In article <3790408A.2ED6 at online.no>, Tore Lund <tl001 at online.no> writes
>In the book "Complexity" by Roger Lewin (1993) [snip]
>> ...Chris felt he was living in the middle of a cube, the sides of
> which were cinema screens with pictures projected on them.
> (Beginning of chapter 8, page 151 in Phoenix ed.)
Nick Medford wrote:
>> I haven't read the book, but the quote above sounds like he could be
> describing the depersonalisation/derealisation syndrome. [snip]
>> These phenomena are currently the subject of research at the Institute
> of Psychiatry in London. You can get more info and references at our
> website: http://www.iop.kcl.ac.uk/home/dpu/index.htm
Thanks for the pointer, Nick. There are quite a few references to
visual disturbances at this site. Let's look at some of them:
Anonymous:
"Get telescopic vision ... The people I was talking to began to turn
into paper cutouts."
Jennifer:
"My vision even feels like a 2-dimensional movie screen all of the
time."
Kerry:
"Suddenly, that surreal, dream-like quality returned, complete with
altered depth perception..."
The mini-FAQ:
"I really don't have any 3-D vision it seems. Everything appears
flat."
You and C_Thomas seem to doubt that Chris was actually seeing the world
as a cube with the world projected on its sides. Taken together with
the quotes above, however, it seems to me that these people actually
have *visual* disturbances.
Presumably, what happens is that patients of this sort come to a
specialist who is not interested in vision - and the vision specialists
never see these patients. Hence these disturbances are never properly
studied and described.
I repeat that I think these phenomena could tell us something about our
stereoscopic vision - because the distortions that can arise in a system
can tell us a lot about the nature of that system and rule out models
that don't allow for such distortions.
Just a thought.
--
Tore Lund <tl001 at online.no>
