Post #2122491

I propose in any case to make a link between the function of giving counsel and the phenomenon of schizophrenia which is so often its pretext, and which we can observe here (in We Can Build You) as it emerges from the mainstream novels and takes on a characteristic Dickian SF value of its own. Schizophrenia is thus not merely the inversion of the individuality or the individualism of the android cogito; it is also the pretext (what the Russian Formalists would have called the "motivation of the device") for the giving of counsel in the first place, the place and appeal to the helper, the essential helplessness of the individual human being abandoned outside the great collectives of Dick's businesses and corporations.