Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: we're a little late getting into the recording studio today
Speaker 1: because we just had in an office wide meeting with
Speaker 1: cheap How Stuff Work legal consultant Richard W. Glazer. Uh.
Speaker 1: Great guy, excellent lawyer. But anytime we have these in
Speaker 1: person meetings with him, it's always a little bit te. Well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: part of the problem is that you can't approach him physically,
Speaker 1: and if you do, he will immediately start wheeling away
Speaker 1: because he cannot be touched, right, and he's not gonna
Speaker 1: find a wheelchair or anything. He is. He just remains
Speaker 1: on a wheeled platform that's covered with throw pillows and
Speaker 1: stuff with with hay. Yeah, it's basically a wooden palette
Speaker 1: with with little roll the office chair wheels on the bottom.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, And I mean you need that when you
Speaker 1: suffer from the glass delusion. That's right, because there's nothing
Speaker 1: actually wrong with him that he doesn't suffer from brittle
Speaker 1: bone disorder anything of that matter. He's the guy from Unbreakable.
Speaker 1: He's not the villain from Unbreakable. He's just he just
Speaker 1: has this psychiatric delusion that his body is made out
Speaker 1: of glass, which makes it all the more horrifying when
Speaker 1: you roll through a pont city market here because everything's
Speaker 1: under construction, Right, He's constantly afraid that the construction workers
Speaker 1: on site are going to grab him and turn him
Speaker 1: into a glass window. Yeah, but the meeting is over,
Speaker 1: the meeting is done with glass or has rolled off
Speaker 1: back to his the padded chamber of his offices, And
Speaker 1: we're here to talk about glass delusion itself, the real
Speaker 1: glass delusion that is largely a product of the past,
Speaker 1: but as we'll discuss, has popped up with some contemporary
Speaker 1: cases as well. Right, so you're not likely to meet
Speaker 1: or have met somebody suffering from the glass delusion, but
Speaker 1: there are times and places in history where this was
Speaker 1: an extremely common psychological ailment. Yes, they're certainly common enough
Speaker 1: that it pops up in the literature and well, as
Speaker 1: we discussed that, uh, that raises some questions at times.
Speaker 1: But let's let's start by just looking to the literature
Speaker 1: and looking at some of the key cases that pop
Speaker 1: up in history, and then we'll start teasing us a
Speaker 1: part of it, sure well. One early case that we
Speaker 1: have in the literature is the story of King Charles
Speaker 1: the sixth of France. So Charles the sixth had a
Speaker 1: sort of troubled reign. He inherited the throne of France
Speaker 1: when he was eleven years old. He didn't immediately get
Speaker 1: to wield power because some of his older relatives were
Speaker 1: sort of ruling as regions for him. Eventually he came
Speaker 1: of age and sort of took the throne in actual practice.
Speaker 1: But Charles suffered from mental illness throughout his life, and
Speaker 1: some of his episodes are described as basically paranoid in nature.
Speaker 1: One of the earliest in our histories is that Charles
Speaker 1: was out on a minor military campaign with a group
Speaker 1: of knights and soldiers going out to I think fight
Speaker 1: some near do well duke and a stranger approached the
Speaker 1: procession that Charles was in and warned him that he
Speaker 1: was going to suffer a great betrayal. And after this warning,
Speaker 1: one of Charles's soldiers happened to make the mistake of
Speaker 1: making a metal clanking noise with his helmet or armor,
Speaker 1: and Charles freaked out. He started attacking his own men,
Speaker 1: and he allegedly killed one of his own nights in
Speaker 1: the ensuing confusion. But this is not the most topically
Speaker 1: relevant of Charles's delusions because, according to accounts recorded by
Speaker 1: Pope Pious, the second, one of the other common delusions
Speaker 1: that Charles would suffer from was the belief that his
Speaker 1: body was made of glass, and so he during these
Speaker 1: times he allegedly refused to let people touch him, and
Speaker 1: he would sort of like sit still and try to
Speaker 1: cushion and protect himself from being shattered. He even demanded
Speaker 1: some form of reinforce clothing is a sort of like
Speaker 1: armor to protect his fragile body. Huh. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's fascinating to to think of this in connection
Speaker 1: with his his place in life, you know, ascending to
Speaker 1: the throne so early. Um, you know, even if he
Speaker 1: didn't have even if his power was more symbolic early on. Um,
Speaker 1: because it will we'll discuss the two things that keep
Speaker 1: coming up with with the glass delusion is that of
Speaker 1: the body is a vessel, breakable vessel and uh and
Speaker 1: and fragility and uh and the impermanence of life. Because
Speaker 1: here's a guy who you know, he's he's essentially a
Speaker 1: vessel for blood, right he has. It's his blood that
Speaker 1: has the claim to the throne, and he is just
Speaker 1: kind of the the fragile container for that blood and
Speaker 1: for that that right to rule. And uh and he
Speaker 1: and he's probably throughout his life he has you know,
Speaker 1: has a very clear view of just how um, how
Speaker 1: slight that grasp of power and that position really is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's got to be, especially the case when you are
Speaker 1: a child king, Like if you inherit the throne at
Speaker 1: a very early age, it's quite clear that you are
Speaker 1: not capable of ruling yet, and that is made clear
Speaker 1: to you by the fact that there are some older
Speaker 1: regions actually pulling all the strings. Um. So it's not
Speaker 1: really your merit that you can believe makes you king.
Speaker 1: I mean, not that merit makes any king king. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you're definitely just waiting your turn because of who your
Speaker 1: parents were. Yeah. And it seems like the common tropes
Speaker 1: that you see in in historical accounts and reenactments and
Speaker 1: of course in our fiction, is you either you're going
Speaker 1: at fragile direction. I'm who I'm this glass thing. I'm
Speaker 1: just this child at the center of this huge wheel
Speaker 1: that's turning or you go in the megalomaniac direction of like,
Speaker 1: of course I'm in charge. I know on eleven, but
Speaker 1: I know everything and I'm fully, fully capable of ruling
Speaker 1: this kingdom right now. That's not the not the only
Speaker 1: case we see in history, but that again, that was
Speaker 1: that's the earliest glass delusion case on record that we
Speaker 1: could find. Also, there's a sixteen fourteen case, So this
Speaker 1: is some of the centuries later recorded by the physician
Speaker 1: to fill up the second of Spain Alfonso Ponce descenta
Speaker 1: cruz Uh. The patient is actually unknown. We don't know
Speaker 1: who this individual was, but it was possibly a French
Speaker 1: prince as he was also described by French King Henry
Speaker 1: the fourth Chief Physician. So this is another case where
Speaker 1: you have an individual who's just languishing on straw beds,
Speaker 1: avoiding being broken by any kind of physical contact. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a large sense of melancholy in all
Speaker 1: these cases as well. You know, it's like I can't
Speaker 1: move because if I move, I might I'm I'm gonna die.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna shatter. Sure, And we don't just mean melancholy
Speaker 1: in in the modern sense. We would use it like
Speaker 1: melancholy in the infinite sadness, but the actual sort of
Speaker 1: medieval bodily humors based theory of melancholy, which was a
Speaker 1: somewhat different thing. Yeah, and also far more debilitating and
Speaker 1: and seen as is rooted in these these key these
Speaker 1: four key biological principles, right, the four key humors. So
Speaker 1: the treatment, of course was interesting for this and it
Speaker 1: seems a bit tongue in cheak. I don't know to
Speaker 1: what extent we can we actually believe it, uh, But
Speaker 1: supposedly that the treatment for this individuals class solution was
Speaker 1: to set fire to the straw in the bed, which
Speaker 1: immediately cured him because he jumps out of the bed
Speaker 1: for fear of the fire. And well, he doesn't shatter,
Speaker 1: he doesn't break. And you see this kind of sink
Speaker 1: or swim treatment in a in a number of the accounts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was another account I was reading about in one
Speaker 1: of the main sources we used for this episode, where
Speaker 1: and I believe it was suspected that this is an
Speaker 1: embellished or made up account, but the story goes that
Speaker 1: there was a man who believed his buttocks were made
Speaker 1: of glass, and the doctor cured him by beating him ye,
Speaker 1: beating him like basically spanking him with a cane and saying, look,
Speaker 1: your buttocks are not shattering, and the pain you're feeling
Speaker 1: is purely organic in nature. And I think in that
Speaker 1: in that account or story, the the individual with glass
Speaker 1: delusion was himself a glass artisan, so you had that
Speaker 1: level of complexity to it. Another example from history would
Speaker 1: be the Flemish poet philosopher Guests bar van borel From
Speaker 1: who lived from four to sixteen forty eight, also known
Speaker 1: as bar Lais. Yeah, this is another individual who reportedly
Speaker 1: suffered melancholy throughout his life and may have suffered a
Speaker 1: mirror delusion, or it's possible he was just waxing poetic
Speaker 1: and philosophic when he said the following. But how often
Speaker 1: the fantasy wants to act absurdly and ridiculously in melancholics
Speaker 1: of how much does it convince the unhappy fellows? This
Speaker 1: one thinks he's made of glass and terrified, is fearful
Speaker 1: of people standing close to him. And and and in this
Speaker 1: we kind of get into one of the problems that
Speaker 1: it emerges when you look back on the glass delusion
Speaker 1: literature is that how many of these cases are actual
Speaker 1: cases where someone was suffering from, you know, psychiatric delusion
Speaker 1: about the nature of their body, and to what extented
Speaker 1: they the embellish stories, are they just outright uh, you
Speaker 1: know literary devices uses of the metaphor of the body
Speaker 1: is glass. Yeah. One of the things about the glass
Speaker 1: delusion is that it's so it's so imagistic, and it's
Speaker 1: so evocative, and it makes a great story. And whenever
Speaker 1: there is a condition that makes a great story, you've
Speaker 1: got to be suspicious of some of these historical accounts
Speaker 1: because they make such great stories. Yeah, it reminds me
Speaker 1: of the you know, the old not even that old,
Speaker 1: but the the the sort of urban legends about the
Speaker 1: you know, somebody took so much LSD that they thought
Speaker 1: they were a bug and climbed inside a keyhole, or
Speaker 1: I thought they were a key and climbed inside a keyhole,
Speaker 1: something like of that nature. Um, which it sounds wonderful
Speaker 1: because it's so ridiculous and so ridiculous that it's actually
Speaker 1: kind of horrifying. But then when you start teasing an
Speaker 1: apart and saying, well did this really happen? Was that
Speaker 1: actually a delusion or is it just make for some
Speaker 1: compelling bit of fiction. Yes, So one of our main
Speaker 1: sources for this episode was an essay by someone going
Speaker 1: by the name gil Speak published in the History of
Speaker 1: Psychiatry in nine and it was called an Odd Kind
Speaker 1: of Melancholy Reflections on the Glass Delusion in Europe fourteen
Speaker 1: forty to sixteen eighty. And the author of this essay
Speaker 1: makes some really interesting general observations about when you see
Speaker 1: this delusion popping up, and one of the most interesting
Speaker 1: to me was that the author says it is an
Speaker 1: affliction of the man of letters in Europe. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is interesting because because again we already touched on the
Speaker 1: literary history of glass delusion that we see it in
Speaker 1: medical accounts, published studies essentially of the day, as well
Speaker 1: as as fiction outright fiction as well, and and that
Speaker 1: sort of space between where you don't know of if
Speaker 1: a have a poet or philosopher is talking about something
Speaker 1: that actually happened or just you know, trying to make
Speaker 1: a prove a point about the human condition. But any rate,
Speaker 1: you have certain individuals who are perhaps saying already a
Speaker 1: little um more inclined toward bouts of melancholy, and they're
Speaker 1: reading all this stuff there of a class where they
Speaker 1: have both the time and the ability to consume all
Speaker 1: of these materials and uh, and so they're they're feeding
Speaker 1: their mind with the idea of glass delusion and perhaps
Speaker 1: allowing then their mind to to generate the delusion. Right,
Speaker 1: So the prevalence of glass delusions could be kind of
Speaker 1: self reinforcing. The people who are the most in temperament
Speaker 1: susceptible to it are also the people who are being
Speaker 1: fed stories about it, right. Yeah, It's kind of like
Speaker 1: if if today somebody was watching a bunch of zombie
Speaker 1: uh TV and reading zombie fiction and zombie comics and
Speaker 1: then suddenly started believing that they themselves were undead or
Speaker 1: but we're getting to have a very real fear of
Speaker 1: of the undead. And likewise, if individual centuries from now
Speaker 1: looked back on media from today and said, oh, there
Speaker 1: were a lot of these zombie stories going on, where
Speaker 1: any of these accounts actual happenings, where they were just
Speaker 1: a fiction people were obsessed with in the day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is it life imitating art or the undead imitating life? Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like one of the big examples that comes up comes
Speaker 1: from Servants the Lawyer of Glass, which of course we
Speaker 1: reference in our introduction here, which which tells the story
Speaker 1: of of a lawyer who is essentially poisoned. Um did
Speaker 1: you want to you want to break into into his story? Well,
Speaker 1: of course yeah. So the the young lawyer is a prodigy.
Speaker 1: He is very gifted and witty and skillful, and he
Speaker 1: graduates from law school. And there is a young lady
Speaker 1: who falls in love with him and wants him to
Speaker 1: fall in love with her. So she comes up with
Speaker 1: a love potion that is supposed to get the job done,
Speaker 1: but instead it goes haywire. She slips the love potion
Speaker 1: into a fruit that he eats, and instead of falling
Speaker 1: in love with her, he falls into a coma. And
Speaker 1: then when he wakes from his coma, he suffers from
Speaker 1: the delusion that his body is made of glass. He
Speaker 1: has contracted the glass delusion. Nevertheless, he goes on to
Speaker 1: have a pretty famous and interesting career. So he becomes
Speaker 1: known all over the place for being the glass lawyer,
Speaker 1: the lawyer who has to travel around and a coach
Speaker 1: filled with straw to you know, blunt all the corners
Speaker 1: and make sure he doesn't get chattered. They say. He
Speaker 1: walks in the center of the street to avoid roof
Speaker 1: tiles falling down on him and shattering him. And then
Speaker 1: eventually he wakes up from his delusion. He says, oh, no,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm not made of glass, but now
Speaker 1: this is what he's famous for. So I have to
Speaker 1: keep that. I have to keep it going. I have
Speaker 1: to keep images of that, right. Um. So yeah, this
Speaker 1: becomes a you know, a fertile meme for literate Europeans.
Speaker 1: And you see glass buttocks showing up in a lot
Speaker 1: of these accounts. They are all kinds of glass body parts, arms, legs, heads, hearts, chests,
Speaker 1: but it seems like the most common one is buttocks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's also the most humorous. And I think, I
Speaker 1: guess that's the That's the thing is that if if
Speaker 1: you're going to tell a story about somebody with a
Speaker 1: body part made out of glass, that the buttocks are
Speaker 1: perfect well to mention. Another literary example in the English
Speaker 1: play Lingua from sixteen o seven by the playwright Thomas
Speaker 1: thom Kiss. There is a glass man in this play
Speaker 1: named Tactus, who says to a character named ol fact Us, quote,
Speaker 1: I am a urinal I dare not stir for fear
Speaker 1: of cracking in the bottom and so in this we
Speaker 1: get into the subset of glass man, in which the
Speaker 1: glass man is not only a glass vessel, he is
Speaker 1: a glass vessel full of urine in the delusion. Right,
Speaker 1: So the author of that essay I mentioned tells us
Speaker 1: that actually, at the time urinal was a synonym. It
Speaker 1: just meant like a glass flask, a small flask, but
Speaker 1: that it certainly had the connotation of something you would
Speaker 1: fill up with urine. But sitting around the study and
Speaker 1: you need, you need to go, you just grab whatever
Speaker 1: kind of glass apparatus is the handy, right. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: as just one of the uh, the connections here when
Speaker 1: you start looking at the what glass delusion meant to
Speaker 1: contemporary UH readers and anyone hearing any of these stories. Yes,
Speaker 1: so the glass delusion isn't just about the physical fragility
Speaker 1: of the body that the breakable nous. It takes on
Speaker 1: other significant dimensions as well. Indeed, I mean at the
Speaker 1: time we see fortune is often described as a goddess,
Speaker 1: a fickle goddess that's made of glass. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's fragile, it's it's fickle. Um. Likewise, chastity sometimes explained
Speaker 1: UH with the metaphor of glass. Uh, the particularly the
Speaker 1: French bishop Saint Francis to sales who compared to the
Speaker 1: human body to glass. And and then you have these
Speaker 1: different human bodies going around uh, and they should not
Speaker 1: be carried together without danger of collision and break it um.
Speaker 1: And then there's this rich tradition in the Bible describing
Speaker 1: the human condition as that of a vessel. And now
Speaker 1: there's not a number of these these descriptions that that
Speaker 1: appear in the Biblical tradition are conflicting and there's not
Speaker 1: a definite thread throughout them, but one of the basic
Speaker 1: ones is the human body as a vessel in which,
Speaker 1: like the Holy Spirit is invested right right, if you
Speaker 1: cracked this vessel, the pure element that's being poured in
Speaker 1: can spill out. It's a bad thing. So sort of
Speaker 1: the body is a temple type thing, right, Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's this idea that one wants to preserve his purity
Speaker 1: and goodness, and but you do that by remaining intact
Speaker 1: to not let it spill out onto the ground and
Speaker 1: be wasted. Which makes me instantly think of the kool
Speaker 1: aid man. Really is our our our generation's glass man.
Speaker 1: He is he is a vessel of glass and uh
Speaker 1: God or you know, the Kulai corporation, whoever has invested
Speaker 1: him with this red power. You know. One of the
Speaker 1: things I immediately think of then, is that if the
Speaker 1: kool Aid Man were to lose his kool aid, to
Speaker 1: be cracked and leak all of his red power out
Speaker 1: onto the ground, he would not only be fragile and breakable,
Speaker 1: but he would be transparent. You could see straight through
Speaker 1: the kool Aid Man. And that seems significant also in
Speaker 1: the history of the glass delusion. That's right. Uh, photophobia
Speaker 1: factors into a number of these So not only are
Speaker 1: you afraid that you're going to to shatter on impact
Speaker 1: with any other kind of physical object. Not only are you,
Speaker 1: you know, keeping yourself confined, you're you're super soft, bad,
Speaker 1: but you're also closing the shutters because you don't want
Speaker 1: light to shine through you. Yeah, because that would be
Speaker 1: kind of horrifying, right, because they're the light is shining
Speaker 1: through your glass body, revealing the emptiness of your form
Speaker 1: in addition to the ephemeral nature of your form. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like the ultimate privacy. Weird out. You're not only exposed,
Speaker 1: but you're actually transparent. People can not only see your nakedness,
Speaker 1: but see beyond you. Yeah. At the time when as
Speaker 1: as optics, uh, you know, makes its way into everyday life,
Speaker 1: especially for you know, learned individuals. Yeah, you know, you're
Speaker 1: you're putting a looking glasses, spectacles on your nose, on
Speaker 1: your nose so you can read, etcetera. By the early
Speaker 1: seventeenth century, you actually see numerous books with titles that
Speaker 1: refer to the looking glass to imply a means of
Speaker 1: self discovery. So, as gil speak argues in his work,
Speaker 1: you see a melancholic photophobia representing the fear of self discovery,
Speaker 1: a kind of techno metaphor for the old adage the
Speaker 1: light that sets me free, you can also blind me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's not just the fear of being seen through
Speaker 1: by others, but the fear of seeing through oneself. Another
Speaker 1: thing about the kool aid Man, he's made out of glass.
Speaker 1: He seems like the perfect candidate for glass delusion. And
Speaker 1: yet what is the other thing that coolant kulaid man
Speaker 1: does all the time. He busts through cinder block. So
Speaker 1: how does that? How does that work? How I've never
Speaker 1: really really questioned it. I was just, you know, I
Speaker 1: just completely trusted the media that I was presented with.
Speaker 1: Of course, kool Aid Man can bust through a wall,
Speaker 1: but he's a glass vessel. What's what's going on here? Well,
Speaker 1: he could be some of that special reinforced glass that
Speaker 1: you know they use in the in the army vehicles
Speaker 1: for windshields and stuff. It doesn't break so easily. I'm
Speaker 1: not quite sure why they would invest that technology in
Speaker 1: the kool Aid Man. Or maybe it's all about the
Speaker 1: Koolaid itself, Like he should break like without the kool
Speaker 1: Aid in him, he would have no power. He would
Speaker 1: be just that fragile vessel. But Koolaid is so good
Speaker 1: and so potent that it can make even the kool
Speaker 1: Aid Man of a creature of glass breakthrough that wall. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Or it's just that the cinder blocks in the wall
Speaker 1: have been made with sand and thus are very very soft.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's true. That's true. So another aspect of the
Speaker 1: glass delusion that might be interesting to talk about would
Speaker 1: be the significance of glass as a technology, because the
Speaker 1: bodily fragility delusion is not It did not begin with
Speaker 1: the glass delusion. In fact, gil Speak tells us that
Speaker 1: there are classical and medieval accounts of earthen where men.
Speaker 1: So this is sort of older glass style. The ceramics,
Speaker 1: the glazed ceramics that are not quite the type of
Speaker 1: clear glass we think about emerging is the windows stuff
Speaker 1: of more recent history. But back in the olden days,
Speaker 1: you might think you were a clay pot and you
Speaker 1: could crack just as easily as a clay pot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the techno metaphor here, uh, you know it just
Speaker 1: it makes perfect sense. You can imagine some you know,
Speaker 1: member of an ancient culture and they have this ceramic
Speaker 1: pot that they've created, a lot of work has gone
Speaker 1: into it, a lot of artistry, and it's a it's
Speaker 1: a useful item, but it's also so easily easily shattered,
Speaker 1: so that that seems an irresistible metaphor for the human experience.
Speaker 1: And as we discussed in our recent episodes on techno religion,
Speaker 1: that we can't help but look to our technology and
Speaker 1: our man made devices and systems and try to use
Speaker 1: those to define ourselves, whether you're talking about you know,
Speaker 1: metaphors for you know, agricultural technology or or construction technology
Speaker 1: and ancient texts or modern interpretations where we we think
Speaker 1: of our mind as a computer or we, you know,
Speaker 1: illogically think of our memories as videotapes. Yeah, and very much.
Speaker 1: I think there is the same kind of thing we
Speaker 1: talked about in techno religion, where ancient metaphors, ancient technological
Speaker 1: metaphors are very acceptable to us. Talking about the turning
Speaker 1: of a wheel that feels sufficiently ancient and and deep
Speaker 1: enough in the human experience to be a metaphor for
Speaker 1: something magical and and related to God. But talking about
Speaker 1: computers and cell phones that feels crass in the context
Speaker 1: of religion. And I think the same thing could could
Speaker 1: possibly apply when talking about what delusions are likely to
Speaker 1: take hold. Things that are I don't know, have more
Speaker 1: of an ancient pedigree seem to be more plausible to us.
Speaker 1: Of course, then again, you do hear people saying they
Speaker 1: put microchips in my brain. I mean that is modern
Speaker 1: delusion some people suffer from. Uh do you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean we when we
Speaker 1: take that that understanding of it and when and we
Speaker 1: can easily apply it to uh uh you know, to
Speaker 1: the fourteenth century, because this is a time when we
Speaker 1: saw an existing technology glass really really developed, really evolved
Speaker 1: because because we've had glass for a while, we we
Speaker 1: have earliest some of the earliest man made glass objects.
Speaker 1: You know, generally beads date back to around UHT b
Speaker 1: c E. But around twenty we see the crown glass
Speaker 1: blowing technique really kick off. Broadsheet glass emerges earlier in
Speaker 1: twelve twenty six, and these really um change what's possible
Speaker 1: with glass and the and the sort of applications that
Speaker 1: we can we can use. And of course, uh, you
Speaker 1: know we're seeing stained glass so up in in churches, uh,
Speaker 1: which which has an interesting connection to to mystical thoughts
Speaker 1: on glass. Uh. There is a certainly a mysticism of
Speaker 1: light at the time, a key factor in the Abbott
Speaker 1: Shuger of Saint denis his a twelfth century push for
Speaker 1: larger windows and colored glasses in churches. And of course this,
Speaker 1: you know that the mysticism light of light here is
Speaker 1: you know, pretty obvious. You get into ideas of of
Speaker 1: light as this, uh, you know, this metaphor for God's presence,
Speaker 1: for God's love, the light of God shining in uh.
Speaker 1: And of course optics have always been an area of
Speaker 1: scientific inquiry, even in times when when science was you know,
Speaker 1: lobbed in there with the philosophical and even magical pursuits.
Speaker 1: You have glass, balls, mirror, other optical creations often used
Speaker 1: as wards against evil spirits, are used in divination. So, uh,
Speaker 1: there's fertile ground there for you. Even as glass begins
Speaker 1: to show up everywhere, um, at least in the ritzier
Speaker 1: parts of your your your local population centers, there's still
Speaker 1: a lot of mysticism, uh, in if not the substance itself,
Speaker 1: at least in the fact that it is used as
Speaker 1: a convance for light, Yeah, and the fact that it
Speaker 1: can be used to manipulate light. And I'm sure once
Speaker 1: that happened, that must have been strange to people, for
Speaker 1: for whom that was new. Yeah. I mean, look what
Speaker 1: a stained glass does to the interior of a cathedral, right,
Speaker 1: It transforms the light of day into this, uh, this
Speaker 1: phantasmagorical mix of colors. Yeah, and light is something we
Speaker 1: don't normally think about being able to manipulate, at least
Speaker 1: not in the you know, at your caveman level of technology,
Speaker 1: or even at your you know, early Middle ages level
Speaker 1: of technology. What are you gonna do with light? I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just coming from the sun. And you can make
Speaker 1: it with fire, and you can I guess you can
Speaker 1: put a shade up. I mean, what's so pervasive now
Speaker 1: our optical technology and our manipulation of light that we
Speaker 1: don't even think about it, but we are just today
Speaker 1: we're just wizards of light. Like just in this room,
Speaker 1: look at all the sources of artificial light coming at
Speaker 1: us in the way that we're we're manipulating even the
Speaker 1: the artificiality of it through various you know, various lenses,
Speaker 1: through screens, through different types of bulbs. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of crazy. So today we live in an
Speaker 1: age where we don't even question the magic. But if
Speaker 1: we look back to this time where the mat a
Speaker 1: lot of the magic is really beginning to come online, Um,
Speaker 1: you can see where that would really get into people's
Speaker 1: heads and help feed existing tendencies towards delusion. Yeah. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we've talked about the images and the ideas that
Speaker 1: fed into the glass delusion, but I think we haven't
Speaker 1: really talked about the explanation for the glass delusion. And
Speaker 1: this is always sort of difficult territory and psychology, where
Speaker 1: you're trying to explain what need a psychological delusion answers.
Speaker 1: But that is something that people have speculated upon. So
Speaker 1: why does the glass lawyer think he is made of glass?
Speaker 1: What causes that? Yeah? In this it really ties well
Speaker 1: into what's known as terror management theory or t MT,
Speaker 1: which is a direct from a cultural anthropologist, Ernest Becker's
Speaker 1: efforts to explain the motivational underpinnings of human behavior, which
Speaker 1: you know everything. Yeah, I mean that's the key argument
Speaker 1: is that like the biggest thing in life is the
Speaker 1: is the eventuality of death, and that every knowledge of
Speaker 1: it knowledge you have to realize it's coming. It's gonna happen,
Speaker 1: It's gonna happen to me, it's gonna happen to everyone
Speaker 1: I know and love, UM, and there's nothing I can
Speaker 1: do about it. And there's there's very little I can
Speaker 1: do to predict when it's going to happen. And so this,
Speaker 1: this knowledge of death, this knowledge of impermanence, is so
Speaker 1: pervasive that it factors into everything we do, both the
Speaker 1: fear of it, the wish to avoid it, and the
Speaker 1: desire for immortality, either some sort of literal immortality through
Speaker 1: today science, um, religiously through ideas of resurrection, or reincarnation,
Speaker 1: or you know, you know less less literal ideas of immortality,
Speaker 1: such as I'm gonna I'm gonna be faint, so I'm
Speaker 1: gonna really make a name for myself, or have lots
Speaker 1: of kids. That's lots of children, or I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make sure that my grave marker is made
Speaker 1: out of stone. I'm not made out of stone, but
Speaker 1: at least something with my name on it will be
Speaker 1: made out of stone, and I will have a curse
Speaker 1: carved into it than anyone walking through the graveyard will
Speaker 1: tremble to look upon. And so you can really see
Speaker 1: where if you look at life through the lens of
Speaker 1: terror management theory, you can see how how glass delusion
Speaker 1: fits fits neatly into that. You can see. Sure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a perfect physical metaphor for realizing the
Speaker 1: fragility of one's existence, sort of the metaphorical fragility that
Speaker 1: you're always just a moment away, potentially from the end
Speaker 1: from being shattered. Yeah, and you know, in this it
Speaker 1: reminds me a little bit of a scene from David
Speaker 1: Cronenberg's Crash. Did you ever see this one? No, that's
Speaker 1: one of the few Cronenberg's I've not seen it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I've heard. It's messed up. It's messed up. It's
Speaker 1: a weird lick about individuals who fetish eye uh, like
Speaker 1: famous lethal car crashes and just car crashes in general. Um.
Speaker 1: But there's a scene early on where, if I remember,
Speaker 1: a character has been in a pretty pretty catastrophic car
Speaker 1: wreck and they have just recovered from their injury. Uh,
Speaker 1: and there there's a scene of them riding in the
Speaker 1: car and it's kind of a split shot with half
Speaker 1: of the half of the scene is uh, is inside
Speaker 1: the vehicle, and then half of it is the busy
Speaker 1: highway on the other side. And it really does a
Speaker 1: great job of, you know, driving home this uh, this
Speaker 1: character's realization about the fragility of the human body. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's that quote from the novel Sutree by cormck McCarthy,
Speaker 1: which is is great if you wonderful. Yeah, it's very funny,
Speaker 1: which is unusual for McCarthy. Uh. That says, what could
Speaker 1: a child know of the darkness of God's plan? Or
Speaker 1: how flesh is so frail? It is hardly more than
Speaker 1: a dream. It's a great line. No, not one of
Speaker 1: the funnier moments in the in the book, but no, no,
Speaker 1: no contact with watermelons in that one. But no. That
Speaker 1: Centre is a wonderful, wonderful book, full of plenty of
Speaker 1: Corey McCarthy darkness in places, but also again it's it's
Speaker 1: also core McCarthy. It is is most humorous. So one
Speaker 1: of the things you might have noticed about pretty much
Speaker 1: all of the cases we've mentioned so far is that
Speaker 1: they come from a particular time and place. We're talking
Speaker 1: about early modern Europe, and that was a particular time
Speaker 1: and place in which this delusion seemed to take hold.
Speaker 1: It suddenly became popular, and you had glass buddocks everywhere.
Speaker 1: But there are some more recent and even some modern
Speaker 1: cases of the glass delusion, and I think it would
Speaker 1: be really interesting to transition to look at those, yeah,
Speaker 1: because because these definitely occur outside of that era of
Speaker 1: of glass is an exciting technology, outside of an era
Speaker 1: in which you had these clear cultural influences, you know,
Speaker 1: regarding the humors and you know, the idea of the
Speaker 1: body as some sort of a biblical vessel, etcetera. And
Speaker 1: then as we come to the work of psychiatrist Andy
Speaker 1: Lemaine Um from Leaden in the Netherlands, and he has
Speaker 1: in recent years claim to have uncovered contemporary cases of
Speaker 1: glass delusion. Interesting. Yeah, he was apparently lecturing on the topic,
Speaker 1: you know, just historically, you know kind of you know,
Speaker 1: how how we've been discussing it. Uh, And then he
Speaker 1: was approached by a Dutch physician who claimed to have
Speaker 1: run across a nineteen thirties case of a woman who
Speaker 1: believed her legs and back were made of glass, suspected
Speaker 1: by the Dutch physician in question to have have been
Speaker 1: part of her particular extreme fear of personal contact. Which
Speaker 1: is which is an angle on it that that hadn't
Speaker 1: really but we haven't really discussed and maybe as ultimately
Speaker 1: a more modern angle to take on it, this gorea
Speaker 1: phobia as the root of glass delusion in an individual. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it shows up in some of these earlier descriptions about
Speaker 1: people who who feared being approached by others less to
Speaker 1: those people shatter them. But those older cases really do
Speaker 1: seem to have more to do with death. It seems
Speaker 1: to me like they fear all kinds of mechanical and
Speaker 1: physical trauma, you know, being afraid of roof tiles falling
Speaker 1: on you, or of being jostled too much in the
Speaker 1: carriage or something which you're both kind of fears of technology.
Speaker 1: That's interesting, Yeah, but but this is strictly talking about
Speaker 1: personal contact. And typically when you're thinking about what would
Speaker 1: break glass, you don't think about somebody's hands. You think about,
Speaker 1: you know, dropping it on the floor or something like that.
Speaker 1: But I can definitely see how this type of glass
Speaker 1: delusion could come into play as well. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: you know, following this, another doctor brought him an additional
Speaker 1: case from a different hospital from around nineteen but it
Speaker 1: but but the really key moment in uh Leman's research
Speaker 1: came when a young patient showed up at his own
Speaker 1: hospital claiming to be made out of glass. So, of
Speaker 1: course he did what you know that you would expect.
Speaker 1: He said, well, we'll come on in, I will get
Speaker 1: you a nice cushion to set on, and we will
Speaker 1: talk about your glass delusion because I really want to
Speaker 1: find out what's at the root of it. And and
Speaker 1: he made sure uh not to lead the questions too much,
Speaker 1: not not to immediately presume that it had to do
Speaker 1: with with with terror management theory and a fear of
Speaker 1: death and impermanence, etcetera. Say, here are the symptoms you
Speaker 1: should be experiencing if you have glass delusion. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean this guy's this guy's a pro. He knows what
Speaker 1: he's doing, so um it. In questioning this patient, it
Speaker 1: emerged that the patient's feelings were similar to the way
Speaker 1: we see through the glass in a window, observing everything beyond,
Speaker 1: has been not seeing the glass itself. So it was
Speaker 1: it's it's tied in this almost a fear of invisibility. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so not just being exposed, but but of being inconsequential. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like I'm just not not only am I just another person,
Speaker 1: but I'm a person that everyone just sees through, Like
Speaker 1: I only take up space, but not in people's minds,
Speaker 1: not in their actual perceptions of reality. That's fascinating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that the quote from from from the individual
Speaker 1: as they were as they're looking out a window at
Speaker 1: the vista beyond, they say, that's me. I'm there and
Speaker 1: I'm not there, like the glass in a window. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in the right up we read of this incident,
Speaker 1: they described how Lemayne found out from this patient that
Speaker 1: the patient had been in an accident, and following the accident,
Speaker 1: his family had been very overprotective of him, and that
Speaker 1: this glass delusion served as what they called a distance regulator.
Speaker 1: It was an attempt to have a sort of self
Speaker 1: controlled level of distance and privacy from all of the
Speaker 1: people leaning in on his life. So it might not
Speaker 1: be that a person necessarily fears being in con sequential.
Speaker 1: It might be that they desire to be less the
Speaker 1: focus of other people's attention, which which serves to bring
Speaker 1: us back around, interestingly enough to the young eleven year
Speaker 1: old King Charles, right, because here's this individual who's at
Speaker 1: the center of all these machinations and concerns about the
Speaker 1: future of a kingdom. Uh, it's it's you know, we're
Speaker 1: speculating here, but it seems like he would be very
Speaker 1: easy for him to feel in consequential and overmanaged and overtouched. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's a good thought. And then, of course
Speaker 1: there's also the possibility that the glass delusion has something
Speaker 1: to do with fears of effacement and social humiliation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this ties into the into the idea that we
Speaker 1: live in this modern age where it's so easy to
Speaker 1: have anxieties about our personal fragility, but also transparency, especially
Speaker 1: of our personal space. Um So this again ties back
Speaker 1: into that idea that that I am I'm not only
Speaker 1: am a made of glass, but I am transparent and
Speaker 1: I don't matter. I'm just a transparent vessel in this
Speaker 1: world of transparent vessels. You can almost think of that
Speaker 1: as being a physical metaphor for how some of us
Speaker 1: exist in the online era, right in the era of retweets,
Speaker 1: where where ideas and content often just kind of flow
Speaker 1: through you and back out. That's where it's so easy
Speaker 1: to be more connected than ever before to the people
Speaker 1: in your life, but also more isolated. Yeah, I'm sharing
Speaker 1: what I have seen. I do not produce my own light.
Speaker 1: So I wonder if that means that we could see
Speaker 1: more cases of glass delusion. Yeah. I wondered about what
Speaker 1: the future of glass delusion might be since we've we've
Speaker 1: sort of seen that it might have some relationship to
Speaker 1: the development of glass technology throughout history. Like in the
Speaker 1: earthenware age you have the earthenware delusion, in the clear
Speaker 1: glass age, you have the glass delusion. What could the
Speaker 1: future material based delusion be? Like will we ever have
Speaker 1: the carbon nanotubes delusion? I don't know exactly what that
Speaker 1: would be. I was just trying to think are there
Speaker 1: any future materials people could feel like they were. Well,
Speaker 1: one of the things I thought of was translucent concrete.
Speaker 1: Have you read about this, No, I have none. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's concrete building material that has embedded elements like that.
Speaker 1: It might be things like optical fibers that allow the
Speaker 1: transmission of light. So the kool Aid Man could be
Speaker 1: translucent concrete. That's why he's so strong, but you can
Speaker 1: still see through him. Ah see he was. He's a
Speaker 1: visitor from the future, bringing to us the joys, the wonders,
Speaker 1: the holy miracle. Yes, uh, this this meta material. I
Speaker 1: think that's something that's actually interesting. If you wanted to
Speaker 1: think about a future in which we do not have
Speaker 1: such fears about fragility, but we still have the fears
Speaker 1: about transparency, maybe there will be the translucent concrete delusion
Speaker 1: where we we still have all of these ideas about
Speaker 1: who sees me, who sees into me, who sees through me?
Speaker 1: Do I exist? Do I take up space? Do I
Speaker 1: flect light? But people aren't so concerned about their own death.
Speaker 1: I mean, this could be if we get the kind
Speaker 1: of Aubrey de Gray future where where the ultimate bad
Speaker 1: ending is not a physical death but just a bad
Speaker 1: social outcome. You know this since this brings to mind
Speaker 1: the fact that we do see quantum mechanics and also
Speaker 1: theories regarding the multiverse um factor into a lot of
Speaker 1: our considerations about self and where we are in our life. Uh.
Speaker 1: And a lot of this, I feel is is you know,
Speaker 1: comes from our consumption of media that employs those concepts.
Speaker 1: Is there is there like a comic book or a
Speaker 1: sci fi usage of meta materials that it could have
Speaker 1: this impact on everyone? I don't know. I'm sure there is,
Speaker 1: and I just can't think of it right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I'm trying to think if there's a if there's
Speaker 1: a comic book character who really makes use of some
Speaker 1: sort of meta material or special material, um, clay Face maybe, yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, that's sort of like the fear of being Well,
Speaker 1: it's always a metaphor and whatever the material is, it's
Speaker 1: always a metaphor for your personal hangouts. Because clay Face
Speaker 1: is what he's an actor, who's uh you know, is
Speaker 1: he really anybody inside? Right? He can assume all these forms,
Speaker 1: but he himself is formless. Um. You know. It also
Speaker 1: brings the crypt kryptonite, which isn't a material, but it
Speaker 1: is at an element. But we do see that used
Speaker 1: a lot of Someone will say, oh, well, that is
Speaker 1: my kryptonite. That is the thing that in and of
Speaker 1: itself can bring about my downfall. So you know, here's
Speaker 1: a thought that might be interesting or might be kind
Speaker 1: of dumb. I'll let you be the judge. One thing
Speaker 1: I was thinking about was that beings with partially glass
Speaker 1: of biology might not be unthinkable in the universe. Because
Speaker 1: here was my reasoning, and and this isn't original to me.
Speaker 1: I've heard people express this idea before. Earth Animals like
Speaker 1: humans are carbon based life forms, So we inhale oxygen,
Speaker 1: which is O two, and then we exhale the waste product,
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide, which is c O two, because we're carbon based,
Speaker 1: if it were possible to have a silicon based organism,
Speaker 1: and I have no idea if that's possible or not,
Speaker 1: but it's an idea that comes up in debates about astrobiology.
Speaker 1: And it breathed oxygen like us, would it inhale O
Speaker 1: two and then exhale silicon dioxide the same way we
Speaker 1: exhale carbon dioxide, because silicon dioxide is the main constituent
Speaker 1: of glass. And if that's possible that is a legitimately
Speaker 1: horrific space dragon that instead of flame breath has glass breath,
Speaker 1: breath of glass. I like it though, it uh, you know,
Speaker 1: brings to mind just last week we were talking about
Speaker 1: Stephen King's Beach World in nineteen seventy short story about uh,
Speaker 1: about individual's landing. I think it's like two humans and
Speaker 1: an android, or a crew of humans and androids that
Speaker 1: crash on a desert world. And at first it seems lifeless,
Speaker 1: but of course you wouldn't have a short story if
Speaker 1: there wasn't something out there. So the silicon sand dunes
Speaker 1: sort of become sentient and then hypnotize one of the guys. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it was pretty creepy. It's pretty creepy. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's one of the great early King stories. And uh yeah,
Speaker 1: you have silicon based life in the form of these
Speaker 1: this you know, collective sand entity. But if that kind
Speaker 1: of life form existed on beach World, then perhaps there's
Speaker 1: on the other side of Beach World there is a
Speaker 1: city where you have glass beings walking around, or a
Speaker 1: glass breathing dragon, glass breathing dragons. Now they are all
Speaker 1: kinds of examples in fiction of people shattering. This is,
Speaker 1: in fact, I think, a very popular trope for some reason.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, one of the big ones. I feel that
Speaker 1: really that really kicked off a lot of it. Of course,
Speaker 1: as in Terminator to where you have the scene where
Speaker 1: the liquid metal TEA one thousand is frozen solid with
Speaker 1: the liquid nitrogen and then shattered. Yeah he's made brittle. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you see continuations of that trope, and we're trying
Speaker 1: to think of a number of these. Time cop has
Speaker 1: a couple of kills, it's great. My mind immediately went
Speaker 1: to Jason X because there is a scene in Jason
Speaker 1: X where Jason murders an unfortunate young lady by putting
Speaker 1: her face in some liquid nitrogen that freezes it and
Speaker 1: then shattering her face on a countertop. And then and
Speaker 1: then Horizon there's a frozen corpse that breaks apart. Mortal Kombat.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Zero does that to you, Donne. He freezes
Speaker 1: you and then punches you to shatter you. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: sure does. And then uh and then of course, like
Speaker 1: Mirror Creatures, there's the the Young Sherlock Holmes movie which
Speaker 1: involved a stained glass night, or at least the the
Speaker 1: hallucination of a stone of a stained glass night killing somebody. Um,
Speaker 1: I seem to recall that both Krull and Barbarella had
Speaker 1: minions that shatter into into shards when they're killed. You
Speaker 1: linked in the notes for this episode a wonderful scene
Speaker 1: from the movie Warlock three that I watched late at
Speaker 1: night last night, right before I went to bed. Julian
Speaker 1: sands right, and he was he's he's wonderful, And yeah,
Speaker 1: he turns a woman into glass and then shatters her,
Speaker 1: not with the most pristine of special effects. Everybody still doesn't,
Speaker 1: so God bless him. Um. Likewise, Uh, there's a you know,
Speaker 1: there's a scene in Labyrinth that involves a reality shattering
Speaker 1: into glass. Pretty much anything that you could run across
Speaker 1: that involves Medusa or a gorgon, there's no if you're
Speaker 1: gonna turn an individual into stone, you also need to
Speaker 1: shatter somebody that has been turned into stone. Yeah, even
Speaker 1: in an age where the glass delusion might not be
Speaker 1: a common delusion for people to actually suffer from, it
Speaker 1: is still a very common image in our imagination for
Speaker 1: some reason. Yeah, because you have things in our life
Speaker 1: that are beautiful, well crafted, in pristine and we attach
Speaker 1: a lot of value to them, and they are so
Speaker 1: easily trashed, they're so easily bro can it don nothing
Speaker 1: and made made completely useless, made May you know their
Speaker 1: their beauty transformed into just ugliness. And we can't help
Speaker 1: but see our own reflection and see our own doom.
Speaker 1: Uh in those examples. All right, So there you have it,
Speaker 1: mirror delusion. You know, a brief journey through the history
Speaker 1: of mirror delusion, where it came from and how it
Speaker 1: it really hasn't gone away? Uh, you know out certainly
Speaker 1: the delusion itself is a psychiatric manifestation. You do see
Speaker 1: very few cases off today, but the the the the idea,
Speaker 1: the concept, the tying of of of impermanence to shattered
Speaker 1: objects continues to reson it. Yeah, we'll always have Mortal Kombat.
Speaker 1: We will, We always will. All right. Hey, in the meantime,
Speaker 1: do you want to check out more episodes of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind? Go to Stuff to Blow your
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Speaker 1: find us on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, or Google Plus. And hey,
Speaker 1: the landing page for this episode will include links to
Speaker 1: some on site materials that are related, as well as
Speaker 1: to a couple of offsite sources. If you want to
Speaker 1: explore this topic further, and if you want to tell
Speaker 1: us about your favorite scene in a movie where somebody
Speaker 1: gets turned into glass or some other brittle material and
Speaker 1: then shattered, or if you want to tell us about
Speaker 1: an interesting delusion where people thought their body was made
Speaker 1: of some foreign substance or material, you can email us
Speaker 1: at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com.
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