Aren’t We All a Little Psychotic?

Just the other morning, I was staring at a dead bug – a wicked looking red and black insect with wings and stingers and pincers. At least I thought it was dead. I moved my face closer and closer to get a better look at it. When I was only a few inches from it, it started buzzing, and I recoiled and yelled, “Holy….” which instantly woke my wife who was sleeping right next to me.

Yeah, it was all a dream, as starkly vivid as anything I could experience in reality, maybe even a little more real. Sure, it was merely an illusion, something my brain cooked up, but how could it seem so real and how could I accept it as being real? Isn’t that what psychosis is – seeing and hearing things that aren’t there? What was asleep in my brain that prevented me from questioning what I was seeing? What was working overtime in my brain to make me “see” such a nasty looking creature?

I’ll leave all those questions to brain and dream researchers to sort out, but the experience made me realize that we might all be a little psychotic. At least we know from our dreams that we have the capacity for psychosis. When we dream, we become delusional. We hallucinate. We see things that aren’t there and hear sounds in the midst of silence. We have no trouble accepting these dreams as normal parts of our lives.

Yet, when we encounter someone who’s experiencing psychosis, it completely baffles us. We can’t wrap our brain around the notion that while people are awake, they can see things that aren’t there and hear voices when nobody’s speaking. We can’t imagine ever experiencing such a thing even though we experience it every night when we fall asleep.