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unhappymandi: today i am posting about night vs. day. ... during the day a person is feeling/behaving as if hypomanic, anxious.... and at night it all crashes down and a person experiences mild psychosis and is suicidal for reasons one may call delusional.
Day and night are opposites. Both could be associated with different forms of consciousness; during the day (light) we are "awake" or "conscious"; during the night (dark) we are "asleep" or "unconscious". I believe that my own experience of psychosis was a process in which that which was unconscious (night/dark) in me was brought to consciousness (day/light).
Quite frequently, conscious experiences are thrust into the caregiving of the unconscious because they are too difficult or painful to accept. For this reason, the unconscious (or the night) is also associated with darkness, anxiety and fear.
Without day there would be no night; without night there would be no day. The function of one defines the function of the other. The full expression of one 24 hour period cannot be complete without the expression of both day and night. Wholeness is comprised of the complete expression of the opposites.
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The Theory of Neurosis Revisited
Jung's approach was an entirely different way of understanding neurosis, one that turned previous thinking about mental 'illness' upside down. Jungian analyst Lilian Frey-Rohn describes it in the following way -<blockquote>In contrast to Freud's tracing psychic disease back to a miscarried defense mechanism, Jung primarily had in mind the idea of a personality at variance with itself. ... Neurosis was essentially a phenomenon of dissociation of the personality, an expression of unresolved opposites.
[His] attempt at a new evaluation of neurosis was articulated as early as 1913 when Jung perceived that this disorder was not 'an entirely pathological formation' but contained 'a quite teleological significance,' which very often heralded an attempt at a personal solution of hitherto insoluble problems. Viewed from this finalistic aspect, neurosis represented a miscarried attempt to incorporate the other, unrecognized side of the total personality into conscious life'. (Lilian Frey-Rohn, From Freud to Jung, page 213)</blockquote> Others who came after Jung - like Abraham Maslow - took this approach a step further, attributing to the human being an instinctual urge toward enlightement - or 'self-actualization', as Maslow liked to call it). When satisfaction of this instinct is denied or actively resisted, we make ourselves sick.
Furthermore, the unconscious urge toward enlightenment, upon being banned, continues to seek to manifest itself nonetheless. But now it can only do so in a disguised, roundabout fashion, without the knowledge or the approval of the conscious mind, as 'neurotic' behavior. This is what Freud called the 'return of the repressed'.
From this point of view, the neurotic behavior may even be conceived as an unconscious simulation of the entire self-realization process - enlightenment in a nutshell, as it were. In the neurotic display that arises there is a bifurcation of consciousness into conflicting polar opposites, and these are cleverly juxtaposed in such a way as to achieve a 'reconciliation' of sorts. It is as if the unconscious is subjecting us to a rehearsal for the real thing.
But the neurotic display that it foists on us is, alas, one that is MERELY symbolic. It does not, and by definition cannot, satisfy our most profound need - which is to become FULLY CONSCIOUS of the incommensurable opposites and the manner in which they paradoxically reconcile.
The neurosis does, however, SIMULATE a real solution. And it thereby provides us with a much needed map of sorts. It turns our attention to certain things that we NEED to attend to if we are to succeed in achieving the goal of enlightenment. It grabs our attention in no uncertain terms, by imposing on us an existential conflict or dilemma that aches for a solution.
The riddle that it presents us with is one that is woven into the very fabric of our being. It is not a mere intellectual conundrum, but a LIVED problem that we suffer in an immediate and direct fashion, every day of our lives. And the answer to this riddle is nothing less than a solution to the problem of the opposites - for which the mandala, as we've seen in this series, presents the structural key.
Source: A Path of Realization Perspective
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See also:
[*] The Role of Metaphor
[*] Archetypes & The Individuation Process
[*] When the Dream Becomes Real
PS: I forgot to say, "Hello mandi".