Quote:debeguiled Wrote:
There was a great book a few years back called Toxic Psychiatry by Peter Breggin which was an indictment of Big Pharma treatments for schizophrenia and other mental disorders. I believe his research showed that while there was schizophrenia all over the world, the rate of cure was much higher in other countries where no drugs were involved.
The basic idea was that if people kept loving their friends and family members with these disorders that they straightened out eventually.
The most important thing is the 'self'. But when that fails the next most important thing is family. After that comes true friends. People who lose their 'self' and have no family or true friends are up the Swanee without a paddling device.
(I use the term 'self' not in the wider sense that Jung proposed, but in its more looser definition)
R.D. Laing who you mention later in this post wrote a book called the Divided Self. He lays blame for much of manifested schizophrenia on the family unit. I'm pretty sure he would extend that out to extended family and close friends (who ain't no good for ya).
For family can literally drive you crazy, and sometimes they do. But when things break for other reasons, it is the family unit and close real friends that can bring you back. I'm not surprised that people got healed back to health with time, with love and attention from family and friends. The most powerful thing in this universe. Without them, you are basically fucked. No man is an island. Though he should try to be as much as he can. Reading what Kai said earlier: your first duty is to yourself, then your family (I paraphrase). This.
A maybe interesting aside: how people with SPD (Schizoid - one of the Cluster A personality disorders) - well they do try to become an island. They become fiercely independent to the point of shunning not just all of society but close friendships, friendships of any kind, sexual relationships and sometimes even family. One wrote on being Schizoid: "having to pretend to cry at my brother's funeral so the rest of my family didn't think I was a monster".
People with Cluster A disorders are by far the hardest to reach, even more than Cluster B narcs and BPD's. Schizophrenics can be treated with medication and if the family was not the cause of the madness, then family and friends. But Schizoids are not technically disordered because that is just their personal choice in life. Many of them debate that it should not be in the DSM as a disorder because it actually does not meet the criteria for things such as personal unhappiness (they are not unhappy), being disordered and dependent (they are fiercely independent and very ordered and methodical), causing disruption to others (very often they do not leave the house), being unable to function in a social or work setting (many are the life and soul of the party and hold down steady jobs. Life and soul of the party because they have no problem interacting, but they are not overbearing or clingy and people sense this aloofness and it attracts people like magnets. Many people want to get to know the Schizoid more for his quiet charisma, but he isn't interested. He holds down a job because he is highly responsible and conscientious. It is his life support system for personal survival. He won't fuck it up. He will quietly shine, usually in a job that requires isolation: a lighthouse keeper - no pun intended - or perhaps even in the military working in cybersecurity).
Schizoids do not have a disconnect from reality in the form of hearing voices or visual hallucinations, but they do have a disconnect in the sense that they choose not to engage with reality, by withdrawing and becoming a hermit or perhaps chronic daydreaming. A subtle but important distinction. Some even talk to themselves. But they do not do this around others, because they have the presence of mind to know they will be seen as odd, if not mad.
Many believe the full on Schizoid to be the ultimate narcissist. But it's a different thing, though they can be co-morbid with narcissism. Again, it's a spectrum, complicated by secondary and tertiary defining characteristics. We are just generalizing here and it really comes down to the individual and how well they are diagnosed and how much they allow themselves to be diagnosed. Schizoids are notoriously under the radar in psych therapy. One guy in the military was about to get a Schizoid diagnosis, but said he didn't want it to his psychiatrist because it would mess up his security levels and complicate things. So technically he was not professionally diagnosed. Many just don't see it as a problem. It's just the 'way they are', and they don't really care what anyone else thinks.
Getting back to what you said about "friends and family members". The Schizoid is very unlike the Schizophrenic, because he is not ill. He will never seek treatment. He will be so fully functional in all the areas that matter that most people won't even know his 'disorder'. He has no need for family or friendship apart from doing the right thing for those who he deems to give his limited time and respect to. He certainly doesn't know there is something wrong with him and he never cries out for help - that would just be drawing unwanted attention to himself.
Excuse my discursion in to Schizoids, but they are Cluster A like our mentioned Schizophrenics, yet very very much distinct from them in so many ways. We won't get in to Schizotypal Personality Disorder (unless you want to later), as that as well, is also a very discrete form of Cluster A typology. And of course these things can overlap as well which totally confuses the issue. But first you have to understand the issue: these are all very disparate disorders underneath this umbrella.
Quote:debeguiled Wrote:
What you will notice is that he doesn't talk about drugs or heavy theory when it comes to actually helping people with schizophrenia.
And he doesn't diagnose it as a brain problem.
He diagnoses it as a social problem in the sense that it happens when a person feels they have no social connection anymore and start creating one in their head centered on themselves.
And the solution, which he even seems sheepish to mention, is to love the person suffering, and to try to get their family to offer their support in getting the person back into feeling a member of a family and then society.
None of this came from theory, and he even gives an interesting account of being an untrained volunteer at a psych hospital when he was a teen and seeing the problem instantly.
He also explains how in the past the Quakers had a kind of moral therapy that could help cure people, and how the people of Lapland have almost no schizophrenia because of how they treat sufferers.
That video is actually quite beautiful and worth a listen if you are looking for something deep.
Good information. I will check it out. However, from your lucid description none of this comes as a surprise to me (or probably other members of the centuries old Anti-psychiatry movement). Talking of which, and talking of rapport with one's therapist...
Quote:debeguiled Wrote:
There is an excellent doc called "Didn't You Used to Be RD Laing" about the famous Scottish psychologist, worth a look in full, but for the sake of this post, if you were to watch just from 49:16 to 55:57 for his conversation with Janet, and you can see exactly the kind of approach that Breggin is talking about.
I've watched this many times. It's enlightening. Laing was a bit of a fruitcake, probably a bit of a charlatan and egotist too. But he played a tidy piano and at least pretended as if he gave a fuck. Fake it to make it baby. If I could get someone of the caliber of Laing, I'd jump at it. But I know that motherfucker would brutalize me! As long as he didn't make me listen to his piano playing...
Quote:debeguiled Wrote:
This is also, by the way, a master class on rapport, but if you watch the clip, you see a woman whose family has completely denied the reality of her memories and perceptions, and so she has created her own symbolic way of dealing with it, a sad, solitary universe, and when she looks a Laing at first, you can see that she is wary, and expects nothing but more scorn and denial, and little by little, watching him like a hawk the whole time, you can see her realize someone is listening to her, giving her the benefit of the doubt, and you can see her, at least partially, being healed before your eyes.
A transformation, or at least the start of one.
I was talking about rapport a couple of days ago in the community, with a really great professional psychotherapist/psychiatrist this time.
I think it's well recognized that it is probably one of the most important factors to a therapeutic relationship working. The anti-psychiatrists had a bit of a bug-bear about the inequality of the 'doctor/patient' relationship. And it's true. It's a mighty imbalance. It gives way to all kinds of subtle and not so subtle abuse, even leading sometimes to full on iatrogenic breakdowns on the part of the patient because of this fact. I have experienced this myself. There is no recourse. Therapists are not held accountable. They are above the law. They can get away with anything bar murder or rape. For another time.
You use the word 'transformation'. It's a good word. It probably means different things to different people. We can also get in to words like 'transmutation' and 'transference'. Kind of related. But we'd need to get into alchemy, for one. Again, maybe another time.
Quote:debeguiled Wrote:
Anyway, the point is, people get alienated, turn inside themselves and create their own internal societies, and many people in many cultures know how to heal them, although it doesn't really scale, does it?
It is all one on one hourly fee.
Can't just invent a pill and mass market it.
So it is shunned.
But it does say something about human beings, their needs for community, and their capacity for loving one another and healing one another, and how foreign this is to the profit motive of a large corporation.
I am speaking here of one of the aspects of what gets diagnosed as schizophrenia, and it is specifically about a severing of the social ties and the effect it has on an individual.
You speak much sense and wisdom. I don't think it's even far off the current prevailing thought on the matter. I would say though that Schizophrenia itself is still quite a mystery with regard to the whole nature/nurture debate. There does seem to be significant evidence for it being an imbalance in brain chemicals and whatnot - no societal/familial dysfunction required. Some say it is a mixture. Don't quote me on this, just my very limited understanding as a layman. I know the grown-ups on this matter keep tossing the ball back and fore. I'll defer to their indecision.
But there does seem to be something about Schizophrenia where the brain breaks in a very real and dangerous way. I recently watched a very good video on some myths about this condition and I was enlightened. I have great respect for the professionals that do this day in day out, hacking it out. Always more to learn.
As for human beings and their need for community and friendship and belonging, well that is very true as well. It's hard not being part of a community. It's hard not having a tribe. It's hard not having any family. It's hard not having any friends. It's hard not having a job. It's hard not having any reflected self-worth that mirrors who we are at our deepest core. And it's hard not having a girlfriend or meaningful LTR for years and years and years. I know this feeling.
We are drowning men. No therapy session will ever heal us. Not even if we found one we could afford. One we could have rapport in. No, it's gone past the point of no return for men like us. We aren't waving, we are drowning. We aren't going our own way. We have been pushed out and ostracized and shunned. It's ok. No drowning man resents this. It's not personal. There is nothing to be gained by trying to help him. The die is cast.
All one can do is become a shaman on the edge of town. Become the archetype of the Wise Man. But as anyone who has studied Jung and the archetypes knows, it's not so clever to dwell on this and internalize this too much. We are hermits not through choice. It smacks of rationalization after the event to me. I say this wisely, of course.
Talking of shamans...
Quote:debeguiled Wrote:
The business about psychoactive plants as well as a natural communing with the spirits is something else, even though it may get lumped in with the modern alienation sort of schizophrenia.
I think the two are different phenomena, and the second shouldn't be considered the same thing as the first.
People who were shamanic or mystical aren't schizophrenic in the same way as those who are alienated in a profound way, so it isn't accurate to say that in the past there were more schizophrenics as a blanket statement, although it is accurate to say that modern Big Pharma Psychiatry is just as incapable of dealing with one as the other.
You are right again. Enforced alienation can lead to deep wisdom. But it is not the wisdom of Jesus who spent 40 days and nights in the wilderness. But is it really all so different? I have had my nigredo. I am well on the path to discovering the philosopher's stone. And a million miles away from ever achieving it. It's the journey baby, not the destination. All the stages in between. I don't know Jesus that well, so I can't say what his personal journey was. Or even what the translation or description of his journey meant in the Bible. I'm sure it's in there somewhere.
Jesus, Buddha, Shaman, Madman. Alchemist? There is much seeking to be done.
There is a connection between what happens in Schizophrenia and what happens when you take LSD or 'shrooms. I've had the most wonderful archetypal religious experience on 'shrooms. I won't go in to it. In fact, I've had two. I had the Christian religious experience and I had the Buddhist religious experience. I'll just say that. I might have even had a third one. But it's possible I was just imagining that one. (It was still cool though, rolling around on the floor thinking I was a dog, with my best mate rubbing my belly till I couldn't howl no more.)
Does the dog have a Buddha nature? On the internet...
Psychosis and Insanity both dance hand in hand on the dance floor of consciousness. Enlightenment? No, that's not it either. I'm sure the answer will just be plucked out of the quantum vacuum space somehow. Where particles just appear out of nowhere then as quickly disappear. In the Heart Sutra they say "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form". Jesus, what if they are right?
Fuck it, just take more drugs!
Drugs are for losers, mmmmkay! But now and again, rites of passage (see the ayahuasca ceremonies where whole communities come together to not just heal, but to shoot the shit and bond), in the right place at the right time, they can be healers. Going out clubbing and dropping E's every weekend is a stealer of time. It probably won't kill you, but it will still fuck you up in other ways long term.
I believe there is much more work to be done in this field regarding entheogens and empathogens. But that work is being done and today the cutting edge consensus is that stuff like MDMA and even Ketamine (apart from LSD and shrooms which have been proven to be efficative for some years now) are beneficial in the treatment of long term alcohol addiction not to mention chronic PTSD. The reluctance of the government and the pharmaceutical industry though needs no explaining to anyone reading this right now I'm sure.
But there is no doubt people who have suffered chronic and profound isolation can be great healers. They will either have gone totally mad or found some kind of peace. They will have found out who they truly are, when every day they wake up and look in the mirror they ask 'Who am I?'. And the question is answered. And one day it is 'you are a good man', and the next day it is 'you are a bad man'. I've found the most deepest evil and darkest shadow at the core of my 'soul'. But as Jung said, when you meet with the shadow, get to know it, then you can recognize it, compartmentalize it and even utilize it. Or was that Jordan Peterson, bucko?
I believe this is why some Catholic priests crack after years of abstinence and start raping all the altar boys. They have never become one or even said 'hello' to the shadow.
Next thing you know, you're on Craggy Island, drinking another fucking cup of tea you don't want, doing Elvis impersonations and shouting "MORE DRANK" after pissing yourself on the sofa!
It's a fine line.
Shadow obsession and possession is never healthy, of course. But not even knowing it exists is far worse. I meet my shadow like an old friend. Then I go on my way.
Bucko!