The main theme which I wish to focus on for the topic of ‘non places’ concentrates on the psychological non place of confusion- the state of ‘not knowing’. By focusing on the idea of confusion within the psyche, I feel this is appropriate as a non-place can be briefly defined as something which an individual passes through and has little to no engagement with. In conjunction with this, considerable complaints have been made about non-place commonly identifying a loss of personal identity, a decline in meaningful relations amongst the users of spaces, and the forgetting of history. In saying this, the feeling of mental confusion concentrates upon a psychological non place where memory loss, hysteria, loss of personality and indefinitely a loss of relation with the brain to the physical being are defined as absorbing the individual in a state of ‘unknown’.
By directing my attention towards mental confusion, I have created a clearer pathway towards the psychological illness of ‘delirium’. This is an acute case of mental confusion whereby a sudden, severe, fluctuating confusion occurs which is usually reversible. It involves a disturbance in mental function, including decreased awareness and confused thinking, and is characterized by the inability to pay attention or think clearly, disorientation, and fluctuations in alertness levels. I feel that by creating a core emphasis on the mental affiliation with a psychological non place where the individual concerned loses all control over their own awareness relates entirely to the notion of a non-place. In saying this, I would like to focus on the inability for the diagnosis of this condition to be absorbed into anything more than purely imprinting the individual with this mental classification rather than seeing past this confusion and looking at the core of the underlying problem in order to treat it.
Fundamentally, I want to raise awareness of the inability to properly manage ‘delirium’ and the journey that the individual goes through when all conscious responses are taken to be replaced with a notion of misperception and disorientation. The non-place exists within this mental state, whereby a loss of conscious identity and engagement with the individual’s previous state and replaced with a deficiency of understanding is overwhelmed within their ‘mental space’.
My current thoughts towards delirium has brought me onto morse code due to the inability for sufferers to correctly explain their symptoms and understand what they are going through, therefore suggesting an intuitive response from health professionals which often leads to misdiagnosis. By concentrating on coding, I am identifying and developing on the fact that delirium is a non place which exists within the mind which is difficult to understand and requires another depth of interpretation possibly via code.
I hope to explore morse code and possibly other forms of coding to encover the complicated and obscuring symptoms that overwhlem the patient into an altogether new realm of non place.
