What is Madness? Darian Leader

I'm one of those people that finds it hard to stick with a book until the end, but I did with this one. I'm also one of those that can't break down a book into a blurb. Nonetheless, here is my take.

The book is about madness. It talks mainly about psychosis and schizophrenia but also touches about other forms of madness and their various manifestations. More than that, the main thread running through the book is one challenging how we perceive the above phenomena. It challenges many concepts of perception and this is one particular thing that made me stick with it, there is a novelty to it.

For example, in general, people who go to therapy may fall into the trap of being told how they should adjust to society, adjust to what is normal, adjust to how they should think etc, but the author challenges the therapist imposing their own conception, their own view on their patient.

The emphasis on social adjustment carries many dangers, as it risks neglecting the unique and idiosyncratic formulae for living that many psychotic subjects have developed. Rather than telling someone how to live, what matters is to find what it is in their own history that has helped them, what points of identification or idealization, what activities or projects: what is there in their delusion, perhaps, or in their family history that is reliable and stable, what 'good objects' are there that could be encouraged and supported? Social adjustment, indeed, can lead to catastrophe if the therapist pushes the subject to engage in some activity or relationship that is socially valorized, yet, because it introduces a symbolic position, has nothing to support it.

Suggesting that someone take a job, or go on a date, for example, may be unproblematic in some cases, but in others may trigger or exacerbate pyschosis. In these instances, the subject is being pushed by the desire of the other - to be a boss for employees, to be a man for a woman - and may not be able to cope with the symbolization that this entails. Likewise, the social imperatives to 'achieve' and to 'act' may lead the therapist to encourage the subject to undertake some activity when in fact it is essential to them that it remain forever unrealized, always situated in the future.

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He offers a view that is interesting in my eyes

Likewise, anyone undertaking such work would be well advised to question their own fantasies of helping or curing others. As Lewis Hill pointed out, 'The phrase, 'to help human beings' can both conceal and indicate motives motives to set oneself up as superior to and condescending towards patients, motives to dominate and control and force patients into preconceived patterns of behaviour, and even motives to achieve distinction by way of morbid self sacrifice and self punishment.' A psychotic subject can understand this very swiftly and quite rightly, show scepticism. As a schizophrenic woman objected to her therapist at the end of their first consultation, 'How can you claim to care about me if we've only just met?' And if the therapist just cared about all distressed human beings, how could she recognize the particularity of the patient in front of her? Her work would be sustained by rescue fantasy that would effectively block her from hearing her patients

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Another tidbit,

Taking seriously the theory of ordinary madness has radical consequences for the society we live in. If we accept that there is a fundamental difference between being mad - which is perfectly compatible with everyday life - and going mad - which will be triggered by certain situations - we can learn to respect the different practices that individuals invent to stabilize their lives. Sometimes, these fit in well with accepted social practices, and sometimes they don't. But once we recognize that they are attempts to create solutions, we can hopefully question any project to bring them back to a normative set of beliefs and values.

Acknowledging this fact will have a crucial clinical consequence. As we have seen, many of the strange and seemingly bizarre practices of psychotic subjects are efforts to find a cure for the primary experiences of terror, fragmentation and invasion. Any treatment plan that confuses these two sets of phenomena will be hazardous, and undermining the person's attempt at self cure can have catastrophic effects. Psychotic subjects are always busy here, naming, creating, assembling, inventing and documenting, and to question or try to excise such activities risks depriving the subject of what is most vital to them. The fruits of such activities do not have to be of any social use or even to make sense: they can be quiet or noisy, private or public, communicative or contained.

Campaigns to destigmatize so-called 'mental illness' often take a wrong turning here. They try to demonstrate how sufferers of some condition have made amazing contributions to the sciences or the arts. Trying to destigmatize the diagnosis of autism, for example, we read how Einstein or Newton would have received that diagnosis today, and yet made fabulous discoveries in the field of physics. Even if they are acknowledged to have been 'different', their worth is still reckoned in terms of how their work has impacted on the world of others. However well intentioned, such perspectives are hardly judicious, as they make an implicit equation between value and social utility.

Taking this step is dangerous, as the moment that human life is defined in terms of utility, the door to stigmatization and segregation is opened. If someone were found to be not so useful, what value then, would their life have?

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It also perception of being able to distinguish between sane & insane people

By the late 1970s, madness had become increasingly equated with its visible symptoms, those that drugs took as their targets.

In his famous study, David Rosenhan arranged for 8 'sane' people - 3 psychologists, a paediatrician, a psychiatrist, a painter, a housewife and psychology professor Rosenhan himself - to seek admission to 12 different American hospitals. None of them had any reported symptoms, yet they were instructed to complain, when seeking admission, of hearing voices that said the words 'Empty', 'Hollow' and 'Thud'. After this, if admitted, they were to simply conduct themselves as usual and report no further occurence of the voices. This all proved even easier than expected. All but one were admitted with the diagnosis, 'schizophrenia', and all of them were discharged with the diagnosis, 'schizophrenia in remission' after stays of between a week and 2 months. They were prescribed nearly 2100 pills, from a wide variety of different drugs. Remarkably staff seemed to have no awareness that these were 'pseudo-patients', but inmates were often suspicious: 'You are not crazy. You are a journalist.' as one patient said.

After reporting these initial findings, Rosenhan then told the staff at an important research and teaching hospital that he would be conducting the experiment again at some point during the next 3 months. Staff were asked to rate admissions according to a scale of probability that they were pseudo patients. 83 patients were deemed pseudo by one or more members of staff, when in fact, Rosenhan in a double bluff, had not dispatched a single one of his recruits to the hospital. Yet, despite this, all these diagnoses had been made. Without wishing to deny the gravity of mental distress, his study had challenged the assumption that the sane and the insane could be distinguished so clearly.

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Beyond the above, it goes deeper into a criticism of the modern focus on external behaviour in terms of mental health, that the distinction between surface and depth has been obliterated and that this naturally generates more and more clinical categories: every aspect of the human condition can now become a disorder. Conversely, conformist surface behaviour can hide a serious underlying problem: think for example, the case of Harold Shipman. He murdered more than 250 people, yet worked for years as a respected GP, earning the admiration of the community he served. He was kind, considerate and an excellent listener, yet at the same time, he was carefully killing off many of his patients. When psychiatrists examined him, they could find no clear indication of 'mental illness.' It is the very absurdity of this result that should make us realize that the DSM system of mental health diagnosis is totally off the rails.

The books goes on and on about many things I personally found quite interesting, that to me truly introduced new things into my mind. So much so that I'll have to explore some of the things further as I truly think the author touched upon some things that were truly profound. However, it also had things that didn't resonate with me so for this reason, I recommend it at your own discretion.

It's also a shame that he didn't touch upon what we call the psychopath as a category of its own (as many people would see Shipman as a psychopath for example) as it'll have been interesting to know exactly what goes on in the depths of their being and why for example some commit homicidal acts that brings them to the attention of the law whilst others terrorise society through institutions and function within the law. The whole book is essentially about 'understanding' madness.

luke wilson said:

I'm one of those people that finds it hard to stick with a book until the end, but I did with this one. I'm also one of those that can't break down a book into a blurb. Nonetheless, here is my take.

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Informative. Thanks for sharing.


[quote author=luke wilson]

For example, in general, people who go to therapy may fall into the trap of being told how they should adjust to society, adjust to what is normal, adjust to how they should think etc, but the author challenges the therapist imposing their own conception, their own view on their patient.

The emphasis on social adjustment carries many dangers, as it risks neglecting the unique and idiosyncratic formulae for living that many psychotic subjects have developed. Rather than telling someone how to live, what matters is to find what it is in their own history that has helped them, what points of identification or idealization, what activities or projects: what is there in their delusion, perhaps, or in their family history that is reliable and stable, what 'good objects' are there that could be encouraged and supported? Social adjustment, indeed, can lead to catastrophe if the therapist pushes the subject to engage in some activity or relationship that is socially valorized, yet, because it introduces a symbolic position, has nothing to support it.

Suggesting that someone take a job, or go on a date, for example, may be unproblematic in some cases, but in others may trigger or exacerbate pyschosis. In these instances, the subject is being pushed by the desire of the other - to be a boss for employees, to be a man for a woman - and may not be able to cope with the symbolization that this entails. Likewise, the social imperatives to 'achieve' and to 'act' may lead the therapist to encourage the subject to undertake some activity when in fact it is essential to them that it remain forever unrealized, always situated in the future.

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[/quote]

I think I can see the author's point. The question that comes to mind is if not social adjustment, then what is the goal of therapy in the author's eyes? Is it understanding the condition and accepting it on the patient's side?

[quote author=luke wilson]
It also perception of being able to distinguish between sane & insane people

By the late 1970s, madness had become increasingly equated with its visible symptoms, those that drugs took as their targets.

In his famous study, David Rosenhan arranged for 8 'sane' people - 3 psychologists, a paediatrician, a psychiatrist, a painter, a housewife and psychology professor Rosenhan himself - to seek admission to 12 different American hospitals. None of them had any reported symptoms, yet they were instructed to complain, when seeking admission, of hearing voices that said the words 'Empty', 'Hollow' and 'Thud'. After this, if admitted, they were to simply conduct themselves as usual and report no further occurence of the voices. This all proved even easier than expected. All but one were admitted with the diagnosis, 'schizophrenia', and all of them were discharged with the diagnosis, 'schizophrenia in remission' after stays of between a week and 2 months. They were prescribed nearly 2100 pills, from a wide variety of different drugs. Remarkably staff seemed to have no awareness that these were 'pseudo-patients', but inmates were often suspicious: 'You are not crazy. You are a journalist.' as one patient said.

After reporting these initial findings, Rosenhan then told the staff at an important research and teaching hospital that he would be conducting the experiment again at some point during the next 3 months. Staff were asked to rate admissions according to a scale of probability that they were pseudo patients. 83 patients were deemed pseudo by one or more members of staff, when in fact, Rosenhan in a double bluff, had not dispatched a single one of his recruits to the hospital. Yet, despite this, all these diagnoses had been made. Without wishing to deny the gravity of mental distress, his study had challenged the assumption that the sane and the insane could be distinguished so clearly.

Click to expand...

Beyond the above, it goes deeper into a criticism of the modern focus on external behaviour in terms of mental health, that the distinction between surface and depth has been obliterated and that this naturally generates more and more clinical categories: every aspect of the human condition can now become a disorder. Conversely, conformist surface behaviour can hide a serious underlying problem: think for example, the case of Harold Shipman. He murdered more than 250 people, yet worked for years as a respected GP, earning the admiration of the community he served. He was kind, considerate and an excellent listener, yet at the same time, he was carefully killing off many of his patients. When psychiatrists examined him, they could find no clear indication of 'mental illness.' It is the very absurdity of this result that should make us realize that the DSM system of mental health diagnosis is totally off the rails.
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Interesting study about "false positives". Does the author have a method to improve diagnoses, for weeding out false positives as well as identifying the genuine cases?

I'll answer in more depth later as I'll need to get different excepts from the book.

In terms of the aim of therapy though, we can get an idea from the below

As we have seen, what had interested many of the early psychiatrists was how a psychosis could stabilise or create mechanisms of compensation or equilibrium. The most florid symptoms might fade and activities, projects and lifestyle take their place.

The key to the study of these processes was the individual case: not the grouping of cases together in an experiment, with results taken through mathematical averaging of the participants, but a study of the unique, singular narrative of each individual patient. This might be bad news for those seeking a single procedure to be applied to psychotic subjects, as it presupposes that each case is different, each solution is different, even if concepts and theories can be deduced from the cases in question. As Jacques Hochman observes in his history of psychiatry, the field has moved away from a model of long term attention to the individual case towards programmes of social rehabilitation, based on cognitive theories, which limit their objectives to social capacities. Charities then bear the weight of chronic, often homeless patients.

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Sounds interesting. I have always been interested in mental illness for some reason. Perhaps because it runs in my family. Speaking about the therapy trap it reminds me of what an old girlfriend was told by her therapist which was to watch more television to see what is normal and conform to this. Even back then i was shocked that anyone would say this.

davey72 said:

Sounds interesting. I have always been interested in mental illness for some reason. Perhaps because it runs in my family. Speaking about the therapy trap it reminds me of what an old girlfriend was told by her therapist which was to watch more television to see what is normal and conform to this. Even back then i was shocked that anyone would say this.

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The therapist must have realized that popular fiction is highly influential. S/he might have heard that some people don't 'know' from a young age how families/people usually interact and only find out how to do so after viewing many examples on the screen, or making the mistake of acting with others the way close family members usually act at home. That or the therapist really wants other people to watch what they watch. Either seems possible.

I can see why that would be surprising, undoubtedly! To me it seems like a silly suggestion because people do this all on their own. I look at some family members and a few friends, consider what they've seen, and realize how they have internalized such memes. South Park influenced one, Buffy another, peppy teen dramas another. To get through a conversation I may even 'recall' some character briefly. Personalities (Simon's meaning) are so easily shaped. But if it weren't tv it would be something else (which would probably be healthier than tv!).

But to quote Gabor Mate, "we could all go crazy." The therapy trap seems to be about therapists not realizing this, even though it would seem so basic. I don't expect them to know everything, but to know that much at least.

obyvatel said:

[quote author=luke wilson]

For example, in general, people who go to therapy may fall into the trap of being told how they should adjust to society, adjust to what is normal, adjust to how they should think etc, but the author challenges the therapist imposing their own conception, their own view on their patient.

The emphasis on social adjustment carries many dangers, as it risks neglecting the unique and idiosyncratic formulae for living that many psychotic subjects have developed. Rather than telling someone how to live, what matters is to find what it is in their own history that has helped them, what points of identification or idealization, what activities or projects: what is there in their delusion, perhaps, or in their family history that is reliable and stable, what 'good objects' are there that could be encouraged and supported? Social adjustment, indeed, can lead to catastrophe if the therapist pushes the subject to engage in some activity or relationship that is socially valorized, yet, because it introduces a symbolic position, has nothing to support it.

Suggesting that someone take a job, or go on a date, for example, may be unproblematic in some cases, but in others may trigger or exacerbate pyschosis. In these instances, the subject is being pushed by the desire of the other - to be a boss for employees, to be a man for a woman - and may not be able to cope with the symbolization that this entails. Likewise, the social imperatives to 'achieve' and to 'act' may lead the therapist to encourage the subject to undertake some activity when in fact it is essential to them that it remain forever unrealized, always situated in the future.

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I think I can see the author's point. The question that comes to mind is if not social adjustment, then what is the goal of therapy in the author's eyes? Is it understanding the condition and accepting it on the patient's side?
[/quote]

I think when we look at 'social adjustment', we have to think about what it is. I personally think, it is something 'agreed upon'. It's almost like an average. It is a collective sphere. However, as with everything 'collective', the majority will fit into it but you will always have people, statistically speaking, who do not, cannot.

The author does make a clear distinction, drastic intervention is required if the mad person is a danger to himself or his neighbour. However, for the majority of people, they aren't a danger to anyone, they are only a danger inasmuch as they don't fit into accepted social norms.

Recognizing discreet, everyday madness can teach us about the mechanisms that allow a psychosis to become stable, and these can then inform our work with those whose psychosis has triggered. The therapist should not be hampered here by conventional views as to how a doctor should treat a patient. They must give up any preset view of what 'rehabilitation' or 'reintegration' might mean, and learn instead from the person they are working with. Instead of seeing the psychotic subject, in Alanen's words, 'as a container of abnormal biological mechanisms', an investment in dialogue and a curiosity about the logic of that person's world can open up new therapeutic directions and offer the possibility of change. Therapy can do no more and no less here than help the psychotic subject do what they have been trying to do all their lives: create a safe space in which to live.

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Why social adjustment is not necessarily a true measure of mental health, here is an example

It is interesting to contrast this with another form of stabilization, the adherence to the image of another person. With no ideal to support them, the person just copies someone else. Although this may allow them to get through life, it maintains them in the place of an object rather than a subject, as they are literally dependant on other people.

Helena Deutsch described this type of identification in her studies of 'as-if' characters, who only enter social relations through a kind of external imitation. They glue themselves to someone else's image, carefully using it to organize their behaviour and generally avoiding those situations that would constitute an appeal to the symbolic dimension. They can show friendship, love and sympathy, but there is something wrong, as their expressions of feeling are 'in form only', like 'the performance of a technically trained actor who lacks truth to life'.

There is nothing here to suggest any disorder, Deutsch comments. Behaviour is not unusual, intellectual abilities are unimpaired, emotional expressions are well ordered and appropriate. But something does not quite ring true. Those who become close to the as-if characters will invariably end up asking, 'what is wrong?' precisely because everything seems so right. Kurt Eissler pointed out that since as-if characters rely on imitative techniques, their span of adjustment might be much broader than that of their counterparts, who will shy away from certain activities, tasks or roles in accordance with their unconscious preferences. Since the as-if person's preferences are located strictly at surface level, they may do what the surface expects of them, thus fitting in well with society and attracting little attention.

Where some as-if subjects can function well in a wide range of situations, others prefer a narrow environment, made up of simple, monotonous situations that brook little challenge. They can have plenty of friends, yet somehow authentic proximity is never possible. There is a strange absence of passion, as if life is simply some sort of procedure that must be run through, even if this means smiling, laughing and crying at the appropriate moments. Speech will likewise display a shallow quality, as if they are not really involved in what they are saying. As-if identifications provide a kind of borrowed strength, and often allow the person to excel in the work or social environment. Their fragility lies in the fact that if the person who is being copied moves away or distances himself, the removal of this key reference point may leave the person with no armature.

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Below is an example of when the removal of this point of reference triggered the psychosis on a young man

In another case, a young man had finished his first written assignment at university and was on the point of knocking on the tutor's door to discuss his work when he froze, invaded by what he called 'an indescribable feeling' of anxiety. He was found by college staff some time later, sitting next to the door talking to himself, yet with no recollection later on what he could have been saying. His subsequent hospitalization was not pleasant, and he complained of insensitive treatment by nurses and doctors and a heavy load of medications that left him overweight, slow and ill smelling.

When I met him many years later, he was still medicated, yet living at home with his parents, not able to do very much, but increasingly interested in the psychology books that his sister would supply him with. Growing up, no one had noticed the slightest anomaly or any sign sign of troubles to come. He had done well at school, mixed with other children and then got into university. So what was it that had allowed him to function so smoothly until that afternoon? As he described his childhood and teens, so banal and uneventful, it became clear that what had sustained him was a continuing set of identifications with his peers. He had just done what they did, fixing usually on one or two classmates and copying their clothes, their mannerisms, their approach to work, and adopting their aspirations.

This mimicry had allowed him to keep up his studies, to go on a handful of dates, and to play sports at school with none of the turbulence one might have expected at these significant moments of 'being a man'. He was just a boy - and then a teenager - like any other, and it was through this process of imaginary reflections that he was able to navigate the dangerous moments of transition that punctuate the lives of young people. In his holidays, when the other boys would be less available, he would imagine what they were doing and try to do the same.

This series of images supported him, until the moment when the encounter with the tutor confronted him with a third term. With no resources to respond, the psychosis triggered. He must have already been made more fragile by the move away from home and school to university, where he knew no one and had no immediate identificatory supports.

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Below is an example of how some found a space to live with their madness

She shows how Joyce suffered from imposed speech, with little barrier against the intrusive dimension of words. He would repeat conversations between his father and uncle without knowing what the words meant, and in 1931 he would hear his father's voice after the latter's death. His 'epiphanies' also revolve around fragments of speech, as if extracts from conversations he heard had an enigmatic quality that he had to write down. Rather than fleeing this dimension of language, however, Joyce's strategy was to accentuate it: he made himself a receiver of all the speech he could hear around him, writing not in isolation but often in the kitchen surrounded by women chattering. He opened himself up to the intrusion of speech, creating his books from what would impose itself on him.

Although these works gave him a name, as Lacan pointed out, they perhaps had another function. Joyce famously remarked that his books would keep his students busy for a few hundred years. We could see this as a form of promotion of his name, Joyce the writer, but also it surely allowed inflection of the addressee function that we have discussed. Rather than being targeted by speech himself, he could relay this, through his work, to the community of readers who would study him. In a sense, he had passed on the enigma to them, yet not on its original form. He had performed a work not just on language but on the addressee function within it.

If a work like 'Finnegans Wake' can baffle and fascinate readers, so we often find that schizophrenic creations of language produce a similar effect. The effort here is to build a metalanguage, a language within a language, which may take the form of a language about another language. There is powerful logic in such projects, since if what the person suffers from is the omnipresence of language, its intrusive, unmediated presence, what better strategy than to build a defence from the very material that is attacking them. At times, such inventions change the world, as we see with computer languages and other mathematical and formal systems, as well as with certain inventions in the field of literature and poetry.

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Obyvatel, regarding the question of identifying with accuracy 'false positives', the author doesn't give a formulae. If he does, I didn't see it.

Thanks for those new excerpts, Luke. Imitation of other people as a coping mechanism for latent psychosis is more common than generally suspected imo. I have had interactions with people of this type. It is very difficult to tell them apart through study of behavior, as the author says. When they have a spectacular fall from normalcy, people are left wondering how could this be and look for reasons in the wrong places. While there could be many possible triggers for the downward spiral , the basic difference in the underlying psychological substratum could be the main reason. It is like a house built on shaky foundations. Taller the building, more chances that a tremor in the ground or a strong wind would bring it crashing down.

Like the author seems to suggest, if such a person is known for what he/she is from an early stage, then there is a possibility of arranging things in their lives such that they can live without descending down into depths. However, even if parents or other caregivers suspect a difference, they tend to normalize and hope for the best going forward. Unfortunately, the person concerned suffers the most from such normalization when things come crashing down in later life along with those who happen to be in a position to care for them. Which brings me to the next part

[quote author=luke wilson]
I think when we look at 'social adjustment', we have to think about what it is. I personally think, it is something 'agreed upon'. It's almost like an average. It is a collective sphere. However, as with everything 'collective', the majority will fit into it but you will always have people, statistically speaking, who do not, cannot.

The author does make a clear distinction, drastic intervention is required if the mad person is a danger to himself or his neighbour. However, for the majority of people, they aren't a danger to anyone, they are only a danger inasmuch as they don't fit into accepted social norms.
[/quote]

Practically, what happens in later life when the latent psychosis strikes is that the person is usually brought in for therapy by people around him/her. They can become incapable of caring for themselves and thus dependent on those around them. The author's example of a young man living with his parents is one such case. Given the nuclear nature of today's societies and associated stresses to make ends meet, if the aged parents or siblings or spouse or relatives are not be able to provide long term care, such people often end up as revolving door patients in psychiatric hospitals and eventually end up in the streets or have worse fates. They may not be suicidal or violent - but they are unable to cope with the stress of living that modern society demands.

Few people entering psychiatric facilities after a few rounds have visitors who agree to really care for them. They are often left alone. Given this situation, often overworked and understaffed medical professionals at psychiatric wards look at re-establishing a degree of social adjustment not for safety reasons alone but for reintegrating the person back into society so that they can survive if not thrive. While it does not solve the problem at its root, this is often the best that these people can do given the situation and resources at their disposal. At least this is what I have observed in my brush with psychiatric facilities as a visitor.

Obyvatel said:

Practically, what happens in later life when the latent psychosis strikes is that the person is usually brought in for therapy by people around him/her. They can become incapable of caring for themselves and thus dependent on those around them. The author's example of a young man living with his parents is one such case. Given the nuclear nature of today's societies and associated stresses to make ends meet, if the aged parents or siblings or spouse or relatives are not be able to provide long term care, such people often end up as revolving door patients in psychiatric hospitals and eventually end up in the streets or have worse fates. They may not be suicidal or violent - but they are unable to cope with the stress of living that modern society demands.

Few people entering psychiatric facilities after a few rounds have visitors who agree to really care for them. They are often left alone. Given this situation, often overworked and understaffed medical professionals at psychiatric wards look at re-establishing a degree of social adjustment not for safety reasons alone but for reintegrating the person back into society so that they can survive if not thrive. While it does not solve the problem at its root, this is often the best that these people can do given the situation and resources at their disposal. At least this is what I have observed in my brush with psychiatric facilities as a visitor.

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You make a really good point! What the author talks as the correct procedure going forward is in fact quite time consuming and resource consuming... the individualised care for each individual. Society, on a practical level, isn't built to take care of people as individuals (at least for the majority) but is divided along the basis of putting people into groups and thus dealing with them, in whatever way, in the grouping they belong to.

Changing directions, when the author talked about the triggers of latent, almost dormant psychosis, it dawned on me, that, there might be a lot of people who won't do to well, for example, when those points of references they use as a guide disappear... With what the Cs have said about the disruptions coming up ahead, I'm picturing a whole bunch of people being put into situations where basically, as you put it, they come 'crashing down'.

On a personal level, I think (and I could be wrong), certain situations for me, in how I am, which might be seen from an external pov as somewhat defective (i.e. not in-keeping with desired social norms) might be there as a sort of make-shift structure to underlying shortcomings in my mental/psychical sphere. The part of the book I didn't really understand, which I wish I could, is what a healthy foundation is. The thing is, most of the stuff he talks about that makes a healthy person, it's things that you really don't have control over, the foundations are mostly set in periods of your life when you have no idea what is happening or how they are forming. It's almost a game of russian roulette if you'll end up ok or not ok (with triggered/untriggered madness).

I'll name some things in my make-up that I think play into the above

- I find my communication style to really not be in-keeping with what is normal. I take way to many liberties in how I express myself and break a lot of rules in the process. Yet somehow, I persist.

- I dislike confrontations but it is inevitable when you let things build up to a particular threshold i.e. the dislike of it on one level is manifesting as an attraction of it on another and since both seem to work in tandem/together, it means the whole dance is part of my equilibrium.

- I like coming in on the side of the underdog even though it might lead you straight into a confrontational situation (something that as stated above, I wish to avoid).

etc etc

In fact thinking about it, most of my Being is based around a structure of revelling in conflict situations. Not even revelling in it, there is a sort of thriving in it that I think is going on. But the funny thing is, by outward appearance, I am quite meek and someone who is well and truly averse to disharmony/conflict. It's all quite confusing really! It's almost like all this is some sort of attempt at some form of restitution.

You realize how much those structures mean to the equilibrium of your mind when you try and change it - even one thing... all of a sudden shock waves occur and you realise their is a big gap somewhere with nothing to support the now soon to come crashing down building. Unless you build a supporting mechanism for the thing you are taking off, it's "timbeeeeeeeers"... It's like the author says, the manifestations of psychosis in many cases are attempts at a cure (self-cure) and going after the symptoms alone, the surface appearance without knowing what lies underneath can be bad news!

I was reading this book and all I could think off is, "Damn! I'm in trouble!!!" Changing how you've come to be fundamentally might not be quite an easy thing to do when you are dealing with things in realms which are well, not only real, but symbolic and imaginary. The author uses those terms in tandem a lot, the real, symbolic and Imaginary.

[quote author=luke wilson]
In fact thinking about it, most of my Being is based around a structure of revelling in conflict situations. Not even revelling in it, there is a sort of thriving in it that I think is going on. But the funny thing is, by outward appearance, I am quite meek and someone who is well and truly averse to disharmony/conflict. It's all quite confusing really! It's almost like all this is some sort of attempt at some form of restitution.
[/quote]

In Carl Jung's model of the mind, the right (as in beneficial) function of the unconscious is to balance the one-sided attitude of the conscious mind. So if the conscious mind adopts a strategy to cope with reality which is somewhat one-sided, the unconscious compensates by taking the opposite attitude.

In your case, meekness and conflict avoidance may be coping mechanisms of the conscious mind to stay out of trouble. If this is a sort of default mode for you - then it is most likely not always adaptive or commensurate with the real situation you are facing. Then the unconscious will make you act in ways which will bring you into conflict in certain situations. In your case, it has happened in the context of this forum, which is a safe environment.

If you shun attention and tend to stay away from the limelight in real life, then your virtual persona driven by the unconscious mind can be more of an attention-seeking trouble-maker :)

If you are able to observe and be aware of these tendencies, you are doing a good job for your psychological health. As you have observed, trying to change things hastily can result in problems. That is why in 4th Way self-observation, the advice given is to just observe without changing or judging.

While the following is not strictly on topic, I wanted to take this opportunity to bring this to your attention in case you feel interested to follow up in the future. Gurdjieff said that the unconscious is the seat of the real consciousness in man. Jung said its usual role is to act as a regulator of psychological equilibrium. Its working is not always understandable from the usual narrow focus of the conscious mind. Yet, if we are willing to pay attention to its signs and "unusual" modes of communication, it can be our best friend and guide on our life's journey. It usually shows itself in our interactions with others, where others see things in ourselves that we usually do not. So networking and getting feedback from others is an easy and effective way of learning about the unconscious.