at best, the feeling is disorienting. At worst, it’s creepy… Now a study suggests that, paradoxically, this same sensation may prime the brain to sense patterns it would otherwise miss — in mathematical equations, in language, in the world at large.”

According to the article, “…the brain evolved to predict, and it does so by identifying patterns. When those patterns break down — as when a hiker stumbles across an easy chair sitting deep in the woods, as if dropped from the sky — the brain gropes for something, anything that makes sense.

Our minds may retreat to a familiar ritual, like checking equipment. But it may also turn its attention outward, the researchers argue, and notice, say, a pattern in animal tracks that was previously hidden. The urge to find a coherent pattern makes it more likely that the brain will find one.”

Does that chair in the forest analogy remind you of our groping to make sense out of non-sense that happens to us when schizophrenia is dropped from the sky upon us?

I’m here to make the case that by taking more of a comedian’s cynical worldview parents can make the most of the disruptive change that schizophrenia brings about. Comedians like Jerry Seinfeld identify and exploit patterns in human behavior. They seize on the absurd and run with it. They make us laugh!

The best comedy is not logical but contains threads of patterns of behavior that are familiar to most of us (fear of being different or inadequate, fear of not being understood, fear of something foreign and new, etc.) You want to make the most of this journey of change? Enjoy it, mine it for the material, become as cynically aware of human nature as comedians are, because, like most of us who find ourselves in this theater of the absurd, fear is what drives us all.

Before I get to the lighter side of madness, I’d like to share a pet peeve of mine: People who put the Serious in Serious Mental Illness.

People who are so Serious about mental illness that they want everyone else to be unhappy. “My neighbor got casseroles when she was undergoing kidney dialysis. Where were my casseroles when my son was in the hospital with a Serious Mental Illness?” I want to scream “this is not about you, sweetie!” The egocentric mother wants a full freezer, obviously, but knows she isn’t going to get it so she’ll settle for sympathy.

Another pet peeve of mine is READ MORE