Psychiatry and the Barriers to Human Growth

8/9/2019 Psychiatry and the Barriers to Human Growth

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Psychiatry and the Obstacles to Human Growth

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WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created

equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable

Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

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With these words, the Declaration of Independence of the original 13

colonies of America, a nation to be, launched a challenge in the face

of the values of the colonial Empire of Great Britain. Not only life,

but liberty and the pursuit of happiness were claimed as inalienable

rights for the citizens of this America-to-be.

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Through good times and bad, this nation has grown, raising the standard

of living of its citizens and carrying our values abroad to inspire

literally billions of world citizens. There is much to be proud of

here: security from foreign wars, protection under our laws from the

injustice of arbitrary government, economic opportunity for most, and

political equality.

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At the same time, after 200 years of history, there are signs of

hardening of our national arteries. Modern American society isprofoundly isolating, intensely individualistic, competitive, and

insecure. The United States is classified as a "guilt-based" culture--

one in which the individual is constantly pressured to conform

economically, religiously and socially to beliefs and behaviors

condoned by the majority. Failure to "measure up" or conform creates

feelings of guilt, shame and self-alienation on a massive scale among

those who feel they do not fit this paradigm.

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We also have some of the most serious health care problems in the

industrialized West. We have more people in prison per capita than any

other Western nation. We have a very high incidence of mental and

emotional illness. Our rates of murder, violence against other persons,

and crime rank among the highest. Homelessness is a national scandal,

with many of those living on our streets suffering from untreated

mental illness because we don't provide universal health care. Poverty

stands at 14 percent of our population, with 40 percent of those in

poverty being children. Marital failures are epidemic, with divorce

rates exceeding 50 percent.

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Nevertheless, as Americans we grow up in this climate and, knowing no

other environment, consider it "normal." We even idealize it as "the

best" in the world, pointing proudly at the standard of living most

enjoy and the freedoms we have compared with much of the rest of the

world.

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America is a society in which work provides the primary avenue for

self-fulfillment. We seek realization of our potential through ourwork, whether it is in the marketplace or in the home. Our 'Protestant

ethic" idealizes work and scathingly judges laziness and sloth as

morally reprehensible. So we go to work with high expectations and with

much to prove: that we are responsible, competent, dedicated to our

employers' interests, willing to grow and assume greater

responsibility, and resilient enough to deal with the inevitable

conflict of working with other employees. The marketplace for jobs is,

for most of us, life's testing ground for our wills and our ambitions,

where we are challenged to make reality surrender to our dreams and our


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needs--to earn what we need and want. Work life in America is, in this

sense, a battleground where we strive to succeed, to exceed others, to

gain wealth, power, recognition, and security.

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The problem is that, in this competitive economy, we are never secure

for long, never satisfied with what we have achieved, and never wealthy

enough to feel safe. No matter what we do, or have done, we are not

able to rest or relax into who we are and live in the present; no

sooner do were fight our way to one victory that we feel that we must

battle on to the next plateau of achievement, wealth, and security. We

find ourselves constantly in a restless quest to "become" something

other than we are now--to get more.

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Then, sooner or later, everyone's fortunes turn downward. We "top out."

Or we find ourselves in an impossible job situation. Then our concern

turns to holding on to what we've got. Now we worry that we might lose

our jobs, our marriages, our lives, our security. When we are not

"winning", we are "losing." There is no rest. There are only the quick

and the dead.

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Our restless striving and struggling to hold on to what we've gainedarises from fear. We miss that fact sometimes, because we distract

ourselves with so much activity or clutter in our lives that we lose

sight of what drives us. But at bottom, fear keeps us from ever being

satisfied and present in our lives. Fear makes us stay in a job when we

should go. Fear keeps us compromising our dreams and our integrity.

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Our sense of "self" rests upon our individual success in 'running this

gauntlet' through school and work life to retirement. Our sense of

worth and value teeters on the outcome of our test of wills. Failure to

run that gauntlet successfully--to wrench what we demand from life,

from others and the environment--results in a collapse of our self-

respect, self-worth, self-confidence, our ability to hold our heads up

in the community and before our families, and our sense of adequacy at

coping with Reality.

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But the work of the past century in psychotherapy suggests that this

need not be the outcome of our lives at all. Work by many psychiatrists

since Sigmund Freud began his work nearly a century ago suggests that

the damage began in childhood in the way we were parented, and then

reinforced by societal values and a ruthlessly competitive economy.

This work to understand our minds and emotions suggests that mental and

emotional health may be achieved only by not allowing our society's

social, religious, and economic values to control our choices about

work and family life. It may well be that "liberty" is not to be found

within the values of American economic, political, social and religious

systems at all, but rather outside those belief systems, within our own

selves..

In this paper, the work of a number of prominent psychotherapists are

reviewed to understand their views of the non-biological sources of

neuroses and psychosis, the consequences of neuroses for our lives, and

the connection between these distorted viewpoints of self and life with

our social environment.

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Sigmund Freud and "Guilty Man"

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Sigmund Freud, popularly known as the 'Father of Psychiatry', perceived

man as caught between the biological drives of sex and ambition.

Building upon the theories of classical liberal economists and

political scientists such as John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Thomas

Hobbes, Adam Smith and others, Freud hypothesized that man's psychic

needs derived from his biological nature. Therefore, he argued that

under our 'social contract', Man surrenders his individual liberty only

in order to protect himself from the violence of others; man is

essentially an animal, potentially violent, and self-interested. When a

man surrenders his liberty to be and do what he pleases to participate

in the in the marketplace or work place, he expects to be protected

from the violent intentions of others and enabled to meet his

biologically based needs.

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The marketplace and work place, Freud maintained, was not only a

hostile place; it was a truly terrible environment unlikely to meet

most men needs. So as a man goes out into the marketplace or work place

to satisfy his needs, he inevitably encounters failure and frustration

of his needs. As a result, every man must inevitably experience rage at

himself and at others for his inability to meet his needs. Every man

inevitably learns to hate himself for giving himself away to get whathe needs from others.

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According to Freud, man seeks satisfaction of his needs from his base

of biological instincts; the result is the stimulation of his lust

(greed and desire to possess) and anger-- each drive working in

opposing directions--the one demanding pleasure and satisfaction for

oneself and the other blaming others for the failure to get one's needs

met. The two drives are ultimately uncontrollable and incompatible,

resulting in painful feelings of guilt (that he would seek to overpower

others).

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As infants, both of the drives are self-reinforcing. Both emotions are

initially reinforce one another then, resulting in self-love and the

identification of others (e.g. mother father) as 'extensions' of one's

self. But as maturation proceeds and the growing child encounters

frustration of his needs, these drives have to be turned out towards

others, resulting in the loss of self-love and increasing self-hatred.

The growing child realizes that he must do for others instead of

himself, and this causes him to deny his own needs to get approval from

others. This denial of self generates self-hatred, which soon becomes

projected outward towards others and society. Modern man thus becomes

haunted by self-hatred projected onto others, which becomes hatred

towards and violence against others.

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In Freud's theory, Man suffers from his inability to get his needs met

but is controlled by guilt and self-judgment. He is also held in place

by society's moral codes, its rules and laws, and his fear ofannihilation by society's power. He is unable to escape his fate and

unable to meet his needs. This intolerable situation, which Freud saw

as terrible for us all, is a fact of life because reality is

essentially heartless.

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Freud felt that the young must surrender to this reality as they mature

and adjust to living in this unfeeling reality. The price of that

surrender and anger at others, however, is the self-inflicted violence

of guilt and hostility to life itself. Thus, the guilt which is


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socially required for individual survival threatens the survival it is

meant to insure.

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Freud was justifiably famous for his recognition of man's unconscious,

conscience, and instincts; and for his recognition of the importance of

man's dreams as revealing man's unfulfilled wishes. Dream

interpretation formed a major part of the therapy patients received

from him. He was perhaps the first to recognize that patients must be

helped to bring the rage and fear experienced helplessly during

childhood into conscious awareness to heal and free them from neurotic

or psychotic behavior. Nearly all neurotic behavior, Freud believed,

could be traced back to sexual fixations upon one's opposite sex

parent. Once aware of the causes of his neurotic fixation, the patient

could integrate the new knowledge into daily living and live a more

acceptable life within the hostile world man has created for himself.

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Alfred Adler and Individual Psychology

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Alfred Adler was a collaborating colleague of Freud's, but broke with

Freud over his insistence upon sexual fixations as the cause of all

neurosis. Adler felt that preoccupation with gaining power over otherswas more important as a symptom of adult neurosis than infantile sexual

frustrations. However, Adler is also misunderstood today because he

never gave "power seeking" the central role in his thinking that much

of psychiatry believes.

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Adler's central preoccupation was with the mental health of children.

His view was that a person's "life style" was formed during the first

three or four years of childhood. During this period, parental behavior

shaped a child's outlook so profoundly, and sometimes so disastrously,

that the child makes mistakes in understanding life. These mistaken

perceptions or viewpoints about life, once formed, are very difficult

to change once they are in place.

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One of Adler's contributions was the discovery that a child's order of

birth within a family is generally a very powerful indicator of his

neuroses, the formation of neuroses, and the character traits he

adopts. First children are the "only child" and the center of parental

attention until the second child is born. The birth of a second child

"dethrones" the first born and leads to their belief that they have

lost the love of their parents to their younger sibling. The first born

subsequently becomes very power oriented, concerned about authority and

responsibility issues in order to win back the love through achievement

they believe they've lost. They also are very resentful of their

younger sibling.

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Second born children, unlike first born, are never alone and always

feel they are competing with their older, more powerful sibling. Thesechildren try to overtake their older brother or sister and are driven

to outperform them. Should the first born "win the race" to parental

love, second born children may give up the battle, become neurotic, and

feel overwhelmed by life's problems. Or they may become a rebel, act

out constantly, and hold all authority in contempt.

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Last born are the last in the nest, and are often spoiled or pampered

by parents. Last born children may shoot forward into success in life,

or be so shaped by childhood pampering that they become dependent and


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expect others to care for them. These latter children may experience a

feeling of helplessness as they enter adulthood and become a 'failure'

in everything they do.

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Parental punishment of a young child can cause the child to adopt the

view that the world is a hostile environment where she is punished for

thoughts, feelings or deeds others disapprove of. This view of the

world can be a frightening event, causing the individual to live in

constant fear of life as she grows in adulthood.

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Adler was also the therapist who coined the phrase "inferiority

complex'--a neurotic condition characterized by being unable to solve

life's problems. However, Adler recognized that feeling inferior was

also a fundamental consequence of being human.

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Babies, small children are dependent on the help of adults. Their

wishes meet resistance from parents and caretakers forcing the little

ones to give in. The experience of weakness and powerlessness awakens a

feeling of inferiority, activating him to strive upward. If this normal

upward striving is prevented through faulty upbringing, then this

inferiority feeling may deepen and lead to an inferiority complex,which prevents him from successfully solving life's problems.

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The feeling of inferiority stems from three sources, according to

Adler: (1) physical weaknesses, (2) spoiling of a child, and (3)

neglect and abuse of a child. Physical weaknesses, handicaps, vision or

hearing problems etc make a child feel inadequate for dealing with

their world and cause a feeling of helplessness to deal with threats to

well being or self esteem

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Spoiling stems from a mother's over-protectiveness of her child; in

spoiling her children, she fails to help the child find contact with

the world around it and to teach it how to cooperate to get its needs

met from others. Spoiled children, Adler, argues, seldom develop the

social skills they need to get along with others and develop close

relationships. They have been taught dependent behavior, which many are

then unable to outgrow. Such children may later constantly avoid

responsibility, be unable to make critical life decisions, and be

unable to care for themselves throughout their lives. They often make

passive and unreliable employees when asked to support themselves

economically.

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Abused children experience continuous humiliation because their parents

hated, did not like, or ridiculed them as infants and small children.

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These children may psychically withdraw from life, feeling the

hostility of the world and the absence of love. Others may attempt to

compensate for their childhood humiliation by adopting personas ofcleverness, wit, being funny, agreeableness, being charming, and even

sweetness. Witness Dicken's character in Oliver Twist called the Artful

Dodger as an example. But underneath, they cannot escape their vision

of the world as a harsh place nor their own feeling of being hated and

unlovable.

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Superiority complexes, Adler pointed out, are simply another form of

the inferiority complex, in which the neurotic acts supercilious, vane,

competitive, arrogant, snobbish, boastful, domineering, and


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hypercritical of others. They often exhibit intense emotions of anger,

a desire for revenge, a claim of superior knowledge or ability, and

hyper enthusiasm to cover their feelings of inferiority.

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Whether these feelings of inferiority manifest as inferiority or

superiority complexes, such people seek power over others to reassure

themselves that they are superior to others. However, he noted that

achievement of power "never satisfies such a person that they can never

be satisfied with what they have achieved. They constantly must prove

anew that they are superior to others and can never rest. This is a

neurotic behavior.

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Treatment of troubled children was Adler's major preoccupation during

his career. He observed that:

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Every human being strives towards a goal. . .As soon as one discovers

the goal a human being has set himself, one can explain his actions.

This method, which Adler called the 'final method', is the opposite of

the method of observation which inquires after the reason for a

behavior, the 'causal method.'

.Adler viewed each individual as a unique personality, unlike any other.

He therefore had no interest in personality categories such as those

developed by Jung and others. Treatment of psychic disturbances had to

proceed by understanding the unity of the personality and the mistaken

perceptions the child adopted during very young childhood.

Adler believed that dreams were not interpreted symbolically, but

should be understood as a means whereby the psyche created "moods" or

feelings to help the patient break his rational justifications of his

perceptual mistakes. In treatment, accepting the patient's reasoning

about how the world is seldom helps the patient, because it holds him

in his suffering state.

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Like Freud, Adler believed that young people must be helped to adjust

to living within society--not to turn their backs on society's values

and ways. He insisted that a human being could not be assessed apart

from her environment and social context. Unlike the Liberal Political

Economy thinkers of his age such as Sigmund Freud, Thomas Hobbes, John

Stuart Mill, or Adam Smith, it was unthinkable to him to consider

mankind's natural state as being outside of society; mankind, he would

say, does not enter into a social contract with others to protect

himself from the violence of others, but because he is a social animal.

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In Adler's treatment regime, the analyst would work to understand the

goals underlying the patient's life, review the childhood experiences

of the patient, and then reveal the mistakes in perception made by the

child in childhood. Once the patient accepts that his point of view is

mistaken, he can adjust to a more normal life..

Recent work by James Hillman has raised the reputation of Adler in the

initial triumphirite of Freud, Adler and Jung. Hillman argues that

Adler was misinterpreted much of the time, largely because of a

pedantic writing style from which poetic metaphor was misinterpreted

literally.

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Both Freud and Jung based their systems upon shaman-like visions, which

led them to an explanatory structure with self-developmental goals,


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such as the movement of neurosis into consciousness, individuation, and

wholeness.

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Adler was doing something different. He based his psychology upon

clinical research. He was a phenomenologist who wanted to understand

consciousness from within itself and without appeal to concepts outside

of it. Whereas Freud and Jung, learning from their inner visions and

psychic experiences, pretended to be objective and scientific,

reasoning how we should live and what life should mean, Adler remained

subjective and hermeneutic.

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Within consciousness, Adler recognized that much that passes for truth

is simply a fabrication or fiction. It is made up or plagiarized. So

to him unconsciousness was simply that we are unclear that what we

believe is fiction. Becoming conscious means being clear about the

fantasies driving our thinking and behavior.

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When we ask therefore What does the soul want?, Adler would answer

that it asks to become aware of its fantasies! Normal people, Adler

would argue, will accept guiding principles and goals as metaphorical

information. The neurotic, on the other hand, ascribes absolute truthto the metaphor. So for Adler, what makes for madness is literalism!

When religion, for example, is interpreted as poetics or metaphor, it

provides as if guidelines which can be used pragmatically to guide

behavior. But when the metaphor is taken, literally, as the Word or

the Truth, it leads into madness. To be sane, we must recognize our

beliefs as fictions, and see through our hypotheses about Reality as

fantasies.

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Being sane then means learning to live in a Universe of ambiguities,

uncertainties, unknowing. To some minds, this ambiguity of truth is

untenable, unbearableand so they move towards dogma or fanatical

belief, using authorities, references, experts, holy books, logic,

social values, belief systems, ideology, tradition etc in an attempt to

make the right choices in life. But there is no making the right

choices if the hypothesis driving our choices are a fiction.

For most of us, the ego will strive to decide the right answer anyway,

because to make the wrong choice leaves one feeling inferior; to make

the correct choice leaves one feeling superior. Ego flees from the

unbearable feeling of inferiority or the unbearable tension of

ambiguity.

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To Adler, Mankinds inability to accept the ambiguity of life,

goodness, rightness leads to madness. In the end, we choose to kill one

another to defend the correctness of our point of view.

The best that psychiatry can do is to lead us all out of our core

beliefs, into acceptance that psychologically we must accept feeling

unwell about ourselves to be well. We must accept our ordinarinessrather than our superiority. We must accept our equality rather than

our belief that we are better than others. Our perceived inferiorities

may not be literally true, but we feel them nevertheless. We can choose

to see our lives as a tragic-comedy if we like, with ourselves as the

leading actor. What matters is surrendering to the idea that Mankind

is an imperfect being in an incomprehensible Universe. Being free of

perfection or of being right, we are free.

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The impetus to resolve the problem of inferiority is the individuals


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path of growth in life and is, in Adlers terms, its soul purposes. The

urgent need to escape from the feeling of inferiority creates neurosis.

Of course, it is the ego itself which defends the psyche against this

feeling, pushes the psyche into unconsciousness of it, and chooses to

grasp the belief systems which it associates with rightness,

correctness, perfection, goodness. So Adler would say the ego can

never lead one out of unconsciousness.

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The primary cause of the damage from these fictions is what Adler calls

the masculine impetus: the need to win, to come out on top, to

compete! In any issue defined by a dualitysuch as good and bad, right

and wrong, high and low--where both poles are fictions, the whole idea

of winning is a fiction! So is the idea of losing. Instead, winning is

the acceptance of the ambiguity of existence, the absence of

information about winning or losing, right or wrongbecause all

existence can only be grasped metaphorically and never literally.

What then drives us to seek the higher, the best, the perfect? Adler

thought this was an innate drive in humanitya fantasy of the spirit,

so to speaklodged in a limiting and imperfect shell (the body). We

desire or need a path towards perfection to feel well about ourselves.

We feel a need to be right! So our inferiorities, or weaknesses, createa path to rigidity acceptance of some code of honor, integrity,

goodness. These needs to be right or get better are ego goals. But

the Path is a fiction if the inferiority is a fiction and if the

duality of lesser and greater, lower and higher, are fictions.

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What then does the soul want? It wants perfection. But if perfection

too is a fiction, then the need of soul is limited by the fiction that

it is making progress by pursuing any goal of perfection, for the

whole idea of progress implies that there is improvement to be made.

Even the soul then has a dualistic perspective.

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Treatment of neurosis stemming from this fictional feeling of

inferiority is to learn not to take the weak aspect literally, not to

harden it into belief or dogma, and to recognize that while the

weakness may have negative effects on ones life, it might also give

one advantages in some respect. The patient must learn to see life as a

play, so to speak; laughter is almost always appropriate in playing

ones own part in the drama. Those who choose to drive themselves into

a fanatical attachment to perfection, into hardening beliefs about

being right or being better, are choosing madness over sanity,

because they live in their neurosis that the inferiority they are

escaping is literally real. To be sane, we must recognize our beliefs

as fictions and as only rough guidelines for how to live, and to see

through our hypotheses about what is good or right as fantasies. It

is these hypotheses which we use to define Reality. To the extent that

society does this, it is insanejust as individuals are.

.A second consequence of this view is not to become fanatical about

ones perceived spiritual path in life. If ones spiritual drive is

based on a fictional belief, which the soul has focused upon to correct

in life experiences, a persons need is to recognize the metaphorical

nature of the weakness underlying the souls motivation. Allow it to be

for awhile. One gets the idea that the soul, like man, seeks to

understand itself in the face of ambiguity. It must seek our

ordinariness, life as an exercise in seeing its fantasies as unwellness

just as we must. It seeks, inevitably, companionship with its mortal


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host rather than a relationship between god and subject. And so we work

to come together as equalsmortal and immortalto live life as an

experience in loving one another.

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Carl Jung and the Drive to Wholeness

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Carl Jung was also a colleague of Sigmund Freud and an early member of

the cluster of Austrian psychotherapists who gathered around Freud in

his earlier years of work. After a period of loyal collaboration, Jung

moved away from Freud's emphasis upon ego and the sexual fixations of

the infant to develop a view of individual growth which differed from

Freud's in significant ways.

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Jung was interested in the constant appearance of spiritual images and

symbols in human dreams and felt that these demonstrated the importance

of spiritual issues in human growth and development, especially during

the second half of a man's life. He noted that, from culture to

culture, dreams were strangely paralleled by myths, folk and fairy

tales in the appearance of similar symbols and stories. It became

apparent to him that something was connecting people of all cultures

and historical periods, and that something was 'speaking' to Manthrough dreams and myths. To explain these observations, Jung

hypothesized the concept of the collective unconscious.

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The collective unconscious is that portion of the psyche which links

everyone together psychically and is normally outside of the normal

awareness of individuals. Because of his own personal experience with

the unconscious, Jung believed that through the collective unconscious,

any person can access knowledge beyond his or her own personal

experience. In a sense, the concept of the Collective Unconscious

portrays the species of Man as a single organism, bound together at a

level of collective consciousness that is ordinarily 'invisible' to the

individual, but which opens in sleep and during waking hours in

'daydreaming.' At these times, images and symbols can come through to

individual awareness informing the individual of imbalances between

needs at the unconscious level and needs recognized in conscious

awareness.

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Jung thought that mankind is essentially guided through life by

guidance from the collective unconscious by instinctive, patterning

energies called "archetypes." In ancient history, the stories of the

archetypes took the form of the Greek myths and the Indian pantheon of

gods and goddesses and the stories of their adventures. In these myths,

the great stories of human life were told--of heroism and tragedy, love

and hate, and life and death. These myths appeared again in the lives

of individual men and women, as we live our own lives, as the

archetypes "live us." We, in effect, are the ways in which these

energies come into manifestation and live; only we do not realize thatthe patterns that guide our instinctive reactions, needs, and behaviors

are collective and species-wide--not individual--in their character.

They encompass not only biological needs, but mental, emotional,

spiritual and sexual needs as well. Moreover, these encounters with the

collective unconscious carry a "numinous" quality to them that

personifies the mystery of life and possesses the character of guidance

from divine sources.

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Man's conscious awareness takes in only a minute fraction of the


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causative factors in his existence, according to Jung, and the central

organizing principle in every man's life is the central, organizing,

collective archetype called "the Self," which seems to be deep within

the collective unconscious. Self, to Jung as to many Eastern

philosophies and religions, was the Divine organizing energy creating

the Universe. Jung felt that Mankind's religious experiences are, in

effect, encounters with the collective unconscious.

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One of Jung's greatest contributions and observations was the

realization that there is a natural psychic process guiding each

person's life towards maturity and growth. He saw this central driving

force as often largely unconscious and impersonal; it takes us on our

ride through life whether we want to or not, moving us along towards

maturity and realization of our divine essence. Jung called this

process 'individuation.' The essence of individuation, the natural

process of growth towards maturity during the human life cycle, is the

emergence of the Self within the human personality. This emergence

brings not only maturity, but the ability to relax into who one truly

is, to turn one's back on the values and expectations of society and

follow one's inner values in life.

.The Self was, he maintained, manifested through many of the great

avatars through history, such as Jesus Christ, Krishna, Ramakrishna,

Rumi, Mohammed, Siddhartha Gautama and the great mystic saints of

Christian history. Individuation, Jung believed, leads, ultimately, to

self-realization.

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Jung realized however that only a tiny fraction of Mankind ever reaches

self-realization because individuals become stuck in their maturation

by rigid belief systems, closed symbols, unrealistic personal rules or

laws, the self-rejecting effects of society's values, and neurotic and

psychotic blocks of all kinds. In other words, conforming with society

demands and its values holds us in childhood, in suffering, and in

unconsciousness.

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Neurotic behavior is caused by the presence of unfulfilled needs, or

wishes, which have been repressed. Individual's repress needs because

they become convinced that the fulfillment of those wishes is

impossible, and the pain experienced from not being able to fulfill

those needs causes individuals to 'forget' the need, e.g. to drive it

out of consciousness and into the subconscious. This process begins at

a very young age, driven by the unresponsiveness of parents to the

demands of their children for need satisfaction. Freud and Jung called

these repressed feelings 'complexes.' '

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Jung taught that treatment of these neuroses involved going back to the

sources of the problems and bringing into the patient's consciousness

the precipitating causes. Two methods dominated in his therapy. First,dream interpretation was probably the most important method for

uncovering the frustrated wishes/needs being expressed at the

Unconscious level of a patient's psyche. And second, active

imagination, guided by word association tests, provided the second

Jungian method of preference for doing this. Dreams, whether sleeping

or waking, come to the dreamer in symbolic form and have to be

interpreted in terms of their symbolic content. Dream interpretation is

therefore a skill that has to be learned.

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As the content of the unconscious becomes understood, the patient

discovers that the repressed frustrated need is a natural and human

need that has been denied, and that the initial cause of the failure of

need satisfaction when he was a child was not his fault. He must then

take responsibility to change his attitudes and behavior to begin

getting that need met.

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This realization helps the patient to recognize that the experience of

traumatic need frustration is a part of the human experience and that

parents and other significant others also suffer beliefs, attitudes and

behaviors that unintentionally damage their own sense of self. The

patient can then forgive himself for being less than perfect, and

forgive parents and other influencing mentors for making human mistakes

with them. This process of working with one's neurotic complexes to

free the trapped energy in them is called "Owning Your Shadow."

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The first half of life, Jung hypothesized, is a time of exploration and

exertion of our intent to explore and gain experience. As one

approaches the mid-point of one's life however, people encounter 'mid-

life crises' that cause them to reassess the directions of their lives.

In fact, such crises are common, and are recognized as being the timewhen the repressed memories and beliefs pushed long ago into the

personal unconscious gain the power to push back into consciousness so

that they can be resolved.

.

In this time of crisis, many people realize, if they did achieve their

life goals, that their achievements have lost the meaning originally

attached to them. And if their life goals were not achieved,

individuals feel they must search out a new way of living to end the

endless struggle for goals which life is denying them.

.

Also at this time, the individual is becoming increasingly aware of his

or her mortality, and the significance of approaching death begins to

make every remaining moment of life assume new importance. Many ask at

this time in their lives: "Who am I? What do I want at this point of my

life? Where am I going? What is it that makes Life worth living? What

is the source of real happiness? What is the best way to live the

remaining years of my life so that I realize my true potential and

become who I was born to be?

.

This time, then, is the opportunity for the individual to begin what is

known in ancient mythology as The Great Work; the work of going back

and retracing one's life, of owning one's own shadow, of cooperatively

working with the forces of the Collective Unconscious to allow the Self

to emerge within the personality. This is the Quest for the True Self.

.

Viktor E. Frankl and the "Will to Meaning"

.Viktor Frankl belongs to that branch of psychiatry known as

"existential psychiatry:" a branch of psychotherapy which sought to

understand man's reaction to the apparent meaninglessness of life and

what might be done in therapy to help the individual find meaning in

his suffering. During the Second World War, Frankl was interned in a

German concentration camp; himself a Jew, he worked with other interned

Jews facing starvation, torture and extinction every day. Faced by such

terrible circumstances, few prisoners could understand the value of

living in the midst of so much suffering. Frankl saw man as often


12/27

powerless to save himself. Still, Frankl saw that many were able to

find meaning in their experiences and meaning in their lives--even in

the midst of horror and terror.

.

Frankl's treatment technique rested on three pillars: the freedom of

will, the will to meaning, and the meaning of life. "The freedom of

will," he argued, "is not freedom from painful experiences, but rather

freedom to take a stand on whatever conditions might confront one." He

argued against the idea that man's life was determined by fate, for

that would imply that man does not have freedom of will. Man can choose

how to meet his fate. But to do that, he often must "reach beyond

himself" to reach levels of courage, power, and duty that transforms.

In the words of psychotherapist Robert A Johnson,"To find meaning in

our lives and from our suffering, we must serve something greater than

ourselves--whether that something be God, or country, or some idealized

'cause.' This of course is the lesson of the myth of the Fisher King.

It is meeting and surmounting conflict and opposition that transforms--

not simply the intent or desire to be transformed.

.

According to Frankl, the will to meaning is man's need to pursue goals

that result in the realization of meaning in life. The need for meaningdrives Man to pursue goals whose achievement produces happiness,

pleasure and meaning. He finds happiness not by seeking happiness or

meaning in themselves, but by pursuing some reason or purpose with

which he allies himself. In fact, Frankl argues that no one can pursue

happiness itself and achieve it, nor can man seek self-actualization or

self-realization, for seeking those states of consciousness and

transcendence is impossible. Like happiness, he argues, self-

actualization and self-realization are the unintended effects of

success in pursuing challenging life goals--goals that take one through

a purification by fire, suffering, challenge, and ordeal. One may

succeed in pursuing such goals, and realize happiness, power, pleasure,

and self-actualization, or one may fail and not reach such goals in

life. But it is the striving through opposition to achieve difficult

goals that helps man to "reach beyond himself," and through that

striving, achieve power and self-actualization.

.

Those who are concerned about seeking self-actualization itself, he

felt, are concerned about the issue at all because they have failed in

their search for meaning in life. The pursuit of pleasure, power, self-

actualization or peak experiences by human beings are therefore all

inevitably self-defeating, Frankl believed.

.

"A human being strives for success, but, if need be, does not depend on

his fate, which does or does not allow for success. A human being, by

the very attitude he chooses, is capable of finding and fulfilling

meaning in even a hopeless situation. This fact is understandable only

if attitudinal values are higher than creative or experimental values.The meaning of suffering--unavoidable and inescapable suffering alone,

of course--is the deepest possible meaning."

.

Suffering can have a meaning and give meaning to life if it changes one

for the better.

.

Frankl believed that the number of persons suffering today from a sense

of meaninglessness and emptiness in their lives is huge and spreading.

"No drives nor instincts," says Frankl, "tells such persons what they


13/27

must do, and no conventions, traditions, or values tell them what they

should do. Instead, they typically wish to do what other people are

doing, or they do what other people are doing. They fall prey to

conformism or totalitarianism.

.

Boredom and apathy are the results of this existential vacuum of which

Frankl writes. This is not a neurosis, he argues, or if it was, it is a

sociogenic neurosis caused by the existential vacuum plaguing society.

Such sickness is overcome only by extending ones self into causes or

work that forces one beyond ones self. The fact that so many Americans

are plagued by existential despair and depression is itself evidence

that our work does not challenge us or inspire us, does not engage us,

does not offer us a cause for which we are prepared to suffer; it is

only our road to comfort and security. So we cope with our boredom with

our lives and our apathy about anything by repressing the existential

facts of our lives--by driving ourselves into trance, the pursuit of

wealth and unconsciousness.

.

Frankl writes:

.

"One of the forms the will to power takes is what I call the will tomoney. The will to money accounts for much of that professional over-

activity which, along with sexual over-activity, functions as an escape

from the awareness of an existential vacuum.

.

Once the will to money takes over, the pursuit of meaning is replaced

by the pursuit of means. Money, instead of remaining a means, becomes

an end. It ceases to serve a purpose.

.

What then is the meaning of money, or for that matter the meaning of

possessing money? Most of those people who possess it are really

possessed by it, obsessed by the urge to multiply it, and thus they

nullify its meaning. For the possession of money should mean that one

is in a fortunate position. One can afford to pay no attention to

money, the means, but rather to pursue the ends themselves--those ends

that money should serve.

.

Logotherapy was the technique Frankl invented to help lead people to

the knowledge that they were in fact pursuing meaning in their lives

and had a meaning. This realization raises the sufferer to a higher

level where they can see that they are not victims but conquerors of

themselves. The technique rests upon man's capacities for self-

transcendence and self-detachment. The patient is encouraged to do, or

to wish to happen, the very things he fears; this is called the

paradoxical intention: intending the very thing one fears and replacing

a pathogenic fear with a paradoxical wish which stops the patient's

neurotic or pathogenic "program" from continuing.

.Nathaniel Branden and the Disowned Self

.

Branden, like Adler, was one of the those early psychologists focussing

on people's 'impoverished sense of self' as a personal disaster. Unlike

Jung or Freud, Branden's idea of 'self' contain primarily the conscious

and the subconscious portions of the psyche.

.

Branden discovered during his own therapeutic work with patients that

at the root of every suffering patient's problems is that that he or


14/27

she did not know who they were. They had lost their 'sense of self' for

some reason. They hated some aspect of their body, mind, or emotional

makeup.

.

Due to traumatic childhood events, patients had pushed away, or

repressed, thoughts, feelings, and actions into their subconscious--

disowned them, denied them, disallowed them, judged them as evil or

wrong or unacceptable. These repressed issues were thereafter avoided

at all costs, even as they matured into adulthood and beyond, in order

to protect their self-esteem. However, even after the precipitating

events, they still refused to face reality, and the reality they sought

to avoid was inside themselves more than it is outside themselves.

.

As people strove to accomplish their goals as adults, they came up

against their own repressed barriers. They formed protective beliefs

by which they could manage their lives. And then they couldn't get past

those beliefs or boundaries erected to protect their feelings. Their

beliefs and comfort boundaries caused them to get 'stuck' in their

growth, their career, their marriages, or their lives; they've built

protections against life that have become self-destructive. Because

people can't stop unconsciously defending their self-image, they stopflowing with life.

.

Branden talks about how children repress their feelings of helplessness

and anger at their parents when they are unable to get their needs met.

First, he details how parents teach their children to be disconnected

from their own emotional experiences so that they become unable to

feel.

.

To begin with, many parents teach children to repress their feelings. A

little boy falls and hurts himself and is told sternly by his father,

"Men don't cry." A little girl expresses anger at her brother, or

perhaps shows dislike toward an older relative, and is told by her

mother, "It's terrible to feel that way. You dont' really feel it." A

child bursts into the house, full of joy and excitement, and is told by

an irritated parent, "What's wrong with you? Why do you make so much

noise?" Emotionally remote and inhibited parents tend to produce

emotionally remote and inhibited children--not only by the parent's

overt communications but also by the example they set; their own

behavior announces to the child what is 'proper,' 'appropriate','

social acceptable.' 'Parents who accept the teachings of religion are

very likely to infect their children with the disastrous notion that

there are such things as 'evil thoughts' or 'evil emotions'--and thus

fill the child with moral terror of his inner life .

.

What the effort at such control amounts to practically is that a child

learns to disown his feelings, which means: he ceases to experience

them..

And there are many other ways this loss of self occurs during a child's

growing up years. Branden continues:

.

For the majority of children, the early years of life contain many

frightening and painful experiences. Perhaps a child has parents who

never respond to his need to be touched, held, and caressed; or who

constantly scream at him or at each other; or who deliberately invoke

fear and guilt in him as a means of exercising control; or who swing


15/27

between over-solicitude and callous remoteness; or who subject him to

lies and mockery; or who are neglectful and indifferent; or who

continually criticize and rebuke him; or who overwhelm him with

bewildering and contradictory injunctions; or who present him with

expectations and demands that take no cognizance of his knowledge,

needs or interests; or who subject him to physical violence; or who

consistently discourage his efforts at spontaneity and self-

assertiveness.

.

A child does not have a conceptual knowledge of his own needs nor does

he have sufficient knowledge to comprehend the behavior of his parents.

But at times, his fear and pain may be experienced as overwhelming and

incapacitating. And so, in order to protect himself, in order to remain

able to function--in order to survive, it may seem to him--he often

feels, wordlessly and helplessly, that he must escape from his inner

state, that contact with his emotions has become intolerable. And so he

denies his feelings. The fear and the pain are not permitted to be

experienced, expressed, and thus discharged; they are frozen into his

body, barricaded behind walls of muscular and physiological tension,

and a pattern of reaction is inaugurated that will tend to recur again

and again when he is threatened by a feeling he does not wish toexperience.

.

Brandon points to these experiences while growing up as a proximate

cause of the 'loss of one's self'--of one's inability to feel and

experience a sense of self--because so much has been rejected and

pushed into the subconscious. The 'gain' in such repression is that the

individual does not consciously feel or experience the suffering and

pain from denied love, spontaneity, intimacy, acceptance; he

experiences it subconsciously. Consciously, he avoids the subject and

avoids getting hurt again. However, the 'cost' of such repression is

the loss of his ability to experience pleasure as well. In repressing

his pain, he has armored himself against both the pain and the pleasure

of life. And so life becomes a gray road without feeling or vitality or

excitement of any kind. He feels as though he is slowly dying in a gray

meaningless landscape.

.

"Self-esteem has two interrelated aspects: a sense of personal efficacy

and a sense of personal worth. It is the conviction that one is

competent to live and worthy of living.

.

The conviction that one is competent to live means: confidence in the

functioning of one's mind; confidence in one's ability to understand

and judge the facts of reality (within the sphere of one's interests

and needs); intellectual self-reliance. The conviction that one is

worthy of living means: an affirmative attitude toward one's right to

live and to be happy; a self-respect derived from the conviction that

one practices the virtues one's life and happiness require..

Self-esteem is a basic need of man, a cardinal requirement of his

mental health and psychological well-being. There is no value judgment

more important to man than the estimate he passes on himself.

.

This estimate is ordinarily experienced by him, not in the form of a

conscious, verbalized judgment, but in the form of a feeling, a feeling

that can be hard to isolate and identify because he experiences it

constantly: it is a part of every other feeling. It is involved in his


16/27

every emotional response.

.

An emotion is the product of an evaluation. It reflects an appraisal of

the beneficial or harmful relationship of some aspect of Reality to

oneself. Thus, a man's view of himself is necessarily implicit in all

of his value-responses. Any judgment entailing the issue: "Is this for

me or against me?" entails the view of the "me" involved. His self-

evaluation is an omnipresent factor in man's psychology.

.

The nature of his self-evaluation has profound effects on a man's

thinking processes, emotions, desires, values and goals. It is the

single most eloquent key to his behavior.

.

One of the tragedies of human development is that many of a person's

most self-destructive acts are prompted by a blind, misguided (and

subconscious) attempt to protect his sense of self--to preserve or

s.trengthen his self-esteem.

When a person represses certain of his thoughts and memories, because

he regards them as immoral or humiliating, he disowns a part of

himself--in the name of protecting his self-esteem..

When a person represses certain of his emotions, because they threaten

his sense of control or conflict with his notion of "strength" or

"maturity" or "sophistication," he disowns a part of himself--in the

name of protecting his self-esteem.

.

When a person represses certain of his desires, because he cannot

tolerate the anxiety of wondering whether or not he will attain them,

an anxiety that makes him feel helpless and ineffectual, he disowns a

part of himself--in the name of protecting his self-esteem.

.

When a person represses certain aspects of his personality which seem

incompatible with the standards of his "significant others," because he

has tied his sense of personal worth to the approval of those

"others", he disowns a part of himself--in the name of protecting his

self-esteem.

.

When a person represses certain of his legitimate needs, because their

frustration leaves him feeling impotent and defeated, he disowns a part

of himself--in the name of protecting his self-esteem.

.

When a person represses his capacity for spontaneity and self-

assertiveness, because he wants to be certain that his responses always

conform to the "moral ideals" laid down by his particular authorities,

he disowns a part of himself--in the name of protecting his self-

esteem.

.Do such attempts succeed? They do not. Self-esteem cannot be built on a

foundation of self-alienation. The consequence of such attempts is the

sabotaging of one's ability to enjoy life, the inner sense of some

nameless fraudulence and self-betrayal, the anxious need always to be

on guard against dark, frightening forces which might erupt from the

limbo of one's denied self to threaten the structure of one's

existence--and the subversion of one's self-esteem.

.

When a young child represses a pain that he experiences as intolerable,


17/27

he does so not only because pain is intrinsically a dis-value, but also

because it threatens his sense of control, it causes him to feel

impotent and incapable of functioning; it nullifies his sense of

efficacy. In later years, his block against re-confronting the pain

serves the same purpose as in childhood; to maintain his equilibrium to

protect his sense of efficacy, of control, of self-esteem.

.

Men destroy themselves every day--in the name of assuring their

survival. Neurosis might almost be defined as the attempt to protect

one's self-esteem and assure one's survival by self-destructive

(reality avoiding) means.

.

[Regaining one's self-esteem in the face of the often overwhelming

power of the conditioning we all have been subjected to growing up is]

the psychological result of a sustained policy of commitment to

awareness, by which is meant:

.

a will to understand the facts of reality, as they relate to one's

life, actions and needs:

a respect for facts, and a refusal to seek escape from facts, including

the facts of one's inner experience;

a policy of being guided by one's awareness of reality when one acts,

so that one does not take actions or pursue goals that require or

entail the subversion of consciousness, the restriction or

evasion of awareness, the betrayal of knowledge, reason or honest

conviction

.

The "self" one is esteeming is one's mind--one's mind and its

characteristic method of functioning, of dealing with reality. All life

is a process of interaction between organism and environment, and

successful life for man is that which has awareness as the cutting edge

of his motion through the world.

.

This way of relating to reality produces that sense of efficacy, ofpower and worth which is the meaning of self-esteem."

.

These repressed energies are carried into adulthood, creating suffering

because they continue to influence behavior of people in ways they are

unaware of.

.

The repression of emotions, which begins in childhood with the denial

of pain, frustration, fear and rage, extends in later years to more and

more areas of one's emotional life, resulting in a progressively

deepening sense of self-estrangement.

A person denies his need to find human beings he can respect, admire

and love--and then superimposes on himself the unreal personality of a

cynic. A person denies his loneliness--and then withdraws from people

behind an artificial front of indifferent remoteness. A person denies

his need for self-esteem--and then proceeds to seek it in the bodies of

an endless procession of women. A person denies his longing for

beauty--and then affects a vulgarity aimed at proving his

'practicality' and 'realism.' A person denies his pain--and then losses

his sensitivity and buries his perceptiveness beneath a brutal

blindness to the pain of others, including those he professes to love.

A person denies his anxiety--and then finds himself locked in a self-


18/27

made tomb of passive rigidity. A person makes himself thoroughly

invisible--and then agonizes over the fact that no one sees or

understands him. A person extinguishes one part of his personality

after another--and then feels horror when he looks inward and finds

only a sterile void.

.

The crisis, Branden observes, comes as the individual begins to feel

like he is falling apart mentally or emotionally, as the pressures of

the energies of the repressed parts of his self begin to intrude into

his outer life and things begin to fall apart in the form of job

losses, break-ups of one's marriage, breaking down of one's

relationship to one's children, drug or alcohol addiction, chronic

depression episodes, psychotic episodes and so on.

.

An individual is often driven into treatment by crisis instead of pre-

emptively through an act of choosing to discover why he does not have a

sense of himself, why he does not know who he is, why he does not know

what he wants, or why he does not know where he is going. In treatment,

if asked why he is not able to get his needs met, he may blame the

environment or his parents for his 'failures', or refuse to revisit the

causes of his childhood frustration and anger, or he may resistferociously assigning blame and instead take all the blame on himself

masochistically. He may take refuge in religion to escape the gray,

barrenness of his life. He may be so repressed that he disavows any

responsibility for what has happened to him and fully believes it.

.

Brandon pointedly argues that in his experience the persons in therapy

are no more neurotic or maladjusted that those who never come to

therapy.

.

Treatment involves helping the patient to recognize that his disorder

is a defense mechanism to avoid remembering and re-experiencing the

pain he experienced during childhood, and re-experience the repressed

thoughts, memories and feelings. Ordinarily, this requires the patient

to revisit his youth to re-experience the environment, mistreatment,

and trauma initiating his repression.

.

Once the patient recalls that feeling originally causing his

repression, the therapist can work logically to help the patient to

understand how his repression is continuing to affect his view of the

world and how he is defending himself from being hurt again. This is

often terrifying to the patient, who may refuse to stop avoiding the

source of his fear and suffering. This underscores the fact that

undertaking this kind of work, or entering therapy, is not only an act

of desperation but of courage as well. At this point, the work has the

possibility of restoring the sense of self, the self-confidence to

change one's beliefs, attitudes and patterns of behavior in the world.

The patient begins working towards the time he can take fullresponsibility for what happens to him in his life.

.

Heinz Kohut's Self Psychiatry and the Tragic Man

.

More recently, a branch of psychiatry known as 'Self Psychology" has

emerged from the work of psychiatrist Heinz Kohut to contradict the

Freudian viewpoint. Kohut, initially a Freudian, departed from his

support for Freud's biological arguments that man is naturally

solitary. He came instead to argue that the maturation process involves


19/27

a tension between two poles of the 'self.' One 'pole' is that of

ambition (Freudian), which drives the individual to achieve in life to

meet her needs. The other 'pole' is that of 'the idealizing self',

which helps the individual to experience herself as okay even when

needs are frustrated because she is supported through intimate

emotional support from an idealized 'other'--such as a mother or father

figure who is able to share their strength and objectivity. Ideally,

the infant and growing child will realize full and unconditional love,

understanding and support from both parents as she grows and tests

herself against the world.

.

In childhood, the infant goes through a healthy 'narcissistic stage' in

which she is very exhibitionistic and sees the world as an extension of

herself. Attempting to meet her needs in this totally safe playground,

she experiences occasions in which her needs become frustrated. As

extensions of herself, she sees her parents as parts of herself whose

purpose is to satisfy her needs. The parents, however, come to a point

that they refuse the child's demands, and the child expresses her

frustration and rage through crying.

.

Parents witnessing infant anger consider it a tantrum and punish thechild whenever this happens. The child experiences shock at first that

a part of itself would strike out at it to refuse its demand. It learns

from repeated punishment, however, that expressing anger at her need

frustration brings punishment from a part of itself it had previously

totally trusted: first, the she feels helpless to manifest her needs in

a family environment which has suddenly become threatening. Second, she

has been told that she is 'bad' for speaking up for herself--even for

having these needs in the first place.

.

She is now fearful of her self and her environment, not knowing what is

safe and what is not. Here, the infant begins to learn that her parents

are not a part of herself, and the shock of this separation through

punishment reverberates as fear, loneliness, and loss of intimacy for

years.

.

Several dynamics are now in play that may prove difficult for the

growing infant.

.

First, the infant begins to see her environment as unresponsive to her

needs; the world--and other people--may begin to appear hostile to her

and her happiness. Secondly, a dynamic is established that produces

guilt in the infant every time she asks others to meet her needs;

instead, she should be thinking about the needs of others and putting

her own needs second or after those of her significant others. Third,

her natural anger at not being able to express or effect her own needs

is stifled and turned within. She is angry at others, but because of

guilt and the threat of punishment, is not allowed to express thisanger. Fourth, she begins to see herself as someone whose needs are not

as important as others, as not being loved enough by her parents to

help or show her how to meet those needs. She somehow is now not worthy

of their love, and she begins to lose respect for herself. She turns

his anger inward at herself for being too weak to speak up for herself,

too unworthy to receive the love of her parents, too unimportant for

society to care whether she gets the things out of life she needs or

not.

.


20/27

This is the beginning of the process described by Heinz Kohut as the

'disintegration of the self.'

.

As the child grows, around the age of 6, 7 or 8 years--normal

development would have the child develop an idealized view of his or

her father or mother, and from this idealization, take on the goals and

values they represent to her. These values serve as a rudder in early

life to give her resiliency, direction, and emotional support as she

encounters the inevitable disappointments to her budding ambitions.

Gradually, the emotional support from this 'idealized other' is

supposed to be 'internalized', so that the maturing youngster builds an

internal structure of emotional support and so that she can sustain the

inevitable cyclic frustration of needs and hopes in life.

Unfortunately, modern society all too frequently fails to provide those

significant 'idealized others' so badly needed during the maturing

process. Parents sometimes refuse to be idealized or to provide the

unconditional, non-judgmental emotional support so badly needed in

growing up.

.

Traditional religious beliefs are described by Kohut, Branden, White

and Weiner, and many others as 'self-destroying' in that their effectis to create a propensity among believers to judge their selves--or

some part of the self--as sinful, evil, or bad. Guilt and fear,

alienation from the self, and self-hate follow. Through their religious

beliefs, many psychiatrists believe, parents instill in their offspring

the guilt and fear they themselves have of the World.

.

They react to the demands of their children seeking need satisfaction

in exactly the way the world treats their own efforts to satisfy their

needs: with indifference, punishment for 'acting out', and lack of

empathy. Early psychiatry viewed child raising in this way; attempting

to bring the child face to face with hostile reality quickly and not

soften the blow. After all, they reasoned, the Real World is a tough

place, and the sooner the child accepts that and conforms, the better

it will be for the child. Today, psychiatry accepts that, while reality

may be harsh, it is easier to bear when one experiences closeness,

intimacy, and love from other humans. Through such support, the

harshness of life becomes endurable.

.

Life itself will test each child; the parents do great harm, however,

by bringing the harshness of the world and a lack of empathy and

nurturing into their training of their children.

.

As the young grow outward away from the parents into the isolation

characterizing much of modern life, they continue to encounter

traumatic frustration of their needs. Not having the emotional support

or stability of idealized values to hold them together, their selves

'fragment' and their behavior grows increasingly self-destructive. Selfpsychologist Gary Greif, in his book The Tragedy of the Self, expresses

this point of view as follows:

.

Destructive human behavior reflects people's experience of

disintegration from insufficient human support. This proceeds in

stages, and is accompanied not only by violent acts, but also by such

experiences as anxiety, fury, arrogance, empty depression and

hopelessness. At high levels of selfobject frustration (i.e. not being

able to find empathetic support from caring individuals), the self


21/27

experiences the threat of losing all vitality and of totally

disintegrating, generating the experience of coming apart at the seams

and breaking up into fragments, culminating in losing all will to live,

causing terror at the prospect of self annihilation. A self lacking

adequate selfobject sustenance will be weak, fragmented and beset by

conflicting urges.

.

This experience is literally one of terror and of coming apart for

some, of an inability to cope with reality. Those afflicted by these

symptoms, which include most of us to a greater or lesser degree, Kohut

refers to as Tragic Man.

.

Once fragmented, the individual's ability to cope with life is

impaired, and without psychiatric support, often cannot put himself

back together again. Continued suffering without relief will lead to a

flight from reality into addictions, religious excess, withdrawal, and

depression. Once they reach the point of disintegration characterized

by psychotic or borderline behavior, they are beyond the reach of self

psychology therapy and often have to be institutionalized or cared for

outside the marketplace.

.Therapy for self-fragmentation of those with lesser disorders can

repair the damage by reactivating the causes of fragmentation and

aiding the sufferer to work through the selfobject needs whose

frustration caused the fragmentation in the first place. Most of us

cannot afford professional assistance and must do this on our own to

repair the damage. Unfortunately, many of those in pain cannot identify

what has happened to them and only know that they are 'inadequate' and

not able to cope with the harshness of the 'real world.'

.

While alive, Kohut was severely critical of the modern social and

economic system in the West as being incapable of supporting the

realization of the self and blames it for enormous suffering and

psychic fragmentation of individuals caught in its web. His student,

Gary Greif argued as follows:

.

While we value individual fulfillment, and often proclaim it our

highest value, out of a fear of being destroyed we readily submit to

limits on realizing this value. We adopt the stance that true

individual fulfillment consists in independence, fundamentally from one

another. The demands of work reinforce our desire to be guarded

emotionally, and are in turn reinforced by this desire. Competing

against one another to obtain and keep employment, we consider our

ability to retain employment a sign that we are independent and

individually fulfilled. We are therefore not inclined to rebel against

social and economic forces which require that our human self needs take

second place. Goods and services provided by the marketplace and work

not only do not entice us beyond commitment to this defensive andrestricted individuality, they appear to validate it as concrete

symbols of success. Our economic world, reflecting and encouraging self

deprivation and fragmentation by subordinating self needs to the

demands of economic competition, increases our propensity for violence

and our consequent need to further subordinate our self needs.

.

Buddhist Psychology

.

The Indian Prince, Siddhartha Gautauma, born 2500 years ago went on a


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quest to seek spiritual understanding. Experimenting with many sects

and teachings, he reached the point where he wondered whether any of

the teachings worked. He finally sat down under a tree in what is now

the country of Nepal determined to await 'enlightenment,' and one

morning as the planet Venus rose in the early morning sky, he

experienced a transcendent awakening. At that moment, he became 'the

Buddha'--the One Who Is Awake. For the next 40 years, he taught the

psychology of awakening to all who sought him.

.

What he taught then is as fresh and true today and it was all those

years ago: The Four Noble Truths

.

The First Noble Truth: That suffering is a part of life, but that we

suffer because we struggle to keep that which can't be kept. Nothing is

permanent in this world; pleasure cannot be sought and suffering cannot

be avoided. Therefore, detachment from the world of the senses and

attunement to the basic goodness of Creation is the path to happiness.

.

The Second Noble Truth: Suffering is made worse because of our fear and

sense of ego. We believe that we are a permanent, unchanging self

living in a separate changing Universe. In fact, we do not exist as aseparate being at all and are simply a perspective of the One Life

having no permanence.

.

The Third Noble Truth: There is a way for us to free ourselves from our

suffering and use it to enrich our lives. That way is through the

control of attachment to the phenomenal world.

.

The Fourth Noble Truth: The path to the cessation of suffering is

called, in Buddhism, the 'Middle Way'--avoidance of the extremes of

either the indulgence of the senses or self-mortification--is the path

to freedom.

.

The Middle Way is also called the Eightfold Path. Practice of the

Eightfold Way brings the ability to perceive reality as it is--

Enlightenment--rather than as we, in our suffering, fear and

defensiveness, insist it is or ought to be.

.

Right Understanding

Right Intentions

Right Speech

Right Action

Right Livelihood

Right Effort

Right Mindfulness

Right Concentration

.

The Buddha taught a psychology of waking up--of living free of

illusions about ourselves and life. Each individual must take

responsibility for raising him or herself from his unconscious or

habit-dominated way of living; the Buddha never taught that there was a

personal God who intervenes in our lives to fix things for us or

rescues us from our pain. In fact, the records we have about him

indicated that he was free of religious zeal entirely. According to the

Buddha, we are all responsible for our own choices, and if we choose to


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live in pain all our lives, then that is the way we are left to live.

.

Disciplining the mind to stop the constant stories and 'pain tapes' we

run each day is a fundamental task in that awakening process.

Disciplining the mind therefore is the key to stepping out of pain.

Once the mind has been trained to 'Mindfulness,' it can comprehend and

control the dominance our emotions exert over our self-images,

attitudes, worldviews, and behaviors. Buddhists use meditation as their

primary technique to first, train their minds to stay alert, and then

to learn to watch their thoughts, their emotions and their bodily

sensations, so that they can become conscious of what they are feeling

and 'remember' the causes of their psychic pain. Gradually as they

practice mindfulness, they begin to apply the meditation technique to

all of life, becoming ever more aware of environment, body, mind,

emotions, feelings, senses and levels of consciousness available to the

human being. This is the awakening process. Awakening therefore does

not refer to some superconscious enlightenment experience, but to the

awareness of the web of social rules, beliefs, and forbidden thoughts

or actions that we unconsciously live by.

.

Buddhists have also learned that it never works to punish or condemnyourself for your failings, your weaknesses, your "bad thoughts" or

even ill deeds. We all may be 'sinners' but to awaken, we must learn to

forgive ourselves for being less than perfect and accept that our

harshest judge is ourselves. Condemning ourselves only serves to drive

us deeper into suffering. Instead, we begin to learn to accept

ourselves with incredible gentleness and caring for those lost,

hurting, and despised parts of ourselves. We become ever kinder towards

ourselves and others.

.

Westerners raised to feel guilt, shame, and anger at ourselves for not

living up to our expectations and goals find this very difficult at

first, but soon discover that reclaiming the denied and despised parts

of ourselves is a kind of salvation no other religion, philosophy or

teaching has brought. Reclaiming those repressed and disliked parts of

ourselves helps us to accept ourselves the way we really are as

ordinary people trying to learn how to live. We learn how to learn with

our fear of living and dying. We learn how to release our anger at

others and to love ourselves. We learn how to recognize the basic

Goodness of the Earth and Life. Often it is the way we behave under the

influence of illusionary thoughts and emotions that creates the

conditions of our life. Freedom brings the ability to see that we are

causing our own troubles and problems and that reality is something

quite different than we believe it to be.

.

Buddhism eventually became a religion in China and India, evolving a

priesthood, monasteries, an emphasis upon meditation and guru-disciple

relationships to support the huge numbers of religious seekers hopingto experience 'enlightenment.' However, its gentle psychology remains a

powerful means by which anyone can seek freedom from the stress,

anxieties, and psychic pain in which modern man lives.

.

The Indian monk, Bodhidharma, traveled to China 1500 years ago to

practice and teach a more experientially-based version of Buddhism,

called Zen (meaning 'meditation'). Zen traveled to Japan, where it took

on a distinctively Japanese character before migrating to the United

States, where it became less structured and some might say, a more


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rebellious form of spiritual discipline. In America, less concerned

about the voluminous literature and teaching of Buddhism, Zen advocates

awakening through mindfulness of the direct experience and appreciation

of life.

.

Unlike the mainstream schools of Buddhism, Zen adopted a non-dualistic

philosophy. Zen accepts that it is a mistake to separate good from bad,

me from you, spirit from matter, because in fact, there is no

difference. The human being, they perceive, does not exist in

separation from all else, and it is only our perception that we exist

as separate, mortal beings that create the fact of fear and all the

suffering that that emotion brings to us each day. All that exists,

Buddhism says, is the One Life, the One Mind, the One Body, and each

human is simply a point of view within a field of conscious energy. Our

life force is the energy of that field, our minds are that mind, our

bodies are the vibrating energy of that field. Our deaths are nothing

more than the changing of form--not the end of consciousness. Nothing

happens when we die. Nothing happens when we are born. The One Life is

just changing form. There is therefore no reincarnation of an

individual.

.There is an eastern mythology that individual goes through countless

births and deaths, not only as humans, but as animals, insects, and

other Earthly forms; that the only way to stop this cycle of births and

deaths is to take up the Dharmic path taught by the Buddha and to break

the karmic pattern of attachment to life on earth. Tibetan Buddhism

teaches, for example, that being born human represents a precious

opportunity for each of us because it is the only avenue to escape the

great Law of Cause and Effect (the Law of Karma) that keeps us bound to

the Earth over enormous periods of Time. The process of escaping the

seemingly endless process of being reborn over and over by practicing

the Dharma may itself take many lives to accomplish. Finding a Teacher,

or Guru, is seen as being enormously important because Guru and

Disciple become bound together through time and continue to help one

another progress on the Path.

.

Some students of original Buddhist sutras argue, however, that the

Buddha never taught reincarnation and that his entire focus was upon

freeing the individual from the tyranny of social conventions so that

we could be free from the double bind "in which each individual is

called upon to take two mutually exclusive courses of action and at the

same time is prevented from being permitted to comment on the paradox."

Alan Watts describes the famous double bind each of us finds ourselves

in as follows:

.

Society gives us the idea that the mind or ego is inside our skins and

that it acts on its own apart from society. This is not true. We do not

exist as individuals. Nevertheless, we are to play the game of life asthough we were and as though this game of life was serious, which it is

not. Believing it is serious and that our survival is at stake, we

experience fear. Furthermore, while we define ourselves as independent,

we must not be so independent that we fail to submit to the rules which

define us. Thus, we are held responsible to the group for our actions.

The rules of the game confer independence and take it away at the same

time, without revealing the contradiction.

.

The only solution is to recognize that we are each not separate beings


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at all but that each of us is inseparable from all mankind. Life is not

a problem, yet our perception that it is a constant problem keeps us in

fear and anxiety, producing neurosis and all forms of mental illness.

The only solution is to stop seeing our life and death as a problem and

live in the present, accepting life as it is. Fear is not a reason to

flee reality; it is only the energy of uncertainty and death. Buddhists

therefore practice familiarizing themselves with the fact of their

deaths so that when the time for their death comes, they can be fully

conscious and go into it as though it were the ultimate adventure.

.

The double bind can lead to a form of schizophrenia in which the

anxiety of this contradiction in life leads many people into a

withdrawal from 'social reality.' In other words, not being able to

escape the double bind can lead to mental illness--conditions which

society views as madness, psychotic behavior, and mass neurosis.

.

To release the double bind, Buddhism had to release the idea of

individual responsibility to a judgmental God--had to let go entirely

of the idea of a God which made human-like judgments of individuals--

and focus on the deleterious effects of society's rules.

."The schizophrenic withdrawal affects a minority, and occurs in

circumstances where the double-bind imposed by society in general is

compounded by special types of double-bind peculiar to a special family

situation. The rest of us are in differing degrees of neurosis,

tolerable to the extent to which we can forget the contradiction thrust

upon us, to which we can 'forget ourselves' by absorption in hobbies,

mystery novels, social service, television, business, and warfare. Thus

it is hard to avoid the conclusion that we are accepting a definition

of sanity which is insane, and that as a result our common human

problems are so persistently insoluble that they add up to the

perennial and universal 'predicament of man', which is attributed to

nature, to the Devil, or to God himself."

.

Conclusions

.

While the American economic, religious and political freedom is

recognized as the leading cultural paradigm of the world, its excesses

of individualism have imposed heavy burdens on our personal health and

happiness. Since the birth of psychiatry, leading psychiatrists have

identified the many sorts of damage imposed upon self-esteem, mental

and emotional health by our parents, teachers, religious leaders, and

employers, and some have even believed that our modern economic system

depends upon armored, neurotic workers to support its needs. We are all

neurotic. Those who cannot bear the pain, isolation and self-repression

that comes with living within our system become its dropouts. Even

those of us who choose to live within this system of values,

requirements and laws suffer. Normally however, people accept thepopular myth that this social reality is normal and desirable; it is

just that

Psychiatry and the Barriers to Human Growth

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