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Why is it that when a child has an imaginary friend, she's called cute, but when an adult has one, she's called crazy? One of the world's most famous experts on mental health had regular conversations with his imaginary friendas an adult. His name? Carl Jung, who readily revealed that his imaginary friend was named Philemon. |
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In some individuals, this ability to communicate with beings beyond their visible world extends beyond the imagination into the spirit realm. Mediums can do this, as do people who communicate with spirit guides or angels. And who are we to say that these unseen beings aren't real? Indeed, through the ages, mystics and prophets have been persecuted for claiming to see into realms beyond the invisible. Over the centuries, many people who talked about paranormal phenomena were imprisoned for being insane. |
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So how can we judge when someone's psychicor just plain crazy? A common symptom of pathological and schizophrenic people is their inability to combine their impressions into a healthy, whole image of reality. For example, a person with multiple personalities perceives and reflects the existence of only one character at a time. They do not recall that they have another personality aside from the one they're experiencing. Yet a healthy person has a solid center that realizes the difference between the material and unseen worlds. |
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A similar situation occurs with schizophrenics who hear voices: They cannot distinguish what they hear in their mind from the facts they see in the material world around them. Interestingly, recent research by Robert Freedman at the University of California showed that schizophrenia is attributed to a genetic brain malfunction. The experiment, using a tonal sound given twice in quick succession, found that normal people block out the second tone, while schizophrenics hear it clearly. This connection between a physical malfunction and a mental one may be another hallmark that separates mental illness from a healthy imagination or highly tuned intuition. |
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