WHY WE SUFFER

Unmasking Fear Itself

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Writing is an art, and I do occasionally like to play around with its styles, forms, devices, and different genres. My intention is to communicate serious matters in a playful, effective manner. Here, with some risk of pedantic overstepping, I lump together fiction, satire, and magic realism. Feel free to laugh at the result.

On an exciting journey into my psyche I discover Fear Itself.

I awaken one winter morning from a nightmare feeling groggy yet strangely feisty. A masked maniac wielding a sharp pencil had been chasing me down the street. What the heck was I afraid of? I was holding a bigger pencil in my hand, a yellow Dixon 2HB. I could have turned on my pursuer and written him off as an illusion.

Tottering to the bathroom, I decide to look deeper into my apparent cowardice. I resolve to journey into my psyche to visit an old archetype, Fear Itself, that mysterious hobgoblin of my psyche, for a face-to-face showdown. I had to act fast, though, before fear squelched the whole idea.

Downstairs, gulping a second cup of coffee to fuel lift-off, I plop myself in front of my computer, enter a classified code, and zoom off into inner space in my pixelated spaceship. Off I go, dodging black holes of idle speculation, comet storms of negativity, and warning signs about crashing into emptiness. Soon my GPS locates Fear Itself, holed up in a run-down estate perched on a bluff in the badlands of my psyche.

My laptop in hand, I strut right into its parlor. In shifting shadows, this masked fiend, Fear Itself, slithers to the back of the room, then suddenly arises full height in a menacing warrior pose. Sure enough, the creature, shimmering amorphously, resembles the creep who chased me in my nightmare. Its mask smirks contemptuously at me, yet I see no sign of life behind its eye holes. Tufts of red hair flare up frightfully from the creature’s temples, though its baggy cargo shorts lessen the overall menacing effect. [Read more…]

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Fundamentalism and the Psyche

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Religion and psychoanalysis make a volatile mix. Like bleach and ammonia, the combination can leave people gasping in irritation. I’m not interested in activating a burning sensation. I only want to apply some salve to blistering boils of unreason.

Splitting is a psychological term that describes one aspect of fundamentalism.

Are we strong enough emotionally to consider the application of some rationality, or have we become hopelessly defensive and hypersensitive?

As a psychotherapist, I’m here as a healer, not a critic. I see that fundamentalists of different religions are influenced by unconscious psychological characteristics that impede their objectivity. Psychology believes that our awareness, intelligence, and wisdom can all be enhanced through self-knowledge. This post explores some of that knowledge for the purpose of helping us all, not just fundamentalists, move toward the light.

Fundamentalists of different religions also have a big impact as voting blocs in democratic elections, so an exploration of the underlying issues that frame their political outlook is fair game for civil, intelligent discussion. In this post, I mostly narrow my discussion to Christian fundamentalists. (Of course, fundamentalism isn’t restricted solely to religious beliefs. Secularists, too, can be dogmatic, and they sometimes react with anger or malice when their pet theories or cherished beliefs are challenged.)

Writers and thinkers have identified four basic aspects of Christian fundamentalism. These big words—literalism, conversion, evangelism, and apocalypticism—will be whittled down to size. While reading about them, watch for evidence of inner fear and passivity lurking in the background. To begin: [Read more…]

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Ascending to Joy

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Joy is the Mount Everest of human emotions. Can depth psychology, knowing well the slopes and faults and ridges of our psyche, lead us like a powerful Sherpa guide to the heights of such euphoria?

Ascending to the heights of joy.

As if in awe of joy, psychology doesn’t dare say a lot about it. The sublime emotion has spiritual and religious connotations, so it’s a touchy subject for psychology. Mental-health experts can dispense valuable knowledge but we wouldn’t dare take credit for instilling joy. We bow before its mystery and sacredness.

We’re thrilled just to help our clients escape from suffering. We rightfully consider that our intervention has been successful when a client breaks free from emotional pain to find a quiet inner space—a neutral corner of the psyche—from where he or she can begin to flourish.

The best psychology can help people get to the last base camp on the ascent to joy. From there, climbers must proceed by means of their instincts, character, intuition, integrity, courage, willingness to endure hardship, and sense of destiny.

Joy is happiness and meaningfulness and connection and generosity and compassion all rolled into one grand moment. It’s most likely felt when all that is right and good and true about ourselves, and beautiful about life, come gusting into our consciousness. Atop the summit where our colors are unfurled, joy is registered in gratitude and wonder. [Read more…]

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Now’s the Time for Heroes

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Now is the time for each of us to find purpose and direction. The world is convulsing in agony and terror, and every one of us is needed to contribute some heroism to the drama of aspiring humanity.

Are you looking for a hero’s role in the drama of aspiring humanity?

Are you looking for your part, your role, in this great drama? Can you do more to help yourself and all of us? The discovery of our true nature is our evolutionary path and collective destiny. You can become a hero in the drama of your life by uncovering your true nature and by helping others to discover theirs.

According to the classic definition, heroes are people who strive by way of an “inner journey” to overcome their pain, suffering, and weaknesses. In psychological terms, heroes venture into their psyche to confront both the chaos and the wonder of this inner landscape. They come back from their inner adventure with a wise and gentle humility—but also with the Golden Fleece of their true nature, which bestows upon them the power and the willingness to serve the common good.

Our world desperately needs strong, wise people. The mental health of populations appears to be receding. An article in the current issue of Scientific American Mind reports that mental health in the United States appears to have declined in the past 20 years, even though more people are now getting treatment and taking medications. The best psychiatrists are standing by helplessly. “Finding novel treatments for mental illness has become so discouraging, the article says, “that several pharmaceutical companies have shut down or reduced neuroscience research.”

Declining mental health is regressive, and it leads us into greater chaos and self-damage. As goes our mental health, so goes democracy. [Read more…]

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Feeling Like a Fraud or an Imposter?

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The imposter syndrome is based on an unconscious disconnect from self.

The imposter syndrome is based on an unconscious disconnect from self.

As a young actor in the 1960s, Michael Caine was sitting across from Frank Sinatra in a private plane on a flight to Las Vegas when, overwhelmed by the moment, he suddenly became tongue-tied and speechless.

Sinatra said, “Mikey, what’s up? You scared of flying?”

Caine, who was dating Sinatra’s daughter, admitted he was feeling overwhelmed by the conviction that he didn’t belong in the famous singer’s presence. Sinatra told him he knew the feeling and had experienced it himself many years earlier in the company of the Academy-Award winning actor Ronald Colman.

“You see, that’s how it is,” Caine remarked decades later in a documentary about his life, “we all come from nothing and nobody.”

The young Caine was experiencing a feeling called imposter syndrome (also referred to as imposter phenomenon or fraud syndrome). It describes the experience of high-achieving individuals who find it difficult to internalize their accomplishments and connect with their worthiness. Studies have found, as well, that 70 percent of all people, not just high-achievers, feel like imposters at one time or another. [Read more…]

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The Invisible Wall of Psychological Resistance

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Resistance is no longer invisible once we start to see it operating in our psyche.

Resistance becomes visible once we start to see it operating in our psyche.

As the client of a depth psychologist back in the mid-1980’s, I acquired a copy of The Basic Neurosis by Edmund Bergler. My therapist told me the book was important, and I was determined to read it. I did so for five or six pages and then, inexplicably, put it aside.

Over the following weeks, I occasionally remembered the book and my intention to read it. But by then I couldn’t recall where I’d put it. I finally came across it six months later, tucked into an excellent hiding place, out of sight in a back shelf in my office.

In a classic case of psychological resistance, I had hidden the book from myself! I had not wanted to learn what it insisted was true, that unconsciously we’re ready and willing to participate in our own misery.

Psychological resistance is like an invisible wall that stands between aspiring individuals and the actualized self they desperately want to become. Bringing this resistance into view is vitally important to our personal development.

People continually bump up against this wall, get knocked back on their duff, get back up, and incomprehensibly repeat the procedure ad infinitum. We don’t even know we’re bumping into a wall. We’re just left feeling confused, dazed, and disoriented, unable to make any sense of recurring self-defeat or self-sabotage. [Read more…]

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Cognitive Therapy’s Flawed Premise

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Psychology needs to shine light on the source of distress and dysfunction.

Psychology needs to shine light on the source of distress and dysfunction.

People struggling to realize their potential or find inner peace often turn to psychotherapy. Yet they find themselves wandering without much guidance through a marketplace of mental-health offerings and claims, lacking the knowledge to distinguish good therapy from bad. More than 150 different psychotherapies are offered in the United States.

In this post, I present some insights concerning cognitive behavioral psychotherapy (CBT), which has become one of the most available forms of treatment. My intention here, as well, is to show important distinctions between CBT and the depth psychology that I practice, particularly as these distinctions apply to clinical depression. This post is twice the length I usually write, and it gets a bit “technical,” so be prepared for some heavy-lifting.

Cognitive therapy, which attempts to address “distorted thinking” by replacing it with rational thinking, originated more than 50 years ago. By the 1980’s, it was merged with the techniques of behavioral therapy to become CBT. This therapy now is widely offered, perhaps in part because it’s a simple, straightforward method for psychotherapists to learn and practice. It offers, as well, a limited, controlled expenditure for insurance companies. I look upon it as the fast food of mental health.

Cognitive therapy originated out of the work of Dr. Aaron Beck, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who became convinced in the late 1950’s that depression was not being effectively treated by psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysts believed that depression was caused by anger or hostility toward the self (self-aggression). Unfortunately, these practitioners were insufficiently effective in their treatment of depression because they were addressing only the aggressive side, not the passive side, of the primary inner conflict that produces the malady. [Read more…]

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Dealing with Election Aftershock

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Don't grieve the election outcome. Sublimate your energy instead.

Don’t grieve the election outcome. Sublimate your energy instead.

This post is written especially for people who, having voted for Hillary Clinton in the U.S. elections this past week, are still feeling miserable. For those of you who voted for Donald Trump, congratulations! I hope he does a great job.

Seeing how I am about to address liberals sympathetically, let me first reassure conservatives that my political bias doesn’t interfere with the professional integrity of my services. It greatly helps us all to feel united when we understand that the conflicted psyche, when dishing out emotional pain, doesn’t care whether we’re conservatives, liberals, or independents. Nor does your psyche care who your psychotherapist votes for.

I am pretty liberal, for sure, and so I wasn’t immune to the surprise outcome of the election. After watching the returns on Tuesday night, I went to bed with unease and deep concern.

Since then, however, I have been doing some of my best sessions and best writing. This content will be published here in coming weeks. I have simply refused to worry or to suffer over the fact that Mr. Trump will be the new president and that Congress remains in Republican hands. I feel strong and self-assured. [Read more…]

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After the Election: Healing the Divide

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We have to become smarter about our personal psychology.

We have to become smarter about our personal psychology.

Whoever is elected president on Nov. 8 has to deal with an acrimonious divide at the heart of the American union. To heal this breach, we have to become smarter about our personal psychology.

Everyone’s at least a little quirky and irrational. We often accept and like each other for the ways we’re different, peculiar, eccentric, and even weak. Americans are remarkable for generosity, honestly, and kind spirit. The country’s vitality is enriched by flamboyant, loveable characters. But the character of so many millions of citizens has darkened and blackened in the past few decades, to the point that the nation is drifting into self-defeat.

While dysfunctional people can often appear normal on the surface, they harbor deep grievances. They’re closing in on themselves, feeling bitter, mean, cynical, suspicious, and uncivil. Their thin-skinned psyche cracks open at the tiniest real or imagined offense to suck in the impression of being criticized, disrespected, refused, oppressed, or controlled. Enough Americans are doing this to constitute an epidemic of neurosis.

Being dysfunctional or neurotic has nothing to do with whether a person is liberal or conservative, rich or poor, black or white. All these groups are riddled with neurotics, who are everyday people in emotional pain due to unresolved inner conflict. The more intense their inner conflict, the more neurotic they are, and the more they are thereby likely to betray their own and the nation’s ideals. [Read more…]

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Collapsing into Helplessness

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A sense of helplessness. when emotionally embellished, makes things more difficult for us.

A sense of helplessness, when emotionally embellished, makes things a lot more difficult for us.

James E. Holmes’s spiral notebook helps us understand his descent into madness. Holmes, a neuroscience graduate student who killed 12 people in a 2012 mass murder spree in a Colorado movie theater, had covered page after page of his notebook with the single handwritten word Why?

In repeatedly writing Why? in his notebook (illustrated here), Holmes was desperately asking a question he couldn’t answer. Evidence suggests he was asking imponderable questions such as why do we exist, why does life exist, why should we matter in the great scheme of things. (His notebook brimmed with what his defense lawyers called “a whole lot of crazy”—delusions about death, human worth, and “negative infinity.”) Anyone who struggles relentlessly to come up with definitive answers to such questions faces the prospect of feeling painfully, profoundly helpless. (That’s why religions encourage people to deal with such questions on the basis of faith.)

Psychologically, we can make sense of what happened to Holmes. We can see clearly what he was doing to himself in the lead-up to his shooting spree. In a process of mental and emotional breakdown, he was falling into the passive side of his psyche and spiraling into a painful sense of utter helplessness. In doing so, the danger existed that he would flip to the other side and become manically aggressive.

This existence of inner passivity is not peculiar just to people with mental illness. We all have a passive side of our psyche, and it can lead us into emotional weakness and self-doubt, thereby creating serious behavioral difficulties. We benefit greatly by seeing and understanding this part of us. In the case of Holmes, meanwhile, we are able to study the role that this passivity plays in the development of mental illness. [Read more…]

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