It is the binding to unassimilated experience which. through its inhibition of the adjustment process is at the root of mental illness. Like the stone wedged between the spokes of a wheel, restricting or even preventing motion, the abortion of emergent consciousness by the lingering traces of traumatic experiences - not so much something in the unconscious as the very substance of unconsciousness itself - reacts back upon the Rebirth Mechanism , damaging one's vitality and capacity for effect action or understanding.
Illness, be it physical or mental, is always accompanied by the feeling that one's possibilities for living a full life are being invaded, depleted and colonized by an alien presence which is somehow bound up with one's being or identity. The model for the unconscious mind being presented here identifies illness with the incorporation of the inanimate cosmos within the living psyche. The feeling of alienation, the sense that one is estranged from one's very identity is something carries over into all situations, in crowds, the intimate circle of one's own family, or in isolation. Conversely, a fully realized individual is neither lonely nor bored. Having established an authentic relationship with the universe, one cannot be alone. It has always appeared strange to me that people get married to "solve the problem of loneliness". I've not observed that married people are less lonely than anyone else. Loneliness and boredom come out of attitudes about oneself and the world. They are, of course, quite natural states that we all experience at times: what I am addressing are the chronic conditions associated with depression.
Supporting evidence exists in the observed connection acute mental illness and learning disabilities. We are all familiar with the kind of person whom we know to be very intelligent yet who, owing to the presence of emotional blocks, is unable to learn certain simple skills, memorization for example, or simple mathematics. Psycho-somatic symptoms such as hysterical blindness, catatonia, hallucinations and delusions obviously interfere with one's learning capacity. Fixed or obsessive ideas can render one incapable of focusing one's mind on matters not connected to the obsession.
Although adjustment and learning are not co-extensive, they are clearly closely related . The notion of adaptation covers both of them: if learning involves understanding , ( itself a highly complex process) , so adjustment involves habituation , the gradual adjustment whereby something considered alien or strange becomes acceptable, even familiar.
Contemporary education tends to gloss over all such distinctions, replacing true cultivation and understanding with the routine assimilation of encyclopedic quantities of factual data. A healthy educational curriculum is one in which knowledge, skill and socialization are interconnected in a balanced fashion. Both spiritual and intellectual development find common ground in the limitless adaptability ( what might be called the spontaneity ) of the living nature.
One finds an artistically effective image for this phenomenon in Norse mythology. In an episode in The Nibelungenlied , Siegfried manipulates his magical sword with such precision that he is able to slice through the body of his enemy without him being aware of it. In a taunting voice, Siegfried asks him to shake his body. When he does so, the two parts of his body fly off in separate ways and he dies. It is as if Siegfried's adversary were to be dead already without being aware of it.
This universal phenomeon can, if carried to its extreme, take the form of an obstinate resistance to altering one's relationship to the world in the presence of changed circumstances. Evidences of this form of behavior abound in history and literature:
Virtually up to the moment of his execution, Charles 1 of England seemed to have had no inkling that he and his cause were doomed. Even in the course of his trial he professed astonishment at not being treated with the deference due to a king.
The heroine of Puccini's Madame Butterfly obstinately persists in her belief that, owing to he marriage ceremony with Captain Pinkerton, he will come back to her. Only the actual presence of Pinkerton's new wife forces her to change her mind. In the absence of any perceived outlet to what to her is an intolerable situation, she commits suicide.
30 years after the end of the Vietnamese War, the black POW-MIA flag can still be seen flying from the flag staffs of local government buildings, fire departments and post offices around the country. The people who promote this flag are convinced that American soldiers are still be kept as slaves in Vietnamese POW camps. They suffer from an unshakable belief in the invincibility of the United States. Because they think that America can never lose a war, for them the Vietnamese War will never end.
Alluding to a similar phenomenon with a neurological basis, one can cite the "phantom limb". This can take various forms: In the first instance, the victim has the sensation that a recently amputated limb is still part of his body. There can be a considerable shock when he discovers that the region where he imagines his leg to be is only empty space.
In the second case, known as "Anton's" or "Babinski's" syndrome, an appendage is perceived of as an "alien presence", totally distinct from the proprioception of one's own body, though as closely attached to the body as its shadow. In A Leg To Stand On ( Simon & Schuster , 1984 ) Oliver Sacks relates :
"When I arrived I found the patient lying on the floor by his bed and staring at one leg...... He had felt fine all day, and fallen asleep towards evening ... Then he found, as he put it, 'someone's leg' in his bed - a severed human leg , a horrible thing ! .... feeling that a joke was a joke, and that this one was a bit much, he threw the damn thing out of the bed. But - and at this point his conversational manner deserted him, and he suddenly trembled and became ashen pale - when he threw it out of bed, he somehow came after it - and now it was attached to him ! "(pg.76):
It was , in fact his own leg. Sacks goes on :
" With my poor patient ... emergency surgery had disclosed a large vascular tumor overlying the right parietal lobe of the brain... as a result it was impossible for him to feel his leg normally - to feel it as 'present' or 'part of himself'. " ( pg. 82)
However, to be in a state of shock , a condition also covered by our use of the word, refers to a condition of fixation or trance, essentially a hypnotic state, with respect to the externally threatening object. The distinction between the first stage , ( the onset of a "shocking experience"), and the second, ( a "dazed" or "shocked" state) , is roughly the one that is made fear and anxiety .
Given that, ultimately, your self-image is your only real possession, anything that threatens or undermines one's sense of identity challenges one's very existence, functioning almost as a premonition of death. Thus, shock is, in some sense, the psychological equivalent of death, whereas anxiety is the emotion attendant upon the uncertainties incident on Pregnancy of Being, the process of Rebirth.
Following the onset of shock there emerge two binding fixations , one upon the mental constructed concept of Being, the other upon the perceived challenge of Non-Being. As Jean-Paul Sartre observes in his essays on existentialism, one's concept of self is perceived externally : one's intellectually constructed self-image has the same existential status as the recognition of someone with whom we are having a conversation.
This alienation is easily explained. Indeed, our self-image is actually the lifeless reflection upon our understanding of a person who has already changed. At the very moment of self-recognition one has already been launched onto the journey of fading from memory.
Both Being and non-Being are inanimate, drained of vitality. Also, in some sense both are obstacles to personal freedom. As such it is inevitable that the mind will seek out some path of liberation from them. A mind is absorbed by hypnotic fixation upon an external object because it is intent upon the destruction of that object. At the same time it is hampered by confusion arising from the presence of danger.
Obsessions are of that nature. Any woman who has had the experience of being the object of the obsessive sexual fixation of a man knows that, despite his assertions to the contrary, his intention is hostile, indeed that her life may well be in danger.
Consider the powerful effect of Hugo's novel Hunchback of Notre-Dame on the reader, through the unfolding of Claude Frollo's sexual obsession with the gypsy dancer, Esmeralda. From the very paragraph in which we witness Claude Frollo staring at Esmeralda out of the window of his study in Notre-Dame cathedral, we know that the endgame of the ensuing drama must culminate in her death. At the same time, Frollo describes his state as "love" because that is what he feels. This fundamental dualism of the tenderest sentiments with violent and destructive intent, is well-captured in the word: passion.
Fixation, hypnosis, passion, obsession, intense concentration, hostility, love: every one of these attributes are incorporated in pregnancy of Being, in the trance-state of shock.
Let us approach this problem from various angles: the first observation one makes is that the condition of fixation itself is a bound and not a free state. No state whose underlying emotion is fear can be free. The paradigm for this state is the natural reaction of both human beings and animals from the perception of the unexpected arrival of a potential enemy, that is to say, suspicion . Suddenly all of one's senses are on alert; canceling out all other mental preoccupations of that moment, one's attention is fixated in the direction of the perceived threat. Frightening events are, in the most literal sense, hypnotizing.
Shakespeare structures Act I, Scene 1 of Hamlet as a series of frightening encounters between the soldiers of the night watch on the battlements of Elsinore castle. These encounters themselves are only a foretaste of the paralyzing horror that will overwhelm them when the Ghost will manifest its presence.
The mind of someone petrified by fear is not free. All one's mental and physical energies have been diverted to dealing with the threat. Various possibilities present themselves for doing so: one may attack it; one may fly from it; or one may stand one's ground; pretend it isn't there; or try some form of conciliation .
The decision is made in the second stage. Clearly the initial stage, the onset of shock, is not free. The process by which it progresses to the second stage is also not free. Freedom from the second state, anxiety, attends upon a decision, and until that decision is made the mind remains in bondage to the external threat. The final outcomes must depend upon a perception of one's own relationship vis-a-vis the unwelcome presence.
In the classical arena of the hypnotic seance, the decision making power is somehow delegated to an external object via a mysterious process which, 230 years after the discoveries of Franz Anton Mesmer, is still not well understood, but which has been given a label ( which explains nothing) : suggestion .
Freedom, freedom of the will, self-affirmation, the resurrection of identity, is fully realized only in the third stage. It should not be understood as a spontaneous growth, some kind of magic, but as something emerging by a process of construction at work in the stage of latency.
Perhaps we never are free. The proper definition of freedom must begin from the recognition that it emerges at the end of a living, creative process, motivated by the necessity within the living nature itself to escape from the twin bondage of Being and Non-Being.
Let's put it this way: if existence in a dungeon is intolerable, one might say that one is compelled to seek a means of escape. Something that iscompelled is thereby determined , and one may then argue that one is not free.
Yet through escaping one is liberated . The attempt to make too fine a distinction between freedom and liberation is merely quibbling with language. Liberation from the double fixation on Being and non-Being requires that one bring into play all one's powers of imagination, resourcefulness and energy . Ultimate triumph in this endeavour may not be "free" in some philosophical sense: but who really cares?
The interpretation of the 3 phases of adjustment in terms of the respective roles of Father, Mother and Child is also basic to the structure and content of Greek tragedy.
The conflict or war of Being with non-Being can be designated The Category of the Father . The state of Latency , Becoming, or psychic pregnancy is The Category of the Mother. The phase of spiritual rebirth is The Category of the Child . The moment of insemination by the Father is the somatic metaphor for the traumatic onset of shock in the confrontation between Being and Non-Being initiating the Rebirth process. One can speak of the personal embodiments of Being (or Identity) and Non-Being (Antithesis or Counter-Identity ) as conjoining through insemination in the womb of Time, (Becoming , or the domain of the Mother ) like the fertilization of sperm and egg.
The close correspondence of the spiritual with the psychic process is prolonged in the attendant state of Anxiety that drives the psyche through the stages of conception, pregnancy and labor, to bring to birth the Reborn Child of Self, a pure manifestation of creative life energy, spontaneous, unconditioned, free.
It is therefore possible to describe all psychic processes in terms of sexual imagery. In some sense, physical procreation is the somatic metaphor or objective correlative to the fundamental psychic process . It is in this sense only , that any credibility is to be accorded to the Freudian claim , otherwise hopelessly mired in monomania, sexism and superstition , that "All psychic life is sexual".
If, as in the Stephen Hawking quotation cited in Chapter I, the forward flow of consciousness is by definition the forward direction of time , then the insemination of the mother by her own son constitutes a violation of the natural temporal order, something like an grammatical error in syntax that produces a nonsense sentence.
Incest in Oedipus Rex functions therefore as a metaphor, and only as metaphor; it is a mistake to think of it in any other way. In its character of metaphor it signifies the creation of malformations ( of the spirit or of the body), and can readily be translated into the birth defects in children born of unions by parents with too many close degrees of relationship. It also signifies the violence and chaos that consumes a society whose ruling class is devastated through internecine war over inheritance claims or property rights.
Grim examples of the latter are numerous and prominent in the phase of English history known as the "Wars of the Roses". The auto-destruction of the British aristocracy was played out over most of the 15th century, from the deposition and murder of Richard 2 (1398) to the death of Richard 3 at the battle of Bosworth Field (1485) .
All of the protagonists were descendants of Edward 3, the Lancastrians by way of his grand-son John of Gaunt, the Yorkists through Edward's great-grand son, the Earl of March.
The period referred to as the "Wars of the Roses", from the battle of St. Albans (1455) to Bosworth Field was only the most intense and vicious phase of a savage struggle that had started in the previous century.
It is deserving of note to observe that, although the institution of the family is reverenced the world over as the warm nest of protection and security against a cold, indifferent world, the familial setting is also the seat of the most merciless and protracted in-fighting. The family is the venue where the bitterest competition for recognition, affection, attention, possessions and property is found.
There is no jealousy like familial jealousy, no possessiveness like that of a mother towards her children, a husband towards his wife, a family towards its status in society. Freud may well have claimed that he was privy to some sort of scientific data showing that the quarrel between husband and son for possession of the mother was the crucial drama of family life, but every playwright from Sophocles to Eugene O'Neill has portrayed the conflict between siblings for a common patrimony as the bitterest struggle of all.
Among the many evils associated with mother/son incest ( genetic, psychological, political), the Greek tragedians singled out the tangle of hostilities between fathers, siblings and their children for the ownership of kingdoms. This vision is present, though in a latent form, in the Oedipus Rex , and is brought to the forefront in the other great play in Sophocles' Theban trilogy, Antigone .
Although Antigone, daughter of Jocasta and Oedipus, is the play's heroine, I would argue that its central figure is Creon. Although he, personally, is free of all incestuous connections with the polluted lineage of Laius, the bizarre complications in their rights of inheritance directly affect, via his unstable political situation, Creon's options for decision-making.
The action of the Antigone opens in the period immediately after the mutual slaughter of Eteocles and Polyneices, the sons of Oedipus. The cause of the war had been the possession of Thebes, that is to say, for the hereditary titles, powers and privileges of the monarch.
With the elimination of her brothers, rulership should have naturally passed to Antigone, the eldest daughter; but she is a woman. My impression of the world depicted in the Theban trilogy is that it was not unheard of that Thebes should have a queen rather than a king. What right, indeed, does Creon have to the throne, being related only to Jocasta, herself only the wife of Oedipus?
However, in the Oedipus Rex , Oedipus states that Jocasta's authority in matters of state policy is at a level with his own:
Creon : Then answer me. Did you marry my sister?
Oedipus: Of course I did.
Creon: And do you rule on equal terms with her?
Oedipus: She has all that she wants from me.
Creon: And am I not a third and equal partner?
Oedipus : You are ....(etc.)
(pg. 14 , Oedipus Tyrannus ; trans. Berkowitz & Brunner; Norton Critical Edition, 1970 )
For reasons which can hardly have been convincing to the Theban polis, ( such as her the blasphemy associated with her birth, her sex, age and so on) , Creon has assumed the right to govern Thebes. The traditional political solution is already prepared : Antigone is to be married to Hermion, Creon's son, thereby re-establishing the "blood lineage" from Laius through Creon's grand-children. One might call it a kind of genetic money-laundering.
Given that Creon's claim to the throne rests on flimsy grounds, he has good reason to fear the presence of factions in Thebes united under the banner of Antigone's stronger right thereof. Indeed, her descent from Laius is double: she is both the grand-daughter of Laius and his son's sister. It matters little that she herself never once in the play expresses any interest in supplanting her uncle.
The insecurity in Creon's position obliges him to impose his authority by force. He justifies this by a time-honored argument that has always had merit, yet has always been self-serving: if he steps down from the throne, anarchy and chaos will prevail:
Creon: ..Anarchy! Anarchy! Show me a greater evil!
That is why cities tumble and the great houses rain down
That is what scatters armies!
( pg 212 , The Oedipus Cycle, trans. Fitts and Fitzgerald, Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1949 )
By honoring Eteocles, defender of Thebes, with all due rites of burial Creon affirms his obedience to the sacred institution of kingship through descent of blood. By condemning the body of Polyneices, rebel and invader of Thebes, to the trash heap, and his soul to Hades, Creon casts out the blood- pollution in the lineage of Laius. He had been obliged to takes sides in the war between Eteocles and Polyneices. He has, so he claims, chosen the side of Thebes.
All of these dilemmae are clearly stated in Creon's opening speech:
Creon : ... the princes Eteocles and Polyneices have killed each other in battle; and I, as next in blood, have succeeded to the full power of the throne:
The irony could not be more complete. He is next in blood to their mother, not their father. Their mother's family had no claim to royalty.
I am aware of course, that no ruler can expect complete loyalty from his subjects until he has been tested in office.
He fully recognizes that his claim to the throne must be supported by extraneous proofs. In this he resembles Henry 5 of England, whose dubious claim to sovereignty rested on the usurpation by Henry 4 of the hereditary right of Richard 2. In order to strengthen his authority, Henry 5 claimed authority over France as well through Carolingian primogeniture. His "test" was at the battle of Agincourt.
Creon then announces his decision to afford burial to Eteocles and cast off Polyneices. After which he says:
... This is my command, and you can see the wisdom behind it. As long as I am king no traitor is going to be honored with this loyal man. But whoever shows by word and deed that he is on the side of the State - he shall have my respect and reverence while he is living, and my reverence when he is dead .
Observe that the sacral/sacrilegious dilemma Creon faces is somewhat similar to the one presented to him in the final scene of the Oedipus Rex :
Creon : What do you ask of me?
Oedipus: Cast me out of this land. Cast me out to where no man can see me. Cast me out now.
Creon: I would have done so, you can be sure. But I must wait and do the will of the gods.
Oedipus: He has signified his will - with clarity. Destroy the parricide! Destroy the unholy one! Destroy Oedipus!
Creon: That was the god's command, I know. But now - with what has happened - I think it better to wait and learn what we must do." ( Norton Critical Edition, pg. 32 )
The essence of Creon's situation in the Antigone , is that he must immediately do something to assert his authority before the Theban polis, something that shows his mastery of the problems facing the city, something that proves to the outside world that his reign will not become entangled with the domestic affairs of that crazy Oedipus family. "State before family! ", he proclaims by which he means "their family ."
The Antigone places its audience squarely in the center of an insoluble conflict, between the usurpation of power based on an indirect family connection (Creon ), and the assumption of power through a legitimate but unwholesome and polluted family connection (Antigone ) . Each antagonist is obstinate, uncompromising, unyielding. Each justifies their actions on the grounds of sacred duty. Each is driven by political forces outside of their control. And each is doomed to destruction, hell-bent on a collision course through the inherently fatal structure of cause-and-effect initiated by the primal crime of incest.
The Theban Trilogy may thus be seen in its entirety as an explication, in dramatic form, of how a false relation in the structure of kinship will pit close family members against each other, ending in the violent destruction of all concerned.