Backing up...

costello: He had his first psychotic episode 5 years ago after losing his job. He was 20. The job was working for his uncle, my sister's husband.

This is what I would call an "ego blow". For some people it will only take one blow to produce ego collapse, for others it will take several -- it all depends on where the Achilles of the Heel can be found. A blow dead center will always bring you down. It would seem that your son's experience began with an event that may have seriously challenged his sense of self-identity.

This is a consistent theme among nearly every "schizophrenic" I've spoken with -- something of significance happened first, then they entered into that psychotic state. It is rare that these events are ever addressed by professional caregivers. Rather, their lives become reduced to a state of neurochemical function/dysfunction.

This event still distresses your son. His relationship with his uncle is still estranged although you note that the "voices" he attributes to his uncle do not correspond with how his "uncle" really is.

Backing up again...

costello: When I lay down again, he started crying again, so I walked with him again. After three or four repetitions, he didn't cry again when I lay down. But he just looked at me with those deep eyes as if he were trying to figure out how to communicate ...

I think many of us feel inadequate to the task of mothering when we first set out on that path. It is our desire to do well that makes us into the mothers we become and that desire is captured in the bond you describe above -- that deep, soulful gaze that unfolds between one human being and another.

An individual is born with no sense of separate ego identity. Initially, this arises out of their relationship with their mother. No mother is perfect but if the mother has been, basically, good enough, that fledgling identity will feel, correspondingly, "good enough". It is mother (the Feminine) that shapes much of our inner life. This used to be reflected among social roles wherein women tended the hearth of the home. It was father (the Masculine), that tended to the larger world beyond the border of the front door.

So too, we see the Masculine play a significant role in forging our sense of self-identity with the world beyond the borders of the ego. The father/masculine shapes our relationship with/to the outer world and contributes to the development of the Persona.

Meantime, a quick lesson on projection. Projection is when we take an internal set of images/ideas and project those images onto someone else. If the object of our projection shares some characteristics in common with the content of the project, that will be enough to hold the projection in place. It can be useful to consider "voices, delusions and hallucinations" as a form of projection. In your son's case, his uncle may be the object of the projection. The same thing may be happening here...

costello: He's writing notes to his "gf" - the one who instructed her family to call the police should my son show up at her house again - asking her advice on what he should do with his life.

Here we see the presence of the Feminine. The female co-worker was able to hold the projection because she contained some characteristics in common with his own inner image. Your son's dependency on her might be weakened if he is able to accept that "she" is with him already, as an inner image and function of the deeper psyche.

The content of your son's projections tells us about his own relationship to the archetypes of the Masculine and the Feminine. By examining what these voices have to say or these images symbolize, we can gain a greater understanding into the individual's sense of self-identity and where it is in need of adjustment, re-evaluation, forgiveness, compassion, healing, etc. Traditionally, Shadow content is always of the same gender; the Anima/Animus is the opposite of our external gender.

Your son's self-identity (Persona) was wounded by the event that took place between him and his uncle (the Masculine). This event may have been the initial wounding that created that cycle of disregulation and compensation. This is an injury that can be addressed through psychological measures.


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