On the Origin of the ‘Influencing Machine’ in Schizophrenia.

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On the Origin of the ‘Influencing Machine’ in Schizophrenia is an article written by psychoanalyst Viktor Tausk in 1919.

A highly influential psyh. article.

The paper is Tausk's observations concerning a particular group of schizophrenics with a particular paranoid delusion. A significant number of patients had described their problems as being caused by an “influencing machine” operated by alien forces. The machines the patients refer to construct entire lives, dwellings, thoughts, emotions, etc, in a perverse guest-host manner. That is, the machine, and the presence/operators both behind and of the machine are feeding on the emotions, energy, and "souls" of the human subjects who are almost entirely unconscious of their "true" state and consequent fate. Indeed, knowledge of the machine and "seeing" the "real" can be fatal or maddening. This is because all of the "givens" of normal validated reality are un-real, in short: utter fabrications. Yet, at the same time, this is all that the subject "knows" and therefore "is". The subjects are, in essence, little by little becoming part of or merged with the machines themselves.

Extract from the article: "The schizophrenic influencing machine is a machine of mystical nature. The patients are able to give only vague hints of its construction. It consists of boxes, cranks, levers, wheels, buttons, wires, batteries, and the like. Patients endeavor to discover the construction of the apparatus by means of their technical lnowledge, and it appears that with the progressive popularization of the sciences, all the forces known to technology are utilized to explain the functioning of the apparatus. All the discoveries of mankind, however, are regarded as inadequate to explain the marvelous powers of this machine, by which the patients feel themselves persecuted. The main effects of the influencing machine are the following:

1. It makes the patient see pictures. When this is the case, the machine is generally a magic lantern or cinematograph. The pictures are seen on a single plane, on walls or windowpanes, and unlike typical visual hallucinations are not three dimensional.
2. It produces, as well as removes, thoughts and feelings by means of waves or rays or mysterious forces which the patient's knowledge of physics is inadequate to explain. In such cases, the machine is often called a 'suggestion-apparatus.' Its construction cannot be explained, but its function consists in the transmission or 'draining off' of thoughts and feelings by one or several persecutors.
3. It produces motor phenomena in the body, erections and seminal emissions, that are intended to deprive the patient of his male potency and weaken him. This is accomplished either by means of suggestion or by air-currents, electricity, magnetism, or X-rays.
4. It creates sensations that in part cannot be described, because they are strange to the patient himself, and that in part are sensed as electrical, magnetic, or due to air-currents.
5. It is also responsible for other occurrences in the patient's body, such as cutaneous eruptions, abscesses, or other pathological processes."

The first known example of the schizofreniform influencing machine delusion is that of James Tilly Matthews and a magnetic ray machine he called Air Loom. Matthews was a tea merchant and idealist before he was admitted to Bedlam psychiatric hospital after shouting 'treason' in the House of Commons in 1797. It took one hundred years after Matthews death, in 1815, before the condition was studied in depth by Victor Tausk. Yet another sufferer of schizofreniform influencing machine delusion is believed to have been one Francis E. Dec of Hempstead, NY, who wrote a large number of paranoia-laden rants about an influencing machine he referred to as the "Worldwide Mad Deadly Gangster Computer God".

1 The Influencing Machine in literature and film
- 1.1 Literature
- 1.2 Film
2 See also
3 External links

[edit] The Influencing Machine in literature and film

Tausk's paper has been highly influential within both his own field of psychoanalysis and outside. It has in more recent years been used in literary theory to explain character's de-centeredness from their surroundings and their psychical collapse into psychosis; furthermore, the idea of the great alien machine taken over the human race have been more present in the arts.

[edit] Literature

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a novel by Ken Kesey (1973). Kesey's novel is in the form of a first-person narrative by Chief Bromden, a Native American and one of McMurphy's fellow patients. McMurphy is a prison ward transfer who pretends to be insane to get out of working. His plan backfires when he is sent to a psychiatric hospital. He tries to liven the place up a bit by playing card games and basketball with his fellow patients, but the head nurse, Ms. Ratched a.k.a. Big Nurse, is after him at every turn. McMurphy wins at first, but then looses it all. Bromden refers to the negative forces of the world collectively as the "Combine," the very force which tries to suppress people like McMurphy. The novel raises a number of interesting questions about the nature of the state and power structures and could be interpreted on a number of allegorical levels. Tausk’s ”influencing machine” is very clear in this book when looking at Bromden. The film (1975)is much less introspective than Kesey's book and focuses mostly on the conflict between McMurphy and Ratched.

Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television by Jerry Mander (1978). The activist, Jerry Mander’s book argues for the complete removal of television from our lives because of its ill effects. Mander gives the example of Tausk’s ”Influencing machine” as being a good parallel to the television: ’Doubtless you have noticed that this “influencing machine” sounds an awful lot like television. ..In any event , there is no question that television does what the schizophrenic fantasy says it does. It places in our minds images of reality which are outside our experience. The pictures come in the form of rays from a box. They cause changes in feeling and ... utter confusion as to what is real and what is not.’

[edit] Film

The following 3 films contain, at one level, a higher-order psychical conflict that can be said to be Oedipal with the protagonists eventually rising up against and overcoming a malevolent and destructive masculine force, but the interesting part here is the unmasking of the un-reality of the lived-in world. In each of the films, the "real" is a construction that people unwittingly inhabit.

The Matrix (1999) by the Wachowski brothers

Dark City (1998) directed by Alex Proyas

The Truman Show (1998) a Peter Weir-film

The Ken Loach-film Family Life (1971) is about Sandy who receives psychiatric treatment for a behavior that is really created by her controlling family. It is not as openly influenced by Tausk's "influencing machine" in that it is more a comment on control; that since life in our society is repressive and exploiting, mental illness is one more form of protest which deserves our sympathy and solidarity. We are given to understand that, beneath Sandy's outward weird behaviour, she is groping towards a true revolutionary analysis of modern capitalism. "A machine in the centre of the world is controlling us all!" she obligingly yells to the ward nurses, who obviously think the poor woman is crazy. Besides Tausk, there is also a great link to R. D. Laing and his views on psychiatric practises. According to Laing, the story of Sandy is a no win situation. Schizophrenic families produces schizophrenic members. The family usually picks the weakest of the group to represent all the schizophrenia. This family embodies all the evils of indoctrination-families. Here the family is the most powerful tool in the influencing machine.