Significant Moments: Do I Exist?

     The internal tensions in . . .
G. Edward White, The American Judicial Tradition: Profiles of Leading American Judges.
          . . . Nietzsche . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
                . . . ultimately led to a fatalistic dependence on paradox and impotence, and this formed the basis of his . . .
G. Edward White, The American Judicial Tradition: Profiles of Leading American Judges.
                       . . . philosophy.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet.
     Consciously or unconsciously, he perceived the opposing impulses in himself, . . .
G. Edward White, The American Judicial Tradition: Profiles of Leading American Judges.
         . . . what he called the constitutional incapacity . . .
Siegfried Hessing, Freud’s Relation with Spinoza.
                     . . . and gave up attempting to reconcile them. Whether man was inherently evil or perfectible, whether change ever constituted progress, even whether he himself existed—a question he took seriously—were unanswerable riddles. The easy solution was to acknowledge “ultimate Facts”—power, force, and change—
G. Edward White, The American Judicial Tradition: Profiles of Leading American Judges.
     The idea that came to him was that all religions and philosophies have so far been mistaken about the highest good. It does not lie in moral virtue, or in self-restraint, or even in self-knowledge, but in the idea of great health and strength. This, says Nietzsche, is the fundamental constituent of freedom. Once man has these the others will follow. For most of his evils—and his intellectual confusions—spring from weakness.
Colin Wilson, Spinoza—The Outsider.
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Oliver Wendell Holmes asked himself if he in fact existed.  Perhaps his physical existence was simply an idea that existed in his belief system.

I have often wondered if I suffer from mental illness.  Perhaps I only believe I have mental illness.  Perhaps when doctors say I have mental illness, that idea only exists in their minds.   Their statements are rational and credible, but they are wrong.  But then, I have paranoid schizophrenia.  So these are simply the ramblings of a psychotic.  Or are these the ramblings of an asymptomatic psychotic?  Do I have paranoid schizophrenia? Or is it simply that a practicing psychiatrist told the D.C. Medical Board that I have paranoid schizophrenia?