From: iain@XXXXX.demon.co.uk (Iain L M Hotchkies)
Newsgroups: uk.misc,uk.legal,uk.politics,uk.media,soc.culture.british
Subject: Corley FAQ (v0.1)
Reply-To: iain@XXXXX.demon.co.uk
Date: Sat May  4 19:30:34 1996

Mike Corley FAQ
version 0.1
first edition 5th May 1996
last updated 5th May 1996
Iain L M Hotchkies iain@XXXXX.demon.co.uk

Mike Corley is a 'net personality' who has been active on the following
newsgroups (uk.misc,uk.legal,uk.politics,uk.media,soc.culture.british)
since....? Well, at least as far back as the summer of 1995.

He posts long tracts, the tone of which approximates that which one
might expect from a reasonably intelligent paranoid schizophrenic.

No details are known of Mike's 'real' personal life or background.
Once would presume that he came from a reasonable family and was
reasonably well educated before the first symptoms of schizophrenia
began.

Schizophrenia: Clinical features
(from the Oxford Textbook of Psychiatry, 2nd Edition)

The acute syndrome

Some of the main clinical features are illustrated by a short
description of a patient. A previously healthy 20-year-old male
student had been behaving in an increasingly odd way. At times he
appeared angry and told his friends that he was being persecuted; at
other times he was seen to be laughing to himself for no apparent
reason. For several months he had seemed increasingly preoccupied
with his own thoughts. His academic work had deteriorated. When
interviewed, he was restless and awkward. He described hearing
voices commenting on his actions and abusing him. He said he
believed that the police had conspired with his university teachers
to harm his brain with poisonous gases and take away his thoughts.
He also believed that other people could read his thoughts.

This case history illustrates the following common features of acute
schizophrenia: prominent persecutory ideas with accompanying
hallucinations; gradual social withdrawal and impaired performance
at work; and the odd idea that other people can read one