Psychosis and the Limits of Psychoanalysis
Tonight, we will watch and listen to what I hope you will find to be a fascinating discussion between two psychoanalysts about the meaning of psychosis—and the possibilities of treatment.
The conversation is divided into three parts. The first links the phenomenon of psychosis to the nature of human freedom. It is both the limit of that freedom, in the sense of the psyche’s power to break free of the limits of ordinary logic—the conventional logic that governs the neurotic mind—and yet that paradoxically creates a state in which all freedom has been lost. The delusions take over.
What the psychoanalytic paradigm does not consider—because of its own lack of freedom (being governed by the same neurotic logic of the social order)—the higher pole of freedom, in which the consciousness can break free of neurotic frames of reference into the infinite intelligence and joyous liberation of God-Realization. This is why there is a need for Atmanology as a therapeutic corrective to the dead end of psychoanalysis.
These two analysts are thinking from a Lacanian paradigm, which also lacks a connection with the imaginal realm of the archetypal level of consciousness, which the Jungians have made their locus of understanding. But neither of the two approaches consider the option of transcending signifiers and symbols entirely to discover the potency of Transcendent Presence.
Nonetheless, because of the tenacity of the postmodern ego, and its materialist, cynical indoctrination and traumatization by a world of deceptive and inauthentic discourse and abusive behavior, the fate of the ego today is to gradually—or rapidly, depending on the internal level of structural incoherence—come apart in anxious overwhelm, leading to malignant depersonalization and psychotic breakdown. The psychotic core of every ego is now threatening to erupt. And that core is a mass of mindless fury, murderous rage, and suicidal desperation.
The only possibility of holding off such a fate is to take the upper death drive and voluntarily incinerate the ego while there is still a margin of free will to do so. But very few will heed such a warning. Those who are yogis in name only should take this very seriously. There is such an exponentially increasing amount of psychotic energy in the morphogenic field that any ego will be subject to psychic contagion, which can trigger a personal meltdown.
May we all choose the option of divine madness, and create a contagious field of nondual perception, divine love, ecstatic delight, and profound wisdom that transcends time and space. Let the perfect beauty of the Great Mandala—which is also the ultimate masterwork of Theodrama—become the fully present to the eternal consciousness of the Absolute Self. And know that You are That!
Om Shanti
Shunyamurti
Youtube Description:
Early on in Stijn’s book he says: “Lacan regarded madness as a limit-experience of human freedom, meaning an experience in which our capacity for astonishment, creative invention, and non-conformist actions is expressed to the fullest” (p. 20). He directly cites Lacan: “Not only can man’s being not be understood without madness, but it would be man’s being if it did not bear madness within itself as the limit of this freedom” [Presentation of Psychical Causality, 1950]. Here, Stijn responds to exactly why he found this quote so inspiring. He also goes on to explain how psychosis can be thought of as allusive, as form of communication.
