[SPOILER] Plot Discussion Thread *Spoiler Alert*

[Peci]

Hi!

I haven't read every single post in this thread and I'm sorry if someone has already mentioned this.

I stumbled today across a couple of articles that I think can draw some parallel lines with the story or atleast
have worked as inspiration for it.

On the Origin of the "Influencing Machine" in Schizophrenia - written by psychoanalyst Viktor Tausk (1933)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Ori...izophrenia

The paper describes Tausk's observations and psychoanalytic interpretation of a type of paranoid delusion that occurs in patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. The delusion often involves their being influenced by a 'diabolical machine', just outside the technical understanding of the victim, that influences them from afar.

It was typically believed to be operated by a group of people who were persecuting the individual, whom Tausk suggested were "to the best of my knowledge, almost exclusively of the male sex" and the persecutors, "predominantly physicians by whom the patient has been treated".

And just as a reminder:
"The English term schizophrenia comes from two Greek words that mean "split mind." It was observed around 1908, by a Swiss doctor named Eugen Bleuler, to describe the splitting apart of mental functions that he regarded as the central characteristic of schizophrenia."

And as an example of this "diabolical influencing machine" I found an articel of James Tilly Mathews

Mike Jay recounts the tragic story of James Tilly Matthews, a former peace activist of the Napoleonic Wars who was confined to London’s notorious Bedlam asylum in 1797 for believing that his mind was under the control of the “Air Loom” – a terrifying machine whose mesmeric rays and mysterious gases were brainwashing politicians and plunging Europe into revolution, terror, and war.

http://publicdomainreview.org/2014/11/12...-air-loom/