A
Apotheosis
Guest
The health of psychosis:
What about psychosis, the most extreme and bizarre of “mental illnesses”? The key symptoms of psychosis are hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech and bizarre behavior such as talking to people who don’t appear to be there. What could be the value of that?
I believe that psychosis is a protective and life-affirming move of the psyche in response to extreme desperation, fear, terror about the prospect of having to live in the real world with real human beings. I’m not the only one. Psychologist John Weir Perry spent lots of time with many people who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. He came to see that state of being as a deeply motivated move by the psyche to reconstitute itself. All of the people he came to know had suffered a severe blow to their self-concept and were experiencing a severe sense of negative self-image. The symptoms of psychosis were a compensating move. In an effort to compensate for a severely debased self-image, the psyche took on the persona of an exalted, powerful figure. Although it can be seen as healthy in the sense that it is more life-affirming than killing oneself or hurting someone else, the discrepancy between the negative self-image in the real world and the exalted figure in the imaginary world sets up an unstable psychic situation full of a sense of unreality and anxiety. Here is Perry’s insight:
“It seems that when the psyche cannot progress further into the next steps of experience so encumbered by this very negative self-image – especially at times of great crises of ebullient falling in love or hurtful falling into rejection – a change is initiated.”
The person’s psychic energy is attracted to the exalted, powerful, capable but unreal, imaginary persona and leaves the higher level, the rational part of the psyche stripped of its usual energy and hence in a state of disorganization.
Perry spent lots of time with a large number (50 or more) of people diagnosed with schizophrenia. He found that their delusions, hallucinations and fantasies had similar themes. People see themselves at the center of things, in a central role, involved in some kind of cosmic conflict, a battle between good and evil, God and the Devil, communism and democracy. They see themselves as having been elevated to divine status, perhaps involved in a sacred marriage with God or spirit. They often feel as if they are being reborn and are participating in the creation of a new society. If they are helped to go through the process, they often find themselves in a more complete, balanced, whole world and are able to come out of it more balanced and whole themselves. Here is Perry again:
“The pre-psychotic make-up, with its assumption of unlovability,…suffers a difficult combination of feelings of crushing insignificance and or superlative prestige-hunger. In other words, the initial tendency of the (exalted, powerful persona) is to prompt the ego to seek out a balm for unacceptability in the form of some absolute mastery. The psychotic process habitually puts this power-oriented form of the self through a transformation that awakens the potentials for relationship and gives them their rightful place in the structure of the personality and in the style of life.”
This makes sense to me. I believe that psychosis is the psyche’s way of protecting itself from having to live in a world full of toxic human beings, a way of avoiding the impossibility of living up to the expectations that have been thrust upon one and of taking on the responsibilities of an adulthood that is way too scary to enter. I’m reminded of psychologist Alice Miller’s dictum that all you have to do create a mentally ill person is two things: first, don’t let them be who they are and, second, when they get angry about that, don’t let them be angry.
Unable and unwilling to live in the real world of real people, the psyche creates its own world and enters into a process of seeking safety, health and wholeness in that imaginary world. I don’t believe people choose this experience. Rather, it is driven by a part of themselves that is much deeper and smarter than their rational side. If they could only use their rational sides, they might kill themselves or others.
I believe all persons who are diagnosed with schizophrenia have been abused, neglected, discounted, dismissed, in some way traumatized in their early lives. It’s significant that the first psychotic break typically occurs just as the person is having to take on the burdens and expectations of adulthood. They are not prepared to do that, are terrified by the prospect, and find a creative way of avoiding it.
Read the rest here.....
http://bipolarblast.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/psychosis-purpose/
What about psychosis, the most extreme and bizarre of “mental illnesses”? The key symptoms of psychosis are hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech and bizarre behavior such as talking to people who don’t appear to be there. What could be the value of that?
I believe that psychosis is a protective and life-affirming move of the psyche in response to extreme desperation, fear, terror about the prospect of having to live in the real world with real human beings. I’m not the only one. Psychologist John Weir Perry spent lots of time with many people who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. He came to see that state of being as a deeply motivated move by the psyche to reconstitute itself. All of the people he came to know had suffered a severe blow to their self-concept and were experiencing a severe sense of negative self-image. The symptoms of psychosis were a compensating move. In an effort to compensate for a severely debased self-image, the psyche took on the persona of an exalted, powerful figure. Although it can be seen as healthy in the sense that it is more life-affirming than killing oneself or hurting someone else, the discrepancy between the negative self-image in the real world and the exalted figure in the imaginary world sets up an unstable psychic situation full of a sense of unreality and anxiety. Here is Perry’s insight:
“It seems that when the psyche cannot progress further into the next steps of experience so encumbered by this very negative self-image – especially at times of great crises of ebullient falling in love or hurtful falling into rejection – a change is initiated.”
The person’s psychic energy is attracted to the exalted, powerful, capable but unreal, imaginary persona and leaves the higher level, the rational part of the psyche stripped of its usual energy and hence in a state of disorganization.
Perry spent lots of time with a large number (50 or more) of people diagnosed with schizophrenia. He found that their delusions, hallucinations and fantasies had similar themes. People see themselves at the center of things, in a central role, involved in some kind of cosmic conflict, a battle between good and evil, God and the Devil, communism and democracy. They see themselves as having been elevated to divine status, perhaps involved in a sacred marriage with God or spirit. They often feel as if they are being reborn and are participating in the creation of a new society. If they are helped to go through the process, they often find themselves in a more complete, balanced, whole world and are able to come out of it more balanced and whole themselves. Here is Perry again:
“The pre-psychotic make-up, with its assumption of unlovability,…suffers a difficult combination of feelings of crushing insignificance and or superlative prestige-hunger. In other words, the initial tendency of the (exalted, powerful persona) is to prompt the ego to seek out a balm for unacceptability in the form of some absolute mastery. The psychotic process habitually puts this power-oriented form of the self through a transformation that awakens the potentials for relationship and gives them their rightful place in the structure of the personality and in the style of life.”
This makes sense to me. I believe that psychosis is the psyche’s way of protecting itself from having to live in a world full of toxic human beings, a way of avoiding the impossibility of living up to the expectations that have been thrust upon one and of taking on the responsibilities of an adulthood that is way too scary to enter. I’m reminded of psychologist Alice Miller’s dictum that all you have to do create a mentally ill person is two things: first, don’t let them be who they are and, second, when they get angry about that, don’t let them be angry.
Unable and unwilling to live in the real world of real people, the psyche creates its own world and enters into a process of seeking safety, health and wholeness in that imaginary world. I don’t believe people choose this experience. Rather, it is driven by a part of themselves that is much deeper and smarter than their rational side. If they could only use their rational sides, they might kill themselves or others.
I believe all persons who are diagnosed with schizophrenia have been abused, neglected, discounted, dismissed, in some way traumatized in their early lives. It’s significant that the first psychotic break typically occurs just as the person is having to take on the burdens and expectations of adulthood. They are not prepared to do that, are terrified by the prospect, and find a creative way of avoiding it.
Read the rest here.....
http://bipolarblast.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/psychosis-purpose/
