paranoia

[Paul Mackin]

 From: Tony Elias <s_tonye at eduserv.its.unimelb.EDU.AU>

> In regard to Henry, Paul Craig's assertions that there exists some kind of
> link between paranoia and intelligence, I'm not so sure.

Well, I'm not so sure either. Was kind of mixing apples and oranges.
Tony makes a necessary distinction (see below).

Do remember a psychiatrist telling me that a friend of mine's 
(well, more than a friend or else the discussion couldn't have
taken place) high intelligence was a positive factor in the prognosis.
Something about giving the "reality principle" a chance to operate.

On the other hand, what if reality is what's driving the paranoia?
Somebody REALLY IS TRYING TO GET YOU.  (which of course they are)

					P.
Tony continues:

> I'm writing a
> thesis at the moment on paranoia and conspiracy theories as a cultual logic,
> and literary-cultural form or genre which of course pynchon has had a lot to
> do with. I'm looking at paranoia, in a psychiatric sense at the moment, and
> a lot of the literature seems to be divided. the usual "portrait of your
> average paranoid" is one of someone with relatively average intelligence,
> usually displaced such as a migrant, which would make sense in that paranoia
> seems to be the basic narrative drive I would argue of SF, throwing someone
> in new environment and letting them work their world out.
> 
> It does seem though, that those who develop the grander, more complicated
> paranoid systems are usually of a higher education level, such as Daniel
> Paul Schreber "history's most famous paranoid", access to a braoder base of
> knowledge, and bascially the development of what constiutes and conspiracy
> theory (rather than a simple - my analyst or my neighbour wants to poison me
> - people are laughing at me - paranoid suspicion). The merit of pynchon's
> paranoid narratives is his formalization of we-systems and they-systems, the
> I and the Other, replacing the question of what is a paranoid with the
> epistemological imperative of what is knowledge and how do we acquire it;
> concerns for more than just paranoids - of which, by the way, we all are.
> Andrew Dinn's point that systems drive us shouldn't be neglected, as much as
> we would like to think that isnt the way it works, that we are all a
> rational citizens of 20th-becoming-21st century.
> 
> gotta gooooo
> 
> Tony Elias