1) LIVING IN FANTASY WORLDS
 
One characteristic of my alleged schizophrenia was that I lived in fantasy worlds, figuratively speaking. I.e. I lived in alternative universes which I invented in my own mind.
 
But I was not hallucinating! I did not conflate my imaginary worlds with reality. I always knew the difference between that which was “out there” - and which therefore was “really real” - and that which was merely “in my head” - and which therefore was unreal! I was fully aware of the fact that I was merely conjuring up fantasies in the privacy of my own mind. But I also granted zero significance to said fact. I felt that it was a perfectly normal activity to while away hours and hours at a time just daydreaming. The thought did not even occur to me that maybe the fact that I went around “lost in space” - i.e. that I spent most of the day immersed in my own private cuckoo-lands - meant that there was something wrong with me. I simply took my unhealthy mental state for granted.
 
People around me could tell that I was lost in my own thoughts. I was “absent” all the time, so to speak. During discussions with me people could tell that my eyes were not really focusing on them and that I was not really paying attention to what they were saying. My habit of being “pretty vacant” all the time was probably the main reason that people around me realized that I was mentally ill and that I needed to be placed in a mental hospital during those two years – i.e. the years 1972 and 1973.
 
And I was utterly preoccupied with my own private thoughts. For that reason I made no objection whatsoever to my being put in a mental hospital without being informed about what was going to happen. Not at all – I was totally indifferent that early morning in June 1972 on which an ambulance, arriving without being announced in advance, fetched me from my parents´ home for the sake of driving me to the Ulleråkers mental hospital some one hundred miles away. It did not occur to me to ask anyone for an explanation concerning why I was being taken away in an ambulance. I was totally, blithely unconcerned about what went on in the outer world around me!
 
It never even occurred to me to seriously wonder why I was placed in Ulleråkers Hospital in the summer months of 1972, and then once again for the entire duration of 1973. However, at some point during the summer of 1973, I did begin to become aware of the fact that the reason for which I was in a hospital was that I was mentally ill. I did not learn what specific kind of mental illness I was suffering from until I had a meeting with a psychiatrist in 1974, some months after I had been released from the hospital. I knew almost nothing about what the illness “schizophrenia” was before the psychiatrist informed me that schizophrenia was in fact my diagnosis. I had myself, in the summer of 1973, made a wild guess that maybe I had Parkinson´s disease! (I did not happen to mention said wild guess to any of the personell in the mental hospital.) My reason for that wild guess was the fact that one of the medications which I was taking at the time caused me to develop facial tics and a quality of stiffness in my facial muscles - which I knew were a few of the symptoms of Parkinson´s disease.
 
I do not know which elements, if any, of the contents of my fantasies might reveal something important about my psychosis. So in the rest of this chapter I will give an almost complete overview of the contents of the fantasies which I had during the years 1968-1979. I will subsequently describe the content of the fantasies which I had after 1979 in the following two chapters, i.e. in chapters Six and Seven - because those fantasies were quite different in nature from my fantasies of the 1970s. The subject matters of the post-1970s fantasies were much more “abstract”. Those latter-year fantasies even involved significant elements of abstract philosophy - of all things!
 
2) MY VERY FIRST FANTASIES AT MILTON ACADEMY - 1967-1969
 
As soon as I arrived at Milton Academy my soul began to become emptied of all personal values. I was not living the same kind of “normal” life that my schoolmates were living. I was not to any significant degree involved with the pursuit of values in recreation, in social life or even in my academic studies. I was studying diligently. But even when I tried hard to carry out the studying which was expected of me, I was not motivated by any love of values. I was merely acting from a sense of duty. Since I was not pursuing any chosen values, I began to feel bored. Bored all the frigging time.
 
It was roughly in the early months of the year 1968, that I began to experience acute and persistent boredom. And - that was when I began to spin vivid, and meticulously detailed, fantasies in my mind. These fantasies served as a diversion from the gray world of my everyday school life. I found my fantasies to be much more interesting. And to be much more fun! Than the activities which had been foisted on me by the numerous authority-figures out there in Milton in the real world.
 
I remember very little of the concrete contents of the myriad fantasies which I spun at Milton. I cannot describe their contents in much detail. As far as I can remember, most of those fantasies “took off” from the story lines of the cheap science fiction and fantasy paperbacks which I often read on my spare time at Milton. I would read exciting stories about such things as wars, space exploration and scientific inventions set in imaginary future worlds, and then my own fertile imagination would take off from there and run with the events of those stories.
 
The only concrete fantasy which I happen to still remember is this single one. In 1968 I read a short sci-fi story about a race of men who were only a few inches high, and who lived in trees. I imagined what life would be like if I were a member of that race. I constructed fantasies about wars in the trees with rival tribes of inch-high men. I fantasized about running around in the trees hunting squirrels. I fantasized that the tribe I belonged to would roam around up there in the trees searching for nuts and fruits to eat.
 
These fantasies about said inch-high men in the trees were very concrete-bound. I did not bother to carry out any thinking about what kind of social organization or politics or philosophy these men might have had. I suppose that I was not yet intellectually equipped to do so.
 
I do not remember the concrete content of any of my other fantasies. But I am quite certain that I fantasized about many more of the science fiction and fantasy stories I read than the one about the race of men in the trees.
 
I remember for sure that I did do a lot of thinking about J. R. R. Tolkien´s saga, The Lord of the Rings, which I read all the way through during my first few months at Milton in the fall of 1967. But the thoughts which I had concerning that fantasy novel did not, as far as I can remember, involve any original “plot development” of my own. I merely projected that I was some random character in The Lord of the Rings and that the events which occurred to that character in the novel suite were happening to me all the while that I was reading about them.
 
3) EARLY FANTASIES IN SWEDEN - 1970-1971
 
I began to live a more normal life at the age of 16. At which time I returned to Sweden in the spring of 1970. I began working for the first time in my life - first as a gardener for a couple of months, and subsequently as an apprentice in a chemical laboratory. I began spinning fantasies on a regular basis whenever I was at work.
 
I remember that I engaged in fantasy-spinning whenever my mind did not have anything else to occupy itself with. So, I did not spin fantasies when I was reading a book or watching television or talking to people. But I did spin fantasies just about all the rest of the time. My mind was “restless”, so to speak. It hungered for something to occupy itself with. My mind just could not stand the state of being "empty". I suppose that my mind had developed different thinking habits from those of most other people! So, therefore, I would entertain myself with daydreams most of the time that I was working - and I would immerse myself in alternative realities when I was wandering around in the pine forests of the area in the evenings or whenever I was riding in a car.
 
Much of the time, during this period of exactly one and a half years, my fantasies concerned imaginary wars. I would conjure up fantastic weapons in my mind, such as fighter aircraft with amazing capabilities, and super-tough, almost indestructable tanks, and artillery which could fire shells as fast as machine guns fired bullets! I did not have any realistic conception of the horrific bloodshed which routinely occurs in real wars. I was like a little boy playing a game of cowboys and Indians in my head. If I remember correctly, at least most of those war fantasies concerned scenarios in which the western countries were fighting for their freedom against the Soviet Union and Communist China. I was sort of a “product of the Cold War”. And I did already at that point in my life treasure the value which was political freedom.
 
While I was employed at the chemical laboratory at Stråssa, I hit upon the idea of spinning fantasies about entire imaginary societies of my own making. These fantasies soon turned out to be largely economic in nature. These fantasies got started by a process of association. I would read an item in a newspaper and then my fertile imagination would take it from there.
 
For example, in either the fall of 1970 or in the spring of 1971 I read about the fantastically rich resources of the anchovy fisheries off the coast of Peru. And somehow, I hatched the weird idea of cooking up a story about how the exploitation of those rich resources might make possible a spectacular “economic take-off” for the developing nation of Peru. I began spinning crazy fantasies which involved Peru exploiting its anchovy fisheries and using the profits from that exploitation to fund a rapid industrialization. Which industrialization subsequently spread to the rest of Latin America initially - and then to the rest of the entire Third World. It was a “strange” fantasy! And it was concrete-bound to boot.
 
I suppose that since I was on the premise of altruism, I sorely wanted the countries of the Third World to find a way to escape from their grinding poverty. And since there were no signs whatsoever at that time (i.e. the early 1970s) that they were in the process of doing any such thing - I began to spin fantasies as a way of cheering myself up. My stupid fantasies were a form of emotional self-therapy. My fantasies were a way of compensating for the depressing effect of a gray reality.
 
4) ELABORATE FANTASIES - 1972-1974
 
My constant immersion in fantasies became much more pronounced during the year 1972. For, my mental health was gradually deteriorating during said year. I was retreating from the external world into the sanctum which was the inner world of my own thoughts. The reason for which I was doing so was probably that I found myself trapped in a “value vacuum” at the end of 1972 (see Chapter Three) when I was obliged to move back to my parents on Lidingö.
 
When I found myself living on Lidingö I no longer valued anything out there in external reality. I had no values in external reality which might motivate me to think about said reality – for I no longer had the job which I had loved. For such reasons, I became more and more immersed in my fantasies as the year 1972 progressed. I must have come across as being a truly “strange” creature at the time in the minds´ eyes of the people who encountered me.
 
My peculiar fantasies of the year 1972 got started by a process of association in the late winter of said year – in either the month of February or March. I was watching the news on television one dark and depressing winter evening. The news program introduced us viewers to the subject of the prospecting for petroleum which the Norwegians were carrying out at that time in the Spetsbergen archipelago in the high Arctic. Somehow, I got the idea into my head that it would be an interesting activity to create a fantasy about an entire fictional society of men living on Spetsbergen many hundreds of years ago - before that archipelago had been discovered by European whalers.
 
I got the idea into my head that there could have been an expedition of Vikings around the year 1.000 AD - which ventured out into the Atlantic ocean all those years ago. I imagined that these Vikings were blown off course by a savage storm and wound up on Spetsbergen! I entertained myself with fantasies which involved the Vikings being stranded there, somehow managing to survive and somehow managing to establish an entire society in total isolation from the rest of humanity. I imagined that the Viking expedition had been carrying women on their ships - so that they were able reproduce up there on Spetsbergen – with the result that their society lasted for centuries and centuries!
 
As time went by during 1972, I continued to develop this bizarre fantasy - and I teased out the fine details regarding the means by which these Vikings would develop successively more and more advanced technology as the centuries went by. I imagined that, somehow, they discovered how to mine coal, how to manufacture steel, how to produce and utilize electricity, how to drill for petroleum and so forth. I daydreamed for hours on end about how this society on Spetsbergen might have developed independently from the entire rest of the world for many centuries due to its geographical isolation.
 
Then, I imagined, this society was at long last discovered by modern European whalers in the 17th century. I imagined how now this Viking society was much more technologically and economically advanced than the societies of Western Europe of that time. I also imagined that said Viking society somehow had developed the institutions of liberty and limited government! (I sure had mental health problems!)
 
I imagined that this society was militarily vastly superior to Western Europe of the time, due to the possession of such things as the technology for the mass manufacture of steel and the knowledge of how to use electricity. I imagined that the society located on Spetsbergen cowed the Europeans with its obvious massive military superiority. And so, I thought to myself (Wishful and deluded thinking!), that my beloved imaginary society in Spetsbergen introduced political freedom, modern science and industrial civilization to Western Europe - and subsequently to the rest of the world. I imagined how investment from the already-industrialized Spetsbergen generated rapid economic growth throughout the entire world - with general prosperity and peace as a result! This fantasy was my own personal utopia and “little blue blanket”!
 
The reason for which this utopian fantasy appealed to me was that it enabled me to envision a modern world without any of the major man-made evils – the wars, the slavery, the political tyranny, the mass poverty, the starvation and so forth. The imaginary society on Spetsbergen was like a collectivistic version of a Messiah, which rescued the rest of the world from an ocean of suffering. Back in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, I had been beginning to become aware of current events in the world at large. I rapidly became distraught by my knowledge of the awful state of the world outside of the idyllic American suburbia in which my own family was located. And the state of the world depressed me! I probably found my elaborate fantasies about a Messiah-type of society on Spetsbergen to be a relief from the depressing state of the real world. I had created my very own private Camelot, or Shangri-La, in the unreality of my troubled mind.
 
Another characteristic of my fantasies concerning a fictional society on Spetsbergen was that this society, taken as a whole, was “heroic” in my mind´s eye. For - I imagined that this society developed all the science, technology, industrialism and political freedom in the space of a few hundred years – which, in reality, had taken the entire world millennia to develop. This fictitious society was vastly superior to those of the rest of the world in many ways.
 
Spetsbergen had perfect political freedom, no slavery, no wars, no superstition (I imagined that the people of Spetsbergen were “devout” atheists) and so forth. And despite their superior military power in relation to the rest of the world they nursed no ambition to build an empire. I imagined that the people of Spetsbergen also were heroic because of their ability to conquer nature. I imagined to myself that it would have been a stupendous challenge for those stranded Vikings to survive in the harsh climate up there on the edge of the Arctic ice floes. But - the geographical isolation shielded them from the military attacks which neighboring societies would have subjected them to had they remained in Europe. And this circumstance enabled them to go about the business of conquering nature undisturbed.
 
I continued to immerse myself in this fantasy about Spetsbergen for all the rest of the year 1972. I did not have a single alternative fantasy at all, as far as I can recall. I was truly obsessed with this fantasy about Spetsbergen. I probably spent several hours every single day for the remainder of 1972 lost in my daydreams about Spetsbergen.
 
I continued to immerse myself in this fantasy when I was re-committed to Ulleråkers Hospital in January of 1973. If anything, I became still more deeply immersed in this fantasy. For, I now had much more spare time on my hands! This fact was caused by my not having to carry out any work at all while I was committed to Ulleråkers. I was confined to a ward on the seventh story of an eight-story building. There were roughly twenty rooms in the ward, with a total of roughly forty patients (there were two beds and two patients in each room). I would wander around the corridors of that ward for hours on end, five days a week - completely lost in my fantasies concerning my beloved - but oh-so-unreal - Spetsbergen society.
 
This continued for the entire year 1973. During my entire one-year stay at Ulleråkers Hospital in 1973 I did not, at least not as far as I can recall, develop a single fantasy other than this one about Spetsbergen.
 
However, as the year 1973 went by, I slowly began to focus more and more on the external world around me. My mental health was slowly beginning to recover. I would devote more and more of my energies to reading. I read mostly newspapers and general news magazines. And - as the year 1973 went by I derived successively more and more enjoyment from such activities as listening to rock music and playing card games with the other patients. During the fall of 1973 I even began to flirt with several members of the nursing staff - most of whom were attractive young women! They, naturally, perceived my flirting to be a major nuisance!
 
I was released from Ulleråkers in January of 1974. My fantasies about a fictitious society on Spetsbergen continued unabated, however. I was, to be sure, focused on external reality to a much greater degree than I had been during 1972 and 1973. But I still spent several hours every frigging day thinking about my beloved fictional society. My thoughts consisted of extensive elaborations of the concrete details of the history and of the economy of Spetsbergen. My fantasies were extremely concrete-bound – just as they had been from the very beginning.
 
And my fantasies were detailed! I would, for example, spin fantasies about the location, names and owners of the individual mines and steelworks on Spetsbergen, and about the concrete details concerning the ways in which Spetsbergen changed the history of the world. E.g., in which year did this or that specific historical event, happen? It was like an entire parallel universe for me.
 
However, my fantasy about Spetsbergen - it came to an abrupt end, at long last, in the beginning of the year 1975. Soon after the end of 1974, I spun no more fantasies about the fictitious society on Spetsbergen at all – and I never did so again. For, that fantasy was supplanted entirely by still other fantasies - which were at least equally bizarre!
 
5) NEW FANTASIES - 1975-1979
 
Sometime at the very beginning of 1975, probably in January, I conceived of an entirely new fantasy. This one also consisted of an “alternate world history”. It started when I happened to read a magazine article. I believe the article was published in National Geographic, although I do not remember for sure. The article concerned the so-called “desert miracle” of Iran. The article was about the allegedly oh-so-impressive economic progress which had been achieved in Iran, under the oh-so-enlightened leadership of Shah Reza Pahlavi.
 
I did not seriously believe that Iran had made any impressive progress under the Shah. I was aware that Iran was a brutal dictatorship and that there was, in fact, a super-abundance of grinding poverty in Iran. But even though I evaluated that article as being a piece of panegyrics for a vicious killer - the article got me thinking - or rather, got me daydreaming.
 
I thought to myself, what if a man had become the Shah of Iran back in the 1930s - and he had chosen to be rational – instead of choosing to lust for power? What if he had instituted a capitalistic political system - one with freedom, individual rights and private property?
 
At the time, in 1975, I was a supporter of capitalism in politics. So - I began to develop a fantasy in which I had become the Shah of Iran back in the 1930s and I had proceeded to institute the capitalistic policies which I embraced in real life. I began to project a course of development entailing amazingly rapid economic development. I was on the premise that political freedom - which I took to mean laissez-faire capitalism - equated with economic health. I subsequently began to spin fantasies about how the successes of Iran´s capitalistic economic policies could have inspired the rest of the world to adopt similar policies. I dreamed the daydream that freedom and prosperity throughout the world would be the consequence. I was not grounded in reality at the time. After all - I was just a slowly recovering psychotic.
 
So, in this new fantasy of mine, Iran rather than Spetsbergen, functioned as the “Messianistic” society which saved the world. It was a truly silly daydream - and it was a major waste of time to spend hours every day lost in that cuckoo-land. But since I was still, to some major degree, mentally ill - I probably just could not help it. And this new fantasy did give me a sense of relief from the depressing knowledge I had of the sordid state of the real world at the time.
 
This building up of a parallel universe in my consciousness was occurring during the middle of the 1970s, a time at which Communism was very popular in Sweden. Most of the people living around me were socialists - or at least welfare statists. And, of course, the newspapers at the time were full of depressing reports of frequent acts of terrorism - and of numerous Communist takeovers followed by orgies of mass murder, in places like Cambodia and Ethiopia - and so forth. So - I felt a desperate need for daydreams with which I tried hard to cheer myself up.
 
Just as with my fantasies concerning Spetsbergen, my fantasies concerning Iran were concrete-bound. I spent a lot of time working out the minute concrete details of the imaginary Irani economy. I devoted (i.e. wasted) truckloads of time to the figuring out of how many large steel companies Iran would have (three or four, I imagined), how many large banks it would have (eight, I imagined) and how many large automobile companies it would have (four, I imagined). I also cooked up figures in my head which stated what the GNP of Iran would be for each year of the Shah´s reign. I imagined that with a capitalistic economic system and the enormous income from its oil exports Iran would be able to achieve a growth rate of real GNP of something like 30% per year - and that this development would be referred to as an “economic miracle” by the rest of the world.
 
And I did in fact have some idea of the specific factors which, I projected, would make such a course of development possible. I imagined that Iran had virtually no economic regulations, and that such infrastructure as the roads and the postal system were privately owned and were thus “ruled” by the forces of the market. I realized that competition would be possible even in such sectors of the economy as the postal system, the electrical utilities and the roads, if they were privately owned and were unregulated. I also realized that the government should be concerned with solely two activities - namely guarding the citizens against criminals at home and guarding the nation against foreign invaders. I realized that such a minimal state could have the world´s lowest taxes. I enjoyed contemplating the idea that this would promote rapid economic development.
 
I conceived of this ideal Iran as a non-egalitarian society, in contradistinction to the egalitarian Sweden which I was living in. I was disgusted by Sweden´s egalitarianism - and my daydreams of a fictional non-egalitarian society provided me with welcome relief.
 
Another factor which would promote economic growth, I projected, would be the circumstance that this imaginary Iran would not have any welfare programs. This circumstance would provide the private citizens of Iran with a strong incentive to develop an extremely high savings rate! Which would make possible a high rate of investment. The high rate of investment would be augmented by the fact that this imaginary Iran would have the world´s highest rate of profit and the world´s lowest taxes on those profits, which would lead to massive foreign investment. I imagined that the total investment in this society would amount to more than 50% of GNP every year.
 
My conception of this imaginary Shah was that he was a sort of rational “philosopher-king” who created an individualistic, non-collectivistic and non-religious society. So, I projected a society in Iran - of all places! – which looked very much like the political ideal of the Western World´s Enlightenment!
 
I realized full well at the time that this fantasy was wildly unrealistic. I knew full well that - in reality the possession of political power would not enable one lucky individual to reform an entire irrational culture. But this wild and woolly fantasy was fun! It provided me with a sort of emotional rescue from the depressing, egalitarian/collectivistic society of Sweden of the 1970s. So, in my fertile imagination I was already thinking along the lines of Objectivism - years before I discovered said philosophy!
 
This fantasy about an imaginary Iran was not the only one which I spun during the period 1975-1979. I had daydreams which concerned a half dozen or so different imaginary societies - and the alternative histories of the modern world which the hypothesized existence of those societies brought about.
 
All these fantasies involved one nation beginning to develop in a positive way at some point in world history. Each of these fantasies would involve some single specific society or other, which had actually existed in human history, beginning to evolve into a modern, politically free type of society at some specific point in time.
 
I could not explain how societies which were saddled with irrational cultures might "somehow" manage to begin to develop in such a way - but the general idea was that somehow their cultures came to acquire rational ideas - such as reason, individualism and political freedom. I imagined, implausibly, that modern societies emerged and changed the history of the world for the better, in such unlikely places as Siberia, China, Japan, The Inca Empire - and a few other locations as well! The basic thrust of all of these daydreams was the concretization in minute detail of the principle that a commitment to reason and political freedom leads to prosperity and human happiness.
 
There were numerous common denominators in each, and every one of these many fantasies during the years 1972-1979. Each one of those fantasies expressed a yearning for a better world. I imagined alternative courses which world history could have taken - courses which were much better than the actual ones. All my fantasies involved some single specific society initiating the process of improvement. My choices of specific societies were wildly improbable. They were probably brought about by a process of brute random association in each case.
 
My initial choice of Spetsbergen as my ideal society in 1972, for example, was caused by my just having happened to see a news report on Swedish television about the prospecting for petroleum in Spetsbergen which was in progress at the time. My choice of Iran as the subject of my next fantasy in 1975 was caused by my happening to read about the so-called “desert miracle” in a magazine early that year. My choice of such other places such as Siberia, China, Japan and the Inca Empire as the places at which world improvement might germinate were also caused by association to something or other which I happened to see on TV or happened to read about in some print publication. The values which I yearned to see actualized in my fantasy worlds – e.g. reason, liberty, prosperity, justice - expressed my basic rational outlook on life.
 
The nature of the fantasies with which I occupied myself changed radically in the years following 1979 - after I discovered and began studying the philosophy of Objectivism. The most major of those new species of fantasies will be the subject matter of the next two chapters.
 
To sum up:
 
The fantasies of my late teen years were apparently a desperate means which I resorted to for dealing with the assault of irrational philosophical ideas on my young, and therefore vulnerable, mind. So, my psychological problems, including even my psychosis - were caused by the indoctrination with bad philosophy which began as soon as I entered into secondary school!
 
In my fantasies I was trying hard to rescue the remnants of the healthy Aristotelian philosophy which I had been exposed to in early childhood. Trying to rescue those elements of reason from the assault of the more Kantian types of crazy-ass philosophy which I was subjected to when I entered the later years of grade school. And which I then was still more assaulted with in seventh grade and then in the prep school. The Kantian-style philosophies which overwhelmed me and caused me to go insane.