Copyright 2003 Revision Sunday March 16, 2008 10:48:47 PM -0600

If you reached this page from a search engine and there is no menu

on  the  left margin click HOME to enter the site

Please read the Co`    pyright page for generous permissions.

If you want to understand the power of this phenomenon,

remember the paranoid psychotic rant of Seng-Hui Cho.

The Virginia Tech shooter had created

 the "special circumstances" for exposure.

When he had the expected mental event,

 he planned then killed 32 people.

        Home contains the list of new pages not in the menu.

"Subliminal Peripheral Vision Psychosis" is a coined phrase to describe a narrowly focused altered mental state.

Persons with this problem function normally.

But they have a belief system that severely contradicts some aspect of normal reality.

What is the difference between "brief psychotic disorder" and SPVP? The cause of SPVP is known.

If you surf this site I will tell you the cause of psychosis and how to avoid it. ...  FREE

SPVP can appear as a temporary episode or  as  a fixed altered mental state.

If you wish to see someone with this problem,

A YouTube Video of George Dillman attempting to throw Chee is now available.

Visit the Links section at the bottom of this page.

This site is about a conflict of human physiology that shaped history but was undetected  until the 1960's.

In the entire history of man on the planet Earth this phenomenon was discovered only once.

It caused mental breaks for office workers.

You will find this material hard to believe.

This phenomenon is explained in first semester psychology lectures where students don't believe it either.

For that reason I wrote a demonstration that will allow you to experience the phenomenon.

The Everquest Connection page has the explanation and assumes you have not taken basic psychology.

The solution for this problem was the office Cubicle.

This site argues that the this phenomenon causes College Suicides and Missing Students.

The phenomenon causes mental events around the world, Chaco Canyon.

If you use computers in unprotected workspace such as homes, dorms, student apartments, and small business offices read  ...Prevention... at the bottom of most pages.

Long  term exposure can cause severely altered mental states. Qi Gong  Kundalini Yoga

If you are visiting the site as part of a school project send the person responsible for controlling violence at your school to this site.

What is Subliminal Peripheral Vision Psychosis?

A Re-Edit of this page is underway. Sunday March 16, 2008

Server problems are causing time-outs. The update may be unfinished.

Incomplete sentences are possible. Do the best you can until this problem is solved.

Subliminal Peripheral Vision Psychosis (SPVP) is a descriptive title I coined for a rare work place psychiatric injury.

(This name was created to have a title that is not currently used for any other problem or feature of physiology.)

In phone calls to designers and engineers who work in this field I have discovered that while they design "Systems Furniture," Cubicles, to prevent workers 'subliminally seeing/detecting' movement approaching from behind, they do not have a name for the reason the design elements are necessary. They refer to this as providing "Cubicle Level Protection."

Discovery History Bottom of this page.

A communication from a grad student in Australia revealed that "Subliminal Distraction" is the term used for this problem. Subliminal Distraction also refers to distracting noise you would subliminally perceive in an office while you are working. Acoustic distraction is the  usual meaning of subliminal distraction in the United States. It is studied as a fatiguing factor. Visual Subliminal Distraction is unknown in any are of mental health services.

 I have been unable to find any reference on the Internet to vision driven Subliminal Distraction. A volunteer searched  the APA data base for me and could not find a paper there.

This phenomenon arises from a 'conflict in the physiology of sight'. Simple psychophysics facts reveal this conflict related to the vision startle reflex.

 This information is from first semester college psychology lectures.

Humans have the ability to ignore things in their vision field by attaching a zero level of attention to them. But since there are no on/off switches for the sensor cells on the rods and cones of your retina you can't "stop seeing" anything in that vision field. As long as your eyes are open, if stimulus strikes these sensor cells, neural impulses are sent to  your brain. Those two facts of physiology are in conflict with each other.

That conflict would be harmless except for a vision driven warning system called peripheral vision reflexes. A small area of your vision in far-peripheral vision functions subliminally to detect only movement. Stationary objects in this area of vision are invisible. Perform the Demonstration to experience this.

In the 1960's designers accidentally discovered these features of physiology could cause a mental break if a set of "special circumstances" were created so that the vision reflexes were triggered many times each day for weeks.

The narrowly focused psychotic belief system of SPVP can be demonstrated in users of Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga.

Users of Kundalini Yoga may believe they can levitate, dematerialize, walk unharmed through solid objects, become invisible at will, hear your thoughts and direct your actions through telepathy; or they may believe they have superhuman or supernormal powers. This altered mental state is the desired outcome of the "Awakening of Kundalini." Persons with these beliefs are revered as enlightened. In their day to day contacts no one within their cultural belief set would be aware of the altered mental state because everyone believes the superhuman feats are possible.

On this site the fixed bizarre beliefs of the altered mental state serve as a model for schizophrenia.

The Cause of Psychotic Mental Illness page compares this narrowly-focused altered mental state to the 'disorganized psychotic mental states of Schizophrenia'. In that case too close side-by-side seating in all classrooms copies the office design problem to provide exposure.  The exposure is random and sporadic until puberty when children experience a growth spurt.  Then the movement of larger bodies are easier to detect in the peripheral vision of classroom students. For students sensitive to this exposure the normal onset of Schizophrenia is in adolescence. Yogins are taught that the Awakening of Kundalini  is a desired religious experience. Victims of Schizophrenia have the same experience without that guidance and  instruction.

I did not discover or invent the basic problem.

I learned of the phenomenon in classroom lectures and discussions. But those with the information had not realized the potential scope of the problem.  I didn't either until my wife had a psychotic mental break in the payroll office of the University of Alabama. This happened thirty days after the design of her workstation was changed. She began to believe that her phone was tapped, that mistakes she made in the details of the payroll had caused the University to loose thousands of dollars, and finally that cameras had been installed to watch her.

I remembered this problem within the few weeks that she underwent neurological evaluation. This happened so fast we all believed she was having strokes. When we reached the point of seeing a psychiatrist I was stunned to find that this phenomenon is unknown in any area of mental health services.

How do you treat or cure this mental state?

In the early stages just stopping the exercise or other exposure will eventually stop the delusions and hearing voices. Cubicle Level Protection is not treatment but is necessary to prevent a reoccurrence.

Recovery does happen to victims of ICU Psychosis. Roughly one in three patients who spend more than five days in a hospital Intensive Care Unit has a temporary delusional/psychotic episode including hearing voices. ICU Psychosis page  Once they leave the ICU most  return to normal.

There are Gurus who attempt to treat mental illness including Schizophrenia with Yoga. They claim some success. It does make sense in that they are using the same stimulation in Subliminal Peripheral Vision if eyes-open concentration is used during the exercise as treatment.

Help sites for those who have mental problems from Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga all agree that stopping the exercise will stop the mental problems. But the gurus and Yogis believe that miss-handling powerful life energy is the cause of the mental problems. They are unaware of Subliminal Distraction or that stimulation of the subconscious is the reason both exercises have health benefits above the simple exercise.

Other media and Internet occurrences of this information.

I have reports that this psychiatric injury has been featured in News segments of  TV magazine program in the last five or more years. (I actually saw the last few seconds of the program when it aired.) This informant cannot remember which show featured the segment or what name the doctor used in describing the injury. This person guessed he and a friend were watching 20/20. Without a name or approximate date of the airing it is not possible to follow this lead. (Subject titles for 20/20 program segments have been searched as far back as the data base lists them.)

If you can pinpoint this program email me. Researcher (Outlook Express email link) Otherwise, Right click and select properties.

Histories supplied on company websites and on the websites of retailers of their products, cite the first metal panels being placed on the Action Office 1, (AO1), built by Herman Miller Inc, 1964. It was an open room system.  The company web site states the Cubicle was introduced in 1968.Steelcase is cited as producing the ‘Steelcase 9000.’ These Internet sites state that both companies hired engineers and designers to produce these products. One engineering article cites Haworth as the first  company to introduce room dividing  panels in 1953. No references were given. The Herman Miller Inc company site frequently changes. Currently Robert Propst is credited with  creation of the cubicle. He denied this in an article for Metropolis magazine. The Modern Cubicle page.

There is no mention of ‘Cubicle Level Protection,’ in any company history  on the Internet. When I emailed Herman Miller Inc, the ergonomics department claimed to have never heard of the problem. Snail mail to them is unanswered.

This is possible because only the designers would be aware of this design requirement. I called a Steelcase distributor in Birmingham Al and asked their designer the name of the reason Cubicle Level Protection is needed.  The department manager instantly understood what I wanted to know but he didn’t have the answer and neither did his designer. She thought her college professor would know. They forwarded my question to  Steelcase  but the manager emailed me later saying they had been unable to find an answer for me.

I first bumped into this phenomenon as an engineering student forty years ago. I read a newspaper story while sitting in a coffeehouse on campus. An office worker had become ‘crazy’ because something was moving behind her. It read like a hoax story and fellow engineering students argued that this just was not possible. We were still arguing before computer class and asked the instructor to settle the dispute. He said the story was true. He remembered when the discovery was made but knew little about it.

The next time I encountered the information was in a psychology class in about 1990. The instructor began the lecture by saying, "Did you know it is possible to see something and not have it recorded by your conscious mind?" The lecture was on Psychophysics and at the end of it she added the comment, "Subliminal sight caused a problem in the early days of modern office design." I instantly remembered the encounter thirty years earlier. I had been looking for an oddity to serve as a base for the plot line of a science fiction short story. I thought I had found it. The problem was and still is that the phenomenon is so odd that explaining it within the limitations of a short story was impossible. My health continued to be a problem and I eventually had to abandon the project.

The explanation my psychology instructor gave was that as the victim continues to ignore repeating vision reflexes a conflict arises in the mind then builds to a mental break.

I eventually found that instructor. She is now a Ph.D. in a different field. She remembered me but not the lecture or where she got the material. Emails and letters to the psychology department there are unanswered. My current plan is to visit the psyche library when we return to Alabama.

What I remember from the period is that in the first efforts by engineers to design close spacing for office workers, there were psychotic episodes experienced by some of the workers. When the psychotic episodes reached a number sufficient to demonstrate it was not a problem with individuals, experts were called in. It was discovered that a quirk of human physiology combined with a previously unknown design error caused the episodes.

Humans developed as hunter gathers. Early man needed a warning system to warn of a potential attack from behind. We call that warning system Peripheral Vision Reflexes. As long as your eyes are open your warning system is working. To prevent false alarms or repeated alarms from the same source, we have the ability to dismiss notice or ignore things we have identified and determined not to be a danger to us. You will find this referred to in Psychology texts as the ability to assign different levels of ‘attention’ or ‘notice’ to objects in your field of vision. In addition you can ‘habituate to extinction’ repeating stimulus.

The quirk or conflict of our physiology is that although you can dismiss notice, or habituate notice of threat movement, you cannot 'stop seeing' that movement. Detection alone identifies movement, approaching from behind, as a threat. The system is warn first, evaluate second. When that happens you will experience a peripheral vision reflex. The reflex is to turn and look at the movement. The part of your brain that creates these reflexes has no reasoning ability and no memory. Each time you "acquire," the movement a new reflex is generated.  Once notice is dismissed the normal subliminal operation of the system prevents your conscious mind being aware this is happening.

If you have ever been startled you know that there is a co-generated emotional content to the reflex. While there is no reason to  believe the stimulus to cause a vision reflex has a complex meaning, we have all experienced the effect of a vision caused startle. There is a gut wrenching fright coupled with that reflex.  It can be argued that the emotion or fright sensation is there to cause instant reaction to the perceived threat. But the intense fright sensation only happens when the movement is detected close by; or when the situation is already stressful; or you believe you are in peril. When your brain detects movement then evaluates the direction and distance this modulates the strength and content of that emotional signal. Your contemporaneous activity can also change the perception of the startle and thus increase the emotional content.

This ability to dismiss notice did not present a problem in early man. There was no activity of early man, which would cause him to remain in the same position for days at a time while being subjected to a repeating warning signal from movement in his peripheral vision. The office setting of modern man does that. Even a pause by early man to manufacturer tools or prepare food would not create the identical seating environment day after day for weeks. It is the creation of the failed reflex day after day for weeks, which causes SPVP. I argue in other text on this site that the movement type, speed, frequency of occurrence, and of course the contemporaneous activity of the subject, also changes the outcome of SPVP.

SPVP could not have created a problem for humans until we began to specialize activities in the production of goods. Operating small shops where attention would have been required to complete tasks while there was human traffic moving around the stationary craftsman would meet all the factors necessary to produce SPVP.

These same requirements are met in using the computer or watching TV. Viewing the monitor while using your computer, game playing, Internet surfing, or word processing, for instance, requires the hour on hour, day after day sitting in the same position, which is the first risk factor for SPVP. The second risk factor is met in that you must concentrate to use either the computer or watch TV. That leaves only the repeating movement in Subliminal Peripheral Vision to complete the rare situation, which causes SPVP.

This site is under construction and the pages are draft level postings. If you have researchable information please leave a message on site. We will edit to correct syntax, spelling and other errors from time to time. Email Researcher.

YouTube Video  (This link appears on several pages.)

Copyright 2003