Mental illness is infrequently presented well in books and TV, but there is one type of presentation that I’ve found fascinating.

The first time came across it was in the Margaret Weis and http://www.trhickman.com/ series “Death Gate Cycle”, where the wizard Zifnab (Zifnab is what brought this to mind. There’s just something pleasing about the name.) spouts off crazy ideas and concepts that are recognizable to the readers as quotes and ideas from modern books, movies and television. It was as if Zifnab couldn’t function well in his world, because he was channeling ours.

The second was in the Deep Space Nine episode, “Far Beyond the Stars“, where Sisko has an experience that displaces him in time and space. He is no longer Captain Benjamin Sisko in the 24th century, but is instead Benny Russell, a science fiction writer in the 1950s. Upon being given a picture of DS9, Benny begins to write the stories of Sisko’s experiences, and then begins to see flashes of Sisko’s world. These flashes, combined with the racial segregation of the 1950s,make it harder and harder for Benny to function in his own time. (If you’ve never seen “Far Beyond the Stars” I highly recommend it. Avery Brooks did an amazing job in both acting and directing.)

The third was an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “Normal Again“, where Buffy is led to believe that the past six years of her life have been nothing but a schizophrenic episode. In that case, Buffy couldn’t function in the “real” world because she was entirely immersed in another world or reality. As with “Far Beyond the Stars” Buffy cannot function well in either world during the disruption. Although what I found most intriguing about this show was its ending, which left it open as to which reality was true.

Of course there are significant differences in the three examples. Zifnab was channeling the distant past, Benny was channeling the distant future, and Buffy an alternate reality, yet the idea behind each was the same: individuals tune into a reality other than ours, and it drives them mad.

It leads to the interesting idea that those who are classified as insane might simply be channeling other times, places, or realities. Like watching ‘General Hospital’, while getting the sound from ‘Days of Our Lives’. Of course for most people scizophrenia is a chemical disorder that for many can be treated with medication. But it’s intriguing to think that there are alternate realities, other worlds, and that there are people who are blessed or cursed with the ability to see through space and time, into those other realities.