Exploring Schizophrenia Through Astronomical Concepts: A Metaphorical Approach
Astronomy explores the positions and movements of stars, constellations, galaxies, and planets, including the sun and moon." Astronomers, in observatories for example, are able to simple microscope the night sky and parallel sight with calendric equations and analysis and these movements can offer insights into how we perceive reality. Astronomical principles can be used as metaphors to better understand mental disorders, including schizophrenia, precisely because astronomers signal positionality of stars, constellations and galaxies as the basis of perplex angles of the sun, knowing precisely when they appear, how and why they overlap, and the reasons for their orbitals. This paper argues that schizophrenia is analogous metaphorically to ways of knowing and theories pertaining to astronomy, as schizophrenic episodes or psychosis affect negatively and positively the brain’s anatomy, and causes the objects or persons to situate themselves as objects of mental disturbances.
According to analemma, the actual motion of the sun during a course of season of the year, reveals the sun’s information about altitude and all this relativity is due in part to the elongated figure 8 known as an analemma (Image A), and its relations to the celestial equation called declination. And within an analemma, the elongated figure 8 “originally used to determine the position of the sun from any location” on too the position of the sun relative to Earth’s distance from the sun during a course of a year, informs the sun’s “annual motion” and declination, being the sun is relative to the celestial equation. Astronomy research from Philip Harrington and Edward Pascuzzi include the example of an individual walking around a tree, quickly, while rotating objects around the tree, and this “orbiting” they suggest causes visual variations of the trunk and similar background objects to appear as very distant stars” (2000).
The same orbital known as analemma and declination can be used to examine schizophrenia relating to symptoms of delusions, unapologetically negative perceptions of reality thwarted by chemical imbalances in the brain such as serotonin and neurotransmitters, informing the individual that there are threats against them, that society is unsafe and threatening to one’s survival, while delusions can also visualize the radio and media as oppositional to their sanity and sending the schizophrenic individual instead constant bombardments of news and information directly through media. The individual experiencing delusions can experience forced “orbital” of the delusions in the beginning of summer and decline to a minus declination beginning of winter, as the hallucinate or “orbit” objects such as billboards, radio, television, newspaper, internet and institutions, displaying during a psychosis feeling of confusion, anxiety, paranoia, memory loss, catatonia —the rate and intensity depending on the schizophrenic individual and his or her diagnosis and treatment. If the background objects or delusions during an “orbit” are very distant stars, then this paper argues delusions more specifically schizophrenia are two very distant “stars.”
Interestingly, the “Dizzy” planet - - as astronomers refer fearlessly to Mars - -can be ‘telescopically observed’ as Mars is a world filled with “dark regions and a variety of changing surface features” derived from the Greek god of war, and the metaphors “death [and] bloodshed” as its characteristics (Harrington and Pascuzzi 2000). Similarly, a schizophrenic individual experiencing delusions can be on a ‘dizzy planet’ or sorts with “telescopic observations” that cloud perception and reality and perceptive reality at conflict during the psychosis. Examined from the Ericksonian life cycle, psychiatry positions individuals as experiencing the following identities during the life cycle: autonomy versus shame and confusion, integrity versus despair, intimacy versus isolation, and trust versus mistrust (Erickson 1998). For schizophrenia, this paper argues that such conflictual states of the life cycle are “dizzing” for the schizophrenic individual experiencing delusions from a psychosis when the delusions appears to threaten or force suicidal thinking or self-harm.
Astronomical illustrations from Harrington and Pascuzzi's analogy of orbiting a tree can help us understand how schizophrenic delusions create shifting realities for the individual. In the sky, planets move the same way, but “left” is really “east,” meaning that as the individual orbits another individual, the background or tree or bushes actually is an illusion, wherein the orbiter did not actually stop, move backward and then start toward again, but the illusion visualized the moment (Harrington and Pascuzzi 2000). Similarly, schizophrenia delusions can retrieve, ‘move’ and remove an individual from a reality and is unreal, or an illusion or sorts. If astronomers show that the individual being orbited can “overtake the friend in the orbit, then schizophrenia delusion can cause a state of an illusion.
If the schizophrenic individual is Mars and the orbiter or its path ‘illusionic’ in nature, then a type of retrograde loop is also formed. Retrograde loop is caused by Earth passing Mars in its orbit, and pushing Mars’ “westward loop” when “closest or in opposition” to Earth. Delusions can result in catatonia wherein there lies a type of metaphorically visual “retrograde loop” formed, or delusions can cause violence outbursts, a starfield in astronomy terms.
In Astronomy, the term “seeing doubles” refers to seeing stars, and can translate to the gestures and behaviors within schizophrenia delusions. Single stars are actually “double stars” and are only defined as “one or more stars orbiting another star" similar to how Earth and the other planets orbit the Sun (Harrington and Pascuzzi 2000). There are also “imposter” stars or to put simply, two stars that happen to live along the same line of sight as seen from Earth (2000). Imposter stars are termed “optical doubles,” For example, “the middle star of the handle of the Big Dipper star named Mizer is in relations to Alcor a second star” and both stars are actually double stars, however, upon further examination, astronomers conclude that both Mizer and Alcor are distant stars, nowhere to be found to each other in space, therefore form a “double orbital” (2000).
Persecutory delusions may resemble a 'double orbit,' with conflicting realities revolving around the individual, psychiatrists note, the voice heard in a schizophrenia’s mind or conscious or both could be viewed as the voice of another version of oneself or themselves the voices in relation to oneself or themselves in relation to concept or their ideal self. Persecutory delusions can occur when religious beliefs impair negatively realities intertwined with ideas about one’s ability to possess certain powers as oftentimes described in the delusion’s gestures and behaviors. Such actions lead to tremors and dyskinesia which oftentimes affect the hand constancy and motion of the individual and the side effect could be termed an “imposter” or "optical double.” The sun, stars, Mars, and its relativity and reactions to its distance can be determinants and used to give insight to ailments affecting schizophrenia, including delusions.
Astronomical concepts provide a metaphorical lens to understand the disorienting and illusionary experiences of schizophrenic delusions and perhaps upon further research can invite reasons for understanding the similar reactions in psychotropic and mood stabilizers medications used to treat schizophrenia.
Further Reading
Erikson, Erik. The Life Cycle Completed. Norton and Company, 1998.
Harrington, Philip and Edward Pascuzzi. Astronomy. Globe Pequot Press, 2000.