Socrates

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I've heard an interesting claim that Socrates suffered from Schizophrenia. It could explain some of his behavior. Is anyone else familiar with the matter?

-- John Zimny (epistemite@aol.com), May 04, 2004

Answers

I played with this on the internet a bit and found some strange sites, but here is one that might give a good lead:

http://socrates.clarke.edu/aplg0260.htm

Apparently Socrates "heard voices" which he attributed to the "daimon"--which is probably the search term that will be most productive. In any case once cannot diagnose schizophrenia on the basis of auditory hallucinations alone.

Regarding these voices, it might be interesting to understand them in terms of Julian Jaynes's analysis in The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Houghton Mifflin 1976)-- Jaynes does use Socrates as an example of possession, which is the first stage of breakdown of the bicameral mind.

Many of the Socratic dialogues are available online. Try the Project Gutenberg website and search for Plato. I suspect Phaedrus is one of the relevant dialogues.

www.gutenberg.net

-- Hendrika Vande Kemp (hendrika@cox.net), May 05, 2004.


No sooner had I read the description in the post concerning Socrate's "voices" that I remembered the hypothesis of the "bicameral mind". A few lines below, Dr. Vande Kemp made a reference to it. Sadly, I have only been able to read something about it in a couple of History of Psychology. Anyone could point me some references to it?

-- Ricardo Marcos Pautassi (rpautassi@immf.uncor.edu), May 07, 2004.

I think it is very close to ridiculous to believe that Socrates was schizophrenic. No schizophrenic could possibly have functioned as Socrates did in his socitey. He was a renowned member of the military in his youth. In his middle adulthood he was a prominent member of a citizen commission investigating an important naval defeat (reportedly the only member of the commission to argue that the commanders were not at fault). He publicly spoke out against the tyranical government that took over Athens after its defeat by Sparta. His arguments were, by most accounts, devastatingly logical (not exactly the "disordered thinking" characteristic of schizophrenics).

It is not clear what the "daimon" that he reportedly spoke of at his trial was, exactly, but there is no reason to believe it was any more psychpathological than when people say that a "little voice" told them something or other. In all probability it was a "façon de parler" for things that were matters of strong conviction for him rather than a literal report of having hallucinated voices.

As for Julian Jaynes' theory of the bicameral mind: (1) no one I know of who is qualified to comment with expertise on the preclassical Greek era believes that Jaynes was correct about this, (2) Socrates lived after the age in which even Jaynes believed people were dominated by bicameral minds.

-- Christopher Green (cgreen@chass.utoronto.ca), May 09, 2004.


It is hypothesised that socrates experienced auditory hallucinations, but not necessarily in the way in which people nowadays experience them. Rather than being classed as mentally ill, socrates was thought of as gifted as he could communicate with the Gods - or the divine as it is often referred to. Read "voices of reason, voices of insanity" by Ivan Leudar and Philip thomas for accounts of how Socrates and achilles could have experienced hallucinations.

-- Vicky callaghan (vickiec27@msn.com), March 15, 2005.

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