Psychosis: An Introduction to a Jungian Perspective

Hello mgran,
There are a few factors that render a Jungian approach to psychosis as radically different from most any other model. The first, and perhaps, most significant is that the model itself is larger and more vast than Freud's model. To return briefly to that image...


Freud's model seems to penetrate as deeply as the personal unconscious and does not acknowledge the collective unconscious. As a result, his ego-based model cannot contain psychosis because psychosis goes beyond the ego. Unfortunately, most professionals have a Freudian-oriented background and their lack of vision contributes to the perception that psychosis is something that does not happen to ordinary human beings. In turn, this contributes to stigma and isolation by rendering the "psychotic" or "schizophrenic" a breed unto itself, separate from most of humanity with an experience that cannot be understood by most of humanity.

In Jung's model however, we acknowledge that everyone is capable of psychosis and we typically enter into such states on a nightly basis when dreaming. During dreaming states, we can access the collective unconscious with its, sometimes, bizarre imagery and rules of Being that do not apply to waking states of consciousness. The concept that schizophrenia is dreaming while in a waking state is a useful one.

What also separates a Jungian approach from the current mainstream ideology is that psychosis is seen as purposive with the roots of the dysfunction to be found in that individual's life experience -- typically, some form of trauma. This is consistent with my own experience and also appears as a recurrent theme in the lives of the many others I've spoken with who have undergone similar experiences.

We have to bear in mind that trauma is a highly-individualized response -- not everyone who experiences ego collapse or ego fragmentation will have a history of childhood abuse or trauma in adulthood. What does seem to be present in the majority of instances is an event or series of events that has seriously challenged that individual's sense of self-identity. To an outsider, those events might seem insignificant but to the individual in crisis, they will be of extreme significance. It is these challenging events that weaken the egoic structure to the extent that it collapses. Once the ego boundaries have come down, contents from the personal and collective consciousness rush forth and it's this content that we call "psychosis".

Using my own experience as an example, the first significant ego blow I underwent was the death of my mother. The unusual "symptom" to emerge from this was intense fear -- that was my first clue. My mother's death was closely followed by the loss of the best friend I had at that time. In the space of a month I lost two of my most trusted confidants. Over the course of the next ten months, unconscious content leaked, dribbled and dripped in the form of dreams which had become nightmares, my intense preoccupation with specific songs or passages of prose, and the feeling that something was terribly, terribly wrong -- something evil was about and I couldn't define what it was.

Those events were enough to produce "cracks" in the structure of my ego but full ego collapse didn't come until several months later when a number of people died in a tragic manner. Due to the circumstances in my life at that time, I felt some degree of responsibility for not preventing those deaths along with horror and revulsion over the circumstances of those deaths. This was also accompanied by the loss of my community, the loss of a role I had invested myself in, public humilation and shame, betrayal, and the loss of yet another significant friend. That was enough for me. My ego collapsed.

I spent the next four months trying to function and pretend that I was okay although I secretly believed I had died and somehow, managed to go on living. There came a point I couldn't maintain that presentation any longer and I became what would be called psychotic although I prefer to say that I encountered the Unconscious and fully engaged it.

It was as if I had fallen into another world and that world was populated by various "characters". One of the most significant of these was a man who I called Gallagher. Like the friend I had lost, Gallagher was someone I could talk to...



At the time, I believed that Gallagher was my friend who had somehow managed to come into that space with me, if only in spiritualized form. However, Gallagher did all kinds of things my friend never would have done. As a result, we had to go through a "getting to know each other" phase much as any other relationship. In the end, he became my therapist. What follows is but one "excerpt" from those therapy sessions that went on 24/7 for a matter of weeks...


It's not difficult to begin to see the traumatic elements, is it? From this point we have the benefit of knowing what some of the trauma is all about but at that time, I couldn't put it into words -- it emerged symbolically.

Meantime, much later, I discovered that all the "characters" in that experience could be mapped onto Jung's model of the psyche: Persona/Ego; Shadow; Anima/Animus; Self. This was when I began to understand that my friend hadn't been in that space with me -- Gallagher was my Animus in a projected, personified form. Within him we can find positive aspects of the Masculine; he contained positive aspects of all the males I have ever encountered in my life including my adoptive father, my husband, my brothers and male friends. Leprosy Man, on the other hand, represents the negative aspects of all males, including my birth father. The same sort of analysis in regard to other characters also offered up other insights that I came to understand were all about me, my relationships with others and my relationship with the larger world.

The above serves as an example of finding the therapeutic intent in psychosis and corresponds with Jung's belief that psychosis can be a means of self-healing.


Music of the Hour: Gallagher's Song