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#1
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The following series of posts were written by me elsewhere but I decided to drag them into this space because...
- It may help people who have experienced psychosis to better understand their own experience. - It may help family and friends who are attempting to support someone who has been through psychosis to better understand that experience. The beauty of using a movie to help explain this process is that many people have seen the movie or can easily rent it from their local movie store. Also, even though it may touch on some common ground, it's not my experience or your experience and sometimes it can be easier to speak of such things when there's a bit of distance. In spite of which, any readers should be aware that the film contains some disturbing scenes. I will be using a Jungian method of interpretation so I'll also drag in a few props that can help serve as an introduction to the Jungian model of the psyche. In addition, I'll quote others where it may be helpful and try to leave plenty of links behind that others can follow up on if they wish to know more in that particular area. It will probably take me awhile to construct this thread in its entirety and it might be helpful if no one else posts in it until that is done. If you do have a question of comment, I'll respectfully request that you hold off on it until I can type: THE END. ~ Namaste .
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~ Kindness is cheap. It's unkindness that always demands the highest price. Last edited by spiritual_emergency; Jul 12, 2009 at 12:38 PM. |
#2
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Fight Club...
Quote:
__________________
~ Kindness is cheap. It's unkindness that always demands the highest price. |
#3
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An Introduction to Some Jungian Terms...
I'll try to keep this simple but it will be necessary to grasp some Jungian basics in order to understand this thread. Here's a map to help provide the reader with a snapshot of the big picture... The Persona: For most of us, if were to try and define "who we are" we would present ourselves as our Persona. To a large extent this is the face we present to the world. It is closely related to what we call the ego -- our sense of self-identity. Our sense of self-identity arises out of our relationships with others, the roles we play and our beliefs about ourselves and the world we live in (e.g. wife, father, engineer, Christian, Democrat, easy-going, etc.) This smaller sense of identity is often referred to as the little self in Jungian psychology to differentiate it from the larger Self. The Ego: The ego is more than just our sense of identity; it also serves as a function that separates our Persona from the remainder of the total psyche. As a function, it mediates what will be allowed to pass through from the deeper personal and collective unconscious. The Shadow: This is the place where we store all the ugly, shameful, painful bits. In many instances, the ego will serve to keep aspects of the shadow repressed and out of consciousness, such as a past trauma or an emotion you feel ashamed of. This repressed material may relate to personal experience, cultural experience, or the collective experience of humanity. In spite of the barrier put in place by the ego, the shadow works as a very powerful force in our lives. In some cases, it is possible to become possessed by our shadow. We're going to see evidence of shadow possession in the film. The Anima/Animus: According to Jung, every human being contains an inner being that is opposite to its exterior gender. If you are a male, this inner feminine is referred to as the anima; if you are a female, your inner masculine is referred to as the animus. We most often encounter our own anima or animus in the form of projection although the anima/animus may also make itself known through dream and fantasy. Mana Personality: Mana personalities are very powerful archetypal patterns that are closely aligned with the Self. Historically, priests, shamans, medicine men/women, etc. have been said to represent mana personalities because they possess great, sometimes supernatural knowledge. The Self: We could compare this part of the psyche to the sun at the center of the Universe; all psychic life flows from it -- it is the center of our psychic Universe. However, just as we once believed that the Sun revolved around the Earth, the little self sometimes suffers from the belief that the Self revolves around it! Discovering that our personas/egos are not the center of the Universe can be a very humbling, painful experience and one that most of us would prefer to avoid if at all possible. ================================================= Now, we're going to meet the characters in the film and see where they fit upon the model above.
~*~ With those basics in place we can now turn to the movie itself with Jack serving as the narrator of his own story. Like all stories of this type we should expect that details will be jumbled and muddled together -- not even Jack understands what is happening to him. Some of the most important details are spoken as whispers or offhand comments and it can be easy to miss them but as we move through "his story" we're going to begin to understand that Jack's outer world is reliant upon his inner relationships with his Shadow, Anima and Self... .
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~ Kindness is cheap. It's unkindness that always demands the highest price. |
#4
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Establishing a Timeline: Baseline - Meeting Jack
The movie begins with the end and relies on a number of flashbacks that serve to reconstruct the story of Jack's experience. Once we've seen the movie we can establish that at the beginning, Jack was for all intensive purposes, a "normal" person. We know little of his early life but we do learn that his father abandoned the family when Jack was quite young. Later in the film Tyler remarks that fathers are like Gods and if our fathers abandoned us, then what does that say about God? We can surmise that Jack lacked a father role model in his formative years and further speculate that his mother may have tried to take this on. This may have produced a double form of abandonment if the dual roles of nurturer/provider left his mother with little time to give to Jack. None of this would necessarily be enough to produce significant trauma but like Achilles and his heel, it may have left Jack with a weak spot in the shielding armor of his persona/personality development. Jack describes himself as a "30 year-old boy" who is a "slave to his IKEA nesting instinct". Jack displays his home to the viewer, including the cost of each item. At one point he ponders, "Which dining room table best represents who I am?" Within a Jungian framework it's important to understand that a house/home serves as a symbol of the self. In displaying his home to the viewer, Jack is also displaying the image he has carefully crafted and invested in. It's a nice home: Clean, straight, orderly, well-orchestrated and magazine-perfect to the point of near sterility. Jack also laments the materialization and consumer mindset of modern life, suggesting that mass marketing and commercialization is due to soon move into the outer limits of the larger universe -- Starbucks billboards on the moon. Jack sees the shallowness and lack of purpose in his life. This creates a sense of emptiness in him with an accompanying hunger for something more meaningful. This makes Jack discontent and perhaps ripe for a life crisis, but it doesn't make him schizophrenic. Meantime, Jack also has a job -- working for a large automobile manufacturer. In a later scene in the film we see Jack surveying a car made by the company he works for. The car had been involved in a horrifying crash and an entire family had burned to death in the interior as a result of a suspected manufacturing fault. Jack lingers over key details of their final anguished moments. As an employee, it's Jack's task to assess whether it will cost the company more to issue a recall and fix the fault than it will to settle with the grieving family members of the people who die in their faulty vehicles; an impartial mathematical formula is imposed to determine the value of human life. We should not overlook that as a result of it's prestige and power, the auto manufacter serves as a patriarchal authority figure with the apparent ability to determine the worth of human life. We could easily imagine Tyler's voice here: Fathers are like Gods and if our fathers abandoned us, then what does that say about God? In most every individual I've encountered since my own experience there has nearly always been a triggering event or series thereof that seems to precede the fragmentation crisis. In Jack's case, the trauma of seeing that car, identifying with the anguish of the human family it once contained, and the impartial regard for human life exhibited by the patriarchal authority figure of his employer seems to have served as the triggering event that foreshadowed the collapse of his ego... See also: Spirituality & Trauma .
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~ Kindness is cheap. It's unkindness that always demands the highest price. |
#5
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Stage One: Egoic Breakdown
Jack begins to have difficulty sleeping. He goes to see a doctor and begs him for some medication that would allow him to get a good night's rest but the doctor, almost coldly in retrospect, dismisses him with the admonishment that he should seek out natural sources of aid. It's important to know that sleep deprivation is associated with psychotic states of consciousness and it's here that we begin to see evidence that Jack's ego is breaking down. This stage would correspond with the 'prodromal' phase of a schizophrenic breakdown/fragmentation crisis. As the Ego begins to break down under the stress and strain experienced by the Persona it seems to lose the ability to serve as a filter or container to the contents of the unconscious, which now begin to break through. The astute observer will first see Tyler appear for just a flash of a second when Jack is standing next to the photocopier at work. In my own case, this was when music or select stages of prose suddenly became of critical importance. I've speculated that people who experience "thought insertion" may be undergoing a similar process as thoughts and beliefs which are alien and do not seem to belong to them are thrust into their consciousness without their conscious consent for a seemingly inexplicable purpose. Quote:
Jack is exhausted and this exhaustion is further hampered by the travel schedule imposed on him by his employer. He complains that he wakes up in strange places, no longer being certain even of the time-zone he is in. Jack's ego barriers are swiftly eroding; as they do so, his inner and outer realities begin to blend and become indistinguishable. At some point during his travels Jack falls asleep and has a nightmare that the plane is crashing. Intense fear seems to belong to this stage, as if the ego senses the risk of fragmentation and the potential for collapse. Jack also seems to understand that something is wrong and perhaps fueled by a desire to find some relief and as a result of the former doctor's haphazard suggestion that 'real pain' can be found among sufferers of testicular cancer, Jack heads out to attend his first support group meeting. He is looking for answers. Tyler also appears as a flash upon the screen, his arm around the faciliator's shoulders. It's here that Jack (Persona/Ego) first meets Bob (Mana Personality) and he doesn't yet consciously know it, but his answers have begun to come because Bob serves as a representative of the Self... .
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~ Kindness is cheap. It's unkindness that always demands the highest price. |
#6
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Stage Two: Ego Collapse
It's on a flight that Jack first encounters his Shadow, face-to-face... Quote:
Something of great significance happens after this meeting. Jack returns to his apartment complex to discover that his home has been completely destroyed as the result of an explosion that we later discover, Tyler played a role in creating. This explosive scene demonstrates the enormity of force involved in a fragmentation crisis. In a later scene with one of the investigative officers Jack relays to us just how devastating this moment was to him: That wasn't just a bunch of stuff that got destroyed. That was ME! Jack may have been "going crazy" previous to this point but he is now fully psychotic because his sense of self-identity (symbolized by his home) has been completely destroyed. It's here that Tyler steps in to take control and it's also here that we begin to see the elements of larger culture reflected in Jack's personal experience of ego fragmentation... Quote:
See also: The Inner Apocalypse .
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~ Kindness is cheap. It's unkindness that always demands the highest price. |
#7
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Stage Three: Psychosis - Entering the Land of the Unconscious: The Shadow
The house that Tyler takes Jack to serves as the now devastated symbol of his known self. It's dark, dank, dilapidated, desolate -- much like Jack's worldview which is now filtered through the perspective of his Shadow. It's here that Jack's repressed rage, shame, pain, fear, shame and other negative emotions begin to exercise themselves. In the case of Fight Club we also see a cultural component, which is not necessarily going to play a role in every schizophrenic breakdown. Quote:
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Individuals who have experienced a fragmentation crisis seem to also experience a great deal of shadow material on a personal, cultural, historic and even, cosmic level. See also: .
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~ Kindness is cheap. It's unkindness that always demands the highest price. Last edited by spiritual_emergency; Jul 12, 2009 at 05:34 PM. |
#8
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If I was to end this thread right here, I'd probably have already covered the majority of complaints and symptoms associated with a fragmentation crisis: Triggering events, ego breakdown, shadow material, ego collapse. It's usually something that happens in those stages that prompts you or others to make a trip to the nearest ER with you in tow. At that point, you'll probably be given medication that will halt, slow, or numb the experience from progressing any further. The experience will likely have been so painful and terrifying you might prefer to never think of it again. It's possible there will have been flashes of the deeper psyche coming through but chances are you won't understand them and no one around you will understand them either so you'll put the experience behind you, take your meds, and try to get back to the life you once had.
In some individuals however, the process carries on or goes deeper; that's certainly the case with Jack. So, I'll continue in that theme... .
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~ Kindness is cheap. It's unkindness that always demands the highest price. |
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Stage Three: Psychosis - Entering the Land of the Unconscious: The Anima/Animus
Like Tyler (Shadow), Marla (Anima) seems to refer to an interior figure and not a "real" person. Jack first encounters her at the support group for men with testicular cancer. Like Jack, Marla is making the rounds of support groups. Initially, he despises her and can easily find fault in her for his own actions. He comments: Marla, that faker! If I really did have a tumor, I'd name it Marla! Quote:
Marla is Jack's anima. It's fitting that Jack would not meet her until after he had met Bob and found the opportunity to reconnect to his emotions and feelings... Quote:
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__________________
~ Kindness is cheap. It's unkindness that always demands the highest price. |
#10
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Stage Three: Psychosis - Entering the Land of the Unconscious: The Self/Ego Death
... only after disaster can we be resurrected it's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything nothing is static, everything is evolving, everything is falling apart you are not a beautiful and unique snowflake you are the same decaying organic matter as everything else we are all a part of the same compost heap we are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world you are not your bank account, you are not the clothes you wear you are not the contents of your wallet you are not your bowel cancer you are not your grande latte you are not the car you drive you are not your f*cking khakis ... i want you to hit me as hard as you can... welcome to fight club if this is your first night you have to fight ~*~ Quote:
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Directed by David Fincher, written for the screen by Jim Uhls, and based on a novel by Chuck Plahniuk, Fight Club was released to Americans recovering from the Columbine school shootings in the fall of 1999... The last image of the film is framed as a vista from within a glass skyscraper. Jack and his lover, Marla Singer, hold hands at the "theater of mass destruction." Two tall towers crumble to the ground. Premiered years before September eleventh, the film serves as chilling prophecy even more profound and ripe with cultural and historical mythic elements than even this author had expected. ... Source: Fight Club: A Jungian Interpretation
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~ Kindness is cheap. It's unkindness that always demands the highest price. |
#11
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So... the movie's over. What now?
Maybe I'll recap. The stages that Jack progressed through were: 1. Baseline: The psychological space he was in just before it all began.We don't get to see it in the movie but the next logical step is: 6: Healing: A fragmentation crisis can be very hard on a body and a psyche. We need to heal. Months of quietude/withdrawal/rest can be helpful. During these months, it may often seem as if nothing is happening on the surface but a great deal can be happening in the depths of the psyche.
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~ Kindness is cheap. It's unkindness that always demands the highest price. |
#12
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As an addendum... the posts above are a condensed version of my original attempts to comb through the movie, make sense of it, and frame it upon the Jungian model; there is far more material and links in the original. If any readers care to review it they can find it here: Fight Club
In addition, I wish to emphasize that Jack did not split into personalities; he split into functions of the psyche. It was immediately recognizable to me because I did the same thing. All the "characters" in my own experience could also be easily mapped upon Jung's model of the psyche. Not everyone gets such a concise presentation, nonetheless, some people may find they can still map some of their experience along Jungian lines. For example... - Got satan, demons, scary voices or visions? They probably belong to the realm of the Shadow. Bear in mind that the Shadow is represented in dreams -- presumably, psychosis too -- as being of the same gender. Likewise, a feminine voice may belong to one area of the psyche, a masculine voice to another but where they belong will depend upon which gender you are. - Note that frightening voices of the opposite sex gender may belong to the realm of the Negative Anima/Animus. Positive voices of the opposite sex gender may belong to the Positive Anima/Animus. Some people may not have a well-developed relationship with their inner Anima/Animus so it can be helpful to draw on positive opposite sex relationships in their exterior world. - Numinous "religious" figures showing up in your experience? Look to place them in the realm of the Self. Fragments of the Self can often be seen near the beginning of the experience. For example, Jack met Bob (Mana Personality) before he entered into a full-fledged relationship with Tyler (Shadow) or Marla (Anima). - What about frightening visions related to death, dismemberment, apocalypse, blood, torture, skeletons, dead people, beheadings, etc.? They may relate to symbolic expressions of psychic wounds as related to ego collapse or ego death. If you understand this, that might help minimize at least some of the fear you experience surrounding those kinds of dreams, visions or waking fantasies. All of the above should be considered a simple introduction only and if none of the above fits for you, don't be concerned. There are different forms of psychotic experience so your personal experience may be different from that expressed above. However, if you find the above to be helpful to you, you might consider seeking out a Jungian analyst in your local town/city that can help you work through your own experience in greater depth. A search engine should be able to point you in the direction of some. Do be aware that most insurance programs probably do not cover the costs of Jungian psychotherapy. In my limited experience, Jungian analysts charge about the same rate as any other psychotherapist and may be open to a sliding-fee schedule. Ask if you are not sure and if you think it will help you. You can also find many free resources on the net as related to Jungian psychology. In particular, I highly recommend the work of Jungian psychiatrist, John Weir Perry. Regretably, Perry passed away in 1998 but he did leave some very good books and articles behind. At his experimental Diabasis project, he also produced an 85% recovery rate among the schizophrenics who passed through that program; that recovery rate was achieved without medication. References to Perry's work can be found via my blogs or through any good search engine. Many of his books can also be found through amazon and possibly, your local library or book store. ~ Namaste .
__________________
~ Kindness is cheap. It's unkindness that always demands the highest price. |
![]() FooZe, mgran
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#13
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I found this very helpful to reinforce my understanding of the Jungian model, thank you for this.
Also, I'm very interested in Dr Perry's work... may I ask, are any of his books self help or workbook types? I have a friend who is suffering from schizophrenia, and I'm impressed with the recovery rate of eightyfive percent.
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Here I sit so patiently Waiting to find out what price You have to pay to get out of Going through all these things twice. |
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