This was as much of the account as was included in Boing Boing, at which point in my reading I assumed that the assailant was probably suffering from schizophrenia. One of the cardinal, terrifying, symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia is thought control or, specifically, thought insertion, the experience that one’s thoughts have been inserted into one’s mind by another, that one is not in control of one’s own thoughts and does not have privacy in their mind. It is often accompanied by the symptoms of thought withdrawal or thought broadcasting. Although there is some dispute about what the cardinal features of schizophrenia are, these symptoms are core in the schema of illustrious German psychiatrist Kurt Schneider, and have come to be known as Schneiderian signs. When I went from the Boing Boing excerpt to the more complete account in the New Mexican, the following illuminated the man’s plight further:

These frightful schizophrenic symptoms are experiences in need of an explanation to the sufferer. Often, the explanations are delusional. Delusions are outlandish, irrational but comforting theories to explain the bewildering and horrifying experiences, since any explanation is better than having none at all. Once hit upon, delusions are rigidly adhered to. A delusion is, in this sense, not a core symptom of schizophrenic experience but a compensatory effort on the sufferer’s part, to my way of thinking.

Someone who claims familiarity with the techniques of thought insertion, claims of which by the psychotic sufferer have usually been scoffed at by listeners, is immediately suspect as responsible for the sufferer’s symptoms.