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| David Bates, aka, BipolarBatesy Was it just silly, to use this nickname? Or my Grandfather's intro, MasterBates? |
My experiential approach to self-therapy, accords with an emerging view of the primacy of emotion, described by Allan N Schore as, “a New Paradigm of Psychotherapy” (Schore, 2007, 2012). I’ve shifted my sense-of-self, from a learned and taken for granted cognition, as my thoughts, my vocabulary of words, towards a middle path of felt/thought awareness. Mastering my psychoses, was based on the latest science of psychophysiology, and an improving sense-ability, to discern my internal systems of energy mobilization. Peter Levine’s conception of survival energies, as charge and discharge, from his trauma resolution work, has profoundly affected my ability to self-regulate, and master psychosis. An organic energy perspective has helped me understand my heart’s role, in energizing the profound affects of post traumatic experience, and the varying degrees of internal constriction, mobilized to contain an internalized sense of threat. From a scientific approach, “the polyvagal perspective” (Porges, 2006), has enabled a paradigm shift in my self-awareness. A new perspective on my experience, in accord with a new Science of the Heart, “Since emotional processes can work faster than the mind, it takes a power stronger than the mind to bend perception, override emotional circuitry, and provide us with intuitive feeling instead. It takes the power of the heart.” (McCraty, Atkinson, Tomasino, 2001). I’ve moved beyond self-limiting thoughts of a diseased brain, and medication compliance. Using self-education and an experiential approach, which accords well with the psychiatric survivor community‘s experience of, “the best way out, is through.”
Six years ago, there were so many questions: Should I even attempt to understand the internal nature of my psychoses? Should I cling to a consensus view of mental illness, to secure my relationship with others? Should I try even harder to trust the learned expert knowledge, or follow my innate intuition, stimulated by my lived experience? Should I need a PhD level education to read and understand neuroscience perspective‘s, and other scientific explanations of my internal functioning? Allan Schore’s call for a multi-disciplinary approach to mental health, was commonsense to me. Yet my training as a therapist had brought the “turf war” tendencies, of medical and other discipline’s of specialization, into a sharp and disheartening focus. Could an emerging science of psychophysiology help me to understand the organic nature of my psyche, even if the scientific method will never capture it? Could an intense self-education effort and an experiential integration, help me to understand my psychoses, from the inside-out? Was my initial experience of a euphoric mania, an innate need to overcome the affective nature of traumatic experience? Is there a developmental issue within my brain and nervous systems? An attachment dynamic, missing from an earlier, critical period, which requires a "corrective emotional experience." (Yalom, 1995)
Stumbling on Schore's "Affect Dysregulation & Disorders of the Self," certainly peaked my interest in neuroscience, from a developmental perspective, with other views about brain plasticity, suggesting that a different approach to my experience was possible, if not probable. Reading the neuroscience literature of early development and embryology, I was surprised to read constant references to the autonomic nervous system. Wondering why my many psychiatrist’s had never mentioned it, even though I remembered well, the phrase "my nerves were shot to pieces," from WWII veteran's during my childhood. Remembered too, my Family Therapy training, and suggestions that there was a less than obvious reason, that such phrases now carried the diagnostic label, PTSD. "Its not necessarily for the sake of the patient," one wit had quipped. Could I really find a way to undo, a developmental problem, from so early in my life, there was no conscious awareness? A time before I’d learned to crawl, and before I ever learned to think? I still remember reading "(an) early postnatal period represents a “critical period” of limbic – autonomic circuit development, during which time experience or environmental events might participate in shaping ongoing synapse formation. (Rinaman, Levitt, & Card, 2000, p. 2739)" in the paper, "EFFECTS OF A SECURE ATTACHMENT RELATIONSHIP ON RIGHT BRAIN DEVELOPMENT, AFFECT REGULATION, AND INFANT MENTAL HEALTH" (Schore, 2001).
In 2007, my lived experience and the views of many others, had really undermined my earlier acceptance of my medical diagnosis. There were so many questions, needing answers: Are my psychoses, not caused by a brain disease, requiring life-long medication, to control its symptom expression? Should I try to understand my experience of psychosis, rather than seek to control the experience by suppression, and keep it hidden? Should I keep any non-consensus thoughts and behaviors out of sight, and out of mind? Should I have tried harder to accept and trust the medical view of psychosis, as a brain disease, a mental illness? Should I have had more faith and trust in my first psychiatrist’s advice about my altered states of mind? “Look! There is no need to think of it as madness, there should be no stigma attached to a diagnosis of mental illness, your disease is no different to someone suffering from cancer or diabetes.” In 1980 though, I was not yet able to question his well meaning, yet paternalistic care and concern, by asking why there were no scientific tests for my brain disease. He said he was 100% certain that the genetic cause for his misdiagnosis of schizophrenia, (later switched to bipolar type 1 disorder) was no more than a couple of decades away. By 2007, I’d had decades of experience, with a rather paternalistic medical system, and its often condescending attitude, towards people like me.
Studying Family Therapy, and Murray Bowen's seminal ideas in particular, had quickened my intuitive sense of an emotional development issue, involved, somehow, in my psychoses. For me, Bowen’s unique insights into an emotional projection process, within our unconscious functioning, explained the triangular patterns of emotional reactivity in my own family, and by extension the paternalistic nature of human societies. “The family projection process is as vigorous in society as it is in the family." (Bowen, 1985) His observations of a generational transmission of "emotionality," seems to be understood within neuroscience disciplines, as an unconsciously learned, self-regulation, involving the primacy of “affect/emotion” My need for a deeper understanding of my "affective" states, led me to Silvan Tomkins conception of "affects," as the physiological foundation of human emotions. From reading Tomkins and others, it seems to me that our innate “distress” response, early in life, epitomizes this notion of primary affect/responses, stimulating emotional reactivity, and underpinning our intellect and sense of reason. (Tomkins described nine, primary, affect/responses).
Bowen‘s concept of a “differentiation of self" NEED, for each individual, within a family and society, gave direction to my experiential approach. “A person can have a well functioning intellect but intellect is intimately fused with his emotional system, and a relatively small part of his intellect is operationally differentiated from his emotional system.” (Bowen, 1985) An “intimate fusion,” which these days, neuroscience seems to understand as cortical and sub-cortical processes within the brain? Like Jaak Panksepp's seven "affective" systems SEEKING, RAGE, FEAR, LUST, CARE, PANIC/GRIEF, and PLAY. FEAR, or what Tomkins described as an innate fear-terror response, lies at the heart of my own need of self-differentiation. A need to understand the internal nature of my psychotic experiences, and improve my self-regulation. My hunch was, that my avoidant life-style, was internally motivated by fear, and mania, was an attempt to "affect" by experience, a more appropriate internal motivation. "The attempt to regulate affect - to minimize unpleasant feelings and to maximize pleasant ones - is the driving force in human motivation." (Schore, 2003). My Family Therapy training, which had included two years of group therapy, induced a fascination with the unconscious processes, involved in my own experience and interpersonal relationships. I'd watched experienced therapists gradually affect a more open and playful, emotional atmosphere, within family groups, who began therapy with somewhat closed and defensive responses. Hence, it doesn't surprise me that the world's most successful intervention for first episode psychosis, is Finland's open-dialogue approach. "in the 5-year treatment outcomes. In the ODAP group, 82% did not have any residual psychotic symptoms, 86% had returned to their studies or a full-time job" (Seikkula et al, 2004).
The success of open-dialogue’s, relationship oriented therapy, and the denial of its success by mainstream opinion, (like other successful, non-medication approaches) seems to bring a non-obvious, emotional projection process into view. Take the current controversy over the release of DSM-5, amid fears of an increasing medicalization of natural emotional experiences, for example. “Essential funds are used in the ongoing futile search for genetic markers instead of addressing the societal issues we know lead to mental health problems.” (Dillon, 2013) Making Murray Bowen’s decades earlier statement seem rather prophetic; “Society is creating more “patients” of people with dysfunctions whose dysfunctions are a product of the projection process. Alcoholism is a good example. At the very time alcoholism was being understood as the product of family relationships, the concept of “alcoholism as a disease” finally came into general acceptance.” (Bowen, 1985) The DSM-5 controversy also includes alarming reports, that use of antipsychotic medications, are implicated in a range of shocking side-effects, including homicidal violence, suicide and a 25 year reduction in life expectancy. Yet despite these alarming reports, Robert Whitaker, author of “Anatomy of an Epidemic,” suggests a societal delusion has been created, as to the success of psychotropic medications, with The Triumph of Bad Science and dubious practice involved. “And voila, you have a process for creating a societal delusion.” (Whitaker, 2012) Although in a recent interview, he had thoughts of “unconscious” processes? In my opinion, there is an unconscious NEED for such a delusion, involving affect/emotion and the dubious quality of our "objective" rationality, when trying to understand ourselves, and the nature of motivation:
“Vulnerable groups fit the best criteria for long term, anxiety relieving projection. Vulnerable to become the pitiful objects of the benevolent, over sympathetic segment of society that improves its functioning at the expense of the pitiful. Just as the least adequate child in a family can become more impaired when he becomes an object of pity and over sympathetic help from the family, so can the lowest segment of society be chronically impaired by the very attention designed to help. No matter how good the principle behind such programs, it is essentially impossible to implement them without the built-in complications of the projection process.” _Murray Bowen.
It took me decades to begin to sense my internal motivation. Sense the paradox of my internal defense against pain and sensations of fear; a flight to the refuge of my mind. To understand how we’re all raised to suppress sensations, in order to secure our mature sense of objective rationality. To understand why I felt lost in a sea of unconscious emotional reactivity, my social reflexes not quiet in-tune with normal social adaptation. Decades and the invention of the internet to begin to really understand, how traumatic experience had frozen my innate ability for spontaneous social communication. I had to leave my own culture to escape the built-in complications of a projection process, in which I felt trapped. So trapped that I’d found myself acting out a well meaning, projection of paternalistic care and concern, towards my therapy clients. So I went in search of my own “built-in” processes, in search of personal transformation. In my opinion, we are so immersed in the “autonomic” nature of our socially evolved humanity, asking people to be aware of unconscious affect and e-motive reactivity, is like asking a fish about water. “What’s water?”
As an illustration of our common lack of awareness, as to the deeper nature of our emotional reactivity; witness my vain attempts at discussion and articulation on the webzine Mad in America, where a well known participant in the ever rational debate on mental illness, has posted his concern for our shared dreams of equality, We Have a Dream: Getting Engaged to a Doctor. Dr Healy is the inspiration behind the website RxISK.org which is making a valiant effort to be "the first free independent website for researching and reporting prescription drug side effects." So that, "Researchers will be able to access patient stories and the official assessment of side effect causality." Interestingly, a footnote to Dr Healy's blog post has caused some concern on MIA: please read the footnote; "I have recently been disinvited from a Catholic Church linked meeting on psychotropic drugs and children apparently for using an analogy between child abuse in the Church and pharmacotherapy abuse in clinical care." While, in the comment responses to this blog post, the organizer of the event writes: MBarbacki on June 16, 2013 at 11:16 am said:
For the record, Dr. David Healy was never invited to the Catholic Church event he refers to in this article and I am familiar with all his work.
As the organizer, I never had any communication with him about this program, so it is perplexing as to why he would write such a statement…
He also links his phrase, “But now when Churches are scared of pharma…” to his footnote regarding his statement that he was “disinvited”. Does Dr. Healy really think that the Church is scared of pharma because HE was not a participant?
Another commenter seizes on this opportunity to hopefully, embarrass Dr Healy: BeyondLabeling a.k.a. Jonah on June 16, 2013 at 12:00 pm said:
MBarbacki,
Thank you for providing your brief but highly informative comment.
It’s quite significant comment, in my opinion, as it points to a serious — self-aggrandizing — fabrication, on the part of David Healy.
At first sight, comments here appear entirely "reasonable," yet my point in trying to raise awareness of the mind's stimulation from within, is to draw attention to the "impulse" for these comments. Hence I grapple with trying to articulate my own sense of the internal stimulation of the rational thread of my thoughts, and the nature of my psychoses. Two days later there is a report on the Vatican conference from Robert Whitaker himself, in which he notes his concern with a "more diffuse agenda." Which led to me asking an embarrassing question about social politics, missing comments and self-preservation agenda's. Again, in an effort to tease out the reactive nature, of the way we actually function, beneath our rationalizations, I issue a personal challenge to Robert Whitaker. A question concerning the term "affect," his facial expression, and: Our Consensus Reality & Cognitive Dissonance? It launched a very interesting thread of comments, as Robert predictably ignored my first challenge, yet just as Murray Bowen's seminal ideas on emotional reactivity suggest, Robert Whitaker could not resist a subconscious sense of threat? Readers may like to contemplate whether Robert has gone into a rational denial of his own self-preservation agenda, in his response? Here is my reply:
I understand your reasoning and your rational desire. I appreciate your enormous efforts to bring to light, the real-life discrepancy, between public perceptions of the merits of antipsychotics, and the reality of long-term outcomes. As you rightly point out here, there is a mystifying lack of reports about this reality, in our mainstream media’s. Hence, my question to you above, about your use of the word “unconscious,” in a recent TV interview and the context in which you used it? I respectfully suggest that there is a double-bind in our common sense of reason, which prevents us from addressing the nature of reality “as it is.”
In your book and in your talks, you have pointed out the backlash to the “schizophrenic mother,” which helped so many to embrace the “chemical imbalance” model of mental illness, with its plausible “how” & “why” explanation. As you point out here, societal beliefs are self-reinforcing and very difficult to challenge, perhaps because “inconvenient truths,” unsettle our imagined sense of reason? As I’ve pointed out above, in regards to our publicly stated belief systems;
“When we are publicly committed to a belief, it is disturbing even to consider that any evidence contradicting our position may be true, because a fear of public ridicule adds to the psychic pain of cognitive dissonance. Commitment stirs the fires of cognitive dissonance and makes it progressively more difficult to even casually entertain alternative views.”
Hence, my constant references to the term “affect” and what this means to the mental illness debate, and indeed the causal factors in the majority of so-called mental illnesses, and in particular psychosis. IMHO it is the denial of innate affects, like shame, which affects “a fear of public ridicule, adding to the psychic pain of cognitive dissonance.”
Further down this comment thread, I again try in vain to show how we "scan posts and comments, and subconsciously seek threats or resources for our established sense of self." Asking a fellow activist in mental health to:
Please consider how you come to the moment of your own actions and how;
“we can only be aware of what we currently know and our immediate surroundings, life is not a thought, it’s an experience.
Hence: The fantasies of your thought are not real. They are generated by your attachment, and therefore by your desire, your hate, your anger, your fear.
The fantasies of your thought, are generated by yourself” _Buddha.
We suffer because we mistake the fantasies of our mind for reality.
It is fundamental, therefore, that we learn to distinguish between reality and the fantasies of our mind.
There are two worlds:
1. The world of the mind. 2. The world of reality.
The world of reality is real, the world of the mind isn’t real.
Of the objects which present themselves to our consciousness, in fact, some belong to the reality that surrounds us , while others belong to our mind – that is, to our memory. (the body/brain and its nervous stimulation).
We tend to falsely believe that “both” kinds of mental objects are real, yet this is a false assumption based on our past, not the present reality, by which we are surrounded and unknowingly immersed in. Only the mental objects which belong to the surrounding environment are real, not those which belong to our memory ( the body/brain nervous energy of the past)”
IMO my fellow activist does exactly as I've suggested, in his reply to my question: see here
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June this year, had also been another of those yearly, supermoon months which seem to peak occasions of synchronicity for me. Which led to a facebook status update: SYNCHRONICITY: What is it, and is it meaningful or less?
I've been pondering how to raise awareness in others, of a path I've documented online, for the last three years. During the recent supermoon I was doing my usual walking meditation and pondering the memory of Elephants, and how the internet doesn't forget. On returning home I turned on the TV, to hear a man say exactly this, in an interview. "The internet, has a memory like an Elephant, it never forgets." Was it a meaningless coincidence, or synchronicity? Which I'd come to understand, as a question of "timing & context," more so than content, and should we be guided by such non-rational events?
Just this morning, after I've spent days trying to figure out how to explain my improved ability to self-regulate, and my understanding of psychosis, a reader comment appeared on my blog. Please consider;
Just this morning, after I've spent days trying to figure out how to explain my improved ability to self-regulate, and my understanding of psychosis, a reader comment appeared on my blog. Please consider;
MANIA & OUR MASK OF CONSCIOUSNESS?
A readers timely comment & my response;
"How do you propose you approach a person when their emotional desires or needs have either been unseen or misunderstood to the point they have a break with reality? Could you perhaps be wrong in thinking it is a social disorder? It's hard to argue against your thinking: because I don't know enough about the genetic underpinnings of mania and if it were something we were born with then it'd have to be a structural difference which it doesn't seem to be. Leading up to my manic break I was extremely depressed, harassed, and had trouble vocalizing my needs because I felt I shouldn't have to. I was stubborn in addressing this because my own condition told me everyone should be respectful and compassionate towards each other, but I had an experience which shook that worldview by being isolated from the entire school. I had no one to talk to, so I broke down and was diagnosed with schizophrenia now schizoaffective but it still doesn't really solve the problem and my rational mind still gets upset about it, while pills help calm me I guess, I don't exactly accept the idea that it was a random chemical misfire or imbalance I was born with because there's no scientific explanation for something like that."
MY RESPONSE:
"Thanks for your thoughtful comment.
The timing is interesting, as I find myself in a month, of grappling with how to explain, in simple commonsense terms, that are easily digestible.
In terms of our "unconscious" functioning, where "structure" is our brain, heart, lungs, intestines and our nervous system organization of metabolic energies, which create our "states" of "attention," within our mind's. The experience of mental illness, is, IMO, "a right of passage." It is, our nervous systems need, for us to face reality, as it is. You write;
"Leading up to my manic break I was extremely depressed, harassed, and had trouble vocalizing my needs because I felt I shouldn't have to. I was stubborn in addressing this because my own condition told me everyone should be respectful and compassionate towards each other, but I had an experience which shook that worldview by being isolated from the entire school. I had no one to talk to, so I broke down and was diagnosed with schizophrenia now schizoaffective but it still doesn't really solve the problem and my rational mind still gets upset about it, while pills help calm me I guess, I don't exactly accept the idea that it was a random chemical misfire or imbalance I was born with because there's no scientific explanation for something like that."
From a subconscious perspective of survival needs, your depression before your manic break, was about using too much of a "passive" energy mode, to get your basic survival needs met. Then in order to take the challenge of a more mature approach to reality as it is, your nervous system, needs to correct its previous imbalanced mode, and allow you to face the external environment, without a fearful expectation of needing to be "passive," to get your needs met.
The challenge, for our Western educated mind's, is for others to see the "body language," in the experience, and the individual, to feel sensations within the body, and discern what they mean. For decades, I got lost, in a subjective interpretation of my "right of passage" experience, in manic periods. I got stuck, in trying to decipher the internal need, within my mind, instead of just enjoying the sudden "un-freezing" of my sensory nature.
I understand, that you can't see a scientific explanation for your experience. Like so many people, I tried my hardest to accept the "chemical imbalance," metaphor of a diseased brain. I did this, more for the sake of others, than myself. Yet when I first started reading Allan N Schore and the science of human development, I began to see a different picture, of what others assume, is a "pathology." Yet, if all we focus our attention on, is pathology, what are we likely to see?
In Silvan Tomkins view of our "innate" nature, we have six negative "affects," and only two genuinely positive affects. So from this viewpoint, we are hardwired with a "wary" expectation, to maximize our chances of survival. These negative, innate affects, energize our fearful and "passive" responses, while the positive innate affects of "interest-excitement" and pure "joy," energize our positive responses to life. Hence, the experience of so-called mental illness, is, in most cases, a need to reconfigure, our "unconscious" orientation to life, as it is, in the anxiety of the lived moment.
A right of passage, misunderstood, by psychiatry, because of the consensus fear of madness, which desperately needs to keep it out of sight and out of mind." (read this 2011 post on mania here)
Madness: An Existential Crisis & Right of Passage?
Rites of passage have three phases: separation, transition, and reincorporation, as van Gennep described. "I propose to call the rites of separation from a previous world, preliminal rites, those executed during the transitional stage liminal (or threshold) rites, and the ceremonies of incorporation into the new world postliminal rites." Excerpt from Wikipedia's, Rite of passage
As I paste this passage from wikipedia, I'm reminded of a lecture room scene in 2006, when I and my fellow counselor students, listened to the painful testimony of an anorexic. A beautiful young woman, who explained her body dysmorphic disorder, in terms of her need for control. She had always felt so pressured by others, that her refusal to eat, had become her "active" way of demanding her status, within her family. I remember, telling her of my own journey, within the crucible of madness, we call the human family, and how I felt her trial, was an unconsciously self-stimulated, right of passage. Consider another excerpt from Rite of passage
A rite of passage is a ritual event that marks a person's transition from one status to another. The concept of rites of passage as a general theory of socialization was first formally articulated by Arnold van Gennep in his book The Rites of Passage to denote rituals marking the transitional phase between childhood and full inclusion into a tribe or social group. The concept of the rite of passage is also used to explore and describe various other milestones in an individual's life, for any marked transitional stage, when one's social status is altered.
In the first phase, people withdraw from their current status and prepare to move from one place or status to another. "The first phase (of separation) comprises symbolic behavior signifying the detachment of the individual or group ... from an earlier fixed point in the social structure." There is often a detachment or "cutting away" from the former self in this phase, which is signified in symbolic actions and rituals. For example, the cutting of the hair for a person who has just joined the army. He or she is "cutting away" the former self: the civilian.
The transition (liminal) phase is the period between states, during which one has left one place or state but has not yet entered or joined the next. "The attributes of liminality or of liminal personae ("threshold people") are necessarily ambiguous."
In the third phase (reaggregation or reincorporation) the passage is consummated [by] the ritual subject." Having completed the rite and assumed their "new" identity, one re-enters society with one's new status.
Recall my statement above;
My improved self-regulation, involves a new mind/body sense, of the respiratory, muscular and vascular nature of an internal constriction, with its variable affect on the "thresholds" of my sensory awareness. My awareness, of sensations, emotions, feelings and the thoughts in my mind.
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The Family: The Foundational Cell of Society?
The family systems perspective contends that the most effective way to work with individuals is in the context of their families. In their groundbreaking book, The Family Crucible (1978), Napier and Whitaker wrote, "Working with the totality of the forces that influence the individual is such a logical idea that it is hard to deny its validity" (p, 59). Excerpt from Creative Family Therapy Techniques
In 2006, when I made my right of passage observation to that young woman, I'd been reading books like The Family Crucible for my Differentiation of Self assignment, researching three generations of my family tree. Trying to understand why the existential themes of abandonment and rejection, seemed to run, river like, through both sides of own family. My ex wife, myself and my four sons. Which, right now, brings me to a recent post about, affect, family faces and the generational nature of our very human madness. Please consider;
Subconscious, reactions to the transmission of "affect"
Recall from: Family Attachment Affects & Mental Illness. Pt 1
"I have three lovely handkerchiefs here, choose one." Then Monica left the house and my mother never saw her mother again. My mother was just five years old when this rather brutal act of abandonment took place. Already the focal point of a family projection process, which sought to dump feelings of guilt and shame onto an unwanted “other.” My mother, who no doubt had already begun to form her hard-core defense against the transmission of “affect.” A tendency to distance and isolation which has had its ripple effects through the continuing generations of our family tree. Please consider;
Is traumatic experience a factor, in the generational nature of, emotional coping?
“It is the nature of trauma to elude our knowledge because of both defense and deficit … To protect ourselves from affect, we must, at times, avoid knowledge. We defend against feelings of rage, cynicism, shame, and fear by not knowing them consciously. Trauma also overwhelms and defeats our capacity to organize it.”
Psychoanalysis, psychiatry, and developmental traumatology are all now converging on dissociation, the bottom-line survival defense against overwhelming, unbearable emotional experiences. Longitudinal attachment research demonstrates an association between traumatic childhood events and proneness to dissociation, described as “detachment from an unbearable situation,” “the escape when there is no escape,” and “a last resort defensive strategy” (Schore, 2003b, 2009). Although Kohut never used the term dissociation, in his last book (1984) he characterized an early interaction in which the traumatized child “walls himself off” from traumatizing experiences.”
Excerpts from “The Science of the Art of Psychotherapy” by Allan N. Schore.
“Dissociation, detachment, and a wall” of indescribable distance, certainly resonates within me, when I think about the traumatic experience of birth, shared by my mother and I, and its ongoing generational affects. Indescribable, by way of the (surface, verbal, conscious, analytic explicit-self) described above. An emerging understanding of the human condition, which seems to resonate with that divided sense-of-self we all feel, when we notice the discrepancies between our explicit-self, and a very private, implicit-self, deep within us. Our taken for granted maturity, signified by an ability to make the appropriate noises and gestures, while simultaneously holding sometimes opposite, private thoughts and feelings. Yet these words, explicit and implicit, are not exactly part of our common vocabulary of self-description and social interaction, leaving me wondering if I’ll ever resolve a family estrangement, now seemingly set in concrete. “Is it really, all my fault,” I’m wondering. Should I let sleeping dogs lie and not question the roots of my own and my mother’s trauma history, for the sake of an emotional equilibrium, maintained by physical distance and psychological denial. Should a child ever question the sanctity of motherhood, or explore the foundations of this most fundamental of relationships? Did traumatic experience affect my mother's ability for emotional empathy? Consider;
“If the mother’s empathic ability has remained infantile, that is, if she tends to respond with panic to the baby’s anxiety, then a deleterious chain will be set into motion. She may chronically wall herself off from the baby, thus depriving him of the beneficial effect of merging with her as she returns from experiencing mild anxiety to calmness. Alternatively, she may continue to respond with panic, in which case two negative consequences may ensue: the mother may lay the groundwork in the child for a lifelong propensity toward the uncurbed spreading of anxiety or other emotions, or by forcing the child to wall himself off from such an overly intense and thus traumatizing [experience, she] may foster in the child an impoverished psychic organization, the psychic organization of a person who will later be unable to be empathic himself.
NOTE: 1, In this chapter we equate “unconscious” with “nonconscious”; that is, implicit functions that occur beneath levels of awareness not because they are repressed but because they are too rapid to reach consciousness.
2. Throughout this chapter, we refer to “mother” interchangeably with “primary caregiver(s).” We are referring to the primary attachment figure, although we recognize that the infant’s primary attachment figure may not be the mother.”
Excerpts from “The Science of the Art of Psychotherapy” by Allan N. Schore.
Two interesting facts spring to mind as I read the above explanation of the generational nature of trauma’s "affect" on our individual ability for empathy. 1. My father and my grandmother were the primary caregivers, in the early childhood I remember. 2. I cannot remember a single occasion in my life when my mother has initiated contact with me, certainly not once in my adult life, including the periods of illness I‘ve suffered. There was a period in my early 20’s when I tried to broach these fundamental questions of family relationships with both my parents, only to meet the “double-bind” response of a subconscious “shame” reaction, rationalized as an assumption that I was blaming them, for my own weaknesses.
In line with new understandings from neuroscience research, it was not me they were really defending themselves against, as it appears at the surface of our conscious sense of self. Our explicit-self. It was their own core, non-conscious self, in an avoidance of negative sensations, such as our internal sense of shame. "Shame-Humiliation" understood within Family Therapy, as the social emotion, of our rank and status, family and society, groups. My parents subconscious reaction was one of anger, as mother nature's antidote for sensations of shame. We can’t feel shame and anger at the same time, it’s literally a physiological impossibility, yet this non-empathic and defensive response, affects sensations of shame in the other. That was the double-bind trap of this traumatized, and unwanted child, and later experience of an "affective disorder." (Bipolar Disorder Type 1) And the subconscious reality, of this strange an very uncommon phrase, “the transmission of affect.” Please consider;
“Nervous Entrainment, as a Mechanism for the Transmission of Affect/Emotion:
If “contagion” of affect/emotion exists (and the study of crowd/group behavior, says it does), how is it “effected?” If one walks into a room where one “could cut the atmosphere with a knife,” and that “affect” contained within the room is a profoundly social thing, how does it get there? There are indications of social science interest in research on “electrical” or nervous entrainment, “the driving effect one nervous system has on another,” affected by touch, sight, smell and sound.
Nervous entrainment may also depend on bodily movements and gestures, particularly through the unconscious imitation of rhythms. In understanding the aural rhythmic component of the vocal interactions of a parent and child, Richard Restak suggests we attend to “prosody” the melody, pitch, and stress of speech, where auditory cues have priority over visual ones. Rhythm is a tool in the expression of “agency,” just as words are. Rhythm, literally conveys the “tone” of communication, and in this sense it unites both word/symbol and affect/emotion. Rhythm also has a unifying or dys-unifying regulation role, in affective exchanges between two or more people.
The rhythmic aspects of behavior are critical in establishing a collective sense of purpose and common understanding. In addition, there is a sense of well-being which comes with a rhythmic entrainment with one’s fellows (in dancing for instance) . By contrast, non-rhythmic or dissonant sound also separates. It leads people to stand apart from one another and generates unease.
While the auditory has priority over the visual, the visual has a place in this process of nervous entrainment. Firstly, registering an image is rooted firmly in brain physiology. The registration of an image in the minds eye is part of such nervous entrainment, yet the image has been transmitted as sound waves or valence register physical effects on the ear drum. Words and images are matters of vibration, vibrations at different electrical frequencies, but still vibration. In addition, the social, physical vibrations of images are critical in the process of nervous “electrical” entrainment, even though they lack the rhythm of auditory entrainment.”
Excerpts from “The Transmission of Affect” by Teresa Brennan, PhD.
What Teresa Brennan is alluding to, in my opinion, is passive and active “energy states,” and how they are subconsciously stimulated. For example, when I asked my father “what’s wrong?” Because his habitual explosive temper, has been subconsciously triggered by a small insignificant incident, and I’m trying to understand why his response is so outrageously out of proportion to the offence. His response “your breathing aren’t you!” Stimulates an extreme “passive” energy state within me, because of the sense of contempt, not just in the words used, but the “tone” transmitted by facial gesture, staring eyes, and prosody of his voice. Please consider;
“Human beings rely extensively on nonverbal channels of communication in their day-to-day emotional as well as interpersonal exchanges. The verbal channel, language, is a relatively poor medium for expressing the quality, intensity and nuancing of emotion and affect in different social situations … the face is thought to have primacy in signaling affective information. (Mandal & Ambady, 2004, p. 23)
In the developmental attachment context, right brain– to– right brain auditory prosodic communications also act as an essential vehicle of implicit communications within the therapeutic relationship. The right hemisphere is important in the processing of the “music” behind our words. When listening to speech, we rely upon a range of cues on which to base our inference as to the communicative intent of others. To interpret the meaning of speech, how something is said is as important as what is actually said. Prosody conveys different shades of meaning by means of variations in stress and pitch— irrespective of the words and grammatical construction (Mitchell, Elliott, Barry, Crittenden, & Woodruff, 2003). These data support suggestions that the preverbal elements of language— intonation, tone, force, and rhythm— stir up reactions derived from the early mother– child relationships (Greenson, 1978).”
Excerpts from “The Science of the Art of Psychotherapy” by Allan N. Schore.
* * * * * * *
What I’m trying to convey here, is the subconscious, emotional foundations of what we consciously, and defensively, presume to be a mental illness in others. What is becoming increasingly understood from all the recent neuroscience discoveries, is how the foundations of our sense-of-self, is laid down in, “subconscious & sensory,” emotional interactions, between caregivers and the child, in the first years of our lives. Those crucial early years when our brain-nervous systems are maturing by way of interactions with a social-emotional environment, and all taking place at the subconscious level of an implicit-self. A subconscious, implicit-self, which guides motivation throughout each individual's life-span, and drives the generational nature of family relationships. From this "subconscious" perspective on human behaviors, there is no blame or shame, this is simply the real-life nature of being human. Unconscious functioning, so little understood, and only now, with the aid of technology, beginning to see the light of true reason.
Chaos theory is playing a huge role in understanding just how complex chemical systems within the human organism, stabilize in defense of our survival. In practical terms, this can be seen in the chance and circumstance of my birth. In the real-life circumstance of time and place, bad luck affected such a pain fueled void between my mother & I, that we’ve never managed to resolved it. We've suffered from the generational nature of pain/shame fueled emotional cut-off too. If my mother had had an optimal birth experience, which had allowed her to bond in the “subconscious” sensory nature of emotional attachment, it more than likely would have helped to heal her abandonment by not only her own mother, but an entire family. I would have ended up with a different “implicit-self,” which would not have needed the subconscious process of psychosis, to stimulate a new and more positive sense of self. Psychosis, as a need of re-wiring those early forming neural networks within my brain-nervous systems. Euphoric psychosis, which was a need of mature orientation to the world of reality, as it is. I needed, at a subconscious level, to dissolve the conditioned, "autonomic," nature of my predominately "negative" internal states. Internal states, stimulated by my hearts reflex orienting responses to reality, along with my brain and nervous systems, of course. I needed to grow beyond, an implicit "freeze" reaction to any new challenge, in the social environment. (As explained here)
Just as I am now estranged from my family, my mother was estranged from her family of origin, and entirely dependent on another’s extended family, my father’s. This unbalanced emotional arrangement played its part in the further chaos, chance and circumstance, which resulted in my first episode of bipolar disorder, mania. Essentially, the current estrangement with my family, which is following the same generational pattern as my mother's estrangement from her family, is based on a subconscious need for movement, both physical and emotional, towards or away from. A subconsciously stimulated movement towards support and protection, and away from a subconscious sense of threat. Like the threat my public airing of mental illness within the family, posses to my mother, my brother and my children, its embarrassing. Embarrassment, being a milder expression of shame, yet nonetheless stimulating a need to move away from the threatening source. Consider Franz Kafka's brilliant critique of the human family, and our need for support and protection:
"The Metamorphosis
"We have to try and get rid of it", said Gregor's sister, now speaking only to her father, as her mother was too occupied with coughing to listen, "it'll be the death of both of you, I can see it coming. We can't all work as hard as we have to and then come home to be tortured like this, we can't endure it. I can't endure it any more." And she broke out so heavily in tears that they flowed down the face of her mother, and she wiped them away with mechanical hand movements. "My child", said her father with sympathy and obvious understanding, "what are we to do?" His sister just shrugged her shoulders as a sign of the helplessness that had taken hold of her, displacing her earlier certainly when she had broken into tears.
"If he could just understand us", said his father almost as a question; his sister shook her hand vigorously through her tears as a sign that of that there was no question.
"If he could just understand us", repeated Gregor's father, closing his eyes in acceptance of his sister's certainty that that was quite impossible, "then perhaps we could come to some kind of arrangement with him. But as it is ..."
"It's got to go", shouted his sister, "that's the only way, Father. You've got to get rid of the idea that that's Gregor. We've only harmed ourselves by believing it for so long. How can that be Gregor? If it were Gregor he would have seen long ago that it's not possible for human beings to live with an animal like that and he would have gone of his own free will. We wouldn't have a brother any more, then, but we could carry on with our lives and remember him with respect. As it is this animal is persecuting us, it's driven out our tenants, it obviously wants to take over the whole flat and force us to sleep on the streets. Father, look, just look", she suddenly screamed, "he's starting again!" In her alarm, which was totally beyond Gregor's comprehension, his sister even abandoned his mother as she pushed herself vigorously out of her chair as if more willing to sacrifice her own mother than stay anywhere near Gregor. She rushed over to behind her father, who had become excited merely because she was and stood up half raising his hands in front of Gregor's sister as if to protect her.
He did not turn his head until he had reached the doorway. He did not turn it all the way round as he felt his neck becoming stiff, but it was nonetheless enough to see that nothing behind him had changed, only his sister had stood up. With his last glance he saw that his mother had now fallen completely asleep.
He was hardly inside his room before the door was hurriedly shut, bolted and locked. The sudden noise behind Gregor so startled him that his little legs collapsed under him. It was his sister who had been in so much of a rush. She had been standing there waiting and sprung forward lightly, Gregor had not heard her coming at all, and as she turned the key in the lock she said loudly to her parents "At last!".
"What now, then?", Gregor asked himself as he looked round in the darkness. He soon made the discovery that he could no longer move at all. This was no surprise to him, it seemed rather that being able to actually move around on those spindly little legs until then was unnatural. He also felt relatively comfortable. It is true that his entire body was aching, but the pain seemed to be slowly getting weaker and weaker and would finally disappear altogether. He could already hardly feel the decayed apple in his back or the inflamed area around it, which was entirely covered in white dust. He thought back of his family with emotion and love. If it was possible, he felt that he must go away even more strongly than his sister. He remained in this state of empty and peaceful rumination until he heard the clock tower strike three in the morning. He watched as it slowly began to get light everywhere outside the window too. Then, without his willing it, his head sank down completely, and his last breath flowed weakly from his nostrils." An excerpt from The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka Translated by David Wyllie.
No longer a source of support and protection within the family group, Gregor is shunned, even by his sister, who had benefited most from his, father-like support. In Murray Bowen's seminal ideas on family therapy, this paternalistic nature of the nuclear family group, becomes the structuring force of mainstream society. Hence, we often describe government and other institutions as "paternalistic and condescending."
* * * * * * *
The Motor Act, Is The Cradle of The Mind? Sir Charles Sherrington.
Hence our implicit, subconscious-self, is based on the survival need of physical movement.
Just as my mother's family physically "moved" away from a source of family embarrassment. A family secret my mother had kept to herself for so many decades, until we sat down to review our "family tree," in 2006. Perhaps she was hoping that those sharing moments together would help to heal the void created between us, in our mutual experience of birth trauma? I'm certain she’d never spoken with my father about our family secret. Such emotional intimacy was not the "style," on that side of my family tree. Perhaps she'd recalled the mother-child relationship which briefly blossomed between us, in Wallingford, England, when I was the responsible, caring son, on a day when she almost died. Or perhaps my deceased father’s lost presence allowed a more sensitive and open emotional “style,” indicative of our shared genetic heritage, from the maternal side of my family tree?
But alas, these subconscious patterns of motivation are not easily dislodged, until brought to our conscious awareness. The very purpose, of my efforts here, unless read with a quick defensive judgment, as a subconsciously stimulated need of projecting blame? Am I really just blaming and shaming my family here, in a need to avoid responsibility for my current circumstances? This is certainly my family’s perspective, on these complex explanations of subconscious motivations. And what do I really mean, in this notion of a subconscious need for physical movement, and its strange recurring patterns, within everyone's family tree? Please consider;
“My mother seemed to be self-absorbed and unwilling to participate, which did not make for a harmonious balance in the household. They seem to have been locked in a struggle between my mother’s insular fear of life, and my father’s desire to participate. In the end my mother won that struggle, with a series of geographical moves that slowly isolated my father from family and friends. And towards the end of his life with her, my father found himself in a house on the Gold Coast, Australia, looking after my mother, just like my great grandfather James had done so many decades before.“ An excerpt from my differentiation of self essay.
Consider a quote from Carl Whitaker, M.D., co-writer of The Family Crucible;
"Every marriage is a battle between two families struggling to reproduce themselves."
Modern Family Therapy, is built on the study of emotional patterns of behavior over generations of family heritage. Emotional patterns of relationships which can be strikingly similar over generations, regardless of seemingly different circumstances. This is the basis of the world's most successful therapy approach, to first episode psychosis. Finland's Open Dialogue approach, interviews a whole family with impressive results: "in the 5-year treatment outcomes. In the ODAP group, 82% did not have any residual psychotic symptoms, 86% had returned to their studies or a full-time job" (Seikkula et al, 2004). If only this had been available in Sydney, in 1980:
"We set off for a private hospital in the Sydney suburb of Baulkham Hills, my best friend, my wife and me. I was still infused with a spiritual sense of purpose of course, still excited by its enabled sense of connection, still needing to trust, to love and be loved. Trust was the principle reason my best friend had taken time off work to support me, as I trusted his advice and his willingness to invest himself in my welfare. Indeed this crisis had brought us really close again, spending hours together, like before we were both married, before the subsequent rift caused by the shame of mental illness. I remember how he’d made sure to inform the psychiatrist of my fears about ETC, as forcefully as he could before I entered the interview room. Yet, “You have schizophrenia and need immediate hospitalization,” the good doctor said, before I found myself being escorted to a locked ward, all within thirty minutes.
I vaguely remember sitting on the edge of a bed as the first injection was administered, so heavily sedated I apparently slept for those first three days. I can’t recall to much about the next two weeks though, only what I was told about early concerns for my continued elative mood and the possibility of ECT. Only one significant memory springs easily to mind, of a day I decided to take a walk beyond the hospital grounds. I remember the incredible tingling of my skin out in the late summer sunshine, it felt like severe sun burn and was the first time I remember being really bewildered by the impact of medication side effects. I confused this strange sensation with my earlier mystic experiences at first, then remember being a bit alarmed by its compounding effect on my strange uncoordinated movements and the persistent and grinding physical fatigue. And I was beginning to hate being locked up, sadly sneaking out for a simple breath of fresh air had only brought me confusion and a first hint of fear.
I remember being spoken to rather harshly and arrogantly by a particularly bossy psych nurse on my return and perhaps the atmosphere of the locked ward began to break through my spellbinding mystical feelings." An excerpt from Born to Psychosis.
Which right now, makes me wonder about my mothers experience with a certain nursing sister, during her attempt to birth me? Like a scene from the movie Sliding Doors, mine and my family's life experience, could have been so different.
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My need to understand my Psychoses
So, is my current emotional cut-off from my family, about my shaming public airing of family secrets? Or is there more to this typical pattern of family relationships? Please consider an excerpt from an essay I'm currently working on:
"The success of open-dialogue’s, family relationships, oriented therapy, and the denial of its success by mainstream opinion, (like other successful, non-medication approaches) seems to bring a non-obvious, emotional projection process into view. Take the current controversy over the release of DSM-5, amid fears of an increasing medicalization of natural emotional experiences, for example. “Essential funds are used in the ongoing futile search for genetic markers instead of addressing the societal issues we know lead to mental health problems.” (Dillon, 2013) Making Murray Bowen’s decades earlier statement seem rather prophetic; “Society is creating more “patients” of people with dysfunctions whose dysfunctions are a product of the projection process. Alcoholism is a good example. At the very time alcoholism was being understood as the product of family relationships, the concept of “alcoholism as a disease” finally came into general acceptance.” (Bowen, 1985) The DSM-5 controversy also includes alarming reports, that use of antipsychotic medications, are implicated in a range of shocking side-effects, including homicidal violence, suicide and a 25 year reduction in life expectancy. Yet despite these alarming reports, Robert Whitaker, author of “Anatomy of an Epidemic,” suggests a societal delusion has been created, as to the success of psychotropic medications, with The Triumph of Bad Science and dubious practice involved. “And voila, you have a process for creating a societal delusion.” (Whitaker, 2012) Although in a recent interview, he had thoughts of “unconscious” processes? In my opinion, there is an unconscious NEED for such a delusion, involving affect/emotion and the dubious quality of our "objectifying" rationality, when trying to understand ourselves, and the nature of motivation:
“Vulnerable groups fit the best criteria for long term, anxiety relieving projection. Vulnerable to become the pitiful objects of the benevolent, over sympathetic segment of society that improves its functioning at the expense of the pitiful. Just as the least adequate child in a family can become more impaired when he becomes an object of pity and over sympathetic help from the family, so can the lowest segment of society be chronically impaired by the very attention designed to help. No matter how good the principle behind such programs, it is essentially impossible to implement them without the built-in complications of the projection process.” _Murray Bowen.
It took me decades to begin to sense the nature of my internal motivation. Sense the paradox of my internal defense against pain and sensations of fear; a flight to the refuge of my mind. To understand how we’re all raised to suppress sensations, in order to secure our mature sense of objective rationality. To understand why I felt lost in a sea of unconscious emotional reactivity, my social reflexes not quiet in-tune with normal social adaptation. Decades and the invention of the internet to begin to really understand, how traumatic experience had frozen my innate ability for spontaneous social communication. I had to leave my own culture to escape the built-in complications of a projection process, in which I felt trapped. So trapped that I’d found myself acting out a well meaning, projection of paternalistic care and concern, towards my therapy clients. So I went in search of my own “built-in” processes, in search of personal transformation. In my opinion, we are so immersed in the “autonomic” nature of our socially evolved humanity, asking people to be aware of unconscious affect and e-motive reactivity, is like asking a fish about water. “What’s water?”"
Considering my own experience with psychotropic medications and the alarming reports of deaths attributed to medication side effects, including deaths of young children. Should I be overly concerned about upsetting my family members, by speaking the truth about my lived experience? People might believe that I've hurt my mother, by exposing her to public scrutiny, although I doubt that anyone she knows outside our family, has read my writing. Also, nobody alive knows my mother like I do, we share the same blood from her side of the family. I know how tough she is, and why she trusted me, above all others, with her family secret, that may have brought our family closer together, if we could have discussed it, openly. Yet, that's the paradox of our subconscious, emotional reactivity, and its rationalized sense of reason. Beneath the layers of conscious, protective, rationalizations, we actually function, within a sea of emotional reactivity. Cover-up rationalizations like this one;
"‘Do I trust the word of a university educated psychiatrist, over the word of a man with a thirty year history of mental illness? - What do you think?’
‘I think you just avoided the sense of yourself, like I used too do.’ He looked perplexed of course, refusing any sense of what I was referring to. A former lover had remarked how James was a brilliant conversationalist, could speak well on such a wide range of subjects, except himself. “Just like you!” She’d added. Her comment mingled with a memory of my therapy supervisor and his remark about the double edged sword of conceptualizations. A millisecond collage of images and sound bites, so seamlessly fussed they are impossible to capture with a plodding description of a this thing or that, explanation. “How can I speak about my inner life objectively, without distancing my head from the immediate flow of sensation?”
‘You side stepped how you feel about all this by throwing the question back at me,’ I offered in explanation, as James switched his attention to writing a text message on his cell phone. My rational, reasonable "I think therefore I am," Descartian young man." An excerpt from Born to Psychosis
So, have I shamed my family, my mother, in my six year journey to understand the nature of my so called mental illness? Well, I remember a conversation with my mother in 2007, when I tried to cross the void between us. The subconscious void of abandonment and rejection, which runs like a river through generations of, my family attachment tree.
'What's your favorite song mom?' I'd asked, fairly sure she'd nominate a Shirley Bassy number, and sure enough:
So today, as our emotional cut-off continues its generational path, will we ever bridge the void between us, and can she forgive me for my apparent transgression of, generations of family rules. “Don’t talk about emotional things, you might upset someone” Would she still react like she did in 1980;
"In a perfect world, a family therapist would been present to guide us through the pain that stimulates cut-off reactions, and erects unbreachable walls between family members. “I’ll see you in Hell before I forgive you for this,” she said as I followed her out to the car, while pleading for conversation and a stay of execution. Alas, painful reactions will always overcome a mountain of rationalizations and I was still decades away from the insights that could articulate my need for guidance in that first experience of euphoric disinhibition." An excerpt from Born to Psychosis
Will we ever sit together again, and can I really explain why I had to go to Thailand, and learn a Buddhist perspective on the reality of Heaven and Hell, in the here and now. Please consider;
A big. burly samurai comes to a Zen master and says, “Tell me the nature of heaven and hell.”
The Zen master looks him in the face and says, “Why should I tell a scruffy, disgusting, miserable slob like you? A worm like you, do you think I should tell you anything?”
Consumed by rage, the samurai draws his sword and raises it to cut off the master’s head.
The Zen master says, “That’s hell.”
Instantly, the samurai understands that he has just created his own hell – black and hot, filled with hatred, self-protection, anger, and resentment. He sees that he was so deep in hell that he was ready to kill someone. Tears fill his eyes as he puts his palms together to bow in gratitude for this insight.
The Zen master says, “That’s heaven.”
Which is why I wrote, above "asking people to be aware of unconscious affect and e-motive reactivity, is like asking a fish about water. “What’s water?”
In 2007, when I'd asked during a telephone conversation, what my mom's favorite song was, I'd previously sent her a CD with a special song on it, knowing how much she would love it, and I wonder if we will ever listen to it together? Or will the generational nature of a subconscious family pattern continue? Have we said our final goodbye, already? Will we miss the possibility to heal the void, as my father and I did? As I tell others nowadays, "its surprising what life brings you, when you stop defending yourself against it." Those, sometimes, awful, internal sensations, which can make us "shun" each other.
In Murray Bowen's seminal approach to family and society, he describes a notion of "sinning," perhaps reflecting the Christian culture in which he was immersed:
"The force that drives the family projection process is intense. It is an automatic emotional force that functions to keep the patient sick. The full power of the force is most clearly seen in “action language” in families with severely impaired patients, when family anxiety is high. The family will overextend itself to do anything for the patient as long as treatment is for the patient.
The process can be aptly described by the following analogy. The family approaches the psychiatrist with a problem in one family member that, from a systems point of view, is the product of years of “sinning” throughout the family. The group is adamant in its demands that the product of the “sinning” be removed without doing anything to disturb the family patterns.
The same projection process operates in psychiatry. There have been reports about family therapy in the literature for almost twenty years. One of the best family research studies in the past decade was designed to keep mental patients out of hospitals. It was carefully designed and controlled, and it demonstrated that about eighty percent of patients already approved for admission to a public hospital could be kept at home and treated with a fraction of the professional personnel and time and expense required for the control group, and that the end result after a five year follow-up was much superior to the conventionally treated group. The scientific reports about it appeared periodically until the final book report five years ago.
Reviews of the work in professional journals described the work as “interesting and worthy of further study,” etc. One could say that innovations in thinking and procedure require time for acceptance. There is evidence that this force in psychiatry is part of the same force in all families, and also in society. Society probably spends more time and energy in futile attempts to remove the products of “sinning” than in trying to stop the “sinning.” " Excerpts from "Family Therapy in Clinical Practice," by Murray Bowen.
In my opinion, Bowen's "sinning," is our subconscious need to "shun" any sense of "otherness," like the experience of so-called mental illness, which no longer lends support to group function, on a family and societal level of implicit needs.
* * * * * * *
Waiting on a natural process:Like other periods, during this six year quest to discover the nature of my psychoses, and renew the respect of my children. Its been a period of more reading to establish the resources I need to argue my case, both socially and scientifically, knowing full well how my claim of self-regulation, without any medications, will be dismissed. "You never had Bipolar anyway," is the most common response from people in online support groups, where posts are overwhelmingly concerned with medications, and tolerating side-effects. Strangely, even within the online groups who mainstream society considers as anti-psychiatry, and anti-science, my experience is dismissed. Even though a favorite expression in these groups is, "the best way out is through." Its been a dismaying experience for me, as I discovered just how much people need simplistic explanations for their experience. I've struggled to understand the nature of our common denial of internal motivation, and our too often, blind adherence to common beliefs. The "group think," or "hive mind" as many people call it. Yet I have learned to wait on my own unfolding experience, without trying to force progress by way of rationalizations.
I've learned to push myself by trying to articulate my experience on websites like Mad in America, and found an experiential process of crystallizing my thinking, with the help of inter-personal interactions. Interactions and a re-reading of appropriate material like comments on a thread like this one:
"I’m trying to show people the subconscious processes which stimulate our sense of reason. When I use the term scan, I’m referring to the subconscious processes, Shcore describes, as happening so fast, they fail to cross the threshold of consciousness. Please consider that we may have become so stuck in Descartes error, that we literally can’t see what is right in front of our eyes.
Please consider;
WE CANNOT PERCEIVE WHAT WE CANNOT CONCEIVE:
We can only perceive, or literally see, what we can conceive of. We must have neuronal firing in our brains, whether it be in the imaginable state or actual perceptual state, for us to register an object as a reality.
Example: When Magellan’s fleet sailed around the tip of South America he stopped at a placed called Tierra del Fuego. Coming ashore he met some local natives who had come out to see the strange visitors. The ship’s historian documented that when Magellan came ashore the natives asked him how he had arrived. Magellan pointed out to his fully rigged sailing ships at anchor off the coast. None of the natives could see the ships. Because they had never seen ships before they had no reference point for them in their brains, and could literally not see them with their eyes. Therefore, it is to our advantage to expose our brains to varied stimulus so that the proper neuronal connections are forged. In this way we expand and enrich our ability to experience more of our environment in a meaningful way.
Consider words from my brother in arms, my kindred spirit;
"It seems obvious that when faced with the choice of allowing a realization that Jung either was singularly psychologically blind to the identity of his own benefactor Dionysus, or a realization that Jung deceptively hid the identity of the phallic maneater Dionysus– that Jung’s followers were in so much cognitive dissonance, were in such a bind that they unconsciously chose the third alternative. They went into a collective trance. Like the throng in the Emperor’s New Clothes fairy tale, they couldn’t see the reality before their very eyes.
Orwell famously affirmed this psychological axiom – 'To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.’
That’s why Perry’s patrician jaw dropped and I saw him for the first time at a loss for words when I spoke my Jungian blasphemy about the big secret hidden in plain sight. When the defense of denial collapses on a secret that big it is a dramatic thing to witness. Perry became almost giddy–he kept repeating–”Of course Michael, yes, you are right, you are right–I never saw it, none of us did–oh, you must publish this, must publish this!” And so I am right now." _Michael Cornwall PhD.
Who in 2012, was moved to write that David Bates has an understanding of madness beyond compare. A comment which gave me great encouragement, considering Michael's four decade's of front-line experience, in healing emotional/mental distress, without medications.
Reading Michael's brilliant essay again (see here) had allowed a further crystallization of my learning experience in Thailand, with its Buddhist traditions. Words and images began to gell together, (psychological-blindness, cognitive-dissonance, denial, and mental-suffering) began to resonate together, in a clearer sense of our common misperceptions, of our own reality. Please consider;
“Our Consensus Reality & Cognitive Dissonance?
Cognitive Dissonance:
This is the uncomfortable feeling that develops when people are confronted by “things that shouldn’t ought to be, but are.” If the dissonance is sufficiently strong, and is not reduced in some way, the uncomfortable feeling will grow, and that feeling can develop into anger, fear and even hostility. To avoid cognitive dissonance people will often react to any evidence which disconfirms their beliefs by actually strengthening their original beliefs and create rationalizations for the disconfirming evidence. The drive to avoid cognitive dissonance is especially strong when the belief has led to public commitment.
There are three common strategies for reducing cognitive dissonance. One way is to adopt what others believe. Parents often see this change when their children begin school. Children rapidly conform to “group-think,” and after a few years, they need this particular pair of shoes, and that particular haircut or they will simply die. The need to conform to social pressure can be as psychically painful as physical pain.
A second way of dealing with cognitive dissonance is to “apply pressure” to people who hold different ideas. This explains why mavericks are so routinely shunned by conventional wisdom. To function without the annoying psychic pain of cognitive dissonance, groups will use almost any means to achieve a consensus reality.
A third way of reducing cognitive dissonance is to make the person who holds a different opinion significantly different from oneself. This is normally done by applying disparaging labels. The heretic is disavowed as stupid, malicious, foolish, sloppy, insane, or evil and their opinion simply does not matter.
When we are publicly committed to a belief, it is disturbing even to consider that any evidence contradicting our position may be true, because a fear of public ridicule adds to the psychic pain of cognitive dissonance. Commitment stirs the fires of cognitive dissonance and makes it progressively more difficult to even casually entertain alternative views.
“Without deep and active involvement in controversy, and/or a degree of philosophical self-consciousness about the social process of science, people may not notice how far scientific practice can stray from the text book model of science.” _Harry Collins.”
Which led me onto this:
"Please consider how we come to each moment of our actions and how;
Psychologically, we can only take in what we currently know and sense our immediate surroundings, life is not a thought, it’s an experience.
Hence: The fantasies of your thought are not real. They are generated by your attachment, and therefore by your desire, your hate, your anger, your fear.
The fantasies of your thought, are generated by yourself” _Buddha.
We suffer because we mistake the fantasies of our mind for reality.
It is fundamental, therefore, that we learn to distinguish between reality and the fantasies of our mind.
There are two worlds:
1. The world of the mind.
2. The world of reality.
The world of reality is real, the world of the mind isn’t real.
Of the objects which present themselves to our consciousness, in fact, some belong to the reality that surrounds us, while others belong to our mind – that is, to our memory. (the body/brain and its nervous stimulation).
We tend to falsely believe that “both” kinds of mental objects are real, yet this is a false assumption based on our past, not the present reality, by which we are surrounded and unknowingly immersed in.
Only the mental objects which belong to the surrounding environment are real, not those which belong to our memory ( the body/brain nervous energy of the past)” (read more of this Buddhist interpretation of our confused mind's here)
Please consider how we get stuck in a moment we can’t get out of, because we “judge” with an expectation from what we’ve been taught? Hence we suffer from psychological-blindness as Michael Cornwall puts it, in his brilliant essay."
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Lastly, do I believe that this essay will suddenly alter my relationship with my family? No, not really, in emotional terms my life now has no "valence" for my family, in psychological terms, no "relevance," as I alluded to throughout this post, and inserted Kafka's genius, to illustrate. My blog writing has, since 2011, been about a process of deepening my own understanding, and an effort to help, in my small way, those hundreds of thousands, around the world, who suffer from so-called mental-illness, and our human need to shun any sense of otherness. The world has changed, since my initial false diagnosis of schizophrenia in 1980, and the age of internet, now allows people to give up their dependence on others, and find their own improved recovery, through self-education, in my opinion.
Please consider an excerpt from the book which was the most helpful on my journey;
“Deepening awareness is a challenge. It isn’t a challenge because my parents didn’t love me enough. It’s a challenge because it’s a challenge. I don’t need to take it personally. I’ve spent years excavating my past, sorting and cataloguing the wreckage. But who I really am, the essential truth of my being, can’t be grasped by the mind, no matter how acute my insights. I’ve confused introspection with awareness, but they’re not the same. Becoming the worlds leading expert on myself has nothing to do with being fully present.” Excerpt from: “In an Unspoken Voice.” by Peter Levine, PhD.
How much longer will we continue to shame and shun, any sense of otherness, we don't understand? Shame can be a killer, not just a stimulation of stigma, it can lead to an impulse for escape, particularly for the tortured creative's like Ian Curtis, who's genius came to mind, as I walked away from my family, in October 2010:
“No wonder isolation has been used as punishment and torture down through the ages,” I thought. Or perhaps I really am insane, no meaningful reality sensed during these hyper-sensitive periods of psychosis, simply the disease of a nasty, and very unsacred illness? I kept walking, fighting the collapse feeling of dying inside. “Your confusion my illusion, was like a mask of self hate, confronts and then dies,” came to mind as I gazed at people passing by. Ian Curtis and Joy Division’s song “atmosphere,” so holy appropriate to each further footstep. “How the hell does this happen,” I pondered, yet it was an eerie serendipitous feature of so many moments like this in my life. “Don’t walk away,” whispered through my mind, along with the haunting melody of a truly fabulous song. “People like you find it easy, aching to see, walking on air, haunted by the rivers, through the streets, every corner, abandoned to soon, set down with due care.” “Don’t walk away,” echoed in reverberation, as I dragged myself further on." An excerpt from Born to Psychosis
“People like you find it easy, aching to see, walking on air,
haunted by the rivers, through the streets, every corner,
abandoned to soon, set down with due care.” “Don’t walk away.”
How long before we stop sinning and blindly judging each other, lost in a sea of subconscious, e-motive, reactivity?
How long before we begin to educate ourselves about these unconscious waters, which move us all?
What does this uncommon term AFFECT, really mean, and is, its subconscious regulation, as Allan Schore and others suggest, the root cause of so-called mental illness?
Active & Passive Energy States & The Affect of Neuroception
Is madness a right of passage? A subconscious need to face reality, as it is?
In my life's journey, which began with the trauma of a three day long labor and brutal forceps delivery, during a harsher period of social perception. A period when the most precious creation in the Universe, a human baby, was so often referred to as an IT? "You need to take control of it, or it will control you," was the often, un-sage advice of many nursing sisters. Un-sage because, we don't understand our own subconscious functioning, and we react with a primarily defensive self-preservation instinct. It was the early 1950's after all, in a working class British society, still struggling to leave the Victorian "spare the rod, and spoil the child," era behind. An era, which did lay the foundations of our current era, of increasing freedom, from fundamentalist, paternalistic regimes.
In today's burgeoning understanding of just how susceptible human beings are to trauma, many believe that there is a second traumatic experience, which really conditions the lasting effects of an "internalized" sense of threat. In my own experience, this second trauma which cemented, so to speak, my internal structure, was the relationship with my mother and father, as a decidedly unwanted child. Particularly, my father's need of emotional dominance (active state) and my mother's passive aggressive coping style, in the crucible of madness, my family. Of course, my parents made the appropriate noises and made the appropriate gestures, particularly in public. Yet the very real and unconscious dynamics of human attachment, spoke the complete opposite. Hence Freud's metaphor of an iceberg, for our conscious and unconscious functioning, is as valid today as it ever was, and is now being discovered, as actual structure, in professor Stephen Porges "The Polyvagal Theory." Porges, coining of the term "neuroception," captures the reality of Freud's unconscious Id. Please consider;
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| I return to Australia, after my Thai visa renewal is denied. |
As I waited inline at immigration the anxious butter-fly's in my stomach rose to higher flight, in respect for an increasingly imminent, family greeting.
"Stay grounded, resist replaying the scenes from the same arrival two years ago," I told myself. Considering how my oldest son James was waiting for me again, after agreeing to bail his father out of a self-imposed "fix," and fly me back to Australia. "No money, no home, no resources of a material kind, how could my children, not see me as having hit rock bottom?" I wondered, and would I get the chance to explain? Life is paradoxical, I thought, as I walked into the arrivals area carrying 15 less kilo's of luggage than I'd taken to Thailand almost three years before. Materially lighter, stripped of all possessions save for my precious laptop, six books and 20 kilo's of clothes. Objectively speaking, should I deny, my life appears to be going backwards? "Your a sad looser!" I probably would have told myself a decade ago, yet I feel more comfortable in my own skin than at any previous time in my life, ready, willing and able, to face the undoubted challenges to come.
I couldn't help a scenario running through my head though, as I pictured a coffee table family reunion, and some of the words we might, but probably won't, say to each other. "When you stop defending yourself against life, it tends to bring you the experiences you need to have," I pictured myself saying.
Its been eight months since I arrived back in Australia, in my ongoing quest to understand so-called mental illness, from the inside-out. A period, when I've continued waiting on a natural process of growth and understanding, with a faith in the power of my innate intuition. A faith in my evolved nature as a human animal, and by keeping to that faith, my trust in my own nature, has been rewarded, with deepening insight. Please consider an earlier post, on my BipolarBatesy blog, below;
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| Neuroception? An "subconscious" Perception? Our vital need to feel SAFE, & its neural perception? |
A Subconscious System for Detecting Threats and Safety.
Ideally, a baby’s neuroception of her environment shows her a safe place to explore.
But even if her perception warns her accurately of danger from a “frightened or frightening” caregiver, the baby can take some defensive measures, even though they are likely to be ineffective and are almost certain to be psychologically costly.
What happens when neuroception itself is impaired? From a theoretical perspective, faulty neuroception—that is, an inability to detect accurately whether the environment is safe or another person is trustworthy—might lie at the root of several psychiatric disorders: (see: NEUROCEPTION: A Subconscious System for Detecting Threats and Safety)
So what exactly is, SUBCONSCIOUS perception?
• Areas in the temporal cortex that are assumed to inhibit fight, flight, or freeze reactions are not activated in people with autism or schizophrenia, who have difficulty with social engagement.
• Individuals with anxiety disorders and depression have compromised social behavior; difficulties in regulating the heart rate, as reflected in measures of vagal control of the heart; and reduced facial expressiveness.
• Maltreated and institutionalized children with Reactive Attachment Disorder tend to be either inhibited (emotionally withdrawn and unresponsive) or uninhibited (indiscriminate in their attachment behavior; Zeanah, 2000). Both types of behavior suggest faulty neuroception of the risk in the environment. _Stephen Porges, Ph,D.
How does SUBCONSCIOUS perception, result in Mental Illness?
At a glance:
• Neuroception describes how neural circuits distinguish whether situations or people are safe, dangerous, or life threatening.
• Neuroception explains why a baby coos at a caregiver but cries at a stranger, or why a toddler enjoys a parent’s embrace but views a hug from a stranger as an assault.
• The Polyvagal Theory describes three developmental stages of a mammal’s autonomic nervous system: Immobilization, mobilization, and social communication or social engagement.
• Faulty neuroception might lie at the root of several psychiatric disorders, including autism, schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, depression, and Reactive Attachment Disorder.
Could most categories of what we normally see as expressions of a mental illness, be classified under this "umbrella" term, Reactive Attachment Disorder? Is "attachment" a fundamental requirement, in human physiological and psychological health? For example: "Individuals with anxiety disorders and depression have compromised social behavior; difficulties in regulating the heart rate, as reflected in measures of vagal control of the heart; and reduced facial expressiveness." Certainly, my own, bipolar disorder type 1, has its roots in a "neuroception" of danger and subsequently compromised social behaviors, of which "mania" was at times, a spontaneous attempt to rectify? IMO. "Nothing overrides a sense of fearful avoidance and withdrawal from other people and life, quite like an episode of mania," I said to a psychiatrist recently.
Has professor Stephen Porges uncovered the hidden biology of Sigmund Freud's unconscious "Id?" And does "The Polyvagal Theory," give us a view of the hidden roots of Affective Disorders like Bipolar? Does The Polyvagal Theory & the concept of a "neural," subconscious perception, professor Porges has called "neuroception," provide a casual link between mental disorders, many consider the truncated response of a natural, mammalian reaction to a sense of threat? Both external & internal? Is a misunderstood and "intellectually" denied, capacity of the autonomic nervous system, at the core of human disorders from Autism to Schizophrenia, including the many symptoms of PTSD & BPD?
Remember the Iceberg Metaphor?
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| Sensing an "uncoscious" motivation? |
Id: The id is the unconscious reservoir of the libido, the psychic energy that fuels instincts and psychic processes. It is a selfish, childish, pleasure-oriented part of the personality with no ability to delay gratification.
Superego: It is making decision regarding the pleasure perceived by the id and the morals of superego. Internalized societal and parental standards of "good" and "bad", "right" and "wrong" behavior.
Ego: Individual's morals divided into the conscious - security rules and regulations. the moderator between the id and superego which seeks compromises to pacify both. It can be viewed as our "sense of time and place",
Primary and secondary processes: In the ego, there are two ongoing processes. First there is the unconscious primary process, where the thoughts are not organized in a coherent way, the feelings can shift, contradictions are not in conflict or are just not perceived that way, and condensations arise. There is no logic and no time line. Lust is important for this process. By contrast, there is the conscious secondary process, where strong boundaries are set and thoughts must be organized in a coherent way. Most conscious thoughts originate here.
The reality principle: Id impulses are not appropriate in civilized society, so society presses us to modify the pleasure principle in favor of the reality principle; that is, the requirements of the External World.
Yet all our perceptions are actually created within our "unconscious," Internal World?
Please consider more of professor Porges articulation of his discovery;
"By processing information from the environment through the senses, the nervous system continually evaluates risk. I have coined the term neuroception to describe how neural circuits distinguish whether situations or people are safe, dangerous, or life threatening. Because of our heritage as a species, neuroception takes place in primitive parts of the brain, "without our conscious awareness".
The detection of a person as safe or dangerous triggers neurobiologically determined prosocial or defensive behaviors. Even though we may not be aware of danger on a cognitive level, on a neurophysiological level, our body has already started a sequence of neural processes that would facilitate adaptive defense behaviors such as fight, flight, or freeze.
Consensus reality: is that which is generally agreed to be reality, based on a consensus view. The difficulty with the question stems from the concern that human beings do not in fact fully understand or agree upon the nature of knowledge or knowing, and therefore (it is often argued) it is not possible to be certain beyond doubt what is real.
Accordingly, this line of logic concludes, we cannot in fact be sure beyond doubt about the nature of reality. We can, however, seek to obtain some form of consensus, with others, of what is real. We can use this consensus as a pragmatic guide, either on the assumption that it seems to approximate some kind of valid reality, or simply because it is more "practical" than perceived alternatives.
Consensus reality therefore refers to the agreed-upon concepts of reality which people in the world, or a culture or group, believe are real (or treat as real), usually based upon their common experiences as they believe them to be; anyone who does not agree with these is sometimes stated to be "in effect... living in a different world."
Throughout history this has also raised a social question: "What shall we make of those who do not agree with consensus realities of others, or of the society they live in?"
Children have sometimes been described or viewed as "inexperienced with consensus reality," although with the expectation that they will come into line with it as they mature. However, the answer is more diverse as regards such people as have been characterized as eccentrics, mentally ill, enlightened or divinely inspired, or evil or demonic in nature. Alternatively, differing viewpoints may simply be put to some kind of "objective" (though the nature of "objectivity" goes to the heart of the relevant questions) test.
Cognitive liberty is the freedom to be the individual's own director of the individual's own consciousness and is fundamentally opposed to enforcement of the culturally accepted reality upon non-conforming individuals. Effects of low cognitive liberty vary from indifference to forced-medication and from social alienation to incarceration to death" From: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
So is our "objective," consensus understanding of Mental Illness, as a Brain Disease, a definite reality? "Or simply, because it is more "practical" than perceived alternatives?"
Are body psychotherapy techniques of "sensation awareness," like those described in Peter Levine's <>SomaticExperiencing, applicable therapies for affective disorders like bipolar, in combination with pharmacology as a means of managing symptoms and reducing medication between crisis periods. Perhaps leading to living medication free, as I now do? I now use Levine's "sensate awareness" methods to manage my affective experience, allowing me to discharge the heightened nervous system energies of mania, & avoid the temptation of a depressive conservation/withdrawal, now that I can identify the three active areas of my triune brain and nervous system, thanks to my reading of professor Porges, "Polyvagal Theory."
In the medical model, of a brain disease (a chemical imbalance), do we in fact, manage an "existential crisis" rather than an illness, in the traditional sense of illness as a biological disease process? Is our consensus reality, simplistically defined by an absence of the kind of emotional crisis, we see in those of us defined as mentally ill? And beneath our agreed upon sense of an objective (consensus reality), is there a deeper reality, which can only be explored, using a "felt" rather than "thought" sense of knowing?
* * * * * * *
So what do you think, dear reader? Is the majority of what we label a mental illness, really an existential crisis, as a right of passage NEED, to face reality, as it is, in the innate anxiety, of the lived moment?
Please consider a comparison between a rather poetic conception of existential crisis, and a small sample of the science of human development, which informed my new understanding;
“So, we finally arrive at the final and perhaps most important question in this discussion:
“Why would an individual’s psyche intentionally initiate psychosis?”
In other words, how can something as chaotic and as potentially harmful as psychosis act as a strategy to aid someone in transcending an otherwise irresolvable dilemma? To understand this, it helps to use as a metaphor the process of metamorphosis that takes place within the development of a butterfly. In order for a poorly resourced larva to transform into the much more highly resourced butterfly, it must first disintegrate at a very profound level, its entire physical structure becoming little more than amorphous fluid, before it can reintegrate into the fully developed and much more resourced form of a butterfly.” _Paris Williams. (read more here)
Yet how do we understand this common metaphor “psyche” and how can I explain how neuroscience gave me clues to understanding the internal NEED for my experience of “mania?” Please consider;
"A second core assumption of systems theory is that self-organization is characterized by the emergence and stabilization of novel forms from the interaction of lower-order components and involves “the specification and crystallization of structure.” This mechanism also describes how hierarchical structural systems in the developing brain self-organize. Developmental neuroscience is now identifying the “lower” autonomic and “higher” central brain systems that organize in infancy and become capable of generating and regulating psychobiological states.
Developing organisms internalize environmental forces by becoming appropriately structured in relation to them, and by incorporating an internal model of these exogenous signals they develop adaptive homeostatic regulatory mechanisms which allow for stability in the face of external variation. The regulation of the organism, which maintains internal stability and output regulation and enables effective response to external stimuli, therefore depends on the formation of a dynamic model of the external environment. Self-organizing systems are thus systems that are capable of generating new internal representations in response to changing environmental conditions. (p, 94)
The human is a nonlinear dynamic system, an inherently dynamic energy-transformation regime that coevolves with its environment, one that self-organizes when exposed to an energy flux. The infant becomes attuned to an external object in its environment who consistently responds in a stimulating manner to the infant’s spontaneous impulsive energy dissipating behaviors. (p, 95)
The nonlinear self acts “iteratively”, so that minor changes, occurring at the right moment, can be amplified in the system, thus launching it into a qualifiedly different state. Indeed energy shifts are the most basic and fundamental features of emotion, “discontinuous” states are experienced as “affect responses,” and nonlinear psychic bifurcations are manifest as rapid “affective shifts.” (p, 96)
One of the fundamental characteristics of an emotional episode… is the synchronization of the different components of the organism’s efforts to recruit as much energy as possible to master a major crisis situation (in a positive or negative sense). (my mania in 1980) I suggest the principle applies to the developmental crisis that must be mastered as one moves along the lifespan. The continuing growth spurts of the right hemisphere that mediate attachment, the synchronization of right-brain activities between and within organisms, thus occur as the developing individual is presented with the stresses that are intrinsic to later stages of life, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. (p, 172)
Vagal tone is defined as “the amount of inhibitory influence on the heart by the parasympathetic nervous system.” (p, 301)
In light of the principle that birth insult and stress interact and impair later stress regulation , early right-amygdala function, including olfactory contributions to proto-attachment communications, should be evaluated in the perinatal period. (p, 304)
Affect dysregulation is also a hallmark of Bipolar Disorders that involve manic episodes. Manic depressive illnesses are currently understood to represent dysregulatory states. The developmental psycho-pathological precursor of a major disorder of under-regulation can be demonstrated in the practicing period histories of infants of manic depressive parents. I suggest that the necessary gene environment condition is embedded specifically in practicing period transactions. (P, 410).
Noting the commonalities between elation as a basic practicing period mood in infants and manic symptomology in adults, Poa (1971) observes Elation as a basic mood is characterized by an experience of exaggerated omnipotence which corresponds to the child’s increasing awareness of his muscular and intellectual powers. The similarity between the two is striking. Manic disorder has also been described in terms of a chronic elevation of the early practicing affect of interest-excitement; this causes a “rushing” of intellectual activity and a driving of the body at uncontrollable and potentially dangerous speeds. (P, 410-411).” (Schore, 2003)
Please note the my reference to mania and its implications for Paris Williams more eloquent formulation, of psychic transformation. There is even a reference to vagal-tone and birth insult, as the hints which enabled my transformation of a birth-trauma, and family dynamic, conditioned FEAR response, within the subconscious functioning of my nervous systems, into a more joyful approach to life. Yet the difficulty in sensing unconscious processes, in a culture, now addicted to Descartes famous error, of "I think therefore, I am," is compounded by our "instinctive" underpinning of our intelligence, with a NEED for quick and easy phrases and statements. Hence, although Paris and others like him have contributed much towards re-framing the mental health debate, in America, little will really change, until we address our common, subconscious functioning, and what really makes us tick, in my opinion.
The positive energies of elation, as a metabolic resource for brain/nervous system structure, is what was missing in my childhood. Hence my first experience of psychosis, was a right of passage need to face the social world, as it really is. Managing the excitement of spontaneous social engagement, had always been my downfall, in relationships, where my "frozen" facial expressions met with an equally "defensive" response. All, occurring at speeds, to fast, to breech the threshold of conscious awareness. Hence, only a "sensate" approach towards understanding the sensations within my body, has helped me to re-connect with my mind's creator, and heal a wound, long forgotten, because it happened, before I ever learned to think.
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