When Other People Push Back
(Social Reality and the Limits of Meaning)
Up to this point, the collapse of meaning has been largely internal.
Even when institutions intervened, the struggle was still semantic — one system of language pressing against another.
In Chapter Twelve of Fought Disorder (“Mass Debating”), that changes.
Now, the audience is no longer imagined.
It’s real.
From Private Meaning to Public Friction
Psychosis can survive in isolation.
It can even survive institutional containment.
What it struggles with is other people who do not share the frame.
This chapter introduces:
Group dynamics
Social scrutiny
Unpredictable reactions
Embarrassment
Shame
Meaning no longer unfolds safely inside the mind.
It is tested in public.
A Short Passage
Rather than a single line, this chapter works through exposure:
Speaking when silence would protect.
Explaining when explanation worsens things.
Performing meaning for people who don’t recognise it.
The result is not understanding.
It is misalignment.
What’s Happening Linguistically
This chapter introduces a twelfth shift:
Intersubjective collapse.
In ordinary social interaction:
Meaning is negotiated
Misunderstanding is repairable
Feedback corrects excess
Here:
Feedback feels hostile
Correction feels humiliating
Misunderstanding escalates rather than resolves
Language stops synchronising.
Why Social Reality Is So Painful Here
Social spaces rely on shared assumptions:
What matters
What doesn’t
What is appropriate
What is too much
Psychotic meaning violates those assumptions constantly.
Not maliciously.
Not deliberately.
But visibly.
That visibility hurts.
Shame Without Resolution
This chapter is saturated with shame — but not the kind that leads to apology or repair.
This is unplaceable shame:
Not about a single action
Not tied to a clear rule
Not correctable by behaviour
The self feels wrong — in public.
The Reader’s Discomfort
Readers often report that this chapter is harder to read than overtly dramatic ones.
Because:
It mirrors everyday social vulnerability
It removes narrative spectacle
It exposes the self without protection
There is no villain here.
Just misfit.
Why This Is a Turning Point
Something important happens here.
For the first time, meaning begins to fail socially.
Not just internally.
Not just institutionally.
But interpersonally.
That failure matters.
Because social reality is where language is corrected — or abandoned.
The Beginning of Constraint
After this chapter, consequences sharpen.
Not because meaning is disproven —
but because it can no longer operate unchecked.
Others intervene.
Boundaries appear.
Freedom contracts.
Why the Book Holds This Tension
Many narratives rush through social exposure.
Fought Disorder stays with it.
Because this is where people often feel most damaged — not by psychosis itself, but by how it is seen.
Where This Leads
Once social feedback cannot be integrated, something has to happen.
Either:
Meaning retreats
Or control escalates
The book follows the latter — briefly.
