MacCruiskeen wrote:c2w, I honestly have no idea what it might mean to say that someone "looks schizophrenic", unless it means that he looks heavily drugged. Of course, anyone designated "schizophrenic" usually is heavily drugged, especially in the USA, and most especially after 48 hours in solitary confinement as a murder suspect, watched over only by cops, warders and prison psychiatrists.
He looks heavily drugged, all right; i.e., absent, dazed, anaesthetized, apathetic, completely out of it. At times he can barely keep his eyes open. He looks like an empty shell.
"He seems to be nodding off."
I read somewhere that he had taken Vicodin, in which case it might make sense if he seemed to be nodding
out (ie -- if he was a scrip junkie). But that's not even speculation, let alone a hypothesis. It's just a thought crossing my mind more or less at random.
ADVISORY: If you think the following is too long, DON'T READ IT.
But to answer your question: It means nothing to say that someone looks schizophrenic, in any literal sense. You can't actually tell who someone is or why he/she did anything simply by looking at him/her, even when you have a closer and more comprehensive view than we (you and I) do of Holmes. So.
Point of Clarification One:I didn't actually mean that "looks" literally. I guess I just didn't feel comfortable saying that he
was schizophrenic, both on the same grounds (except more so, by a factor of approximately infinity) and others, including but not limited to:
Point of Clarification Two:I suppose that I'd hold that the word "schizophrenic" means more than nothing for strictly utilitarian communication purposes, in that it's commonly understood by pretty much everybody to mean (among other things) "subject to bouts of psychosis of unknown origin and etiology (typically though not always starting in young adulthood for males) that frequently occur in conjunction with a number of other, preexisting features and characteristics -- such as social isolation, an unemotive manner, a preoccupation with imaginary realms that are, in some way, kinda fantastical -- that not only aren't, in themselves, pathologically abnormal attributes in anybody (let alone in a male adolescent) but actually very fucking common."
But I wouldn't go a whole lot further than that without some pretty fucking rigorously quantified, qualified and specifically detailed elaboration wrt exactly what I was saying and why I was saying it. Because (among other things) even the AP-fucking-A wouldn't, couldn't and doesn't, as far as its official position on the matter goes. Granted, a lot of its members ("psychiatrists") do. Maybe most of them. And, strictly in the arena of clinical practice, probably virtually all of them. Frequently with tragic consequences. Which are (also frequently) the natural and foreseeable result of a horrendous, reprehensible, and callous disregard on the clinician's part for the welfare of the vulnerable people who end up in (what's supposed to be) his or her care.
But, you know. It's very difficult to
speak to*** that type of affair in general terms, while still saying anything at all that's meaningful, cant-free and non-sanctimonious.
So. Moving right along.
Point of Clarification Three:I guess I just thought that "schizophrenic" had the considerable advantage of being commonly understood to mean what I just finished saying, while being only one word long. Which seemed to me to greatly outweigh the (in this case) relatively minor disadvantage of its also connoting "condition of bio-psycho-social origin that is (or maybe "should be"?) responsive to medical treatment of some kind. Though not necessarily (or even probably) to the exclusion of all other things."
(In this case, "relatively minor" because I didn't particularly mean or not mean that. BTW.)
Point of Clarification Four: Seriously, MacC, my friend. I really only meant something so simple and uncontroversial that it practically defies clarification. But what the hell. I'll give it a try. When I said
He just looks schizophrenic to me.
what I meant was:
This young man's demeanor and actions appear to me to be consistent with something very sad and painful that I'm familiar with in other people -- some of whom I've known well and others of whom I know casually -- for which I have no explanation, although I wish very much that I did. Because the necessity of living with the lack of one is an almost intolerably painful thing to acknowledge, under the circumstances. As it is under many, many others.
However, since this isn't actually about either me or my feelings to any very significant degree, I don't really have any excuse for letting my personal need for an explanation bumrush me into saying that I do know or can see one that's much more elaborate or much less uncertain than that, when (in fact) I don't and can't. Apart from the pleasures of self-indulgence. Which isn't much of an excuse here, as already noted.
And that was about it.
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Note for Record, Superfluous, Confidential to MacC:
I take what (just for convenience's sake) I guess I'll call "mental-health-related concerns" pretty fucking seriously. And whenever that applies, it would really just be a fatal act against self-interest for me to lull myself into thinking that I knew or saw a whole lot more than nothing about the object of my interest, for me personally. I've never gotten anywhere I wished to go when I started out at "I know." Or, ftm, gotten a whole lot further than the mirror (figuratively speaking) when I started out at "I want to know" as opposed to "I want to find out."
So. It's not like I enjoy this. But I usually try to make some infinitely repeating form of "There's something I don't know. What is it?" my default starting point for stuff that I don't understand but seriously wish that I did. For (roughly) the reasons stated above, that's (roughly) what "looks schizophrenic" connotes to me. But that could just be me. And frankly, I kind of hope that it is. Because it's a mind-bogglingly boring concept and/or approach. It just happens to work for me.
However, fwiw, ^^that's truly and essentially all I really intended to say, honey.
I can't honestly claim that I said it, obviously. But I wasn't actually trying to. I was just trying to say something very basic (maybe crude) that didn't starkly and actively contradict it.(
I'm so sorry. But you asked!)
***
.... although, that could turn around.... or not. 
