The Reverend George Trosse  (1631–1713)

Autobiography Includes Spontaneous Remission

Subliminal Distraction                                               
How were Subliminal Distraction mental break discovered?
Why does the mental break happen?                       
Psychotropic drugs                                                   
You are here -->     Spontaneous remissions                                         

                        Return to page list, Home                                                                        

Spontaneous remissions were common in the 16/1700's.

Where are they now?

Information is available in scholarly books on the history of mental illness to show that

400 years ago in London some practitioners, without drugs or modern therapy,

claimed a 90% success rate treating mental illness.

How is that possible if today mental illness is considered a life long  unresolvable  problem?

The answer to that question is the subject of this site.

If you found this page from a search engine the story starts on the Home page.

Spontaneous remissions were common in the 17th and 18th century. But why didn't more recover?

This period illustration, 1838, shows typical activities in the common room in a madhouse in London, circa 1600's to late 1700's.

It is intended to be a caricature of the madhouse situation but accurately depicts conditions there.

Note that activities such as drawing, reading, or playing table games would require full mental investment and allow Subliminal Distraction exposure for those performing such activities.

It doesn't matter that these patients already suffer psychotic behaviors. The additional exposure would prevent remission of Subliminal Distraction symptoms.

This would explain why some recovered and others didn't. Those who recovered didn't have behaviors to prolong symptoms.

Today art is still used as a tool to occupy the mind of someone with psychiatric symptoms. No precautions are taken for peripheral vision blocking protection, aka Cubicle Level Protection. Artists through the centuries such as Vincent van Gogh had severe psychiatric problems.

Zelda Fitzgerald, 1920-1940, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald died in a mental institution fire while confined after a mental breakdown.  There had been more than one such confinement.   Although she is known for her writing she was also an artist. No one has evaluated the timing of her breakdowns with the production of painting, and sculpture. When they lived in Montgomery, Alabama there were seven people in the two story house. It is now the only F. Scott Fitzgerald museum.

The Reverend George Trosse is one of the most often discussed figures in the history of mental illness. His experience is self explained in writings including an autobiography published in 1714 after his death.

Much of the historical discussion hinges on attempting to determine what his psychiatric problem was. 

Born  October 25, 1631, of wealthy parents he wrote the autobiography when he was 61.  Confined to madhouses three times he recovered each time, left the institution only to have the psychiatric symptoms, hallucinating and hearing voices, begin again. He recounts hearing voices in the autobiography. On one occasion he reported he stopped his symptoms by traveling abroad.

Those spontaneous remissions and relapses point to Subliminal Distraction causation for his mental distress. 

His last recovery was permanent.  He lived the remainder of his life without mental illness.

The first incident of hearing voices recounted was preceded by playing cards and dice in ale houses. If that was the only source of exposure he would have had hyper sensitivity for Subliminal Distraction exposure.  (More to follow.)

That brings to mind an incident in Hong Kong where there were more than 20 cases diagnosed as Mahjong epilepsy during a Mahjong tournament. Mahjong had not caused the seizures before nor has it since. The inference to be drawn is that the incident was Subliminal Distraction caused by the unique placement of a few Mahjong playing tables too close together or located beside a traffic aisle. Concentrating to plan Mahjong moves supplied enough mental investment so the movement of nearby players in peripheral vision was detected to cause that outcome for a small number of players.

There was a student disappearance of a computer science major from Rice University who had a habit of playing table dungeons and dragons card games.  That information came from a friend while he was missing. He was recovered when he broke into a computer lab at UCLA. After being on suicide watch, police released him to his mother.  My contact with his family ended when they closed his missing person's site. 

The difficulty in interpretation from his writings is that they are his own view of events as he remembered them. They do not contain outside observations from eye witnesses.

There were no psychotropic drugs available in the 1600's. Treatment consisted of spinning the patient on their back in an inclined chair supported on a pole until their eyes and ears bled.

Those in madhouses were locked up and fed. Nothing would have been available similar to "treatment"  we have today.  

That means spontaneous remission recoveries could not be attributed to drug treatments or talk therapy.

Mental illness has not changed,   If spontaneous remissions happened then, where are they now?    Have you ever heard of someone's quick recovery attributed to a spontaneous remission?     ___     No, ...   recoveries at anytime are always credited to "powerful modern drugs." or successful talk therapy.

That's where the spontaneous remissions are today.   They are being claimed as success stories for drug treatment and talk therapy.

That is because psychiatrists believe, without objective evidence, they are successfully treating mental illness when someone recovers while under their treatment regime.

There are recorded success stories of recoveries from schizophrenia involving  Native American dance treatments and recoveries from diet regimens.  If you search long enough you will find many of these treatments that appeared to work.   In these cases the subjects did recover.

 But why did they recover with these odd modalities for treatment?

How is it possible that so many treatments appear to work?  The answer is that the subject was not mentally ill but having a chronic Subliminal Distraction episode mistaken for mental illness.

There is not nor can there be any treatment for a Subliminal Distraction episode.  It must spontaneously remit when exposure is stopped.      When either the treatment regime or accidental changes in their situation removes a subject the source of Subliminal Distraction exposure their symptoms remit.    It's just that simple.

If you closely examine these "modern" treatments that claim success for  "powerful psychotropic drugs," there is no "testable objective evidence" that any drug, talk therapy, or bizarre modality actually does anything except cause side effects.   There is no way to "open the box" to determine what happened to cause a remission. Such evidence cannot exist.

No one knows what mental illness is. Yet those in white lab coats will argue that mental illness can be alleviated by drug or talk therapy treatments.

There have been some horrific treatments foisted on the mentally ill even in our modern times. The belief that "hidden infection" caused mental illness resulted in the complete removal of teeth and operations to remove large parts of intestines in a New Jersey state hospital. The horrific treatments only stopped when the doctor in charge of the state hospital had a psychotic break revealing the nonsense he had perpetrated on others.  After the fact investigations by state officials revealed there had been a huge death rate from these massive operations.   (Book reference and links to follow.) 

Google "Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill"  Robert Whitaker.

"The history told in Mad in America will surprise many readers. In its review of the scientific literature, the book reveals that long-term outcome studies  of antipsychotics regularly showed that the drugs increased the likelihood that people diagnosed with schizophrenia would become chronically ill. The book also investigates the marketing of the new atypical antipsychotic medications in the 1990s, and uncovers the scientific fraud at the heart of that enterprise."

robertwhitaker.org

I am not the only person to tell this story. But I am the only one to explain what is happening and what the causation for behaviors believed to be mental illness is.

Furthermore much of what we believe is mental illness can be circumstantially connected to Subliminal Distraction exposure.   No one can open the box, look inside the mind, and prove any connection. But Subliminal Distraction avoidance or prevention is FREE with simple precautions.

If you have not done so go to the HOME page, start there  and follow the page links for the explanation.   

This page is being written as my health condition permits. It may be several weeks before it is complete.  There may be repetitions of text as the edit process continues.  July 23, 2017