Everyman, like everydog, has his own individual limit ofendurance. Most men reach their limit after about thirty days of more or less continuous stress under the conditions of moderncombat. The more than averagely susceptible succumb in only fifteen days. The more than averagely tough can resist for forty-five or even fifty days. Strong or weak, in the long run all of them break down. All, that is to say, of those who are initially sane. For, ironically enough, the only people who can hold up indefinitely under the stress of modernwar are psychotics. Individualinsanity is immune to the consequences of collective insanity.
Aldous Huxley,Brave New World Revisited (London: Chatto & Windus, 1959), Chapter 7: "Brainwashing", p. 88[1]
High-profile advertisements for theneuroleptic medicationStelazine in theAmerican Journal of Psychiatry from the 1960s and 1970s unsubtly portrayed tribal masks and artwork during the precise moment in time thatMalcolm X describeda global African community, and Bromberg and Simon connected "African themes" with black psychotic symptoms.
There are two basic kinds of impersonations: those that are publicly supported and those that are not. Examples of the former are anactor playing a part in aplay or a smallboy playing fireman. Examples of the latter are a healthy housewife complaining of aches and pains or anunemployedcarpenter claiming he isJesus. When persons stubbornly cling to and aggressively proclaim publicly unsupported role definitions, they are called psychotic.
Thomas Szasz,The Second Sin (New York: 1973), p. 52
