[Cryptography] The Voynich Manuscript as a product of a mental health disorder

[Peter Gutmann]

The Voynich Manuscript has attracted interest almost entirely from
cryptographically-inclined people (alongside historians) who are by nature
inclined to try and interpret it as some form of cipher or code, because they
want to see a cipher or code there.  I recently tried a different approach, I
showed it to a psychologist and asked "which type of mental health disorder
could the creator of this work have?".

The first response was that it was created by a functional schizophrenic, a
disorder that developed over time where they were seen as deeply spiritual by
others (perhaps in a monastery) and their work was encouraged.  Less likely
would be a paranoid schizophrenic who sees themselves as a witch and writes in
a secret language so that no-one else can persecute them for it.  Another
possibility is someone with serious bipolar disorder who, during a period of
severe euphoria, thinks they're in direct touch with God and writes down
visions from God, with God giving them a new language to record in the
manuscript.

So that's another option for the book, and an explanation for why attempts to
decipher it have failed: There is no decipherment, since it came from the mind
of someone whose thought processes don't match ours.

Peter.