The Precognitive Cultural Ingredients of Schizophrenia

In the earliest eras of human existence, man never considered himself distinct from the world around him. He never felt separated from the ground upon which he walked, or from the trees that brushed against him. He was at one with the wind that lashed his hair and the rain that wet his skin. He was mountain and he was himself. He was one with the sky overhead, with the ocean that rolled against the beaches, with the rocks that mounted on the reefs. He and nature were confluent. His past and his future were contemporaneous with the air he breathed. For him there was only today.

The rocks, the trees, the rivers, the mountains, the caverns, the oceans, and the hummocks of earth were alive, invested by man with a human spirit. Even the animals were human. In this world the lowly snake could come to represent a king, a god.

When the soft yellow haze of summer hung lazily over the plains and valleys, ancient man lived a life of serenity (6). It was turbulence that frightened him, and the intensity of his terror varied with the degree to which his world was disturbed. Earthquakes, avalanches, volcanoes, eclipses, floods, tidal waves were terrifying not only because they were severe but because they were unexpected, and to primitive man even these scourges of nature were human.

Not only did the violent upheavals of nature frighten the early man, but the day's minor changes aroused his uneasiness.

Fear, as in modern man, might be sudden in its onset, or a drawn-out matter—drawn out into a chronic state of tension. To define this latter state, I know no better word than 'suspense'. Suspense is unique. It is so unendurable that in the end it impels one to some sort of action. Man must either flee the source of his suspense or of his fear, or destroy the situation that frightens him.

The source of fear may not actually endanger life. An eclipse of the sun occurring at midday terrified primitive man. The gloom of night slowly and stealthily creeping over the damp ear