In our culture there is a belief that many people who have an acute psychotic breakdown exhibit signs of psychic ability, and conversely that if you have a psychic experience it is best not to tell anyone or they will think you are crazy.

The brain is an holistic system with only part localization of function. There are multiple causes and effects with no generalized basis. Bearing this in mind I shall show some links with some neurochemistry and specific states of consciousness.

Apart from the visionary shamanic quality of ayahuasca, it can therefore be seen as a form of self-medication for depressive psychological problems.

3. Changing our Attitude about Psychosis

1. There is doubt about the validity of the concept of schizophrenia; there is poor correlation between symptoms and diagnosis (Bentall, 1990);
2. Warner (1985), in his study of schizophrenia, has shown that it [schizophrenia] is a disease of societies with a wage economy. Material conditions mould the course and outcome of schizophrenia and influence its prevalence. The Industrial Revolution (wage economy) is linked to an increase in occurrence of schizophrenia.
   Tribal societies and those with subsistence economies do not show the same pattern of illness. When someone, usually a young person, has what we would call a psychotic breakdown there is no stigma and no loss of status. They stay within the family and extended community and do simple tasks until there is full recovery, normally within about 9 months. A low-stress household is essential for recovery; the benefits are equal to, or better than, drugs. In a Third World extended family, people recover much quicker because subsistence agriculture needs constant low-stress work from everyone in a cooperative framework.
3. Alternatively, the community considers that the person has been attacked by a bad spirit and this is a problem for everyone, so there is a communal healing ritual in which the whole village takes part. Tribal people have a world-view in which the supernatural plays a large part. Giving psychotic symptoms a supernatural element removes “blame” from the person.
   N: Can you imagine what it would be like in our society if, when someone suffered an acute psychotic attack, we all felt responsible and that it was everyone’s problem, so we all came together for healing? The strength of love and support that the person would feel!
4. Anthropological studies suggest that some epileptics and some we label psychotic are often chosen for training as shamans by tribal societies. The hallucinations and ASC’s experienced are often a prerequisite for gaining shamanic power and are interpreted as an initiatory experience. They are held by their experience to be linked in some special way with the world of spirits and psi abilities, and they gain status by becoming the shaman’s apprentice and undergoing training.

3.1. Schizotypy

There is a continuity between health and sickness, disease is not an all or none phenomenon. One can compare schizophrenia to systemic disease. As stress increases so the person suffers from the problem. Mental illnesses form the endpoints of continuously variable behavioural dimensions and these dimensions have a substantial biological basis grounded in naturally occurring individual variation in brain functioning. There is a normal “nervous type” associated with schizophrenia comparable to traits underlying other disorders; the “dispositional” aspects are inherited. This openness to stimulation, open mode of attention, links to high creativity, and has recently been found to link with psychic ability (Lawrence, 1998). Thalbourne (1997) has proposed the concept of transliminality to describe this state.

It is considered, therefore, that there may well be unrecognised psychic components in the breakdown experience of those people whom we label psychotic and also that the anthropological reports of psychic abilities being exhibited by shamans may have some foundation. And, as the research at Maimonides (Ullman et al, 1973) and since has shown, the dream and hypnagogic states of consciousness are psychic states par excellence.

5. The Changes Needed in Our Society

1. It is time we recognised the potential shaman in the psychotic. Antipsychotic drugs may be unnecessary or harmful in the treatment of many schizophrenics. We need to provide guaranteed work that is neither too demeaning nor stressful, and at the same time ensure adequate psychological support in the family and community; provide adequate material support; and challenge the stigma of mental illness in society.
   In tribal societies, healing ceremonies for psychotics are a communal process. The communal ritual procedures are a symbolic recognition that illness is a problem for the community as a whole. Any form of treatment which does not receive full community endorsement has only a limited chance of success.
2. Recognise that altered states and internal thought are the primary mode of consciousness. There is a deep need in the human psyche to experience altered states of consciousness as shown by the essential requirement for all of us to sleep and dream every night. We spend one third of our lives in this altered state of consciousness. This need is also shown by the use of psychedelics in nearly every cultures that we have any historical knowledge about!
3. Recognise the connection between psychic awareness and altered states. The psychic state seems to be an intimate aspect of this primary state of consciousness. Rather than the experience of psychic phenomena denoting mental problems, it is the inability to experience these states of consciousness that appears to be the sick state which is unique to our present day 20th century Western culture. Let us honour our psychic abilities for the gift that they are - our ability to walk between the worlds of spirit and matter.