Reality Grasped Wisely
What is the opposite of schizophrenia?
Cognitive scientist John Vervaeke asks students in his class to raise their hands if they are in a relationship. Then, he asks students in that group to keep their hands up if they would want to know if their partner is secretly cheating. Usually, all hands stay up. When he asks students why and points out that the information likely means a breakup, they say that they would want to know whether or not their relationship is “real.”
When I think about reality, I usually imagine the Earth floating in outer space. Reality is all the stuff that is. But, as the idea of a “real relationship” suggests, there are other aspects to reality. Relationships are not like stuff. A relationship is not a material object in physical space. When I say that an interpersonal process like a relationship is “real,” what am I saying?
Vervaeke contrasts the real with the illusory. If your partner is secretly cheating on you, then your understanding of your connection with your partner is illusory. Illusions aren’t fake in the same way nonexistent objects are. They exist as flawed understandings of life. Flawed, according to some criteria of realness. The criteria of realness are typically social psychological. Vervaeke describes them as an “agent-arena relationship.”
In the romantic relationship, the arena is defined by psychological and sociocultural boundaries. Secret cheating socioculturally violates, and secretly feeling apathetic about one’s partner psychologically violates, these boundaries (criteria of realness). If the professor informs his student that their partner is secretly cheating, then the student’s romantic agent-arena relationship collapses. They learn that it hasn’t really existed for some time and that their understanding of an important aspect of their life was illusory.
Vervaeke introduces a term that I really like to describe agent-arena relationships. They aren’t subjective because they have interpersonal boundaries, but they aren’t objective either because they also have psychological boundaries. Vervaeke calls them “transjective,” using the prefix -trans meaning “across” to indicate their hybrid nature.
It sounds negative to say that agent-arena relationships are defined by their boundaries, but boundaries enable creativity. Commitments, like to a career or a university program, bound resources to create, or afford, future possibilities.
Affordances are the upside to boundaries, but they require investment. For example, the trust of a longtime friend is earned through repeated sacrifice in the friendship arena. The trust is realized through engagement in that bounded agent-arena relationship.
This all gets really interesting when it’s applied to mental health. Criteria for realness are applied to assess mental illness. Hallucinating can only be symptomatic of disorder if there’s a discernible order to reality. If so, then ways of experiencing life fall on a comparative spectrum ranging from fully real to fully illusory. Full-blown psychosis is relatively further down the illusory spectrum than an auditory hallucination.
Mental health disorders like schizophrenia lie at the delusive edge of the real-illusory spectrum. What states of mind lie on the opposite end? A state of mind that isn’t experiencing hallucinations or psychosis still may be under many illusions. Classifications of mental disorder are ever expanding, but ones of mental order remain few.
Vervaeke proposes that wisdom is the opposite of psychosis, which he portrays as a kind of foolishness. He has a complicated cognitive science theory about wisdom that he explains in a 50+ hour video lecture series on YouTube. Basically, wisdom is the capacity for self-corrective self-correction. When things go wrong in a wise person’s life, they recognize the problems and fix things in a way that protects them against the same kind of problems going forward without overly restricting their future opportunities. They learn general lessons from specific events by addressing immediate problems and their underlying sources.
It may seem strange to understand mental health and illness in terms of wisdom and foolishness. It makes more sense in light of other parallels between psychological and moral categories. Narcissism is a psychological disorder and a moral flaw. While the labels may not line up as nicely as in narcissism’s case, many psychological and moral categories often describe the same problem in different ways. Oppositional defiant disorder is a psychological classification of what could also be understood as a deep moral problem with authority. A moral problem with shame is often diagnosed as social anxiety disorder. Psychology and morality aren’t distinct domains of life, but conceptually overlapping vocabularies for describing people and their behavior.
It also makes more sense when considering how seeking help for life problems can be an expression of intelligence. It’s not smart to ignore and repress bad aspects of life. This kind of existential intelligence is unique. It’s not like the ability to solve complex mathematical equations, although it may be tied to that other sort. You have to be aware enough to recognize that the problems exist, humble enough to face them, and resourceful enough to find the right kind of help. Seeking help when it’s needed is the wise kind of smart.
Wisdom is not a list of rules, but a way of understanding and living life. The unmedicated schizophrenic has a loose grasp on reality, while the wise person’s grasp is tight. Wisdom is measured by the tightness of one’s grasp on the real aspects of life. How does one strengthen their grip?
Vervaeke prescribes an ecology of practices that afford, elicit, and integrate feedback. Some practices, like yoga, afford the possibility of better feedback detection by making our minds more calm and receptive to information from our bodies and environments. Activities like stream-of-consciousness journaling or a deep dialogue with a trusted friend elicit valuable feedback. During such activities, we often write or say things that surprise us and thereby learn more about what we actually think and feel. Mindfully practicing the same movement repeatedly is an example of a practice that integrates feedback. Quizzing oneself with flashcards, practicing a new lift at the gym, and learning how to use a new software through trial and error are all examples of activities in which the next attempt is modified by feedback from the last and then the cycle repeats.
When we perform certain kinds of practices, we exercise particular aspects of our cognition. A well-rounded cognitive system is good at perception, intuition, and reflection. If different practices strengthen different cognitive aspects, then multiple practices are necessary for balanced cognitive improvement. Leveling up cognitively doesn’t necessarily entail an increase in wisdom. However, improved cognitive ability affords the possibility of becoming more wise. Just like how you tend to be more foolish when you’re drunk, you tend to be wiser when your cognitive system is skilled at affording, eliciting, and integrating feedback.
In the future, we may think of mental health in a similar way to physical health. It’s well known that physical health requires an ecology of practices. There’s diet, endurance training, strength training, visits to the doctor for checkups, etc. It’s common to hear concerns about specific activities’ deleterious effects on mental health, such as doomscrolling or drug use, but news about activities that improve mental health is relatively less common. Hopefully, positive psychology, the study of optimal mental performance, will gain more popularity in academia and mainstream society. The need for wisdom feels especially acute in the world right now.