Cloudscape

Perhaps all the symptoms of schizophrenia, paranoia in particular, are a direct result of ego-splitting, in which the person's sense of self, or ego, becomes split into separate compartments which seem to assume a role of their own. For instance, the person's own thoughts may seem as though they are those of someone (or something) else, leading to the delusion that thoughts have been inserted into the person mind. These thoughts which have separated from the ego may then turn to intrusive thoughts or voices.

At the same time, if the ego has been split into many compartments, it becomes harder to focus one's attention on one specific compartment, because one's thoughts have basically become scattered across each of these many compartments. In this way, one's attention may become distracted as it rapidly shifts from one train of thought to another.

In ego splitting, the central part of one's ego is still in one's physical body, but most of it has become transferred onto other areas of one's consciousness, such as daydreams, to such extent that these may become extremely vivid. These may then have such impact on one's emotions that they seem real, whereas the part of the ego concerned with reality has become so small that real events have a much smaller impact on one's emotions. The result is an increased response to imaginary stimuli, and a decreased response to real stimuli. In other words, the ego has partly dissolved into imagination.

In addition, parts of the ego may become transferred onto objects in the person's environment, so that it seems as though these are alive, or as though they contain cameras, microphones or other means through which they might be spied upon, or it might seem that the person can control these objects with his mind.

This may also happen with people: when parts of the ego are transferred to other persons, the person's emotions about him- or herself may become projected upon them. It follows that if the person has a high self-esteem, this may lead to the feeling that people will likewise have a high esteem of him or her, increasing the feeling of high self-esteem and so forth. This interaction may lead to grandiloquence. On the other hand, if the person has a low self-esteem, this may lead to paranoia, because he or she then projects his or her feelings about him- or herself onto others.

In addition, some people who suffer from self-loathing may use daydreams to punish themselves, especially people who have a lot of imagination. They may do this by hurting themselves in their thoughts, but also by making other people hurt them in their daydreams. In one's daydreams, one has the ability to exert full power over all things, and for people who live largely in daydreams, this ability might distort their image of reality, leading to the delusion that reality differs little from daydreams.

As the ego splits up, the person comes to feel one with things that are in reality separate from his physical self. In this way, the person's sense of separation becomes blurred. This may cause the feeling that people are too close to oneself and so worsen the sociophobia already caused in part due to the paranoia. Furthermore, because of this lack of sense of separation, it becomes as if all things in the world are in fact part of the person's own mind, things that are therefore controlled by the person's own thoughts. As the person dissociates from their own thoughts, however, and they come to appear to take a form distinct from the ego, it seems as if their thoughts are not their own, and that they are instead thoughts that they pick up from other people.

Furthermore, because of this lack of sense of separation, it may also seem that everyone is much too close to them. Close enough, for instance, to harm them, or to read their thoughts. Strictly speaking, this is not in itself ego splitting, since the ego is one's sense of self, and the paranoid still knows the difference between themselves and other people, and does not see them as part of themselves as one would see one's arm as part of oneself, for example; but the feelings they believe others to have towards them still originate from their own. This is so because the paranoid's sense of self has partly dissolved, so that they no longer recognize these feelings as their own.

If the person hates him- or herself, it may seem to them that the entire world hates them. If the person is also self-destructive, it will seem as if the entire world is keen on destroying them. But to paranoids, this feeling becomes so extreme that is no longer a mere emotion, but a reality to them.

One might argue that ego dissolution is not the only thing that may cause paranoia. Traumas can be another cause, for instance, which neither directly nor indirectly have anything to do with ego dissolution. On the other hand, one might question if this is paranoia at all, since people who develop fear of people because of traumas have an actual reason to do so, namely, the chance that the trauma might repeat itself. The traumatized person's estimation of this chance isn't even necessarily irrationally high, but he or she is so terrified of this chance that no matter how small it may be, it is still significant to him or her.

In ego dissolution, emotion has become a continuum from the ego to empathy, with no well-defined line in between, and so emotion can readily flow back and forth from the ego to empathy. At the other extremity, in the case of egotism, the line between the two becomes an impenetrable wall that cuts the ego off from empathy, and the little shared emotions there are are attributed to the ego.

It may be that schizophrenics are highly empathic, though this does not have to mean that they are compassionate, and, if they have low self-esteem, they will likely not be.

Some Buddhists, and other practitioners of meditation, practice a form of meditation called metta meditation, or compassion meditation, in which the meditator tries to generate compassion for living beings: first him- or herself, then loved ones, then acquaintances, then enemies, then strangers, and ultimately all that lives.

This form of meditation would not actually work with paranoids, because the issue with paranoids is not their own hate for others, but the imagined hate others have for them. However, if this form of meditation were reversed, it might actually serve as a potential cure or prevention for paranoia.

Since the paranoid's emotions have become projected onto other people, he must deal both with the emotions ascribed to the ego as those ascribed to others, meaning that he must re-place him- or herself in the place of others and then deal with the emotions he feels for himself in others' place.

To the paranoid, the metta meditation should be focussed entirely on the first stage of generating compassion for him- or herself, but from the viewpoint of others. In other words, he or she should imagine other people to love them and send them love. This is unlikely to work, but in the process, he or she might resolve the hate that he or she imagines others to feel for them, which is actually their own self-hate projected onto others.

As this form of meditation would require insight on the paranoid's part that he or she is paranoid, this would sometimes be more useful as a preventive than a curative method, at least in severe cases. Nonetheless, it can also be used in less severe forms of paranoia, or while the illness is already or still in full force.