Given the below considerations, how exactly is the “self” placed in the context of normative expressions and experiences? Given the fact that verbal and auditory hallucinations are descriptively classified in Western society as “disorders,” they immediately become marginalized as systems of meaning. Not all cultures respond in this way to hallucinations. Many cultures consider these activities as rites of passage, normal expressions of the unconscious, the spiritual world, perhaps even “normal” events within the language faculty of human beings. Speaking with imaginary figures, hearing voices, or disassociating through an “out of body” experience, are descriptively acceptable forms of expression, originating as meaning constructed from the individual. Rather than denying a legitimate placement of the self within this context (as is the approach of most Western psychologists and psychiatrists) these other cultures employ the spiritual resources of the community to help plant the “self” firmly within a (perhaps constructed) universe, which is bigger and more influential than the empirical realities. In other words, the individual suffering from hallucination X may in fact have a completely separate reality in which to construct his experience and interpret his data, and thereby with enough tolerance from the community, lead a relatively productive life.
The disorder of self occurs in the Western paradigm when the value of these illusory experiences becomes marginalized: a self-fulfilling prophecy. Rather than incorporating the individual’s reality and working therein, the therapist (or worse, the pharmacist) develops an “elimination” plan, through which the aberrant behaviors are relentlessly questioned, deconstructed, and hopefully replaced by structured expressions of a more socially acceptable nature.
I don't want to be misunderstood. We should assume that disorders do exist, at least incorporeally, and we need to see them as such for the sake of those suffering from, and those suffering on the account of their manifestations.
Certainly there are cases in which it is the interest of the collective community, or immediate family to adopt this Western approach to problems as they manifest themselves. But what if these interventions involved less deconstructing of the psychosis, and more of a reconstructing approach, using the internal world view of the mentally ill to build an illusory reality in which he or she can operate?
This was precisely the approach of Milton Rokeach in dealing with his, Three Christs of Yipsilanti. As more of a social worker than a psychologist (he was technically a social psychologist), Rokeach worked for several years with three men who each believed they were Jesus Christ. He brought the three men together in a group in hopes of un-establishing the deific world in which they had placed themselves. After one year of the project, Rokeach reported his findings:
"The three Christs had each adjusted to their new way of life; each in his own way had learned to cope with the others and with us…. The novelty and shock of confrontation had worn off. Each one had formulated and stabilized a set of rationalized beliefs to account for the claims of the others, and these rationalizations were bolstered by a silent bargain and repertoire of rituals designed to avoid the tension-producing subject of identity."
He decided to try a different approach after the first year. Entering into their delusions, Rokeach immersed himself into the worlds of the three mean and wrote confrontational letters to each of them signed in the name of their respective delusional creations. The men never knew it was Rokeach who penned the letters. In the correspondence, Rokeach challenged the men’s delusions by becoming a figure of authority as defined by the illusionary “selves” each man had constructed. He found that the delusions were best countered by advice from a perceived authority figure emerging from within the world of the deluded self. Drawing on the work of Bruno Betteheim’s study of concentration camps and anti-Semitic Jews who changed their concepts of self by adopting a new referent, he found that the three Christs were much more likely to identify with the ideology of either an aggressor, or a perceived authority. This approach has been used numerous times, as is currently bedrock to the theory that abductees will often grow to care for and relate to their kidnappers. But Rokeach argues that in the case of a psychotic, the external referents have become all together untrustworthy, and constructing a respectable authority was necessary in his treatment of the three Christs.
He advances the following hypothesis:
"A normal person will change his beliefs or behavior whenever suggestions for such change are seen by him to emanate from some figure or institution he accepts as a positive authority. Either he will change his beliefs and behavior so that thy conform with what he believes positive authority expects of him, or if he cannot or will not change, he will alter his beliefs about the positive authority itself; he will become more negative or more disaffected with the authority and, in the extreme, he will even formulate new beliefs about new authorities to rely on. "
Given the nature of current psychological theories in dealing with disorders, it’s hard to imagine the therapist as a “positive authority,” especially given today’s reliance on prescriptive medication to “cure” patients. This “pharmacological hedonism,” as it is aptly named by historian Edward Shorter, can sometimes only service the individual by the alleviation of symptoms. I can confess to real, unavoidable power of such drugs and have experienced them first hand via anti-depressants and I must truthfully confess that having such symptoms relieved wasn't inherently a bad thing.
Up to this point, I have considered the limits of both statistics and language in collectively classifying and defining disorder (and I have omitted two sections, one on Noam Chomsky and the other on Jung), but what opportunities does language offer the field of psychology — particularly considering that language is one of our only windows into the unconscious? Rokeach’s approach seems beneficial, albeit with a certain degree of risk. Entering linguistically into the world of the psychotic seems like dangerous business, especially given the potential lack of a perceived positive-authority. To the primitive, it was the shaman or spiritual magician who guided individuals through their various psychological states, in a similar way in which the scientific magician, the psychologist / psychiatrist does in the West today. By constructing a mythological tale, even a mythological world, in which to place the individual’s fears and hallucinations, this primitive therapist created a space for the unconscious to structurally express itself through prescriptive speech acts. Unfortunately, there is little research today to suggest if this approach is a valid.
What we do have are modern religious experiences, which border on the cusp of this primitivism and its latent perception of authority. Several empirical studies have been done on a variety of religious states and their effects. Some studies have shown that mystical spiritual beliefs and practices relieve stress and are more likely to define “mental pathology” in a positive light when taken in a spiritual context. Modern psychology would have diagnosed Joan of Arc as schizophrenic, paranoid, hysteric, or epileptic—maybe all of these, but in the context of her own mythological understandings, she was just a woman of devout faith; and in that context, she was able to become a powerful historical figure. How many other Joan’s of Arc are locked away in padded cells, or drooling quietly under the haze of medication? I suppose they at least aren't wielding firebrands... so we have that going for us.
William James defines “healthy-mindedness” as one positive aspect of the religious experience lending itself to numerous positive outcomes. Persons of this type of religious experience are intrinsically motivated to live out their beliefs in a highly personal, altruistic way. He contrasts this type of experience with those religious folk who are extrinsically motivated by creed and dogma. These sorts are called the “sick soul” by James and are continually surrounded by guilt, anxiety, and other neurosis.
Admittedly, I am no expert on the current trends of narrative psychology. But if we are going to rely on magical classifications to diagnose and hopefully “cure” people, I wonder what harm could possibly come from a spiritually-minded therapist, individually focused and willing to help the struggling patient solidify and construct an inner dialogue and mythology to deal with psychological stressors? If our language faculty is truly a part of unconscious make-up, then it seems reasonable to suggest that part of that faculty is the mythological expression. History and anthropology would suggest this is also the case, in that every culture has at least some form of belief structure—be it the sun, an anthropomorphic god, or monotheism. These seemingly imagined authorities are no more incorporeal than current psychological theories and building an empirical vocabulary around them may be beneficial to treating a suffering individual and a society with a steadily increasing influx of descriptively “disordered” selves. Is it a coincidence that the advent of modern Western psychology coincided with rationalism and the decline of religious sentiment? Perhaps, though Thomas Szasz says it is not. It may be that the unconscious of many still need a structured expression of spiritual dialogue in which to place their “selves” and their stressors. Structured speech, given from a perceived spiritual authority and focused on the individual’s needs, may hold at least one key to unlocking the problems of today’s mentally ill. The approach seems no less reasonable than modern psychology and its constructions.
Jung reminds us that in a time when people are disregarding spiritual ideologies, it might be good to remember why they were constructed in the first place: to deal with the brutality, vulnerability, and anxiety of the ancient world. The more they are discarded, the more these brutalities and stresses are unleashed upon the psyche. I doubt I would disagree as to the great psychological “crutch” religion has been to the world since the dawn of consciousness. However, re-establishing the spiritual props of religious dialogue and authority may be as equally helpful as the magic of mental health. We need therapists as brave as Rokeach to find out.
But then again, we could just give them pills.
I admit that after my four month stay as chaplain in an insane asylum, I do find myself wondering.
The disorder of self occurs in the Western paradigm when the value of these illusory experiences becomes marginalized: a self-fulfilling prophecy. Rather than incorporating the individual’s reality and working therein, the therapist (or worse, the pharmacist) develops an “elimination” plan, through which the aberrant behaviors are relentlessly questioned, deconstructed, and hopefully replaced by structured expressions of a more socially acceptable nature.
I don't want to be misunderstood. We should assume that disorders do exist, at least incorporeally, and we need to see them as such for the sake of those suffering from, and those suffering on the account of their manifestations.
Certainly there are cases in which it is the interest of the collective community, or immediate family to adopt this Western approach to problems as they manifest themselves. But what if these interventions involved less deconstructing of the psychosis, and more of a reconstructing approach, using the internal world view of the mentally ill to build an illusory reality in which he or she can operate?
This was precisely the approach of Milton Rokeach in dealing with his, Three Christs of Yipsilanti. As more of a social worker than a psychologist (he was technically a social psychologist), Rokeach worked for several years with three men who each believed they were Jesus Christ. He brought the three men together in a group in hopes of un-establishing the deific world in which they had placed themselves. After one year of the project, Rokeach reported his findings:
"The three Christs had each adjusted to their new way of life; each in his own way had learned to cope with the others and with us…. The novelty and shock of confrontation had worn off. Each one had formulated and stabilized a set of rationalized beliefs to account for the claims of the others, and these rationalizations were bolstered by a silent bargain and repertoire of rituals designed to avoid the tension-producing subject of identity."
He decided to try a different approach after the first year. Entering into their delusions, Rokeach immersed himself into the worlds of the three mean and wrote confrontational letters to each of them signed in the name of their respective delusional creations. The men never knew it was Rokeach who penned the letters. In the correspondence, Rokeach challenged the men’s delusions by becoming a figure of authority as defined by the illusionary “selves” each man had constructed. He found that the delusions were best countered by advice from a perceived authority figure emerging from within the world of the deluded self. Drawing on the work of Bruno Betteheim’s study of concentration camps and anti-Semitic Jews who changed their concepts of self by adopting a new referent, he found that the three Christs were much more likely to identify with the ideology of either an aggressor, or a perceived authority. This approach has been used numerous times, as is currently bedrock to the theory that abductees will often grow to care for and relate to their kidnappers. But Rokeach argues that in the case of a psychotic, the external referents have become all together untrustworthy, and constructing a respectable authority was necessary in his treatment of the three Christs.
He advances the following hypothesis:
"A normal person will change his beliefs or behavior whenever suggestions for such change are seen by him to emanate from some figure or institution he accepts as a positive authority. Either he will change his beliefs and behavior so that thy conform with what he believes positive authority expects of him, or if he cannot or will not change, he will alter his beliefs about the positive authority itself; he will become more negative or more disaffected with the authority and, in the extreme, he will even formulate new beliefs about new authorities to rely on. "
Given the nature of current psychological theories in dealing with disorders, it’s hard to imagine the therapist as a “positive authority,” especially given today’s reliance on prescriptive medication to “cure” patients. This “pharmacological hedonism,” as it is aptly named by historian Edward Shorter, can sometimes only service the individual by the alleviation of symptoms. I can confess to real, unavoidable power of such drugs and have experienced them first hand via anti-depressants and I must truthfully confess that having such symptoms relieved wasn't inherently a bad thing.
Up to this point, I have considered the limits of both statistics and language in collectively classifying and defining disorder (and I have omitted two sections, one on Noam Chomsky and the other on Jung), but what opportunities does language offer the field of psychology — particularly considering that language is one of our only windows into the unconscious? Rokeach’s approach seems beneficial, albeit with a certain degree of risk. Entering linguistically into the world of the psychotic seems like dangerous business, especially given the potential lack of a perceived positive-authority. To the primitive, it was the shaman or spiritual magician who guided individuals through their various psychological states, in a similar way in which the scientific magician, the psychologist / psychiatrist does in the West today. By constructing a mythological tale, even a mythological world, in which to place the individual’s fears and hallucinations, this primitive therapist created a space for the unconscious to structurally express itself through prescriptive speech acts. Unfortunately, there is little research today to suggest if this approach is a valid.
What we do have are modern religious experiences, which border on the cusp of this primitivism and its latent perception of authority. Several empirical studies have been done on a variety of religious states and their effects. Some studies have shown that mystical spiritual beliefs and practices relieve stress and are more likely to define “mental pathology” in a positive light when taken in a spiritual context. Modern psychology would have diagnosed Joan of Arc as schizophrenic, paranoid, hysteric, or epileptic—maybe all of these, but in the context of her own mythological understandings, she was just a woman of devout faith; and in that context, she was able to become a powerful historical figure. How many other Joan’s of Arc are locked away in padded cells, or drooling quietly under the haze of medication? I suppose they at least aren't wielding firebrands... so we have that going for us.
William James defines “healthy-mindedness” as one positive aspect of the religious experience lending itself to numerous positive outcomes. Persons of this type of religious experience are intrinsically motivated to live out their beliefs in a highly personal, altruistic way. He contrasts this type of experience with those religious folk who are extrinsically motivated by creed and dogma. These sorts are called the “sick soul” by James and are continually surrounded by guilt, anxiety, and other neurosis.
Admittedly, I am no expert on the current trends of narrative psychology. But if we are going to rely on magical classifications to diagnose and hopefully “cure” people, I wonder what harm could possibly come from a spiritually-minded therapist, individually focused and willing to help the struggling patient solidify and construct an inner dialogue and mythology to deal with psychological stressors? If our language faculty is truly a part of unconscious make-up, then it seems reasonable to suggest that part of that faculty is the mythological expression. History and anthropology would suggest this is also the case, in that every culture has at least some form of belief structure—be it the sun, an anthropomorphic god, or monotheism. These seemingly imagined authorities are no more incorporeal than current psychological theories and building an empirical vocabulary around them may be beneficial to treating a suffering individual and a society with a steadily increasing influx of descriptively “disordered” selves. Is it a coincidence that the advent of modern Western psychology coincided with rationalism and the decline of religious sentiment? Perhaps, though Thomas Szasz says it is not. It may be that the unconscious of many still need a structured expression of spiritual dialogue in which to place their “selves” and their stressors. Structured speech, given from a perceived spiritual authority and focused on the individual’s needs, may hold at least one key to unlocking the problems of today’s mentally ill. The approach seems no less reasonable than modern psychology and its constructions.
Jung reminds us that in a time when people are disregarding spiritual ideologies, it might be good to remember why they were constructed in the first place: to deal with the brutality, vulnerability, and anxiety of the ancient world. The more they are discarded, the more these brutalities and stresses are unleashed upon the psyche. I doubt I would disagree as to the great psychological “crutch” religion has been to the world since the dawn of consciousness. However, re-establishing the spiritual props of religious dialogue and authority may be as equally helpful as the magic of mental health. We need therapists as brave as Rokeach to find out.
But then again, we could just give them pills.
I admit that after my four month stay as chaplain in an insane asylum, I do find myself wondering.
The Three Christs of Yipsilanti, Milton Rokeach: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. (1964) p. 190- 194
The History of Psychiatry, Edward Shorter: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. (1997), p. 325-326
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