Daniel Johnston And The Devil Summary

The biography "Daniel Johnston and the Devil" spoke of a young man, at the time, which lived a chaotic life due to his head, this is because Daniel suffered from multiple mental illnesses. I will take this time to look at a traditional psychiatric diagnosis and an emotional/spiritual understanding of the life, struggles and mind of Daniel Johnston. Daniel Johnston started life seemingly average to most, though after some drug experimentation with a psychoactive drug, known as LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide) which he then experienced his first psychotic episode, that is recalled. From what we know, we can only assume that this was in fact the beginning of Daniel 's delusions and changes within his mannerisms. Other change that can be called on is an increase in aggression, loss of social queues, loss of self awareness and disassociation. After reviewing Daniel Johnston 's biography some ideas of what he may have been suffering from come to mind. Daniel Johnston was most definitely suffering from bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and …show more content…
Daniel was never shown previously to be affected by ASD but characteristics relate with key symptoms of it. In such case Daniel excelled in the arts, these arts being more specifically drawing and music. While he showed a lack of ability in other areas of interest, he proved to excel in these specific arts, apparent in the first 4 years of his life. He also showed the inability to pick up on social queues and lacking some necessary tools to interact with other individuals. One circumstance was when Daniel, while under the delusion he was Caspar, a ghost found in child movies, dove his father and himself towards the ground in their hobbyist aircraft. On landing he seemed to be over joyed and in search for praise of his peers, which is not the usual reaction in this sort of