How To Be Free (Very Early Draft)

INTRO

The following conglomeration of mixed metaphors and quotes taken out of context is an attempt on my part to articulate a philosophy of life that has been striving to form itself in my mind over the last 30 years or more. It borrows heavily from various books that I've read. I make no claim that any of what I say here is true. It is merely the best description I can currently come up with for what I believe at this time in my life. I offer it for what it may be worth. If any of it is useful to you, feel free to quote, misquote or plagiarise it. It doesn't belong to me, but to anyone who finds it useful. If you don't find it useful please ignore it. It is not meant to be a prescription for what you should believe or do. We all have to chose our own beliefs and decide our own actions. No-one can take that responsibility away from us.

DOGMATISM AND FUNDAMENTALISM

It seems as if we live in a world which is becoming increasingly polarised between competing rigid fundamentalistic ideologies. It might be the left and the right in politics or different religious ideologies. Groups of individuals who insist, "You are either with us or against us." Repression and oppression tend to characterise the dogmatic philosophies. Of course there are many of us who don't buy into it. But often we are less vocal or less clear about what we do or don't believe. Thus it can be hard at times to defend our position. And yet there must be some psychologically viable alternative which is ethical, but not based on rigid fundamentalistic repression of the individual.

HOW DO WE BECOME REPRESSED?

If none of us ever had the urge to do anything harmful to anyone else, the problem of ethics and ideologies wouldn't arise. But we do have such urges. Why? To find the original cause we would have to go all the way back to our origins as a species. I don't want to go into that here. I'll include a link to a theory about this below. Let's just take it as read that human society is one in which there is much conflict and look at ourselves as individuals. When we were born we were no doubt open to the world around us and not carrying the kind of burden of aggressive feelings that we now do. We would have had our needs, for food and warmth, etc., and been upset if they were not fulfilled, but generally we would have had benevolent feelings towards those around us. But we would soon have discovered that we were born into a psychological battlefield of competing egos and hostility among adults that we would not come to understand until we were adults ourselves. Gradually we would start to accumulate stored up anger. Our openness would not always be met with the same. And when we did start to express our anger, we would often be discouraged from doing so, and learn instead to keep it bottled up inside. And so we gradually grew into adults with an accumulation of repressed aggressive feelings. No doubt we also learned to repress other feelings too, if their expression made others uncomfortable.

"Many teachers think of children as immature adults. It might lead to better and more ‘respectful' teaching, if we thought of adults as atrophied children. Many ‘well adjusted' adults are bitter, uncreative, frightened, unimaginative, and rather hostile people. Instead of assuming they were born that way, or that that's what being an adult entails, we might consider them as people damaged by their education and upbringing."  Keith Johnstone, "Impro : Improvisation and the Theatre" (Eyre Methuen, 1981)

All this bottling up of feelings made us self-absorbed and in a state of psychological pain. If you hit your thumb with a hammer, you'll find that all of your attention will focus on your sore thumb. Similarly the reason our attention centres around our self is because our self is in pain. Were we not in a state of psychic pain our attention would be focused principally on the far more interesting world around us, and most particularly the people around us.

WHAT WE REPRESS AND HOW IT FORMS THE STUCTURE OF OUR PERSONALITY

Psychologically we are made up of three basic levels. At base we have the nature that constituted our whole being at birth - open to the world around us and finding the meaning of its existence in a state of spontaneous communication with it. If I were the sort of person who appears on the Oprah Winfrey show, I might refer to this as our inner child. Then there is the layer of repressed feelings and urges, much of it consisting of aggressive feelings, but also of sexual feelings that we may feel it would be unwise to express. This is kind of like what Sigmund Freud described as the Id. Above that we have the level we present to the world, a more or less friendly sociable persona, and perhaps one which subscribes to some system of morality or ideology.

Of course these layers interact. Some of the repressed aggressive feelings sometimes find gaps in our sociable persona through which to burst out, perhaps when we get drunk or behind the wheel of an automobile. And when we feel very, very safe and secure, the base level of the playful, loving inner child may come to the surface.

But I think that it is the aggressive feelings, the repressed anger, which is most important to our personality structure.

The anger has to go somewhere. When we repress it it forms the structure of our rigid personality or belief system. Matter is energy trapped in a structured form. To the extent that our belief structure is rigid and dogmatic or fundamentalistic, we are much like solid matter and our anger is much like energy. We daren't "loosen up" for fear of losing our sense of our self in what might seem to amount to a thermonuclear explosion. But the anger still has to have an outlet and it often finds it in pursuit of the belief system, but most particularly it is channelled towards any threat to its own rigid structure. Religious fundamentalism and political dogmatism are examples of  such a rigid structure. There is often another party against whom the anger is channelled. A religious fundamentalist may channel their anger towards unbelievers, abortionists or homosexuals. A political  dogmatist of the left wing may channel his anger towards "capitalist greed-heads", while the right wing dogmatist may channel towards "bleeding-heart liberals". A dogmatic feminist may channel anger against "the patriarchy". In each case our most explosive expressions of anger will occur when we feel it hardest to maintain our structure. The closer a person gets to the soft underbelly that lies beneath the hard carapace of our belief structure the harsher the anger we will spew against them and the less we will be able to control the way we are seen by others. It is at time like this that we are liable to "blow our cover".

"The psychologist Wilhelm Reich developed the idea of ‘character armour', which he said was ‘A protection of the ego against external and internal dangers. As a protective mechanism which has become chronic it can rightly be called armour... in unpleasurable situations the armouring increases, in pleasurable situations it decreases. The degree of character mobility, the ability to open up to a situation or to close up against it constitutes the difference between the healthy and the neurotic character structure.' (Character Analysis, translated by V. R. Carfagno, Vision Press, 1973).

"He might be have been talking about good and bad acting. Drama students  who are ‘tight' and ‘inflexible' and ‘alone' are able to to receive and transmit only a very narrow range of feeling. They experience muscle tension as ‘acting'. In The Function of the Orgasm (translated by T.P. Wolfe, Panther, 1968), Reich says :

"The facial expression as a whole -- independent of the individual parts -- has to be observed carefully. We know the depressed face of the melancholic patient. It is peculiar how the expression of flaccidity can be associated with a severe chronic tension of the musculature. There are people with an always artificially beaming face; there are "stiff" and "sagging" cheeks. Usually, the patients are able to find the corresponding expression themselves, if the attitude is repeatedly pointed out and described to them, or shown to them by imitating it. One patient with "stiff" cheeks said : "My cheeks are as if heavy with tears." Suppressed crying easily leads to a masklike stiffness of the facial musculature. At an early age, children develop a fear of "faces" which they used to delight in making; they are afraid because they are told that if they make a face it'll stay that way, and because the very impulses they express in their grimaces are impulses for which they are likely to be reprimanded or punished. Thus they check these impulses and hold their faces "rigidly under control".'" Keith Johnstone, ibid.

FEAR AND GUILT - WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

When we try to change a person's behaviour by making them feel guilty or afraid, we are using the situation as an outlet for our personal anger. Take a bunch of animal rights activists harassing a celebrity in public for wearing furs. We may not know if their intention is to make the fur-wearer feel guilty or simply afraid to go out in public wearing a fur lest they be harassed. Either way, the real purpose of the exercise is the venting of personal anger. It has nothing to do with the animals. They merely provide the rationalisation. The same applies to "right to lifers" outside an abortion clinic. Animals, children and unborn foetuses provide a perfect focus for this form of disguised self-indulgence. It is hard to criticise someone for standing up for innocent creatures who can't protect themselves, and since the injustices we suffered as children are the root grievance we are taking out on others, "I'm doing it for the children/animals/foetuses!" becomes a perfect psychodrama to find catharsis for once having been the innocent victim. It is never really about the issue, but the issue needs to be one which can be rationalised within the rigid structure of the dogmatist's belief system. I've been there. My dogmatic belief structure has often been that of a pacifist, and thus I've shouted "No Blood for Oil" at rallies. But it was never about the innocents dying in the war zone. It was about me getting my rocks off, so to speak. Although this expression is usually used with specific reference to sex, it is a perfect expression also for the phenomenon about which I am speaking. Our accumulated anger weighs us down like a heavy burden of rocks, and we do need to get this weight off of our shoulders.

"The accusation of sin is moral virtue's deadly gin" William Blake, The Everlasting Gospel

If our concern really is to prevent the suffering of animals, the setting up of a restaurant that sells tasty vegetarian meals will do more good than painting "Meat is Murder" on a butcher shop window. As Jesus once said, "It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness." And there is always a way we can light a candle. A way we can simply make it easier for someone to avoid doing the thing we oppose if they should so chose. But the choice must be theirs, free from the compulsion of guilt or fear. And neither should we allow guilt or fear to determine our actions. When we do anything out of guilt or fear we stifle the human spirit within us.

PLUG ONE HOLE AND IT WILL COME OUT ANOTHER

We have no choice about the fact that we have this burden of anger now, but we do have a choice about what we do with it. We can chose an outlet for it which doesn't harm others. And we can arm ourselves with understanding in order to slow its accumulation.

If we have an outlet we can "get our rocks off" and approach the world with a new found generosity of spirit. If we simply try to repress the anger - or lust, or whatever form the spirit of hurt defiance may take - it will find its outlet elsewhere, perhaps in ways we don't fully acknowledge. The self-righteousness of the puritan is the unavoidable result of repression. Accusing others of being hopeless sinners is how he gets his rocks off. He has to have some outlet. And the more that what the "sinner" has done closely resembles what he is having most difficulty in containing in himself, the greater will be his wrath. The more temptation threatens his strategy of containment, the greater his fear of losing his sense of himself in one of those thermonuclear explosions.

Another strategy that needs to be discussed is transcendence. We might take to meditation to rise above the pain and anger. This is achieved through the cessation of rational thought. And there is its weakness. It may provide a useful way of looking at our situation from outside and experiencing a period of inner peace, but, either we start thinking rationally again and the pain and anger come back, or we live continually "off with the fairies" and are clearly no longer plugged into the real living world of others.

I use the term anger to keep things simple, because, if we were once completely open to love, but ended up getting hurt, it stands to reason we would feel angry about that. But the forms that our revenge for the hurt may take are not always things we would recognise as anger. We think of anger as something which is expressed with aggressive speech or physical violence. But the revenge, if you like, or defiance, perhaps, takes a number of different forms. Aggression is one. Materialism is another. Most of us like to be comfortable and enjoy "the finer things in life", but when the joy of owning something is linked to the fact that someone else doesn't, it is a form of generalised revenge for hurt. Sexuality also is a common conduit for this defiant tendency. How often do we say that we like something sexually because it is "naughty". This shows that it is an expression of our rebelliousness as much as it may also be a form of loving communication with the other person. And self-righteousness can also be an expression of this drive for revenge against others.

REPLACE THE GUNS WITH WATER BALLOONS

Repressing the warlike spirit will do us no good, and we can't simply wish it away, but if we realise that it is all about getting our rocks off and not about the issues, then we can trade our guns for water-balloons. We all need to get our rocks off somehow, and the most sensible thing is to chose outlets which don't harm others. Artistic expression can be one of these. Some people channel these feelings into aggressive computer games or playing sport. Some express the rebellious urge through the clothes they wear, tattoos or body piercings.

There are lots of factors that might need to be taken into account if trying to decide how destructive or benevolent a particular outlet for the rebellious urge is. Clearly taking a gun and shooting people in the street would be at the more destructive end of the spectrum. Yelling abuse at the mindlessly smiling faces that appear on your television set is totally benevolent. They can't hear you. No-one loses out, and it is surprising how much better it can make you feel.

Other areas are very complicated. Sexual behaviour is one of these. As far as I can see, barring the dangers of venereal disease or other forms of physical damage, the key factors involve the emotional relationship between partners, not the physical acts involved. There are many ways we can hurt another person emotionally. Whether this occurs in a sexual relationship may depend very much on what each person is hoping to get out of it. Honest communication is the key. If a woman doesn't mind that a guy spends time with her only because she has large breasts, or a man doesn't mind that a woman only wants to spend time with him because he has lots of money to spend on her, there is no problem. The relationship between them will be shallow, but it may be more satisfying than none at all.

JUST IGNORE THEM

It is no wonder that, over time, we have a tendency to dig in deep, to fortify our position, and to fight tenaciously to defend it. We can't expect anyone to drop their guns and leave the fort, simply because we have told them that there is a better way. The world really is a troubled place and things are getting worse. There are genuine reasons to feel afraid. And fear naturally makes us cling more tightly to whatever we have that makes us feel more secure.

Of course, in some cases the war is a literal one. But, in general, what I'm talking about is emotional war, not literally a war of guns and bombs. But in that metaphorical war, the guns and bombs are criticism. So no matter how compassionately and considerately we may suggest to someone that they come out of their metaphorical fortress - be it fundamentalist religion, dogmatic socialism, rigid neo-conservatism, or whatever - our words are liable to be perceived as bombs or gunshots. And nobody comes out when they are being fired at.

The only thing to do is to leave them be. We don't have to fear their fire as we are armed with knowledge of what lies behind it. We know that their expressions of anger or condemnation are the result of the same pain that we have experienced and that their choice of method for getting their rocks off has been restricted by fear arising from the length and severity of their experience of the war. We shouldn't waste time fighting against their position, but rather in providing the aid of knowledge to those who are still capable of being hurt by their fire. The more people who can live safely on the battlefield - that is, live free of rigid forms of dogmatism, just as individuals together, accepting themselves and each other without judgement - the more ridiculous the die-hards in the fortresses will feel themselves to be and the more likely they will be to come out. After all, what's the point if less and less people are attacking them and their bullets no longer have any effect on anyone outside the fort.

HOW DO WE DEAL WITH REAL LIFE VIOLENCE

Unfortunately, of course, this metaphorical emotional war is not all we have to worry about. Real war, with real bullets and real bombs, is very much a part of our current reality, and no amount of understanding of what lies in the mind of the guy who pulls the trigger will stop the bullet that goes through your brain from killing you. For those whose job it is to respond to violence hard choices often have to be made. Whatever action they take will be affected by the burden of repressed anger they carry with them. Unless they've found a very effective way of expelling this burden elsewhere their response will inevitably also be used as a way of getting some of their rocks off, whether they are aware of this or not, and thus, rather than a surgical response to a violent incident, which deals only with the matter at hand, a scatter-gun approach will be taken and the conflict will escalate. Also, our self-absorption can amount to a form of passive aggression which adds to the problem. If something we are doing negatively effects others in some major way, and we don't pay any attention when they try to point this out, we may be surprised when they resort to violence to get our attention.

Politicians, as those who make decisions about war, and soldiers, as those who carry them out, have a great deal to gain, if they want to do their jobs responsibly and thus reverse the trend toward armed conflict in the world, by learning how to get their rocks off in a benign way. There are many decisions the rest of us can make about the way we live our lives that may effect the situation - i.e. the less we use of a resource people are liable to fight over, the less we contribute to the problem. But, unless we want to become a politician or soldier ourselves, voting for the candidate we feel to be least rigid with repressed aggression  and therefore least likely to use war as a way of getting his rocks off may be about the best we can do about the problem. Once again, being able to see what a person's psychological situation with regard to the rigidity of repressed aggression is is the most useful tool we can have or help others learn.

Just as we mustn't be fooled into thinking the anti-fur protest is about the animals, when it comes to those conflicts, such as war, that we can't simply ignore, we mustn't be fooled into thinking that the question of which side started it, or which side is "right" and which is "wrong", is really relevant. We may have little say in what "our side" does, but we have no say in what a group of which we are not a constituent does. All we should be concerned with is whether those whose actions we have some say in respond to the situation in a way which is in our best interests. And by "our best interests" I mean in the larger sense. If we are hungry and we steal food from our neighbour it may seem to be in our best interest in the short term, but in the long term we are not going to be on very good terms with our neighbour and stealing food won't get rid of the fact that we clearly have a food supply problem. Saying things like "They started it!" and "What they did is worse than what we did!" is just a way of justifying the fact that we are using the conflict to get our rocks off. And if we become a truly pathological case we may start to claim that we are fighting "against evil" or "for God". While evil is probably best defined as the irresponsible, and thus destructive, expression of our accumulated anger, to claim to be fighting this while clearly still in the grip of it ourselves is madness. And as for God, I'm sure that, if he exists, he doesn't need a bunch of guys with guns doing his fighting for him. That seems to run counter to the whole idea of being an all-powerful being.

Even in these life or death situations, it is easy to underestimate the power of being able to say with confidence, "I know the game you're playing and I won't buy into it." When we can do this, we contribute to the undermining of the destructive strategy, whereas, when we attack either side we only serve to strengthen it. It is much the same approach that a mother takes when her kids are fighting and she sends them to their rooms without bothering to listen to their self-justifications. Unfortunately we can't send our political leaders to their rooms when they use their position to get their rocks off in a way that is detrimental to us all, but it will be damned embarrassing to them when they realise that everyone can see them psychologically naked.

WHERE THE HIPPY'S WENT WRONG

It has been said that the bloodletting of the Second World War cleared our systems and allowed for the flowering of the Love Generation of the Sixties. But between the two came the Beat Generation of the late fifties. The Beats were all about free expression, and much of what they expressed so freely was very dark. Take a look at William Burrough's "The Naked Lunch" or Allen Ginsburg's "Howl". It is conventional wisdom that this spirit of free expression evolved into the hippy movement of the last half of the sixties. And then all that was lost. How did that happen? Expelling the bile can liberate the love beneath, but the bile will accumulate once more. Only if we continue to provide an outlet for it will we continue to have access to the love. The mistake the hippies made was to try to hang onto the love. You can't do that. "Love is Like a Butterfly" according to the old Dolly Parton song. Try holding onto a butterfly and you'll tend to find that its wings will come off. Desperate to cling to the positives and unwilling to acknowledge the reaccumulation of the bile, the living idealism of the Sixties rigidified into increasingly fundamentalistic and oppressive forms of ideology, leading to the horror that we now know as "political correctness".

"POLITICAL CORRECTNESS" = IDEOLOGICAL FASCISM

"Political correctness" is founded on the delusion that, if we repress all expression of the bile, it will go away. Of course the opposite is true. It goes away when it is expressed. Stop a racist from expressing his hostility toward other races, and you make sure he will remain a racist. Repress a misogynist's expression of his hatred towards women and he will never be able to reconnect with the love that lies buried beneath it.

Now I'm not suggesting that we tolerate the open expression of racism or sexism or any other form of hatred in the presence of those against whom that hostility is directed. But we do have to encourage the expulsion of the bile.

Next time you are alone in your home watching television, try hurling a stream of vile verbal abuse at the bland smiling face of a television presenter. Don't censor yourself. Let it all out. Be as gross and disgusting and hateful as you can find it in yourself to be. Sometimes we are not even aware of the bile we have floating freely in our system. I remember when I was in high school and we were reading "Macbeth" aloud in class. I surprised myself, and certainly everyone else in the class (since I was usually such a quiet pupil) with the passion I put into my reading of the line "You secret, black and midnight hags!"

You may find that, unbeknownst to yourself, you have accumulated a repository of racist or sexist bile. Try referring to the people you see on your television as "honkies", "crackers", "niggers", "jungle bunnies", "gooks" or "kykes". Our culture has thrown up a rich language of abuse. Why not make therapeutic use of it in the privacy of your own home? If you are a woman, try yelling at the man who reads the news, "If you look at me that way one more time I'll castrate you, you male chauvinist pig!" If you are a man you may want to refer to all the women on television as "bitches", "whores" and "sluts".

Why we have these feelings is not really relevant. We may carry a generalised hatred against people of a particular race because someone of that race stole our teddy-bear on our first day at school. A woman may have a generalised hatred for men, because a man once raped her. The origin of the feeling is really irrelevant. What matters is that it is the bile itself which is causing our current suffering, not the person who originally hurt us.

We can't hang onto love, but expel all of the bile and it will be all we have left. Of course the bile will accumulate again. So don't let yourself become constipated. Make sure to have a regular bile movement. There at the bottom of the septic tank of bile, as well as love, we may also find God, if there is one. One thing is for sure. Whatever bile we carry with us, can only keep us cut off from the deity of our particular faith, if we have one.

DEPRESSION AND OTHER FORMS OF MENTAL ILLNESS

Depression is one of the most common forms that bile constipation takes. Depression is really self-directed anger. When we are depressed we are like a soldier in wartime who has grown tired of all the bloodshed and lost sight of the cause for which he was fighting and turns his gun against himself. We come to feel we are nothing but a overflowing cesspit of bile, best expunged from the face of the earth. But we are not the bile. We simply need to find an outlet for it, so that we can rediscover the person we really are beneath it all. Often a person who is exemplary in their behaviour may be prone to depression for the very reason that they allow themselves no opportunity to expel their bile.

I feel sure that all forms of mental illness result from the absence of a healthy outlet for the bile. I've had a lot of experience with depression in my life, and some experience also of what was once known as manic depression, but is now referred to as bipolar disorder. For me, depression has always been characterised by the use of fear or guilt to keep angry feelings repressed. When I've experienced mood swings, the high has been characterised by a release of pent up feelings of some kind. In an extreme case this can be the psychic thermonuclear explosion I referred to earlier. When this happens, for a while, rational thinking may not be possible. The expression may not be an obviously angry one, though some experience that. It can take the form of unrestrained sexual behaviour, uncontrollable outpourings of emotion or thought of any kind. This is why I tend to view mental structures - belief systems, etc. - as being constructed of these angry or defiant emotions. Because when they breakdown tremendous energy is released, though it may not take an aggressive form.

None of this is scientific. I have no training in psychology or psychiatry, this is just my imperfect way of describing what I have experienced. These concepts, parts of which I have taken from the writings of psychologists or psychiatrists, may have no objective reality, but I've found them invaluable for managing the emotional challenges of my life, and freeing myself from the often crippling bouts of depression from which I used to suffer.

THERE IS NOTHING WEAK OR PACIFISTIC ABOUT THE SOUL

When I talk about reconnecting with some kind of submerged layer of pure love, you may think I'm just spouting some kind of hippy-dippy philosophy. The hippies put flowers in the barrels of soldier's guns. Unfortunately a flower will not stop a bullet.

Even if you were to expel all of the bile and reconnect with your capacity for pure love, you might still decide that the only way to deal with a terrorist who threatens you or your loved ones is to kill him. The only difference would be that you would have a much better chance of killing him with due efficiency if your mind were not clouded by all that bile.

What we experience as compassion is the identification of the pain of our ego with the physical or emotional pain of others. If the life of the spirit or soul were one of feeling the pain of others it would be a life of weakness and not of strength. Harm is done only to our ego, nothing can harm the spirit as it has existed since the beginning of the world and all the suffering that has taken place since then has not diminished it by one iota. Pain is felt only in the ego.

"The fountain has not played itself out, the Flame still shines, the River still flows, the Spring still bubbles forth, the Light has not faded. But between us and It, there is a veil which is more like fifty feet of solid concrete. Deus absconditus. Or we have absconded."

R.D. Laing, "Transcendental Experience In Relation to Religion and Psychosis" (http://laingsociety.org/biblio/transexperience.laing.htm)

The spirit doesn't care whether our behaviour has been what we consider to be good or what we consider to be bad. Nothing can harm the spirit. We make our own hell to punish ourselves for what we perceive to be our misdeeds. All of this occurs within the ego and has nothing to do with the spirit. This is why in Christianity it is said that our "sins" are forgiven us. The source of destructive behaviour is in the rigid ego, and guilt is part of that rigidity.

YOU CAN HARM THE EGO BUT YOU CAN'T HARM THE SOUL

This is a weakness in the concept of the "inner child". When we were a child we were physically vulnerable and our ego was not yet fully-formed and thus able to defend itself. So when we say we are going to "get in touch with our inner child" we think we are going to return to a way of experiencing the world in which we are vulnerable and easily hurt. But, in fact, in some ways we are much more vulnerable to suffering now than we were when we were born. Suffering is the suffering of the ego. And the more rigid and precarious the structure of the ego, the more prone to suffering. If we fear contact with the world of the soul or spirit, it is not because it is a zone of super-sensitivity, but because its power threatens the structure of our ego. The soul or spirit is the water, the ego is the dam. The ego  knows that it may break because of the strength of the spirit, and thus it fears it. But we are not just our ego, but the spirit as well. It makes sense when we realise this to gradually disassemble the dam from the top, letting water out gradually, and allowing ourselves to grow more secure in the process. A big dam is a more powerful dam, but it is not a more secure one, because the bigger the dam, the more water it has to retain.

Disassembling is much to be preferred. I once experienced the collapse of my ego dam, and it was no fun. I survived, but the process of rebuilding it was a long and painful one and the flying bricks hurt people. Now it is a smaller one and the water behind it not under such great pressure.

We have a choice, we can be a dam holding back the water, or we can gradually let the water out and become a swimmer in a peaceful ocean.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH PSYCHOANALYSIS?

In conventional psychiatry a lot of time is spent probing into the past experiences of the patient to try to find out what experiences led to their ego taking the unhelpful form it now has. But this is really irrelevant. What really matters is how can we make it easier for the patient's ego structure to become gradually less rigid. The less rigid it is, the more it will naturally form itself into something more helpful. The past is the past. Our early experiences may determine the form that the bottom of our dam takes, and thus how much weight it can bear. But if the dam has a fragile bottom, the last thing you want to do is go poking around down there. Much better to help the patient to let some water out over the top of the dam where the pressure is not so great and gradually work down from there. That way, if and when they get to looking at the fragile bottom, it will be no big deal as it will not be required to hold back much water.

IMMORTALITY AND THE FEAR OF DEATH

Fear of death is really the fear of the dam that it will not last forever. But the dam is not us. We are the water and the dam is just the vessel within which we are contained. So what we really fear is change, because, in a real sense, we can't die. The water will never cease to exist. Only the form of the container will change. And this has happened throughout our life. What contains our spirit today is not what contained it when we were a child.

The spirit is, by its nature, that part of us which is alive. The ego is like our clothes. We may be embarrassed to go around without them. But if we were not inside them they would just lie in a dead heap on the ground. Our clothes have no life of their own, and neither does the ego. It is nothing but an outer form for what we are and experience ourselves to be.

CATHARSIS VS. ADDICTION

Various things can break off bits of the top of the dam, allowing water to flow through. These include crying, expressing anger in a free - rather than focused and destructive way, or having an orgasm. At these times we feel the burden of restraint ease and the spirit flow freely through our ego. These are the experiences we refer to as being cathartic.

Look at things this way, and some aspects of our world seem less disturbing than they otherwise might. Take violence in movies and computer games and the proliferation of all kinds of pornography on the internet. These things clearly provide an outlet for large quantities of accumulated bile which might otherwise be expressed in ways which directly harm others.

I'm not saying these things are not without some problems. Some people become addicted to these things, as they may to other things like alcohol, drugs or gambling. But, unlike those other things, these cultural expressions of bile, I believe, can be cathartic if enjoyed wholeheartedly and shamelessly.

It is when something fails to satisfy us, so that we need more and more to produce the same effect, that we become addicted. Enjoy it less, need it more, is the formula of addiction. But the opposite also applies - enjoy it more, need it less. Generally what happens with addiction is that we overindulge in something, feel ashamed of ourselves as a result, and, wanting to find an escape from such negative feelings, we throw ourselves back into the same form of overindulgence.

Now I'm not saying that things like violent computer games or porn are the most effective sources of catharsis, nor are they something that appeals to or works for everybody, but perhaps they are not something to worry about as much as we sometimes do.

FEAR OF BEING FOUND OUT

"My feeling is that sanity is actually a pretence, a way we learn to behave. We keep this pretence up because we don't want to be rejected by other people - and being classified insane is to be shut out of the group in a very complete way.

"Most people I meet are secretly convinced that they're a little crazier than the average person. People understand the energy necessary to maintain their own shields, but not the energy expended by other people. They understand that their own sanity is a performance, but when confronted by other people they confuse the person with the role...

"...When I explain that sanity is a matter of interaction, rather than of one's mental processes, students are often hysterical with laughter. They agree that for years they have been suppressing all sorts of thinking because they classified it as insane." Keith Johnstone, ibid.

I think many of us also secretly feel that we are monstrous or depraved, because of the pent-up bile we carry with us. This is why "sick humour" provides such a useful social function, to reassure us that we are not alone in hiding twisted thoughts and feelings beneath our sociable exterior.

A PERVERSELY COMFORTING GURU

The film-maker John Waters has always been a hero of mine. He filled his early films with all the most vile, depraved, violent and deranged ideas in his head. But these are comedies. They show that we needn't be afraid of our own sick minds. And amidst this unrestrained outpouring of bile, Water's films express a paradoxical generosity of spirit. He clearly loves his characters regardless of how ugly and insane they may be. And some of his later films - such as "Pecker" and "A Dirty Shame" have an almost utopian feel with characters losing their inhibitions, learning to work through their conflicts and coming together in a more honest and meaningful form of community.

"Grotesque and frightening things are released as soon as people begin to work with spontaneity. Even if a class works on improvisation every day for only a week or so, then they start producing very ‘sick' scenes : they become cannibals pretending to eat each other, and so on. But when you give the student permission to explore this material he very soon uncovers layers of unsuspected gentleness and tenderness. It is no longer sexual feelings and violence that are deeply repressed in  this culture now, whatever it may have been like in fin-de-siecle Vienna. We repress our benevolence and tenderness." Keith Johnstone, ibid.

At one stage, John Waters, who has always been fascinated with real-life crime, spent some time teaching film studies to prisoners in jail for such crimes as murder, rape and child molestation. Here was his advice to them :

"Next time you feel like killing somebody, don't do it for God's sake -- write about it, draw it, paint it," I advised a startled class of about twenty-five cons the first time I guest-lectured. "These films I make are my crimes, only I get paid for them instead of doing time." It was my tryout at the Patuxent Institution, located halfway between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. I was a little nervous, but I felt it was good advice. Maybe a little different from the usual therapy, but practical nevertheless." "Going to Jail" in "Crackpot : The Obsessions of John Waters"

He also did impro with them, and his experience seems to back up what Johnstone says about spontaneity liberating the child within :

"The last day I resisted the requests of some of the students to bring in porno videos, and instead we did mass improvs featuring the entire class on camera : a tent revival led by a berserk preacher, a bratty kindergarten class and a 747 full of passengers about to crash were the most fun. With fifteen minutes left before the end, someone came up with the best idea of all. Singed into my memory is the image of the biggest brute in the class playing Santa Claus as each con sat on his lap telling what he wanted for Christmas. Ho, ho, ho was never like this." John Waters, ibid.

"Students need a ‘guru' who ‘gives permission' to allow forbidden thoughts into their consciousness. A ‘guru' doesn't necessarily teach at all. Some remain speechless for years, others communicate very cryptically. All reassure by example. They are people who have been into the forbidden areas and who have survived unscathed. I react playfully with my students, while showing them that there are as many dead nuns and chocolate scorpions inside my head as there are in anybody's, yet I interact very smoothly and sanely. It's no good telling the student that he isn't to be held responsible for the content of his imagination, he needs a teacher who is living proof that the monsters are not real, and that the imagination will not destroy you." Keith Johnstone, ibid.

When we follow the example of someone like John Waters and reveal to the world just how insane and depraved the things going on in our heads really are, but in a safe way, with humour, and while remaining a polite, functioning, responsible member of society, we ease the sense of fear and guilt in others.

Coming Out of the Closet

One of the social movements that came out of the sixties was the Gay Pride movement. Homosexual men and woman had, for centuries, been living in a state of secret shame, afraid to acknowledge their true sexual desires. The Gay Pride movement encouraged them to "come out of the closet" and be proud of who they were.

Maybe we need to take a leaf out of their book. If we are all fucked up inside from all of that repressed bile, and needing a safe and therapeutic way of unburdening ourselves, perhaps we need a new movement which says, "I'm fucked up and I'm proud!" Because we have every reason to feel proud that we have had the strength to live with this sorry state of affairs for so long in secret. The amount of energy we spend covering up what we are ashamed of and hurling accusations at each other in self-defence is incredible. And when we find that we are really all in the same boat - and that there are fun forms of therapy to deal with it - we will find together a life so rich and rewarding that we can't even begin to imagine it.

People to Check Out

These are a few people whose writings I've found useful.

Jeremy Griffith

An Australian biologist who has written three books about the origins and nature of the human condition - our capacity for good and evil. Given the rough time I had with depression from the age of 17 to 35, I doubt I would be alive today if it were not for the help I received from reading Griffith's books - "Free : The End of the Human Condition", "Beyond the Human Condition" and "A Species in Denial". Obviously I'm not in a position to judge the scientific basis of his theories, but his central thesis makes so much sense and is so illuminating of human behaviour that it is very hard to argue with. Which doesn't mean that I agree with everything he has to say. I find some aspects of his treatment of the varieties of human sexuality unconvincing at times, and his interpretation of then current political events in "A Species in Denial" seems over-simplistic at the very least. But, having said that, all of his books contain a vast treasure-trove of crucial insight :

http://www.humancondition.info/

Keith Johnstone

Johnstone is a teacher of theatrical improvisation. His book "Impro : Improvisation and the Theatre", which I've quoted extensively above is one of the most remarkable, insightful and inspirational books I've ever read. You don't have to be an actor to benefit from reading it. It is a remarkable tool for learning to be more creative :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Johnstone

R. D. Laing

A Scottish psychiatrist whose controversial views on sanity and madness caused a stir in the Sixties. The Politics of Experience is one of his best books :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._D._Laing

Wilhelm Reich

A German psychiatrist who described "body armour" - the repression of emotions through the rigidifying of the musculature (e.g. "the British stiff upper lip") - and "character armour" - the unhelpfully rigid ego structure. He believed that the repression of the emotions was linked to the formation of cancer. He also pointed out that the orgasm serves a useful function in freeing up the armouring. He coined the term "the sexual revolution", believing that political oppression relies on sexual repression. Toward the end of his life he went kind of nutty, and many only know him for the strange inventions he dreamt up during that part of his life, such as the Orgone Accumulator and the Cloudbuster :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich

Theodore I. Rubin

"The Angry Book" had a huge impact on me :

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684842017/ref=pd_rvi_gw_1/002-7751062-6213641?...

John Waters

My favourite film-maker and an hilarious writer and public-speaker. His autobiography "Shock Value" and his collection of essay's "Crackpot" are an unending source of delight :

http://www.dreamlandnews.com/

Also :

Gospel of Thomas

It is interesting to compare fundamentalist Christianity as it is today with the view of Jesus and his teachings as described in this short Gospel that was not included in the New Testament :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Thomas