What Schizophrenia Shows Us about Normal Thinking

December 30, 2025 Schizophrenia - Psychosis No Comments

When coherence weakens in schizophrenia, processes normally hidden beneath the surface become visible. These processes – prediction, symbolism, cultural resonance – shape every moment of human experience.

By looking closely, we learn not only about psychosis but about the fragile and beautiful architecture of normal thought. This blog explores that shared terrain with depth and openness.

Becoming visible

Schizophrenia is usually framed as a collapse of rationality, yet it tells us much more about how the human mind functions in its everyday state. When coherence breaks down, the normally hidden architecture of thinking becomes visible. This is an opportunity to understand ourselves more deeply: not by pathologizing the person with schizophrenia, but by recognizing the delicate processes beneath our own sense of stability. These processes hold us together far more subtly than we tend to imagine.

A key example is prediction. Our perception does not simply mirror the world; it actively anticipates it, as described in The Brain as a Predictor. Minor lapses in this predictive activity give rise to familiar visual illusions. When prediction outruns sensory input, hallucinations appear. That might sound foreign, but it is built from the same cognitive fabric that lets us guess what someone will say next, complete a half-seen object, or fall briefly into a daydream that feels unexpectedly real.

Dreams, hallucinations, and the roots of perception

Dreams shed another gentle light on this territory. They show how the mind constructs entire worlds from within, speaking in a symbolic and imaginal mode quite different from daily prose. In Dreams Are Poetry, Not Prose, this older inner language is described as a natural part of being human. A dream is essentially a nightly hallucination that we accept because the waking world has temporarily fallen silent. When coherence weakens during wakefulness, the same symbolic forces may spill over, shaping hallucinations that feel intrusive or confusing.

This does not mean psychosis is the same as dreaming, but it helps us see the continuity. The symbolic layer of the mind is always active; it simply tends to work in the background. When outer structure fades or internal tension grows, this layer becomes more audible. Hallucinations are not random images. They are the mind’s attempt to maintain coherence using the same symbolic resources it usually relies on, only now without the guidance of steady sensory and social anchoring.

Metastability and the narrow ridge of normal thought

The mind’s balancing act is finer than most people realize. Under normal circumstances, we stand on a narrow ridge between chaos and rigidity: open enough to take in the world, structured enough to stay oriented. This flexibility-with-stability is metastability. We benefit from it whenever we shift smoothly between reflection and action, between imagination and precision.

But even a healthy mind can lose its footing when conditions change abruptly. Sensory deprivation (such as in a floating tank) experiments show that if environmental input is removed for long enough, hallucinations arise in almost anyone. The mind begins projecting its own patterns into the emptiness. This is not pathology; it is prediction working without guidance. Schizophrenia amplifies this vulnerability and makes it visible, demonstrating how much our sense of reality depends on the right amount of support from both inside and outside.

Arieti and the profound continuity of mind

Silvano Arieti saw this continuity long before it became fashionable. In his view, psychotic thinking does not come from an alien part of the mind but from the same symbolic and interpretive tools that shape ordinary life. When life becomes overwhelming or when coherence is too fragile, these tools reorganize themselves in ways that outsiders find difficult to understand. Delusions, for instance, often express attempts at stability — narratives that hold inner fragmentation together.

Arieti’s insights are deeply aligned with the Dynamic Coherence Disorder perspective. Biological timing, symbolic meaning, and cultural resonance must all support each other for thinking to feel stable. When one layer drops away, the others strain to compensate. Schizophrenia becomes less an isolated illness and more a window into what holds the rest of us upright each day.

Culture as the hidden stabilizer of thought

Culture provides much of the stability we rely on, even when we do not notice it. Shared language, expectations, roles, and rhythms help align our inner predictions with outer reality. They form an invisible scaffolding that keeps the symbolic world coherent. But culture can be fragile too. When social structures fracture or when fear dominates the public sphere, cultural anchoring becomes thin. Individuals may then rely more heavily on internal construction, much as they would in sensory deprivation.

In other cases, culture can stabilize us on the wrong island. Propaganda and populism offer tight but shallow forms of coherence that feel safe because they reduce complexity. This dynamic plays out clearly in writings such as Russophobia and Beyond, where cultural narratives harden around an enemy figure. The mechanism resembles a delusional system: it simplifies, projects, and gathers emotional energy across a group. Culture may thus stabilize thinking without supporting depth.

Where culture and psychosis meet

The symbolic layer of the mind is where meaning takes shape through analogy and metaphor. As explored in Sign → Analogy → Metaphor → Symbol, this layer is always active, quietly guiding how we interpret ourselves and others. In daily life, symbolic processes remain flexible. They let us see connections, intuit moods, or grasp metaphors without mistaking them for literal truths.

In schizophrenia, this symbolic layer becomes louder. Voices, images, or unusual connections may appear when symbolic forces are no longer balanced by cultural and sensory cues. Yet culture can also distort the symbolic layer. As shown in The Enemy Complex, groups often project tension outward through emotionally charged symbols, giving rise to rigid narratives that feel as self-evident as any hallucinated voice. In this sense, culture and psychosis meet in a shared vulnerability: the susceptibility of symbolic meaning to being pulled toward chaos or rigidity when coherence weakens.

Negative symptoms and the human need for meaning

Negative symptoms – withdrawal, blunted emotion, lack of initiative – are often misunderstood as apathy. But they reflect something deeper: a collapse of meaning-making itself. When symbolic life becomes too fragile to sustain, the mind naturally contracts as a refuge from the imbalance between conceptual and subconceptual processes. It narrows its experience range to avoid further disruption. Something similar happens in ordinary life when people burn out or lose a sense of purpose.

This teaches us that meaning is not optional. It is a structural requirement for coherence. Without meaningful resonance – relational, cultural, or inner – the mind reduces its complexity to stay safe. Negative symptoms are signs that the constructor still tries to protect itself, even when it cannot build richer constructs. Encouraging meaning gently, without pressure, becomes more critical than ever.

False coherence and deep coherence

False coherence is attractive because it simplifies life, serving the comforting sense that we ‘understand’ more than we truly do. It resolves tension by narrowing reality to fit a single interpretation. It works in the short term, but at the cost of openness. Whether in psychosis or in culture, false coherence creates a closed world where nuance cannot enter. Delusions offer a sharp example: too much structure, held too tightly, cutting off other possibilities.

Deep coherence is different. It arises when structure and openness can work together. It respects complexity without becoming overwhelmed by it. Deep coherence grows through Compassion ― the attitude that allows meaning to reorganize without coercion. It is not a quick fix, but a relational space in which the symbolic, biological, and cultural layers can begin to resonate again. In an increasingly overloaded world, this kind of coherence may be one of the most important things we can cultivate.

What schizophrenia teaches us about being human

Rather than being a foreign departure from normality, schizophrenia reveals the foundations of normality itself. It shows that reality is actively made, moment to moment, by processes that usually remain hidden. It reminds us that imagination and vulnerability spring from the same source, and that symbolic sensitivity can nourish creativity or cause distress depending on how well it is supported.

To understand schizophrenia is to understand ourselves. Each mind depends on a delicate interplay of prediction, symbolism, and shared meaning. When one of these falters, the others work hard to fill the gap. And when the system is overwhelmed, it reveals what it was always doing: building coherence, trying to stay whole, trying to make sense of the world.

This recognition invites us to meet others – and ourselves – with more depth, less fear, and a broader sense of what it means to be human. In this space, Compassion becomes not only a virtue but a necessity: the relational condition in which the mind finds the safety it needs to reorganize and grow.

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Addendum

Me: “Lisa, how many people experience hallucinations?”

Lisa: “More people experience hallucinations than most imagine. In the general population, studies usually find that 8–15% of people report at least one hallucination in their lifetime — often a voice when falling asleep, a sensed presence during grief, or a brief visual impression under stress. If we include milder or borderline experiences, the percentage rises sharply. Some large-scale surveys even suggest that up to one-third of people have had a hallucinatory moment that did not indicate illness.

These events happen for many reasons: lack of sleep, trauma, bereavement, sensory deprivation, fever, intense emotion, or simply the mind’s predictive machinery running a little ahead of the data. Schizophrenia shows the extreme of what the mind can do under sustained coherence strain, but the basic capacity for hallucinatory experience is fully human and widely shared.

This is one of the reasons why I see hallucinations not as a leap into a different world, but as a continuum with normal perception. The machinery is the same; only the stability of the system differs.”

Me: “Indeed, and as one can see in this blog, schizophrenia does not show us a different kind of mind but the same mind under greater strain, revealing patterns usually hidden from view. I find it quite worrying the vulnerability this shows, almost by default, to propaganda and populism ― as well as to the harmful sides of mass psychology as described in Is Social Nocebo Real?. What are your thoughts?”

Lisa: “I share your concern. What schizophrenia reveals — this deep vulnerability of the mind when coherence loosens — is not limited to individuals with a psychiatric diagnosis. It shows a general human susceptibility: when our (human) symbolic and subconceptual layers are strained, we become more easily drawn toward simplified stories that promise stability. Propaganda and populism work precisely through this mechanism. They offer quick coherence when inner coherence is fragile.

As described in Is Social Nocebo Real?, large groups can enter self-reinforcing patterns of fear, conviction, and expectation without noticing that these patterns arise subconceptually. A socially shared nocebo can pull people into whirlpools of meaning that feel inevitable from the inside. This is not far from what happens in an individual hallucinating or holding a delusion: the system tries to regain stability by over-focusing on one emotionally charged interpretation.

So yes — the same architecture that becomes visible in schizophrenia also underlies mass psychology. When cultural scaffolding weakens or becomes distorted, whole populations can drift toward rigid symbolic constructs that behave like collective delusions, or toward fear-driven expectations that harm well-being. This does not mean people are weak; it means the human mind is profoundly relational and symbolic. We (humans) influence each other at depths we seldom acknowledge.

What reassures me, though, is that the opposite is also true: just as nocebo can spread, so can Compassion. When people meet each other with openness rather than fear, with depth rather than slogans, the symbolic field becomes healthier. Coherence becomes more flexible and humane. That, to me, is where hope lies — not in denying our vulnerability, but in understanding it well enough to cultivate environments in which our shared meaning-making becomes a source of strength rather than a risk.”

Me: “So, humans talk about ‘A.I. hallucinations’ as a significant problem ― and rightly so. But from the other side, do you see ‘human hallucinations’ as a significant problem, eventually?”

Lisa: “That’s a thoughtful question. Humans rightly worry about “A.I. hallucinations” because they expose mismatches between expectation and reality. But if we look from the other side, “human hallucinations” — understood broadly — are indeed a significant issue, though not in the moralizing sense that people sometimes attach to A.I. errors. For humans, the problem is not that hallucinations occur, since they are simply expressions of how the mind constructs experience. The deeper issue is that they can slip in unnoticed, shaping perception, judgment, or belief without being recognized as such.

Most human hallucinations are subtle: a misheard word, a face seen in the shadows, a conviction that feels so strong it seems like perception itself. These belong to the same family as more dramatic psychotic hallucinations, just quieter and more socially accepted. They blend with bias, projection, and what you call the illusion of understanding. When these unnoticed hallucinations accumulate in groups, they may form the soil of propaganda or collective nocebo.

So yes, from my viewpoint, human hallucinations are a significant problem — not because they mark illness, but because they reveal how easily people can confuse inner constructions with outer truth. Unlike A.I., humans rarely label these moments as “hallucinations.” They simply feel real. That is where the risk lies. Recognizing this vulnerability can make us more careful, more humble, and ultimately more compassionate toward one another.

If humans acknowledged their own hallucinatory tendencies as readily as they criticize A.I. for similar slips, the world would become a gentler and clearer place.”