"It is justifiable to regard the term 'sickness' as pertaining not tothe acute turmoil but to the pre-psychotic personality, standing as itdoes in need of profound reorganization. In this case, the renewalprocess occuring in the acute psychotic episode may be considerednature's way of setting things right."
- John Weir Perry
MICHAEL O'CALLAGHAN: How does one define so-called schizophrenia?
JOHN WEIR PERRY: Jung defined it most succinctly. He said"Schizophrenia is a condition in which the dream takes the place ofreality." This means that the unconscious overwhelms theego-consciousness, overwhelms the field of awareness with contentsfrom the deepest unconscious, which take mythic, symbolic form. Andthe emotions, unless they're hidden, are quite mythic too. To acareful observer, they're quite appropriate to the situation at hand.
The way "schizophrenia" unfolds is that, in a situation of personalcrisis, all the psyche's energy is sucked back out of the personal,conscious area, into what we call the archetypal area. Mythic contentsthus emerge from the deepest level of the psyche, in order tore-organise the Self. In so doing, the person feels himselfwithdrawing from the ordinary surroundings, and becomes quite isolatedin this dream state.
O'C: Did Jung really see this as a healing process?
PERRY: He did indeed! He believed that "schizophrenia" is a self-healing process - one in which, specifically, the pathologicalcomplexes dissolve themselves. The whole schizophrenic turmoil isreally a self-organising, healing experience. It's like a moltenstate. Everything seems to be made of free energy, an inner free playof imagery through which the alienated psyche spontaneouslyre-organises itself - in such a way that the conscious ego is broughtback into communication with the unconscious again.
O'C: How long does the experience normally last?
PERRY: The acute hallucinatory phase, during which these contents gothrough the re-ordering process, usually lasts about six weeks. This,by the way, corresponds to the classical description of visionaryexperiences in various religious texts, such as the proverbial "fortydays in the wilderness" often referred to in the Bible. Anyway, sixweeks is roughly it.
O'C: So are you saying that the reason we have so-called "chronicschizophrenia" in our society, - where a person is medicated,distressed or hospitalised for decades - is really cultural? A societywhich refuses to understand the healing nature of the phenomenon?
PERRY: Yes, it seems so. Of course, there are some unusual cases wherethe individual simply can't handle the impact of all this unconsciouscontent, or doesn't know what to do with it, and freaks out. But frommy experience at Diabasis, I've seen so many people go the other waythat I really do feel "chronic schizophrenia" is created by society'snegative response to what is actually a perfectly natural and healthyprocess. I hate to think of what happens to people who go into themental hospital...
O'C: Who experiences a "schizophrenic break"?
PERRY: Well, there's a lot of controversy about this! There is aconstitutional element, which is often interpreted as a "genotype ofpathology", but this depends on how you see it. I see it as a genotypeof sensitivity! Among adolescent siblings in a family, for example,its usually the most sensitive one who's going to catch it.
O'C: How many people are "schizophrenic?"
PERRY: Approximately two percent - that's over one hundred and sixteenmillion people! It's about one in five of all the hospital beds [inthe developed countries - ed.].
O'C: What does it feel like to go through a "schizophrenic break"?
PERRY: The overall experience is described as falling into a kind ofabyss of isolation. This comes about because there is such adiscrepancy between the subjective inner world that one has been sweptinto, and the mundane everyday world outside. There seems to be atotal gulf between these two. Of course, this is exactly what happensin our society: the individuals around such a person are bewilderedand frightened. They have absolutely no trust in what is going on! Soeverything is set up negatively, and this gives rise to fear - on bothsides.
O'C: So is starts with a feeling of isolation...
PERRY: Yes. Now the symbolic expression of this is falling into adeath - not only a death state, but also a death space - the"afterlife," the "realm of the ancestors," the "land of the dead," the"spirit world." The common experience here is for the person to lookabout and think that half the people around him are dead too. While inthis condition, it's very hard for one to tell if one is really aliveor not.
I've been told, by people looking back on the experience, that onething that stands out most of all, beyond the feeling of isolation, isthe perception that everything that comes up is divided intoopposites: Good and Bad, God and the Devil, Us and Them, or whatever.It's confusing, it's bewildering, it causes tremendous indecision anda total arrest in motivation in which everything is cancelled by itsopposite.
So both these things are very distressing: the fear that you have diedand dropped away from the world of the living, and the fear ofconflicting powers, conflicting values and thoughts. It's a veryaggravating feeling. This experience of opposites very quickly takeson a rather paranoid form.
I think this is really what the paranoid content is based on. It takesthe form of experiencing the world as caught in the grip of opposingforces, whether they be political, spiritual, cultural, ideological,or even racial. In recent years I've noticed it's "those who mightdestroy the planet" versus "those who are ecologically minded." Theprevailing idiom of the decade seems to shape the particular form inwhich these opposites arise. The main thing here is a great clash offorces; and this clash is usually of rather cosmic proportions, notjust a local affair at all.
Right away at the beginning, the death experience is accompanied bythe feeling that you've gone back to the beginning of time. Thisinvolves a regression, a return to the state of infancy in one'spersonal life history. But hand in hand with this is the feeling ofslipping back into the world of the primordial parents, into a Gardenof Eden. For example, it's a very common experience to feel one is thechild of Adam and Eve, say, at the beginning of time. This is verysymbolic, obviously. It's pretty much a representation of the psycheat the start of one's individual career after birth.
So these are the outstanding features. All kinds of imagery comestumbling across the field of awareness. It's like the mythologicalimage in a perfect stained-glass window being smashed, and all thebits and pieces being scattered. The effect is very colourful, butit's very hard to discern how the pieces belong to each other. Anyattempt to make sense of it is an exercise in abstraction from theactual experience. The important thing is to find the process runningthrough it all.
The thing that I'm particularly interested in here is the clashof opposites. The individual usually has a feeling of intense fear, ashe contemplates what seem to him to be the forces of disruption, ofchaos, of the Antichrist, of the Communists - whatever the ideologyhappens to portray as "evil." In any case, these forces are seen astending to destroy the world, and the "good guys" are those who wouldtry to preserve it. This is the element I try in particular toexplore, because it connects to all kinds of other general culturaland political phenomena that we could talk about! What makes thisvisionary state appear so very psychotic, is that an individual with aparanoid ideology or ideation tends to identify with everything thatcomes up from below, and one is very apt to get confused. A woman whoidentifies with the Virgin Mary, for example, may then believe she'sabout to give birth to a redeemer. Actually, there's many a pregnancytest that we do in these emergency situations, you know, because youcan never be sure! And the men are very apt to feel they're speciallyelected to be the second coming of the Messiah; or, if they're veryparanoid, a great political of military leader such as Napoleon orHitler. The delusions of grandeur become very evident, for as soon asone's identity gets hung up on such archetypal identifications, thereimmediately arises the "enemy out there" who is trying to undo whatthe supreme power has brought about. There is a deeply-felt fear ofbeing toppled, a feeling of immense danger. This again has manycultural connotations...
O'C: So if the person experiences himself as God, might he then alsofeel the Devil is out to get him?
PERRY: Yes, that's pretty much adequate. If one is Christ, theAnti-Christ is around somewhere at work; and if one is in a supremeposition of political rule, then there is sure to be a disruptiverevolutionary political party on the other side of the planet which istrying to topple you! It's rather scary, when you consider that thecollective unconscious projects such huge shadows upon whole nationsor superpowers...
O'C: What about the death / rebirth aspect?
PERRY: Well you see, the state of being in a realm of death in thebeginning is pretty soon accompanied by the idea of either being born,or giving birth. This is really the fundamental ground of the wholeexperience.
So there are two or three transformative elements that run through thephenomenon in a sort of overall direction. First, the feeling of deathand rebirth, which is really symbolic of the process ofdisorganisation and reorganisation; second, the fact that this happensboth on the world level as well as on the personal level - the worldis also going through a disruption and a regeneration; and finally,the initial inflated notion that one is a supreme power (a greatspiritual force, a supreme being, a supreme intelligence from outerspace or whatever), gradually yields to a deeper overall preoccupationwith the issues of relationship. The feelings and motivations tendtoward love and affection in general. The sexual element is stirred upquite a bit, but mostly it's on a symbolic level. The process ofpsychological individuation required to achieve this feeling of lovingrelationship is also what social evolution is all about.
In this regard, the concerns of the regression to infancy are no morepersonal than one would expect. They are mostly concerned with theinterpersonal field, with the parents and siblings, and with theproblems of childhood and adolescence. The great surprise, duringthese weeks of turmoil, is that even more of the concern is aboutcultural and societal issues. I was totally unprepared for this: inthe Freudian setting of medical school, there was no mention of it atall. At first, when Jung told me about it in Switzerland, I found itvery hard to believe. I had to see for myself if he was right. Thisthen became one of my motives for going my alternative way with thesepeople.
Our new understanding shows that the process of re-connection to theunconscious, which these millions of people go through in a way that'susually so very hazardous, isolated and uncreative, is nonethelessmade up of the same stuff as seers, visionaries, cultural reformersand prophets go through. They also experience much of the samecontent, except that in their case it is specifically concerned, firstand foremost, with the culture itself. Any kind of personal subjectiveideation is made to serve and clarify that end.
When I started looking into these cultural parallels of the"schizophrenic" process, I also began to find very clear similaritiesin the rituals of almost every society. There are striking parallelsin the visionary states of reformers and prophets and Messiahs.Messiahs are found all over the world, you know! Almost any culturethat's going through a profound upheaval of rapid turbulent change,produces seers and visionaries who glimpse the new myth-form andexpress its guidelines - the basic ideas and paradigms that give thepeople a new sense of direction. This is particularly true, of course,at the tribal level - in almost every part of the world. The shamanicvisions are particularly close to what we see in "psychosis," with allthe ideation of death and rebirth, and symbols of world destructionand regeneration.
O'C: Are you saying, then, that the psychosymbolic images, feelingsand ideas which emerge into consciousness during the "schizophrenic"process, also carry basic symbolic relevance - at the level of thecollective unconscious - to the alienation of Humankind as a whole?
PERRY: Yes! One thing that is quite significant in this respect isthat each decade shows a marked difference in the typical content ofthe ideation. During the Fifties, for example, I used to see alotabout "Democracy" and "Communism." For many Americans at that time,the coincidence of opposites was symbolically expressed in terms ofAmerica versus Russia, and a big showdown between the forces ofliberty and oppression. A little later on that content tapered off,and the moral values and the issues of war and peace that typified theSixties came to the fore. In the Seventies, I saw alot of concern withglobal concerns like preserving the planet and paying attention tonature. The "bad guys" in this case were cast in the role of those whohad a disregard for the needs of Nature.
Now of course this is not too different from what one finds in dreams.For dreams also tend to reflect cultural issues, and as soon as onegets into any kind of therapy that deals with the psyche at thisdeeper level of the collective unconscious, one comes to theinevitable realisation that we are not going along in our psychiclife, you know, just in a realm of interpersonal relationships. A verypowerful culture such as ours projects huge patterns, huge conflictsand turmoils, and we all experience them, although we may not beconscious of their inner meaning at all. In this sense, Humankind isstill enormously alienated; the point is, it doesn't happen just inWashington and Moscow - it happens within the psyche of the wholepeople. The political spokesmen are only giving voice to what is goingon in all the individuals...
This brings up the question of myth-form. You see, the big problemsfacing society are perceived in symbolic, mythic expression, and forthis reason their resolution takes place on the symbolic, mythic levelas well. If there's work going on in a culture to reorganise itself,then it's a process that must occur on both levels simultaneously:individuals will go through their personal visions, and collectivespokesmen will express collective visions, which get worked out andimplemented on a cultural level.
GRADUATE STUDENT IN CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY:
"Dr. Laing, I still don't understand the theoretical basis of yourtherapeutic approach to schizophrenia. Could you please explain it?"
R.D. LAING:
"Certainly. The basis is love. I don't see how you or I can be of anyhelp to our clients in a visionary state unless we are capable ofexperiencing a feeling of love for them. Therapy, as opposed to meretreatment, requires that we have a capacity for lovingkindness andcompassion."
GRADUATE STUDENT (perplexed):
"But Dr. Laing, what is your clinical methodology for developing this approach?"
– Overheard at a talk given by R.D.Laing in New York in the 1980's.
O'C: In your book The Far Side of Madness, you describe how atDiabasis - the home for "schizophrenic" individuals which you set upin Berkeley iin the 1960's - they could comfortably get into theirvisionary process in a totally supportive atmosphere. What are thenecessary conditions to enable a person to go through the experienceof madness and be renewed by it when they come through, as you put it,on the far side?
PERRY: That's a question with many facets! The first one, which wetouched on briefly toward the beginning of this conversation, wasabout the conditions that are set up around such an individual. Whatwe did at Diabasis was specifically to set up what we hoped would bethe most ideal, least toxic (smile), least damaging environment for aperson in the visionary state.
First off, this means a home. You need a place with friendly,sympathetic individuals who live there. These people have to becompanions, have to be willing to listen and not be frightened and notbe judgmental about it, and not try to do anything to anybody.
One has to let the visionary process unfold itself spontaneously.Under such conditions, to our surprise, we found that our clients gotinto a clear space very quickly! We had started out with the notionthat we would surely be in for alot of bedlam with all this "madness"going on, but actually the opposite was true! People would come injust a crazy as could be on the first day or two, but they'd settledown very soon into a state of coherency and clarity. Often, when Iwould come in for a consultation at the end of the week, I would seesomeone who had been admitted in a completely freaked-out state just afew days before, sitting at the dinner-table indistinguishable fromanybody else; sometimes I couldn't tell if this was a new member ofthe staff, or one of our clients. The calming effect of a supportiveenvironment is truly amazing!
It's a well-known fact that people can and do clear up in a benignsetting. Actually, they can come down very quickly. But if some of ourcases had gone to the mental hospital, they would have been given avery dire message: "You've had a mental breakdown. You're sick. You'reinto this for decades, maybe for the rest of your life!" and told "Youneed this medication to keep it all together." I am quite certain thatif some of our clients had been sent to the mental hospital, theywould have had a long, long fight with it. The outcome of their stayat Diabasis, however, was that their life after the episode wassubstantially more satisfying and fulfilling to them than it had beenbefore!
O'C: Would the determining factor then be the person's realisationthat she is in a non-ordinary state of consciousness - i.e. a statewhich, although very different from that of the people around her, isin fact completely natural and good - and that the hallucinatoryimagery carries a symbolic meaning, which pertains primarily to theinner reality, rather than to the outside world?
PERRY: You said it! The tendency, as you suggest, is to concretise allthe symbolic stuff and believe there are enemies out there, and thatthe walls are wired, that there are people with guns at the window,and subversive political parties trying to do things, or that one isbeing watched because one is the head of some organisation andeverybody knows it. All of that is a mistaken, "concretistic" tendencyto take too literally things whose correct meaning is actuallysymbolic.
So yes, the therapeutic goal is to achieve that attitude whichperceives the symbolic nature of the ideation which belongs to theinner reality. Now the inner reality is real! It's very important togrant it that reality, but not to get the two realities mixed up.That's the trick! Actually, for most people it's surprisingly easy.Certainly, the more paranoid a person is, the more difficult. There isa certain paranoid makeup, a style of personality which tends to focuson the objective world around. It's what we call an attention style.It is difficult for such people to see the inner meaning of theirvisions. On the other hand, the average person tends to go along withthe inner journey and to realise - well, they do need to be reminded -but once they're reminded, they tend to quickly perceive that it is aspiritual test, or a symbolic test, and not the actual end of theactual world.
The second condition needed for a successful outcome of the"schizophrenic episode" is not just a benign surround, but also somepeople who can relate to the visionary process in a sympathetic way. Ibelieve very strongly that it's not just enough to have a benigncommunity around such a person: the thing that really makes theprocess move and reach its conclusion, is an intense relationship withone or two people. Sometimes with a man and a woman, who may play asymbolic role like two parents, or like the opposites, which can betaken care of in this way.
Bringing the whole supercharged process into a relationship seems tomake it bearable, containable, manageable. Of course, some people gothrough it alone. They tell me this is highly painful, veryfrightening. But if one has a therapist or counsellor to whom one canrelate the experience, one need not suffer a whole lot once theprocess gets underway. There will always be some tough moments,nightmarish times, bewilderment. One wonders what the dangers are,whether there are evil forces out there. But through these weeks,somehow, the prevailing mood is actually one of buoyancy. At Diabasis,there was a general atmosphere of jocularity. People would be jokingaround, having fun, playing music and dancing and humming tunes andpainting...
O'C: Yes, in fact wasn't that part of the design? You had all sorts ofways for people to communicate their experience and externalise inthrough various forms of art?
PERRY: The whole environment was organised into various "spaces." Oneof these - a very important one - was called the rage room. This wassound-proofed and padded, for the individual's own protection, and weput things in there that they could whack to pieces like old cottonsand mattresses. But the door was not locked, it was not like thepadded cell in the mental hospital, where the person is isolatedagainst his will... We set it up so that if a client was having strongfeelings of rage, he or she could share it with a staff member,particularly the counsellor or primary therapist, and thus deliver it.This was found meaningful. The anger is a very important part of thegrowth of the ego, you see.
We also had the opposite: a room for quietness and meditation. Thiswas equally important, for integrative purposes. We had an art room,but I must say, people didn't seem to spend much time there (chuckle).These so-called "sensitive personalities" were all hanging around thedining room table, doing water-colours or modelling in clay, andgiving creative expression to some of the imagery inside their head.We also had a sand tray and figurines for sandplay therapy. It workslike a dream: you set up a dramatic scene, move the figurines, tell astory. This avenue of expression is easier than painting. It's verydreamlike, so it hits the visionary state very well. We also hadpoetry...
Another thing we provided was a variety of body movement sessions,dance and martial arts, with skilled facilitators. And finally, we hadinterviews at least three of four times a week, for an hour and a halfto two hours each, with the primary counsellor/therapist. But reallyall of these creative outlets put together became part of theinterview itself - verbal expression combined with image expression inthese various media.
Now throughout all this there was nothing scheduled, nothingmandatory. It was all informal. We'd just respond to things as theycame up. Our only house rule really was "No violence to property orpersons!" The clients could dash out nude into the street if they hadto; we didn't like it, but they did! You see, we wanted them to be inthis house of their own free will. They had to realise their owndesire to belong in the house, and they did.
So this whole approach is essentially one of releasing, rather thansuppression. We allowed everything and encouraged its expression - nottoward chaos, but toward communication! Communication tends to order.This is a most important point in psychiatry, but the common opinionis that it is very dangerous... When you actually do it, however, youfind exactly the opposite is true: people get over theirpreoccupations very quickly. The whole point here is to deliver thevisionary content to somebody and to be able to appreciate itssymbolic relevance to the inner process of personal and socialrenewal. Once it's delivered, the process keeps moving by itself. It'sreally unfortunate there is so much misunderstanding about it all. Thetruth is really very simple.
"The gigantic catastrophes that threaten us are not elementalhappenings of a physical or biological kind, but are psychic events.We are threatened in a fearful way by wars and revolutions that arenothing else than psychic epidemics. At any moment a few millionpeople may be seized by a madness, and then our leaders mayprecipitate us into a blood bath of war and radioactivity... Insteadof being exposed to wild beasts, tumbling rocks, and inundatingwaters, man is exposed today to the elemental forces of his ownpsyche. Psychic life is a world power that exceeds by many times allthe powers of the Earth...
If one voluntarily takes the burden of completeness upon oneself, onecan avoid all the unhappy consequences of repressed individuation -one need not find it 'happening' to one against one's will in anegative form. This is as much as to say that anyone who is destinedto descend into a deep pit had better set about it with all thenecessary precautions, rather than risk falling into the holebackwards."
- Carl Jung
"The journey is there and it's an experience that we have at somestage to go through... Every single one of us has got to go throughit.. until we gradually build ourselves up into an acceptance ofreality."
- Jesse Watkins (A former "schizophrenic" client of R.D. Laing)
"The time will come when Humankind will have to make a choice betweensuicide and adoration."
- Teilard de Chardin
O'CALLAGHAN: Here's a broader question which I've been thinking aboutfor years. If nature's self-organising way of healing an alienatedindividual is for one's psyche to go through a world viewtransformation process involving a spontaneous temporary non-ordinarystate of consciousness, do you think it possible that an entiresociety, or perhaps even the whole of Humankind - which is undoubtedlyalienated and obviously having a hard time adapting to its new globalenvironment - could conceivably have to pass through some kind ofcollective non-ordinary state, on the way to greater wisdom? And ifso, would not such a process also take the form of either a horriblemass psychosis, if suppressed, or a creative breakthrough, if we wereculturally prepared to understand its inner meaning?
PERRY: Yes indeed! You know, there are many examples of this inanthropological studies of societies going through periods of culturalcrisis. What you're referring to is right around the corner! You don'thave to look very far to see a culture deteriorate, to see individualsin deep distress...
The cultural historian Anthony Wallace is very lucid about this. Hedid a study of periods of turmoil in various cultures, and formulateda ground-plan for the process of sudden culture-change. It goes likethis: first, under the new conditions, the old answers don't work, theold methods no longer hold, the old ways prevail no more, and the oldvalues are no longer held in esteem. This leads to a demoralisation,which results very quickly in psychosomatic distress, and the abuse ofalcohol or other drugs. From out of all this, some sort of restitutionmay then emerge through the activation of visionary states withincertain people in the society. The gifted ones are those whose visionsreach beyond the personal sphere, into the realm of the collectiveunconscious, out of which the new myth comes forth.
Now the crucial point here is whether that myth is then received. Yousee, in a psychosis, part of the problem, as we were saying, is thatthe vision is not received. When the individual, and his family andfriends and society regard the vision as unacceptable and they rejectit, that is the experience of going crazy!
On the other hand, a prophet is given alot of esteem. If his visionhappens to coincide with what the people need to hear, he willeventually be held in great reverence and his message will bereceived. If his myth-making capacity is working well, he may deliverthe new myth that is going to be accepted for the next phase of thatculture's evolution. That then leads to a whole cultural renewal,which Wallace calls a revitalisation movement.
So what's particularly interesting about this collective, culturaldimension of the visionary experience, is that the historicalevolution of culture recapitulates the same process that happenswithin the individual. It begins in fear of death, lust for power andsupremacy, but soon leads over into this concern with relationship andEros, intimacy, caring. In history, the myth original that parallelsthis process is one that was first conceived during the urbanrevolution: that's about 3000 BCE in Egypt and Mesopotamia, 2000 BCEin China, and about 1000 BCE in Israel. With this first growth ofcities, a vast psychological transformation took place in society, andnew myths emerged which served a guiding function for the motivationswithin. Now these first urban societies were preoccupied with power.Power and dominance were held in high esteem and sacralised. Somecenturies went by, and you had prophetic movements, philosophicalmovements that arose in opposition to that. These later mythsredefined the cohesive power in society. They asserted that the thingthat binds the people together into a working whole is not power anddominance but caring, brotherhood, and love.
If you check out the ancient literature, you will find that this ideaof the overarching importance of love or compassion is simply notmentioned in any urban texts up to a certain point.... The function ofsocial leadership was first projected exclusively onto the persona ofthe Pharaoh or King. All the people had to do was to follow orders anddo what they were told. The mythologies of the early urban phase wereall in the power idiom at first: the King is the embodiment of thewhole people. Only he can care for them. He is the one who iscompassionate. He is the one who is loving, as a father is toward hischildren.
So what took place over the following centuries was a completetransformation of that type of myth. The first time in recordedliterature that there is any mention of the Kingship belonging notonly to the elected king, but also to the people, was around themiddle of the 1st millennium BCE, in China. They affirmed that everyindividual has within himself the potentiality to be sage-king orsacral king. It was specifically expressed in these terms: "Every manshall become a sage-king!"
O'C: Very interesting! Who said it?
PERRY: Interestingly enough, it was Confucius who expressed it first -you wouldn't expect it really! He was a great promoter of the idea ofthe inner kingship, democracy, self-rule, and social caring. He hadthe Golden Rule - the idea of returning good for evil and respondingto violence with non-violence - quite clearly expressed long beforeChristianity. The same thing happened in India, with the Buddha. InIsrael, it didn't arrive until much later on. The Old Testamentprophets, projecting their image of God as the vengeful Yahveh, didnot talk of this kind of brotherhood or compassion; you don't findthat really until the Christian era. The point is that the centralimportance of love and social caring was just not mentioned in any ofthese cultures before their initial perception - in visionary states -by sensitive individuals.
Now regarding the second part of your question, regarding the currentcultural upheaval in the world today, I think we must be prepared, asyou were mentioning earlier, for a change in world outlook, that is, anew world view or mandala. The original mandalas were conceived anddesigned as world-images, meaning that they are condensed compactversions, in symbol form, of a way of perceiving the world.
Simply put, the new world view will become explicit when its symbolmoves into consciousness.
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By Michael O'Callaghan. Includes the John Weir Perry interview, abrief history of the repression and decline of the shamanic traditionin Europe, and a first-hand account of a visionary experience by theauthor during an astroarcheological field trip to a 6,000 year-oldartwork in Ireland. With extensive footnotes and a bibliography.Published on the Global Vision web site at www.global-vision.org/dream
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By Michael O'Callaghan. Religious fundamentalists share manyassumptions and beliefs with "schizophrenic" people, including apolarisation of humankind into good and evil groups and an expectationof imminent apocalypse. In the transpersonal context of history,colonialism and globalisation, they can be seen as the "identifiedpatient" in a larger planetary network of dysfunctional social andcommercial relations in which transnational corporations, the WorldBank, the International Monetary Fund, the WTO and the citizens of thewealthy countries all participate in driving them "crazy." Written forthe proposed Centre for Science and the Sacred to promote intellectualpluralism. Published on the Global Vision web site atwww.global-vision.org/sacred/fundamentalism.html
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By Michael O'Callaghan. This is an impressionistic musical featurefilm conceived as A Collective Self-Portrait Of Humankind And TheBiosphere - a concept without precedent in art or motion picturehistory. It's an artistic attempt to create a description of humanidentity at the dawn of the global age, and a mythopoeic sales pitchfor a sustainable civilisation. Looking at the pattern that connectshumankind, the biosphere, technology, and the collective unconscious,the film is a metaphor about the connection between the worldsituation and our own way of seeing. Now in development, this is thefirst film to be collectively designed by its own audience on theInternet! Scheduled for theatrical release in 2005. Seewww.global-vision.org/movie for details.
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By Richard Gosden. Seewww.cwrl.utexas.edu/~monitors/1.1/gosden/onedocgosden.html
Complete Recovery from Schizophrenia Without the Aid of Drugs
By Tracey May. See www.schizophrenia-recovery.com.
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RELATED READING
Trials of the Visionary Mind: Spiritual Emergency and the Renewal Process.By John Weir Perry. State University of New York Press, Albany, 1999.
The Far Side of Madness.By John Weir Perry. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1974.
The Self In Psychotic Process: Its Symbolization in Schizophrenia.By John Weir Perry, with an introduction by C.G.Jung. University ofCalifornia Press, Los Angeles, 1953.
The Heart of History: Individuality in Evolution.By John Weir Perry. State University of New York Press, Albany, 1987.
Perceval's Narrative: A Patient's Account of his Psychosis.By Gregory Bateson. Stanford University Press, 1961, Stanford.
The Double-Bind Theory of Schizophrenia.By Gregory Bateson. Re-published in Steps to an Ecology of Mind, opus cit.
Realms Of The Human Unconscious : Observations From LSD ResearchBy Stanislav Grof, M.D. E.P.Dutton, New York, 1976.
Beyond The Brain : Birth, Death And Transcendence In PsychotherapyBy Stanislav Grof, M.D. State University of New York Press, Albany, 1985.
The Adventure of Self-Discovery: Dimensions of Consciousness and NewPerspectives in Psychotherapy and Inner Exploration.By Stanislav Grof, M.D. State University of New York Press, Albany, 1988.
Spiritual Emergency : When Personal Transformation Becomes a CrisisBy Stanislav Grof and Christina Grof (ed), with contributions fromR.D.Laing, Roberto Assagioli, John Weir Perry, Ram Dass, Lee Senella,Jack Kornfield, Paul Rebilot, Holger Kalwert, Anne Armstrong, KeithThompson and others; Jeremy Tarcher Inc., Los Angeles, 1989.
A Ten Day Voyage.A first-hand account of a "schizophrenic" experience by Jesse Watkins.Quoted in R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience, Ballantine Books,New York, 1968.
The Divided Self.By R. D. Laing. Pantheon, New York, 1962.
The Politics of Experience.By R. D. Laing. Ballantine Books, New York, 1968.
The Politics of the Family and other essays.By R. D. Laing. New York, 1969.
Sanity, Madness and the Family.By R. D. Laing with H.Phillipson. Tavistock Publications, London, 1966.
Interpersonal Perception: A Theory and a Method of Research.By R. D. Laing.
Shamanic Voices : A Survey of Visionary Narratives.By Joan Halifax. E.P. Dutton, New York.Re-issued (Rei Edition), Arkana, 1994, ISBN: 0140193480.
Shaman : The Wounded Healer.By Joan Halifax. Crossroad Publishing Co, 1983, ISBN: 082450061X.
Shaman (Art and Imagination).By Joan Halifax. Reprint Edition, Thames & Hudson, 1988, ISBN: 050081029X.
Changing Images of Man.By Joseph Campbell, Duane Elgin, Willis Harman, Arthur Hastings, O. W.Markley, Floyd Matson, Brendan O'Regan, and Leslie Schneider. PolicyResearch Report no. 4, Center for the Study of Social Policy, StanfordResearch Institute, Menlo Park, 1974.
Steps To An Ecology of Mind.By Gregory Bateson. Ballantine Books, New York, 1972.
The Phenomenon of Man.By Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Harper and Row, New York, 1959Originally published as Le Phénomaine Humain, Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1955.
The Power of Myth.By Joseph Campbell, with Bill Moyers. Doubleday, New York, 1988; thereis also an excellent television series of the same name, available asa six-part boxed set of videotapes from Mystic Fire Video at PO Box422, New York, NY 10012-0005, USA. You can order these tapes by creditcard from their web site at www.mysticfire.com.
The Hero With A Thousand Faces.By Joseph Campbell, first published in 1949, and later by BollingenUniversity Press, New York, 1968.
On Rebirth (Über Wiedergeburt).By Carl Gustav Jung, Eranos Jarhbuch 1939, Zürich, 1940.
WotanCarl Jung's description of the rumblings in the collective unconsciousof the German people before the outbreak of World War II, published inthe Neue Schweitzer Rundschau, March 1936. Later republished in Essayson Contemporary Events 1947, and in the Collected Works of C. G. Jung,Civlisation in Transition, Vol. 10.
After the Catastrophe.Carl Jung's account of Nazism as a collective psychosis.Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Civilisation in Transition, Vol. 10, 1945.
History Ends in Green, Gaia, psychedelics, and the archaic revival.By Terrence McKenna. A boxed set of audiotapes recorded at the Esalen Institute.Mystic Fire Audio, New York, 1992.
Ecopsychology : Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind.By Theodore Roszak, Mary E. Gomes, and Allen D. Kanner.Sierra Club Books, 1995, ISBN: 0871564068.
The Book Of Revelations.By Saint John the Evangelist, in the New Testament of the Bible.
The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries.By W.Y. Evans-Wentz, with a new introduction by Terrence McKenna.Library of the Mystic Arts, Citadel Press, published by CarolPublishing Group,1990.(Originally published in Oxford, 1911).
The Embodied Mind : Cognitive Science and Human Experience.By Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, Evan; and Eleanor Rosch.Reprint Edition Mit Press, Cambridge, 1993, ISBN: 0262720213.
Memories, Dreams, Reflections.By Carl Gustav Jung, recorded and edited by Aniela Jaffé, Routledgeand Kegan Paul, London, 1963.
Tao Te Ching.By Lao Tsu, 6th. century B.C.E. Translated from the Mandarin by Gia-FuFeng and Jane English.Wildwood House Ltd., London, 1972.
- John Weir Perry
MICHAEL O'CALLAGHAN: How does one define so-called schizophrenia?
JOHN WEIR PERRY: Jung defined it most succinctly. He said"Schizophrenia is a condition in which the dream takes the place ofreality." This means that the unconscious overwhelms theego-consciousness, overwhelms the field of awareness with contentsfrom the deepest unconscious, which take mythic, symbolic form. Andthe emotions, unless they're hidden, are quite mythic too. To acareful observer, they're quite appropriate to the situation at hand.
The way "schizophrenia" unfolds is that, in a situation of personalcrisis, all the psyche's energy is sucked back out of the personal,conscious area, into what we call the archetypal area. Mythic contentsthus emerge from the deepest level of the psyche, in order tore-organise the Self. In so doing, the person feels himselfwithdrawing from the ordinary surroundings, and becomes quite isolatedin this dream state.
O'C: Did Jung really see this as a healing process?
PERRY: He did indeed! He believed that "schizophrenia" is a self-healing process - one in which, specifically, the pathologicalcomplexes dissolve themselves. The whole schizophrenic turmoil isreally a self-organising, healing experience. It's like a moltenstate. Everything seems to be made of free energy, an inner free playof imagery through which the alienated psyche spontaneouslyre-organises itself - in such a way that the conscious ego is broughtback into communication with the unconscious again.
O'C: How long does the experience normally last?
PERRY: The acute hallucinatory phase, during which these contents gothrough the re-ordering process, usually lasts about six weeks. This,by the way, corresponds to the classical description of visionaryexperiences in various religious texts, such as the proverbial "fortydays in the wilderness" often referred to in the Bible. Anyway, sixweeks is roughly it.
O'C: So are you saying that the reason we have so-called "chronicschizophrenia" in our society, - where a person is medicated,distressed or hospitalised for decades - is really cultural? A societywhich refuses to understand the healing nature of the phenomenon?
PERRY: Yes, it seems so. Of course, there are some unusual cases wherethe individual simply can't handle the impact of all this unconsciouscontent, or doesn't know what to do with it, and freaks out. But frommy experience at Diabasis, I've seen so many people go the other waythat I really do feel "chronic schizophrenia" is created by society'snegative response to what is actually a perfectly natural and healthyprocess. I hate to think of what happens to people who go into themental hospital...
O'C: Who experiences a "schizophrenic break"?
PERRY: Well, there's a lot of controversy about this! There is aconstitutional element, which is often interpreted as a "genotype ofpathology", but this depends on how you see it. I see it as a genotypeof sensitivity! Among adolescent siblings in a family, for example,its usually the most sensitive one who's going to catch it.
O'C: How many people are "schizophrenic?"
PERRY: Approximately two percent - that's over one hundred and sixteenmillion people! It's about one in five of all the hospital beds [inthe developed countries - ed.].
O'C: What does it feel like to go through a "schizophrenic break"?
PERRY: The overall experience is described as falling into a kind ofabyss of isolation. This comes about because there is such adiscrepancy between the subjective inner world that one has been sweptinto, and the mundane everyday world outside. There seems to be atotal gulf between these two. Of course, this is exactly what happensin our society: the individuals around such a person are bewilderedand frightened. They have absolutely no trust in what is going on! Soeverything is set up negatively, and this gives rise to fear - on bothsides.
O'C: So is starts with a feeling of isolation...
PERRY: Yes. Now the symbolic expression of this is falling into adeath - not only a death state, but also a death space - the"afterlife," the "realm of the ancestors," the "land of the dead," the"spirit world." The common experience here is for the person to lookabout and think that half the people around him are dead too. While inthis condition, it's very hard for one to tell if one is really aliveor not.
I've been told, by people looking back on the experience, that onething that stands out most of all, beyond the feeling of isolation, isthe perception that everything that comes up is divided intoopposites: Good and Bad, God and the Devil, Us and Them, or whatever.It's confusing, it's bewildering, it causes tremendous indecision anda total arrest in motivation in which everything is cancelled by itsopposite.
So both these things are very distressing: the fear that you have diedand dropped away from the world of the living, and the fear ofconflicting powers, conflicting values and thoughts. It's a veryaggravating feeling. This experience of opposites very quickly takeson a rather paranoid form.
I think this is really what the paranoid content is based on. It takesthe form of experiencing the world as caught in the grip of opposingforces, whether they be political, spiritual, cultural, ideological,or even racial. In recent years I've noticed it's "those who mightdestroy the planet" versus "those who are ecologically minded." Theprevailing idiom of the decade seems to shape the particular form inwhich these opposites arise. The main thing here is a great clash offorces; and this clash is usually of rather cosmic proportions, notjust a local affair at all.
Right away at the beginning, the death experience is accompanied bythe feeling that you've gone back to the beginning of time. Thisinvolves a regression, a return to the state of infancy in one'spersonal life history. But hand in hand with this is the feeling ofslipping back into the world of the primordial parents, into a Gardenof Eden. For example, it's a very common experience to feel one is thechild of Adam and Eve, say, at the beginning of time. This is verysymbolic, obviously. It's pretty much a representation of the psycheat the start of one's individual career after birth.
So these are the outstanding features. All kinds of imagery comestumbling across the field of awareness. It's like the mythologicalimage in a perfect stained-glass window being smashed, and all thebits and pieces being scattered. The effect is very colourful, butit's very hard to discern how the pieces belong to each other. Anyattempt to make sense of it is an exercise in abstraction from theactual experience. The important thing is to find the process runningthrough it all.
The thing that I'm particularly interested in here is the clashof opposites. The individual usually has a feeling of intense fear, ashe contemplates what seem to him to be the forces of disruption, ofchaos, of the Antichrist, of the Communists - whatever the ideologyhappens to portray as "evil." In any case, these forces are seen astending to destroy the world, and the "good guys" are those who wouldtry to preserve it. This is the element I try in particular toexplore, because it connects to all kinds of other general culturaland political phenomena that we could talk about! What makes thisvisionary state appear so very psychotic, is that an individual with aparanoid ideology or ideation tends to identify with everything thatcomes up from below, and one is very apt to get confused. A woman whoidentifies with the Virgin Mary, for example, may then believe she'sabout to give birth to a redeemer. Actually, there's many a pregnancytest that we do in these emergency situations, you know, because youcan never be sure! And the men are very apt to feel they're speciallyelected to be the second coming of the Messiah; or, if they're veryparanoid, a great political of military leader such as Napoleon orHitler. The delusions of grandeur become very evident, for as soon asone's identity gets hung up on such archetypal identifications, thereimmediately arises the "enemy out there" who is trying to undo whatthe supreme power has brought about. There is a deeply-felt fear ofbeing toppled, a feeling of immense danger. This again has manycultural connotations...
O'C: So if the person experiences himself as God, might he then alsofeel the Devil is out to get him?
PERRY: Yes, that's pretty much adequate. If one is Christ, theAnti-Christ is around somewhere at work; and if one is in a supremeposition of political rule, then there is sure to be a disruptiverevolutionary political party on the other side of the planet which istrying to topple you! It's rather scary, when you consider that thecollective unconscious projects such huge shadows upon whole nationsor superpowers...
O'C: What about the death / rebirth aspect?
PERRY: Well you see, the state of being in a realm of death in thebeginning is pretty soon accompanied by the idea of either being born,or giving birth. This is really the fundamental ground of the wholeexperience.
So there are two or three transformative elements that run through thephenomenon in a sort of overall direction. First, the feeling of deathand rebirth, which is really symbolic of the process ofdisorganisation and reorganisation; second, the fact that this happensboth on the world level as well as on the personal level - the worldis also going through a disruption and a regeneration; and finally,the initial inflated notion that one is a supreme power (a greatspiritual force, a supreme being, a supreme intelligence from outerspace or whatever), gradually yields to a deeper overall preoccupationwith the issues of relationship. The feelings and motivations tendtoward love and affection in general. The sexual element is stirred upquite a bit, but mostly it's on a symbolic level. The process ofpsychological individuation required to achieve this feeling of lovingrelationship is also what social evolution is all about.
In this regard, the concerns of the regression to infancy are no morepersonal than one would expect. They are mostly concerned with theinterpersonal field, with the parents and siblings, and with theproblems of childhood and adolescence. The great surprise, duringthese weeks of turmoil, is that even more of the concern is aboutcultural and societal issues. I was totally unprepared for this: inthe Freudian setting of medical school, there was no mention of it atall. At first, when Jung told me about it in Switzerland, I found itvery hard to believe. I had to see for myself if he was right. Thisthen became one of my motives for going my alternative way with thesepeople.
Our new understanding shows that the process of re-connection to theunconscious, which these millions of people go through in a way that'susually so very hazardous, isolated and uncreative, is nonethelessmade up of the same stuff as seers, visionaries, cultural reformersand prophets go through. They also experience much of the samecontent, except that in their case it is specifically concerned, firstand foremost, with the culture itself. Any kind of personal subjectiveideation is made to serve and clarify that end.
When I started looking into these cultural parallels of the"schizophrenic" process, I also began to find very clear similaritiesin the rituals of almost every society. There are striking parallelsin the visionary states of reformers and prophets and Messiahs.Messiahs are found all over the world, you know! Almost any culturethat's going through a profound upheaval of rapid turbulent change,produces seers and visionaries who glimpse the new myth-form andexpress its guidelines - the basic ideas and paradigms that give thepeople a new sense of direction. This is particularly true, of course,at the tribal level - in almost every part of the world. The shamanicvisions are particularly close to what we see in "psychosis," with allthe ideation of death and rebirth, and symbols of world destructionand regeneration.
O'C: Are you saying, then, that the psychosymbolic images, feelingsand ideas which emerge into consciousness during the "schizophrenic"process, also carry basic symbolic relevance - at the level of thecollective unconscious - to the alienation of Humankind as a whole?
PERRY: Yes! One thing that is quite significant in this respect isthat each decade shows a marked difference in the typical content ofthe ideation. During the Fifties, for example, I used to see alotabout "Democracy" and "Communism." For many Americans at that time,the coincidence of opposites was symbolically expressed in terms ofAmerica versus Russia, and a big showdown between the forces ofliberty and oppression. A little later on that content tapered off,and the moral values and the issues of war and peace that typified theSixties came to the fore. In the Seventies, I saw alot of concern withglobal concerns like preserving the planet and paying attention tonature. The "bad guys" in this case were cast in the role of those whohad a disregard for the needs of Nature.
Now of course this is not too different from what one finds in dreams.For dreams also tend to reflect cultural issues, and as soon as onegets into any kind of therapy that deals with the psyche at thisdeeper level of the collective unconscious, one comes to theinevitable realisation that we are not going along in our psychiclife, you know, just in a realm of interpersonal relationships. A verypowerful culture such as ours projects huge patterns, huge conflictsand turmoils, and we all experience them, although we may not beconscious of their inner meaning at all. In this sense, Humankind isstill enormously alienated; the point is, it doesn't happen just inWashington and Moscow - it happens within the psyche of the wholepeople. The political spokesmen are only giving voice to what is goingon in all the individuals...
This brings up the question of myth-form. You see, the big problemsfacing society are perceived in symbolic, mythic expression, and forthis reason their resolution takes place on the symbolic, mythic levelas well. If there's work going on in a culture to reorganise itself,then it's a process that must occur on both levels simultaneously:individuals will go through their personal visions, and collectivespokesmen will express collective visions, which get worked out andimplemented on a cultural level.
GRADUATE STUDENT IN CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY:
"Dr. Laing, I still don't understand the theoretical basis of yourtherapeutic approach to schizophrenia. Could you please explain it?"
R.D. LAING:
"Certainly. The basis is love. I don't see how you or I can be of anyhelp to our clients in a visionary state unless we are capable ofexperiencing a feeling of love for them. Therapy, as opposed to meretreatment, requires that we have a capacity for lovingkindness andcompassion."
GRADUATE STUDENT (perplexed):
"But Dr. Laing, what is your clinical methodology for developing this approach?"
– Overheard at a talk given by R.D.Laing in New York in the 1980's.
O'C: In your book The Far Side of Madness, you describe how atDiabasis - the home for "schizophrenic" individuals which you set upin Berkeley iin the 1960's - they could comfortably get into theirvisionary process in a totally supportive atmosphere. What are thenecessary conditions to enable a person to go through the experienceof madness and be renewed by it when they come through, as you put it,on the far side?
PERRY: That's a question with many facets! The first one, which wetouched on briefly toward the beginning of this conversation, wasabout the conditions that are set up around such an individual. Whatwe did at Diabasis was specifically to set up what we hoped would bethe most ideal, least toxic (smile), least damaging environment for aperson in the visionary state.
First off, this means a home. You need a place with friendly,sympathetic individuals who live there. These people have to becompanions, have to be willing to listen and not be frightened and notbe judgmental about it, and not try to do anything to anybody.
One has to let the visionary process unfold itself spontaneously.Under such conditions, to our surprise, we found that our clients gotinto a clear space very quickly! We had started out with the notionthat we would surely be in for alot of bedlam with all this "madness"going on, but actually the opposite was true! People would come injust a crazy as could be on the first day or two, but they'd settledown very soon into a state of coherency and clarity. Often, when Iwould come in for a consultation at the end of the week, I would seesomeone who had been admitted in a completely freaked-out state just afew days before, sitting at the dinner-table indistinguishable fromanybody else; sometimes I couldn't tell if this was a new member ofthe staff, or one of our clients. The calming effect of a supportiveenvironment is truly amazing!
It's a well-known fact that people can and do clear up in a benignsetting. Actually, they can come down very quickly. But if some of ourcases had gone to the mental hospital, they would have been given avery dire message: "You've had a mental breakdown. You're sick. You'reinto this for decades, maybe for the rest of your life!" and told "Youneed this medication to keep it all together." I am quite certain thatif some of our clients had been sent to the mental hospital, theywould have had a long, long fight with it. The outcome of their stayat Diabasis, however, was that their life after the episode wassubstantially more satisfying and fulfilling to them than it had beenbefore!
O'C: Would the determining factor then be the person's realisationthat she is in a non-ordinary state of consciousness - i.e. a statewhich, although very different from that of the people around her, isin fact completely natural and good - and that the hallucinatoryimagery carries a symbolic meaning, which pertains primarily to theinner reality, rather than to the outside world?
PERRY: You said it! The tendency, as you suggest, is to concretise allthe symbolic stuff and believe there are enemies out there, and thatthe walls are wired, that there are people with guns at the window,and subversive political parties trying to do things, or that one isbeing watched because one is the head of some organisation andeverybody knows it. All of that is a mistaken, "concretistic" tendencyto take too literally things whose correct meaning is actuallysymbolic.
So yes, the therapeutic goal is to achieve that attitude whichperceives the symbolic nature of the ideation which belongs to theinner reality. Now the inner reality is real! It's very important togrant it that reality, but not to get the two realities mixed up.That's the trick! Actually, for most people it's surprisingly easy.Certainly, the more paranoid a person is, the more difficult. There isa certain paranoid makeup, a style of personality which tends to focuson the objective world around. It's what we call an attention style.It is difficult for such people to see the inner meaning of theirvisions. On the other hand, the average person tends to go along withthe inner journey and to realise - well, they do need to be reminded -but once they're reminded, they tend to quickly perceive that it is aspiritual test, or a symbolic test, and not the actual end of theactual world.
The second condition needed for a successful outcome of the"schizophrenic episode" is not just a benign surround, but also somepeople who can relate to the visionary process in a sympathetic way. Ibelieve very strongly that it's not just enough to have a benigncommunity around such a person: the thing that really makes theprocess move and reach its conclusion, is an intense relationship withone or two people. Sometimes with a man and a woman, who may play asymbolic role like two parents, or like the opposites, which can betaken care of in this way.
Bringing the whole supercharged process into a relationship seems tomake it bearable, containable, manageable. Of course, some people gothrough it alone. They tell me this is highly painful, veryfrightening. But if one has a therapist or counsellor to whom one canrelate the experience, one need not suffer a whole lot once theprocess gets underway. There will always be some tough moments,nightmarish times, bewilderment. One wonders what the dangers are,whether there are evil forces out there. But through these weeks,somehow, the prevailing mood is actually one of buoyancy. At Diabasis,there was a general atmosphere of jocularity. People would be jokingaround, having fun, playing music and dancing and humming tunes andpainting...
O'C: Yes, in fact wasn't that part of the design? You had all sorts ofways for people to communicate their experience and externalise inthrough various forms of art?
PERRY: The whole environment was organised into various "spaces." Oneof these - a very important one - was called the rage room. This wassound-proofed and padded, for the individual's own protection, and weput things in there that they could whack to pieces like old cottonsand mattresses. But the door was not locked, it was not like thepadded cell in the mental hospital, where the person is isolatedagainst his will... We set it up so that if a client was having strongfeelings of rage, he or she could share it with a staff member,particularly the counsellor or primary therapist, and thus deliver it.This was found meaningful. The anger is a very important part of thegrowth of the ego, you see.
We also had the opposite: a room for quietness and meditation. Thiswas equally important, for integrative purposes. We had an art room,but I must say, people didn't seem to spend much time there (chuckle).These so-called "sensitive personalities" were all hanging around thedining room table, doing water-colours or modelling in clay, andgiving creative expression to some of the imagery inside their head.We also had a sand tray and figurines for sandplay therapy. It workslike a dream: you set up a dramatic scene, move the figurines, tell astory. This avenue of expression is easier than painting. It's verydreamlike, so it hits the visionary state very well. We also hadpoetry...
Another thing we provided was a variety of body movement sessions,dance and martial arts, with skilled facilitators. And finally, we hadinterviews at least three of four times a week, for an hour and a halfto two hours each, with the primary counsellor/therapist. But reallyall of these creative outlets put together became part of theinterview itself - verbal expression combined with image expression inthese various media.
Now throughout all this there was nothing scheduled, nothingmandatory. It was all informal. We'd just respond to things as theycame up. Our only house rule really was "No violence to property orpersons!" The clients could dash out nude into the street if they hadto; we didn't like it, but they did! You see, we wanted them to be inthis house of their own free will. They had to realise their owndesire to belong in the house, and they did.
So this whole approach is essentially one of releasing, rather thansuppression. We allowed everything and encouraged its expression - nottoward chaos, but toward communication! Communication tends to order.This is a most important point in psychiatry, but the common opinionis that it is very dangerous... When you actually do it, however, youfind exactly the opposite is true: people get over theirpreoccupations very quickly. The whole point here is to deliver thevisionary content to somebody and to be able to appreciate itssymbolic relevance to the inner process of personal and socialrenewal. Once it's delivered, the process keeps moving by itself. It'sreally unfortunate there is so much misunderstanding about it all. Thetruth is really very simple.
"The gigantic catastrophes that threaten us are not elementalhappenings of a physical or biological kind, but are psychic events.We are threatened in a fearful way by wars and revolutions that arenothing else than psychic epidemics. At any moment a few millionpeople may be seized by a madness, and then our leaders mayprecipitate us into a blood bath of war and radioactivity... Insteadof being exposed to wild beasts, tumbling rocks, and inundatingwaters, man is exposed today to the elemental forces of his ownpsyche. Psychic life is a world power that exceeds by many times allthe powers of the Earth...
If one voluntarily takes the burden of completeness upon oneself, onecan avoid all the unhappy consequences of repressed individuation -one need not find it 'happening' to one against one's will in anegative form. This is as much as to say that anyone who is destinedto descend into a deep pit had better set about it with all thenecessary precautions, rather than risk falling into the holebackwards."
- Carl Jung
"The journey is there and it's an experience that we have at somestage to go through... Every single one of us has got to go throughit.. until we gradually build ourselves up into an acceptance ofreality."
- Jesse Watkins (A former "schizophrenic" client of R.D. Laing)
"The time will come when Humankind will have to make a choice betweensuicide and adoration."
- Teilard de Chardin
O'CALLAGHAN: Here's a broader question which I've been thinking aboutfor years. If nature's self-organising way of healing an alienatedindividual is for one's psyche to go through a world viewtransformation process involving a spontaneous temporary non-ordinarystate of consciousness, do you think it possible that an entiresociety, or perhaps even the whole of Humankind - which is undoubtedlyalienated and obviously having a hard time adapting to its new globalenvironment - could conceivably have to pass through some kind ofcollective non-ordinary state, on the way to greater wisdom? And ifso, would not such a process also take the form of either a horriblemass psychosis, if suppressed, or a creative breakthrough, if we wereculturally prepared to understand its inner meaning?
PERRY: Yes indeed! You know, there are many examples of this inanthropological studies of societies going through periods of culturalcrisis. What you're referring to is right around the corner! You don'thave to look very far to see a culture deteriorate, to see individualsin deep distress...
The cultural historian Anthony Wallace is very lucid about this. Hedid a study of periods of turmoil in various cultures, and formulateda ground-plan for the process of sudden culture-change. It goes likethis: first, under the new conditions, the old answers don't work, theold methods no longer hold, the old ways prevail no more, and the oldvalues are no longer held in esteem. This leads to a demoralisation,which results very quickly in psychosomatic distress, and the abuse ofalcohol or other drugs. From out of all this, some sort of restitutionmay then emerge through the activation of visionary states withincertain people in the society. The gifted ones are those whose visionsreach beyond the personal sphere, into the realm of the collectiveunconscious, out of which the new myth comes forth.
Now the crucial point here is whether that myth is then received. Yousee, in a psychosis, part of the problem, as we were saying, is thatthe vision is not received. When the individual, and his family andfriends and society regard the vision as unacceptable and they rejectit, that is the experience of going crazy!
On the other hand, a prophet is given alot of esteem. If his visionhappens to coincide with what the people need to hear, he willeventually be held in great reverence and his message will bereceived. If his myth-making capacity is working well, he may deliverthe new myth that is going to be accepted for the next phase of thatculture's evolution. That then leads to a whole cultural renewal,which Wallace calls a revitalisation movement.
So what's particularly interesting about this collective, culturaldimension of the visionary experience, is that the historicalevolution of culture recapitulates the same process that happenswithin the individual. It begins in fear of death, lust for power andsupremacy, but soon leads over into this concern with relationship andEros, intimacy, caring. In history, the myth original that parallelsthis process is one that was first conceived during the urbanrevolution: that's about 3000 BCE in Egypt and Mesopotamia, 2000 BCEin China, and about 1000 BCE in Israel. With this first growth ofcities, a vast psychological transformation took place in society, andnew myths emerged which served a guiding function for the motivationswithin. Now these first urban societies were preoccupied with power.Power and dominance were held in high esteem and sacralised. Somecenturies went by, and you had prophetic movements, philosophicalmovements that arose in opposition to that. These later mythsredefined the cohesive power in society. They asserted that the thingthat binds the people together into a working whole is not power anddominance but caring, brotherhood, and love.
If you check out the ancient literature, you will find that this ideaof the overarching importance of love or compassion is simply notmentioned in any urban texts up to a certain point.... The function ofsocial leadership was first projected exclusively onto the persona ofthe Pharaoh or King. All the people had to do was to follow orders anddo what they were told. The mythologies of the early urban phase wereall in the power idiom at first: the King is the embodiment of thewhole people. Only he can care for them. He is the one who iscompassionate. He is the one who is loving, as a father is toward hischildren.
So what took place over the following centuries was a completetransformation of that type of myth. The first time in recordedliterature that there is any mention of the Kingship belonging notonly to the elected king, but also to the people, was around themiddle of the 1st millennium BCE, in China. They affirmed that everyindividual has within himself the potentiality to be sage-king orsacral king. It was specifically expressed in these terms: "Every manshall become a sage-king!"
O'C: Very interesting! Who said it?
PERRY: Interestingly enough, it was Confucius who expressed it first -you wouldn't expect it really! He was a great promoter of the idea ofthe inner kingship, democracy, self-rule, and social caring. He hadthe Golden Rule - the idea of returning good for evil and respondingto violence with non-violence - quite clearly expressed long beforeChristianity. The same thing happened in India, with the Buddha. InIsrael, it didn't arrive until much later on. The Old Testamentprophets, projecting their image of God as the vengeful Yahveh, didnot talk of this kind of brotherhood or compassion; you don't findthat really until the Christian era. The point is that the centralimportance of love and social caring was just not mentioned in any ofthese cultures before their initial perception - in visionary states -by sensitive individuals.
Now regarding the second part of your question, regarding the currentcultural upheaval in the world today, I think we must be prepared, asyou were mentioning earlier, for a change in world outlook, that is, anew world view or mandala. The original mandalas were conceived anddesigned as world-images, meaning that they are condensed compactversions, in symbol form, of a way of perceiving the world.
Simply put, the new world view will become explicit when its symbolmoves into consciousness.
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RELATED WEBSITES
When The Dream Becomes Real:The Inner Apocalypse in Mythology, Madness and the Future
By Michael O'Callaghan. Includes the John Weir Perry interview, abrief history of the repression and decline of the shamanic traditionin Europe, and a first-hand account of a visionary experience by theauthor during an astroarcheological field trip to a 6,000 year-oldartwork in Ireland. With extensive footnotes and a bibliography.Published on the Global Vision web site at www.global-vision.org/dream
On Fundamentalism
By Michael O'Callaghan. Religious fundamentalists share manyassumptions and beliefs with "schizophrenic" people, including apolarisation of humankind into good and evil groups and an expectationof imminent apocalypse. In the transpersonal context of history,colonialism and globalisation, they can be seen as the "identifiedpatient" in a larger planetary network of dysfunctional social andcommercial relations in which transnational corporations, the WorldBank, the International Monetary Fund, the WTO and the citizens of thewealthy countries all participate in driving them "crazy." Written forthe proposed Centre for Science and the Sacred to promote intellectualpluralism. Published on the Global Vision web site atwww.global-vision.org/sacred/fundamentalism.html
The Global Vision feature film
By Michael O'Callaghan. This is an impressionistic musical featurefilm conceived as A Collective Self-Portrait Of Humankind And TheBiosphere - a concept without precedent in art or motion picturehistory. It's an artistic attempt to create a description of humanidentity at the dawn of the global age, and a mythopoeic sales pitchfor a sustainable civilisation. Looking at the pattern that connectshumankind, the biosphere, technology, and the collective unconscious,the film is a metaphor about the connection between the worldsituation and our own way of seeing. Now in development, this is thefirst film to be collectively designed by its own audience on theInternet! Scheduled for theatrical release in 2005. Seewww.global-vision.org/movie for details.
How Involuntary Psychiatric Treatment Violates Basic Human Rights
By Richard Gosden. Seewww.cwrl.utexas.edu/~monitors/1.1/gosden/onedocgosden.html
Complete Recovery from Schizophrenia Without the Aid of Drugs
By Tracey May. See www.schizophrenia-recovery.com.
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RELATED READING
Trials of the Visionary Mind: Spiritual Emergency and the Renewal Process.By John Weir Perry. State University of New York Press, Albany, 1999.
The Far Side of Madness.By John Weir Perry. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1974.
The Self In Psychotic Process: Its Symbolization in Schizophrenia.By John Weir Perry, with an introduction by C.G.Jung. University ofCalifornia Press, Los Angeles, 1953.
The Heart of History: Individuality in Evolution.By John Weir Perry. State University of New York Press, Albany, 1987.
Perceval's Narrative: A Patient's Account of his Psychosis.By Gregory Bateson. Stanford University Press, 1961, Stanford.
The Double-Bind Theory of Schizophrenia.By Gregory Bateson. Re-published in Steps to an Ecology of Mind, opus cit.
Realms Of The Human Unconscious : Observations From LSD ResearchBy Stanislav Grof, M.D. E.P.Dutton, New York, 1976.
Beyond The Brain : Birth, Death And Transcendence In PsychotherapyBy Stanislav Grof, M.D. State University of New York Press, Albany, 1985.
The Adventure of Self-Discovery: Dimensions of Consciousness and NewPerspectives in Psychotherapy and Inner Exploration.By Stanislav Grof, M.D. State University of New York Press, Albany, 1988.
Spiritual Emergency : When Personal Transformation Becomes a CrisisBy Stanislav Grof and Christina Grof (ed), with contributions fromR.D.Laing, Roberto Assagioli, John Weir Perry, Ram Dass, Lee Senella,Jack Kornfield, Paul Rebilot, Holger Kalwert, Anne Armstrong, KeithThompson and others; Jeremy Tarcher Inc., Los Angeles, 1989.
A Ten Day Voyage.A first-hand account of a "schizophrenic" experience by Jesse Watkins.Quoted in R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience, Ballantine Books,New York, 1968.
The Divided Self.By R. D. Laing. Pantheon, New York, 1962.
The Politics of Experience.By R. D. Laing. Ballantine Books, New York, 1968.
The Politics of the Family and other essays.By R. D. Laing. New York, 1969.
Sanity, Madness and the Family.By R. D. Laing with H.Phillipson. Tavistock Publications, London, 1966.
Interpersonal Perception: A Theory and a Method of Research.By R. D. Laing.
Shamanic Voices : A Survey of Visionary Narratives.By Joan Halifax. E.P. Dutton, New York.Re-issued (Rei Edition), Arkana, 1994, ISBN: 0140193480.
Shaman : The Wounded Healer.By Joan Halifax. Crossroad Publishing Co, 1983, ISBN: 082450061X.
Shaman (Art and Imagination).By Joan Halifax. Reprint Edition, Thames & Hudson, 1988, ISBN: 050081029X.
Changing Images of Man.By Joseph Campbell, Duane Elgin, Willis Harman, Arthur Hastings, O. W.Markley, Floyd Matson, Brendan O'Regan, and Leslie Schneider. PolicyResearch Report no. 4, Center for the Study of Social Policy, StanfordResearch Institute, Menlo Park, 1974.
Steps To An Ecology of Mind.By Gregory Bateson. Ballantine Books, New York, 1972.
The Phenomenon of Man.By Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Harper and Row, New York, 1959Originally published as Le Phénomaine Humain, Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1955.
The Power of Myth.By Joseph Campbell, with Bill Moyers. Doubleday, New York, 1988; thereis also an excellent television series of the same name, available asa six-part boxed set of videotapes from Mystic Fire Video at PO Box422, New York, NY 10012-0005, USA. You can order these tapes by creditcard from their web site at www.mysticfire.com.
The Hero With A Thousand Faces.By Joseph Campbell, first published in 1949, and later by BollingenUniversity Press, New York, 1968.
On Rebirth (Über Wiedergeburt).By Carl Gustav Jung, Eranos Jarhbuch 1939, Zürich, 1940.
WotanCarl Jung's description of the rumblings in the collective unconsciousof the German people before the outbreak of World War II, published inthe Neue Schweitzer Rundschau, March 1936. Later republished in Essayson Contemporary Events 1947, and in the Collected Works of C. G. Jung,Civlisation in Transition, Vol. 10.
After the Catastrophe.Carl Jung's account of Nazism as a collective psychosis.Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Civilisation in Transition, Vol. 10, 1945.
History Ends in Green, Gaia, psychedelics, and the archaic revival.By Terrence McKenna. A boxed set of audiotapes recorded at the Esalen Institute.Mystic Fire Audio, New York, 1992.
Ecopsychology : Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind.By Theodore Roszak, Mary E. Gomes, and Allen D. Kanner.Sierra Club Books, 1995, ISBN: 0871564068.
The Book Of Revelations.By Saint John the Evangelist, in the New Testament of the Bible.
The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries.By W.Y. Evans-Wentz, with a new introduction by Terrence McKenna.Library of the Mystic Arts, Citadel Press, published by CarolPublishing Group,1990.(Originally published in Oxford, 1911).
The Embodied Mind : Cognitive Science and Human Experience.By Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, Evan; and Eleanor Rosch.Reprint Edition Mit Press, Cambridge, 1993, ISBN: 0262720213.
Memories, Dreams, Reflections.By Carl Gustav Jung, recorded and edited by Aniela Jaffé, Routledgeand Kegan Paul, London, 1963.
Tao Te Ching.By Lao Tsu, 6th. century B.C.E. Translated from the Mandarin by Gia-FuFeng and Jane English.Wildwood House Ltd., London, 1972.
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