Schizophrenia, Culture, and Technology: A brief overview

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:00]Hello everyone, CybryYamo here. Today I'm going to be talking about schizophrenia and its influence on culture and technology and vice versa.

[00:00:10]So, when most people think of schizophrenia, they think of clinical schizophrenia. Uh, this cons- The symptoms of that can be divided into three different categories: positive, disorganized, and negative symptoms.

[00:00:22]Now, the positive symptoms are what people typically think of when they think of schizophrenia. And those include hallucinations and delusions.

[00:00:30]Disorganized symptoms include things like disorganized speech and behavior, which basically means the speech is incoherent and the behavior doesn't really make much sense. And negative symptoms, uh, include things like apathy, lack of speech, um, lack of motivation, and so forth.

[00:00:48]I'm not going to go into real depth int- of clinical schizophrenia in this video because there are just so many resources about that already, and that's not the focus of this video. The focus of this video is that nowadays, schizophrenia is thought of as merely clinical, when historically, it really wasn't seen that way, at least not according to the author that I will be talking about very soon.

[00:01:13]Maybe it wasn't known as schizophrenia, but it used to be seen as more cultural.

[00:01:19]And, um, um, additionally, in different schools of thought, such as in schizoanalysis, it even takes on a more metaphysical, philosophical meaning. So, let's dive straight into this. The first book that we will be getting into is Madness and Civilization by Michel Foucault.

[00:01:36]So, according to Foucault, schizophrenia has always had cultural influence, even if it was known as madness back in the day.

[00:01:43]It was associated with water, for instance, and it used to be rejected by society, or people who were considered mad were praised as spiritual gurus.

[00:01:53]But generally, they were allowed to roam freely in the countryside.

[00:01:57]Then, asylums attempted to separate madness from society in the 19th century by containing it. And as we know, these asylums were quite abusive.

[00:02:07]However, modern psychiatry, Michel Foucault argues, isn't all that different from the asylums because, once again, instead of allowing madness to be a cultural presence, it instead pathologizes and medicalizes it. And Michel Foucault, I don't know why I keep saying his full name, Foucault, argues that this is even more a more covert way of oppressing it because, instead of seeing it as this broad, um, force that is not just in the human mind, it is instead reduced to a disorder to medicate and to treat.

[00:02:45]So, now let's get into another book called The Divided Self. And this was written by R.D. Laing, and this was a psychiatrist.

[00:02:53]And he argues that schizophrenia is more than just a chemical imbalance, like Foucault. But, instead of taking a more cultural or historical approach, Laing, uh, argues that schizophrenia is a much more psychoanalytic, uh, kind of process. So, a more internal, uh, kind of thing.

[00:03:16]He argues that schizophrenia can happen when a person has a split identity in which they put on a mask and their true identity withdraws inward. Thus, they experience ontological insecurity.

[00:03:28]This is when our identities Our identities are the basis of our understanding of the world. And when an unstable identity breaks its understanding of the foundation of how the world works. So, ontological insecurity is basically a foundational, um, right, insecurity of how the world works. You don't know the foundation of it if you don't have a solid sense of self.

[00:03:52]Thus, thought disorder emerges from this ontological insecurity. Keep the word term ontological insecurity in mind because it will be important later on.

[00:04:02]Next, we get into Anti-Oedipus by Deleuze and Guattari. And um Deleuze and Guattari did not see schizophrenia just as a psychological disorder, either, but instead they framed it metaphysically.

[00:04:14]They saw schizophrenia as what happens when desire or the flow uh the flow of what creates blocks and uh connects things. So, basically like a driving force in nature.

[00:04:30]What happens is when it's not restrained, when it's not coded, when it's not categorized, then schizophrenia emerges. And this is not necessarily clinical schizophrenia, but rather a sort of total lack of restriction.

[00:04:44]However, there is overlap with clinical schizophrenia because it sort of is the mental um uh version of the metaphysical schizophrenia, where thought has no limits and is allowed to live outside of the bounds of logic.

[00:05:00]Next, we have accelerationism, which was a thought um movement uh created by Nick Land. Now, Nick Land saw schizophrenia as a natural consequence of technological progress. Societal chaos and fragmentation was seen as desirable and as a stage beyond humanity. So, he theorized that as technology progresses, uh society becomes more and more fractured, logic becomes more and more fractured, and um schizophrenia, this metaphysical schizophrenia, emerges. And so now, we have it tied into technology.

[00:05:37]Next, let's take into account the anime Serial Experiments Lain, in which technology revolutionizes reality and thus makes it alien and confusing. The Wired being an upper layer of reality in that anime, thus causing ontological insecurity.

[00:05:53]I mean, think about it. The internet acts like another world, right? In which we are different people, in which things are abide by completely different rules.

[00:06:03]And so, it can be understandable how this can lead to ontological insecurity when your entire foundation of the world is split in two.

[00:06:11]Symptoms of schizophrenia can resemble the effects of technologies such as isolation, avolition, and like I said, ontological insecurity that we're seeing a lot nowadays.

[00:06:22]And as even our bodies and minds become cybernetic, I and as we be this technology ingrains itself into us, and as perhaps we become cyborgs, identity confusion, another major symptom of schizophrenia, also becomes relevant, as well as the issue of altered thinking potentially resembling thought disorder if uh if that is caused by uh let's say a technological implant, such as a cyber psychosis from the anime Cyberpunk Edgerunners.

[00:06:54]Lastly, we have the technological society by Jacques Ellul, which shows and argues how technology fundamentally changes the way that we behave and think.

[00:07:05]Ted Kaczynski, for example, argued that over socialization is a natural result of technological progress. So, we can see here that uh technology can affect the way that we think on a fundamental level.

[00:07:20]So, as techno- technology increases ontological insecurity, schizophrenia becomes more and more relevant in understanding baseline modern psychology.

[00:07:29]And that is part of the purpose of my channel. It is not just about clinical schizophrenia, but also how cultural and metaphysical schizophrenia is becoming more and more relevant in our worlds nowadays.

[00:07:42]So, I hope that was a good very brief overview of this, and I hope you guys enjoyed the video. Don't take it super seriously because I while I have um done research on this, I am not an expert by any means, and this is just a video to uh get people thinking. So, I hope you guys enjoyed Cyber Yell Out. Bye-bye.