The Blinding Light

[Grimalkin]

So I was curious about something in the game. I have completed the game now, so I know pretty much all the secrets.

I know that Renee is a playable ghost and we're reliving her traumatic life leading up to her unfortunate demise. I know that Amara was a friend but not really a lover like Renee obsessed, that Renee had huge disassociative problems when dealing with guilt and reality and her paranoia made it worse. I know about her messed up childhood and how her mother died before she could save her from the institution. I know about Renee's true delinquent yet also delusional and self destructive behaviors that led to her basically being a prisoner and experimented on for treatment, and then the staff covering a lot of the shady details up and pretending like it was all imaginary. I also know that towards the end of her life before being lobotomized that she basically gave up and attempted suicide frequently once she knew she would never be allowed to leave.

So here's my question: What IS the light? I would've believed that the light was symbolic of the afterlife if Renee only started encountering the "light" when she was admitted to the asylum, like maybe foreshadowing the end and how she's really dead. However, in the diary it's mentioned how (if I remember she said she was 5 years old?) one day when she was little she was witness to a very blinding light that probably made her pass out or black out or something. But anyways, basically her schizophrenic/psychotic behaviors didn't really kick in until she first encountered the light. Then after that, peoples faces would shapeshift and she'd hear voices and became paranoid, thus leading into the inevitable downward spiral into utter madness which led to her life as we know it now (which was really bad overall)

So what is the light? Is it representing an event she's blacking out because of trauma? Did she get hurt by something and receive brain damage? Was this just the experience of her natural development of schizophrenia like hereditary, a physical reaction to the deterioration of her brain? Or was this light just simply one of her unique ailments of her schizophrenia, similar to how not all schizophrenics experience the same things? I would be curious to know what the developers have to say, or anyone else who has ideas.

[Kardelen]

I was also confused but my thought was this:

The light represented the time when a family friend come to her room and abused her. Remember she was in the dark, sleeping and when he opened the door, light came in. So IMHO the light symbolized the trauma she experienced. But I could also be so wrong because I'm not certain about the timeline. Not sure if she had talked about the light before she was abused though.