The psychotic does not merely think he sees four blue bivalves with floppy wings wandering up the wall; he does see them. An hallucination is not, strictly speaking, manufactured in the brain; it is received by the brain, like any 'real' sense datum, and the patient act in response to this to-him-very-real perception of reality in as logical a way as we do to our sense data. In any way to suppose he only 'thinks he sees it' is to misunderstand totally the experience of psychosis.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that hallucinations are genuine experiences for those who have them, not mere figments of imagination.
Philip K. Dick illustrates the reality of psychosis by asserting that hallucinations are perceived as real by the individual experiencing them. He argues that these perceptions, while not shared with others, are as valid and impactful as any common sensory experience, thus highlighting a profound misunderstanding of psychosis if one believes that the person merely 'thinks' they see their hallucinations rather than truly perceiving them.
In practice
During a discussion about mental health, this quote can be used to emphasize the importance of understanding the experiences of individuals with psychosis.
We are living in a computer-programmed reality, and the only clue we have to it is when some variable is changed, and some alteration in reality occurs. We have the overwhelming impression that we were reliving the present - deja vu.
Don't try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.
On some other world, possibly it is different. Better. There are clear good and evil alternatives. Not these obscure admixtures, these blends, with no proper tool by which to untangle the components.
"Do you have information that there's an android in the cast? I'd be glad to help you, and if I were an android would I be glad to help you?" "An android," he said, "doesn't care what happens to another android. That's one of the indications we look for." "Then," Miss Luft said, "you must be an android."
The universe is information and we are stationary in it, not three dimensional and not in space or time.
A man is an angel that has gone deranged.
There's an old saying that applies to me: you can't lose a game if you don't play the game. (Act 1, scene 4)
Language comes first. It's not that language grows out of consciousness, if you haven't got language, you can't be conscious.
I'm one of those people that you have to keep your eye on or I'll wander off into the woods and forget to come back.
All knowledge that is about human society, and not about the natural world, is historical knowledge, and therefore rests upon judgment and interpretation. This is not to say that facts or data are nonexistent, but that facts get their importance from what is made of them in interpretation… for interpretations depend very much on who the interpreter is, who he or she is addressing, what his or her purpose is, at what historical moment the interpretation takes place.
Whether we eat, sleep, work, play, whatever we do life contains dissatisfaction, pain. If we enjoy pleasure, we are afraid to lose it; we strive for more and more pleasure or try to contain it. If we suffer pain we want to escape it. We experience dissatisfaction all the time. All activities contain dissatisfaction or pain, continuously.
God uses lust to impel men to marry, ambition to office, avarice to earning, and fear to faith. God led me like an old blind goat.
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