Mental Illness: Mystery or Mis-Story (Fantini 1998)

[Roger Waldram]

The title relates to a workshop I did during my training as a psychotherapist & was the seed for my Doctorate concerning 'Madness' & 'Spiritual Experience'-people have heard or seen things that others don't since the beginning of recorded history.
The answer to 'So what?' is that our individual experience can be seen from different perspectives depending on whose doing the 'seeing' & the stories (meta-narratives' they believe. For example, your experience meets the criteria for a diagnosis of mental illness due to genes, physical abnormality and chemical imbalance so you need, injections, drugs or electro-convulsive therapy. Your 'story' i.e. what happened to you is missed.
Here is a link to a pod-cast (unfortunately only available for a week) & please heed the instruction there to NOT discontinue medication if you are on it!!! http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/ngts/ng...atment-048.mp3

Crikey that's a helluva link-hope it works...It does. John Read the interviewee emphasises the importance of 'informed choice' and relationship-exactly the outcome of my research with mental health professionals like myself who recovered,
All the best,
Roger

[Roger Waldram]

Anomalous Recovery ref.doc

Above is the outcome of that research (The Anomalous Recovery Model) that I hope is of interest-I have posted it already so hope this is not seen as spamming!

The concept of 'transliminality' is well grounded in psychological research-it means to cross a boundary or thresh-hold into another world of experience (Anomalous Experience). That world may feel like or be seen as very different-a symbolic world of spirituality and/or 'madness'. The boundary crossing is usually not chosen-it happens and is very frightening & horrible. (A bit like the Phillip Pullman 'His Dark Materials' Trilogy) However, when the 'crossing' is chosen by means of religious ritual it is wonder-full, drug use is very much more uncertain and therefore risky & not recommended!

In the Diagram above I use circles to indicate stages in the process. Elsewhere I used something of a mixed metaphor by speaking of the 'steps' of a 'bridge' to that different world and the 'recovery' steps to 'normal' reality. I know from some of the meaning given to it that it was not clearly understood. In my next post I will provide a presentation about the 'Worlds' and the Steps that form the Bridges to & fro'.

PS The link above still works & well worth a listen.

[maxitab]

It made sense to me and has been at the back of my mind ever since, especially since i was able to analyse for the first time just what it was about the convent that meant I was so stable there......today have been thinking very seriously about how and where I can achieve those things again....
Thanks.

[Roger Waldram]

It made sense to me and has been at the back of my mind ever since, especially since i was able to analyse for the first time just what it was about the convent that meant I was so stable there......today have been thinking very seriously about how and where I can achieve those things again....
Thanks.

Thanks maxitab. When I was browsing for the presentation in an almost defunct PC (only on 'cos I was hunting for a Microsoft Money file-it's that time in my life when as a self-employed psychotherapist I begin to have hallucinations/visions of Moira Stewart underneath me stairs threatening me with £200 fines if I don't pay me tax by next January!!!), I found the following file that I hope you enjoy reading-I know I did,
Roger

A Conversation With Dr. John Weir Perry.doc

[Roger Waldram]

Bath Presentation.pdf

Above is the presentation I was looking for-it was a pointer to the Anomalous Experience Recovery Model above. They offer a different and valid story or meta-narrative (over-arching theory) to that offered sometimes by the medical model. There are many varied & healthy ways we can change our feelings and experience...

[Roger Waldram]

It made sense to me and has been at the back of my mind ever since, especially since i was able to analyse for the first time just what it was about the convent that meant I was so stable there......today have been thinking very seriously about how and where I can achieve those things again....
Thanks.

Perhaps it provided a Sanctuary for you-a safe place with boundaries, rituals and routines within which we can feel safe. We can perhaps create our own sanctuaries in our own way.

My 'family role' was that of the 'Outsider' and for me to learn to have healthy contact and be 'part of' something was and perhaps still is an upward learning curve. That wonderful, challenging book by Skinner & Cleese called 'Families and How to Survive Them' has hilarious cartoons and quite a lot of wisdom about family 'positions'. In my trainings I've done some funny experiments 'sensing the presence' of others, making first eye-contact, then each saying their name & the other repeating it, then saying the other's name that is then repeated, then moving on. What tends to happen is 'Outsiders' find other 'Outsiders' who when asked to 'pair' with another couple, unerringly find another pair of 'Outsiders'. That happens with the other family roles in my experience also-humans are wonder-full beings and it's so good for us to find our path...

[oneday]

Thanks, Roger, for starting this thread and I was especially pleased to listen to the John Read radio interview - I've read various things by him but never heard him before.

I also like your question about the 'story', the narrative we have about whatever it is that we're struggling with (our 'mental health problems'). I've been thinking a lot about how we understand/tell our stories lately, so it's very timely.

I'll try and come back to this and say more another time, but one thing that's occupying me at the moment is ways that the medical/'mental illness' narrative is and is not - may and may not be - useful to people (and who it's useful to - i.e. those of us to whom this narrative is applied, professionals, people's friends and relatives, the wider society, government, etc).

Anyway, thanks again.

[maxitab]

Me too oneday, as I said at the start of my other journal thread, part of this was prompted by attending a storyteller workshop where we got to start to tell our story without using any medical or self critical or pejorative words......

I am also wondering, do you either know of anywhere, outside of religious communities, that people live as hermits? The more I think about it the more I resonate with a hermetical existence....the only place I know that this takes place today is in communities such as the carmelites or the carthusians. I recently watched 'Into Great Silence' and experienced a profound grief, it felt like a grief for my home.

[cfb107]

Great thread Roger, very thought provoking.

[oneday]

Me too oneday, as I said at the start of my other journal thread, part of this was prompted by attending a storyteller workshop where we got to start to tell our story without using any medical or self critical or pejorative words......

Yes, I remember reading that - probably fed into my preoccupation with the telling of our story thing, and the medical/'mental illness' narrative (and it being just one of the narratives available). I am going to come back to this when I've got time to think it through and research it properly.

I am also wondering, do you either know of anywhere, outside of religious communities, that people live as hermits? The more I think about it the more I resonate with a hermetical existence....the only place I know that this takes place today is in communities such as the carmelites or the carthusians. I recently watched 'Into Great Silence' and experienced a profound grief, it felt like a grief for my home.

I don't know that film - what's it about? - apart from great silence!! (I can Google though)

I hope you don't go off and live as a hermit, maxi - selfish reasons though, I'd miss you here, as would lots of other people too, I know.

Interesting about silence, solitude and all that, though. I was talking to my gf the other morning about a religious retreat place that she, and at different times friends, had gone to stay at (a Catholic place). It was very 'hands-off' apparently - just offered a quiet, supportive place to stay, in beautiful grounds/countryside, with great food, and you could be as involved or not as you wished with the religious side of things (e.g. worship, speaking to a spiritual counsellor). she said they also offered a solitary retreat place (a little hut/couple of rooms away somewhere on the grounds). I also know of Buddhist retreat centres that offer similar places for solitary retreat - a friend I know who is very involved with one Buddhist school, stayed in a solitary retreat caravan at one such centre.

You reminded me, too, of psychotherapist Anthony Storr's book 'Solitude' - you may have read it - I read it some years ago now. I've got a book on my shelf that I only got half-way through in the end: 'Hermits - The Insights of Solitude' by Peter France which touches on all kinds of interesting things/people - the Desert Fathers, Henry Thoreau, Thomas Merton, Ramakrishna and so on.

Also reminded me of Sara Maitland's book: 'A Book of Silence' see: www.saramaitland.com/Silence.html
I've heard her talking about it on the radio and read reviews. I like her - she used to write for Mind's Openmind magazine.

Finally, I was listening to something on the radio about famous women of Norwich the other day. I know you like Julian of Norwich. Wow, didn't those archoresses have a a tough life - walled up in a small cell, people would come and seek their counsel, and the church would bring food and take mass with them, but they'd spend the rest of the time in solitary contemplation and prayer.