Mahira’s Reviews > The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness > Status Update
Mahira
is on page 40 of 218
The schizophrenic is desperate, is simply without hope. I have never known a schizophrenic who could say he was loved, as a man, by God the Father or by another man. He either is God, or the Devil, or in hell, estranged from God. When someone says he is an unreal man or that he is dead, in all seriousness, expressing in radical terms the stark truth of his existence as he experiences it, that is - insanity.
— Dec 14, 2025 10:59AM
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Mahira
is on page 37 of 218
We shall suggest that it was on the basis of this exquisite vulnerability that the unreal man became so adept at self-concealment He learnt to cry when he was amused, and to smile when he was sad. He frowned his approval, and applauded his displeasure. 'All that you can see is not me,' he says to himself.
— Dec 14, 2025 10:55AM
Mahira
is on page 37 of 218
The person whom we call 'schizoid' feels both more exposed, more vulnerable to others than we do, and more isolated. Thus a schizophrenic may say that he is made of glass, of such transparency and fragility that a look directed at him splinters him to bits and penetrates straight through him. We may suppose that precisely as such he experi-ences himself.
— Dec 14, 2025 10:54AM
Mahira
is on page 37 of 218
We have our secrets and our needs to confess. We may remember how, in childhood, adults at first were able to look right through us, and into us, and what an accomplishment it was when we, in fear and trembling, could tell our first lie, and make, for ourselves, the discovery that we are irredeemably alone in certain respects, and know that within the territory of ourselves there can be only our footprints.
— Dec 14, 2025 10:54AM
Mahira
is on page 36 of 218
His whole life has been torn between his desire to reveal him-self and his desire to conceal himself. We all share this problem with him and we have all arrived at a more or less satisfactory solution.
— Dec 14, 2025 10:52AM
Mahira
is on page 36 of 218
For instance, a man tells us he is 'an unreal man', and if he is not lying, or joking, or equivocating in some subtle way, there is no doubt that he will be regarded as deluded. But, existentially, what does this delusion mean?
— Dec 14, 2025 10:51AM
But comprehension as an effort to reach and grasp him, while remaining within our own world and judging him by our own categories whereby he inevitably falls short, is not what the schizophrenic either wants or requires. We have to recognize all the time his distinctiveness and differentness, his separateness and loneliness and despair.