Le Voile

Lyrics

Patient presents with a persistent, or recurrent, experience of unreality. The external world is perceived as… artificial. Two-dimensional.The coffee cup on the table is a prop. Its weight is an assumption. The steam is a special effect. The colors in this room, my office, have been… desaturated. A film grain settles over the familiar wallpaper. Sounds arrive from a distance, muffled, as if through cotton, or water.This is derealization. The pane of glass descends. It has no thickness, but it stops the world. You are not in the movie. You are simply watching it. A spectator to a life you are supposed to be living. A loss of the reality function.Your face across the table seems… applied. A well-made mask. The Duchenne marker around your eyes is technically correct, but the signal does not arrive. Your words are a perfect recording, playback from a distant source. I can see the syntax, but I cannot feel the meaning.Monsieur Janet described it in eighteen eighty-nine. A ‘psychological automatism.’ It took until May of twenty-thirteen for the committee to agree on the specific language. A paragraph in the DSM-5 to contain the fog. To classify the veil. But the words are just more props on the set.This is derealization. The pane of glass descends. It has no thickness, but it stops the world. You are not in the movie. You are simply watching it. A spectator to a life you are supposed to be living. A loss of the reality function.Stare into a mirror for ten minutes. The brain can be coaxed into this state. The reflection becomes a stranger. The room behind him becomes a backdrop. Diagnosis… confirmed.