The Hope-Despair Rollercoaster

spiritual_emergency · Jan 09, 2011, 01:17 PM

Hello again costello,
I hope you didn't find my posts from yesterday to be too confusing. I can see some of these things quite clearly because I'm seeing them from the inside-out. I understand it can be bewildering for those who are trying to view them from the outside-in.

There are some archetypal themes present in your son's experience that I can see, notably: Masculine/Feminine; Mother/Father; Shadow/Anima. As noted, there may well be more. No matter, the person who is in the best position to determine if Jungian applications will be helpful is your son. Those posts above offer a snapshot of how someone might use a Jungian model to interpret, assimilate and integrate their own experience.

Meantime, to back up to your earlier post yet again...

costello: I'm not sure what he thinks of his experience. He doesn't believe he's ill, and he hates the word schizophrenia. Much of the time he denies there's a problem at all, although he admits that other people perceive him as being mentally ill and that his current life isn't in a very good condition. He also admits he wouldn't be able to live alone right now.

I've yet to speak to anyone who has experienced fragmentation and didn't become aware at some point that "something" was happening. They might not use the labels to describe their own experience that others might say they should but they are very much aware that something unusual or different is happening to/with them. If your son hates the word schizophrenia, chuck it. Find out what his words are for his experience and use those. This helps to place you in his camp as opposed to being on the other shore.

An article I came across this morning captures this shift well...

Quote:

But Pam Polowski, the Alzheimer's Association program specialist for Sarasota County, says Rivera works a kind of magic that is rare in this field.

"One of the things that is really important to know is that we can't drag our dementia patients into our world," Polowski says. "We have to go to their world and join them on that journey. And he gets that."

... dosages of antipsychotic medications have dropped to less than half the state average for this most challenging patient population.

Source: Psychiatrist Tries a Different Approach With Dementia Patients

In terms of my own child, we often referred to their experience as "a personal crisis". This tiny shift in perspective can also have a profound impact upon eventual outcome. After all, people can recover from a personal crisis even if it's difficult but people who end up with a label of "schizophrenic" are repeatedly told (in this culture) that there is no hope of recovery. Some may take that as a challenge that serves to motivate them to prove others wrong, but many others internalize that message of hopelessness and begin to structure their lives to meet those lowered expectations. People around them can do the same.

This is where mentors can become of critical importance. In my own recovery efforts I've been very fortunate to come across a number of individuals who served as mentors to me. For example, reading the stories of people like Dan Fisher, David Lukoff and Rufus May told me that people did recover. In turn, this gave me hope that if others had, I could too. One important point about mentors is they must be self-chosen. If, for example, I feel inspired by Lance Armstrong's battle with cancer and his prowess as an athlete, that's one thing. However, if someone were to say to me, "Lance Armstrong got over his problems," that can feel like a standard I'm expected to measure up to. Lance Armstrong might no longer exist as a source of inspiration, rather, he might become a measure of my own lack.

It might be helpful to encourage your son to sit down and fill in the blanks: Who makes up his personal support team? Who are the professionals he trusts and feels comfortable with? Who are the family members he identifies as helpful and supportive? Who are his mentors? Who are his peers? What does he call his experience and what does he think he might need to be able to move forward in his own life?

One of the values of this kind of exercise is it moves the individual in crisis into an active as opposed to a passive role. It helps move them toward reclaiming their own life.

costello · Jan 10, 2011, 02:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spiritual_emergency

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.

Actually the uncle he's currently delusional about is a different uncle.

costello · Jan 10, 2011, 02:26 PM

Hi Michah: I do make an effort to care for myself. It can be very difficult to find the time. And it's hard to plan when I don't know where my son will be at emotionally at any given moment.

Unfortunately - or maybe fortunately - I come to this task already exhausted. I adopted a troubled teenaged boy in 2004 and he's only recently moved out of my home. I had a few months of blissful peace before my older son needed to come home again.

So my reserves are nearly drained already. I haven't had time to recharge from the previous challenges - which, of course, are still on-going to some minor extent, because he's still my son even though he's moved out.

On the other hand the challenges my younger son brought into my life taught me a lot about both myself and the "systems" surrounding people with psychological problems.

So I come to this task wiser and stronger than I would have been, but also very drained - physically, emotionally, financially - in every way one can be drained really.

costello · Jan 10, 2011, 03:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spiritual_emergency

Hello again costello,
I hope you didn't find my posts from yesterday to be too confusing.

Yes, it's a bit confusing still. I think I'm getting a handle on parts of it, then it slips away.

I will say I do think there are issues with ego fragmentation. At least he seems to rock back and forth between thinking he's worthless and thinking he's the cat's meow.

Quote:

Originally Posted by spiritual_emergency

I've yet to speak to anyone who has experienced fragmentation and didn't become aware at some point that "something" was happening.

I've asked this question a few more times - what do you think is going on with you? Usually I get no answer or, with a great deal of discomfort, he tells me that he doesn't understand what I'm talking about and that I don't know what's going on. (We really are like beings from two different planets trying to converse. This morning he decided to stop talking and started pantomiming.)

One time when I asked him to tell me how he perceived his experience, he gave me this video:

Quote:

Originally Posted by spiritual_emergency

In terms of my own child, we often referred to their experience as "a personal crisis".

I've tried referring to it as crisis, distress, and other terms, but it seems that euphemisms only contribute to the miscommunications between us. He thinks I'm referring to his inner world - which I have very little knowledge or understanding of.

A couple of days ago I spoke to him and he didn't respond, because he was lost in his inner reality. (This happens a lot.) A few seconds later, he seemed to come back to reality and realized I had spoken. He apologized, which he'd never done before, and asked if it was rude to ignore me like that. I told him I knew he was absorbed in something very important right now, so I didn't take offense. Then I went on to add something along the lines of it's normally important to pay attention to the people around him but right now he's pretty distracted. I don't remember my exact words, but he homed in on the world "pay attention to the people around you." He complained that when I said things like that he thought I was referring to his voices and hallucinations.

Quote:

Originally Posted by spiritual_emergency

This tiny shift in perspective can also have a profound impact upon eventual outcome.

No doubt it will. I've always thought that the story you tell yourself about your experience will effect the outcome. And obviously the labels you choose depend on the story you're telling.

Quote:

Originally Posted by spiritual_emergency

One important point about mentors is they must be self-chosen.

Yes. I've found those same people you've mentioned. My son hasn't. And as you say I can't really foist what impresses me onto him with any real hope that it will "stick." Maybe the homeless guy in the video is his hero.

Quote:

Originally Posted by spiritual_emergency

It might be helpful to encourage your son to sit down and fill in the blanks:

I'm going to have to do that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by spiritual_emergency

One of the values of this kind of exercise is it moves the individual in crisis into an active as opposed to a passive role. It helps move them toward reclaiming their own life.

This is the key issue as I see it. It feels like I'm putting out all the effort here. He's waiting, like a baby bird, to have nourishment dropped down his gullet. Or more likely to reject all suggestions as absurd.

On the other hand it could be that he's exerting a kind of energy I don't perceive or understand, and all my fluttering around is wasted energy. He really doesn't want me to supply answers for him.

On the third hand this morning he announced he's moving to Shreveport - which is nowhere near here and where we have no ties (he just thought it sounded "comfortable" just like the other day he thought Avandia sounded like a good medication). He was actually on the Internet trying to figure out how to get transport to Shreveport. It's things like that that make me despair.

spiritual_emergency · 11:54 PM

costello: I've asked this question a few more times - what do you think is going on with you? Usually I get no answer or, with a great deal of discomfort, he tells me that he doesn't understand what I'm talking about and that I don't know what's going on. (We really are like beings from two different planets trying to converse. This morning he decided to stop talking and started pantomiming.)

One time when I asked him to tell me how he perceived his experience, he gave me this video:

I get the feeling you're back to that place of feeling that you can't communicate with him, but very much wanting to find that connection. In the Windhorse article, they talk about the value of "basic attendance". I believe Mosher referred to this as simply, "being with".

Quote:

Genuine Recovery

Restoring personal and social meaning
The process of recovery from mental disorder, or from any life-disrupting situation, can naturally develop if the optimal environmental and interpersonal conditions are provided. Our human body/mind systems are intrinsically oriented toward health and balance, but it is impossible to predict the extent of someone’s future recovery of health.

Any successful treatment begins and ends with the caregiver’s hopeful attitude about the person’s potential for significant recovery. This attitude communicates a sense of trust to the person that his or her experience is valued, can be understood, and can be worked with. The art of basic attendance is to skillfully be with the person with maximal attentiveness and flexibility through the stages of recovery. Experience shows that at some point the person simply begins to respond positively to the healthy environment of the Windhorse team. At Windhorse Community Services, we place a high value on such a positive attitude of hope and workability.

Often the most painful aspect of mental disorder is the person’s sense of loneliness and alienation. One’s basic connection to self and others is in doubt and one ceases to recognize and trust oneself. When a person who is suffering in this way is in an environment that combines attentive care with the companionship of engaging people:

That person can begin to relax and be curious about his or her experience.
He or she can then begin to reconnect with a realistic confidence in his or her mind and actions, which naturally carries over into relating properly to the surroundings.
This process can lead to a renewed appreciation for what one has been through and even forgiveness of oneself.

These gains, combined with abatement of symptoms, are the elements of genuine recovery. Reengagement with a meaningful life is then within reach, which is the ultimate goal of every Windhorse treatment.

Source: Windhorse ~ Basic Attendance

During my child's own experience there were many times I felt that longing to connect as well, to understand intimately, what they were going through, to help them where I could. We did find touchpoints of similarity and I think it was helpful in some ways that I'd had a similar experience. It didn't take me as far as I'd hoped however. I think what really got us through was the ability to stick with each other, to stumble through to the best of our ability, and to have faith in each other.

costello: Maybe the homeless guy in the video is his hero.

Maybe he is. He strikes me as a bit of an underdog -- someone whose cards are stacked against him but he holds one powerful trump card that just might overturn the entire game. Maybe your son does feel like the odds are stacked against him. But if he feels that he just might have it within him to overturn the tables and emerge triumphant after all... I hope he carries that belief close to his heart and allows it to quietly nurture him, possibly for a very long time.

Do you and your son watch movies together? If so, perhaps you could look for some movies that contain underdog themes and then, talk about the movie when it's done. Maybe it will help to build that connection between you.

This is the key issue as I see it. It feels like I'm putting out all the effort here. He's waiting, like a baby bird, to have nourishment dropped down his gullet. Or more likely to reject all suggestions as absurd.

lol! I recall at one point my child saying to me, "I needed you here because I knew you'd understand. You're the best!" It's certainly true that my child's experience restored a large measure of my value in my family's eyes because they were all frightened and suddenly, I was the expert. But, as I also pointed out to my child months later, they had patently rejected every single piece of advice I offered -- so much for the aura of "my expertise".

I wondered if it might have been different if I wasn't their mother and they weren't a young adult trying to forge their own way of being in this world that required them to be separate from "Mother". That is the way of the ego.

For better or worse, my way of responding to them was to "decorate" the environment with books and articles by Perry, Laing, Grof, personal stories of recovery, etc.. I think I may have mentioned that I often left reading material in the bathroom. Sooner or later, everyone gets bored and there's no telling where or when a seed can be planted. No telling when it will sprout either.

There did come a time when my child actively stepped forward and took on the reins of their own recovery. They have done their recovery differently from the way I might have scripted it for them but that's the way recovery has to happen. On our own terms. It can be a long gestation.

~ Namaste

Music of the Hour:

spiritual_emergency · Jan 10, 2011, 11:48 PM

The Development of Ego Consciousness...

Quote:

Psychological Development is the progressive emergence and differentiation of the ego or consciousness from the original state of unconsciousness. It is a process which, ideally, continues throughout the lifetime of the individual. In contradistinction to physical development, there is no time at which one can say that full psychic development has been achieved. Although we may distinguish various stages of development for descriptive purposes, actually one stage merges into another in a single fluid continuum.

In the early phase, the ego has very little autonomy. It is largely in a state of identification with the objective psyche within and the external world without. It lives in the world of archetypes and makes no clear distinction between inner and outer objects. This primitive state of ego development is called, after Lévy-Bruhl, participation mystique, and is shared by both the primitive and the child. It is a state of magical participation and interpretation between the ego and its surroundings. What is ego and what is non-ego are not distinguished. Inner world and outer world are experienced as a single totality. This primitive state of participation mystique is also evident in the phenomena of mob psychology in which individual consciousness and responsibility are temporarily eclipsed by identification with a collective dynamism.

Jung made no effort to present a systematic theory of psychological development. However, some of his followers, especially Neumann, have attempted to fill in this gap. Following Neumann, the stages of psychological development can be described as follows.

The first or original state is called the uroboric stage, derived from uroborus, the circular image of the tail-eating serpent. It refers to the original totality and self-containment which is prior to the birth of consciousness. The ego exists only as a latent potentiality in a state of primary identity with the Self or objective psyche. This state is presumed to pertain during the prenatal period and early infancy.

The transition between this state and the second stage of development corresponds to the creation of the world for the individual psyche. Thus world creation myths refer to this first decisive event in psychic development - the birth of the ego out of the unconscious. The basic theme of all creation myths is separation. Out of undifferentiated wholeness one element is discriminated from another. It may be expressed as the creation of light - the separation of light from darkness, or as the separation of the world parents - the distinction between masculine and feminine, or the emergence of order out of chaos. In each case the meaning is the same, namely, the birth of consciousness, the capacity to discriminate between opposites.

The second stage of psychological development is called the matriarchal phase. Although beginning consciousness has appeared, it is as yet only dim and fitful. The nascent ego is still largely passive and dependent on its uroboric matrix which now takes on the aspect of the great mother. Masculine and feminine elements are not yet clearly differentiated so that the great mother will still be undifferentiated as to sex. To this stage belongs the image of the phallic mother incorporating both masculine and feminine components. Here, the ruling psychic entity is the great mother. The predominant concern will be to seek her nourishment and support and to avoid her destructive, devouring aspect. The father archetype or masculine principle has not yet emerged into separate existence. Mother is still all. The ego has achieved only a precarious separation and is still dependent on the unconscious, which is personified as the great mother. ...

The third stage is called the patriarchal phase. The transition is characterized by particular themes, images and actions. In an attempt to break free from the matriarchal phase, the feminine with all its attributes is rejected and depreciated. The theme of initiation rituals pertains to this period of transition. The father archetype or masculine principle emerges in full force and claims the allegiance of the individual. Tests, challenges, rules and discipline are set up in opposition to the sympathy and comfortable containment of the great mother. The incest taboo is erected prohibiting regression to the mother-bound state.

Once the transition to the patriarchal stage has been accomplished, the archetype of the great father, the masculine spirit principle, determines the values and goals of life. Consciousness, individual responsibility, self-discipline and rationality will be the prevailing values. Everything pertaining to the feminine principle will be repressed, depreciated or subordinated to masculine ends. In childhood development, the patriarchal phase will be particularly evident in the years preceding puberty.

The fourth phase is designated the integrative phase. The preceding patriarchal stage has left the individual one-sided and incomplete. The feminine principle, woman and therefore the anima and the unconscious have been repressed and neglected. Another change or transition is thus needed to redeem these neglected psychic elements.

This transition phase also has its characteristic imagery. The most typical myth is the hero fighting the dragon. In this archetypal story, a beautiful maiden is in captivity to a dragon or monster. The maiden is the anima, the precious but neglected feminine principle which has been rejected and depreciated in the previous patriarchal phase of development. The monster represents the residual uroboric state, the great mother in its destructive, devouring aspect. The anima or feminine value is still attached to this dangerous element and can be freed only by heroic action. The hero represents the necessary ego attitude that is willing to relinquish the safety of the conventional patriarchal standards and expose himself once again to the unconscious, the dangers of regression and bondage to the woman in order to redeem a lost but necessary element, the anima. If this is successful, the anima or feminine principle is raised to its proper value modifying and completing the previous one-sided patriarchal attitude.

This is a decisive step in psychological integration that amounts to a reconciliation of opposites; masculine and feminine, law and love, conscious and unconscious, spirit and nature. In individual development of the youth, this phase corresponds to the emerging capacity to relate to girls during puberty which is subsequently followed by love for a particular woman and eventually marriage.

It should be understood that although these phases of psychic development have been related to various periods in the development of the child and young man, their meaning is not confined to these external events. The end of psychological development is not reached with the event of marriage. Such external happenings are only the external manifestations of an archetypal process of development which still awaits its inner realization. Furthermore, the series of psychological stages here described can be traversed not once but many times in the course of psychic development. These stages are, so to speak, successive way stations that we return to again and again in the course of a spiral journey which takes one over the same course repeatedly but each time on a different level of conscious awareness.*

*The foregoing account of development refers particularly to masculine psychology. Although the same stages of development apply to a woman, they will be experienced in a somewhat different way. Relevant myths are those of Demeter and Persephone and Amor and Psyche. See Neumann's excellent commentary on Amor and Psyche.

Jung's major contribution to developmental psychology is his concept of individuation. The term refers to a developmental process which begins in the adult individual, usually after the age of thirty-five, and if successful leads to the discovery of the Self and the replacing of the ego by it as the personality center.

Individuation is the discovery of and the extended dialogue with the objective psyche of which the Self is the comprehensive expression. It begins with one or more decisive experiences challenging egocentricity and producing an awareness that the ego is subject to a more comprehensive psychic entity. Although the full fruits of the individuation process only appear in the second half of life, the evolving relation between the ego and the objective psyche is a continuous one from birth to death.

Source: An Outline of Analytical Psychology: http://www.capt.org/using-type/c-g-jung.htm

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