Psychosis: An Introduction to a Jungian Perspective

The following series of posts were written by me elsewhere. I'm sharing the information here because there may be some who would benefit from this form of treatment.

If you wish to pursue a therapeutic relationship with a Jungian analyst I suggest you make use of your favorite search engine and enter the terms "Jungian+Analyst+Your Town/City" to see if there may be any practicing in or near your location. Note that I am not a Jungian analyst and neither am I in a position to recommend any.

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MICHAEL O'CALLAGHAN: How does one define so-called schizophrenia?

JOHN WEIR PERRY: Jung defined it most succinctly. He said...

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"Schizophrenia is a condition in which the dream takes the place of reality." This means that the unconscious overwhelms the ego-consciousness, overwhelms the field of awareness with contents from the deepest unconscious, which take mythic, symbolic form. And the emotions, unless they're hidden, are quite mythic too. To a careful observer, they're quite appropriate to the situation at hand.

The way "schizophrenia" unfolds is that, in a situation of personal crisis, all the psyche's energy is sucked back out of the personal, conscious area, into what we call the archetypal area. Mythic contents thus emerge from the deepest level of the psyche, in order to re-organise the Self. In so doing, the person feels himself withdrawing from the ordinary surroundings, and becomes quite isolated in this dream state.

Source: When the Dream Becomes Real



See also:
- The Role of Metaphor

- What was that you said again? -- A New Look at Psychosis

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Stress may cause highly activated mythic images to erupt from the psyche's deepest levels in the form of turbulent visionary experience. Depending on whether the interactions between the individual and the immediate surroundings lean toward affirmation or invalidation, comprehension of these visions can turn the visionary experience into a step in growth or into a disorder, as an acute psychosis. Based on his clinical and scholarly investigations, John Weir Perry has found and formulated a mental syndrome which, though customarily regarded as acute psychosis, is in actuality a more natural effort of the psyche to mend its imbalances. If the upset is received in the spirit of empathy and understanding, and allowed to run its course, an acute episode can be found to reveal a self-organizing process that has self-healing potential.


Treatment or Therapy?

The medical model of handling the acute "psychotic" episode comes under the classification of what is known as "treatment," which implies doing something to the patients to relieve them of their symptoms, even to cure them. The alternative paradigm I am proposing is based on the concept of a "therapy" that gives respectful heed to the psychic process underlying the symptoms.

The original meaning of the Greek word therapeia was a "waiting upon" or a "service done" to the gods, with implications of tending, nurturing, caring and being an attendant; in time the word was applied to medical care. The original connotation is pertinent to the handling of acute "psychotic" episodes, since the persons going through them are in a state of being overwhelmed by images of gods and other mythic elements. Hence a therapist does well to "be an attendant" (therapeutes) upon these mythic images so as to foster their work. "Treatment" strives to stop what is happening, while "therapy" attempts to move with the underlying process and help achieve the creative aim implicit in it.

Visionary experiences of various kinds, including acute episodes, have a tendency to take six weeks to accomplish their inner aims. It is intriguing to reflect on the connotations of this, for this number is recognizable as forty days, with all this time's connotations. Pacing is an important phenomenon that invites our scrutiny. Our experience indicates that in the acute episode the more floridly disturbed the persons are, the more rapidly they move through it. Intensity seems to correlate directly with favorable outcome. The persons who are frightened, overwhelmed with imagery, and engrossed in their preoccupations are the ones most likely to have a favorable inner experience, from which they emerge with significant change.

When we admit individuals who are at the very onset of their episode and again, at the height of their disordered state, they may be fragmented, often mute, with scattered bits of ideation passing across the mental stage. At this phase of the process the mental content is a hodgepodge and the ego has quit the field, lost in the deep interiors of the psyche. Listening to an individual at this time gives kaleidoscopic glimpses of mythic themes that often leave the listener bewildered. Yet if we sit quietly and attentively with a person in this state for only two or three times, we may find the fragments coalescing into a story that gradually begins to move forward.

Source: Trials of the Visionary Mind

See also: Psychosis as Purposive: The Far Side of Madness

How to Produce an Acute Schizophrenic Break

To produce a schizophrenic break you need to collapse the ego, preferably as rapidly as possible. There are different ways of defining the ego but I define it thusly: The ego is a structure of the personality that is made up of what we believe to be true about ourselves, others, the world around us, and our place in it. We form these beliefs as based on our relationships, our experiences, the roles we play and the activities we engage in. All of these combined, create our ego -- which is, for most of us, our sense of who we are. I prefer to think of the ego in this regard as the little self.

When the ego collapses, fragments, or disintegrates, shadow and archetypal contents flood in from the personal and collective unconscious. Those are Jungian terms and I use them because it's the best model I've found thus far for explaining this experience to others. During psychosis, what is experienced and what is seen by the people around you, are fragments of the collapsed ego (one's shattered sense of self), shadow material (which produces fear, terror, paranoia, shame, etc.), and archetypal material, such as the sense that one is Jesus Christ, or Buddha, or God... or has just seen one of those figures get into a cab on 49th street.

Yet, each of those religious icons are also symbols of center which is where the larger Self resides. If you make it all the way through the unconscious to the center -- for a little while at least -- you don't just play God, you are God, because there is nothing left at that point to separate the I-from-The-Thou. Within an Eastern framework, this might be called Self-realization or God-realization. In the West, it's called delusions of grandeur.

There are a number of spiritual traditions that work to slowly polish these layers of selfhood away so as to come into contact with the pure source of the Absolute; meditation in the Buddhist tradition or contemplation in the Christian mysteries are two such examples. There are also various drugs that temporarily displace the ego allowing the numinous to shine in -- the use of peyote among Native Americans; LSD among university professors; ayahuasca among shamans of the Amazon. In addition, there are ritual activities one can engage in: kundalini yoga, drumming, chanting, sacred forms of dance, tantric love-making or creating a work of art. Note that none of these activities produce neurological dysfunction, they simply remove the ego -- one's sense of the little self -- from the larger equation.

Falling in love can displace the ego. Losing someone you love can displace the ego. Shock and trauma can displace the ego. Retiring, or losing a job or role you had strongly invested yourself in can displace the ego. All of us have likely had these kind of experiences and we're familiar with the feeling that life feels a bit shaky for a while afterwards. We don't quite know how to be who we believed we were if we're no longer "Joe's wife" or "Director of Internal Affairs" or "Mary's best friend". If we thought of those people, roles, belongings as positive (i.e., we were attached), we experience their departure as losses. We may need to replace them in some form; a new spouse, new friend, or new job, before stability returns and we are back to being "ourselves" once more.

In a matter of months I lost my self-identity as a daughter, my self-identity as a mother, my self-identity as a wife, my self-identity as a worker, and I also lost my community and my two best friends -- external forms of support that otherwise could have helped provide some structure in the midst of those losses. In addition, trauma was interwoven through those events: trauma from my past, trauma in my present, and a trauma that came to be in which many people died and I felt responsible in some twisted way for their deaths. I wasn't, but something doesn't have to be true to believe that it's true.

You cannot try this at home because you require the co-operation of the entire Universe which strips you of most everything that you have loved or believed in, in one relentless blow after another with hardly any time in between to catch your breath, until you really and truly, absolutely cannot stand anymore. This is how you produce rapid ego collapse, which in turn, produces an acute schizophrenic break -- no faulty neurological wiring required.

Source: How To Produce an Acute Schizophrenic Break


See also:
- Psychosis and Ego Collapse

- Visionary Experience in Myth & Ritual

- Archetypes & The Individuation Process

- The Unmanifest Absolute

An article I came across which, although not entirely Jungian in nature, does support the above.

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... In our book, Human Givens: A new approach to emotional health and clear thinking, we described how the REM brain state, which underlies dreaming, is separate from the process of dreaming and dream content. It is also clear that the healthy brain is organised to keep the dream process separate from the waking state, which is why we find it so difficult to remember dreams. We have shown how the behaviour of a person in a hypnotic state clearly mirrors phenomena of the REM state, such as muscle paralysis, dissociation, imperviousness to pain, and amnesia for the event after "waking".

A psychotic breakdown is almost always preceded by an overload of stress and severe depression in a person's life, which, as we know, results in excessive REM sleep. We are now convinced that, when people are in psychosis, they are in fact trapped in the REM state, a separate state of consciousness with dreamlike qualities. In other words, schizophrenia is waking reality processed through the dreaming brain.

... In the dream state, which is the province of the right hemisphere of the brain, people are not usually capable of independent thought, the province of the left hemisphere, because the mind is "locked" into the metaphorical script of the dream. But if an individual is trapped in a waking REM state, with waking reality happening around them, there is still likely to be activity in the left hemisphere of the brain.

We suggest that, because the REM state operates through metaphor, the only way it could make sense of these independent left brain thoughts would be to create the metaphor of hearing voices, or being watched, or spied upon by "aliens" which easily becomes paranoia. ...

Rapid eye movements are often seen to occur in psychotic states, which, of course, are the defining sign of the REM state. Psychotic patients also very quickly convert thought into sensory experience, with the result that they can become highly emotional almost instantly. When recalling a distressing memory, for example, they can be instantly transported right back into that memory and re-experience the emotions connected with it. That phenomenon, too, is a characteristic of the dream state, when arousals from the emotional brain trigger a thought pattern, in the cortex, which is immediately converted into a sensory metaphor -- the dream.

It is not surprising, then, that psychotic patients not only talk in metaphors but live them out, which explains their often bizarre speech and behaviour. ... We suggest that we can use this insight to help people make sense of their psychotic experience. Ordinarily, there is ongoing interplay between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. ...

In our preliminary investigations, using these concepts, we have found that psychotic patients calm down when they realise there is an explanation for what is happening to them. When calm, the psychotic phenomena become less threatening and less intense. Then we can start doing what many traditional third world countries seem to do so much better -- re-orientating people towards getting their emotional needs met and creating strong support structures for them.

Read the full article here: Schizophrenia: waking reality processed through the dreaming brain

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I was quite pleased to run across the following statement in an article I was reading tonight in regard to Jaakko Seikkula's approach...

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Psychotic reactions should be seen as attempts to make sense of one's experience and to cope with experiences so difficult that it has not been possible to construct a rational spoken narrative about them. In subsequent stress situation, these experiences may be actualized and a way is found to utter them in the form of a metaphor (Karon, 1999; Penn, 1998; Van der Kolk, 1995). This is the prenarrative quality of psychotic experience (Holma & Aaltonen, 1997; Ricoeur, 1992).

Source: Open dialogues with good and poor outcomes for psychotic crises: Examples from families with violence

It should be emphasized that the common ground Perry and Seikkula share in their approach is their willingness and ability to do psychotherapy with individuals in acute states. For this reason, it's not surprising that they would both identify the value of metaphor as a means of communicating the individual's emotional turmoil and inner experience.

You will not find this emphasis within mainstream approaches where the primary value of psychotic content is as an identified symptom. Beyond that, professionals actively discourage any discussion of delusions and hallucinations out of a perceived fear that they will be encouraging them.

This conversation would hardly be complete without introducing the concept of projection. For those who may not be familiar with the term, I'll try to use an example that readers will likely be able to identify with.

Imagine that I am an individual who has never known someone who carries the diagnosis of schizophrenia. In this way, I'm largely ignorant of the realities but I may have read some stories in the newspapers and seen some movies about "crazy people" so I have an idea, an image of what a "schizophrenic" is.

Now, imagine that you introduce yourself to me and you note that you are a "schizophrenic". At this point, chances are very good that you will trigger the image I carry of what a "schizophrenic" is. Now, this image of my creation comes to life and stands between us. I no longer see you, I only see my image, my perception, and this is what I relate to instead of you. I am engaged in the psychological act of projecting. Within Buddhist terms this might be referred to as maya -- an illusion. Many of you may know it a little more intimately as "stigma".

In order for a projection to be held in place there must be a common ground, a "hook" must be presented. In this case, the "hook" would be your admission that you are "schizophrenic". The "hook" is what holds my perception in place between us. If you had introduced yourself as a "Baptist" you might have triggered an entirely different projection as based on my understanding of what "Baptists" are but that is neither here nor there.

Understanding how the psychological function of projection works may help an individual to dismantle their "hallucinations". A case in point...

A "schizophrenic" I once knew told me the following story. He wanted a hamburger so he drove to the nearest take-out. As he was paying the cashier, her face suddenly turned into the face of "the devil" and he became enormously frightened; he wondered if he needed to take any action to protect himself.

It would take a bit of knowledge of that man's personal history to know that his first wife had cheated on him and later dissolved the marriage. This was something that had been deeply humiliating and traumatic to him and in his mind, she was the equivalent of "the devil". The hapless cashier had unknowingly triggered a projection as a result of some common ground she shared with his first wife. Maybe the name on her name tag was the same as his first wife's, maybe she styled her hair in a similar manner... Whatever it was, with that common ground in place she presented the "hook" for him to hang his projection upon. An illusion was created and he stopped relating to who she really was and instead, began to relate to his projection.

For the man to unravel that particular "hallucination" he needed to accept that the cashier was not his wife. She wasn't going to leave him, or shame him, or break his heart -- she was just a college student in a part-time job who was hoping for a tip. Ideally, he would also work through any remaining grief or shame as related to the demise of his first marriage so he would no longer be at risk of becoming "hooked" again.

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Although the imagery is of a general, archetypal nature (imagery that pertains to all men and all times), it also symbolizes the key issues of the individual undergoing the crisis. Therefore, once lived through on this mythic plane, and once the process of withdrawal nears its end, the images must be linked to specific problems of daily life. Thus, the archetypal affect-images await a reconnection to their natural context: to the personal psychological complexes (which tend to be externally projected).

Source: Psychosis as Purposive: The Far Side of Madness

In my own situation, the first blow to my ego structure came when my mother died but the one symptom that wasn't covered in Kubler-Ross's standard descriptions of the grief process was terror -- I couldn't understand where mine had come from. In order to understand why my mother's death would produce terror in me it would be necessary to know that my birth father was extremely abusive. My mother left him the night he tried to kill his children but for many months after, he continued to stalk her and she lived in fear of her life and the lives of her children.

All of this occurred in my own life at a pre-verbal state which might be why voices did not play any significant role in my experience. All I knew was that my mother died and the world suddenly became a very frightening place. This included being frightened of a very specific kind of male -- the kind who would share some characteristic in common with my birth father and thus present me with a "hook" that I could project all my unaddressed fears upon. For me to get well, I had to address the root cause and come to terms with my past. My world is no longer a terrifying place as a result.

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Whatever you see, however terrifying it is, recognise it as your own projection; recognise it as the luminosity, the natural radiance of your own mind.

Source: The Therapeutic Psychology of the Tibetan Book of the Dead

As a general rule of thumb, and using the Jungian model above, if your "hallucinations" produce negative emotions -- fear, terror, shame, horror -- they are likely arising from the territory of the shadow or the negative anima/animus. If your "hallucinations" produce positive emotions they may be arising from either the positive anima/animus or the Self. Bear in mind that the unconscious contains relics from both your personal unconscious and the collective unconscious which in turn, may produce an internal image that can be triggered and projected upon something else in your environment. A person, a sound, a smell... that's the common ground that can produce a "hook". When the image and the hook get together a projection is created in your internal or external world that appears to be real -- even if it's just an illusion.

If anything in the above rings true for you, you may want to explore the concept of psychological projection in more depth. It may be helpful to work with a therapist, possibly a Jungian if you can afford one and can find one in your geographical location. In some cases, a therapist with a good grounding in trauma theory may be more appropriate.

If anything I've said has been useful to you, I suggest you pick it up and carry it with you. If it wasn't, I suggest you leave it where you found it.

~ Namaste

See also:

- Major Archetypes & The Individuation Process

- Shadow Projection: The Fuel of War

I came across the following in my wanderings and felt it belonged in this thread. What's most interesting is that this quote is in regard to Freud, psychoanalysis and psychosis/schizophrenia...

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Smith’s description of psychoanalytic contributions to understanding psychosis is significantly ill-informed, and lacking in depth. Firstly, he incorrectly asserts that Freud advised against psychoanalysts from approaching the problem of psychosis. It is widely known in psychoanalytic circles, that Freud encouraged such exploration (e.g., Freud in his 1925 paper “An autobiographical study”, noted:“...since the analysts have never relaxed their efforts to come to an understanding of the psychosis...they have managed now in this phase and now in that, to get a glimpse beyond the wall.”) and made cogent observations on the psychotic process.

Freud, in his 1911 paper “Psycho-Analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides” analyzed the illness narrative of Daniel Paul Schreber (1903), Memoirs of my Nervous Illness. Freud emphasized the withdrawal of emotional, libidinal investment in external reality in psychosis which could lead to an internal catastrophe signified in a delusion of world destruction. The latter is a restitutional attempt at self-cure of the extensive de-cathexis: “The delusional formation, which we take to be the pathological product, is in reality an attempt at recovery, a process of reconstruction”.

Freud, in his 1924 paper “Neurosis and Psychosis,” noted: [the ego may be able to avoid collapse] by deforming itself, by submitting to encroachments on its own unity and even perhaps effecting a cleavage or division of itself."

Source: Hearing Voices

The bolded quote was what caught my eye. It's remarkably similar to John Weir Perry's observations as well as the quote by Jung that opens this discussion.

See also:
- The Inner Apocalypse
- Visionary Experience in Myth & Ritual
- Mental Breakdown as Healing

Additional quotes by Carl Jung (found at the same site as the above)...


Jung worked at the Burghölzli clinic from 1900 to 1909. He was also a lecturer in psychiatry at the University of Zurich . Jung worked under Eugen Bleuler who introduced the term schizophrenia as a replacement for the concept of dementia praecox. In 1907 he drew an association between the content of dreams (for which he used a process he called amplification) and the content of hallucinations and delusions. He utilized Freud’s theories to help understand what on the surface seemed incomprehensible. For Jung, it was the feeling-toned complex, not the dream, which was the royal road to the unconscious. Similar to the postmodern views of a multiplicity of selves, Jung saw the individual as being made up of many selves, which are autonomous and therefore we cannot assume the unity of consciousness or the primacy of will. Jung relates complexes and psychosis, with a view of the latter as a type of waking dream:

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“A person with a strong complex thinks in terms of the complex, he dreams with open eyes and no longer adapts psychologically to the environment” (Jung 1907).

“...in schizophrenia the complexes have become disconnected and autonomous fragments, which either do not reintegrate back to the psychic totality, or, in the case of a remission, are unexpectedly joined together again as if nothing happened” (1939).

Jung believed that such mental states as paranoia could not be accounted for as neuropathology. In 1914 he noted:

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“I incline to the view that, on the basis of a disposition whose nature is at present unknown to us, an unadapted psychological function arises which may develop into a manifest mental disturbance and secondarily induce symptoms of organic degeneration.”

This latter viewpoint is remarkably consistent with our current understanding of the pervasive effects of profound anxiety/stress on CNS structure and function. Jung accused psychiatry of reductionistic materialism, i.e., placing the organ of the brain above its functions.

Jung, in his collection of detailed patient histories, discovered that the schizophrenic illness often occurred within the context of significant trauma [see the work of John Read]. Like Sullivan, Jung saw psychosis as on a continuum with everyday experience:

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“When we penetrate into the human secrets of our patients, the madness discloses the system upon which it is based, and we recognize insanity to be simply an unusual reaction [also similar to Adolf Meyer’s psychobiological perspective] to emotional problems which are in no wise foreign to ourselves” (1914).

Jung believed that once we understood the ‘code’ of psychotic communication we may then be able to put together the chain of events that led to the emergence of a psychotic episode. In regard to the ‘stuckness’ of the psychotic solution, Jung suggested:

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“Why is the mind compelled to expend itself in the elaboration of pathological nonsense? Our new method of approach gives us a clue to this difficult question. Today we can assert that the pathological ideas dominate the interests of the patient so completely because they are derived from the most important questions that occupied him when he was normal. In other words, what in insanity is now an incomprehensible jumble of symptoms was once a vital field of interest to the normal personality” (1914).

Jung believed that the principal function of the unconscious is to effect compensation and bring about balance.:

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“The mentally unbalanced person tries to defend himself against his own unconscious, that is to say, he fights against his own compensating influences” (1914).

For Jung, the psychotic person has fought for many years in order to preserve ego functioning-he is overwhelmed by strong unconscious forces:

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“These forces did not originate in our patient out of nowhere. They are most emphatically not the result of poisoned brain cells, but are normal constituents of our unconscious psyche. They appeared in numberless dreams, in the same or a similar form, at a time of life when seemingly nothing was wrong. And they appear in dreams of normal people who never get anywhere near a psychosis” (1939).

In 1909, Jung moved into private practice. Later he noted: “In psychotherapy, enthusiasm is the servant of success” (1939). Towards the end of his life, Jung believed that if patients were treated only with pharmacological agents, to leave their internal life unanalyzed was to leave patients with little means of being able to take care of themselves in their everyday lives. Jung noted that it was his work with one patient, referred to as Babette S. that he first came to understand the language of schizophrenia.

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“More than once I have seen that even with such patients there remains in the background a personality which must be called normal [Freud, Katan, Bion and many other psychoanalysts held this viewpoint]. It stands looking on, so to speak...Through my work with patients I realized that paranoid ideas and hallucinations contain a gem of meaning” (1995).

In 1958, Jung commented on his life-long experience:

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“It is now just about fifty years since I became convinced, through practical experience, that schizophrenic disturbances could be treated and cured by psychological means. I found that, with respect to the treatment, the schizophrenic patient behaves no differently from the neurotic. He has the same complexes, the same insights and needs, but not the same certainty with regard to his foundations. Whereas the neurotic can rely instinctively on his personality dissociation never losing its systematic character, so that the unity and inner cohesion of the whole are never seriously jeopardized, the latent schizophrenic must always reckon with the possibility that his very foundations will give way somewhere, that an irretrievable disintegration will set in, that his ideas and concepts will lose their cohesion and their connection with other spheres of association and with the environment. As a result, he feels threatened by an uncontrollable chaos of chance happenings. He stands on treacherous ground, and very often he knows it.

The dangerousness of his situation often shows itself in terrifying dreams of cosmic catastrophes [see the work of Marvin Hurvich on annihilation anxiety], of the end of the world and such things. Or the ground he stands on begins to heave, the walls bend and bulge, the solid earth turns to water, a storm carries him up into the air, all his relatives are dead, etc. These images bear witness to a fundamental disturbance of relationship, that is, of the patient’s rapport with his surroundings, and graphically illustrate the isolation that menaces him” (pp. 258-259).

Jung, after many years of clinical experience concluded:

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“I have now, after long practical experience, come to hold the view that the psychogenic causation of the disease [the schizophrenias] is more probable than the toxic [physico-chemical] causation. There are a number of mild and ephemeral but manifestly schizophrenic illnesses-quite apart from the even more common latent psychoses-which begin purely psychogenically, run an equally psychological course (aside from certain presumably toxic nuances) and can be completely cured by a purely psychotherapeutic procedure. I have seen this even in severe cases” (p. 264).

In regard to the latter (i.e., severe cases), Jung stated:

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“It would be a mistake to suppose that more or less suitable methods of treatment exist. Theoretical assumptions in this respect count for next to nothing. Also, one would do well not to speak of ‘methods’ at all. The thing that really matters is the personal commitment, the serious purpose, the devotion, indeed the self-sacrifice, of those who give the treatment. I have seen results that were truly miraculous, as when sympathetic nurses and laymen were able, by their courage and steady devotion, to re-establish psychic rapport with their patients and so achieve quite astounding cures” (p.265).

Jung then addresses certain countertransference issues:

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“But even so one can bring about noticeable improvements in severe schizophrenics, and even cure them, by psychological treatment, provided that one’s own constitution holds out [in my own experience, I have had situations where I continued the long-term psychotherapy of several patients in inpatient state hospital settings, later transferred into my practice, in which I was physically attacked, reported to have sexually molested the patient , etc, to very positive outcomes, e.g., to the point where family thought their family member was originally misdiagnosed as schizophrenic, never having to return to the state hospital after many years of residing there, etc]. This question is very much to the point, because the treatment not only demands uncommon efforts but may also induce psychic infections in a therapist who himself has a rather unstable disposition. I have seen no less than three cases of induced psychoses in treatments of this kind” (pp. 265-266).

Jung took the position, as I and many of my colleagues in ISPS have, that schizophrenia is primarily an affective illness with secondary cognitive sequelae. Jung noted:

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“Here we are faced with a dilemma: are we to assume, as a causal factor, a weakness of the ego-personality, or a particularly strong affect? I regard the latter hypothesis as the more promising, and for the following reason. The notorious weakness of ego-consciousness in the sleeping state means next to nothing so far as a psychological understanding of the dream-contents is concerned. It is the feeling-toned complex that determines the meaning of the dream., both dynamically and also as regards its content. We must undoubtedly apply this criterion to schizophrenia, for, so far as we can see at present, the whole phenomenology of this disease turns on the pathogenic complex. In our attempts at explanation we shall probably do best if we start from this point and regard the weakening of the ego-personality as secondary, as one of the destructive concomitants of a feeling-toned complex which arose under normal conditions [in regard to my own clinical experience and the research of John Read and other colleagues, I would disagree with Jung on this-traumatic events, strain trauma, emotional neglect and an emotional disconnection are often seen in the histories of persons later diagnosed with schizophrenia] but afterwards shattered the unity of the personality by its intensity” (p. 269).

I will end this posting on a quote from Jung (1995) in regard to the therapeutic relationship:

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“For psychotherapy to be effective, a close rapport is needed, so close that the doctor cannot shut his eyes to the heights and depths of human suffering. This rapport consists, after all, in a constant comparison and mutual comprehension, in the dialectical confrontation of two opposing psychic realities. If for some reason their mutual impressions do not impinge on each other, the psychotherapeutic process remains ineffective, and no change is produced. Unless both doctor and patient become a problem for each other, no solution is found” (p. 166).

Source: On Jung...

Music of the Hour:

heya. there is a guy... i think i've mentioned him to you before. elvin semrad. this is a half remembered quote from somewhere (forget where)

`the great psychoanalyst elvin semrad could make any patient sane. how did he do it? through radical empathy, making every effort to think, feel, and be like the patient he succeeded in gaining entry into their delusional world and eventually... drawing them back out'.

bentall (psychologist) wrote a book 'madness explained' and sass (rutgers, psychiatry) has a line... it is a line that is hard to find, but there is a line...

empathy. people don't understand because their empathy is limited. here are some examples that bentall talks about:

'doctor x has turned me into a portfolio'.

thought to be an 'un-understandable delusion'. if you looked into her case file doctor x was indeed writing up her case for conferences / journals etc... and probably... using her to push his line rather than empathetically trying to understand things from her point of view.

'there are bees buzzing inside my skull'.

autopsy revealed a tumor pressing on the primary auditory cortex. it isn't out of the question that this resulted in the patient experiencing a buzzing sound...

and so it goes on... clinicians are more interested in making a point (typically to contrast 'really severely sick before treatment' to 'much better and understandable even after i treated') than they are in humanly interacting and attempting to understand. indeed, current theory is that attempting to understand is pointless if not dangerous. the utterances are 'meaningless' and the content of the 'delusion' does not matter. just medicate and all will be well... only... its not...

****ing *** wipes. i don't think people are as malevolent as they seem to be... ignorance... think ignorance has a lot to ask for. sometimes... i look at the world... the ignorant state of the ****ing people with the ****ing power... and i feel... so pained. so pained at the human race.

be careful what images fill your mind Kim.. while there may be evils, there are goods in all areas.... please dont let hatred of one class destroy your inner ability to express the imbalances you've witnessed in our world.. we can evolve this thing in ways... practicing acts of kindness will end the suffering if we can get a huge overload of care to take place... it might send a message that we the people are looking for humane treatment... and we can show what we need by example... offer the world a donut and a smile.. if kicked in the teeth, lead by your own example.. few will be likely to join a darkened front for change... light the way with hope.. sell us a working product.. we know whats broken..

best hopes for all always..

hey. i don't hate. i feel sad. disillusioned and let down. and sad, mostly. frustrated, sure. but sad, mostly.

i often work in the health sciences library and there is a cafe attached. like to sit there for a time and drink coffee in the mornings and potter away with work.

overhear residents sometimes. feel angry, yeah. superiority... they think they know... and they don't come anywhere close to understanding...

then i visit the student doctors network and see how the driving concern regarding speciality is typically a concern of average income and entry requirements.

and i kinda wanna heave, yeah.

'cause these people don't deserve the power and status they have. and it makes me feel a little (a lot) ill. sick, really. and... i don't think that is my sickness... society... had a lot to answer for...

i understand a lot of your feelings Kim... i noticed a few things also as a cashier for a major fuel chain.. too much 'everything is ok if they have twenty' attitude and pretty soon stuff can get out of control and we werent much able to defend ourselves so it was swallow the bullying and dangerous behavior and enjoy the wages...

its just that i dont belive (i know) we cant improve the situation by spreading oil on the fire.... so im trying to be peaceful about learning about peace.. trying to be kind about learning to be kind.. jeez.. getting angry only made my head hurt...

i think Jung had interesting perspectives and i think his sources for study are researchable and supportable... what Jung wanted to teach us is to open our minds, explore, dont get boxed in.... imo

hope you are doing a little better now Kim, it feels good to get those feelings out somewhere and cussing a little is really understandable considering all but i know you have a lot of educated info that really is beneficial as we sort this all out.. thanks for that... always take care and i'll keep monitoring the thread, SE always puts out info that generates my thinking

I've mentioned before the book Soul Murder, by Morton Schatzman. He delineates his thesis that Freud ignored the effect on Daniel Paul Schreber, who was a German judge who developed a debilitating fantasy life, of the upbringing at the hands of his own father, Daniel Gottlieb Moritz Schreber. Since both of them were prolific writers, it is possible even at this late date to get a lot of clues to the origins of the son's disease by comparing their writings.

Thanks for posting the articles. It very much affirms my own work. Thank you.

i get a little lost in some of the technical terms, but did you just say the process of psychosis is similar to the cathartic re-creation?

I came across the following quote in regard to John Weir Perry and thought I would tuck it here.

Quote

THE WORK OF DR. JOHN WEIR PERRY, M.D.

Although not specifically connected with clinical depression, the work of John Weir Perry deserves a mention here. Perhaps one of the foremost authority's in the mental health field for many years was Dr. John Weir Perry. After finishing his M.D. at Harvard Medical School and training at the C. G. Jung Institute of Zurich, he went on to establish Diabasis.

This was residential facility for young adults in their 20's with acute psychosis, e.g. a schizophrenic condition. Medication was not used in the treatment. In an 1997 interview, Dr. Perry spoke of an earlier study done at San Francisco State Hospital. With his colleague Dr. Julian Silverman, they set up a double blind experiment to identify which patients did well without medication. Using randomly assigned cases, each patient received a similar capsule of either thorazine or a placebo. Half the patients on the unit received medication and the other half the placebo. No one except the researchers knew which was which. The results: the half on medication had a return rate of 73 per cent and those who received the placebo (no medication) had a return rate of 8 per cent.

At one point in his career Dr. Perry was invited to present his findings on psychosis as a healing process to members of The New York Academy of Sciences.

Source: The Archetypal Connection

Note: If I can find a more authoritative quote on the study referenced above, I will link it in this space.

The following post was lifted from a separate thread and placed here because it pertains to a "Jungian approach to psychosis".


I have found the work of the Jungians to be most insightful in terms of working through and understanding my own experience so this is what I tend to share with others.

Within a Jungian model, schizophrenia and/or psychosis may best be understood as the collapse or fragmentation of the egoic structure; the ego comprises our sense of known identity and also serves to order the larger psyche. When the ego/one's sense of self-identity collapses, content floods forth from the personal and collective unconscious, including archetypal figures thus producing what we call "psychotic content".

Based on what you have shared here I'm going to assume that at some point before this unusual behavior of your husband's began there was an event or series thereof that produced a number of blows to his egoic structure. The archetypal figure that most commonly arises at that point is one that is typically associated with greatness, such as a messiah or redeemer -- what is often interpreted as grandiosity but might be better understood as a heroic effort of the ego to save, redeem and rebirth itself.

In terms of your husband, it may be as if he is in two worlds at the moment -- the first is the "regular" world we might accept as reality; the second is the "mythical, emotionally-laden world" (the dynamic feminine) where god-like archetypal figures reign. The language of that world leans towards the "irrational" and "metaphoric" such as that frequently expressed in music and poetry.

If your husband has been reluctant in the past to work with mainstream clinicians he may be open to working with a Jungian therapist who could help him to better understand the process of ego fragmentation and re-integration. There is also a wealth of free information on the net that can be utilized for self-help purposes.

I think what would be ideal in this instance is if your husband could maintain work, if only in a part-time position, and perhaps attempt to work through this process with your support, various self-help tools, and an empathic therapist. Occasionally, medications such as anti-anxiety agents, anti-depressants and possibly anti-psychotics can be helpful. Your family doctor may be able to offer some assistance in this matter however it's also possible he/she would impose treatment on your husband. Given his past experience, he likely would not be open to the same.

~ Namaste

See also:
- How To Produce An Acute Schizophrenic Break

- An Outline of Analytical Psychology

bumped. This is the thread, Joan.

~ Namaste

Fleshing out the concepts of the Archetypal Masculine and Feminine...

Bumped in response to a private conversation.

Note that the following links also provide some additional areas of exploration in a Jungian line...

• Carl Jung's Encounter With Psychosis

• Jung & The Wonderwall of Broken Songs

• Fight Club: An Example of a Schizophrenic Process

~ Namaste

Thank you very much for resurrecting this thread... I'm going to subscribe to it, and am slowly working through the resources.

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

You may enjoy this article as well mgran...



- Finding Light in the Dark Places

- Schizophrenia & The Hero's Journey