The Mentally ill - an image of God.

[BarbaraTherese]

Quoting Alan…

Of course, I have this problems that I consider everybody a prophet – or at least a “potential prophet” from which I am to learn something. That doesn’t mean I’ll like what they say or even agree with it, but it means to me that they have a bit of Truth hiding somewhere in their minds or hearts that I don’t have, and if I show them love and try to listen to them, they just might reveal that part of the Truth the Holy Spirit finds destined for me.

Excellent comments to my mind Alan…everyone is a messenger and a message and the messenger is the message. After all that’s is what our ancient prophets were…messengers.

Some might not think I believe this because of the way I react to people’s ideas sometime, but I fall back on the lame though true excuse that I am just a sinner.

Gosh Alan…after all the insights of real genius including on the spiritual level with real insights you have displayed in this thread for only one…you are entirely human after all!

Barb

 

[BarbaraTherese]

Quoting Reen…

In any case, some of the kindest and most gentle actions
I ever saw, took place between patients on those units.
Truly Christ-like. And I recall thinking: Too bad
people on the “outside” can’t see this.

Although there are exceptions, in the main psychiatric patients and the mentally ill are very gentle, caring and sensitive people and possibly if anything to an extreme degree.
Here in Australia it is recognized that valuable therapy takes place patient to patient. So much so that a patient can be trained to be a visitor on a psychiatric ward visiting patients generally offering support and advice, coping skills etc. This is a voluntary undertaking by interested patients.
It has more more or less been recently introduced here in South Australia anyway in Northern Mental Health to which I belong been brought in that patients can be trained as Peer Support Workers (self explanatory) and* be paid a wage by Public Mental Health* who also provide the training. These workers may be in supervisory positions and take patients out on outings as part of their brief. As these workers become more experienced, it is planned by PMH that their briefs should be widened, including scope of training.
Being an Aussie, this is why it was such a surprise to me and I was quite taken aback when the Bipolar Club thread was closed.

And I would look at some of their faces and think:
This is Christ, bearing the crown of thorns.
It reminded me of a painting by Georges Rouault:
“Il est malitrate” He is mis-treated…mis-treated by
many, in the world around them, yet well-cared for, here.

Perhaps the mentall ill as no other illness bear marks of Christ’s Passion in severe mental suffering. Also crucifixion in the days of Jesus was a complete disgrace and the death by execution of a criminal…Jesus was innocent…society still regards mental illness as something of a disgrace (the mentally ill are innocent) although real inroads are being made here in Australia anyway…but still a very long way to go before the general community insights the truth of mental illness.
The brain is after all an organ of the body in which mental functioning takes place…and can break down like any other organ of the body such as kidneys, heart, lungs etc. etc. This is not generally anyway insighted by the general community and that the mentally ill are simply ill the same as a person with kidney failure, heart disease, diabetes etc. etc.

How good those people were, so many of them,
both staff and patients.

Just my expereince,

In Australia we have excellent staff on wards, but then also present are the less than excellent staff…except for one ward I know of here in the north of Adelaide where the staff without exemption are kind, thoughtful and caring people. Our problem with ill patients remains in the main that one must attend a general hospital to be admitted to a psychiatric ward where, and when the person is quite ill, attitudes of the general hospital staff to patients are appalling often. Patients are admitted to a bed and then guarded by two security guards and this is most demeaning until and up to three days later they are admitted to a psychiatric ward and worse the wear for their treatment in the general hospital.
Until recent years patients were taken by hospital in a Police van…this has been amended (and about time!) to by law we must be taken to hospital in an ambulance. The Police are glad of this too, for their job is to solve crime and catch criminals…not a taxi service for ill people. If a patients is or seems likely to become violent, the ambulance requests police to attend who will if it seems necessary be with the patient in the ambulance…in other instances they simply follow the ambulance to hospital. But our government at least recognizes that we are ill and should be transported by ambulance, not placed in a Police van as criminals.

Barb

 

[AlanFromWichita]

I think a better term for “Mentally Ill” is "mentally exceptional.

Some people are sensitive and others are not. Why is it that we demand that everybody react approximately the same way to the same stimuli?

As we’ve discussed, under today’s conditions, Christ and other servants of God who have harbored a very non-standard state of consciousness would be considered “mentally ill” because we assume that anybody “different” is actually “sick” and needs to be fixed.

We should call ourselves, “the six sigma consciousness” except that there are too many of us.

As others have mentioned, not all mentally “ill” are noble, nor is psychiatry completely unhelpful. Many, however, are victims of the system and after having talked to them I know their value and just wonder how much talent and genius is rotting away in never-ending treatment. For myself, I cannot even apply to be a bagger at our local grocery store without disclosing “mental illness” on the application. Where I did work, I can never go back because fools have made it an issue of fear – once they found out I was in a hospital they all thought I was going to go “postal” I guess. Even if they don’t think so, they wouldn’t take the chance because – God forbid – what if I did go postal? Imagine the lawsuits that they allowed a known mentally ill person to work there – not a good setup for any company with any amount of assets to risk. If somebody is going postal, it “had better be” a complete surprise PLUS they must have taken all kinds of precautions, or they will pay dearly.

Barb, I know you were bummed about the “Bipolar Club” being closed, but I now believe it’s what the staff had to do. I do want to thank the CA staff for allowing us to discuss these issues on this thread as we have. I think the difference may be that we need to steer clear of giving medical advice. If we discuss our ideas about mental illness and spirituality as we have here and talked of our experience and general terms, that doesn’t put CA in the kind of predicament that it could if we start the armchair psychiatry and diagnose and attempt to treat others online.

As you started this thread with a clear warning, luckily none of us have gone off on a tangent and tried to treat each other.

Personally I think information itself is the best treatment for such things, and as long as they are not personal, there is no presumption that we are acting like doctors – who (along with their lawyers) DO NOT want to lose their turf by having amateurs show them up.

If there are any psychiatrists here, please accept my apologies for painting all psychiatrists like the ones that are typically found as interns in mental wards. I know you aren’t all the same, as my private psychiatrist is wonderful, open, and doesn’t try to “fix” me except for the parts that are broke.
John 8:

30 Because he spoke this way, many came to believe in him. 31 Jesus then said to those Jews who believed in him, “If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Alan

 

[reen12]

quote: BarbaraTherese

…he [Michael Angelo] would perhaps have been on so much medication he wouldn’t have known his pallet from his chisel…

That is* very* funny! Got a big laugh out of me.

reen :tiphat:

 

[BarbaraTherese]

Hi Alan…I tend to think that the reason we are demanded to respond to same stimuli in the same way as the common conception is because the herd/society (and human beings do have herding instincts…we seek to ‘belong’) desires to reinforce its ‘identity’. To react aginst the normal is in some way to challenge this identity which is not tolerated.

…Christ and other servants of God who have harbored a very non-standard state of consciousness would be considered “mentally ill” because we assume that anybody “different” is actually “sick”…

This bears out “they have persecuted me and they will persecute you” and an entirely prophetic statement that proves in our own experience very true. I think if we are going to think, speak and act outside the squares or box within which society confines itself to achieve a sense of its own security, then we need to be prepared to be victimized perhaps in some way.

Very true that many are victims of the psychiatric system, which does not at all take away from the fact that psychiatry can be of real help in certain social problems and mental illness is a social phenomena rather than a moral one per se…nor does it take away from the fact that psychiatry can have distinct drawbacks past and present and possibly future as well. We had a psychologist visit us in PMH to give a few talks (us = Public Mental Health) she had been diagnosed schizophrenic and confined to a back ward (security) of a large psychiatric hospital as a young woman…she had to fight tooth and nail to get out of that ward. Did so after many years fighting, qualififed as a psychologist and now travels the world lecturing the mentally ill and on developing their own potentials. She is still apparently a diagnosed schizophrenic and takes medication and sees a psychiatrist and at times if decidedly unwell admits herself to a psychiatric ward.

Barb, I know you were bummed about the “Bipolar Club” being closed, …If we discuss our ideas about mental illness and spirituality as we have here and talked of our experience and general terms

Yeah Alan, I realize all the above; nevertheless at the time the Bipiolar Thread was closed, I was really taken aback, with psychiatric patients here in Australia assuming an entirely productive and responsible role in therapy and rehabilitation and under the auspices of Public Mental Health who recognize our distinct value coming as we do not so much fromt the book as from hard experience. But I thought CA’s concerns were entirely valid once explained to me.

As you started this thread with a clear warning, luckily none of us have gone off on a tangent and tried to treat each other.

I did include the warning because of the closure of the Bipolar Thread and reasons CA did close it. Hence for those unaware of the circumstances that developed around the Bipolar Thread, I thought it best to include the warning, as the subject of this thread could well have initiated similar circumstances as the Bipolar Thread and be closed - and nothing productive is served by that.

Here in Australia Alan, I think mental health workers including doctors, some of them, have realized that patients can indeed at times show them up. Not only this, other patients seem to react to a fellow patient differently and more productively by reason of the common bond of being a sufferer and usually a sufferer who has made many successful adjustments and achievements. This gives patients real hope and affirmation.

If there are any psychiatrists here, please accept my apologies for painting all psychiatrists like the ones that are typically found as interns in mental wards

Agree Alan…my own psychiatrist has now left in the main PMH and is in private practise and I see her privately. She is not authoritarian and any decisions are discussed and mutual decisions arrived at after discussion, including medication. Nevertheless she remains a psychiatric professional and I am most careful not to show the bubbly side of my personality, nor my deep religious and spiritual convictions…she gets nervous and jumpy seeing same as indications of mania. Though I do not think at all that she is silly…but I reason that she thinks as long as I am able to control ‘mania’ (her definition) it is not harmful to me or disturbing to others which latter are the potentials of a manic episode. I have seen a statement by a senior worker which states that in a manic episode I become overtly religious…so I take much care not to mention religion or spirituality and to keep my 'bubbling. hidden. Hence my presenting self to psychiatry (views religion etc. as evidence of underlying pathology) is not the real self. Frankly, I dont think a patient should have to do this and should be able to reveal their true selves without victimization and name calling.

Barb

 

[AlanFromWichita]

I’m not sure psychiatry is too concerned with whether people have a religion. I think they only get nervous when someone actually behaves as if they believe in it; that’s when the trouble starts!

That’s why mental patients who believe in God should keep religious views rather covert when around doctors – and busybody clerks who telephone the Thought Police!

Alan

 

[BarbaraTherese]

Hi Alan…I tend to think that the reason we are demanded to respond to same stimuli in the same way as the common conception is because the herd/society (and human beings do have herding instincts…we seek to ‘belong’) desires to reinforce its ‘identity’. To react aginst the normal is in some way to challenge this identity which is not tolerated.

Just a few comments on my own comments above. On a reread of the above, I realized that the ‘finger I was pointing’ was also at myself. Because I am distinctly human, I too have the ‘herding instinct’ I seek to belong and seek out those of like mindedness to me, and also I find it most difficult to accept a contrary opinion to my own or someone who is thinking outside my own box and I think we need to realize that we all indeed think in boxes…if I can recognize my own box, then I am more ‘armed’ to recognize an opinion outside my own box as perhaps valid, which underscores what Reen said that ‘listening and saintiliness are cousins’. I dont think as humans we can escape our own boxes, but one can recognize same and hence in the light of a more valid and informed opinion challenging my box, change the box to a more valid and informed one by including a contrary opinion to my original boxed thought pattern. But I think I do need to recognize that I do indeed think within a box and that I too have ‘the instinct to herd’.
I read an article from the USA which states that there is a movement thought small, but growing, amongst psychiatristes to acknowledge the religious and spiritual aspect of the human psyche…and a slow but growing movement away from the concept of religion/spirituality as evidence of pathology somewhere. This is a sign of real hope and hope for the future.
After all spiritual directors in the main recognize when a person may need a psychiatrist and advises same…and we need psychiatristes to recognize when something is outside their brief calling perhaps for spiritual direction rather than psychaitric treatment for mental pathology. Religious and spiritual convictions are not an illness/pathology and the domain of psychiatry. We need psychiatry to generally recognize this. We need psychiatry and religion/spirituality/spritual direction to be partners in mutual respect, not in opposition.

Barb
I am really happy with this thread as I think some excellent thinking and concepts have evolved out of it…Alan, you for one and Reen for another with a few comments almost in passing of hers have given me new concepts that I think are very important ones:thumbsup: Others too fit into that latter category whose names (I’m terrible with names!) now escape me. A productive thread due to contributions to my mind.

 

[BarbaraTherese]

Quoting Alan…

I have an excellent audio file from a philosopher on this point – how society and psychiatry presume a psychiatric authority as the arbiter of what’s normal, giving them powers parallel to a medeival arch-bishop. They are not questioned, like the police are, in their diagnoses as there are no checks and balances, and no competent oversight. I’ll get that posted to the web and give you the address. It’s called, “on Being God,” by Alan Watts.

Another great point Alan…psychiatry is to society and its various ‘sacred cows’ what The Inquisition was to adverse religious opinions to the religious opinions and concepts of the day which were those of The Catholic Church.
While I need to take care while in my psychiatriste’s office…it is good to voice one’s opinion and hear that others share it because I think we need to battle against psychiatry’s notion and concept of religion and spirituality being evidence of illness or pathology. While my own doctor would not be receptive to such a viewpoint and see it indeed as evidence of illness or pathology…the internet is a tool for positives in the battle or fight to have the religious and spiritual aspect of our selfhood and psyche recognized as valid and positive. If only by virtue of the affirmation and confidence that is born by insighting others share one’s opinion through reading Posts…and the hope that Posts influence the thinking of others towards a more accurate and truthful understanding of mental illness.
Indeed one can be suffering a severe mental illness which does not at all invalidate their religious and spiritual aspect.
My own experience with spiritual direction (other than my current director and a Vincentian priest who directed me and was my confessor for 15years until his death 25years ago) is that the moment the director knows the person is suffering a mental illness, the person is told to speak to their psychiatrist and abandoned by the ‘director’ which is a dismissal of their spiritual self as pathology and irrelevant to religion (whom after all the director does represent).
In other words, spiritual directors can be as impoverished as a psychiatry on insighting the reality of the person.

Barb

 

[AlanFromWichita]

AlanFromWichita:

I have an excellent audio file from a philosopher on this point – how society and psychiatry presume a psychiatric authority as the arbiter of what’s normal, giving them powers parallel to a medeival arch-bishop. They are not questioned, like the police are, in their diagnoses as there are no checks and balances, and no competent oversight. I’ll get that posted to the web and give you the address. It’s called, “on Being God,” by Alan Watts.

I have posted it at in mp3 format at wordsfree.org/songs/

The file is large; the lecture is 49 minutes and the file is over 56M.

If I recall the details correctly (might be mixing up with another lecture) this is a recording of a radio broadcast where Watts (1915-1973) was speaking at some sort of psychiatry convention. Again, if memory serves, he was supposed to have spoken as a last-minute substitute for Aldous Huxley.

One wonders, when listening to this, how such powerful words spoken to so many people several decades ago seem to have vanished in that things are almost exactly the same now a generation later. It seems our institutions change in technology but not in substance over the decades.

Alan

 

[Shoshana]

Has anyone heard of Dr Scott Peck…especially his book on 'The father of Lies"?

 

[reen12]

Hi, Shoshana

quote: Shoshana

Has anyone heard of Dr Scott Peck…especially his book on 'The father of Lies"?

I’ve heard of him, but have not read any of his work.
Perhaps others here have.

Best, :tiphat:

reen

 

[reen12]

quote: AlanFromWitchita

The file is large; the lecture is 49 minutes and the file is over 56M.

Bring on your 56M file! - me and my computer can handle it!
[downloading it now.]

Read a bit of Watts, ages ago, so this should be interesting.

[download complete.] This is Mission Control…

reen

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Shoshana:

Has anyone heard of Dr Scott Peck…especially his book on 'The father of Lies"?

I just read an online excerpt on amazon of “People of the Lie” by a Dr. Scott Peck. Is that the same author?

It seemed really interesting. It talked about evil thoughts. Strange thing is some of the stuff in the excerpts reminded me of stuff that happened a lot of times and places, especially during Mass. It could be worth reading further.

Alan

 

[BarbaraTherese]

AlanFromWichita:

I’m not sure psychiatry is too concerned with whether people have a religion. I think they only get nervous when someone actually behaves as if they believe in it; that’s when the trouble starts!

That’s why mental patients who believe in God should keep religious views rather covert when around doctors – and busybody clerks who telephone the Thought Police!

Alan

Good comments Alan…I learnt the above the hard way. I can have a religion and spirituality but not allowed according to psychiatry to make a full investment in same so that it is integral to ‘the me and the I’. To use your insight which I did not insight until your Post in that I did not know how concisely to express it…I need develop a ‘false self’ to be the presenting self to psychiatry and the ‘Thought Police’ and I think it takes a real measure of ‘wellness’ to do this. Again I dont think my psychiatrist is at all silly and insights that I keep hidden my real self which will only emerge in her presence if I am indeed unwell. Hence revealing to her my real self becomes an indication to her that I am indeed unwell.
A psychiatrist whom I saw in the early years of my illness put it this way to me “you can be as crazy as you like on the inside as long as you behave on the outside”. To him my inner workings were madness - in other words my religion and spirituality fully invested in…and it was he I can now insight, thanks to your insightful Post…who helped me develop a false self to be the presenting self in any situation I insighted as a risk to my real self.
I can now insight that psychiatry did me a real favour! As long as I am entirely conscious of my false and real self and can freely interchange between the two, no psychological damage results.
Be all that as it may, ideally speaking I should not need to develop a false self in the first place. I saw my director yesterday and on the journey home, pondered the fact that I am so childlike and open with her…and then it hit me, my ‘real self’ had been in charge. The fact that I have developed a false self in necessary circumstances and facilitated by psychiatry indicates just how powerful and psychology manipulating psychiatray can be, though indeed in this instance anyway it did me a favour.
Your insight Alan…bringing to consciousness with clarity my real and false self has been a real breakthrough for me for which I am entirely thankful to you. Keep up the great work Alan!

Barb

 

[reen12]

Hello, Alan,

Well, well, well, i see monsieur watts - is giving of his best - with a reference to burning heretics at the stake - in the hopes that they would manage a 'perfect act of contrition, ’ in media res, as it were. [p.a.c. being one of my favorite topics…which i continue to maintain
to be a psychological impossiblility.]

I wonder what Jesus would make of same?

watts’ anecdote about satipanna meditation and Zen was
well put.
to paraphrase the reference: let all who would operate ferry boats do so - and if you haven’t got the sense to stay off of one that sinks, that’s your doing.
put me in mind of a commentator noting, during the
Reformation; ‘some looked around, saw what was
happening, and decided to paddle their own spiritual
canoe.’ [always had a fellow-feeling for those yachhtsmen.]

Continuing to listen to the lecture.

reen

 

[reen12]

it was worth listening to the talk, for I came to understand that while I may not know what ‘mystical experience’ is, I recognize satori.
I just never thought of them as allied.

Or, as he said, earlier in the lecture:

transformation of the way we are aware of ourselves and our world

or - for those who know Sartre - the realization that the tree I’m looking at and self are irredeemably separated by a great ontological chasm…yet the answer lies – in what a poster on CAF once pointed out to me:
‘Climb the tree*…*’ [which is what Christ did.]

reen

 

[Shoshana]

Well, folks, at about this time, I am considered a mental issue…or tissue…who knows? Psychiatric assessment is not even important! I guess Fr Groeschel was right…when we enter into ourselves by the grace of god and find out some very ugly things, it ain’t no picnic. Just wish I had someone to talk to…methinks my spiritual director ain’t up to this! Oh well…maybe take a retreat and allow the Lord to pluck every ugly creature that is lurking in the corners. In the meantime, I will hibernate within my own little chapel within my heart and sleep it away. The pain is too much to bear especially if I am not understood…but what do I do with my child crying all the time?

Anyhoo, I can’t speak as well as you guys about all of this but I do wish you a very blessed Lent.

 

[reen12]

Hello, Shoshana,

quote: Shoshana

Well, folks, at about this time, I am considered a mental issue…or tissue…who knows? Psychiatric assessment is not even important! I guess Fr Groeschel was right…when we enter into ourselves by the grace of god and find out some very ugly things, it ain’t no picnic. Just wish I had someone to talk to…methinks my spiritual director ain’t up to this! Oh well…maybe take a retreat and allow the Lord to pluck every ugly creature that is lurking in the corners. In the meantime, I will hibernate within my own little chapel within my heart and sleep it away. The pain is too much to bear especially if I am not understood…but what do I do with my child crying all the time?

Anyhoo, I can’t speak as well as you guys about all of this but I do wish you a very blessed Lent.

A lovely post, Shoshana, I think.

quote: Shoshana

Just wish I had someone to talk to…methinks my spiritual director ain’t up to this!

i would guess that few spiritual directors are,
which is a sadness, in itself.

quote; Shoshana

The pain is too much to bear especially if I am not understood…but what do I do with my child crying all the time?

You refer to the “child within?” Who, I think, mirrors the
face of God.

[Whenever I see a newborn, I ask:[/color]
“So, what do you think of the world, thus far?” ]
to transgress CAF policy, and I fear that recommending*
same, might well constitute an infraction of those rules.]

As to:
quote: Shoshana

Anyhoo, I can’t speak as well as you guys about all of this …

i’ve hardly understood a word since i got here!
[to borrow a phrase.]

As to spiritual directors, that’s out of my experience, in terms
of speaking with any competence whatever.

You have my prayers, for what they’re worth,
Shoshana, and I hope that you experience a Lent
of beauty and peace.

Best wishes,

reen

 

[Shoshana]

reen12:

Hello, Shoshana,

quote: Shoshana

A lovely post, Shoshana, I think.

quote: Shoshana

i would guess that few spiritual directors are,
which is a sadness, in itself.

quote; Shoshana

You refer to the “child within?” Who, I think, mirrors the
face of God.

[Whenever I see a newborn, I ask:[/color]
“So, what do you think of the world, thus far?” ]
to transgress CAF policy, and I fear that recommending*
same, might well constitute an infraction of those rules.]

As to:
quote: Shoshana

i’ve hardly understood a word since i got here!
[to borrow a phrase.]

As to spiritual directors, that’s out of my experience, in terms
of speaking with any competence whatever.

You have my prayers, for what they’re worth,
Shoshana, and I hope that you experience a Lent
of beauty and peace.

Best wishes,

reen

Dearest reen…please pm me those books! I would be grateful if you did…

 

[reen12]

They’re on their way,

reen