PSYCHO.TXT Hypothesis: How the brain works This document is deliberately written as a hypothesis rather than as a claim about how everybody else's brain works. I only have direct access to my own brain. I therefore distinguish carefully between: 1. what I directly remember experiencing; 2. my interpretation of those experiences; 3. hypotheses about the mechanism producing them; and 4. claims about other people or institutions. The purpose of this document is to explain numerous hospitalizations and, in particular, to document a possible mechanism by which my brain generated actions that I experienced as suggestions about "what to try next". THE CENTRAL HYPOTHESIS My hypothesis is that my conscious mind can assign a problem to my subconscious, and that my subconscious can then generate candidate actions or experiments for the conscious mind to consider. The subconscious is therefore not being treated as an oracle. A suggestion generated by the subconscious is a proposal to test, not a guarantee that the proposal is correct. The proposed process is: CONSCIOUS | | identifies a problem and asks for an explanation v SUBCONSCIOUS | | generates a possible action or experiment v CONSCIOUS | | decides whether to act v REAL WORLD | | produces consequences v OBSERVATION | | exposes agreement or disagreement with the existing model v MODEL REVISION The important point is that the world, rather than the subconscious, is the source of the external test. I do not claim from this process that the subconscious is "right". I am not even treating "right" and "wrong" as intrinsic properties of a subconscious process. The relevant question is whether a generated suggestion produces useful information when tested against reality. THE PROBLEM I WAS TRYING TO SOLVE With the benefit of hindsight, I now describe myself as a pioneering "Final Auditor". I was testing the integrity of my own institutions. I needed to be able to explain why someone like Beazley could openly support Saddam's rape rooms and not get called out for it. Something was fundamentally wrong with my model of society. I was therefore not merely trying to acquire information. I was trying to identify a failure in the system that was supposed to distinguish acceptable from unacceptable behaviour. This is my interpretation of the purpose of the activity. It should not be confused with an independently established explanation of my mental state. THE ROLE OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS I believe my subconscious had been tasked by my conscious to figure out why our societies were fundamentally corrupt. My subconscious then offered suggestions about "what to try next". This formulation is intentional. I am not claiming that the subconscious possessed a complete explanation. I am not claiming that every suggestion was sensible. I am not claiming that a suggestion was morally or factually correct merely because it originated subconsciously. The proposed role is narrower: PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION | v SUBCONSCIOUS PROPOSAL GENERATION | v CONSCIOUS DECISION | v EXPERIMENT / ACTION | v REALITY CHECK This would explain why an apparently strange action can nevertheless have a function within a larger process of model testing. THE SANTA CLAUS EPISODE I cannot remember all the previous hospitalizations, but I do remember the most recent one. I had received a suggestion from my subconscious to put on my Santa Claus costume and walk around the large block to stake a claim to the title. Afterwards I asked for a relative to turn up because I was going to clear her debts, as Santa Claus. I was shocked when this could not be arranged. That experience shattered my worldview. In other words, I encountered a result that did not fit my existing mental image of how the world worked, and I needed to understand the discrepancy. My subconscious then suggested that I make a big scene about it. I said "fuck the Philippines", even though I knew that what was happening was not anything to do with the Philippines as a country. I deliberately pushed it. The important observation here is not that the Santa Claus proposal was "correct". The important observation is that the proposal led to an interaction with the real world that exposed a mismatch between my expectations and what actually happened. That distinction matters because the hypothesis is about proposal generation and reality testing, not subconscious omniscience. OBSERVATION VERSUS INTERPRETATION The Santa Claus episode illustrates why this document must distinguish data from interpretation. Directly remembered: * I experienced a suggestion to put on the Santa Claus costume. * I acted on that suggestion. * I expected a particular interaction involving a relative. * That interaction could not be arranged. * I experienced this as a shattering of my worldview. * I then experienced another suggestion to make a big scene. * I deliberately pushed the "fuck the Philippines" statement despite knowing that the event was not actually about the Philippines as a country. Interpretation: * My conscious mind had identified a problem in its model. * My subconscious was generating proposed actions. * The failed Santa Claus interaction exposed a mismatch in the model. Hypothesis: * A conscious/subconscious feedback process of this kind may explain at least some of the otherwise puzzling actions associated with my hospitalizations. The third category is the one that remains to be tested. THE PSYCHIATRIC SYSTEM AS AN AUDIT TARGET My wife wanted me to go to hospital, and I thought that was fine. I had nothing to hide. I expected to explain to the doctor what had happened and for the matter to be resolved through discussion. My experience was different. The clinicians appeared to be primarily interested in medication. I experienced the interaction as a short assessment followed by pressure toward medication rather than an extended attempt to understand and debate my account. That experience is part of my evidence. However, the strongest defensible claim from this document is about my experience of the psychiatric system, not about every psychiatric professional or every psychiatric treatment. The broader conclusion that psychiatry is a "snake oil profession" is my interpretation of these experiences. It is not an independently established fact demonstrated by this document. The more useful Final Auditor question is therefore: Did the system adequately test my explanation of what was happening? and, more generally: What evidence does a psychiatric system use to distinguish competing explanations of a person's behaviour, and how does it determine whether its intervention has worked? That question is testable in a way that a blanket condemnation is not. MEDICATION This is why I have insisted that I do not want to be on medication. I do not believe the experiences documented here provide a rational basis for forcing that decision in the absence of a satisfactory explanation of what the medication is intended to change and how that change will be evaluated. At the same time, this document does not establish that medication is never appropriate, nor that medication cannot help a person. The Final Auditor position should be: State the proposed problem. State the proposed intervention. State the evidence supporting the intervention. State the expected outcome. State what would count as failure. Observe the result. Update the model. A treatment decision should therefore remain distinguishable from a general theory about psychiatry. FINAL AUDITOR The term "Final Auditor" describes the role I believe I was performing. An ordinary participant may accept the institution's model and attempt to operate within it. An auditor asks whether the institution's model corresponds to reality. A Final Auditor goes further: when the existing institutions themselves cannot satisfactorily explain the discrepancy, the auditor treats the institution as the object requiring explanation. That creates a difficult problem. The auditor can be wrong. The auditor's own model can be defective. The auditor's proposed experiment can fail. The auditor can misinterpret the result. Therefore the Final Auditor cannot be defined simply as someone who challenges institutions. The stronger definition is: A Final Auditor is someone willing to subject both the institution's model and their own model to the same demand for evidence. That final condition is essential. THE SELF-AUDIT REQUIREMENT If I am going to call myself a Final Auditor, I must audit my own theory. That means I must distinguish: "This happened to me" from: "This is what caused it" and from: "This is how everybody's brain works". The first may be firsthand evidence. The second is a hypothesis. The third requires evidence beyond my own experience. The same distinction applies to institutions. If a psychiatric clinician proposes an explanation, I can ask what evidence supports it. If I propose an alternative explanation, I must accept the same question. The Final Auditor therefore has no special exemption from falsification. WHAT WOULD FALSIFY THIS HYPOTHESIS? The hypothesis would be weakened if a careful examination of my experiences showed that the supposed subconscious proposals were better explained by some other mechanism. It would also be weakened if the proposals did not function as candidate actions or experiments, or if the apparent conscious/subconscious sequence could not account for the observations. Most importantly, I must not interpret every surprising event as evidence for the hypothesis. If an event contradicts the hypothesis, that contradiction must remain visible. Otherwise the auditing process becomes circular: "The hypothesis explains the evidence." "What about evidence against it?" "That also proves the hypothesis." That is not auditing. A hypothesis that can explain everything and be contradicted by nothing has ceased to function as a useful hypothesis. CONCLUSION The central claim of this document is deliberately modest. I have direct access only to my own brain. I have experienced what I understood as suggestions from my subconscious about "what to try next". I believe these suggestions occurred in the context of attempts by my conscious mind to understand problems in my model of society. My hypothesis is that the subconscious can function as a generator of candidate actions or experiments in response to a problem assigned by the conscious mind. The generated suggestion does not need to be correct. It only needs to be a proposal that can be tested against reality. The Santa Claus episode is an example of the kind of event from which I developed this interpretation: an internally generated proposal led to an interaction with the world that exposed a mismatch in my existing model. The broader psychiatric conclusions require separate evidence. The most important methodological consequence is therefore this: DO NOT CONFUSE THE PROPOSAL WITH THE TEST. The subconscious may generate the proposal. Reality supplies the test. The Final Auditor's job is to observe the result and be willing to revise the model - including the Final Auditor's own model.