b) A. J. Deikman also sees a kinship between the psychotic and the mystic:
'One of the puzzling phenomena of psychosis is that of the mystical state preceding or marking the onset of many cases of acute schizophrenia. . . . the specific configurations of these states vary from case to case but they share basic features: marked heightening of sense perception; a feeling of communion with people, the world, God; intense affective response; and blurring of perceptual and conceptual boundaries. First person accounts of this type of psychotic experience are strikingly similar to reports of sensate mystical experience and suggest a similar process. In terms of the bimodal model, the experience is one of a sudden, sharp, and extreme shift to the receptive mode: decreased self-object differentiation, heightened sensory intake, and nonverbal, nonlogical thought process.'
'Both mystical and psychotic states appear to have arisen
out of a situation in which the individual has struggled with a
desperate problem, has come to a complete impasse, and given up
hope, abandoned the struggle in despair. [italics added: My
experience does not verify this phrase.] For the mystic, what
emerges from the 'cloud of unknowing' or the 'dark night of the
soul' is an ecstatic union with God or Reality. For the psychotic
person, the world rushes in but does not become integrated in the
harmony of mystico unio or satori . Instead, he creates a delusion
to achieve a partial ordering and control.'
A. J. Deikman, Bimodal Consciousness, Archives of
General Psychiatry , 25 (Dec 1971), 481-489.