DELUSION ISLAND.

 

DELUSION  ISLAND.

Many would assert that if you have misunderstood something, then you haven´t understood at all. But it might not be that simple. Because look at the concept of misconception. Suppose you have a misconception regarding something specific. In that case, you might say that you haven´t got any conception at all about it. But certainly, you have. You do have a conception that you might have harbored for many years and upon which you have based all your doings, dreams, and plans. A misconception is some kind of conception. Otherwise, you might not have been able to build all your life on it.

Let us see if we might refer to a phantasy as a misphantasy? Let us say that you are having a fantasy about your wife. But this fantasy turns out to be wrong. Your phantasy was that she is passionate about leather collars. But when you tried to make her put one on herself, and when you even yourself attempted to put a leather collar on her, she point blank refused.

Your phantasy turned out to be wrong. But as a phantasy, it, of course, was utterly right. It served its purpose as a phantasy, and when this phantasy should be turned into reality by your wife ( and you ), it happened that this phantasy, which was a very good phantasy, as a REALIT was disastrous. She could not at all bring her to put on a leather collar. Thus it was a misphantasy.

The phantasy was wrong, but it was good as a phantasy. This phantasy was in some way a delusion, in some way perhaps not.

Of course, it would perhaps be wrong to call a phantasy delusional. But some people would call it so. Now, if you have a delusion, but this delusion turns out to be accurate, clearly, this delusion was a misdelusion? It was not a delusion, but it was REAL, that the phantasy about her liking leather necklaces was wrong.

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I might wake up and have a vague feeling that something is wrong. I have a vague sense that there is someone else in the room, in the dark. But I wouldn't say that it is a strong feeling that bothers me. Still, I am a little worried that I am having even the vaguest feeling, that there is someone else in the room when I am nearly entirely sure that the room only has one person in it, and that person is me.

I am worried that I MIGHT have a delusion. IF I have a delusion, then I might have become psychotic, or in any other way CRAZY. But I do not know if this feeling of the presence of another person, HOWEVER VAGUE, can be called a delusion. I am not SURE that I have a delusion.

Thus I can say to myself: “I might have a delusion. But this, in itself, might be a delusion!” Now I am in trouble because now I know that either I am having a delusion or having the delusion that I am having a delusion. Thus, in either case, I am having a delusion.

I wonder if I have misunderstood delusions, or if I might have had phantasies about delusions, that were in some way wrong, that made me, when I woke up in the middle of the night, misinterpret a certain feeling in such a way, that I misinterpreted it to be a feeling of another person when it might have been something else. As I was not sure if my thought were delusions, but through intense reasoning found out, that in which way I reasoned about it, it would turn out that I was delusional, I now concluded that every understanding, every misunderstanding, every conception, and every misconception and every phantasy and every misphantasy just seemed all the same treacherous phenomena! I could never be sure unless someone proved me sure, never wrong unless someone proved me wrong, and nobody could prove me wrong about to what degree I felt that there was another person in my room. It all came down to – so I thought – my own decision about whether this feeling just was a whim or not. And this was the most challenging question. What is a whim?

As I was lying on my back, staring up in the dark above my head, the dark of my room, I finally said aloud: ”What is a whim?”

Nobody was answering, of course.

Then I suddenly thought: SUPPOSE TWO persons were having a delusion, the SAME delusion, and it was not a delusion about the other person, but about something else, a third factor, a third phenomenon, apart from me and ( let us say ) her.

Let us fantasize that I am having a delusion about an ISLAND, and that she has the same delusion about an ISLAND, and that WE NEVER TELL each other about it. But we are dreaming, having fantasies and illusions about this very island. And that, because we ar4e TWO of us, this delusion eventually becomes so strong that a real ISLAND rises from the deep in the ocean and becomes real?

Because a twofold, shared delusion has to be mightier than a delusion that just is being harbored by a sole person?

But, now, there is another thing. The fact that we are both having delusions makes us both very vulnerable and unfit for thoughts and acts that are about ordinary matters.

We, me and her, are having a relationship marked by this silent phantasy, although none of us knows that the other is having such a phantasy.

Maybe we love each other a little and plan a small living together, but our main interest isn´t this love or that life, because we are in the greatest secrecy, the secrecy of our own private soul, planning on investigating an island that does not exist. At least not until we are several people that are having the same phantasy….