A Jungian Approach to Psychosis

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2012-01-12T20:51:00.001-08:00

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose
of human existence is to kindle a light in
the darkness of mere being.

- Carl Jung

This blog is currently under construction although working links are slowly being added to the Table of Contents at right.

Please be patient during the construction period.

Thank you.

This blog will feature the work of Jungian analysts and approaches that can be applied to understanding and integrating psychotic experiences. I'll be sharing a number of articles I've found helpful in addition to my own notes from a series of free podcasts offered by Jungian analyst, John Betts. When possible, I'll try to incorporate specific examples or include links in my notes that can help readers see how Jungian concepts can be used to help them interpret, integrate and move on from their own fragmentation experiences.

By no means should anything on this blog be considered an end point, rather, it's a place you might begin. I am not a Jungian analyst nor have I worked with any. Everything I share on this blog (or my other blogs) is shared from the position of peer; my own breakdown occurred several years ago.

If you feel it might be to your benefit to work with a Jungian analyst I suggest you make use of a good search engine to see if you can locate any in your area. If none are available locally it might also be possible for you to arrange to work with one by distance.

I hope you enjoy the Jung podcasts which have been graciously offered to those interested in Jungian Psychology as well as the articles I've gathered here. In all cases, I have tried to link to the original on the net. Please contact those authors/analysts directly if you feel their efforts have helped you.

~ Namaste

Recap

2012-01-09T21:53:00.000-08:00

So... the movie's over. What now?

Maybe I'll recap. The stages that Jack progressed through were:

1. Baseline: The psychological space he was in just before it all began.

2. Ego Breakdown: The boundaries of the ego begin to crack or become porous allowing unconscious content to begin to seep through.

3. Ego Collapse: The boundaries are overcome by contents from the unconscious and the individual becomes unmistakably psychotic.

4. Entering the Unconscious: The individual may begin to directly engage unconscious content including the Shadow, the Anima/Animus and the Self.

5. Ego Death: In some cases, a complete death of the ego may occur. Anyone who has gone through this experience will likely find it helpful to draw on spiritual/religious texts which directly deal with this process.

We don't get to see it in the movie but the next logical step is:

6: Healing: A fragmentation crisis can be very hard on a body and a psyche. We need to heal. Months of quietude/withdrawal/rest can be helpful. During these months, it may often seem as if nothing is happening on the surface but a great deal can be happening in the depths of the psyche.

7. Rebuilding the Persona: Once a sufficient degree of healing has taken place, the next logical step is to rebuild our self-identity. This too takes time because our inner relationship with our self and everthing/everyone in the outer world has been substantially altered. Nonetheless, we rebuild our persona the same way we did it the first time -- by re-engaging with the exterior world; by resuming social roles and responsibilities; by entering into relationships with other people.

Various forms of therapy and treatment can assist us in these processes.

Stage Three: Psychosis - Ego Death

2012-01-09T21:33:00.000-08:00

In his book, Mysterium Coniunctionis, Jung says that an experience with the self is always a defeat for the ego but that the death of the ego (the self as you knew it) allows one to be reborn into one’s own wholeness as projections are taken back.

Source: Is it Love or is it Projection?

In the final scenes of the movie Jack puts a gun to his mouth and pulls the trigger. We must remember that as a character, Jack represents the Ego.

Early in the movie Jack lacks the courage to confront his Shadow. Instead, Jack identifies with his persona, the role the world expects him to play. As the movie progresses Jack gradually begins to become aware of his shadow, and how it motivates his behavior. It is only by doing so that he begins the process of self-realization. One criticism that will be made is that the movie depicts a superficial and incomplete process of self-realization.

Source: Tripping Over the Shadow

When Jack shoots himself, surprisingly, it is Tyler who spins away and then drops to the floor. This act, which Jack never would have had the courage to do had he not known Tyler, demonstrates Jack gaining mastery over his Shadow.

The initial disordered state that I am describing contains two distinct elements. The first is an experience of dying or of having already died, which symbolizes a dissolution of the accustomed self. The second element, closely related to the first, is a vision of the death of the world. In an acute psychosis individuals undergo a profound reorganization of the self, effected by a thoroughgoing reintegration through utter disintegration. ...

This is a difficult point, for we seem to find ourselves firmly biased against suffering and death as the ultimate enemy, dark and sinister, to whom we give no quarter and show no tolerance. You might say suffering and death are on an equal footing with madness in this respect.

We have seen that the growth process of the psyche, on the other hand, sees all this quite differently. According to the psyche's purposes, in order to break out of the security of solid consensus and convention, one must encounter the experience of the death process in psychic depth, and also at the same time the dissolution of the familiar, accustomed worldview. Though all this demand might seem at first glance overly drastic, it consists actually of the death of the familiar self-image and the destruction of the world image to make room for the self regeneration of each.

Source: Visionary Experience in Myth & Ritual

Directed by David Fincher, written for the screen by Jim Uhls, and based on a novel by Chuck Plahniuk, Fight Club was released to Americans recovering from the Columbine school shootings in the fall of 1999...

The last image of the film is framed as a vista from within a glass skyscraper. Jack and his lover, Marla Singer, hold hands at the "theater of mass destruction." Two tall towers crumble to the ground. Premiered years before September eleventh, the film serves as chilling prophecy even more profound and ripe with cultural and historical mythic elements than even this author had expected. ...

Source: Fight Club: A Jungian Interpretation

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Stage Three: Psychosis - The Self

2012-01-09T21:20:00.000-08:00

And you open the door and you step inside
We're inside our hearts
Now imagine your pain as a white ball of healing light
That's right, your pain
The pain, itself, is a white ball of healing light

I don't think so

This is your life, good to the last drop
Doesn't get any better than this
This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time

This isn't a seminar, this isn't a weekend retreat
Where you are now you can't even imagine
what the bottom looks like

Only after disaster can we be resurrected
It's only after you've lost everything
that you're free to do anything

Nothing is static,
everything is evolving,
everything is falling apart

This is your life, this is your life, this is your life, this is your life
Doesn't get any better than this

This is your life, this is your life, this is your life, this is your life
Minute, minute, and it's ending one minute at a time

You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake
You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else
We are all part of the same compost heap
We are the all singing, all dancing, crap of the world

You are not your bank account
You are not the clothes you wear
You are not the contents of your wallet
You are not your bowel cancer
You are not your grande latte
You are not the car you drive
You are not your fucking khakis!

You have to give up, you have to give up
You have to realize that someday you will die
Until you know that, you are useless

I say let me never be complete
I say may I never be content
I say deliver me from Swedish furniture
I say deliver me from clever lunch
I say deliver me from clear skin and perfect teeth
I say you have to give up
I say evolve, and let the chips fall where they may

This is your life, this is your life, this is your life, this is your life
Doesn't get any better than this

This is your life, this is your life, this is your life, this is your life
Minute, minute, spending one minute at a time

You have to give up, you have to give up

~ I want you to hit me as hard as you can!

~ I want you to hit me as hard as you can!

Welcome to Fight Club
If this is your first night
You have to fight

The Dust Brothers ~ This is Your Life

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Stage Three: Psychosis - Anima

2012-01-09T20:56:00.000-08:00

Stage Three: Psychosis - Entering the Land of the Unconscious: The Anima/Animus

Like Tyler (Shadow), Marla (Anima) refers to an interior figure and not a "real" person. Jack first encounters her at the support group for men with testicular cancer. Like Jack, Marla is making the rounds of support groups. Initially, he despises her and can easily find fault in her for his own actions. He comments: Marla, that faker! If I really did have a tumor, I'd name it Marla!

At this point the similarity between Jung's visions and schizophrenia starts to waver for two reasons. The first one I have already mentioned. It concerns the fact that Jung's subsequent productions of the unconscious are in the form of dreams and fantasies, and have none of the terrifying, involuntary quality of psychosis so common in schizophrenia. Secondly, according to Couteau, the schizophrenic confrontation with the unconscious lacks the mediation of the anima

I began to comprehend in a new way the notion of severe illness as a magnifying glass of the soul, from which sometimes the only benefit seems to be insights gained about psyche by the analyst observing "from the outside," for many of my patients, estranged from the mediating function of the anima, were instead confronted directly with the chaotic abyss of the collective unconscious. Yet even for these patients, the presence of a therapist, especially one who could serve as a surrogate anima—a therapist routed in soul-making—provided a vital link to their souls (Couteau 198).

Source: Schizophrenia & Self Disintegration

Water represents the unconscious but it also refers to the feminine and emotions. In a guided visualization Jack takes part in at one of the support group meetings he attends, he finds himself in a cave made of ice, suggesting that his own emotions are frozen. A penguin appears and tells him to slide. When the visualization is repeated, Marla appears in the penguin's place and repeats the word: Slide.

It's fitting that Jack would not meet Marla until after he had met Bob and found the opportunity to reconnect to his emotions and feelings...

Seeking guidance, Jack stumbles into a group for men with testicular cancer. He finds that a weekly catharsis between Bob's breasts rids him of his insomnia by allowing him to feel. But this apparent solution produces a new dilemma for Jack - crying men.

BOB: We're still men.

JACK: Yes. We're men. Men is what we are.

JACK (Voice Over): Bob cried. Six months ago, his testicles were removed. Then hormone therapy. He developed bitch tits because his testosterone was too high and his body upped the estrogen. That was where my head fit -- into his sweating tits that hang enormous, the way we think of God's as big.

Source: Fight Club: A Jungian Interpretation

In its highest form, the anima/animus serves as a guide to the unconscious but Jack so despises Marla he makes an arrangement with her to split up the support group meetings so they need never see each other. This seems to serve as a reinforcement to the split that has taken place between Jack and his Anima.

However, Tyler does enter into a relationship with Marla. This is a very dark relationship, not all that healthy and largely sexually based (union) but even this suggests the beginning of establishing communication lines between Jack (Ego) and Marla (Anima).

Every man has a feminine component in his psyche; every woman has a masculine component in hers. Unfortunately, for centuries, and particularly in the western world, it has been considered a virtue - 'the done thing' - for men to suppress their femininity; and until very recently women have been socially conditioned to think it unbecoming to show their masculinity.

One result of this has been man's bad treatment of women. Man's fear and neglect of his own femininity have had dire consequences. Not only has he repressed the femininity in himself; but also, being frightened of women - who are 'the feminine' par excellence - he has suppressed them, kept them subordinate and powerless.

The further consequence of this suppression of femininity in a world dominated by men is war. Wars are the result of the lopsided development of men whose aggressiveness has not been balanced by love and patience and a feeling for harmony: that is, whose anima has been kept under lock and key. The macho male is violent and destructive.

Source: Anima & Animus

Through Tyler, Jack's masculine side begins to come into relationship with his feminine side although this is a convoluted process. It's not until near the end of the movie that Jack consents to speak directly with Marla once more. She is standing at the sink of the dilapidated house and a shaft of sunlight pierces the window to light up her character. It is the only time we see sunlight come into the house.

Like Jack and Tyler, Marla is also in a state of metamorphosis, transforming herself from the negative anima to the positive anima.

Your soul-image (anima/animus) will lead your conscious ego safely into the unconscious and safely out again. When Theseus neded to penetrate the labyrinth in Crete in order to slay the monstrous Minotaur, the fair Ariadne, with her thread, enabled him to go in and find his way out again.

If we follow Jung and translate this story into psychological terms, the labyrinth is a symbol of the unconscious, the monster is the frightening and threatening aspect of whatever in our unconscious has been neglected and has therefore 'gone wild'; the slaying of the monster means 'taming' that wild, unruly force and bringing it under conscious control. The 'slaying' can be accomplished, however, only by love (Ariadne - the feminine) - only by accepting the neglected thing, honouring it and welcoming it into our unconscious.

Source: The Individuation Process: Anima/Animus

It's only through developing his relationship with his Anima that Jack develops the strength and courage to overcome his Shadow. In order for this to happen, Bob's character intervenes once more, by dying. It's not until Bob's death that Jack is able to see just how destructive his Shadow can be...

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Intermission

2012-01-09T20:49:00.000-08:00

If I was to end this series right here, I'd probably have already covered the majority of complaints and symptoms associated with a fragmentation crisis:

- triggering events
- ego breakdown
- shadow material
- ego collapse.

It's usually something that happens in those stages that prompts you or others to make a trip to the nearest ER with you in tow. At that point, you'll probably be given medication that will halt, slow, or numb the experience from progressing any further. The experience will likely have been so painful and terrifying you might prefer to never think of it again.

It's possible there will have been flashes of the deeper psyche coming through but chances are you won't understand them and no one around you will understand them either so you'll put the experience behind you, take your meds, and try to get back to the life you once had.

In some individuals however, the process carries on or goes deeper. That's certainly the case with Jack. So, I'll continue in that theme...

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Stage Three: Psychosis

2012-01-09T20:23:00.000-08:00

Entering the Land of the Unconscious: The Shadow

The house that Tyler takes Jack to serves as the now devastated symbol of his known self. It's dark, dank, dilapidated, desolate -- much like Jack's worldview which is now filtered through the perspective of his Shadow. It's here that Jack's repressed rage, shame, pain, fear, shame and other negative emotions begin to exercise themselves.

The first step is taken towards self-realization {individuation} when you meet your 'shadow'. This is so called because it is the 'dark' side of your psyche, the parts of yourself that you have not previously brought into the light of consciousness. It is, for this reason, the 'primitive' (undeveloped or underdeveloped) side of your personality. It is also the 'negative' side of your personality, insofar as it is the opposite of whatever you have hitherto regarded as making a positive contribution to your well being.

In dreams your shadow may be represented either by some figure of the same sex as yourself (an elder brother or sister, your best friend, or some alien or primitive person) or by a person who represents your opposite (and of the same sex). A clear example of this in literature is Robert Louis Stevenson's 'The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde', in which Mr Hyde may be seen as Dr Jekyll's unconscious shadow, leading a separate and altogether different life from the conscious part of the personality.

The werewolf motif features in the same way in literature (e.g. Hermann Hesse's 'Steppenwolf') and in folklore. In pre-literate societies this 'other' side of the individual's personality was sometimes depicted as a 'bush-soul', having its own separate body - usually that of an animal or tree in the nearby bush or forest. (It should be noted that in such preliterate society the bush or forest or other wide or desert places surrounding the human settlement were powerful symbols of anti-anomianism, that is, of everything that constituted a threat to the established law and order in the human community. There is an obvious parallel here to the way the dark forces of the unconscious may be felt as a threat to the ordered life of the conscious ego).

Source: Myths, Dreams and Symbols: The Shadow

The basement of this new residence is filled with water. Water is a symbol of the unconscious so it's quite fitting that Jack's new basement would be overun with water, much as he has become overwhelmed with contents which have flooded upwards from the unconscious.

Water is a common symbol of the unconscious. In baptism a person is plunged into water and is said to be 'born again' when he or she rises out of the water. This symbolizes the descent of consciousness into the unconscious and the resulting new and fuller life. The same applies to stories of a great flood which destroys the face of the earth and the recedes, leaving one pure human being (e.g Noah in the Jewish - Christian tradition; Markandeya in the Hindu tradition).

If we take this as a symbol of individuation, what is destroyed by the flood-waters (the unconscious) is the persona, that makeshift self-image with which we start our adult life. This partial self must be desolved to make way for the appearance of the whole self {represented by Noah or Markandeya}.

In some cultures there are myths of a diver who plunges to the bottom of the sea and brings up treasure. The water, again, may be seen as a symbol for the unconscious, and the treasure as the new self one finds when previously unused psychic resources are given appropriate expression in one's conscious life.

Source: Myths, Dreams and Symbols: The Shadow

I will carry you kicking and screaming, and in the end -- you will thank me for it.

-- Tyler

There is much that a relationship with our own Shadow can teach us. However there is also a danger in becoming possessed by your Shadow because you may then begin to act out your inner fears and rage upon the exterior world. This is precisely what Jack does and we can learn a little something from the error of his ways. Alternatively, you may be continually assualted by your shadow in your inner world and will need to overcome those forces so that you can live peacefully and fearfully as appropriate.

Within Tyler is all of Jack's shame, his rage, his pain, his hate, disdain and condemnation; his fears of inferiority and rejection.

The first task Jack faces is to come into relationship with these disowned and projected parts of himself -- his Shadow -- and ultimately, gain mastery over them.

In order to reach the second stage of individuation you must resist two temptations. First, you must avoid projecting your shadow on to other people. Your shadow, because it is your dark side, may be quite frightening, and you may even see it as something evil. You may therfore want to disown it; and one way of doing this is to make believe it is the property of someone else. On a collective level this is what leads to racism and the persecution of 'non-believers' (which in this context means people whose beliefs are different from our own). These are both examples of the 'them-and-us' syndrome, where we unload our 'dark' side on to some other group, which then becomes the scapegoat that carries the blame for everything that is wrong in our lives or our society. Commenting on Jesus's command to 'Love your enemy', Jung remarks: 'But what if I should discover that that very enemy himself is within me, that I myself am the enemy who must be loved - what then?'

The answer is that you must learn to integrate the dark side of yourself, which means accepting it and allowing it to proper expression under the control of your conscious mind. It will then cease to be dark and terrifying and hostile; instead, it will enhance the quality of your life, advance your personal development and increase your happiness.

The second temptation to be resisted is that of suppressing the shadow, which means putting it back into the cellars of the unconscious and locking the doors on it. (If Cinderella never realized her shadow, she would still be locked behind the closed doors which represents her unconscious desires to be free). Says Jung: 'Mere suppression of the Shadow is as little a remedy as beheading would be for a headache.' Whatever pain or unease your shadow may cause you, it consists of precisely those parts of your total self that you need to utilize if you are to achieve full personal growth. To suppress the shadow is merely to go back to square one; and sooner or later you will be forced to come to terms with this 'dark' side of yourself.

Source: Myths, Dreams and Symbols: The Shadow

Individuals who have experienced a fragmentation crisis may also experience a great deal of shadow material on a personal, cultural, historic and even, cosmic level.

See also:
Shadow Work

Meeting Darkness on the Path

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Stage Two: Ego Collapse

2012-01-09T19:46:00.000-08:00

It's on a flight that Jack first encounters his Shadow, face-to-face...

According to Jung, one must get in touch with the Shadow and Anima/Animus before one can truly get in touch with the Self. The order is sequential, and as tempting as it may be to try and skip the Shadow or deal only superficially with it, it is here that we begin.

Source: The Individuation Process

Something of great significance happens after this meeting. Jack returns to his apartment complex to discover that his home has been completely destroyed as the result of an explosion that we later discover, Tyler played a role in creating.

This explosive moment demonstrates the enormity of force involved in a fragmentation crisis. In a later scene with one of the investigative officers Jack relays to the viewer just how devastating this moment was to him: That wasn't just a bunch of stuff that got destroyed. That was ME!

Let's go back to that scene for a moment. As you are hysterically rushed through the traffic, away from family and friends in a screaming ambulance, how could you possibly know that it is not yourself who has come to an end, only your precious personality that has died? When you arrive at the hospital, the admitting psychiatrist informs you that you've had a Nervous Breakdown, and that you are in urgent need of immediate medication.

See also: The Inner Apocalypse

Jack may have been "going crazy" previous to this point but now, he is fully psychotic because his sense of self-identity (symbolized by his home) has been completely destroyed. When the barriers of the Ego come down, the contents of the unconscious rush forth. It's here that Tyler steps in to take control and it's also here that we begin to see the elements of larger culture reflected in Jack's personal experience of ego fragmentation...

Ego controls the psyche, but when ego is disrupted (through Tyler's cutting frames into the film) or weakened through sleep loss or an emotional void (in Jack's case), the shadow creeps in to take control. The ego is constructed around societal norms and the desire for behavior which "fits into society." However, Post-Modernity challenges these social norms as simply one narrative or structure which is no better than any other structured narrative. The destruction of Jack's ego also parallels the destruction of American hegemony.

The film which exists apart from conventional reality can provide an extasy - an ex stasis allowing the viewer to be taken outside of the domain of normal consciousness and into a reality that is probably most similar to the passive experience of the unconscious dream mixed with conscious memory. The film exists within the inner life of Jack: Listen to this. It's an article written in first person. "I am Jack's medulla oblongata, without me Jack could not regulate his heart rate, blood pressure or breathing!" There's a whole series of these! "I am Jill's nipples". "I am Jack's Colon."

From such statements about the inner body of Jack stem further meditations by Jack about his own inner life: "I am Jack's smirking revenge." "I am Jack's cold sweat." "I am Jack's broken heart." What may be unique about Fight Club is its self-consciousness about its own medium. The breakdown of Jack's ego is manifest through the breakdown of cinematic form itself...

Read more: Fight Club: A Jungian Interpretation

At this point, Jack has no where to go so he accepts Tyler's invitation to live with him...

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Stage one: Egoic Breakdown

2012-01-09T19:28:00.000-08:00

Jack begins to have difficulty sleeping. He goes to see a doctor and begs for some medication that would allow him to get a good night's rest. The doctor, almost coldly in retrospect, dismisses him with the admonishment that he should seek out natural sources of aid. It's important to know that sleep deprivation is associated with psychotic states of consciousness and it's here that we begin to see evidence that Jack's ego is breaking down.

Stage one would correspond with the 'prodromal' phase of a schizophrenic breakdown/fragmentation crisis. As the Ego structure begins to crumble under the stress and strain experienced by the Persona it seems to lose the ability to serve as a filter or container to the contents of the unconscious, which now begin to break through. The astute observer will first see Tyler (Shadow) appear for just a flash of a second when Jack is at the doctor's office.

Is Schizophrenia 'Split Personality'?

Yes... and No! Imagine, if you will, that a 3-levelled house represents the structure of the psyche. The top floor, consisting of various linked rooms, represents consciousness, in all its bustling, interacting complexity. Immediately below is the cellar, which represents the personal unconscious, or dark 'shadow' side of the personality.

The lowest level, the basement, is the oldest part of the house and contains dim, godlike and archaic figures, personifications of what Jung called 'archetypes', universally occurring, powerful energies and forms of behaviour and thought, which make up what Jung called the 'collective unconscious', and which often take on mythological, religious, semi-human, divine, animal or natural forms.

What we call 'split personality' involves the conscious personality forming split off, distinctly separate personalities, so it's as if the upper floor rooms become completely isolated from each other, their doors all locked.

With a schizophrenic split, or fragmentation, however, it's as if the house's floorboards (foundations of the conscious personality) are split, or shattered as invading archetypal figures from the basement rush up to inhabit, or displace the upstairs (conscious) inhabitants.

Source: Schizophrenia: The Soul in Crisis

Jack is exhausted and this exhaustion is further hampered by the travel schedule imposed on him by his employer. He complains that he wakes up in strange places, no longer being certain even of the time-zone he is in. Jack's ego barriers are swiftly eroding. As they do so, his inner and outer realities begin to blend and become indistinguishable. At some point during his travels Jack falls asleep and has a nightmare that the plane is crashing. Intense fear seems to belong to this stage, as if the ego senses the risk of fragmentation and the potential for collapse.

Jack also seems to understand that something is wrong and perhaps fueled by a desire to find some relief and as a result of the former doctor's haphazard suggestion that 'real pain' can be found among sufferers of testicular cancer, Jack heads out to attend his first support group meeting. It's here that Jack (Persona/Ego) first meets Bob (Mana Personality) and he doesn't yet consciously know it, but his answers have begun to come because Bob serves as a representative of the Self...

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Timeline: Jack, as He Was

2012-01-09T19:22:00.000-08:00

Establishing a Timeline: Baseline - Meeting Jack

The movie begins with the end and relies on a number of flashbacks that serve to reconstruct the story of Jack's experience. Once we've seen the movie we can establish that at the beginning, Jack was for all intents and purposes, a "normal" person. We know little of his early life but we do learn that his father abandoned the family when Jack was quite young. Later in the film Tyler remarks that fathers are like Gods and if our fathers abandoned us, then what does that say about God?

We can surmise that Jack lacked a father role model in his formative years and further speculate that his mother may have tried to take this role on. This may have produced a double form of abandonment if the dual roles of nurturer/provider left his mother with little time to give to Jack. None of this would necessarily be enough to produce significant trauma but like Achilles and his heel, it may have left Jack with a weak spot in the shielding armor of his persona/personality development.

Jack describes himself as a "30 year-old boy" who is a "slave to his IKEA nesting instinct". He ponders: "Which dining room table best represents who I am?" The camera displays his home to the viewer, including the cost of each item. Within a Jungian framework a house/home serves as a symbol of the self-identity. In presenting his home to the viewer, Jack is also presenting the self-image he has carefully crafted and invested in. It's a nice home: Clean, straight, orderly, well-orchestrated and magazine-perfect to the point of near sterility.

Jack also laments the materialization and consumer mindset of modern life, suggesting that mass marketing and commercialization is due to soon move into the outer limits of the larger universe with Starbucks billboards threatening to populate the moon. Jack sees the shallowness and lack of purpose in his life. This creates a sense of emptiness in him with an accompanying hunger for something more meaningful. This makes Jack discontent and perhaps ripe for a life crisis, but it doesn't make him schizophrenic.

Jack also has a job -- working for a large automobile manufacturer. In a later scene in the film we see Jack surveying a car made by the company he works for. The car had been involved in a horrifying crash and an entire family had burned to death in the interior as a result of a suspected manufacturing fault. Jack lingers over key details of their final anguished moments. As an employee, it's Jack's responsibility to assess whether it will cost the company more to issue a recall and fix the fault than it will to settle with the grieving family members of the people who die in their faulty vehicles; an impartial mathematical formula is imposed to determine the value of their lives. We should not overlook that as a result of its prestige and power, the auto manufacturer serves as a patriarchal authority figure with the apparent ability to determine the worth of a human life. We could easily imagine Tyler's voice here: Fathers are like Gods and if our fathers abandoned us, then what does that say about God?

In most every individual I've encountered since my own experience there has nearly always been a triggering event or series thereof that seems to precede the fragmentation crisis. In Jack's case, the trauma of seeing that car, identifying with the anguish of the human family it once contained, and the callous disregard for the sanctity of a human life exhibited by his employer seems to have served as the triggering event that foreshadowed the collapse of his ego...

See also:
Spirituality & Trauma

Links Between Trauma and Psychosis

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Reframing the Cast Within Jungian Terms

2012-01-09T18:48:00.000-08:00

I'll try to keep this simple but it will be necessary to grasp some Jungian basics in order to understand this thread. Here's a map to help provide the reader with a snapshot of the big picture...

The Persona: For most of us, if were to try and define "who we are" we would present ourselves as our Persona. To a large extent this is the face we present to the world. It is closely related to what we call the ego -- our sense of self-identity. Our sense of self-identity arises out of our relationships with others, the roles we play and our beliefs about ourselves and the world we live in (e.g. wife, father, engineer, Christian, Democrat, easy-going, etc.) This smaller sense of identity is often referred to as the little self in Jungian psychology to differentiate it from the larger Self.

The Ego: The ego is more than just our sense of identity; it also serves as a function that separates our Persona from the remainder of the total psyche. As a function, it mediates what will be allowed to pass through from the deeper personal and collective unconscious.

The Shadow: This is the place where we store all the ugly, shameful, painful bits. In many instances, the ego will serve to keep aspects of the shadow repressed and out of consciousness, such as a past trauma or an emotion you feel ashamed of. This repressed material may relate to personal experience, cultural experience, or the collective experience of humanity. In spite of the barrier put in place by the ego, the shadow works as a very powerful force in our lives. In some cases, it is possible to become possessed by our shadow. We're going to see evidence of shadow possession in the film.

The Anima/Animus: According to Jung, every human being contains an inner being that is opposite to its exterior gender. If you are a male, this inner feminine is referred to as the anima; if you are a female, your inner masculine is referred to as the animus. We most often encounter our own anima or animus in the form of projection although the anima/animus may also make itself known through dream and fantasy.

Mana Personality: Mana personalities are very powerful archetypal patterns that are closely aligned with the Self. Historically, priests, shamans, medicine men/women, etc. have been said to represent mana personalities because they possess great, sometimes supernatural knowledge.

The Self: We could compare this part of the psyche to the sun at the center of the Universe; all psychic life flows from it -- it is the center of our psychic Universe. However, just as we once believed that the Sun revolved around the Earth, the little self sometimes suffers from the belief that the Self revolves around it! Discovering that our personas/egos are not the center of the Universe can be a very humbling, painful experience and one that most of us would prefer to avoid if at all possible.

Now, we're going to meet the characters in the film and see where they fit upon the model above.

Jack: Jack is played by Edward Norton and serves as the protaganist to the film. He corresponds with the Persona/Ego (self-identity).

Tyler Durden: Tyler is played by Brad Pitt. He serves as Jack's Shadow. Tyler is a dark, ominous, even evil character yet he also adds strength to Jack's psyche and serves as an important teacher to him. The larger portion of the film is focused upon this relationship between Jack as Persona/Ego and Tyler as Shadow.

Marla Singer: The character of Marla is played by Helen Bonham Carter. Marla is Jack's Anima. For much of the film, Jack's relationship to Marla is mediated through Tyler.

Bob: Played by Meatloaf. Bob is a male who has undergone surgery and hormone treatment for testicular cancer. Like a hermaphrodite or androgynous being, these treatments have rendered him both male and female; as a result, Bob represents the opposites united as one.

It's through his relationship with Bob that Jack begins to relate to his inner emotional life and inner turmoil. Bob serves as a Mana Personality.

With those basics in place we can now turn to the movie itself with Jack serving as the narrator of his own story. Like all stories of this type we should expect that details will be jumbled and muddled together -- not even Jack understands what is happening to him.

Some of the most important details are spoken as whispers or offhand comments and it can be easy to miss them but as we move through "his story" we're going to begin to understand that Jack's outer world is reliant upon his inner relationships with his Shadow, Anima and Self...

NEXT POST

Where is my mind?

2012-01-09T18:46:00.000-08:00

With your feet in the air and your head on the ground
Try this trick and spin it, yeah!
Your head will collapse
But there's nothing in it
And you'll ask yourself

Where is my mind?
Where is my mind?
Where is my mind?

..................... Way out in the water
..................... See it swimmin'

I was swimmin' in the Caribbean
Animals were hiding behind the rocks
Except the little fish
But they told me, he swears
Tryin' to talk to me, coy koi.

Where is my mind?
Where is my mind?
Where is my mind?

..................... Way out in the water
..................... See it swimmin'

With your feet in the air and your head on the ground

Try this trick and spin it, yeah
Your head will collapse
If there's nothing in it
And you'll ask yourself

Where is my mind?
Where is my mind?
Where is my mind?

Oh
With your feet in the air and your head on the ground
Oh
Try this trick and spin it, yeah!
Oh
Oh

The Pixies ~ Where is My Mind?

NEXT POST

Fight Club: An example of a schizophrenic process

2012-01-09T18:38:00.000-08:00

The following series of posts were written by me elsewhere but I decided to drag them into this space because...

- It may help people who have experienced psychosis to better understand their own experience.

- It may help family and friends who are attempting to support someone who has been through psychosis to better understand that experience.

The beauty of using a movie to help explain this process is that many people have seen the movie or can easily rent it from their local movie store. Also, even though it may touch on some common ground, it's not my experience or your experience and sometimes it can be easier to speak of such things when there's a bit of distance. In spite of which, any readers should be aware that the film contains some disturbing scenes.

NEXT POST

Under Construction

2009-02-05T07:53:00.000-08:00

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose
of human existence is to kindle a light in
the darkness of mere being.

- Carl Jung

This blog is currently under construction although working links are slowly being added to the Table of Contents at right.

Please be patient during the construction period.

Thank you.

Auditory Hallucinations in Schizophrenia: Collaborating with the Voices from Without

2009-02-05T06:49:00.000-08:00

… there is no symptom which could be described as
psychologically groundless and meaningless. Even
the most absurd things are nothing more than
symbols for thoughts which are not only
understandable in human terms but dwell
in every human breast.

- Carl Jung

Abstract
Differentiating between the pathological, and possible religious or
spiritual connotations of schizophrenia sheds light on the possible mechanisms of coping, useful in developing clinical strategies in the treatment of schizophrenia. While many studies have focused on the nature and treatment of auditory hallucinations within modalities such as cognitive-behavioral therapy and/or psychiatric interventions, these modalities aim at eliminating the auditory hallucinations in patients with schizophrenia, perceiving them as a pathological symptom. Research has also been undertaken in understanding the cultural and religious components of schizophrenia, as well as how religion and spirituality have been incorporated in the coping mechanisms of this population (Lukoff, 2007). However, there appears to be very little research on how auditory hallucinations themselves may be incorporated in the recovery process, in the development of new meaning and purpose as one grows beyond the catastrophe of mental illness (Anthony, 1993). It also implies that the individual may not necessarily be cured or be symptom free.

Hence, this paper suggests reconsidering the role of auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia, an area in the field of psychology that has a dearth of information. This theoretical perspective is supported by the survey of the literature, which suggests that for many centuries, individuals experiencing auditory hallucinations have been given much more credence than their counterparts in modern society. Most recent studies on auditory hallucinations indicate that auditory hallucinations themselves are not debilitating. Romme (1989) proposes instead that the fear of not being able to control or manage the auditory hallucinations can be disabling to the individual. It is hoped that a more refined understanding of the present literature regarding auditory hallucinations will promote a basis for the relevance of researching auditory hallucinations in the recovery process of individuals with schizophrenia.

An introduction that may be best suited for this paper lies in an antic that depicts the complexity and obscurity of schizophrenia: “Hey- when you talk to God it’s called prayer, but when he talks back, it’s schizophrenia.”(Jenkins & Barrett, 2004). The etymology of the word schizophrenia suggests schiz to mean 'broken’ and phrenos to mean ‘soul’ or ‘heart’ (Radder, 2006). One could say that this paper may in essence reflect the story of the broken hearted.

The purpose of this paper is a brief review of the current literature on auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia whereby it is hoped that a case for re-examining the role of auditory hallucinations in the recovery process of individuals with schizophrenia will be established. In essence, this paper begs the question: Can auditory hallucinations in patients with schizophrenia be incorporated in the recovery process? In other words, is it possible that instead of viewing auditory hallucinations as a pathological symptom of schizophrenia, we “re-view” them as having meaning in an individual’s life?

Schizophrenia is one of the most prevalent psychological illnesses in the USA. A description that would suffice for the purposes of this paper can be drawn from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV-TR (2000). Having been Considered the most widely employed definition in clinical psychology, the DSM-IV-TR (2000) describes schizophrenia as a mental disorder that lasts for at least 6 months and includes at least 1 month of active-phase syndromes (i.e. two or more of the following: delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior).

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, Schizophrenia afflicts approximately 2.4 million American adults (The Numbers Count, n.d). The World Health Organization (2001) has reported that approximately 24 million people worldwide suffer from schizophrenia.

Auditory Hallucinations in Schizophrenia
In laymen’s terms, hallucinations are simply defined as perceptions (can be sound, sight, touch, smell, or taste) that occur in the absence of an actual external stimulus. According to the DSM-IV-TR (2000), hallucinations may occur in any sensory modality (e.g. auditory, visual, olfactory, gustatory and tactile), but auditory hallucinations are by far the most common in schizophrenia.

Several factors such as sleep deprivation, use and ingestion of psychedelics or the use of psychoactive drugs such as marijuana or LSD, have been accounted for in the experience of hallucinations. Hallucinations have also been known to occur due to certain infectious diseases such as HIV or Lyme disease, due to the imbalances of various chemicals or neurotransmitters in the brain, or in patients suffering from delirium or dementia. Similarly, studies on brain temperature (Fay, 1959) and the effects of hyperventilation on auditory and visual hallucinations (Allen & Agus, 1968) have provided crucial clues to the causes of hallucinations.

There have been varying opinions and perspectives on the causes and nature of hallucinations, some viewing them as equivalent to insanity, while others regard them as being stimulating and inspirational. Lelut (1836) believed that hallucinations were inherently pathological, and an indisputable sign of madness. On the other end of the spectrum, the German psychoanalyst Fromm-Reichmann (1959) spoke of psychosis and hallucinations as being “useful to the mentally healthy in really finding their minds, which are all too frequently lost, as it were, in the distortions, the dissociations…and all the painful hide-and-seeks which modern culture forces upon the mind of man” (p.24).

One of the most prevailing paradigms of auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia is the psychiatric or “medical model” that has its roots in the late Middle Ages, and whose attitudes have been reflected in the establishment of asylums for the mentally ill of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The medical model views mental illness as a problem concerned with chemicals, and the solution is likewise a chemical one (Shorto, 1999). The opinion of the proponents of the medical model is that mental illness should be viewed as a disease, a dysfunction of the brain. According to modern psychiatry, people who are experiencing major mental illness are having ‘broken brains’ and cannot possibly take a stand towards what is ailing them except to take medications (Jenkins & Barrett, 2004).

Karl Jaspers, the German psychiatrist, claimed that it is not possible to discern meaningful content in psychosis: “Much has been explained as meaningful which in fact was nothing of the kind” (Jaspers, 1963, p.408). This view continues to be upheld in today’s society, for the majority of patients who experience auditory hallucinations are under the direction of psychiatric care.

The National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI), founded in the USA in 1979, believes that its purpose is the “eradication of mental illness”, thereby expressing and promoting the view that mental illness is something society should aim to eliminate. This idea is in direct opposition to the views of Laing (1960) and Jung (1960), who believed that people who suffer from mental illness can offer insights into human processes that are fundamental to living in a world shared with others.

NAMI holds that schizophrenia is a “treatable medical condition”, an illness caused by the biochemical disturbances of the brain. Time and again, auditory hallucinations have acquired a rather negative reputation, often looked upon as the language of the insane; a language least understood even after decades of research and investigations. Seldom are auditory hallucinations taken seriously and looked upon as possibly being a psychological aid in the healing process of the individual. Psychiatry, the predominant model of treatment, recognizes minimal or no value in auditory hallucinations, rendering them a bane or a futile aspect of the human condition. Romme (1993) succinctly illuminates this idea when he says:

… psychiatrists and others who insist that such
voices do not exist are missing the point. It is
wrong to deny them…these voices represent real
influences, and they have something to say;
sometimes the message may be unwelcome and
uncomfortable; sometimes wise and instructive.

From the current research and literature on the treatment of schizophrenia, there seems to be an absolute reliance on psychiatric medications, particularly because of the belief that psychosis is a biological or a medical disease. Psychiatric services rely exclusively on neuroleptic medication, which make little or no effort to respond to patients’ psychological needs (Bentall, 2003). This idea is echoed by Fadiman & Kewman (1979) who state that in the last 15 years, neuroleptic agents have replaced most forms of treatment for psychoses and other serious mental ailments.

About a century ago, Carl Jung (1908) spoke on the significance of auditory hallucinations in individuals with schizophrenia, stating that:

… there is no symptom which could be described as
psychologically groundless and meaningless. Even the
most absurd things are nothing more than symbols for
thoughts which are not only understandable in human
terms but dwell in every human breast.

The above quote affirms and indicates that indeed there is meaning and symbolism in auditory hallucinations of patients with schizophrenia, suggesting that an inquiry into the same may be of grave relevance. Auditory hallucinations continue to be viewed as a symptom to be eliminated, thereby providing minimal context for exploring the efficacy of assimilating them within the treatment of schizophrenia. Smith (2007) explicates the notion that the probability of seeking meaning in auditory hallucinations is very scarce.

This opinion is exemplified in the following sentences:

What matters most to the contemporary clinician is the
experience’s form – what grammatical tense and “person”
it speaks in…whether it speaks continuously and
intermittently. This information is the key to making a
correct diagnosis, and therefore to prescribing the most
effective treatment. Discussions of meaning are
commonly thought to distract from this work.

For centuries, and particularly in western cultures, auditory hallucinations have been pathologized and viewed in a negative light, with a very bleak future in sight. Bentall & Slade (1988) have commented that hallucinatory experiences are assumed to be strictly pathological in nature. However, over the last few decades a significant number of researchers have challenged the dominant paradigm of mental illness by altering and re-constructing their perceptions of the same. There appears to be an emphasis on “the potential adaptive value of the experience of madness or the possibility for positive change” (Fadiman and Kewman, 1973, p.1).

This paradigm shift can be noted in the emergence of the relatively new concept of "recovery", having being described by Anthony (1993) as:

… a deeply personal, unique process of changing one's
attitudes, values, feelings, goals, skills, and/or roles. It is
a way of living a satisfying, hopeful, and contributing life
even with limitations caused by illness (p.3)

The idea of recovery challenges the existing notion that mental illness is debilitating and of very little significance to the patient. In reference to individuals with auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia, recovery may imply that such individuals may be in a position to cultivate a more favorable attitude towards their auditory hallucinations, thereby possibly viewing them as an aid to psychological healing instead of something to be completely extinguished from the human experience.

The recovery model seems to be of great relevance to individuals with auditory hallucinations, though there appears to be a paucity in the literature regarding the same. Infact, the process of recovery has not been researched (Anthony, 1993), and only assumptions have been made regarding the process. This indicates that there is a crucial need for exploring the value and utility of research regarding the incorporation of auditory hallucinations in the recovery process of schizophrenia.

The outlook towards auditory hallucinations determines to a great extent, the level and kind of treatment that is undertaken for patients with this experience. So far, treatment of auditory hallucinations has been approached in numerous ways. Operant conditioning, systematic desensitization, thought stopping, counter-stimulation, aversion therapy, and ear plug therapy, as well as self monitoring (Bentall, 2003), are some of the treatment models that have been developed and implemented over the years.

All of the above methods have consistently aimed at eliminating the auditory hallucinations of patients. But what if we were to change our perspective and shift our focus from eliminating auditory hallucinations to assimilating them into the recovery from schizophrenia? In other words, what if the goal of treatment was the development of a relationship with the auditory hallucinations so as to collaborate with them rather than eradicate them in order to promote psychological healing?

The above perspective has been adopted by the Dutch psychiatrist Marius Romme who possesses a rather non-pathological view of auditory hallucinations, emphasizing the importance of controlling or managing them. In a study by Dr. Romme, where patients and non-patients who experienced auditory hallucinations were compared, it was found that there were few differences in the two groups. Both patients and non-patients experienced a combination of positive and negative voices, but the non-patients often felt they had some control over their voices. This suggests that it is not the hallucinations per se that determine whether people seek help from psychiatric services, but how well they are able to cope with these experiences (Bentall, 2003).

Conclusion
Extensive research has been undertaken with respect to auditory hallucinations within psychiatric populations (e.g.: schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, dementia, etc). In the same vein, there has been some research conducted with non-psychiatric populations, thereby indicating that auditory hallucinations are not necessarily a pathological phenomena, but part of the human experience.

There appears to be two schools of thought that are key players in providing a theoretical understanding of auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia. The medical model or psychiatric perspective deems it important to eliminate auditory hallucinations via neuroleptic medications. Therefore, it could be suggested that according to this world-view, the suppression or elimination of auditory hallucinations is an indication of successful treatment, and therefore a necessity in order for an individual to resume a normal life.

The second school of thought suggests that auditory hallucinations are a significant part of the individual’s experience, and therefore should not be eliminated. The proponents of this paradigm, who include Romme (1993), Jung (1908) and Laing (1960), have indicated that auditory hallucinations have a purpose in the individual’s life, and have meaning or relevance for the individual concerned. Romme (1993), on speaking of the importance of accepting auditory hallucinations, which he refers to as “voices”, states:

… hearing voices has been considered solely as a
symptom of illness, and the psychiatric intervention has
paid no attention to the possible meaning of voices to the
patient’s life history (p.8).

It appears that there is meaning in auditory hallucinations; meaning that cannot be ignored, but explored. What I believe is missing from the current literature is research relevant to the incorporation of auditory hallucinations within the treatment or recovery process, specifically in the case schizophrenia. The literature reviewed does not provide any indication that this idea or concept has ever been looked into or researched before, or that the idea is of any significance to the treatment of schizophrenia. With time, it is becoming evident that perhaps even a slight modification in our attitude towards auditory hallucinations and their possible significance in the recovery from schizophrenia is what are most needed. This is not to say that such an attitude is a panacea for schizophrenia. Yet, instead of viewing auditory hallucinations solely as a symptom, it may be of certain benefit to the patient to “re-view” auditory hallucinations in a more progressive light. James Hillman (1977) illuminates this idea in stating that we need to approach the concept of pathology afresh. Infact, he describes symptoms, such as auditory hallucinations, as the psyche’s yearning to heal.

Decades of research on auditory hallucinations, especially in schizophrenia, have focused on “more basic examinations, especially at the neurological and behavioral level” (p.175, Fadiman & Kewman, 1979). Research has sought to understand auditory hallucinations from a rather scientific and material basis, viewing the suppression of auditory hallucinations as a successful indication of treatment in schizophrenia. In shifting our attitude, it may be hoped that an acknowledgement of the role of auditory hallucinations may pave the path to a less pathological perspective. Furthermore, from the current research and literature, it seems that a progressive and tolerant attitude towards auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia may be beneficial in deepening our appreciation and perception of this widely studied phenomenon.

Source: © Rochelle Suri: Auditory Hallucinations in Schizophrenia [PDF File]

References
American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed., text revision). Washington, DC
Bentall, R. (2003). Madness explained: Psychosis and human nature. London: Penguin Books Ltd.
Fadiman, J. & Kewman, D. (1979). Exploring madness: Experience, theory and research. California: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company.
Fromm-Reichmann, F. (1959). Psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.
Hillman, J. (1977). Re-visioning psychology. New York: Harper Collins Publishers.
Jaspers, K. (1963). General psychopathology (J. Hoeing, & M. Hamilton, Trans.)
Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Jenkins, J.H., & Barrett, R.J. (2004). Schizophrenia, culture, and subjectivity: The edge of experience. Cambridge University Press.
Jung, C. (1960). On the psychogenesis of schizophrenia. (R.F.C.Hull, Trans.) Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Laing, R. (1960). The divided self. London: Tavistock Publications.
Lelut, L. F. (1836). Du demon de Socrat. Paris: Trinquart.
Lockhart, R. (1975). Voices of psychosis. Psychological Perspectives , 6 (2), 146-160.
Radder, B. (2006). Beyond countertransference: The therapist’s experience in a clinical relationship with a schizophrenic patient. Michigan: UMI Company.
Romme, M. & Escher, S. (1993). Accepting voices. London: Mind Publications.
Shorto, R. (1999). Saints and madmen: How pioneering psychiatrists are creating a new science of the soul. Owl Books
The Numbers Count: Mental Disorders in America. (n.d). Retrieved April 2, 2008, from
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers-count-mental-
disorders-in-america.shtml#Schizophrenia
World Health Organization (2001). Mental and neurological disorders. Retrieved April 2, 2008, from http://www.who.int/whr/2001/media_centre/en/whr01_fact_sheet1_en.pdf

Under Construction

2009-02-05T05:58:00.001-08:00

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

- Carl Jung

This blog is currently under construction although working links are slowly being added to the Table of Contents at right.

Please be patient during the construction period.

Thank you.

Episode 6: The Persona - Part II

2009-02-05T05:48:00.000-08:00

EPISODE 6: PERSONA - PART II
This episode is part 2 of the Persona and continues to enlarge on the concept. Central in our understanding of the Persona is the possibility of a one-sided ego stance and how this occasionally may lead to difficulties in mid-life. One outcome of such a stance may involve another psychodynamic process referred to as enantiodromia, meaning things turn into their opposite. The difference between a symbol and a sign is reviewed and we end the episode with Jung’s notion of symbol amplification. By this episode, the student should have sufficient basic knowledge to be able to tackle the next episodes, which are four podcasts on Jungian Dream Interpretation.

© John Betts

Notes: Psychotic content can be interpreted much like dreams and ordered on Jung's model of the psyche. For example, if you encounter "satan" in a dream or a psychotic state, "satan" belongs to the realm of the shadow.

Enantiodromia: Means "running contrary-wise" in other words, things turn into their opposite. Enantiodromia refers, in part, to a form of compensation. If an extreme one-sided ego stance exists in consciousness, psychic energy has to balance this one-sided position. This means that psychic energy loads up in the unconscious and eventually breaks through, erupting into consciousness.

Sign: A sign has a fixed meaning which is culturally or universally understood, such as a stop sign or a red neon exit sign over a doorway. These signs have only one meaning and are not open to any form of interpretation.

Symbol: A symbol does not have a fixed singular meaning, it can be interpreted in many ways. For example, imagine you dreamed of a horse. As a child you may have been hurt by a horse and may never have liked them. As a result the symbol of "horse" is one that is threatening or frightening to you. Someone else might interpret "horse" along entirely different lines according to their experience of horses. The meaning of a symbol is largely influenced by our personal experience but balanced against the universal meaning of the symbol. Symbolically, a horse might be a reference to war, grace or power. The color, age or actions of the horse might also impact how the symbol should be interpreted. A plodding gray mare might represent something very different from a bucking white stallion.

Amplification: This is the process of exploring what a sign or symbol might mean through mythic, historical and cultural sources in order to clarify the metaphorical content of dream symbolism. Amplification emphasizes a metaphorical as opposed to literal interpretation. This is done by acknowledging what is most immediately relevant and then allowing for further understanding as a consequence of reflection. By way of amplification one consciously experiences oneself within and as part of archetypal energies rather than as their object. The first part of amplification is to develop personal associations, the next phase is to develop the universal meaning of the symbol. Don't thrash a symbol to death, stay with your feelings -- if an arcane cultural interpretation doesn't speak to you on some level, set it aside.

See also: Myths, Dreams & Symbols

Episode 5: The Persona - Part I

2009-02-05T04:28:00.000-08:00

EPISODE 5: PERSONA - PART 1
In this episode I cover the archetype of the Persona as well as begin to address the issue of what a symbol is. First a short review of the episodes to date is offered. The Persona is the mask we wear to the outside world. It may be seen as the opposite of the Anima or Animus as the anima and animus are mediators between the inner world and the ego, whereas the Persona acts as a mediator between the external world and the ego. Examples are given of how critical the Persona is for us all to have access to, and a brief developmental perspective is outlined.

© John Betts

Note: This episode contains a brief review of all the terms covered in previous episodes.

Persona: Refers to the mask or face that a person puts on to confront the world. Persona can refer to gender identity or a stage of development such as adolescence, a social status, a job or profession. Over a lifetime many personas can be worn and several can be combined at any point. We all have at least one persona, more likely, we have far more. Our persona is often based on what we do or are expected to do. When we are in this role we act in ways that are consistent with how we expect others to view us. Without a persona we are naked in the world and have nothing between us and our ego and the external world; nothing to hide behind, no clear sense of how to act, what to wear, what to say... Individuals with a weak sense of their persona suffer tremendously because they don't know who to be at any particular moment. They may feel that people can see right through them and that they have no defenses.

As we mature, we begin to develop and adapt our personas in order to find acceptance from others. We tend to develop personas by identifying with role models. There is a risk we can over-identify with our persona, thus leading to one-sidedness. When we do so, the unconscious may burst forth as a means of compensation to correct the one-sidedness. Equally problematic is someone who changes their persona too often, thus lacking a consistent degree of identity.

Review: The persona operates as a form of defense against the world and is a mediator between the external world of others and the ego. The anima/animus operates as a mediator between the internal world and the ego. For this reason, the persona and anima/animus are opposites because they fulfill very opposite roles within the psyche.

Psychoanalysis and Psychosis: Trends and Developments

2009-02-02T02:29:00.000-08:00

Abstract: This paper presents the basic principles of insight-oriented therapy for schizophrenia, emphasizing the effectiveness of this approach: each treatment effort is a unique adventure, fueled by hopefulness in both participants. Next, it reviews the history of such treatment efforts and current tensions in the field. It presents information on the International Society for the Psychological treatments of the Schizophrenias and other psychoses (I.S.P.S.) and its current mission, to promote quality care for patients suffering from schizophrenia, to promote and facilitate research into this work, and to provide organizational support and ongoing educational programs for clinicians involved in these efforts.

Introduction
Psychodynamic work with people suffering from psychoses is under siege. Our institutions, whether in the public or private sector, perhaps without exception are either shrinking or closing. “Length of stay” is itself a euphemism for a few days of rapid evaluation prior to ever-shortened “step-down programs.” Professionals working in community-based programs are pressured to increase productivity, meeting with more people less often and less intensively. Those who have stayed at the same institution for many years generally have witnessed a dramatic decrease in the their organizations’ commitment to the continuing education of their staff through in-depth case conferences, individual and group supervision, study groups, and the funding of guest speakers. Psychodynamic work is too often dismissed as outmoded, while no theory has been developed that rivals it in effectiveness or in ability to offer cohesive theory. Such work with the severely ill, which has always been under-represented, is now even considered by many as outside the standards of the community, and perhaps even harmful.

This paper delineates the basic principles of psychodynamic work with patients suffering from psychosis. It emphasizes that current opinion on the prognosis of schizophrenia is erroneously pessimistic. About one third of people suffering a psychotic breakdown are able to recover without formal professional help. Very many therapeutic dyads know that their teamwork allowed for renewed hope and the courage to strive for and succeed in healthy human development.

This paper outlines how those of us committed to such work, who have had the enormously gratifying experience of participating in recoveries, are reacting to the current health care crisis. We are organizing, collaborating creatively, and forming an increasingly effective constituency association, I.S.P.S., to be discussed later. Mental health workers in general are not as rigidly bound by guild affiliations, institutional loyalties, or by theoretical dogmas as we were in the so-called ‘good old days’. Now the professional scene is more fluid, less constricted by often arbitrarily defined boundaries. We are proving yet again the wisdom of the Chinese proverb, “Out of chaos comes opportunity.”

Historical review
Those suffering from severe mental illness have never lived in a kind or gentle nation. While I promote dyadic insight-oriented work with severely ill patients, the reader should not infer that I would glorify the earlier care of the mentally ill. Beginning my psychiatric career in the early 1970s, I recall the optimism generated by community psychiatry initiatives. Meanwhile, working partly in the state hospital system, I saw patients who had been warehoused for decades on enormous barren back wards, whose psychiatrists often had responsibility for 350 or so patients, many of whom walked in cramped circles in the empty ward day room. Their weary and isolative doctors perused these patients’ charts on a yearly basis. Community initiatives offered hopes, which were partly realized, that these patients could actually return to live in their home communities. They would be rehabilitated, assisted in caring for themselves and building a future. Group therapy was popular; it too would help psychotic patients. Family therapy developed.

Meanwhile, the hugely effective parents’ organization, The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill has mounted an effective assault on theories blaming parental communications and parental psychopathology for their children’s psychotic illnesses. They combat stigma against those with mental illness. They remind us that the people who provide primary care are the families. However, much of the literature they have endorsed or supported sends a pessimistic message that those with schizophrenia suffer a genetic illness compounded by perinatal trauma producing cerebral anoxia, the resultant damage manifesting itself in adolescence or young adulthood, to be helped by medications and sheltered support. Dolnick’s book, Madness on the Couch and the recent “documentary” “Schizophrenia: Stolen Minds; Stolen Lives” illustrate these attitudes. The latter does not even mention psychotherapy in any of its forms, either in current or in past approaches.

Unfortunately, the emerging apparent consensus, often presented as fact, is that psychosis is a biologic disorder, to be managed pharmacologically. Fortunately, the newer generation of anti-psychotic agents seems significantly superior to the phenothiazines. However, the possibility that psychotic breakdown may be precipitated by intense anxiety secondary to profound inner conflict is dismissed as outmoded and somehow disproved. Students of mental health, patients and families are told to await ever more definitive treatments, now that the genome has been defined. They are referred to the NAMI literature and the Surgeon General’s Report which quote the PORT study, The Schizophrenia Patient Outcomes Research Team (PORT) Treatment Recommendations.

The PORT Study Treatment Recommendation 22 states that “psychotherapy aimed at understanding unconscious drives or getting at the psychological roots of schizophrenia is never appropriate.” (Italics theirs) I believe this reflects a profound misunderstanding of the methods and goals of insight oriented therapy. The authors of the PORT Report perhaps imagine therapists leading patients to produce evidence of their parents’ supposed destructiveness, as if the therapist aims at allying with the patient against one or both parents, as if shared anger at some external entity would constitute “improvement.” I believe that therapists generally oppose such misalliances. Or perhaps the PORT Study authors envision an aggressive therapist insistently enforcing a view of the patient’s inner life, as if taking on the authoritarian tone of the patient’s condemning and controlling hallucinated voices, but preaching a message.

The PORT Study recommendations are drawn from Scott and Dixon’s 1995 paper, “Psychological interventions for schizophrenia,” not itself a meta-analysis of past studies, but rather an incomplete literature review. It states, “…individual psychotherapy historically connotes either dynamically oriented psychotherapy, which typically seeks to increase insight, or supportive psychotherapy, which typically seeks to build ego strength.” The distinction itself lacks substance. How can one increase insight independent of ego strength? How can one’s ego become stronger without an accompanying increase in awareness of one’s patterns of interaction and of reaction, of one’s strengths and weakness, and one’s ways of coping with anxiety?

Insight oriented psychotherapy
Quoting Shiobahn O’Connor, (unpublished ms.) “A psychoanalyst has trained in a discipline of thinking and in clinical technique,…a theory of the mind in which words, symptoms and behaviour have meaning, and meaning lies within the relationship rather than in the individual. The therapeutic approach is based on the belief that better understanding leads to improved communication.” In working with psychotic patients, the principles of insight oriented psychotherapy include the following:

1) Approach work with each new patient on the assumption that within every human being is a striving towards positive effectiveness and mutuality. No matter how self-absorbed and despondent a person may have become after years of defeat, confusion and isolation, there is still the probability (not merely the possibility) that over time a trusting relationship can grow.

2) Usually patients suffering from psychosis have a brittle grandiosity regarding their own magically destructive potential. One false move and someone or everyone or the entire planet will be destroyed. They thus dread the excitement accompanying feelings of hope or creativity. Therapists must respect this profound dilemma and be cautious in their pleasure when patients reveal their hidden intellectual and aesthetic capabilities. They must not provide facile reassurance that they understand the extent of this dread and magnified primitive guilt.

3) Assume that patients will test the clinician’s endurance, and will manage, through heightened self-protective sensitivity, to ferret out the clinician’s own personal vulnerabilities and defensive styles. Patients will confront the therapist’s resolve by making him or her defensive, suffering his or her own version of defeat, confusion and isolation. The greater one’s self-awareness, the more comfortable one can be in crazy situations, acknowledging one’s own crazy aspects: hence the importance of personal psychotherapy or psychoanalysis for mental health professionals.

4) Look for possibilities for playfulness and creativity. Do not stay in a hide-bound constricted office setting, protecting oneself with one's ’professional paraphernalia, but get outside and walk with the patient, both looking ahead, rather than staring each other down. Having fun together equates with working towards increasing strength and health; playfulness is not an avoidance of the work. Patients suffering a schizophrenic breakdown in adolescence usually have not mastered the latency aged task of chumship (Sullivan, 1953).

5) Do not leave all the work of talking to the patient; leave “let’s see what comes to mind” for those who choose the analytic couch. Instead, feel free to bring in your own associations, and to help the patient organize the topics under discussion. Engage in dynamically informed conversations, rather than waiting for the right time to make an interpretation (Silver, 1989, 1993, 1997.).

6) Summarize each session—the topics discussed, the conclusions reached, the plans made.

7) Encourage your patients to let you know when you have erred, and how so.

8) Abide by ethical rules of conduct. There must never be physical or sexual abuse or provocation. And just as one should never make physical demands on a patient, one should not push him or her to discuss topics mainly of interest to the therapist.

9) Meanwhile, the therapist should give the patient an opportunity to discuss past traumas: “Has anyone done things to you without your permission?” is too seldom asked, especially given the very high incidence of childhood sexual abuse in the past histories of patients suffering from psychosis (Read, 1997, 1999).

10) Treat the patient in the manner you would want to be treated. No matter how dilapidated or preoccupied the patient may seem, he or she has an acutely functioning ego, assessing the other person’s reliability and trustworthiness. Ultimately, if the therapist works at imagining what life is like for the other person, this is less tiring than keeping one’s own defensive distance. Meeting the patient’s alienation with one’s own leads to exhaustion in both parties in the defeated dyad.

Current crises
Theoretical debate may seem an idle distraction. After over a decade of managed care’s assaults on inpatient and community program reimbursements, people suffering from schizophrenia are failing to stay connected with the places designated to provide care. They populate our jails, are too often homeless or living in subsistence dwellings. They zip through the revolving doors of inpatient settings that are authorized to perform only cursory evaluations within ridiculously short authorized stays. ...

The shorter the hospital stay, the more aggressive the pharmacologic regimen has become. Patients now are prescribed mind-numbingly complex regimens that their prescribers would have trouble keeping straight. I doubt that these psychiatrists would risk ingesting such regimens themselves for a single day. We know little about the primary effects of these medications given individually let alone in combinations. Probably we know nothing about secondary and tertiary effects. How many mental health professionals know, for example, that olanzapine, the rather new and popular anti-psychotic agent additionally prescribed to borderline and very anxious neurotic patients, is a thienobenzodiazepine, that is, a sulfurated benzodiazepine? But most importantly, if one reviews the mechanisms of action of the various psychiatric medications, one finds a listing of the neuro-transmitters affected. However, the primary effects are complex, and the secondary and tertiary effects are essentially unknown.

The pharmaceutical houses, in their information presented in the Physicians’ Desk Reference essentially all admit that the drugs’ mechanisms of action remain unknown. When these are combined with anti-anxiety, anti-seizure, and anti-depressive agents, we are combining agents whose mechanisms of action are even less well defined, ultimately described simply as “tranquilizing.” Psychotic patients often ingest seven different compounds daily.

What does it mean when we rather blindly tinker with our patients’ brain wiring, while evincing no interest in what they are thinking or feeling? When we chronically block a neurotransmitter, does the receiving nerve atrophy like a muscle cell held inactive too long in a cast? What does this do to the clinician’s humanity and dignity? What is the countertransferential consequence of such reductionistic practice? I worry about the possibility that there is a secret epidemic of self-medication by psychiatrists. As I hear of cases of tardive dyskinesia in patients chronically receiving SSRI’s, I suspect that the tongue thrusting I see in some of my colleagues may signal their self-medicated chronic professional despair. Psychiatrists are often tasked in clinics to work productively, seeing three or even four patients each hour, to monitor their medications, meeting with them every month or so.

Recently I was told of a clinic director who recommended “meds checks” on a twice yearly basis, reprimanding the junior clinician for “over-scheduling” appointments on a monthly basis, thus demonstrating problems with “limit-setting.” A social worker in such a clinic quoted the psychiatrist who asked, “Why are you talking with this man? I’m giving him medications.” This doctor seemed to say that the patient is not worth talking to, is somehow pre-verbal or perhaps sub-human. And this in Harry Stack Sullivan’s city, where we often quote his aphorism, “We are all more simply human than otherwise.” This is the city of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, whose newly released biography by Gail Hornstein is aptly titled To Redeem One Person Is to Redeem the World.

I find these developments horrifying. Why at this time would psychologists want prescribing responsibilities? How do my colleagues do it, day after day, directing befuddled patients to ingest powerful concoctions that are mysterious individually and in combination even for the person writing the scripts? What about the Hippocratic Oath, to do no harm? And how has it come about that psychodynamic therapy is deemed “too dangerous” for those who have endured a psychotic storm? Where are the supporting data?

Intriguingly, the Hippocratic Oath begins “I will look upon him who shall have taught me this Art even as one of my parents. I will share my substance with him, and I will supply his necessities, if he be in need”. We have a responsibility not only to our patients but to our mentors as well, in this current era of quick, technical, impersonal solutions to society’s or individuals’ problems. Searles, who was my analyst until he dared to retire and move away, wrote in 1975 railing against the already strong reliance on pharmacologic agents. “[Patients with schizophrenia] have written off their fellow human beings as not kin to them, [and]… their fellow human beings have come to accept this as functionally true. If the psychoanalytic movement itself takes refuge in what I regard essentially as a phenothiazine-and-genetics flight from this problem, then the long dark night of the soul will have been ushered in, not only for these vast numbers of schizophrenic patient…but also for those relatively few psychoanalysts who are particularly interested in this field”.

Happily, we are beginning to hear of research demonstrating increasing cerebral synaptic development in psychotherapy patients of whatever diagnostic category. As such reports acquire greater validation, there will be renewed interest in the art and science of psychotherapy. Seeing, currently, is believing. Pinking up of frontal lobes over the course of effective therapy will be deemed more objective proof than the case write-up of the participant-observer (and thus biased and not monetarily disinterested) treating clinician. Additionally, Scandinavian studies by Tienari (1992), Alanen (1997 a&b), and their colleagues have shown that early psychological intervention in families where a young child has been identified as socially dysfunctional correlates with a national decreased incidence of schizophrenia as that population enters teenage and early adulthood.

One might presume, then, that a pro-active quest for such psychologically vulnerable children might provide convincing data to support intensive family and individual therapy for children and their families who are failing to meet socio-developmental landmarks. This probably will not happen. Just as we are seeing an escalation of prescription of methylphenidate (Ritalin) and fluoxetine (Prozac) in two and three year olds who act up at their day care programs, we may soon see young children who have never been psychotic placed on anti-psychotic medications to spare them the possibility of breakdown. The newly formed International Association of Early Psychosis, headed by Thomas McGlashan and Patrick McGorry, hopes to seek out such children in the United States and elsewhere. They will compare outcomes for a control group, a group receiving prophylactic antipsychotic medication such as olanzapine, and another group receiving cognitive behavioral therapy. McGorry told me there will be no group receiving psychodynamic therapy, which he feels is “too dangerous.”

Studying the history of psychodynamic applications to the treatment of schizophrenia, I find that this work has been a political “hot potato” from the earliest years of psychoanalysis in the U.S. (Silver, in press) I have found a cluster of papers in the Bulletin of the New York State Hospitals, beginning in 1908, by Adolf Meyer and his associates. These pre-date Freud’s famous Clark University lectures given in May of 1909. The psychoanalytic establishment’s strong reaction to Rank and Ferenczi’s 1924 “The Development of Psychoanalysis” starkly illustrates the division between an intellectually interpretive approach to “analyzable” patients on the one hand, and an “erlebnis” or experientially based approach on the other.

Tensions were vastly compounded by the World Wars, especially by the psychosis of the Holocaust. The forced immigration of many analysts to the United States became a complex cultural invasion. Our professional organizations perhaps enacted aspects of the world war. For example, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann was asked at a meeting of the American, “What right do you have to call yourself a psychoanalyst?” Elitism greatly impeded communication within the mental health field and has alienated family members as well. Now, however, as was clear at the recent meeting of the International Association on the History of Psychoanalysis, so-called mainstream psychoanalysis is significantly more interpersonal, or “intersubjective” than in earlier decades, and more receptive to the treatment of patients suffering from psychotic illness. Simultaneously, cognitive behavioral approaches are becoming more individualized and long-term.

I.S.P.S.
The International Society for the Psychological treatments of the Schizophrenias and other psychoses, ISPS, and its United States Chapter aim 1) to provide information and collegial support for those mental health professionals working with patients suffering from psychotic illnesses and 2) to bring issues regarding patient care to the attention of the general mental health community and the public and 3) to work for the improved understanding and care of those suffering from psychosis. I.S.P.S. began in 1956. ...

As Gaetano Benedetti and Maurizio Peciccia have said (unpublished) “Biological research into …schizophrenia has…, over the last twenty years, become more and more fascinating; but psychodynamic reflection on psychopathology remains indispensable because only this forms the obligatory connection between the brain disturbance and the human condition of the patient.” If we lose a humanistic striving to understand each human being who comes to us for psychological assistance, we forego the essence of professional availability. If we objectify those who are most alienated from society, we relinquish our responsibility to build an I-Thou relationship, and encourage in its place an I-it, dehumanizing one. While we may want to learn about the latest “scientific progress” we must guard against the dangers of scientific regression, in which participant observation devolves into objectification.

Source: Psychoanalysis and Psychosis: Trends and Developments

See also: ISPS: International Society for the Psychological Treatments of Schizophrenia and Other Psychoses

Jung, Bleuler, Janet, Freud & Schizophrenia

2009-02-01T04:14:00.000-08:00

Man's task is to become conscious
of the contents that press upward
from the unconscious.

- Carl Jung

Eugen Bleuler is acknowledged by the development of a revolutionary synthesis in the field of the Psychiatry of his time: he elaborated a theory about schizophrenia which, in contrast with the organicist trends prevailing in that period, nowadays could be termed as "organ-dynamic."

In his work of 1911: Dementia praecox. The group of the schizophrenias, Bleuler coined the new term to describe the frightful illness and he approached a syndromic concept of the same. Bleuler established a fundamental distinction between "primary symptoms" (Disturbances of the thought association, of affectivity, autism and ambivalence) directly produced by an unknown organic process, and the "secondary symptoms," or psychogenic ones, derived from the former. The enlargement of the illness concept and the therapeutical implications of such a new focus gave rise to an intense debate with the Kraepelinian point of view about schizophrenia; this debate turned into a focal point of interest for the psychiatry of this century.

However, to understand the genesis of the Bleuler's work , we have to direct our attention further back. To be exact, we need to consider Moreau of Tours (1845) who was the first to apply the concept "dynamic" in psychiatry. He conceived mental illness as a special world comparable with the oniric one, where the basic fact resided in a modification which entailed the decrease of the intellectual functions and the disproportionate unfolding of vestigial psychic activities. His concepts were expanded to the field of Neurology by H. Jackson in 1874.

It is, however, with the work of Pierre Janet, that the so-called "dynamic theory" reached a first stage of maturity, a starting point for the new psychological trends that would develop across the twentieth century.

In 1889, Janet set up a dual system in which the conscious mind exerted a synthethic function of control over subconscious tendencies that, released from their natural inhibition - as was evident in Neurosis - brought about the so-called "automatisms" (hypnoid states, distractions, obsessions, hallucinations, "fixed ideas," etc.). He discerned two basic types of neurotic disturbances: Hysteria and Psychasthenia, each of them involving "basic symptoms" (the narrowing of the consciousness and the alteration of the"function of reality" respectively) and "contingent symptoms." Contingent symptoms were fundamentally "fixed ideas" of a subconscious character with regard to hysteria, and, on the other hand, ideas that should be conscious in psychasthenia: phobias, obssesions, etc.).

In 1903, Janet expanded his conception of the mind, establishing a hierarchic system based on five levels, from greater to minor complexity. At the top was the "reality function" with its characteristic synthetic operation, "presentification." Below, would be located "disinterested activity"--habitual, indifferent, and automatic actions - and further on, in decreasing complexity, "imagination functions," and finally, the emotional reactions and the muscular movements. The maintenance of a psychic activity as complex as possible required the support of a hierarchical structure of functions with the necessary performance of a "psychological tension" function on the highest level. Janet postulated that the basic phenomenon present in psychasthenia was precisely the decrease of that level of "mental tension." With this decrease the symptomatology reflected the reorganization of psychological functions corresponding to stages of lower complexity.

The system of Pierre Janet was founded mainly on his experiments with hypnosis, and the system constituted a genuine and pioneering psychodynamic theory whose field of application was that of Neurosis.

It can be affirmed after a careful examination that some of the most important ideas of Bleuler with regard to the notion of Schizophrenia are a tributary of the dynamic conception of psychasthenia developed by Pierre Janet.

Evidently, however, there is a great distance in speaking about Neurosis on the one hand and of Psychosis on the other. This move was made by Carl Gustav Jung who in his work of 1907, The Psychology of Dementia Praecox, set up the bridge that would unite the first dynamic conceptions of Janet with the later organo-dynamic theory developed in 1911 by Eugen Bleuler.

As an offspring of intense years of studies with the word-association test, Jung had arrived at the conclusion that the phenomena supporting the apparition of the well-known "automatisms" coincided with the involuntary eruption, in the conscious course of representations, of particular "affects" which usually originated in the vital history of the patient due to traumatic or conflictive events of a different nature. These events had the property of clustering round them, a certain number of thoughts, mental images, and sensations. These ideational contents and affect-constellations were called "Feeling-toned Complexes". The "Complexes," which finally would be converted into the foundation of the entire Junguian system, had the following characteristics.

In the first place complexes were firmly rooted in the corporal "inervations," forming a "block" with them, as could be demonstrated by studying the changes in the neurovegetative system that happened concomitantly with its eruption into consciousness. The self same "Ego" was considered a Complex, the most firmly rooted complex. The ego complex occupied the highest hierarchic position in the mental life, and its function should include the maintainence of the other complexes under its ascendancy, giving rise to continuity in the conscious process. None the less, it was habitual that the other complexes - whose desirable role would be that of cooperative work together with the voluntary intentionality - would emancipate or separate in a more or less intense way. Such dissociation of the complexes showed that they possessed the capacity of functioning as something like a "secondary psyche," with a strong tendency to reveal themselves as "personified" and with a considerable autonomy. It was even possible to glimpse in them the trails of consciousness.

Its effects on the word-association test could be described as "complex-reactions" (disturbances in the time of reaction, inadequate responses, etc.) In this way, they were not only a reformulation of the old concept of "automatism", but also ,as Jung thought in 1905, they agreed extensively with the phenomena of repression, substitution and symbolization, described by Sigmund Freud.

In The Psychology of the Dementia Praecox, Jung, in a great synthesis, could demonstrate for the first time a dynamic conception of the illness.

With this purpose, he applied the association test to schizophrenic subjects and saw how the results obtained coincided amazingly with those of other studies performed with normal persons, but in conditions of external distraction (shallowness of association, automatisms, neologisms, stereotypes, perseverations, etc.). This fact led him to postulate, regarding dementia praecox, a factor of internal distraction, which, on the other side, fit well with the concept of "Aperceptive impairment" - that had been already put forward to explain the illness - and with the other concept of "Abaissement du niveau mental," proposed by Janet as the cause of Psychasthenia.

In the way it had been defined, the "Abaissement du niveau mental" bore several characteristics: the damage of the logical connection of thoughts; loss of the control of whole regions of mental contents with the production of split fragments of the personality; the invasion of the consciousness on the part of contents usually inhibited conscious functioning and, in consequence, caused inadequate or inappropriate emotional reactions.

Jung's findings agreed outstandingly with his experiments of association with neurotic and psychotic patients which revealed abnormally intense ways the presence of the Complexes. His research gave cause for establishing the similarity between certain mechanisms underlying the formation of symptoms in hysteria and the symptoms in dementia praecox.

So then, two parallel phenomena were established with regard to neurosis just like for dementia praecox: On the one hand the existence of "Abaissement du niveau mental" and on the other, the abnormally intense intrusion of "Complexes" into normal consciousness, an intrusion that revealed the dissociation and emancipation of the complexes from the mental hierarchy to be expected in normal subjects.

However, it wasn't possible to speak about identity between the two types of illness: the impairment and irreversiblity of the dementia required another explanatory factor. Jung believed that the answer resided in the concept, "Fixing of the complexes." That is to say, while in hysteria the affects showed a characteristic fluidity and mobility that would allow ego consciousness to re-establish itself, in dementia praecox it seemed as if one or several complexes adhere to the conscious process in an irreversible way. One or more complexes turned autonomous from the ego in an absolute way which then lost its role of "coordinator" and was converted merely in any other "subject" in the psychic experience of the patient, completely overwhelmed by the chaotic effects of his mental split.

There was in dementia praecox, therefore, the utmost disintegration of the psychological processes, and at the same time an absolute possession of the consciousness on the part of unconscious complexes that would otherwise be inhibited.

Although it was possible to understand the form and the contents of schizophrenia in accordance with the theory of Freud, the intensity of the process, in respect to etiology, caused Jung to postulate a necessarily organic factor.

But in this matter two posible interpretations were opened. Given an initial aperceptive disturbance, what was primary? A physiological unknown alteration which would cause extreme harm to the "niveau mental" with the subsequent release of automatisms? Or could it be that the violent intrusion of complexes in consciousness would be the primordial fact in damaging the brain, more or less, in an irreparable way and paralyzing the higher psychical functions? The author, being based in clinical experience, prefers this second posibility, although without discarding the opposed option.

In spite of all the reserves, it was revolutionary in Jung's time to bet on a psychic alteration - or rather, psychosomatic - as an etiogenic factor for dementia praecox.

It has been said that the book of Bleuler of 1911 would be unthinkable without The Psychology of the Dementia Praecox. In fact, Jung developed here the first psychodynamic conceptualization of schizophrenia and established the necessary bridge with the work of Janet, extending its field, from neurosis towards psychosis. Moreover, the parallelism established with hysteria will be the base of the "secondary symptoms" of Bleuler.

But 1907 also marks the beginning of Jung's collaboration with S. Freud, which would last until 1914. These are the years in which Jung moved away from academic psychiatry and decided to promote with all his interest the development of the psychoanalytic movement. The most valuable document of this period is, without doubt, the correspondence sustained between Freud and Jung. In the light of the information contained in it, several things can be affirmed: First of all, the traditional idea about Jung being a disciple of Freud is completely imprecise. Second, the theoretical differences which finally cut them off had their origin nearly from the beginning of the relationship. Finally, it was precisely the field of schizophrenia where those principle differences between the two men were more evident. Already in the The Psychology of Dementia Praecox Jung showed his reticence about considering sexuality as the only foundation, even within the arena of hysteria, in spite of the support that he was explicitly giving to Freud.

During the correspondence maintained between 1907 and 1908, both writers were involved in a sort of "deaf's dialogue" in regard to the etiology of psychosis and, specifically, in regard to the "self-erotism" outlined by Freud. But is from 1909 on when little by little the new approach Jung would defend in the following years became evident. We can see his enthusiasm in discovering how the contents in schizophrenia showed a close relation with mythological and cultural motifs shared in common by all the humankind and see the progressive necessity to expanding his conceptual system to give account of the phenomena that would became his focus of interest.

With Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido--Symbols of Transformation and Theory of Psychoanalysis Jung separates himself from Freud, defending a new concept of "Libido," purely energetic and desexualized, of neutral character (equivalent to "interest"). If in dementia praecox the patient withdraws from the outer world in order to create inwardly an "equivalent of the reality," the loss is of such calibre that it must include "even some impulses whose sexual character must be set completely in doubt, since nobody will recognize that the reality in itself is a sexual function".

On the contrary, Jung was frequently faced with patients who had lost "all consideration in respect to the self-conservation, but not regarding the erotic interests, very strong in them."

The new "Libido" is set up as a "limit concept," necessary to give an account of the value of the psychical processes, understanding "value" as something that provides an effect. Libido has nothing to do with a measurable force but rather a hypothetical concept useful to explain the capacity for psychological transformations toward new attitudes and behaviours.

The psychic process will be now understood as a relatively closed system in which are to found the principles of "equivalence" and "enthropy."

Jung also will set up an "energetic-finalist" concept in contrast to the "causal-mechanistic" one of Freud - Jung regarded both points of view as complementary and necessary to understand the mental life. The psyche is an auto-regulated system with subsystems of opposite polarity that function in a dialectical way through an energetic movement of "progression-regression" and "extraversion-introversion."

It is in relation to Schizophrenia where it is possible to clearly discern the slight influence exercised by Freud on Jung. In fact, when he finished his psychoanalytic stage, Jung paid attention to applying his new concepts to schizophrenia and to reclaiming immediately the legacy of Pierre Janet, modified by his own findings, and replacing them in the conceptual frame attained by Bleuler in 1911.

In this way, Jung will redefine the classical Janetian distinction between hysteria-psychasthenia through his new typology. In hysteria the extraversion (regressive) predominates, and in dementia praecox, just like in psychasthenia, introversion is the more obvious mechanism.

As well, from now on, Jung will allude over and over again to Bleuler, whom he had intensely criticized with respect to the schizophrenic negativism, considering that the "primary symptoms" should be understood as defensive reactions of the sick person due to being "overwhelmed" by the complexes. The sole specific issue, Jung will argue about the primary symptom, would be the same thing Janet had defined as "Abaissement du niveau mental".

With regard to the problem of psychogenesis, his main controversy with Bleuler, Jung will formulate: "On the basis of a disposition whose nature is at present unknown to us, an unadapted psychological function arises which may develop into a manifest mental disturbance and secondarily induce symptoms of organic degeneration".

What does that unadapted function consist of? According to Jung there is a breakdown of the compensatory function of the psyche. In the presence of an unilateral attitude of consciousness and in the event of an external conflict, the Unconscious responds with a complementary attitude trying to re-establish the mental equilibrium; in normal circumstances this occurs successfully. This is not the case in psychosis where consciousness reinforces even further its one-sideness in an "escape forward" facing the unconscious compensatory trends, arriving to a point in which "The pairs of opposites are torn asunder, the resultant division leads to disaster, for the unconscious soon begins to obtrude itself violently upon the conscious processes. Then come odd and incomprehensible thoughts and moods, and often incipient forms of hallucination, which plainly bear the stamp of the internal conflict". This invasion would be expressed in the "Unconscious' own language" an archaic material closer to mythical formations than to personal repression.

In order to understand this "language," Jung considered it necessary to introduce a new "synthetical-constructive" approach. "What is the goal the patient tried to reach through the creation of his system?". The meaning of the delusional system is understood as a regressive movement facing a difficulty in life adaptation: "it is a necessary transition stage on the way to adapting the personality to the world in general. Only, the patient remains stuck in this stage and substitutes his subjective formulation for the real world - which is precisely why he remains ill".

With the synthetical method, he began to perform a comparative, analogical analysis with the delusory system, comparing it to onirical formations, to mythological and cultural themes which will lead him to the concept of "primordial images" and subsequently to the concept of the "Archetype" in 1919. Exactly in the same year, he put forward again the possibility of psychogenesis in schizophrenia based on the changes produced in the illness after environmental modifications (the disappearance of a great number of catatonias after the reform of the asylums), the presence of psychological circumstances in the stages of onset and relapse and above all, in the existence of a great number of cases of latent schizophrenia usually hidden behind a neurotic façade and which, by chance, were a tributary of a successful psychological treatment.

Nevertheless, the psychic factor was not able to explain only by itself the illness of schizophrenia and Jung speaks about "Conditionalism." The question about how a psychological cause may precipitate the illness can be only conceived as the function of a "special predisposition": "The conflicts are different... of the normal ones, only in regard to his abnormal sensibility, overwhelming the faculties of the person". Such a state entails the affective isolation of the patient, understood as "self-defense," from some domineering strong emotions but at the same time feeding more and more a regressive inner world in which the patient feels trapped. The normal energetic mechanism of regression-progression finds itself paralysed in a sort of "eternal return," cyclical, inhabited with very intense images and affects, essentially archetypical.

The concept of "Archetype," the study of which Jung devoted the major part of his late work, has been the source of countless confusions. In spite of the several readings of the term, in regard to the schizophrenia, Jung always insisted upon its biological character. From 1919 on, he insisted that archetypes are not inherited images but possibilities in regard to the formation of typical images. The archetype would be the "self - portrait of the instinct": structures, forms of perceiving and apprehending the reality, characteristic of the human species.

"The archetype in itself is empty and purely formal, nothing but a facultas praeformandi, a possibility of representation which is given a priori. The representations themselves are not inherited, only the forms, and in that respect they correspond in every way to the instincts,which are also determined in form only." In other words, they are "typical attitudes, modes of action-thought-processes and impulses which must be regarded as constituting the instinctive behaviour typical of the human species. The term I choose for this, namely "archetype," therefore coincides with the biological concept of the "pattern of behaviour." Archetypes constitute the foundations of psychic life, with an energetic (motivational) power of an enormous magnitude.

In 1947 Jung distinguished between the "archetype-as-such," an unknowable structuring factor of the psyche, and the "archetypical image," that would be formed by the interaction of the former with the environment of the person to produce personally meaningful but nonetheless "typical" images.

Furthermore, from this vantage point, the concept of archetype presupposes that the human being is, somehow, "pre-programmed" in regard to his own vital cycle. The activation of the "archetype-as-such" would be produced in common circumstances for the human species: mothering, the exploration of the milieu, the relation with the peers, fighting, maturity, marrying, etc.

Therefore, faced with the necessity of vital adaptation, we find the instinctive, universally human "instinctive" form responding to the requirements of the environment. Only with this condition could the "libido" flow freely in the service of an optimum adaptation. So long as this situation is an ideal, there always will be, so to speak, an "energetic surplus" underneath consciousness forming the "complexes," which are understood in this way as the form in which archetypes emerge in individual life.

Jung always insisted upon the role played by "complexes" in schizophrenia where they would split completely from conscious control, "swallowing" completely the ego and producing the symptomatology.

In his final works about schizophrenia, he understood this split-off quality of the complexes as "Physiological and unsystematic". In an "interactionist" model, he considers that the illness requires an "organic" explanation , but without excluding the elucidation of "a psychic factor, of equal importance". The study of the contents of psychosis is a vital necessity. Although Jung since 1939 understood that the manifestations of the complexes in schizophrenia were radically different of what happened in neurosis, now he makes it clear: "Now if the schizophrenic compensation, that is, the expression of affective complexes, were satsfied with a merely archaic or mythological formulation, its associative products could easily be understood as poetic circumlocutions. This is usually not the case, any more than it is in normal dreams; here as there the associations are unsystematic, abrupt, grotesque, absurd, and correspondingly difficult if not impossible to understand. Not only are the products of schizophrenic compensation archaic, they are further distorted by their chaotic randomness."

The reason for this is seen in the fact that there seems to be a self-destruction of the complexes, probably by means of some unknown "toxic factor" (let us remember the psychosomatic quality of the complexes and archetypes), bearing in its turn an affective charge of such intensity, that the patient would be "overwhelmed" by the effects of such a split. In other words: by destroying the complex, the archetype becomes "de-humanized," coming into sight for the subject "in a rough state," carrying with itself fragmentary images, disproportionately mythical, archaic and extreme affects. The bridges between the consciousness and its instinctive basis are broken off, and the person become trapped in an autistic world.

In the face of the old issue about considering the destruction of the personality as primary, or alternately, the pathological activation of unconscious contents, Jung finally never dared to give an ultimate answer. He came even to postulate the existence of two types of schizophrenia: "an asthenic type [...] (motivated by a primary decrease in the hierarchical level of the personality), and a spastic type, given to active conflict."

Although in his late work, Jung devoted little space to the study of schizophrenia in depth, it's also true that he deepened like anybody before him in the contents of the sick mind through an hermeneutic study of huge scope. It is his merit to build from it a general theory of the psyche whose outcomes are still in blossoms.

What can be truly affirmed is the influence that his work had in some of the theoretical developments about schizophrenia. He established the conceptual nexus between the first dynamic psychiatry and the "organo-dynamic" formulation of Bleuler, greatly indebted to Jung's work of 1907.

He was the first in leading psychoanalysis towards the field of psychosis and in carrying out therapeutical efforts from the analytical point of view.

His breaking-off with Freud, compelled the latter to reformulate his theory introducing the concept of "Narcisism" in order to explain the psychosis, whereas Jung, moving always closer to a Janetian view about the unconscious, arrived finally at the elaboration of a theory about the psyche, radically different from the Freudian.

His hermeneutic work can be considered as an alternative to those systems which postulate a "ontologic breaking" for psychosis. Moreover it contains elaborations which anticipate the actual "defectual", "motivational" or "vulnerability-stress" models.

Source: MetaReligion: Jung On Schizophrenia

See also: Understanding Recovery

Bibliography

1-Bleuler, E. (1911): "Dementia Praecox. El grupo de las Esquizofrenias" .Ed. Hormé 1960

2-Castilla del Pino: "Introducción a la Psiquiatr¡a II". Ed. Alianza. Madrid.1982.

3-Ellenberger, H.F. (1970): "El descubrimiento del Inconsciente". Ed. Gredos.

4-Jung,C.G. (1907): "The Psychology of Dementia Praecox".(CW-3)

5-Jung,C.G.(1911): "A Criticism of Bleuler's Theory of Schizophrenic Negativism".(CW-3).

6-Jung,C.G. (1913 a): "Teor¡a del Psicoanálisis". Ed. Plaza and Janés. Madrid, 1983

7-Jung,C.G. (1913 b): "Four papers on Psychological Typology". (CW-6).

8-Jung,C.G. (1914 a): "On the Importance of the Unconscious in Psychopathology". (CW-3)

9-Jung,C.G. (1914 b): "The Content of the Psychosis". (CW-3)

10-Jung,C.G. (1919 a): "On the Problem of Psychogenesis in Mental Disease". (CW-3)

11-Jung,C.G. (1919 b): "The Instinct and the Unconscious". (CW-8).

12-Jung,C.G. (1921 a): "Psychological Types". (CW-6).

13-Jung,C.G. (1921 b): "The Therapeutic value of Abreaction". (CW-16).

14-Jung,C.G. (1928 a): "Analytical Psychology and Weltanschauung". (CW-8).

15-Jung,C.G. (1928 b): "Sobre the Energética del Alma". (EP).

16-Jung,C.G. (1934): "Consideraciones generales sobre la teoría de los Complejos". (CI).

17-Jung,C.G. (1935) : "Introducción a la Psicología Analítica". (CI).

18-Jung,C.G. (1939 a): "On the Psychogenesis of Schizophrenia".(CW-3)

19-Jung,C.G. (1939 b): "Los aspectos psicol¢gicos del Arquetipo de la madre". (AIC).

20-Jung,C.G. (1939 c): "Conscious, Unconscious and Individuation". (CW-9i).

21-Jung,C.G. (1947): "Consideraciones teóricas sobre the naturaleza de lo psíquico". (AIC).

22-Jung,C.G. (1951): "Fundamental Questions of Psychotherapy". (CW-16).

23-Jung,C.G. (1956): "Recent Thoughts on Schizophrenia". (CW-3)

24-Jung,C.G. (1958): "Schizophrenia".(CW-3)

25-Samuels, Shorter, Plaut: "A Critical Dictionary of Junguian Analysis". Routledge.1986.

26-Stevens, A.: "Archetype. A Natural History of the Self". Routledge. London 1982.

27-Vazqueza.:"Psicología de la Personalidad en C.G.Jung". Ed. Sigueme.

The Inner Apocalypse in Mythology, Madness & The Future

2009-01-31T22:42:00.000-08:00

When conscious life is characterised by one-sidedness and by a false attitude, primordial healing images are activated – one might say instinctively – and come to light in the dreams of individuals and the visions of artists.

— Carl Gustav Jung

All we have learned of psychotherapy suggests that it is at the precise time when the individual feels as if his whole life is crashing down around him, that he is most likely to achieve an inner reorganisation constituting a quantum leap in his growth toward maturity. Our hope, our belief, is that it is precisely when society's future seems so beleaguered – when its problems seem almost staggering in complexity, when so many individuals seem alienated, and so many values seem to have deteriorated – that it is most likely to achieve a metamorphosis in society's growth toward maturity, toward more truly enhancing and fulfilling the human spirit than ever before. Thus we envision the possibility of an evolutionary leap to a trans-industrial society that not only has know-how, but also a deep inner knowledge of what is worth doing.

— Willis Harman

A CONVERSATION WITH JOHN WEIR PERRY: INTRODUCTION

True sanity entails in one way or another the dissolution of the normal ego, that false self competently adjusted to our alienated social reality... and through this death a rebirth and the eventual re-establishment of a new kind of ego-functioning, the ego now being the servant of the divine, no longer its betrayer.

— Dr. R.D.Laing

"Our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness,
provided the madness is given us by divine gift."
— Plato (Phaedrus)

"If the human race survives, future men will, I suspect, look back on our enlightened epoch as a veritable Age of Darkness... They will see that what was considered 'schizophrenic' was one of the forms in which, often through quite ordinary people, the light began to break into our all-too-closed minds."

— Dr. R.D. Laing

The idea that the inner Apocalypse experience might be the guardian of the gate to a sustainable future has a metaphorical ring of truth which I find appealing. To explore this further, I went to California in the early 1980s to visit Dr. John Weir Perry MD, a man who was especially knowledgeable on the subject. I had first met him a few years before in Boston at the first conference of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA) [1] and was impressed by his compassion, wisdom, and humility.

John Weir Perry (1914 - 1998)[2] was a Jungian psychiatrist who founded an experimental residential facility called Diabasis, in San Francisco, California, during the 1970s. This was designed as a comfortable home where young adults, who were experiencing the initial days of their first "acute schizophrenic break", could live in and be empowered to go through their Apocalypse on the way to greater health and happiness. The results were amazing: without any treatment by medication, electroshock or locked doors – but with opportunities for painting, dance, massage, meditation and conversation – full-blown "schizophrenics" were able to go through their ego-death and emerge on the other side, as Perry put it, "weller than well." Instead of being sent to a mental hospital and/or being expected to take medication for the rest of their lives, these people would live at Diabasis for the first three months, spend three more months in a half-way home, and then return to the outside world, with few if any relapses of their "schizophrenia"! [3]

This corroborated the results of R. D. Laing's famous Kingsley Hall experiment in London in the 1960s [4], in which only nine out of sixty-five "certified psychotics" who were tracked afterwards were re-admitted to hospitals again. Those who insist that "schizophrenia" is a disease will have to admit that it is curable! The principal differences between Kingsley Hall and Diabasis were the deliberately anarchic organisation of the former and its rather dismal location in a London slum, and the more organised approach of the latter in a more pleasant location in Berkeley on San Francisco Bay.

Dr. Perry met Carl Jung in Switzerland as a young medical student. He then became a psychiatrist. As a conscientious objector during World War II, he served for two years as a medic in the U.S. Army, attending to war victims in China. Here he was impressed by the character of the people and profoundly touched by their ancient philosophy of the Tao. He noticed the similarity between the traditional Chinese view of the universe as a self-organising system [5] , and Jung's idea that schizophrenia is not a disease which the psychiatrist should attempt to control, but rather a spontaneous healing process which a subtle therapist might indeed facilitate through a kind of psychological shiatsu.

After the war Perry returned to San Francisco, where he went into practice in 1949. The introduction to his first book The Self in Psychotic Process, published in 1952, was written by Jung himself [6].

Perry then wrote The Far Side of Madness [7] (about Diabasis), and The Heart of History [8], a trans-cultural study of mythological evolution. The book is interesting, since individuation is normally thought of in the context of a given mythology or world view. Here, Perry explores the individuation process not in the context of a given world view, but within the larger macro-historical evolution of the world views themselves. He thus tracks the individuation of the deepest dimensions of the Self, as reflected in the symbolism of the metamorphosis of the world's great mythologies from the power-preoccupied cosmologies of the first city-states to the more compassionate world views which seem always to follow. Ironically, in the 1980s he found himself invited to teach psychiatry at the University of Wuhan, in China - where official dogma had it that the unconscious does not exist! His latest book, published not long after his death in October 1998, is Trials of the Visionary Mind: Spiritual Emergency and the Renewal Process [9].

John and I met three or four times for lunch at his delightful office in a townhouse on San Francisco's Steiner Street. Gregory Bateson [10] sometimes stayed the night there on his way back and forth from Esalen [11] down the coast at Big Sur, where he spent the last years of his life. I pushed the half-open wooden gate that leads to the back garden, walked past a trellis of Heavenly Blue morning glory flowers, and found my friend John – a soft-spoken, melodious, rosy-cheeked, smiling man in his mid seventies, smoking his pipe in the sun. The following conversation was recorded that afternoon.

It is justifiable to regard the term 'sickness' as
pertaining not to the acute turmoil but to the
pre-psychotic personality, standing as it does
in need of profound reorganization. In this case,
the renewal process occurring in the acute
psychotic episode may be considered
nature's way of setting things right.

— Dr. John Weir Perry

The Persistence of Memory, Salvador Dali, 1931

Michael O’Callaghan: How does one define so-called schizophrenia?

John Weir Perry: Jung defined it most succinctly. He said "Schizophrenia is a condition in which the dream takes the place of reality." This means that the unconscious overwhelms the ego-consciousness, overwhelms the field of awareness with contents from the deepest unconscious, which take mythic, symbolic form. And the emotions, unless they're hidden, are quite mythic too. To a careful observer, they're quite appropriate to the situation at hand.

The way "schizophrenia" unfolds is that, in a situation of personal crisis, all the psyche's energy is sucked back out of the personal, conscious area, into what we call the archetypal area. Mythic contents thus emerge from the deepest level of the psyche, in order to re-organise the Self. In so doing, the person feels himself withdrawing from the ordinary surroundings, and becomes quite isolated in this dream state.

Michael O’Callaghan: Did Jung really see this as a healing process?

John Weir Perry: He did indeed! He believed that "schizophrenia" is a self-healing process – one in which, specifically, the pathological complexes dissolve themselves. The whole schizophrenic turmoil is really a self-organising, healing experience. It's like a molten state. Everything seems to be made of free energy, an inner free play of imagery through which the alienated psyche spontaneously re-organises itself – in such a way that the conscious ego is brought back into communication with the unconscious again.

Michael O’Callaghan: How long does the experience normally last?

John Weir Perry: The acute hallucinatory phase, during which these contents go through the re-ordering process, usually lasts about six weeks. This, by the way, corresponds to the classical description of visionary experiences in various religious texts, such as the proverbial "forty days in the wilderness" often referred to in the Bible. Anyway, six weeks is roughly it.

Michael O’Callaghan: So are you saying that the reason we have so-called "chronic schizophrenia" in our society – where a person is medicated, distressed or hospitalised for decades – is really cultural? A society which refuses to understand the healing nature of the phenomenon?

John Weir Perry: Yes, it seems so. Of course, there are some unusual cases where the individual simply can't handle the impact of all this unconscious content, or doesn't know what to do with it, and freaks out. But from my experience at Diabasis, I've seen so many people go the other way that I really do feel "chronic schizophrenia" is created by society's negative response to what is actually a perfectly natural and healthy process. I hate to think of what happens to people who go into the mental hospital...

The Scream by Edvard Munch, 1893 © 1999 The Munch Museum

Michael O’Callaghan: Who experiences a "schizophrenic break"?

John Weir Perry: Well, there's a lot of controversy about this! There is a constitutional element, which is often interpreted as a "genotype of pathology", but this depends on how you see it. I see it as a genotype of sensitivity! Among adolescent siblings in a family, for example, it’s usually the most sensitive one who's going to catch it.

Michael O’Callaghan: How many people are "schizophrenic?"

John Weir Perry: Approximately two percent of the world population – that's over 110 million people! It's about one in five of all the hospital beds.

Michael O’Callaghan: What does it feel like to go through a "schizophrenic break"?

John Weir Perry: The overall experience is described as falling into a kind of abyss of isolation. This comes about because there is such a discrepancy between the subjective inner world that one has been swept into, and the mundane everyday world outside. There seems to be a total gulf between these two. Of course, this is exactly what happens in our society: the individuals around such a person are bewildered and frightened. They have absolutely no trust in what is going on! So everything is set up negatively, and this gives rise to fear – on both sides.

Michael O’Callaghan: So it starts with a feeling of isolation...

John Weir Perry: Yes. Now the symbolic expression of this is falling into a death – not only a death state, but also a death space – the "afterlife," the "realm of the ancestors," the "land of the dead," the "spirit world." The common experience here is for the person to look about and think that half the people around him are dead too. While in this condition, it's very hard for one to tell if one is really alive or not.

I've been told, by people looking back on the experience, that one thing that stands out most of all, beyond the feeling of isolation, is the perception that everything that comes up is divided into opposites: Good and Bad, God and the Devil, Us and Them, or whatever. It's confusing, it's bewildering, it causes tremendous indecision and a total arrest in motivation in which everything is canceled by its opposite. So both these things are very distressing: the fear that you have died and dropped away from the world of the living, and the fear of conflicting powers, conflicting values and thoughts. It's a very aggravating feeling. This experience of opposites very quickly takes on a rather paranoid form.

I think this is really what the paranoid content is based on. It takes the form of experiencing the world as caught in the grip of opposing forces, whether they be political, spiritual, cultural, ideological, or even racial. In recent years I've noticed it's "those who might destroy the planet" versus "those who are ecologically minded." The prevailing idiom of the decade seems to shape the particular form in which these opposites arise. The main thing here is a great clash of forces; and this clash is usually of rather cosmic proportions, not just a local affair at all.

Right away at the beginning, the death experience is accompanied by the feeling that you've gone back to the beginning of time. This involves a regression, a return to the state of infancy in one's personal life history. But hand in hand with this is the feeling of slipping back into the world of the primordial parents, into a Garden of Eden. For example, it's a very common experience to feel one is the child of Adam and Eve, say, at the beginning of time. This is very symbolic, obviously. It's pretty much a representation of the psyche at the start of one's individual career after birth.

So these are the outstanding features. All kinds of imagery comes tumbling across the field of awareness. It's like the mythological image in a perfect stained-glass window being smashed, and all the bits and pieces being scattered. The effect is very colourful, but it's very hard to discern how the pieces belong to each other. Any attempt to make sense of it is an exercise in abstraction from the actual experience. The important thing is to find the process running through it.

The thing that I'm particularly interested in here is the clash of opposites. The individual usually has a feeling of intense fear, as he contemplates what seem to him to be the forces of disruption, of chaos, of the Antichrist, of the Communists – whatever the ideology happens to portray as "evil." In any case, these forces are seen as tending to destroy the world, and the "good guys" are those who would try to preserve it. This is the element I try in particular to explore, because it connects to all kinds of other general cultural and political phenomena that we could talk about!

What makes this visionary state appear so very psychotic, is that an individual with a paranoid ideology or ideation tends to identify with everything that comes up from below, and one is very apt to get confused. A woman who identifies with the Virgin Mary, for example, may then believe she's about to give birth to a redeemer. Actually, there's many a pregnancy test that we do in these emergency situations, you know, because you can never be sure! And the men are very apt to feel they're specially elected to be the second coming of the Messiah; or, if they're very paranoid, a great political of military leader such as Napoleon or Hitler. The delusions of grandeur become very evident, for as soon as one's identity gets hung up on such archetypal identifications, there immediately arises the "enemy out there" who is trying to undo what the supreme power has brought about. There is a deeply-felt fear of being toppled, a feeling of immense danger. This again has many cultural connotations...

Michael O'Callaghan: So if the person experiences himself as God, might he then feel the Devil is out to get him?

John Weir Perry: Yes, that's pretty much adequate. If one is Christ, the Anti-Christ is around somewhere at work; and if one is in a supreme position of political rule, then there is sure to be a disruptive revolutionary political party on the other side of the planet which is trying to topple you! It's rather scary, when you consider that the collective unconscious projects such huge shadows upon whole nations or superpowers...

Michael O'Callaghan: What about the death / rebirth aspect?

John Weir Perry: Well you see, the state of being in a realm of death in the beginning is pretty soon accompanied by the idea of either being born, or giving birth. This is really the fundamental ground of the whole experience. So there are two or three transformative elements that run through the phenomenon in a sort of overall direction. First, the feeling of death and rebirth, which is really symbolic of the process of disorganisation and reorganisation; second, the fact that this happens both on the world level as well as on the personal level – the world is also going through a disruption and a regeneration; and finally, the initial inflated notion that one is a supreme power (a great spiritual force, a supreme being, a supreme intelligence from outer space or whatever), gradually yields to a deeper overall preoccupation with the issues of relationship. The feelings and motivations tend toward love and affection in general. The sexual element is stirred up quite a bit, but mostly it's on a symbolic level. The process of psychological individuation required to achieve this feeling of loving relationship is also what social evolution is all about.

In this regard, the concerns of the regression to infancy are no more personal than one would expect. They are mostly concerned with the interpersonal field, with the parents and siblings, and with the problems of childhood and adolescence. The great surprise, during these weeks of turmoil, is that even more of the concern is about cultural and societal issues. I was totally unprepared for this: in the Freudian setting of medical school, there was no mention of it at all. At first, when Jung told me about it in Switzerland, I found it very hard to believe. I had to see for myself if he was right. This then became one of my motives for going my alternative way with these people.

Our new understanding shows that the process of re-connection to the unconscious, which these millions of people go through in a way that's usually so very hazardous, isolated and uncreative, is nonetheless made up of the same stuff as seers, visionaries, cultural reformers and prophets go through. They also experience much of the same content, except that in their case it is specifically concerned, first and foremost, with the culture itself. Any kind of personal subjective ideation is made to serve and clarify that end.

When I started looking into these cultural parallels of the "schizophrenic" process, I also began to find very clear similarities in the rituals of almost every society. There are striking parallels in the visionary states of reformers and prophets and Messiahs. Messiahs are found all over the world, you know! Almost any culture that's going through a profound upheaval of rapid turbulent change, produces seers and visionaries who glimpse the new myth-form and express its guidelines – the basic ideas and paradigms that give the people a new sense of direction. This is particularly true, of course, at the tribal level – in almost every part of the world. The shamanic visions are particularly close to what we see in "psychosis," with all the ideation of death and rebirth, and symbols of world destruction and regeneration.

Michael O'Callaghan: Are you saying, then, that the psychosymbolic images, feelings and ideas which emerge into consciousness during the "schizophrenic" process, also carry basic symbolic relevance – at the level of the collective unconscious – to the alienation of Humankind as a whole?

John Weir Perry: Yes! One thing that is quite significant in this respect is that each decade shows a marked difference in the typical content of the ideation. During the Fifties, for example, I used to see a lot about "Democracy" and "Communism." For many Americans at that time, the coincidence of opposites was symbolically expressed in terms of America versus Russia, and a big showdown between the forces of liberty and oppression. A little later on that content tapered off, and the moral values and the issues of war and peace that typified the Sixties came to the fore. In the Seventies, I saw a lot of concern with global concerns like preserving the planet and paying attention to nature. The "bad guys" in this case were cast in the role of those who had a disregard for the needs of Nature.

Now of course this is not too different from what one finds in dreams. For dreams also tend to reflect cultural issues, and as soon as one gets into any kind of therapy that deals with the psyche at this deeper level of the collective unconscious, one comes to the inevitable realisation that we are not going along in our psychic life, you know, just in a realm of interpersonal relationships. A very powerful culture such as ours projects huge patterns, huge conflicts and turmoils, and we all experience them, although we may not be conscious of their inner meaning at all. In this sense, Humankind is still enormously alienated; the point is, it doesn't happen just in Washington and Moscow – it happens within the psyche of the whole people. The political spokesmen are only giving voice to what is going on in all the individuals...

This brings up the question of myth-form. You see, the big problems facing society are perceived in symbolic, mythic expression, and for this reason their resolution takes place on the symbolic, mythic level as well. If there's work going on in a culture to reorganise itself, then it's a process that must occur on both levels simultaneously: individuals will go through their personal visions, and collective spokesmen will express collective visions, which get worked out and implemented on a cultural level.

Michael O'Callaghan: In your book The Far Side of Madness, you describe how at Diabasis – the home for "schizophrenic" individuals which you set up in San Francisco in the 1970's – they could comfortably get into their visionary process in a totally supportive atmosphere. What are the necessary conditions to enable a person to go through the experience of madness and be renewed by it when they come through, as you put it, on the far side?

John Weir Perry: That's a question with many facets! The first one, which we touched on briefly toward the beginning of this conversation, was about the conditions that are set up around such an individual. What we did at Diabasis was specifically to set up what we hoped would be the most ideal, least toxic (smile), least damaging environment for a person in the visionary state. First off, this means a home. You need a place with friendly, sympathetic individuals who live there. These people have to be companions, have to be willing to listen and not be frightened and not be judgmental about it, and not try to do anything to anybody. One has to let the visionary process unfold itself spontaneously.

Under such conditions, to our surprise, we found that our clients got into a clear space very quickly! We had started out with the notion that we would surely be in for alot of bedlam with all this "madness" going on, but actually the opposite was true! People would come in just a crazy as could be on the first day or two, but they'd settle down very soon into a state of coherency and clarity. Often, when I would come in for a consultation at the end of the week, I would see someone who had been admitted in a completely freaked-out state just a few days before, sitting at the dinner-table indistinguishable from anybody else; sometimes I couldn't tell if this was a new member of the staff, or one of our clients. The calming effect of a supportive environment is truly amazing!

It's a well-known fact that people can and do clear up in a benign setting. Actually, they can come down very quickly. But if some of our cases had gone to the mental hospital, they would have been given a very dire message: "You've had a mental breakdown. You're sick. You're into this for decades, maybe for the rest of your life!" and told "You need this medication to keep it all together." I am quite certain that if some of our clients had been sent to the mental hospital, they would have had a long, long fight with it. The outcome of their stay at Diabasis, however, was that their life after the episode was substantially more satisfying and fulfilling to them than it had been before!

Michael O'Callaghan: Would the determining factor then be the person's realisation that one is in a non-ordinary state of consciousness – i.e.: a state which, although very different from that of the people around one, is in fact completely natural and good – and that the hallucinatory imagery carries a symbolic meaning, which pertains primarily to the inner reality, rather than to the outside world?

John Weir Perry: You said it! The tendency, as you suggest, is to concretise all the symbolic stuff and believe there are enemies out there, and that the walls are wired, that there are people with guns at the window, and subversive political parties trying to do things, or that one is being watched because one is the head of some organisation and everybody knows it. All of that is a mistaken, "concretistic" tendency to take too literally things whose correct meaning is actually symbolic.

So yes, the therapeutic goal is to achieve that attitude which perceives the symbolic nature of the ideation which belongs to the inner reality. Now the inner reality is real! It's very important to grant it that reality, but not to get the two realities mixed up. That's the trick! Actually, for most people it's surprisingly easy. Certainly, the more paranoid a person is, the more difficult. There is a certain paranoid makeup, a style of personality which tends to focus on the objective world around. It's what we call an attention style. It is difficult for such people to see the inner meaning of their visions. On the other hand, the average person tends to go along with the inner journey and to realise – well, they do need to be reminded – but once they're reminded, they tend to quickly perceive that it is a spiritual test, or a symbolic test, and not the actual end of the actual world.

The second condition needed for a successful outcome of the "schizophrenic episode" is not just a benign surround, but also some people who can relate to the visionary process in a sympathetic way. I believe very strongly that it's not just enough to have a benign community around such a person: the thing that really makes the process move and reach its conclusion, is an intense relationship with one or two people. Sometimes with a man and a woman, who may play a symbolic role like two parents, or like the opposites, which can be taken care of in this way. Bringing the whole supercharged process into a relationship seems to make it bearable, containable, manageable. Of course, some people go through it alone. They tell me this is highly painful, very frightening. But if one has a therapist or counselor to whom one can relate the experience, one need not suffer a whole lot once the process gets underway.

There will always be some tough moments, nightmarish times, bewilderment. One wonders what the dangers are, whether there are evil forces out there. But through these weeks, somehow, the prevailing mood is actually one of buoyancy. At Diabasis, there was a general atmosphere of jocularity. People would be joking around, having fun, playing music and dancing and humming tunes and painting...

Michael O'Callaghan: Yes, in fact wasn't that part of the design? You had all sorts of ways for people to communicate their experience and externalise it through various forms of art?

John Weir Perry: The whole environment was organised into various "spaces." One of these – a very important one – was called the rage room. This was sound-proofed and padded, for the individual's own protection, and we put things in there that they could whack to pieces like old cottons and mattresses. But the door was not locked; it was not like the padded cell in the mental hospital, where the person is isolated against his will... We set it up so that if a client was having strong feelings of rage, he or she could share it with a staff member, particularly the counselor or primary therapist, and thus deliver it. This was found meaningful. The anger is a very important part of the growth of the ego, you see.

We also had the opposite: a room for quietness and meditation. This was equally important, for integrative purposes. We had an art room, but I must say, people didn't seem to spend much time there (chuckle). These so-called "sensitive personalities" were all hanging around the dining room table, doing water-colours or modeling in clay, and giving creative expression to some of the imagery inside their head.

We also had a sand tray and figurines for sand play therapy. It works like a dream: you set up a dramatic scene, move the figurines, tell a story. This avenue of expression is easier than painting. It's very dreamlike, so it hits the visionary state very well. We also had poetry... Another thing we provided was a variety of body movement sessions, dance and martial arts, with skilled facilitators. And finally, we had interviews at least three or four times a week, for an hour and a half to two hours each, with the primary counselor/therapist. But really all of these creative outlets put together became part of the interview itself – verbal expression combined with image expression in these various media.

Now throughout all this there was nothing scheduled, nothing mandatory. It was all informal. We'd just respond to things as they came up. Our only house rule really was "No violence to property or persons!" The clients could dash out nude into the street if they had to; we didn't like it, but they did! You see, we wanted them to be in this house of their own free will. They had to realise their own desire to belong in the house, and they did.

So this whole approach is essentially one of releasing, rather than suppression. We allowed everything and encouraged its expression – not toward chaos, but toward communication! Communication tends to order. This is a most important point in psychiatry, but the common opinion is that it is very dangerous... When you actually do it, however, you find exactly the opposite is true: people get over their preoccupations very quickly. The whole point here is to deliver the visionary content to somebody and to be able to appreciate its symbolic relevance to the inner process of personal and social renewal. Once it's delivered, the process keeps moving by itself. It's really unfortunate there is so much misunderstanding about it all. The truth is really very simple.

The gigantic catastrophes that threaten us are not elemental happenings of a physical or biological kind, but are psychic events. We are threatened in a fearful way by wars and revolutions that are nothing else than psychic epidemics. At any moment a few million people may be seized by a madness, and then our leaders may precipitate us into a blood bath of war and radioactivity...

Instead of being exposed to wild beasts, tumbling rocks, and inundating waters, man is exposed today to the elemental forces of his own psyche. Psychic life is a world power that exceeds by many times all the powers of the Earth...

If one voluntarily takes the burden of completeness upon oneself, one can avoid all the unhappy consequences of repressed individuation – one need not find it 'happening' to one against one's will in a negative form. This is as much as to say that anyone who is destined to descend into a deep pit had better set about it with all the necessary precautions, rather than risk falling into the hole backwards."

— Carl Jung

"The journey is there and it's an experience that we have at some stage to go through... Every single one of us has got to go through it... until we gradually build ourselves up into an acceptance of reality."

— Jesse Watkins (former "schizophrenic" client of R.D. Laing)

"The time will come when Humankind will have to make a choice between suicide and adoration."

— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The Apocalypse: Breaking of the Sixth Seal by Albrecht Dürer

Michael O'Callaghan: Here's a broader question which I've been thinking about for years. If nature's self-organising way of healing an alienated individual is for one's psyche to go through a world view transformation process involving a spontaneous temporary non-ordinary state of consciousness, do you think it possible that an entire society, or perhaps even the whole of Humankind – which is undoubtedly alienated and obviously having a hard time adapting to its new global environment – could conceivably have to pass through some kind of collective non-ordinary state, on the way to greater wisdom? And if so, would not such a process also take the form of either a horrible mass psychosis, if suppressed, or a creative breakthrough, if we were culturally prepared to understand its inner meaning?

John Weir Perry: Yes indeed! You know, there are many examples of this in anthropological studies of societies going through periods of cultural crisis. What you're referring to is right around the corner! You don't have to look very far to see a culture deteriorate, to see individuals in deep distress...

The cultural historian Anthony Wallace is very lucid about this. He did a study of periods of turmoil in various cultures, and formulated a ground-plan for the process of sudden culture-change. It goes like this: first, under the new conditions, the old answers don't work, the old methods no longer hold, the old ways prevail no more, and the old values are no longer held in esteem. This leads to a demoralisation, which results very quickly in psychosomatic distress, and the abuse of alcohol or other drugs. From out of all this, some sort of restitution may then emerge through the activation of visionary states within certain people in the society. The gifted ones are those whose visions reach beyond the personal sphere, into the realm of the collective unconscious, out of which the new myth comes forth.

Now the crucial point here is whether that myth is then received. You see, in a psychosis, part of the problem, as we were saying, is that the vision is not received. When the individual, and his family and friends and society regard the vision as unacceptable and they reject it, that is the experience of going crazy! On the other hand, a prophet is given a lot of esteem. If his vision happens to coincide with what the people need to hear, he will eventually be held in great reverence and his message will be received. If his myth-making capacity is working well, he may deliver the new myth that is going to be accepted for the next phase of that culture's evolution. That then leads to a whole cultural renewal, which Wallace calls a revitalisation movement.

So what's particularly interesting about this collective, cultural dimension of the visionary experience, is that the historical evolution of culture recapitulates the same process that happens within the individual. It begins in fear of death, lust for power and supremacy, but soon leads over into this concern with relationship and Eros, intimacy, caring. In history, the myth original that parallels this process is one that was first conceived during the urban revolution: that's about 3000 BCE in Egypt and Mesopotamia, 2000 BCE in China, and about 1000 BCE in Israel. With this first growth of cities, a vast psychological transformation took place in society, and new myths emerged which served a guiding function for the motivations within.

Now these first urban societies were preoccupied with power. Power and dominance were held in high esteem and sacralised. Some centuries went by, and you had prophetic movements, philosophical movements that arose in opposition to that. These later myths redefined the cohesive power in society. They asserted that the thing that binds the people together into a working whole is not power and dominance but caring, brotherhood, and love. If you check out the ancient literature, you will find that this idea of the overarching importance of love or compassion is simply not mentioned in any urban texts up to a certain point....

The function of social leadership was first projected exclusively onto the persona of the Pharaoh or King. All the people had to do was to follow orders and do what they were told. The mythologies of the early urban phase were all in the power idiom at first: the King is the embodiment of the whole people. Only he can care for them. He is the one who is compassionate. He is the one who is loving, as a father is toward his children. So what took place over the following centuries was a complete transformation of that type of myth. The first time in recorded literature that there is any mention of the Kingship belonging not only to the elected king, but also to the people, was around the middle of the 1st millennium BCE, in China. They affirmed that every individual has within himself the potentiality to be sage-king or sacral king. It was specifically expressed in these terms: "Every man shall become a sage-king!"

Michael O'Callaghan: Very interesting! Who said it?

John Weir Perry: Interestingly enough, it was Confucius who expressed it first – you wouldn't expect it really! He was a great promoter of the idea of the inner kingship, democracy, self-rule, and social caring. He had the Golden Rule – the idea of returning good for evil and responding to violence with non-violence – quite clearly expressed long before Christianity. The same thing happened in India, with the Buddha. In Israel, it didn't arrive until much later on. The Old Testament prophets, projecting their image of God as the vengeful Yahveh, did not talk of this kind of brotherhood or compassion; you don't find that really until the Christian era. The point is that the central importance of love and social caring was just not mentioned in any of these cultures before their initial perception – in visionary states – by sensitive individuals.

Now regarding the second part of your question, regarding the current cultural upheaval in the world today, I think we must be prepared, as you were mentioning earlier, for a change in world outlook, that is, a new world view or mandala. The original mandalas were conceived and designed as world-images, meaning that they are condensed compact versions, in symbol form, of a way of perceiving the world. Simply put, the new world view will become explicit when its symbol moves into consciousness.

Source: The Inner Apocalypse: Madness, Mythology & The Future [PDF File]

See also:
Shadow Projection: The Fuel of War

The Relevance of Visionary Experience to Culture

The Apocalypse: Breaking of the Sixth Seal • By Albrecht Dürer • 1496 - 98: This image depicts a scene from the Apocalypse or Book of Revelations (the last section of the New Testament of the Bible), which Saint John the Divine wrote after obtaining a vision whilst held prisoner in a cave on the Greek island of Patmos. Describing his vision, the Saint mentions an end of time, a resurrection of the souls of the dead, a divine last judgement, followed by a grand entry of the souls of the blessed into Paradise. The word Apocalypse is interesting. Its English meaning is assumed to be "the end of the world." But as the psychiatrist R.D. Laing pointed out, if you scrutinise the text, you will not find a single indication that St. John was talking about an external phenomenon! The word itself, in Greek, simply means "revelation," or more precisely, the uncovering of something that was hidden.

ENDNOTES
1. Founded by Dr. Stanislav Grof, MD, Ph.D, and others, the International Transpersonal Association (ITA) is a scientific and educational organisation with the following purposes: (1) to provide an orientation that can reconcile the viewpoints of various disciplines and formulate a comprehensive and integrated image of human nature; (2) to facilitate the development of new paradigms that will synthesise presently disparate approaches in education, research, teaching, psychotherapy, spiritual practice, the arts and media, socio-economic theory and other areas of human life and knowledge; and (3) to promote scientific research, development, and communication in all areas related to the transpersonal dimensions of human nature.

For more information, contact the ITA in Mill Valley, California (tel: + 1 415 383 8779). The ITA can also put you in touch with the Spiritual Emergency Network, a worldwide group of psychotherapists specialising in a gentle, non-drug, transpersonal approach to personal crisis.

See also www.holotropic.com and the following books by Stan Grof:

Grof, Stanislav. Realms Of The Human Unconscious: Observations From LSD Research, E.P.Dutton, New York, 1976.

Grof, Stanislav. Beyond The Brain: Birth, Death And Transcendence In Psychotherapy, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1985.

Grof, Stanislav. The Adventure of Self-Discovery, dimensions of consciousness and new perspectives in psychotherapy and inner exploration, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1988.

Grof, Stanislav; and Grof, Christina (ed.); Spiritual Emergency - when personal transformation becomes a crisis; with contributions from R.D.Laing, Roberto Assagioli, John Weir Perry, Ram Dass, Lee Senella, Jack Kornfield, Paul Rebilot, Holger Kalwert, Anne Armstrong, Keith Thompson and others; Jeremy Tarcher Inc., Los Angeles, 1989.

2. The San Francisco Chronicle published this obituary of Dr. John Weir Perry
on 3 November 1998: John Weir Perry, a psychiatrist, author and expert on the disorder known as brief-reactive psychosis, died Thursday of cancer in his Larkspur home. He was 84. Known as a radical thinker in the mental-health field, Dr. Perry believed that schizophrenia had benefits and that the psychotic state could lead to higher consciousness if allowed to run its course.

A native of Rhode Island and a graduate of Harvard University and its medical school, Dr. Perry studied in Zurich with Carl Gustav Jung and trained as a Jungian analyst. In 1960 he moved to San Francisco where he practiced for more than 30 years. He was an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco and a lecturer at the Jung Institute in San Francisco.

Dr. Perry wrote six books, including The Far Side of Madness, a 1974 work that described certain psychoses as visionary states. In the 1970s he founded Diabasis, a San Francisco residence for young schizophrenics where therapy included painting, dance, massage, meditation and conversation. Such treatment usually worked better, he said, than "the men in white who come rushing up and the whole atmosphere becomes antagonistic."

He is survived by his children, Wendy Perry of Larskpur, Brian Perry of Denver, Alice Garofalo of Seattle, Anne Weir of Portland, Maine, and John Weir Ferguson Perry of Vermont. A private memorial service will be held Sunday.

3. For a description of Perry's therapeutic facility at Diabasis, see Perry, Dr. John Weir. The Far Side of Madness, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1974.

4. See Laing, Dr. Ronald D. The Politics of Experience, Ballantine Books, New York, 1968. Regarding the self-organising aspect of the acute schizophrenic syndrome, see Jesse Watkins, A Ten-Day Voyage, quoted in

5. Regarding the self-organising aspect of the Universe, see the following classic texts:

Tsu, Lao. Tao Te Ching, 6th. century B.C.E.; translated from the Mandarin by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English, Wildwood House Ltd., London, 1972.

Bateson, Gregory. Steps To An Ecology of Mind, Ballantine Books, New York, 1972.

Jantsch, Erich. The Self-Organizing Universe: Scientific and Human Implications of the Emerging Paradigm of Evolution, Pergamon, New York, 1980 (re-issued by Pergamon Press 1980, ISBN: 0080243126).

Maturana, Humberto R. and Varela, Francisco J. Autopoiesis and Cognition. D Reidel Pub Co, 1980, ISBN: 9027710163.

Bohm, David. Wholeness and the Implicate Order, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1980.

Capra, Fritjof. The Web of Life : A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems. 1 Anchor Edition, Anchor Books, 1996, ISBN: 0385476752.

Gleick, James. Chaos: Making a New Science, William Heineman Ltd, London, 1988.

6. Perry, Dr. John Weir. The Self In Psychotic Process: Its Symbolization in Schizophrenia, with an introduction by C.G.Jung. University of California Press, Los Angeles, 1953.

7. See note 3 above.

8. Perry, Dr. John Weir. The Heart of History: Individuality in Evolution, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1987.

9. Perry, Dr. John Weir. Trials of the Visionary Mind: Spiritual Emergency and the Renewal Process, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1999.

10. Gregory Bateson (1904 - 1980) was a brilliant and unusually eloquent scientist and biological philosopher with a poetical turn of phrase. Born in England and educated at Cambridge, he carried out early anthropological work on pattern and communication in New Guinea and Bali. He then did research in psychiatry, schizophrenia, and dolphins. He played a major role in the early formulation of Cybernetics, and helped introduce Systems Theory and Communications Theory into the work of social and natural scientists. His influence is most strongly felt in the fields of education, family therapy and ecology. He was married to the anthropologist Margaret Mead for many years; sat on the Board of Regents at the University of California; and was Scholar-in-Residence at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur.

Bateson rose to international prominence through his book Steps to an Ecology of Mind, followed by Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity and finally Angels Fear, co-authored with his daughter Mary Catherine Bateson. He may yet be recognised as the most important thinker of the 20th century. His key texts are:

Bateson, Gregory. Perceval's Narrative: A Patient's Account of his Psychosis, Stanford University Press, 1961, Stanford.

Bateson, Gregory. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Ballantine Books, New York, 1972. Reprinted with a foreword by Mary Catherine Bateson, University of Chicago Press, 2000. ISBN 0-226-03905-6. Includes a republication of The Double-Bind Theory of Schizophrenia.

Bateson, Gregory. Mind and Nature : A Necessary Unity. Ballantine Books, New York, 1979.

Bateson, Gregory & Mary Catherine. Angels Fear. Macmillan, New York, 1987.

Bateson, Gregory & Ruesch, Jurgen, M.D. Communication, The Social Matrix of Psychiatry. W.W. Norton, New York, 1951.

See also: The Pattern That Connects the world situation to our own way of seeing it, by Michael O’Callaghan, at www.global-vision.org/bateson.html

11. Esalen Institute, in Big Sur, California, is a non-profit organisation that has been devoted to the exploration of human potential since the 1960's. Historical luminaries like Aldous Huxley, Joseph Campbell, Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsberg, Joan Baez, and countless others have gathered here to develop revolutionary ideas, transformative practices, and innovative art forms. Today Esalen is a retreat center where people live and work in a communal setting. Residents and guests participate in an incredible variety of alternative education and personal growth programs in subjects ranging from meditation to massage, yoga, psychology, ecology, spirituality, art, music, and much more. For details visit their web site at www.esalen.org

By Michael O’Callaghan
www.global-vision.org/papers/JWP.pdf
© 1982 Global Vision Corporation.

Jung's Experience of Psychosis

2009-01-31T22:05:00.000-08:00

Trust that which gives you meaning
and accept it as your guide.

- Carl Jung

Schizophrenia is commonly viewed as a paradigm of disintegration and breakdown. It may surprise some to discover that schizophrenic experience often includes visions of the center, and that these visions can provide a sense of well-being to the disoriented sufferer of psychic breakdown. Concerning the meaning of the center, Derrida once listed all the names which it has been called in the history of metaphysics; "It could be shown that all the names related to … the center have always designated an invariable presence — eidos, archē, telos, energeia, ousia (essence, existence, substance, subject) alētheia, transcendentality, consciousness, God, man, and so forth".

In the visions of schizophrenics, the center is most often experienced as an ultimate source of supernatural power; the power to heal and the power to protect. The center is thus not associated with a specific religion or even a personal god. C.G. Jung observed that the encounter with the center is often accompanied by the production of a certain kind of visual art by the individual known as a mandala or centralized pattern; as a rule a mandala occurs in conditions of psychic dissociation or disorientation, for instance […] in schizophrenics whose view of the world has become confused, owing to the invasion of incomprehensible contents from the unconscious. In such cases it is easy to see how the severe pattern imposed by a circular image of this kind compensates the disorder and confusion of the psychic state — namely, through the construction of a central point to which everything is related, or by a concentric arrangement of the disordered multiplicity and of contradictory and irreconcilable elements. This is evidently an attempt at self-healing on the part of Nature, which does not spring from conscious reflection but from an instinctive impulse (my emphasis).

He also hinted that a mandala may be "acted out" by movement in a circular pattern around a center, the center being the mandala. His conclusions about schizophrenics were confirmed by J. Weir Perry, who studied schizophrenics for forty years and wrote many books about it, including The Self in Psychotic Process. He observed the symbol of the center as well as many other symbols in the visions and drawings of schizophrenics.

The appearance of the center as a powerful locus of healing, which I call the "mandala experience," can be seen in the life of John Nash, who suffered from schizophrenia and has recently become famous for the depiction of his life in the movie entitled A Beautiful Mind. The tendency to experience the center as a constructive force in the midst of psychic distress and disintegration raises questions about whether one can also find such hitherto undetected moments of constructiveness in fictional accounts of disintegration which have been compared to schizophrenic breakdown. One such account is Kafka's Description of a Struggle, a work in which a symbol of the center appears in the midst of such a psychic disintegration. However, first I will give an account of the "mandala experience" as discovered by Jung during what has been called his "schizophrenic" breakdown.

Jung's Mandala Experience
It was through Jung's own difficulties that he discovered the role of the center in psychic disintegration. It began in 1912, when Jung was at midlife, and in his autobiography he calls it his "confrontation with the unconscious". After it was over he had broken with Freud never to look back, and was well on his way to his own unique approach to psychology.

Jung's confrontation with the unconscious was very serious, and is increasingly being seen by modern interpreters as one which bordered on schizophrenia. "Newer interpretations by nearly all investigators have proceeded on the assumption that Jung's very sanity, and not just an interesting experiment in insight and introspection, was at stake". Moreover, as early as the 1960's, D.W. Winnicott, a psychoanalyst, went as far as saying that Jung was already a childhood schizophrenic. "Jung, in describing himself, gives us a picture of child schizophrenia, and at the same time his personality displays a strength of a kind which enabled him to heal himself. At cost he recovered".

Unfortunately Winnicott doesn't cover Jung's "confrontation with the unconscious" which occurred when he was an adult. I will not discuss the confrontation in its entirety, I only wish to point out that it had the features of a schizophrenic breakdown particularly at the beginning, and the beginning was the most troubled. In addition, it was during that time when Jung discovered the effects of the symbol of the center.

The schizophrenic features of his breakdown are threefold; first he had a couple of hallucinations, secondly the content of his hallucinations and subsequent dreams contain the symbols of death and renewal featuring imagery of the center prominently. Finally, at the beginning of the breakdown there were no intervening archetypal figures, Jung was confronted directly with the unconscious. This is typical of schizophrenia according to Couteau.

Concerning the hallucinations, Jung describes himself as being "seized by an overpowering vision" which last about one hour, in other words a psychosis, a feature of schizophrenia. The vision contains the symbols of disintegration in the form of apocalypse and death. In it, the natural order is being disturbed in a kind of reversal of opposites, order becomes disorder, dry land becomes flooded:

I saw a monstrous flood covering all the northern and low-lying lands between the North Sea and the Alps. When it came to Switzerland I saw that the mountains grew higher and higher to protect our country. I realized that a frightful catastrophe was in progress. I saw the mighty yellow waves, the floating rubble of civilization, and the drowned bodies of uncounted thousands. Then the whole sea turned to blood.

The same vision recurred two weeks later. At this point even Jung concluded that he was "menaced by a psychosis". He did not realize that he is already having one.

Unlike many schizophrenics, the symbols continue in dreams, not during a psychosis. Soon after the "sea of blood" vision, he has a dream of rebirth and the center:

There stood a leaf bearing tree, but without fruit (my tree of life, I thought), whose leaves had been transformed by the effects of the frost into sweet grapes full of healing juices. I plucked the grapes and gave them to a large, waiting crowd.

Throughout mythology tree of life has been an image of the symbol of the center, often imbued with supernatural qualities. For example, Dumuzi, the son-lover of the Inanna was himself called the "Lord of the Tree of Life." In Ancient Egypt, the sun-god was born from the highest branches of the tree of Isis. Again from Egypt, Osiris was reborn from a tree. In the image of a tree, the center takes on the qualities of power, growth and springtime renewal. Here, in Jung's dream, it bears the fruit to feed the crowd. The dream also contains the symbol of apotheosis, as Jung feeds the crowd in a manner which brings Christ to mind when he fed the multitudes.

At this point the similarity between Jung's visions and schizophrenia starts to waver for two reasons. The first one I have already mentioned. It concerns the fact that Jung's subsequent productions of the unconscious are in the form of dreams and fantasies, and have none of the terrifying, involuntary quality of psychosis so common in schizophrenia. Secondly, according to Couteau, the schizophrenic confrontation with the unconscious lacks the mediation of the anima;

I began to comprehend in a new way the notion of severe illness as a magnifying glass of the soul, from which sometimes the only benefit seems to be insights gained about psyche by the analyst observing "from the outside," for many of my patients, estranged from the mediating function of the anima, were instead confronted directly with the chaotic abyss of the collective unconscious. Yet even for these patients, the presence of a therapist, especially one who could serve as a surrogate anima—a therapist routed in soul-making—provided a vital link to their souls.

Every production of the unconscious which Jung experienced after the initial hallucinations would have such a mediating figure in it including the anima herself in the form of Salome. There are also Siegfried, Ka, whom Jung called the "spirit of nature," a "brown-skinned savage," as well as Elija, the "wise old prophet," and Philemon, the "winged sprit," to name a few. Schizophrenic imagery is largely unpopulated by such figures.

Jung also had a dream of the center which he admits, kept him going. In this dream he was in Liverpool, a "dirty, sooty city:"

It was night, and winter, and dark, and raining […] I had the feeling that there we were coming from the harbour, and that the real city was actually up above, on the cliffs. We climbed up there. It reminded me of Basel, where the market is down below and then you go up through the Totengässchen ("Alley of the Dead"), which leads to a plateau above and so the Ptersplatz and the Peterskirche.

When we reached the plateau, we found a broad square dimly illuminated by street lights, into which many streets converged. The various quarters of the city were arranged radially around the square. In the center was a round pool, and in the middle of it a small island, while everything round about was obscured by rain, fog, smoke, and dimly lit darkness, the little island blazed with sunlight. On it stood a single tree, a magnolia, in a shower of reddish blossoms. It was as though the tree stood in the sunlight and was at the same time the source of light. My companions commented on the abominable weather, and obviously did not see the tree. They spoke of another Swiss who was living in Liverpool, and expressed surprise that he should have settled here. I was carried away by the beauty of the flowering tree and the sunlit island, and thought "I know very well why he has settled here." Then I awoke.

The ascent upwards, the crossing of the threshold to a center which is in the image of a tree is something which will occur again and again in the experience of schizophrenics as I have discussed elsewhere. For now, it suffices to give Jung's own comments on the dream:

This dream represented my situation at the time. I can still see the grayish-yellow raincoats, glistening with the wetness of the rain. Everything was extremely unpleasant, black and opaque—just as I felt then. But I had had a vision of unearthly beauty, and that was why I was able to live at all. Liverpool is the "pool of life." The "liver," according to an old view, is the seat of life — that which "makes to live".

He represented this dream in a mandala. One can see the blackness of the surround, with a flower which looks like a magnolia in the center. The image grows increasingly brighter, with the brightest spot at the center.

Figure 1 - Jung's mandala with a stylized version of magnolia tree in the center
(Jung Archetypes, Fig. 1)

I will call Jung's "vision of unearthly beauty" the mandala experience. This is to be distinguished from an experience of the dark side of the center, for as I will explain below when examining Kafka's work, the center terrifies as well as uplifts. The mandala experience plays a familiar role in the imagery of the center in schizophrenia, to an even greater extent than the dark side of the center.

Jung remarked of the visions he had during his time of disintegration and subsequent reintegration; "Today I can say that I have never lost touch with my initial experiences. All my works, all my creative activity, has come from those initial fantasies and dreams which began in 1912, almost fifty years ago. Everything I accomplished in later life was already contained in them, although at first only in the form of emotions and images. These dreams included his "vision of unearthly beauty," which sustained him. It was thus a vision of the center, or in Campbell's words, the "universal source".

The point is, that out of Jung's own suffering, which has been argued to be a disintegration of schizophrenic proportions, came the vision of the transcendent, the mandala experience from which he would draw inner strength from for years to come...

Source: The Mandala Experience: Visions of the Center in Schizophrenia and Fictional Accounts of Disintegration

Music of the Hour: Love & Fear

Visionary Experience in Myth and Ritual

2009-01-31T02:32:00.000-08:00

... we are beginning to realize that we cannot
fix on the outside what is broken deep within
the human heart and psyche.

- John O'Dea

The initial disordered state that I am describing contains two distinct elements. The first is an experience of dying or of having already died, which symbolizes a dissolution of the accustomed self. The second element, closely related to the first, is a vision of the death of the world. In an acute psychosis individuals undergo a profound reorganization of the self, effected by a thoroughgoing reintegration through utter disintegration. Life cannot be repaired, it can only be re-created by returning to the sources. And the 'source of sources' is the prodigious outpouring of energy, life and the fecundity that occured at the Creation of the World.

Since the acute episode of visionary turmoil can have, along with its tormenting aspect, some ecstatic features, I will enlarge on the basic Dionysian principle that the exuberance of vital aliveness is born out of the realm of death. This is the miraculous revelation at the heart of the famous Dionysian rites, the Eleusinian mysteries.

Now this disturbing information is, in our culture, very unwelcome news. Here ecstasy is desirable as long as it is easy to attain. Yet, in truth, to have access to this state the price of admission is to take full account of the role of death. This is a difficult point, for we seem to find ourselves firmly biased against suffering and death as the ultimate enemy, dark and sinister, to whom we give no quarter and show no tolerance. You might say suffering and death are on an equal footing with madness in this respect.

We have seen that the growth process of the psyche, on the other hand, sees all this quite differently. According to the psyche's purposes, in order to break out of the security of solid consensus and convention, one must encounter the experience of the death process in psychic depth, and also at the same time the dissolution of the familiar, accustomed worldview. Though all this demand might seem at first glance overly drastic, it consists actually of the death of the familiar self-image and the destruction of the world image to make room for the self regeneration of each. These two images move together in the process, each an aspect of the other, and both assume the form of the mandala images.

Source: Trials of the Visionary Mind - John Weir Perry

See also: The Relevance of Visionary Experience to Culture

Psychosis: The Archetype of the Apocalypse

2009-01-31T02:16:00.000-08:00

There is no coming to consciousness without pain.

- Carl Jung

Psychosis
Psychosis means chaos in the inner world. The picture Hallucinations made in 1978 by a woman on her way into psychosis, shows the beginning disintegration of her inner world. Her own shape is starting to dissolve and new shapes are being formed, shapes that harass her with their voices.

Figure 2 Hallucinations Drawing by Hebriana, 1978.

It was only because she was protected from any disturbance from the outside that her pen could go on recording what was happening. This happened in the middle of the night. A couple of hours later another picture, Apocalypse, emerged on her pad. In that drawing her own shape is entirely effaced. The world, what we call reality, has dissolved. Something else is appearing.

Figure 3 Apocalypse Drawing by Hebriana, 1978

Her experience is the same as that described by the mystics. All is fire, Holocaust. The ego is effaced. Even the gestalts of the Voices are effaced. Face to face with God. In the picture we see the letters of the Swedish word for chaos, kaos: O,S,K,A. "Chaos is the neighbor of God," wrote the 18th century Swedish poet Stagnelius. This God spoke and gave the woman her name: Hebriana. In the picture we see the word "Hebriana" followed by an apparently meaningless, but perhaps esoteric series of letters NAGA CTORNC and the word 'hjärnlarm' (brain din or noise in Swedish). Chaos no longer allows distinguishable Voices to crystallize.

In psychosis, what we call reality falls apart. Something else is unveiled, something that is normally hidden behind our social, consensual reality. That night, Hebriana was sitting lost in a puzzle. The puzzle was her world shattered into pieces.

Overcoming Psychosis
What was required for her to recreate a whole from the pieces? The least disturbance, the least intrusion into her sphere would have destroyed her ability to draw. Her drawing was an utterly fragile activity, because she no longer had a social, "reality-oriented" persona to protect herself. The least intrusion - which a psychotic person is, of course, rarely spared - would have triggered panic and chaos in her behavior. Would have triggered madness.

I knew I had to be there with a deep but completely quiet interest in her puzzle and in her predicament, knowing that only she herself could recreate her world. I had to be there, but not aloof and observing, and not intrusive, but fully present with a pure and open mind.

Only then could she come out again. In her own time. Out to me and to all others. Only then could she again make the leap to points of view outside herself. Make the leap required to recreate her inner world, and to share a world in mutual empathy with others. Only then could she again become the warm, intelligent, curious, sensitive, and very present person that you see in the pictures taken three years later.

If she had been taken into psychiatric care when in this state, she would have been exposed to the very opposite of what she needed. Her behavior would have broken down in madness. Archimedes, when enemy soldiers storming into Syracuse trampled into his study, cried: "Don't move my circles!"

In a psychiatric setting, Hebriana, as a matter of course, would have been given a neuroleptic drug. The drug would have devastated her inner world, would have destroyed her puzzle and her visions. Poverty. Ugliness. A wasteland.

A person is given a neuroleptic drug. He who loves her sees that her Life has been taken. But the psychiatrist does not see. The psychiatrist records "reduction of symptoms," "improvement," "therapeutic effect," etc. Psychiatrists are blinded by their language.

Neuroleptics, or a lobotomy, would not have helped her, but would, on the contrary, have made her task impossible: the task of recreating a whole from the shattered pieces. Neuroleptics would, like enemy soldiers, have destroyed her circles, would have trampled and scattered the pieces of her puzzle. They would have made it impossible for her to become what she wanted to be - what she was meant to be...

Hebriana was diagnosed by leading psychiatrists as having a particularly severe form of schizophrenia requiring high doses of neuroleptics. Nevertheless, as a rare exception, she escaped psychiatry and the neuroleptic fate. Today she is a healthy, creative woman with an equally radiant 14 year old daughter.

Source: Love, Hope & Brain Science

See also:

Archetype of the Apocalypse - Edward Edinger

What is the Archetype of the Apocalypse All About?

The Role of Metaphor

Jung: On Schizophrenia

2009-01-31T00:13:00.000-08:00

An understanding heart is everything in a teacher and cannot be esteemed highly enough. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.

- Carl Jung

Jung worked at the Burghölzli clinic from 1900 to 1909. He was also a lecturer in psychiatry at the University of Zurich . Jung worked under Eugene Bleuler who introduced the term schizophrenia as a replacement for the concept of dementia praecox. In 1907 he drew an association between the content of dreams (for which he used a process he called amplification) and the content of hallucinations and delusions. He utilized Freud’s theories to help understand what on the surface seemed incomprehensible. For Jung, it was the feeling-toned complex, not the dream, which was the royal road to the unconscious. Similar to the postmodern views of a multiplicity of selves, Jung saw the individual as being made up of many selves, which are autonomous and therefore we cannot assume the unity of consciousness or the primacy of will. Jung relates complexes and psychosis, with a view of the latter as a type of waking dream:

“A person with a strong complex thinks in terms of the complex, he dreams with open eyes and no longer adapts psychologically to the environment” (Jung 1907).

“...in schizophrenia the complexes have become disconnected and autonomous fragments, which either do not reintegrate back to the psychic totality, or, in the case of a remission, are unexpectedly joined together again as if nothing happened” (1939).

Jung believed that such mental states as paranoia could not be accounted for as neuropathology. In 1914 he noted:

“I incline to the view that, on the basis of a disposition whose nature is at present unknown to us, an unadapted psychological function arises which may develop into a manifest mental disturbance and secondarily induce symptoms of organic degeneration.”

This latter viewpoint is remarkably consistent with our current understanding of the pervasive effects of profound anxiety/stress on CNS structure and function. Jung accused psychiatry of reductionistic materialism, i.e., placing the organ of the brain above its functions.

Jung, in his collection of detailed patient histories, discovered that the schizophrenic illness often occurred within the context of significant trauma. Like Sullivan, Jung saw psychosis as on a continuum with everyday experience:

“When we penetrate into the human secrets of our patients, the madness discloses the system upon which it is based, and we recognize insanity to be simply an unusual reaction [also similar to Adolf Meyer’s psychobiological perspective] to emotional problems which are in no wise foreign to ourselves” (1914).

Jung believed that once we understood the ‘code’ of psychotic communication we may then be able to put together the chain of events that led to the emergence of a psychotic episode. In regard to the ‘stuckness’ of the psychotic solution, Jung suggested:

“Why is the mind compelled to expend itself in the elaboration of pathological nonsense? Our new method of approach gives us a clue to this difficult question. Today we can assert that the pathological ideas dominate the interests of the patient so completely because they are derived from the most important questions that occupied him when he was normal. In other words, what in insanity is now an incomprehensible jumble of symptoms was once a vital field of interest to the normal personality” (1914).

Jung believed that the principal function of the unconscious is to effect compensation and bring about balance.:

“The mentally unbalanced person tries to defend himself against his own unconscious, that is to say, he fights against his own compensating influences” (1914).

For Jung, the psychotic person has fought for many years in order to preserve ego functioning-he is overwhelmed by strong unconscious forces:

“These forces did not originate in our patient out of nowhere. They are most emphatically not the result of poisoned brain cells, but are normal constituents of our unconscious psyche. They appeared in numberless dreams, in the same or a similar form, at a time of life when seemingly nothing was wrong. And they appear in dreams of normal people who never get anywhere near a psychosis” (1939).

In 1909, Jung moved into private practice. Later he noted: “In psychotherapy, enthusiasm is the servant of success” (1939). Towards the end of his life, Jung believed that if patients were treated only with pharmacological agents, to leave their internal life un-analyzed was to leave patients with little means of being able to take care of themselves in their everyday lives. Jung noted that it was his work with one patient, referred to as Babette S. that he first came to understand the language of schizophrenia.

“More than once I have seen that even with such patients there remains in the background a personality which must be called normal. It stands looking on, so to speak... Through my work with patients I realized that paranoid ideas and hallucinations contain a gem of meaning” (1995).

In 1958, Jung commented on his life-long experience:

“It is now just about fifty years since I became convinced, through practical experience, that schizophrenic disturbances could be treated and cured by psychological means. I found that, with respect to the treatment, the schizophrenic patient behaves no differently from the neurotic. He has the same complexes, the same insights and needs, but not the same certainty with regard to his foundations. Whereas the neurotic can rely instinctively on his personality dissociation never losing its systematic character, so that the unity and inner cohesion of the whole are never seriously jeopardized, the latent schizophrenic must always reckon with the possibility that his very foundations will give way somewhere, that an irretrievable disintegration will set in, that his ideas and concepts will lose their cohesion and their connection with other spheres of association and with the environment. As a result, he feels threatened by an uncontrollable chaos of chance happenings. He stands on treacherous ground, and very often he knows it.

The dangerousness of his situation often shows itself in terrifying dreams of cosmic catastrophes, of the end of the world and such things. Or the ground he stands on begins to heave, the walls bend and bulge, the solid earth turns to water, a storm carries him up into the air, all his relatives are dead, etc. These images bear witness to a fundamental disturbance of relationship, that is, of the patient’s rapport with his surroundings, and graphically illustrate the isolation that menaces him” (pp. 258-259).

Jung, after many years of clinical experience concluded:

“I have now, after long practical experience, come to hold the view that the psychogenic causation of the disease [the schizophrenias] is more probable than the toxic [physico-chemical] causation. There are a number of mild and ephemeral but manifestly schizophrenic illnesses-quite apart from the even more common latent psychoses-which begin purely psychogenically, run an equally psychological course (aside from certain presumably toxic nuances) and can be completely cured by a purely psychotherapeutic procedure. I have seen this even in severe cases” (p. 264).

In regard to the latter (i.e., severe cases), Jung stated:

“It would be a mistake to suppose that more or less suitable methods of treatment exist. Theoretical assumptions in this respect count for next to nothing. Also, one would do well not to speak of ‘methods’ at all. The thing that really matters is the personal commitment, the serious purpose, the devotion, indeed the self-sacrifice, of those who give the treatment. I have seen results that were truly miraculous, as when sympathetic nurses and laymen were able, by their courage and steady devotion, to re-establish psychic rapport with their patients and so achieve quite astounding cures” (p.265).

Jung then addresses certain countertransference issues:

“But even so one can bring about noticeable improvements in severe schizophrenics, and even cure them, by psychological treatment, provided that one’s own constitution holds out [in my own experience, I have had situations where I continued the long-term psychotherapy of several patients in inpatient state hospital settings, later transferred into my practice, in which I was physically attacked, reported to have sexually molested the patient , etc, to very positive outcomes, e.g., to the point where family thought their family member was originally misdiagnosed as schizophrenic, never having to return to the state hospital after many years of residing there, etc]. This question is very much to the point, because the treatment not only demands uncommon efforts but may also induce psychic infections in a therapist who himself has a rather unstable disposition. I have seen no less than three cases of induced psychoses in treatments of this kind” (pp. 265-266).

Jung took the position, as I and many of my colleagues in ISPS have, that schizophrenia is primarily an affective illness with secondary cognitive sequelae. Jung noted:

“Here we are faced with a dilemma: are we to assume, as a causal factor, a weakness of the ego-personality, or a particularly strong affect? I regard the latter hypothesis as the more promising, and for the following reason. The notorious weakness of ego-consciousness in the sleeping state means next to nothing so far as a psychological understanding of the dream-contents is concerned. It is the feeling-toned complex that determines the meaning of the dream, both dynamically and also as regards its content. We must undoubtedly apply this criterion to schizophrenia, for, so far as we can see at present, the whole phenomenology of this disease turns on the pathogenic complex.

In our attempts at explanation we shall probably do best if we start from this point and regard the weakening of the ego-personality as secondary, as one of the destructive concomitants of a feeling-toned complex which arose under normal conditions but afterwards shattered the unity of the personality by its intensity” (p. 269). [in regard to my own clinical experience and the research of John Read and other colleagues, I would disagree with Jung on this-traumatic events, strain trauma, emotional neglect and an emotional disconnection are often seen in the histories of persons later diagnosed with schizophrenia.]

I will end this posting on a quote from Jung (1995) in regard to the therapeutic relationship:

“For psychotherapy to be effective, a close rapport is needed, so close that the doctor cannot shut his eyes to the heights and depths of human suffering. This rapport consists, after all, in a constant comparison and mutual comprehension, in the dialectical confrontation of two opposing psychic realities. If for some reason their mutual impressions do not impinge on each other, the psychotherapeutic process remains ineffective, and no change is produced. Unless both doctor and patient become a problem for each other, no solution is found” (p. 166).

Source: ISPS: On Jung

See also:

Trauma & Schizophrenia

Relationship Between Trauma & Psychosis [PDF File]

The Role of Metaphor

Schizophrenia: Waking Reality Processed Through the Dreaming Brain

Embracing the Fragmented Self

2009-01-30T22:56:00.000-08:00

The most terrifying thing is
to accept oneself completely.

- Carl Jung

clancycavnar.com

The fragmented psyche does not automatically require or seek mending; or at least there may be a kairos space of time during which it may need, indeed can thrive upon fragmentation. In certain crisis situations the psyche, instead of putting all its eggs in one basket, to play safe and ultimately protect its integrity, may choose to invest fragments of libido into splinter personalities for safe-keeping until the crisis has abated. In therapy situations I have seen this anticipated in dreams, then worked out in situations where a person was facing imminent, possibly life-threatening danger and in an attempt to cushion the impending blow, split into several ego stances. I have called this phenomenon "pre-traumatic dissociation" as an anticipatory move which, unlike the more severe and overridingly pathological Multiple Personality Disorder, does not interfere significantly with the individual's ability to function normally in day-to-day reality.

As a second parameter in the assessment of the overriding effect of pathology, placing woundedness in its mythic context, it's worth bearing in mind, for instance, that Osiris and Dionysus were dismembered, that Psyche had to journey to the Underworld, that Prometheus had his liver repeatedly torn out by Zeus's eagle, and that Medusa was beheaded. As well, in terms of the psyche's ultimate goal of attaining wholeness, centredness and integration, fragmentation is a blow to the hubris of the stable ego, which must relinquish its sense of a fixed identity and must eventually step aside in order to allow the paradoxical Self to displace it as the centre of consciousness.

Shamanism & Schizophrenia
What we call schizophrenic is, as Joseph Campbell has discussed, called (positively) visionary or mystical in shamanic cultures, hence is valued, not feared or sedated with chemicals. As he clarifies in the well-known [1988] TV series, "The Power of Myth", 'The shaman is the person, male or female, who ... has an overwhelming psychological experience that turns him totally inward. It's a kind of schizophrenic crack-up. The whole unconscious opens up, and the shaman falls into it. This shaman experience has been described many, many times. It occurs all the way from Siberia right through the Americas down to Tierra del Fuego.'

Hence working with sufferers of schizophrenia from a shamanic angle can be helpful, since the shaman has in all likelihood experienced similar experiences to those of the schizophrenic. Mainstream reductionist psychiatrists, on the other hand, by and large presume that if an experience (such as chronic depression) is unpleasant, it must be stopped or band-aided, but because an experience is painful or difficult, it doesn't necessarily follow that's it's not valuable, or therapeutically worthwhile as a 'wound which heals'.

As Mircea Eliade has recounted in detail, shamanic initiation is often unpleasant, even at times horrific, and can involve being mythically stripped to the skeleton, dismemberment, or being taken to pieces. If the schizophrenic can work through these kinds of processes with an empathetic therapist, s/he may be able to find healing and some ego stability at the other end of the ordeal. I know of other schizophrenics who have courageously gone off of medication and helped each other through such processes, or (more rarely) who have worked through them alone.

Schizophrenia: The Shaman Sickness
The path is always lonely and demanding for those called to shamanism, and doubly so for those who must contend with Western culture's refusal to accept the overwhelming reality of the disturbing realms of vision and torment in which these potential shamans dwell. Along with having to endure the loss of ego stability, hence the frightening blurring of outer and inner realites, sufferers of schizophrenia are often forced to contend with psychiatric notions, ruled by the Apollonian myth of reason, monotheism and normality, which demand that such "deviant" Dionysian states be subdued with medication, or punished with incarceration in mental institutions.

The schizophrenic's reason and senses, like those of the shaman during initiation, are assaulted by concrete revelations of the heights and depths of the vast Otherworlds of the collective unconscious. Simultaneously, the schizophrenic is forced to slot into the sometimes petty humdrum and routine of daily existence. The invasion of the ego by archetypal forces transforms the individual profoundly and irreversibly; no-one who has endured such a crisis can confine the expanded horizons of their consciousness to the tame boundaries of cultural norms. Yet instead of encouraging and bolstering the development of such transcendental levels of awareness, mainstream psychiatry seeks - out of fear of the unknown, the unconscious, the numinous, the irrational and the abnormal - to stifle it under the euphemistic and patronising guise of 'treatment'.

The schizophrenic, being intensely introverted is automatically poorly adapted in a society which narrowly defines personal identity in terms of appearance, behaviour and social status. S/he lives in a discontinuous reality which can become a terrifying bombardment of overlapping realities, voices and chaotic perceptions. Everything takes on mythical overtones. The players in the archetypal dramas are often gods who are potentially both benevolent and destructive. Mainstream psychiatry deals with this overload by numbing the mind and trying to force the individual to readjust to cultural norms. At the same time, the "patient" is robbed of a unique mode of learning that many schizophrenics sense to be immensely valuable and worth pursuing. And unfortunately the law is in the psychiatrists' hands to take away what others treasure as an experience of the awesome power of the sacred.

Self Retrieval vs Soul Retrieval
Jung once remarked that his work would be continued "by those who suffer", and he was undoubtedly including in that phrase all who have the courage to confront - with the peculiar aloneness and risk that's unavoidable in such work - their inner depths, soul pathology, and shadows. From the perspective of effective therapy (bearing in mind that 'therapy' means 'serving the gods'), the bottom line is that sufferers of schizophrenia as individuals have the right to choose what sort of treatment they wish to accept, but at present they're not being presented by mainstream psychiatry with the option of working through their experiences as an alternative to fearfully band-aiding the symptoms. Coming to terms with the illness takes a lot of guts - on the part of both patient and therapist - but the option exists and sufferers of schizophrenia are surely entitled to be informed that it does.

Paraphrasing Hamlet, then, to intervene, or not to intervene, that is the quesion. During solitary Self retrieval, for instance, when a person may be recovering from grief, or from an ended relationship, or from plain old unrequited love, the energy is gradually reclaimed, in the same way as a snail's stalks, or the leaves of some touch-sensitive plants tentatively re-emerge or unfold after they've been touched. Similarly, the soul's energy doesn't need to be yanked back, or forcefully torn away from its attachment. It needs gentleness and slow movement, not sudden jolting or other forms of hasty retrieval.

Through my own experiences of grief, loss and wounding, and though being privileged to share the painful experiences of others, I have learned that the soul lets go when in the kairos of its own time-frame it is ready to. It undergoes a gradual transition from acknowledging the soul-bond, to relinquishing dependency and belongingness, to acknowledging the reality of separation. The soul like a child must in such times be weaned off, because its vulnerability and woundedness so often belong to the Puer, the eternal child archetype of trust and openness that has more often than not drawn it into the situation in the first place. The hopeful and idealistic Puer, earthed and sometimes shocked through the harsh facts of human relatedness into the realm of Soul, thereby becomes, if it accepts its lot with growth in understanding and no bitterness, the willing victim of sometimes painful reality. In some circumstances, then, interventional soul retrieval, perhaps out of a desire for a quicker remedy, or even out of a well-meaning shamanic longing to help the suffering soul escape its pain, could become a hasty substitute for a more gradual, natural process of Self retrieval. For it is through bathing in the gentle alchemical fire in which the agony of passion is gradually transmuted to the gold of 'com-passion', that the Wounded Healer is most thoroughly forged.

Source: Embracing the Fragmented Self: Shamanic Explorations of the Sacred in Schizophrenia & Soul Loss

See also: Schizophrenia & The Hero's Journey

The Far Side of Madness

2009-01-30T22:39:00.000-08:00

They miss the whisper that runs
any day in your mind,
"Who are you really, wanderer?"--
and the answer you have to give
no matter how dark and cold
the world around you is:
"Maybe I'm a king..."

William Stafford

The terror of psychosis–and the terrifying treatments to which the “mental patient” is subjected–remains a source of bafflement to the outsider and a source of frustration to many practitioners in the mental health field. Although the literature is fraught with descriptions of symptoms, diagnoses, theories, and methods of treatment, few researchers address the patient as an equal. Rare, indeed, is the practitioner who has come to view psychosis as a strange sign of health: as an attempt to heal or as a stage in a developmental process that transports the subject beyond sickness or health and into a positive transformation of the self.

Such an exception is John Weir Perry. His The Far Side of Madness remains a classic in the field for all these reasons. Working in the lonely tradition of Carl Jung and R.D. Laing, who each viewed psychosis as potentially purposive and telic in nature, Perry describes the goals – and the terrible dangers – that are typically portrayed in the psychotic journey.

Perry’s work in traditional psychiatric settings led him to conclude that those in the thrall of an acute psychotic episode are rarely listened to or met on the level of their visionary state of consciousness. Instead, every imaginable way to silence the patients–to ignore and to disapprove of their nonrational language and experience–was called into play, thereby increasing their sense of isolation, alienation, and so-called madness. (Although the book was first published in 1974, things have not substantially changed in state mental hospitals or in community residence settings. To explore the strange imagery of psychosis with a client in a counseling session is viewed as “feeding into their delusional system,” and it is sternly discouraged by psychiatrists and social workers.) Perry’s work with those in acute stages of psychosis revealed that their pre-psychotic personalities were the true source of the “sickness.” Forced to live an emotionally impoverished life, the psyche had reacted by forcing a transformation in the form of a “compensating” psychosis, during which a drama in depth was enacted, forcing the initiate to undergo certain developmental processes.

Such psychic processes, which are accompanied by rich, emotional imagery, yield amazing parallels to classical myths and to obscure rituals of antiquity:

The individual finds himself living in a psychic modality quite different from his surroundings. He is immersed in a myth world ... His emotions no longer connect with ordinary things, but drop into concerns and titanic involvements with an entire inner world of myth and image.

Although the imagery is of a general, archetypal nature (“imagery that pertains to all men and all times”), it also portrays the key issues of the individual undergoing the crisis. Therefore, once lived through on this mythic plane, and once the process of withdrawal nears its end, the images must be linked to specific problems of daily life. Thus, the archetypal affect images await a reconnection to their natural context: to the personal psychological complexes (which are externally projected).

The notion of a “reorganization of the Self” is central to Perry’s approach to the psychotic journey. Extreme damage to the self-image was the typical pattern involved in the cases he studied. Injury to the self-image is so severe that, during a crisis, psychic energy leaves the higher levels of consciousness and is attracted to the psychic depths, where an archetypal process of renewal commences. The goal is not only to restore self-esteem but also to engender a “capacity to love and be loved.”

For this to occur, there must be a connecting link with another human being (and not necessarily a link with “professional”): one that instills warmth and trust. This will allow a forward progression of the inner-imagery (reminiscent of Jung’s statement that a schizophrenic is no longer schizophrenic when he feels understood by someone else). Therefore, “analysis” seems (at least, at this stage) secondary to the basic human consideration of kindness. In place of an omniscient psychotherapist, Perry posits the autonomous psychic process as a crucial factor at this point in transformation.

Perry searched for and finally discovered a regular pattern of imagery and ideation in the psychotic process. The “negative self-image” is typically compensated by an “overblown” archetypal one, the latter manifesting in imagery such as that of the hero, clown, saint, ghost, or sovereign leader. In addition, there is a sense of “participating in some form of drama or ritual performance.” Most significantly, ten sets of motifs emerged:

symbols of the center
death
return to beginnings
cosmic conflict
the threat of the opposite sex
apotheosis
sacred marriage
new birth
new society, and
the quadrated world.

Following the Jungian school of thought (from which Perry emerged), comparative symbolism and cross-cultural studies were used to uncover a holistic context in which to view such motifs in a larger context. Research led to the discovery of the same sequence of imagery in archaic religions and in other cultural structures. Most significant to the author is that “the myth and ritual form that resembles it is the principle and central rite of the civilizations of remote antiquity, and parallels the image sequence step for step.” That is, the “ceremonial pattern of sacral kingship,” found in the ancient Near East, the Mediterranean, Europe, and the Far East, which involves an annual renewal of the cosmos during the New Year.

The author devotes an entire chapter to the psychic significance of kingship, and he refers to its importance throughout The Far Side of Madness. Indeed, the correspondence is striking: in the New Year festivals, we find “a creation rite also emphasizing the center, the beginnings, death and renewal, the sacred combat and sacred marriage, and the other elements of the process.” The sacred functions of kingship represents a projection of “man’s spiritual potential as an individual.” Only with the integration of such functions in the psyche of the common man was the era of the sacred king to give way to a new era: one ushered in by “great prophets and founders of the great religions,” and characterized by a revaluation of the individual and the Eros principle. Thus, kingship reflects an archetypal pattern of growth: one progressing through dismemberment, reconstitution, and the rebirth of psyche, paralleling the “outer” historical processes (which themselves were probably based on inner archetypal correlates) and ending in the Eros principle described above (the return to love).

He places the advent of this era of exalting Eros at around “the middle of the first millennium B.C.,” and he refers to it as the “revolution of democratization.” The great prophets and mystics proceeding from that time–founders of culture and “heroes with a vision”–underwent turbulent, eerie depth experiences. Afterward, they communicated a vision that was concerned not only with their own change but also with one within the societies of their time. The genuine depth experience, however, is never supported by society-at-large when in its “acute” stage. As has been noted by Perry and by others before him, the great prophets of old would have been locked up in psychiatric wards by today’s practitioners of “health.”

The point of Perry’s inquiry and of those in that lonely tradition I earlier alluded to (it might be called the Romantic tradition in psychology) is not to diagnose artists, prophets, and mystics–not to denigrate the highest human values and aspirations–but to reexamine such rich transformation processes and to value the cultural elements that enrich human life. Thus, “Rather than what is pathological in mysticism, we ask what is mystical in its intent in psychosis?” Perry concludes:

The content of the depths reached in the ultimate ecstasies is on the one hand illumination that enlarges the understanding, and on the other, rapture that fills the heart with lovingness.

The obsession of the schizophrenic with “social reform” is viewed as more than merely a “complaint against the faulty parental world.” For Perry, the schizophrenic’s ideation of a “new society” is a legitimate psychic concern that affects us all: a collective problem seeking a collective solution and one that especially manifests in psychotic and visionary states of consciousness. He asks: With our secular governments, and with our diminishing trust in any generally accepted higher moral or spiritual authority … where do we find our real governance–one that involves us in depth? I consider this to be the modern problem that the archetypal psyche is wrestling with in order to produce a convincing new myth that will satisfy the need of the times.

The rebirth of society is based upon continual psychic upheaval: a renewal of the social archetype rooted in each individual psyche. It is there that we find the true matrix of history. When history produces social forms that become too rigid, it is there that we will uncover a creative means of overcoming them.

Source: Psychosis as Purposive

Treatment or Therapy?

2009-01-30T22:20:00.000-08:00

"85% of our clients (all diagnosed as severely
schizophrenic) at the Diabasis center not only
improved, with no medications, most went on
growing after leaving us."

- John Weir Perry

Stress may cause highly activated mythic images to erupt from the psyche's deepest levels in the form of turbulent visionary experience. Depending on whether the interactions between the individual and the immediate surroundings lean toward affirmation or invalidation, comprehension of these visions can turn the visionary experience into a step in growth or into a disorder, as an acute psychosis. Based on his clinical and scholarly investigations, John Weir Perry has found and formulated a mental syndrome which, though customarily regarded as acute psychosis, is in actuality a more natural effort of the psyche to mend its imbalances. If the upset is received in the spirit of empathy and understanding, and allowed to run its course, an acute episode can be found to reveal a self-organizing process that has self-healing potential.

The medical model of handling the acute "psychotic" episode comes under the classification of what is known as "treatment," which implies doing something to the patients to relieve them of their symptoms, even to cure them. The alternative paradigm I am proposing is based on the concept of a "therapy" that gives respectful heed to the psychic process underlying the symptoms.

The original meaning of the Greek word therapeia was a "waiting upon" or a "service done" to the gods, with implications of tending, nurturing, caring and being an attendant; in time the word was applied to medical care. The original connotation is pertinent to the handling of acute "psychotic" episodes, since the persons going through them are in a state of being overwhelmed by images of gods and other mythic elements. Hence a therapist does well to "be an attendant" (therapeutes) upon these mythic images so as to foster their work. "Treatment" strives to stop what is happening, while "therapy" attempts to move with the underlying process and help achieve the creative aim implicit in it.

Visionary experiences of various kinds, including acute episodes, have a tendency to take six weeks to accomplish their inner aims. It is intriguing to reflect on the connotations of this, for this number is recognizable as forty days, with all this time’s connotations. Pacing is an important phenomenon that invites our scrutiny. Our experience indicates that in the acute episode the more floridly disturbed the persons are, the more rapidly they move through it. Intensity seems to correlate directly with favorable outcome. The persons who are frightened, overwhelmed with imagery, and engrossed in their preoccupations are the ones most likely to have a favorable inner experience, from which they emerge with significant change.

When we admit individuals who are at the very onset of their episode and again, at the height of their disordered state, they may be fragmented, often mute, with scattered bits of ideation passing across the mental stage. At this phase of the process the mental content is a hodgepodge and the ego has quit the field, lost in the deep interiors of the psyche. Listening to an individual at this time gives kaleidoscopic glimpses of mythic themes that often leave the listener bewildered. Yet if we sit quietly and attentively with a person in this state for only two or three times, we may find the fragments coalescing into a story that gradually begins to move forward.

Source: Trials of the Visionary Mind

Episode 4: Projection, Shadow, Anima & Animus

2009-01-30T16:58:00.000-08:00

The schizophrenic confrontation with the unconscious lacks the mediation of the anima...

- Rob Couteau

Image Source: Major Archetypes & The Individuation Process

EPISODE 4: PROJECTION, SHADOW, ANIMA & ANIMUS

In this episode, I review the concept of projection and examine three core archetypes of the psyche, that of the Shadow, the Anima, and the Animus. The Shadow is all that we dislike about ourselves or wish others not to see. It is the repository of the aspects of myself that I hide from others. The Anima and Animus are critical mediators in the psyche, between the inner or unconscious world and the ego. Both are contrasexual archetypes, with the Anima existing in men and the Animus existing in women. The psychodynamic process of projection is explained as it is this very process that is necessary for the psyche to interact between the inner world that is projected and the outer world that we project onto.

© John Betts

Projection: To understand the concept of projection I'll use an example that most readers should be able to easily identify with. Imagine that I am an individual who has never known someone who carries the diagnosis of schizophrenia. As a result, I'm largely ignorant of the realities but I may have read some stories in the newspapers and seen some movies about "crazy people" so I have some ideas and beliefs about what a "schizophrenic" is.

Now, imagine that you introduce yourself to me and you note that you are a "schizophrenic". At this point, chances are very good that you will trigger the image I carry within me. This image of my creation now comes to life and stands between us. I no longer see you, I only see my image, my perception of what a "schizophrenic" is and this is what I relate to instead of who you really are. I am engaged in the psychological act of projecting.

For the "schizophrenic," projection is more commonly experienced as stigma however projections can be positive as well as negative. For example, the idea that all schizophrenics are violent is a negative projection; the idea that schizophrenics might be gifted in some manner is a positive projection. In order for a projection to be held in place there must be some common ground between the image I project and the person I project it upon. The common ground serves as a "hook" to hold my projection in place. In this case, the "hook" would be your admission that you are "schizophrenic".

A more classical definition would be: Projection is the operation whereby qualities, feelings, wishes or even objects which the subject refuses to recognize or rejects in himself are expelled from the self and located in another person or thing. Whatever is expelled is unconscious. Typically, we are not aware that we are projecting when we do it. Anima and animus projections are carried by real people. Likewise, shadow content is typically projected upon people or other objects. For anything of value to be gained it we need to be able to recognize when we are projecting. When we begin to withdraw our projections, we begin to see the other for who they really are.

Shadow: The shadow serves as the repository for the negative or unpleasant side of our psyche. This is the archetype we encounter early on in analysis (or psychosis). Until we come to terms with the shadow we are at great risk of projecting our shadow onto others or to become possessed by it and act it out our shadow through cruel or inhumane acts.

Try this exercise: Think of someone of the same gender, someone you dislike. (If you can't think of anyone in your social circle you dislike, think of a celebrity or political figure.) Someone whose habits, behaviors and attitudes are quite disgusting to you. Now, list the qualities they have that you dislike. Perhaps they are selfish, or gossipy, or vindictive, or always late. The person you described is a living embodiment of your shadow and the qualities you dislike about them so much are the qualities of your own that you have disowned. "You have met your shadow and it is you."

Though the shadow is a motif as well known to mythology as anima and animus, it represents first and foremost, the personal unconscious and it's contents can therefore be made conscious without too much difficulty. However, when the shadow appears as an archetype, one encounters the same difficulties as with anima and animus; it is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognize the relatively evil side of his nature but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil.

We can think of the shadow as being like a complex comprised of three layers, much like an onion. The outer layer refers to the personal shadow, the middle layer is the cultural shadow, and the central core is the archetypal shadow. We know this archetype well. For example, within the Christian religion, the devil represents the archetypal shadow. Occasionally, individuals may become associated with the archetypal shadow because they unleashed immense forces of evil. Hitler or Stalin are two such examples. If we are conscious of our shadow, we are far less prone to project our shadow onto others or to become possessed by the shadow and thereby commit cruel or evil acts.

The Anima & Animus: The inner figure of woman held by a man (anima) and the figure of man at work in a woman's psyche (animus). Don't make the common mistake of thinking they both exist in a man or woman. They are archetypal images and are typically unconscious. Both are vital to the psyche's healthy functioning but because they are unconscious they are prone to projection. The anima & animus act as "guides to soul". As personified components of psyche they connect and involve us with life.

Males project their inner anima onto women; females project their inner animus onto men. People may also become possessed by their anima or animus in such a way as to give prominence to those traits which are seen as psychologically characteristic of the opposite sex. For example, a man may become moody, sentimental, or tempermental. A woman may become ruthless, domineering, or obstinate. There is a risk that the ego stance will become one-sided.

Try this exercise: Think of your ideal partner. What would they look like? How tall are they? What are their physical characteristics? How do they behave? What do they do for a living? Are they protective or dominant or more submissive? Are they nurturing and communicative or silent and deep? What kind of mother/father would they be? These images are personifications of your personal anima and animus.

See also:

Carl Jung: Quotes on the Shadow

Meeting Darkness on the Path (Layers of Shadow)

The Individuation Process: The Shadow

The Anima & Animus

Episode 3: Model of the Psyche - Part II

2009-01-30T16:28:00.001-08:00

EPISODE 3: JUNG’S MODEL OF THE PSYCHE - PART II

In this episode, Jung’s model of the psyche is expanded on, and includes the introduction of basic psychodynamic terms used in the model. These terms assist us in understanding how the structures of the psyche introduced in the previous episode inter-relate. Central psychodynamics such as the process of compensation and teleology are introduced. The central organising principle or archetype of the psyche is briefly described. Examples are provided that assist the student to understand why Jung spoke of a one-sided ego stance and how this stance relates to the development of disorders such as clinical depression. An overview is provided of Jung’s use of the term “psychic energy” and how an understanding of this principle enlarges our ability to appreciate the psychodynamics at play in the psyche.

© John Betts

Compensation: Compensation means balancing, adjusting, and supplementing. The compensatory function balances any tendency towards one-sidedness on the part of consciousness. All aspects of the psyche are involved in a dynamic relationship with one another. Think of the psyche as a very involved system, such as the traffic pattern in a busy city. We know that if something happens further down the road such as a truck going off the road, that will impact the traffic flow long before we arrive at the accident location. If we were able to see the bigger picture, we would adjust our trip to account for the traffic jam further ahead. In a similar manner, the psyche as a system is constantly striving to balance itself as it adjusts to the demands from the inner and outer worlds. In other words, the unconscious compensates for the limited perspective of the conscious ego.

One-sided ego stance: A one-sided conscious stance creates a necessary but painful response from the unconscious that seeps through to all layers of the psyche. The psyche, in its wisdom, knows that a person cannot live a one-sided life so it directs your attention to the neglected area through a response such as depression. This is an example of compensation. (Note: Examples are given of an individual in an mid-life crisis. It's been my own observation that psychosis is more likely to occur during transition points in an individual's life when their sense of self-identity is already in a flux and therefore, a weakened position. This includes the transition from childhood to adolescence; from adolescence to adulthood, and; the midlife transition.)

Teleology: This refers to a process that is directed towards ends rather than causes. It is here that Jung diverges from Freud's classic psychoanalysis which relies on a reductive approach such as, what occurred in your past that produced the current events. Jung's teleological approach goes one step further and also asks, What is this current process trying to lead you towards? In clinical work we have to deal with the reductive aspects of the work first, but then we need to go one step further and ask, Where are you going to end up if you work this piece out? We can understand that there is some system within the psyche that direct what happens and may produce suffering as a means of addressing deeper suffering of the psyche and that this entire process is directed toward some end position or situation.

The Self: This is the central organizing archetype and is usually written with a capital S. Think of the Self as the organizing archetype that regulates all the other archetypes and the rest of the psyche. The goal of this regulatory process is for the individual to confront the contents of the unconscious. The Self is an archetypal image of man's fullest potential and the unity of the personality as a whole. The Self as a unifying principle within the human psyche occupies the central position of authority in relation to psychological life and therefore, the destiny of the individual. The psyche has an inner wisdom; this wisdom arises from the Self.

Ego-Self-axis: Imagine that we begin life with a body and contained in that body is the Self. This is all that exists of the psyche until it differentiates out as we encounter the environment. Within the first few months of our lives a small ego begins to emerge from the Self. Over time, this ego gains in strength and becomes a separate entity within the psyche. We can imagine the Self as a sphere and the ego as a smaller sphere outside of the Self. We can draw a line from the center of these two spheres, joining them. This line represents the ego-Self axis.

This diagram represents the development of the ego-Self axis (the perpendicular line). At first the ego exists only in potentia as a component of the Self. As development proceeds from this first bio-survival program, through the emotional-territorial, semantic and then socio-sexual programs, the ego gradually differentiates out from the Self, connected by the ego-Self axis - the vital link which sustains the integrity of the personality. The fifth element illustrates a mind-body split, where the ego has lost touch with its physical roots and the axis disintegrates.

Source: The Genetic Self

When the axis disintegrates, the ego loses touch with the Self and the deeper symbolic riches of the unconscious...

Over half a century ago in Küsnacht, Switzerland, the psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung came to feel that psychological health is a dynamic, on-going process of personal development into greater maturity and spiritual awareness. This process – which he called individuation – is, he said, nourished by a continuous flow of symbolic insights transmitted from the unconscious Self to the conscious Ego, in a variety of ways including dreams, insight, and flashes of intuition. Should this inner communication flow get blocked for any reason, one may find oneself increasingly frustrated, for the simple reason that one has lost touch with the built-in guiding system of one's deeper Self.

In Jung's view, if such a blockage persists in time, one becomes alienated – in the sense that one may no longer be able to use the considerable resources of one's innate common sense to adapt effectively to one's social environment. Alienation, of course, also happens on a collective level within the family, society, and civilisation, in which case the context one may have trouble adapting to includes not only the social, but the ecological environment as well. Whether individual or collective, a chronic blockage of the psyche's inner communications process may lead beyond a mere sense of ennui, and eventually jeopardise the ability to be responsible for one's health and survival.

Source: The Inner Apocalypse

Image Source: Ego & Archetype

As we develop, our ego gains ascendancy in the psyche and consciousness becomes the primary goal. This is the result of pushing ourselves harder in the ego-based world to achieve more, accumulate more and become more powerful. All the while, the Self is attempting to regulate the psyche through compensation.

Psychic energy: Psychic energy or libido can be thought of simply as the energy involved in the psychodynamics of the psyche. Core principals of psychic energy:
- neutral: not exclusively sexual
- indestructible: it cannot be destroyed, only transformed into another state in the psyche
- follows a gradient: can move from a position of high intensity to lower intensity
- has an energetic amount or value: we can theoretically imagine an assigned value
- has a potential:
- can be blocked or channeled: blocked energy can be rechanneled
- obeys the laws of conservation and thermodynamics:
- involves both causality and finality: All psychic energy is directed towards a particular endpoint
- originates in the unconscious: all psychic energy comes from within the unconscious
- can progress and regress: regression can be seen as a build up of psychic energy

What is Schizophrenia?

2009-01-30T16:06:00.000-08:00

What is Schizophrenia?
A good question, with no simple, short, or straightforward answer, since each sufferer is unique and schizophrenia is a complex phenomenon. In general, schizophrenia is an extremely introverted, psychospiritual mode of perception, or way of relating to the world; or state of consciousness involving (what I have called) 'extreme empathy'.

This simultaneous blessing and curse is due to a fragile, fragmented, dead, or lost ego, or conscious personality structure. The normal, ego-enforced boundaries between the self and the world have broken down, such that schizophrenia sufferers - for better and worse - find themselves identifying with everything within their scope of perception. It is because of this ego loss, or 'dis-integration' that psychosis, shamanic initiation and mystical experience are so inextricably bound. The schizophrenic person may appear to family, friends and doctors to be lacking in emotion, but in reality is in a state of intense empathy, such that extreme sensations of joy and fear are usual.

Because of their fragile personal boundaries, schizophrenic folk typically see, hear, sense, perceive and understand things that others are unaware of. Secret, or symbolic meanings are seen and heard in everything, and the schizophrenia sufferer typically feels responsible for the fate of the world.

Is Schizophrenia 'Split Personality'?
Yes ... and No! Imagine, if you will, that a 3-levelled house represents the structure of the psyche. The top floor, consisting of various linked rooms, represents consciousness, in all its bustling, interacting complexity. Immediately below is the cellar, which represents the personal unconscious, or dark 'shadow' side of the personality. The lowest level, the basement, is the oldest part of the house and contains dim, godlike and archaic figures, personifications of what Jung called 'archetypes', universally occurring, powerful energies and forms of behaviour and thought, which make up what Jung called the 'collective unconscious', and which often take on mythological, religious, semi-human, divine, animal or natural forms.

What we call 'split personality' involves the conscious personality forming split off, distinctly separate personalities, so it's as if the upper floor rooms become completely isolated from each other, their doors all locked. A good example was portrayed in the movie "The Three Faces of Eve", where Eve's conscious personality consisted of a demure, moral personality, who called herself Eve White, coexisting - and juggling for supremacy - with a completely independent, brazen and promiscuous alter ego, Eve Black. Eventually, Eve resolved the split through the emergence of a third 'compromise', who combined the traits of the other two into the more healthily balanced Eve Grey. Similarly, in the recent Jim Carrey movie, "Me, Myself & Irene", Carrey portrayed a Jekyll and Hyde split personality (wrongly called 'schizo' in the film), where an overly 'nice' and law-abiding guy lets loose his devilish alter ego, or (what Jung called) his repressed 'shadow' side.

With a schizophrenic split, or fragmentation, however, it's as if the house's floorboards (foundations of the conscious personality) are split, or shattered as invading archetypal figures from the basement rush up to inhabit, or displace the upstairs (conscious) inhabitants. As Jung notes, whereas the healthy person's ego (conscious self) is the subject of his/her experiences, the schizophrenic person's ego is (therefore) only one of several subjects. The nature of the schizophrenic 'split' (which I've called 'split subjectivity') in other words, arises from the splitting of the archetypes of the collective unconscious into a multitude of figures that invade, or usurp the weaker and far more fragile conscious personality. It's a bit like a swimming pool trying to contain the ocean!

Source: Dr. Maureen Roberts: Schizophrenia - The Soul in Crisis

When is a Schizophrenic no longer a "Schizophrenic"?

2009-01-30T15:42:00.000-08:00

A schizophrenic is no longer schizophrenic...
when he feels understood by someone else.

- Carl Jung

Image Source: Major Archetypes & The Individuation Process

MICHAEL O'CALLAGHAN: How does one define so-called schizophrenia?

JOHN WEIR PERRY: Jung defined it most succinctly. He said...

"Schizophrenia is a condition in which the dream takes the place of reality." This means that the unconscious overwhelms the ego-consciousness, overwhelms the field of awareness with contents from the deepest unconscious, which take mythic, symbolic form. And the emotions, unless they're hidden, are quite mythic too. To a careful observer, they're quite appropriate to the situation at hand.

The way "schizophrenia" unfolds is that, in a situation of personal crisis, all the psyche's energy is sucked back out of the personal, conscious area, into what we call the archetypal area. Mythic contents thus emerge from the deepest level of the psyche, in order to re-organise the Self. In so doing, the person feels himself withdrawing from the ordinary surroundings, and becomes quite isolated in this dream state.

Source: When the Dream Becomes Real [PDF File]

Marek: A Story About Schizophrenia

2009-01-30T14:59:00.000-08:00

I thought I would pass on the story of a very human being who was diagnosed with schizophrenia. I wandered into this individual's blog in mid-January, 2006. I thought he was very funny. As I read more, I thought he was a talented poet and writer -- somewhat jaded and cynical -- yet also compassionate, kind, empathic, and very wounded. Where others saw "a schizoprenic" I saw "a mystic".

He has been willing to share his story for the sake of other people out there who have been diagnosed with a form of "mental illness" and has consented to allow me to respectfully share his story with others too. I trust that anyone who reads his story here will extend that same respect to him.

Marek...

I wanted to share a story with all of you about the day I first recognized that having a “mental illness” meant that I would not be accepted as an intelligent human being capable of contributing to this world and worthy of the basic respect that any person should be afforded.

I went to my first psychiatric consultation six years ago. I, of course, should have been in therapy much sooner but did not realize the extent of my illness or the fact that I was even ill at all until that time.

I had to first consult with a primary caregiver due to the regulations dictated by my insurance plan. This meant that I had to first see my general practitioner and he would then send me to a specialist if required.

I recall making a list of things that had been disturbing me. Things that I did not necessarily feel were unusual but felt they were causing me great distress nonetheless. Things such as hearing voices. At the time, I didn’t realize that hearing voices was unusual. I thought everyone heard them. I just felt distressed by the things that they were saying and by the number of voices there were altogether. At its worst, it was like being in a crowded room where everyone was talking to each other and I would think I would hear my name being called but could not make out any of the other words. It became noise. Overwhelming noise.

I also had begun to take an enormous amount of over-the-counter antihistamines that seemed to help reduce some of my anxiety but they did cause my heart to race.

I mailed my list to my doctor prior to my visit. I knew that, by the time my visit would finally take place, I may not have the desire or ability to speak candidly with him.

When I arrived in his office, he asked me what had been bothering me. I mentioned the letter that I had mailed to his office and much to my disappointment, he had not read it. He quickly left the room and retrieved the letter from the front desk, where it had apparently been for several weeks.

I watched as he read quickly through the letter and he was obviously disturbed by what he had read. He wasted no time in telling me that he would refer me to a psychiatrist as the whole “antihistamine” thing bothered him.

I did later see the psychiatrist and that will no doubt be the subject of many upcoming blogs. But what I found distressing was how my relationship with this doctor had been irreparably changed.

I saw him many months later, as I was visiting someone in hospital. I approached him and said hello as I was genuinely pleased to see him. My pleasure soon faded as I realized that he was very uncomfortable in my presence. It was at that moment, I realized he would have rathered I had been a drug addict or a wife beater than the person who was standing before him.

That day, I went home and cried.

© Marek

That entry was made in September, 2005. In March of 2006, Marek made a new entry in which he stated: I am no longer disOrdered. What occurred between September 2005 and March 2006 is a story unto itself.

How it all began...

2009-01-30T12:54:00.000-08:00

Jung concluded that every person has a story.
When derangement occurs, it is because the
personal story has been denied or rejected.
Healing and integration comes
when the person discovers or rediscovers
his or her own personal story.

My experience of psychosis (what I prefer to call an altered state of consciousness or a "fragmentation crisis") can be loosely categorized into five stages, each of them referring to a different ego state.

Stage 1: Ego Softening
This stage was marked by a phase in tremendous personal growth. Life had placed me in a new environment, one that was enlivening and challenging. It had also brought new people into my life, people who were very different from myself. I fell in love -- with my new environment, with the new friends I'd made, and with the new opportunities for change and growth that were being presented to me. This phase lasted approximately two years and there was nothing psychotic about it. It's quite likely that if what happened next hadn't happened, I would have happily moved on in my life, transitioning easily into midlife.

Stage 2: Ego Blows
This stage marked the beginning of psychosis and lasted approximately ten months. It began when my mother died. Within a few days of her death I encountered someone who frightened me and I couldn't figure out why. Two weeks later, I lost my closest friend. I believe these events effectively produced "cracks" within my egoic structure (already "thinned" as a result of the first stage), thereby allowing unconscious content to begin to "leak" through.

At that time, I heard a song by the Canadian group, Blue Rodeo. The song was called, Underground and it captured my attention in a manner that wouldn't allow me to shake it...

There's a way I've been told, if we walk together
it keeps us from this cold
On the sidewalks of these streets, lie the broken dreams
scattered at our feet

Lead me on, I don't mind
I'll come forward, laughing every time
All my friends, they've gone underground
Go underground

There's a shadow on this land, a growing darkness
A cruel and senseless hand
This block won't be the same, now, the music's there
but somehow, something's changed

Lead me on, I don't mind
I'll come forward, laughing every time
All my friends, they've gone underground
Go underground

There's a song that I've heard, rising up above
the streets of this crumbling world
'Bout the sadness in every day
How it leaves and takes a bit of your faith away

Lead me on, I don't mind
I'll come forward, laughing every time
All my friends, they've gone underground
Go underground

I got burned, left too quick
Got myself caught outside the heart of it
All my friends, they've gone underground
Go underground

Blue Rodeo - Underground

That song was accompanied by an intense level of fear; fear that made no sense to me so, like the song, I pushed it away.

Within a schizophrenic model, this stage would correlate with a prodromal phase. Over the course of the next ten months, other songs, poetry, and passages of prose would also capture my attention in a most intense manner. I would pore over those poems or listen to those songs, over and over again, but I didn't know why I felt so drawn to them.

A few other oddities were also occurring during this phase. First, I was becoming increasingly captivated by my interior life. Secondly, I was beginning to associate specific friends with my family of origin. For example, the friend I had lost had been 'like a brother to me'. Other friends corresponded with an older sister, or a younger sibling. Third, a few close friends and I had taken to playing the equivalent of some online games. One of our online personalities was "God" and we briefly took turns playing the role and feeling somewhat scandalous for doing so. I was also grieving the loss of my mother and my friend, both of whom had served as confidantes to me. I began to experience a number of nightmares during this phase -- something I had not been plagued by since childhood -- but these too seemed out of place and disconnected from my ordinary waking reality.

I recall during this phase too, having the equivalent of a vision. The vision was of a beautiful cathedral and initially, I was looking up, up into the chambers that soared far above my head. Then I noticed that the cathedral had been boarded up, from the inside out; layers upon layers upon layers of boards criss-crossed one another and were held in place with nails. At the very center of this haphazard structure was a small opening and huddled in that constricted space was a small figure.

Stage 3: Ego Collapse
This stage was marked by multiple losses as accompanied by trauma. I lost more friends, I lost my community, my marriage was falling apart, people died and I felt I was responsible in some manner for their deaths. So much grief, fear, death. One night was especially agonizing. I felt I died that night but somehow I managed to get up the next day and go through the motions. I continued to go through the motions for four more months until I couldn't keep up the charade any longer and entered a full blown state of altered consciousness -- a space I called "The Story".

... Two streams of thought had emerged: one lead to my past, the other was creating an entire imaginary setting upon the page – an altered state of consciousness. Without being aware that I was doing so I was creating a place of psychological safety for myself. Within that altered space, characters came into play: gods, devils, a kindly and compassionate mentor, a fierce warrior goddess – the real life people I had lost, been with, or been up against, transformed into larger-than-life characters by Story.

Frequently, a third thread would erupt to dangle a clue and beckon me to follow. More often than not that clue came in the form of music, poetry, or a written passage of work that had resonated within me for months without my knowing why. Soon, I wasn’t writing The Story at all. The Story was writing me...

Chapter Excerpt: Miracles

Tess was sitting on the floor, in front of the new coffee table by the fireplace. Upon its surface she had placed the necklace with the heart of gold. Inside the necklace she was arranging the chess pieces. Gallagher came out from the kitchen with a dishtowel over one shoulder and joined her.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"These people," Tess said, "These people inside the circle are important to me." She pointed and named them each in turn: "Me, the Black ViKing, my Friend, Five-Star Woman, Limh, and Skadi." She then placed an amethyst crystal into the circle. "This is my mother," she said. "She's here with me." Tess added a jeweled autumn leaf to the grouping. "This is my father," she said, "Thanksgiving Man. He's here with me too."

She rearranged the necklace into a rectangular shape. "Some of these people are protectors. The protectors go in the corners." Tess then placed the jewelled autumn leaf, amethyst crystal, Black ViKing, and Skadi into one of each of the four corners. "The people that are left in the middle," she said, "They are the ones who are hurting. They are the ones we have to fix." She pointed and named them each in turn: "Me, my Friend, Five-Star Woman, and Limh." She sat back on her haunches and folded her hands into her lap. "There," she sighed with a pleased expression.

Source: Story as a Vehicle of Healing

Music of the Hour: Gallagher's Song

The song above is a "conversation" that took place during that time between "Tess" and "Gallagher". It was when "Gallagher" consented to serve in the role of "therapist".

Stage 4: Ego Death
This point occurred within the experience of The Story. It was the most painful and the most frightening part of that experience. I've since referred to that point as "The place where Time melts" or "Dancing with God". For at least a certain period of time, I did not exist in that space. Then I did, somehow reborn in those moments, and the story moved on to a natural conclusion.

Stage 5: Recovery & Rebuilding
I had no knowledge of Carl Jung or his theories previous to my experience. During The Story a book did come into my hands that spoke of the animus but I didn't know enough to follow up on it further. Nonetheless, I began looking for an understanding of what had happened to me and why it had happened almost as soon as that experience was over. I floundered for a year and only then stumbled across the work of Jungian, John Weir Perry. From that point forward, I had a name and a model for my experience. (Later, I would discover other names and models too.) I've drawn on all those models to understand, interpret and move through that experience of mine and although all of them were helpful, none were as consistently insightful as the work of the Jungians.

I returned to work fourteen months after my experience. I have never been hospitalized, received any form of psychiatric medication, seen a psychiatrist/psychologist or received any degree of formal therapy as a means of understanding or interpreting my experience. I did, however, lean heavily on a very few friends and some kind strangers. I also used the internet to my advantage so I could learn as much as possible about my experience and recovery from same. In the process of searching for my own answers, I've encountered hundreds of other people who have had experiences similar to my own. We have learned from each other. This blog is a continuation of that spirit of sharing.

- January 2009

See also: An Introduction to the Work of Carl Jung

Episode 2: Jung's Model of the Psyche - Part I

2009-01-29T22:22:00.000-08:00

EPISODE 2: JUNG’S MODEL OF THE PSYCHE - PART I

In this episode I cover the fundamental aspects of the psyche and review the core structures associated with each such aspect. Central to the model is an understanding of the topographical notion of the psyche, comprised of three strata, being the conscious, the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious. The structures within each of these strata are the ego, complexes and archetypes respectively. A review is made of what the five core functions of the ego are and how these functions relate to complexes. Complexes are clusters of feeling-toned associations around a common theme. Archetypes are explained, and simply defined as symbol-producing structures in the collective unconscious. Terms such as psyche, the unconscious, the personal unconscious, the collective unconscious are defined. Critical references are recommended for the student of Analytical Psychology, both at a beginner and intermediate level.

© John Betts

To produce a schizophrenic break you need to collapse the ego, preferably as rapidly as possible. There are different ways of defining the ego but I define it thusly: The ego is a structure of the personality that is made up of what we believe to be true about ourselves, others, the world around us, and our place in it. We form these beliefs as based on our relationships, our experiences, the roles we play and the activities we engage in. All of these combined, create our ego -- which is, for most of us, our sense of who we are. I prefer to think of the ego in this regard as the little self.

When the ego collapses, fragments, or disintegrates, archetypal contents flood in from the personal and collective unconscious. Those are Jungian terms and I use them because it's the best model I've found thus far for explaining this experience to others. During psychosis, what is experienced and what is seen by the people around you, are fragments of the collapsed ego (one's shattered sense of self), shadow material (which produces fear, terror, paranoia, shame, etc.), and archetypal material, such as the sense that one is Jesus Christ, or Buddha, or God -- or has just seen one of those figures get into a cab on 49th Street...

Source: How to Produce An Acute Schizophrenic Break

Notes: This podcast is particularly pertinent to those who have experienced psychosis as it may allow them a means of understanding what happened to them on a psychological level and provide a model they can follow as they rebuild their fragmented self. The image shown below is not exactly as suggested in the podcast but it's the closest model I could find.

Image Source: Jungian Models of the Psyche

Psyche: Psyche is the totality of all psychic processes, conscious as well as unconscious plus the body. Consciousness + Unconsciousness + Body = Psyche.

Ego: Without the ego we could not be conscious. The ego is described by Betts as having five functions in Jungian psychology.
1. Stability of Personality: General personality remains reasonably stable over time.
2. Stability of Identity: Sense of self-identity remains stable over time.
3. Cognition: The ability to process information, problem-solve and store memories.
4. Executive functioning: The ability to deal with the everyday demands of the world via sequential thinking.
5. Reality testing: The ability to obey and respect basic laws of reality, such as physical laws.

Personal Unconscious: The personal unconscious is unique to you and contains complexes. Complexes are clusters of feeling-toned associations around a central theme, i.e., money complex, work complex, marriage complex. Complexes can be triggered by a specific thought or event in our environment and then come up from our personal unconscious and cause us to behave in ways that are not typical of our personality. Complexes impact the ego's functioning.

Collective Unconscious: This is a deeply unconscious layer that is common to all humankind. We create symbols every day and are surrounded by a symbol laden world -- these symbolic images are also known as archetypes. An archetype is a symbol producing structure within the psyche. We experience archetypes symbolically, through the images they create. Archetypes can only be "seen" in the behaviors and responses they produce.

The Body: The body serves to express the workings of the psyche through a process called somatization; that is, to make physical what is psychological. For example, if we are nervous about meeting someone new we might experience a pounding heart and sweating palms. Somatization translates our psychological thoughts and emotions into physical responses. Somatization also works to make psychological what is physical. For example, people who have been in car accidents may later have intrusive thoughts and flashbacks. When they recall the trauma of the accident they may re-experience the anxiety or pain they felt in their body at that time, even though the event is long past.

Review: The psyche is comprised of three parts: Consciousness, Personal Unconsciousness and the Collective Unconsciousness (+ the body). Each layer of the psyche contains an inner structure. Consciousness contains the ego; the personal unconscious contains complexes, and; the collective unconsciousness contains archetypes. All three layers exist within the body.

See also:

Recovering Body & Soul from PTSD

Jung Podcasts: Introduction

2009-01-29T21:59:00.000-08:00

As a means of laying a foundation to Jungian thought I'm sharing my notes from a series of free podcasts offered by Jungian analyst, John Betts.

You can find the full list of podcasts and a brief description of each at John's website: John Betts - Jung Podcasts. For your convenience, I'll be linking them as I work through each one myself (Click on the title within the post and a new window should open with the podcast.) Don't be concerned if you need to listen to episodes more than once.

Mr. Bett's has recommended a few specific reference titles which I'll be happy to include in my list of recommended books. In recognition of this blog's readership however -- many of whom may carry a diagnosis of schizophrenia and have very limited incomes -- I'll also be making use of as many free resources as I can find on the net. For example, you can find definitions of key terms here: Daryl Sharp - The Jung Lexicon

I suggest you read through the articles above, reflect on your own experience, and listen to -- at minimum -- Episodes two through six. At that point, you might decide to continue through the full series or possibly, to find an analyst you can personally work with. You should have enough basics in place by then that you could comfortably use many basic terms.

I hope you enjoy the Jung podcasts which have been graciously offered to those interested in Jungian Psychology by Mr. Betts. Please feel free to contact him directly if you feel his efforts have helped you.

EPISODE 1: INTRODUCTION

This series of podcasts concerns Jungian Psychology and starts with an overview of Jung's Psychology and then progresses to greater depths of the model. Features will include Dream Interpretation, Jungian Analysis etc.

© John Betts