Schizophrenia as a Monster: Toby Allen's Artistic Representations and Lori Schiller's Voices

I want to share some beautiful pieces of art by TOBY ALLEN that are his interpretation of Schizophrenia and Paranoia as monsters.

Toby Allen's Monsters

Allen states that he has anxiety, noting, "It effects me every day of my life and can be a real burden but I have learnt how to keep it mostly at bay." He also points out that he created the images because he wants "to make people aware of how damaging these illnesses are and how much of a burden they can be to those who suffer from them."

(Note: He has a collection of images crafted for each of various mental illnesses).

Reflecting on Lori Schiller's experiences in The Quiet Room for what must be the twelfth time I am teaching the book in this class is challenging. Yet, each time I go back into Lori Schiller's text, I am drawn to a different aspect of her description of her experiences with schizophrenia. In Chapter 3, Lori describes how her fear of the Voices increased during her time at Tufts University and how she frequently felt paranoid, afraid that her professors and classmates could hear the Voices and "now knew the terrible secrets about me they were revealing." She began to believe the Voices that her friends thought she was "scum" and that people were talking about her and would begin taunting her.

Her experiences fit with Toby Allen's description of the Paranoia monster, who "uses its tall ears like a radar, scanning the area for any activity" and feeding on "feelings of anxiety of fear which they unintentionally create within their victims," working with other monsters like Schizophrenia, who "like mafia gang leader[s]" are "rarely seen and like to hide in the shadows."

Lori's monsters seem to work in tandem, with the Voices hiding in the shadows but creating anxiety and paranoia in her mind in a very intentional way.