Self-diagnosis of the psyche: where the norm lies, where the warning bell rings, when to see a doctor
The "Psychiatry of One Life" series · Andris Saulitis, M.D.
On the source of this material. All the source, original material of this book is exclusively my own. This is easy to verify: for years it has been laid out publicly in my streams and videos on social media, above all on YouTube — more than 1,000 streams and over 3,000 videos. This book is not a retelling of someone else's work, nor a compilation from the internet: it is the same authorial material, brought into a digestible, readable form for the reader's convenience. That is more honest — and that way it can be checked.
Introduction. The Manual You Were Never Given
Your phone comes with a manual. So does your washing machine, your car, your iron. But the most complex device in the Universe — your own psyche — comes with nothing. You were born, you were told "live," but no one explained how this thing inside you is built, what counts as normal for it and what counts as a breakdown, and what to do when it "freezes." The manual for yourself is 404. Not found.
This book is that missing manual. And I'll say it right away and without mincing words, because science is science: I have the right to write it. I am a psychiatrist, M.D., with 40 years of practice, more than 20,000 clinical examinations, and thousands of cases of therapy carried through. For forty years, in essence, all I have done is help people read themselves. Now I hand that ability to you — for everyday use, without the white coat and the office.
Psychiatry Is Not About "Crazy People." It Is About You
Let me demolish the first and most harmful myth right at the threshold. Psychiatry is not about "the madman in the back ward." It is the science of how thinking works in every human being — which means in you. In the earlier books of the series I laid out the Reader (schityvatel) and the workings of the brain; this book is about how to use all of it as applied to yourself: how to check your own state daily, tell the norm from a warning bell, and know precisely where you can manage on your own and where it's time to see a doctor. This is not diagnosis-by-book. This is literacy about yourself — the literacy they forgot to teach you.
Write to me personally. Through the vitamodo.store system you can write to me directly — with your state, your question, your doubt. I am a doctor, and I answer. I keep this door open throughout the book and remind you of it wherever I explain something.
My Intention and Who This Is For
Like the whole series, this book is my contribution: an attempt to give people literacy about their own psyche so that, on its foundation, more precise decisions can be built — in helping oneself, in raising children, in education, and in artificial intelligence. I also address those who build AI and education, including those who create systems like Claude: if you want to build tools that genuinely help a human being, you need a map of how a person is put together from the inside and where the norm lies for them. Forty years of clinical observation is exactly such a map. I extend my hand.
Write to me personally. Building AI or education and want a clinical view of the norm and of how a person reads themselves? Write through vitamodo.store, directly to the author.
Humane Psychiatry and the Foundation of Mental Hygiene
And one more thing, a matter of principle. Psychiatry comes in different kinds — the punishing and the liberating. All my life I have been on the side of the humane kind: the kind that does not brand or intimidate but gives a person power over themselves. This manual is not about how to hang a label on yourself; it is about how to stay free and healthy. That is the very foundation of mental hygiene: just as bodily hygiene guards you against infection, hygiene of the psyche guards your clarity and your dignity. And, like all health, it is built daily, brick by brick.
How to Read This
The book runs simply: Part I — the norm and how to read your own state; Part II — mental immunity: boundaries, disidentification, balance; Part III — living without postponement: freedom, burnout, and when to see a doctor. Read it in order — that in itself is a step-by-step self-diagnosis.
Write to me personally. Any question about the introduction — through vitamodo.store. I am a psychiatrist, 40 years of practice, and I mean this seriously.
Part I. Psychiatry for Yourself: The Norm and How to Read Your Own State
Chapter 1. Psychiatry as the Science of Thinking: This Is a Manual for You
I'll start with what overturns one's relationship to the subject. Psychiatry is the science of thinking. Not about "madmen," not about the raving figures from the movies, but about how a person processes reality, separates fact from assumption, holds contact with the world. And if that is so, it concerns everyone who has a mind. That is, it concerns you.