A Letter of Encouragement to a Client of Mine

March 10 2005

  Well done Paul and Thanks ……………..

 Finally had some time to review your Documents and as well as your permission for me  to share some comments and observations from my perspective that is rooted firstly in Psychiatry and secondly in Comparative Religions therefore the field is quite vast.

 If your intentions were noble, in giving me this text and honouring the confidentiality of this or any correspondence (what is shared between us, stays between us), which I believe were your intentions I then feel free to respond. 

 “First we learn on dry land… then we take to the sea once we understand”

 “Your vision will become clear only when you look in your own heart. Who looks outside, a dream; who looks inside, awakes.”  Carl Jung

 “It is a madhouse down here” Plato

 Paul, only a very few people ever have the opportunity to get well in this tragic world.

 What is the ancient cure/spell that blinds us, the darkness, the Shadow?

 As a health professional, I am mandated to first discern universal mental health determinates (values and beliefs) and then implement them into the suffering world. But it was into the world of my suffering that I would first have to journey to understand my “own veil tears” and then return with the “Good News”

 Life then is finally understood as a series of “passages” that I must successfully navigate to arrive “on the “other side” or simply to the next passage, hence the journey, the quest of the hero. 

 What is required? First, an open mind, which I sense, you have and then secondly, finding the inner strength to finally for the last time, “kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight”.

 You are trapped, in bondage by guilt and fear, which was not your original position. We all were in fact ‘pure at birth’ No we don’t have corrupted DNA; we are contaminated from the external world as you have so carefully investigated and described. 

 You list both material and immaterial contaminants. Hence the two groups of ‘insults’ to our ‘Biological-Social-Spiritual’ system we call “I”. (The “I” position is where mental/soul health is located. The “I” position is known in this business as the ‘True-Self’.)  The first group can simply be labelled psychological/interpersonal insults and the second group simply “I-It” contaminates.

 I am primary only concerned with a psychological insult to the ‘self’ that results in mental/spiritual suffering. We look then at the ego structure itself and its scar tissue from the external trauma and attempt with some success to remove it.

 The client is nearly always unwilling to give up this ‘scar tissue as they have gotten used to it, adjusted to it, encapsulated it, walls it off, and buries it into the unconscious which by nature is opaque to us.

 So to be of any use to anyone I must become a scientist of the unconscious, to understand its terrain and be able to navigate successfully through it, if the time ever comes to be a ‘ferry-man’, to take someone else who decides to cross its hostile and dangerous landscape…. to leave the land of darkness, rooted in the past, and move towards the future, leaving the past behind into the land of light… insight instead of delusions)

 To leave the past behind is a very painful experience as we are losing something of our core self. It is like cutting off the right arm of the client to save him. The most difficult of all is that the client has to do the amputation himself. Once the client more clearly sees (insight) the ‘no-win’ situation he is in, they will readily ‘step up to the plate’ and make the ‘cut’. To go forward in one’s life, you have to go back into the distant past of our lives otherwise known as our ‘psycho-genesis’ to finally more fully ‘know where we indeed came from instead of continuing to be ‘trapped in the mirror’ of our own deceptions, illusions, denials, rationalizations and so on …. Of the lies, we have told ourselves and of the lies, others have told us.  Hence the journey of self-discovery of the “truth, our truth’ and so on.

 There are many areas in your text that I wish to engage in but at the bare minimum:  That which I believe could be most helpful to you is to inquire about the connection between your own sense of ‘environmental contamination’ resulting in your own ill health and the fact that they are identical to two of the prominent features of your Mother. This mixture of health/life (love of your Mother) and illness/death (alcohol intolerance and perfume intolerance) clearly indicates ambivalence, which is the core nature of all conflicted relationships.

 I have added to this letter some articles that I hope may be helpful. Winnicott's concept of ‘transitional objects’ is very important in understanding ‘connections with loved ones’ (those most powerful in our psyche) as well as other ‘pieces’ that may be helpful in your project of ‘integration of your soul’. 

 And a few important points on the 5th commandment; it should read: “only if they deserve it”. Otherwise, all parents would have and deserve complete obedience, servitude, and impunity even when the child is clearly in abusive/toxic and traumatizing conditions. Some authors believe it should be read, “Honor you Mother and Father in heaven” which is in keeping with what Jesus said in Matthew 10:37. We are not of course to obey our parents if this causes disobedience to God.

 Loyalty and betrayal are key concepts in the understanding of the human condition. We are all in fact in one way or another trying to recover from a betrayal of someone we were once loyal to and loved deeply. Betrayal is the poison of the soul. 

 I welcome any further dialogue.  Best wishes……………………

 A brief list of the references:

 

 The Bible

Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence

Paradise Lost – John Milton

Canterbury Tales – Chaucer

The Prince – Machiavelli

Lord of Rings Trilogy – Tolkien

I and Thou – Martin Buber

Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan

Confessions - Saint Augustine

The Divine Comedy – Dante

Pensees - Blaise Pascal

Cloud of Unknowing – Anonymous

Oresteia - Aeschylus

The Nicomachean Ethics – Aristotle

 

 

Some from General Psychology / Psychiatry, almost into the Self-Help category at times:

 

Man’s Search for Himself – Rollo May

The Undiscovered Self – C. G. Jung

Guilt is the Teacher; Love is the Lesson – Joan Borysenk

Emotional Blackmail – Susan Forward

Trapped in the Mirror – Elan Golomb

The Angry Heart – Joe Santoro & Ronald Cohen

Family Secrets – John Bradshaw

Necessary Losses – Judith Viorst

Road Less Traveled – Scott Peck

Beyond Co-Dependency – Melody Beattie

Healing the Child within – Charles Whitfield

Toxic Parents – Susan Forward

Family Therapy in Clinical Practice – Murray Bowen (particularly Ch. 16 & 22)

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

 




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On the Jungian concept of "Individuation" or "Wholeness."

  On the Jungian concept of "Individuation" or "Wholeness." All of us have, to some degree or other, the impulse towards individuation. Individuation was the core of Jung’s work. Yet individuation has nothing to do with Jung specifically. What I mean is that we find the notion of individuation portrayed in multiple areas. For instance, if you read the Gospel of Thomas you will be reading about Individuation. If you watch the Wizard of Oz you will be going through Dorothy’s process of Individuation. “Somewhere over the rainbow” turns out to be in her own home, in her own home town, within the particular circumstances of her life. It is an inner realisation, not dependent upon outer circumstances. If you watch the series "Judge John Deed", you will see the portrayal of a person who is, for the most part, individuating. The Hero’s Journey, whether the hero be Luke Skywalker or the Knights of the Round Table, is an archetype of Individuation. The hero’s ...
Read more

The Women by the Desert Well – Trapped in the Present by her Past

  The Women by the Desert Well – Trapped in the Present by her Past- All that She Knows  There once was a man who had been travelling alone for many years.  At long last, he found himself in the very heart vast desert.  He came over the last hill and there in front of him was a tired-looking woman sitting by a small well attempting to lower her bucket into the well to draw water. Each time she pulled the bucket up, it was empty. The place was barren, not a tree for shade, no grass to sit down on. The desert was all around her.   She was utterly alone.  He said to her, “you appear to be an intelligent woman, don’t you know that is a dry well?”  She said, “No, it is not, I just have to try harder and eventually I will get water. It is my fault that I am not drawing water.  I am not doing something right. I even may deserve it. It may be some sort of punishment and I must atone for it”.  He asked the young woman, who by now looked much ...
Read more

To "Know Thyself"

  If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion." ~Aldous Huxley Aldous Leonard Huxley, (born July 26, 1894 in Godalming, Surrey (England); † November 22, 1963 in Los Angeles) was a British writer and philosopher. Philosophical Term For the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates, self-knowledge is the condition of morality. The motto Gnothi seauton (“Know Thyself”), handed down by Heraclitus and often attributed to Thales or the Seven Wise Men, adorned the entrance of the ancient Temple of Apollo at Delphi. The demand for self-knowledge is thus one of the oldest and still most important demands of philosophy on the individual. Epistemologically, the philosophical structure of self-knowledge is based on turning the knowledge process back to the person who knows it (see also hermeneutics). The incentive for this recognition is to overcome the "subject-object split". According to Karl Jaspers, self-re...
Read more