WHAT IS PSYCHOSIS?
A conventional definition is 'A disorder in Reality Testing and Judgment'. Psychotics are unable to place time and space on a continuum. Places, objects, boundary and time become fractured, jumbled and confused. But what is reality and what is judgment? Both are subjective. They are based on experience. Reality is a linking and amalgamation of a present experience to a previous or accepted event. Judgment monitors the bonding as acceptable or not. Reality testing and judgment are ways of coherently storing and monitoring experience. We are now postulating that the mind is forever increasing its experiences. It does so by adding onto previous experience. To do this the mind must possess a very powerful and accurate filing system. It must be able to recognize the ‘new input’ by categorizing it. Then by use of the category it is able to run a quick match. Finally it incorporates the two. The mind has a new experience .
HOW IS KNOWLEDGE STORED?
In a previous article I described how thinking and thoughts are interrelated. Briefly we postulated thoughts are mere predictions. The one to get closest to correct prediction is kept. In other words thoughts are in competition. Only the fittest survive. Initially thoughts are like buds on a tree. They store a prediction and an emotion. If the thought is maintained it can be the starting point of a new bud. It is as if it has become a twig. A twig becomes a branch. Each has its own emotion. Each has its ever present buds competing to survive. This way thinking can be done more quickly. But we are faced with a new problem. How does the sorting process work so quickly? There must be a mapping or registry. I believe that this is a fair assumption. As far as technology is concerned man tends to unconsciously imitate himself. Today information is stored by use of registries that inform where the information is. There is a similar mapping process in the brain. Our brains contain distinct areas which map sensation and muscular activity. They are called homunculi. I propose that the 'Knowledge Tree' that we are all perpetually building is ordered so to maintain spatial, temporal and experiential integrity of experience. We are capable of 'turning off' this process. We do so when we daydream or use our imagination. This is an important process that allows us to voluntarily 'place buds' in locations on the tree that otherwise would not be placed there. But this process is voluntary and can be turned on and off at will.
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