Activist Writing from Chapter 18

November, 1987

        SHOW US that we’re REAL – and I do mean WE – not what YOU think we are according to the DSM III or what you think we SHOULD be or what you’d LIKE for us to be.  For something to move, it has to have a starting point, and some of us have no place from which to start, our “knot of energy” isn’t concentrated enough; it’s still too diffuse. 
       You don’t want people to STAY psychotic, then allow the sacred in them, the spirit in them, that energy in them or that’s coming through them, the REAL, to come out.   And it can’t come out if you’re pushing against it which is what most people are doing.  Each of us has a lamp inside, perhaps waiting to be turned on, our own candle to be lit so the light can shine from the inside out. 
        (Interesting, since I’m hearing about the latest ideas on consciousness and light.)) 
       But most people are still looking for THEIR reflection, trying to put THEIR world (since there is no objective world) into US, saying, “You don’t have any reason to feel that way,” “It’s just your imagination,” “That’s nonsense,” “I know what’s best for you,” whether it’s mother or psychiatrist, saying over and over and over, “YOU ARE NOT REAL!” 
        Some of “us” are standing up in meetings with professionals in mental health and saying, “We have found some things that work for us.”  Not one person has bothered to ask, “What worked? A friend recently had an article published in a newspaper about some alternatives with which to approach “mental illness.” He was not identified in it as ever having been diagnosed “schizophrenic” or that he had found these approaches to be helpful.  (So have I.)  He has already received two letters from mental health professionals, one working on her doctorate, saying, “Obviously, you know nothing about mental illness!” That’s scary!  People like THAT are going to HELP us?! 
       I’m trying to make a connection between words and real experience but the mental health profession is deaf and can’t hear the Machine Age grinding to a halt!  I have been through the fire and I’m coming back to tell what the fire FEELS like but nobody is interested because it doesn’t validate THEM.  WHO is schizoid?  WHO is not sure of their existence? 
       How much input into psychiatric theory of schizophrenia has come from subjective experience or has it all been deduced from the outside, by the OBSERVER?