Perception, Part II

I had been fully planning to cover perception again, but the more I mull it over, the more I perceive that it is a bigger concept than anything I am able to wrap my head around. It can be looked at from way too many angles, and I do not have the time, intellect, or the education to handle it. Maybe if I were writing a thesis . . . When I saw and listened to three floridly psychotic patients today, I realized that my idea of perception was going to cover only the roughly eighty-five percent of us who fall into the "normal" range and not people such as these who have gross misperceptions. Schizophrenia is a brain disease that affects about one half of one percent of people worldwide. The skewed perceptions in these schizophrenic men are based on brain chemistry and not choice. The only way for them to possibly come closer to the "real world" is by correcting their brain chemistry via antipsychotic medications, not by therapy or an act of the will. I believe that perception in the "normal" person is mostly influenced by experiences and values, and that the majority of us can work at changing our perceptions if we decide the ones we have do not lead to happiness. Milton wrote, "The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven." Things are what we think they are. As a man thinks, so he is. Yet thoughts can be changed and the mind renewed.