Neurosis
Neuroses, like all illnesses, are symptoms of maladjustment.
Because of some obstacle – a constitutional weakness or defect, wrong
education, bad experiences, an unsuitable attitude, etc. – one shrinks from the
difficulties which life brings and thus finds oneself back in the world of the
infant. The
unconscious compensates
this regression by producing symbols which, when understood objectively, that
is, by means of comparative research, reactivate general ideas that underlie all
such natural systems of thought. In
this way a change of attitude is brought about which bridges the dissociation
between man as he is and man as he ought to be.[1]
Neurosis' occur when unconscious contents are so powerfully charged that they break past the threshold of consciousness and take control of the psyche.
The
conscious,
unable
to understand the symbolism and source of
the
neurosis’ voice,
needs to ‘listen and
observe’ in order to understand the causality of the
neurosis in order to ‘cure
(dissolve)
it’.
Neuroses are generally seen as the
negative resultant circumstances of psychological problems, but in actuality
they are also opportunities to be positively viewed since they are just as
purposive as the
complexes.
"Neuroses are psychological crises
due to a state of disunity with oneself, or more formally, a mild dissociation
of the personality due to the activation of
complexes."[2]
Like the immune system going into ‘fever mode’, it is the unconscious taking charge to purge a source of “dis-ease”[3]. It forcefully shakes us out of our apathy and forces us to deal with festering situations that we would otherwise not deal with due to laziness and our natural tendency to resist acknowledging that which we don’t like. A neurosis serves as a warning that our personality requires an increase in focal consciousness.
To ‘cure’ a neurosis, the unconscious area (of thought) must be illuminated by consciousness and brought into the conscious field. The longer the repression stays within the field of unconsciousness the more psychically virulent it becomes and the harder it is to deal with as one grows old.
The
neurotic has the soul of a child who bears ill with arbitrary restrictions whose
meaning he does not see; he tries to make this morality his own, but falls into
disunity with himself: one side of him wants to suppress, the other longs to be
free – and this struggle goes by the name of neurosis. 2EoAP
25
…
This is where those perilous aberrations begin, the first of which is the
attempt to dominate everything by the intellect.
In a healthy psyche thinking is in harmony with feeling so that logic and reason can work together in a constructive way with the emotional side of an individual. By overly encapsulating one’s self with one function we severely limit our potential. Einstein (INTP) was an example of this. His mind was one-sidedly thinking oriented and most likely this imbalance can explain why he sabotaged many of his familial relationships (i.e. because of his inabilities in dealing with his feelings).
The more the critical reason dominates, the more impoverished life becomes; but the more of the unconscious, and the more of myth we are capable of making conscious, the more of life we integrate. Overvalued reason has this in common with political absolutism: under its dominion the individual is pauperized. MDR 302
“For
what should it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own
soul?”
Matt
What neurotics are
ignorant of is,
There is something preventing them from
knowing what is causing their misery”
Intro to Freud - pg 95
“... we
have been taught by all too many mistakes that organic medicine fails completely
in the treatment of neuroses, while psychic methods cure them”.[6]
… As for a totally rational approach to life, that is, as
experience shows, impossible, especially when a person is by nature as
unreasonable as a neurotic. MDR 166
They keep him on the run with restlessness, vague apprehensions, psychological complications, an insatiable need for pills, alcohol, tobacco, food, and above all, a large array of Neurosis. (JUNG 1964:82)
RE REPRESSION - “Repression is not only a factor in the etiology of many neuroses, it also determines contents of the personal shadow, since the ego generally represses material that would disturb peace of mind” (Jung Lexicon Repression – page 118)
“In every primitive tribe, “ writes Dr. Geza Roheim, “we find the medicine man in the centre of society and it is easy to show that the medicine man is either a neurotic or a psychotic or at least that his art is based on the same mechanisms as a neurosis or a psychosis.” 1000 faces, page 84
When a neurosis breaks out in an adult, the fantasy world of childhood reappears … THE UNDISCOVERED SELF – PG.
… If they are enabled to develop into more spacious personalities, the neurosis generally disappears.
… For that reason the idea of development was always of the highest importance to me. MDR 140
These victims of the psychic dichotomy of our time are merely optional neurotics; their apparent morbidity drops away the moment the gulf between the ego and the unconscious is closed. MDR 144
People who know nothing about nature are of course neurotic, for they are not adapted to reality.
… They are too naïve, like children, and it is necessary to tell them the facts of life, so to speak – to make it plain to them that they are human beings like all others. Not that such enlightenment will cure neurotics; they can only regain their health when they climb up out of the mud of the commonplace. But they are only too fond of lingering in what they have earlier repressed. MDR 166
… neurosis… When an individual is full of anxieties and fears in a situation that is not fearful, these are not real anxieties. They are imagined punishments from invisible parental disciplinarians for prohibited desires that the individual has secretly enjoyed. P2B 50
Now, when there have been an excessive number of frustrations, of prohibited desires, there is an irresistible down-pull in the psyche; that is to say, there is too much going on down below, and the individual may become incapable of action up in the conscious world. If the unconscious content piles up tremendously, you can have what is called a psychosis: the individual loses contact with the outside world altogether. P2B 50
A psychology of consciousness can, to be sure, content itself with material drawn from personal life, but as soon as we wish to explain a neurosis we require an anamnesis which reaches deeper than the knowledge of consciousness. MDR 206
When in treating a case of neurosis, we try to supplement the inadequate attitude (or adaptedness) of the conscious mind by adding to it contents of the unconscious, our aim is to create a wider personality whose centre of gravity does not necessarily coincide with the ego, but which, on the contrary, as the patient’s insights increase, may even thwart his ego-tendencies. Like a magnet, the new centre attracts to itself that which is proper to it, the “signs of the Father,” i.e., everything that pertains to the original and unalterable character of the individual ground-plan. Aion 190
Neurosis is intimately bound up with the problem of our time and really represents an unsuccessful attempt on the part of the individual to solve the general problem of his own person.
Neurosis is self-division. In most people the cause of the division is that the conscious mind wants to hang on to its moral ideal, while the unconscious strives after its – in the contemporary sense – unmoral ideal which the conscious mind tried to deny. 2EoAP 20
I myself have long discarded any uniform theory of neurosis, except for a
few quite general points like dissociation, conflict, complex, regression,
abaissement du niveau mental, which belong as it were to the stock-in-trade
of neurosis. In other words, every neurosis is characterized
by dissociation and conflict, contains complexes, and shows traces of regression
and abaissement. These principles are not, in my
experience, reversible. But even in the very common
phenomenon of repression the antinomial principle is already at work, since the
principle “The chief mechanism of neurosis lies in repression” must be reversed
because instead of repression we often find its exact opposite, the drawing
away of a content, its subtraction or abduction, which corresponds to the
“loss of soul” so frequently observed among primitives. “Loss
of soul” is not due to repression but is clearly a species of seizure, and is
therefore explained as sorcery. These pheneomena, originally
belonging to the realm of magic, hae not by any means died out in so-called
civilized people. TDoP 114
People
should know that not only the neurotic, but everybody, naturally prefers (so
long as he lacks insight) never to seek the causes of any inconvenience in
himself, but to push them as far away from himself as possible in space and
time. Otherwise he would run the risk of having to make a
change for the better. Compared with this odious risk
it seems infinitely more advantageous either to put the blame on to somebody
else, or, if the fault lies undeniably with oneself, at least to assume that it
somehow arose of its own accord in early infancy. One cannot
of course quite remember how, but if one could remember, then the entire
neurosis would vanish on the spot. The efforts to remember
give the appearance of strenuous activity, and furthermore have the advantage of
being a beautiful red herring. TDoP 111
Neuroses
are still – very unjustly – counted as mild illnesses, mainly because their
nature is not tangible and of the bod. People do not “die” of
a neurosis – as if every bodily illness had a fatal outcome!
But it is entirely forgotten that, unlike bodily illnesses, neuroses may be
extremely deleterious in their psychic and social consequences, often worse than
psychoses, which generally lead to the social isolation of the sufferer and thus
render him innocuous. An anchylosed knee, an amputated foot,
a long-drawn-out phthisis, are in every respect preferable to a severe neurosis.
It forces us to extend the term “illness” beyond the idea of an individual body whose functions are disturbed, and to look upon the neurotic persona as a sick system of social relationships. TPOP 24
In all clear cases of neurosis a certain re-education and regeneration of
personality are essential, for we are dealing with a misdevelopment that
generally goes far back into the individual’s childhood.
TPoP 27
[1]
`The Philosophical Tree` CW 13,
par. 473 (Jung Lexicon – page 89 – Neurosis)
[2]
Don’t’ know what to write for
this one???
[3]
See Dis-ease, page 170?
[4] (that he wished not to identify himself with and will thus suppress the opposing thought {if it was not illuminated and disempowered by the conscious})
[5] A neurosis can be defined as a mild disorder or anxiety. Psychosis is a complete disorder or anxiety
[6] MODERN
[7]
The Nature of Things (with David
Suzuki). Jim Van Os – Dutch
researcher University of
Maastricht
[8]
BW – On the Phychogenesis of
Schizophrenia – page 397 – par. 506-7