The Shamanic View of Mental Illness (2010)
jaysongaddis.com
jaysongaddis.com
I really don't agree with how widely we apply the disease model when thinking of human behaviors. Some people are mentally ill, but the world we live in is more certainly ill. The expected arc of a life in the Western world is that you spend your healthy years working on other people's goals so you can spend the last few years of your life doing what you want with what resources you've amassed and what health you have remaining. We wage wars and torture, reward greed, deny each other healthcare, homes, food, our leaders are cartoon villains. If we manage to find love, it is discriminated against unless it fits into a narrow set of parameters. If we are unlucky, we are born, starve for a few years, and then die of preventable, curable disease.
Happy participation in this society is not rational. As Krishnamurti said, "It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a sick society." I have been lucky in the opportunities that I have had available to me, but it's not hard for me to conceive of situations where the rational choice is to drink oneself to death. Life is unkind to many people.
The ideal solution is to fix all of the world's ills, but obviously that isn't realistic, at least not in our lifetimes. We can make progress, but help will arrive too late for many. I can empathize with those who choose to say that the individual is sick, rather than the world, because the individual is easier to change.
But it's simply not true in some cases. Instead of telling someone, "Something is wrong with you, let's fix it," we should often be telling them, "You're right, there's a lot wrong with your life and the world, and much of that can't be changed; let's see if we can find a way to find you some contentment despite that."
To be very clear: some people are mentally ill. Individuals can be ill AND the world's can be ill. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Eventually, I sought mental health help (to get the drugs I sought from GP) where I was being treated from the article's perspective. I was told that instead of a mental illness, I seem to have a PTSD and the way I am having delusions is a natural behavior. I also got some drugs, not the ones I wanted, but the ones I actually needed. Either way, I finally found an authority that accepted me and my situation. Surely enough, all my symptoms disappeared within days the appointment.
The experience showed me how fine line there is in mental health and how much the outside world can affect the image of yourself.
I love this sentence, and I want to say yes to both -- we should keep working to fix all the world's problems, and not be discouraged that it will indeed take longer than our lifetimes. And in the meantime show what kindness and mercy we can to people who are caught up in the undertow of today's social reality.
I'm not sure what you mean by "believing in spirits". But our origin is of spiritual nature and this "materialistic" world we experience is just one (temporary) expression of it.
There is more than one healer who claims that a certain percentage of "schizophrenic" people are not actually ill, but have a heightened level of sensitivity, meaning they receive information coming from "the other side" (from our "source"). Hearing voices can therefor be part of that. Some call such people "psychics".
Here's an example of such a person (healer): http://www.miraclescome.com/en/the-book-summary/excerpts
If there was something real to this "other side" it would be reliably reproducible. Yet no well formulated double blind follow up study has ever reproduced any psychic phenomena.
Not to mention, I can trick a "psychic" every time with acting.
My mental health crisis was absolutely a wake up call. It lead me to make significant structural changes to my approach to phenomenology, aesthetics, morality, and epistemology. I totally restructured my moment to moment experience of existence.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SuicideWatch/
they have some very good stuff in the sidebar and are very supportive.
And with that out of the way, if you will indulge my curiosity, do you suffer from it? I hope you have a nice day.
In the last 2 years I have sat in a total of 5 joint ayahuasca and san pedro ceremonies (2 ceremonies over 3 days) and can say that each one has shifted in some significant way how I see myself, the world, other people and the interconnected relationships between them.
The internet has a lot of crazy information out there, but this Vice piece is the most measured I've seen:
You killing yourself would fuck up the lives of the people who love you and make them sad. In that sense, your life doesn't really belong to you; they're the ones who will suffer if you die.
Please don't do it. I know it's hard. And having a mental condition is tiring. You're a rock in the sand slowly being worn down by the waves. They never stop. And all of your fellow rocks are just past the high tide mark.
It's possible to be supportive and try to keep someone alive as long as possible without making them feel like they're slaved to someone else's desires. I think everyone deserves to feel autonomous.
I want to kill myself. I've wanted to end my wretched life for a long time now. But I know that if I did this it would destroy my family. I love my mother, father and sister and I don't want to do this horrible thing to them. So, in my mind, my only option is to limp onward.
It is 100% my decision. I've decided to make the less selfish choice.
First of all, please, if you believe you are actually going to harm yourself then talk to someone right away. Call a relative / friend / counseling hotline [online search should find a number in your country / area].
If you can't get through, or you think you might still harm yourself, then go straight to your hospital's ER or call an ambulance.
Bottom line: if you're in that situation, you need to make contact with someone!
Aside from the "urgent situation" stuff above, I echo the suggestions of other commenters that explaining your symptoms to a medical professional (appointment with family doctor, or similar) is an important step. They will likely be able to advise you better than any of us.
Finally, on mental illness in general: I've experienced episodes of major depression and of serious anxiety problems (as, in fact, have many of my friends and family). Medication, for me, worked wonders and helped me rebuild my strength - but the real turning point was when I talked it over with my doctor. That helped me begin exploring what I could do to get better, which led to all the improvements I've felt since.
I know it's difficult and I know I'm not in a position to understand your particular situation. I'm not suggesting these problems are always easy to fix - but from what I've seen, I really do believe improvements are possible for all of us.
Good luck with everything.
Something within you associates the feeling of "depression" with reward.
Actively review your history, your relationships, patterns of behaviour. Look at your own thought processes critically, document them, decide how you want to think instead, and force yourself to think in the new way.
You control not just what you think but how you feel. You can feel how you want to feel. That's the key. Once you decide or are told you're "depressed" you "accept" that you have an "illness" and internalise it. Stop doing that shit. Ignore those bastards. Change how you think.
This is basically CBT. You have to actively control your thought processes to change them to something you want. Once you've done that for a while it becomes the new default.
Don't allow yourself to think things that don't help you. When you start fantasising about death, don't let yourself think about it. Force yourself to make plans for the next few days or something instead. When you think "I don't have the energy/motivation to make plans because I'm 'depressed'", tell yourself, "I'm not allowed to think that, instead I'm going to MAKE THE FUCKING PLANS".
Fuck all that bullshit about "chemical imbalances". You know what that means? It means your brain is wired wrong. Those chemicals? The sames ones everyone else has. Wanna know what the imbalance is? YOU LEARNED TO BEHAVE IN THE WRONG WAY, SO YOUR WIRING IS ALL FUCKED UP. Those neurotransmitters are going exactly where they've learnt to go.
YOU have to retrain your brain. Fuck everything people have told you about being "mentally ill". Recognise your brain as a learning machine and TEACH THAT MOTHER FUCKER HOW TO BEHAVE.
Life sucks? You either learn how to change it or learn how to change what you think about it.
You think those poor mother fuckers in third world countries with just enough food to eat who save up for years to buy a BICYCLE are depressed? FUCK NO THAT MOTHER FUCKER GOT HIS BICYCLE. He's 40 years old, barely feeding his family, but he's got a smile so wide he lights up every mother fucking heart in his village.
You know WHY? Because he doesn't think about why things are shit. He thinks about why things are SHIT HOT. MOTHER FUCKING BIKE HAS A BELL CHECK THAT SHIT OUT.
YOU define your reality. YOU define how you perceive the world. With a great deal of influence from those around you.
Surrounded by mother fuckers who are "depressed"? Get the fuck away from them. Find happy people. Catch their disease instead.
Control your thoughts, control your environment, discipline your brain to only allow you to think things that help you. Fuck everything else.
That's how you cure depression. You control what you think by understanding why you think what you think right now and throwing away the bad shit and keeping the good shit.
Do yourself a favour. Next time you think "I should be dead". Think "lol brain you're not allowed to think that shit anymore", SMILE and write down some shit you're grateful for. Call your friends/family and chat about some good shit that went down in the past. Think about the people who have done good shit for you over the years, and how happy it makes you that those mother fuckers exist.
Think of the mother fucker who you're most grateful for. Why do you like them so much? How did they make you feel? GOOD. Now go make other people feel like that. Be happy. Make other people happy. Feed on their happiness.
"But I want to die". Shut the fuck up brain you're not allowed to think that. Hey brain, remember that fucking awesome ice cream we ate last week? Yeah that was some good shit. I should show someone that ice cream, they'll like that shit. Remember that kid we used to hang out with when we were kids? Wonder what he's doing with his life now. We laughed our fucking cocks off at such and such. What a good memory.
What's that brain, feels good? Yeah, yeah it does feel fucking good. That's why you're gonna think good shit from now on brain. BECAUSE IT FEELS GOOD.
Fuck. Think good stuff. Don't allow yourself to think bad stuff. Make it a habit. Eventually you stop thinking bad stuff.
Make plans. Make people happy. Feed on happiness. Think of good memories. No good memories? Go fucking make some. Then think about them.
Fuck depression. Ain't nobody got time for that.
Here have a hug. They're free. Pass it on. Have a smile too these fuckers are great. :-D
Okay I'm done.
> This is basically CBT. You have to actively control your thought processes to change them to something you want. Once you've done that for a while it becomes the new default.
It's a very poor description of CBT.
Of course, giving mental health advice on the internet can be dangerous. This is of course not a magic recipe (advertising it as such may lead to people thinking "if this doesn't work for me, I'm broken") but I believe for some people your advice might be very helpful.
What you describe is the state of mind I had going out of a long lasting (1y+) depressive phase: "Fuck depression. These thoughts are not me, they are a parasite in my brain trying to kill me and I will identify and fight them."
https://news.ycombinator.com/fave?id=14104733&auth=eadd5c4c6...
For instance:
> The key thing is to realise that YOU control your thoughts. We're creatures of habits. YOU choose what to think whether you realise it or not.
Rather, you choose what to think of those thoughts you have.
Saying that "you choose what to think" means that you can control your thoughts.
You seem to be operating with unusual definitions of "think" and "thoughts" if thinking does not result in thoughts.
By saying, and repeating "you can control you're thoughts" without giving any of the detail of CBT you're merely telling people with depression to just think themselves happy.
Also, people with OCD will find it harder to control their thoughts, and people with psychosis may find it impossible without medication.
Given that thought generation is not a process that you (the person) actively control, that seems rather obvious. "Thoughts" would refer to all of them, and many thoughts are intrusive or otherwise do not originate from "you" (i.e., insights, creativity related thoughts, odd memories, associations, etc., etc.).
You can have thoughts about thoughts, and you have a greater control over those because you /are/ more or less actively generating those, but that's not true for most thoughts you have.
Even then, the control space is very limited (not truly deserving of the term control) and only available to people who practice a lot of introspection. CBT is a tool in making one's way there. It's not something that the average person can get up and do. "You can control your thoughts" is therefore not the most useful statement, we're not discussing what's possible in theory, we're trying to help a specific person.
-- Albert Einstein
If you need a more hands-on approach, I can recommend an old (1980) but very, very good book: Feeling Good by David D. Burns. Best $6 you will ever spend IMHO if you have any kind of depression issue.
When I was most severely depressed, it felt like I had fallen into a pit of soft, soft dirt. The more I tried to claw my way out of it, the more I would only dig a deeper hole. By learning to change my thought patterns, it was like having the hole I was in shrink until I could just step out. It is hard for someone who hasn't been there to understand. Those who suffer try so hard, but it just doesn't work.
Today, I am fully recovered and have been for years. There is hope that people can be completely healed.
Those thoughts you listed are entirely rational. Only very, very few folks have irrational thoughts.
1) Take a shower. 2) Do a load of laundry. 3) Go for a long run. 4) Take a shower and put on clean clothes. 5) Start eating mostly green leafy vegetables and 6) Make an appointment with a doctor or psychiatrist (you are in urgent need of medical care).
Get and stay clean, start exercising and eating healthy, and go get some professional help. If you have any close friends or family, now would be a time to cash in those "Free Hug" vouchers with your support network. I also started reading the Stoics.
- internal family systems (for understanding how deal with strong emotions) - https://youtu.be/qo_DebUQgmA
- Win Hof Method (for helping the body to heal itself) - https://youtu.be/gKgUE76udK4
Don't want to give any real advice here other than talk to someone! - that sounds very scary.
will keep ya in mind..
EDIT: Or are you a sister?
Conventional psychology tries to do something similar by saying these problems are a chemical imbalance or a dysfunction of the brain, but both of those are hard for a person dealing with the illness to separate from "your mind or yourself is wrong." This is a terrifying idea that only gets worse when an illness goes untreated for long periods.
When the only life you remember is depressed, if you work towards fixing it you find the things you like, the friends you've made, and the life you've built will pull you back towards depression. This overcomes all of that by putting you in a new situation and setting a new path for your life.
The causes they claim seem silly to me, it's not far away from "of course you have cancer you unrepentant sinner," but some aspects of their treatment methods seem helpful.
Less esoteric explanation: Or it is a call from deep within, the subconscious. But with the same implications. And that medications might not be that helpfull for that purpose.
And the concept of a higher beeing... and in general esoteric things, and least in the common understanding of the word, not so much.
That beeing said, I am quite open and interested in esoteric things(even though I prefer the word spiritual), I just wanted to point out a more likely explanation to the op. Not ridiculing his version.
additionally I would refute your claim that the subconscious (or really anything to do with consciousness) is well understood by science. it is acknowledged as being a thing that exists and just as readily acknowledged as being a thing that is poorly understood, at least from a materialist science perspective.
the models of consciousness that produce more thorough and well-explored theories tend to come from spiritual traditions, such as Buddhism, rather than materialist traditions.
And I did not said that subconscious "is well understood by science", just that it is broadly accepted that it exists, unlile gods.
What's the more likely explanation:
(1) various different conditions including depression and psychosis are calls from a higher being, not thus far sensible to science; or
(2) the brain, a vastly complex organ with significant structure and dynamics, grown out of meat from a tiny unique egg and trained over decades of unique experience, works a bit differently to the norm in some people, in ways that can be distressing.
Occam's Razor is tingling.
"When my son was four or five years old, he asked one of those interminable questions that children ask: 'Why does the sky get dark at night?'
"Eager to increase his understanding, I put a lamp in the middle of the floor to act as the sun, got down the world globe, and used a tennis ball for the moon. Then I walked around the "sun", carrying the globe and turning it, explaining how we are suspended in space, constantly moving. It was the universe in a nutshell - sun, earth, moon, stars, seasons.
"My son watched the production with silent, squint-eyed attention. When I finished, he said to me, 'You don't expect me to believe that, do you?'"
For a lot of people, the supernatural explanation is the simpler explanation. The so-called "scientific" (or more properly Scientistic[1] or maybe Naturalistic[2]) world view rests on explanation after explanation that takes years and years of education to even understand, much less accept.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_%28philosophy%29
I'm a physics teacher, and most teenagers don't have a clue about this at all. They think astronauts float around in space because there's no gravity there. If there's no gravity, then how does the earth stay in orbit around the sun? That shows they really don't understand it at all. It's difficult and you have to actually think hard over a long time to make all the pieces fit together.
the level of precision and rigor, backed by advanced instruments and mathematics, needed to disprove the Geocentric Model is really quite high. you have taken your own education for granted.
So it seems that people in this thread are taking the position that depression is a calling from a higher being. Not just metaphorically, but some version of actually true.
Have you spent some time with depressed people, or been depressed? This posited higher being is pretty weird.
I am constantly suprised by my fellows.
Consider a religious zealot who denies evolution on the basis of a literal interpretation of a Creator. Pretty ridiculous right?
The opposite end of the spectrum is an empiricist who only cares to discuss or consider that which can be posited and falsified by scientific experiment. If something can not be observed and measured then it is "supernatural" and therefore nonsense that doesn't merit consideration.
I am of the opinion that the empiricist is just as much of a bull-headed fundamentalist. Of course the empiricist is more rational on the surface, but as you peel the layers of logic away, eventually you realize that there is always faith in something in the end. Maybe you believe that objective knowledge can give us meaning, maybe you believe science can explain all phenomena, maybe you believe there is nothing real which can't be somehow perceived.
Well I am an agnostic. To me, the application of Occam's Razor is that my consciousness if evidence of some meaning. The idea that the configuration of my atoms gives rise to my consciousness is possible but does not seem particularly likely, yet many so-called rationalists somehow assume this is the case out of fear of a "supernatural" explanation. Setting up an image of God as a bearded man in the clouds is just a strawman to discredit what is actually a very reasonable idea: there is some purpose to the universe which is probably beyond our understanding and which will never be revealed by science.
Talk of a higher being necessarily implies not understanding. Being able to sit comfortably with not knowing is a valuable trait. Putting a framework like a "higher being" around difficult psychological conditions is one way to grapple with uncertainty and perhaps find a solution. Getting caught up in whether or not that is a metaphor is to really miss the point.
Very good point. Most people in the west assume that religious texts are written to be understood literally and not metaphorically.
This might be due to zealotry witnessed in some major religions.
You've invoked consciousness, purpose and meaning as if they were important. All of which are like the higher being - they aren't real outside psychology. They are compact labels we made up to try to capture some aspects of our psychology. They help us predict each other's behaviour and communicate effectively.
There's no hard problem of consciousness, no problem of meaning or purpose, no need to ground anything in faith, no solutions exist, because all these things are psychological concepts that have no meaning at all outside the psychological context. They aren't nonsense - they are important to us as people - but that doesn't make them real in any fundamental way. They are contingent on the details of our brains. Its very important to realize that we don't need cosmology to be compatible with these things.
Consider how difficult it is to even define any of these terms in satisfying way. They are all metaphorical, like the higher being.
This means that:
> what is actually a very reasonable idea: there is some purpose to the universe which is probably beyond our understanding and which will never be revealed by science.
is incoherent. 'Purpose' is a property that is convenient to ascribe to brains. There is absolutely no justification to apply it to anything else. And if you look even a little closely, you can't even find it in brains.
Are you able to explain what an electron is, or what gravity is or how light propagates without resorting to metaphor and hard-to-define terms?
I used to be a pretty hardcore rational materialist until I accepted that it doesn't fit very well with my own experiences.
> You've invoked consciousness, purpose and meaning as if they were important.
They are and you know it.
My point is that you don't need to ground your cosmology on them.
No one can say there is no absolute because that statement itself is asserted as absolute.
is your mind real? is mine?
I doubt anyone believes that. How could that ever be so?
"To me, the application of Occam's Razor is that my consciousness is evidence of some meaning"
This really makes no sense, it's the same anthropocentric fallacy that led people to believe for centuries that the Earth must be the centre of the universe.
It's back-to-front... the need to seek 'meaning' for life is more likely a result of the narrative tendency in human consciousness. And in recognising this we can turn away from the idea that there must be some kind of 'higher' externally-provided big-m 'Meaning' - an idea which must lead to either hopelessness and futility, or self-delusion.
Instead, small-m 'meaning' in your life becomes something you can give to yourself, you can choose what gives meaning to your life, you can change your mind.
Being able to sit comfortably without Meaning is a valuable trait.
Note that I don't need for there to be Meaning, I just happen to believe there is because it makes sense to me. It's not particularly anthropocentric because I'm not claiming that it has anything more to do with humans than with space dust. Again this is not about knowledge but about faith. We all have faith in something, but some people have trouble accepting that and instead justify their belief systems by pointing to facts. The problem is we don't live in a mathematical world where the axioms are defined by us, our logic has to ultimately be based on something. I agree with you it's a beautiful thing that we get to choose what that is.
The problem with this conversation is that the idea you unpack from the phrase "higher being" isn't really like the idea they compiled to that phrase. There's a fundamental translation problem in that things which are simple structures in one framework are hard or impossible to express in the other.
You have to understand what the reverse image of that phrase is in their model, not what the reverse image is in your model (ie, the idea they were trying to convey, not what you would have been trying to convey using those words). This is obviously extremely hard, as we only have access to our own model, not theirs.
For places where the models are similar, this is less of an issue, because the two reverse images are then similar. However, when the models substantially diverge, it leads to one of the most common breakdowns in communication we see (and we see it a lot, across topics).
I mean, modern mathematics happened because people had different internal models for what "function" meant, but you seem to think a concept like "higher power" is easy to translate.
For what it's worth, I don't think the two ideas are incompatible -- could you elaborate on why you do?
I have no idea why you think I have any position on the ease or otherwise of 'translating' this term. I've made no claim about that. I read the article in good faith. 'Higher being' is the term they chose. I assume it's the best term available to the author. I'm not arguing about it. I'm just not persuaded that depression is a call from a higher being, as far as I understand what they are getting at.
If you don't actually understand what they're getting at, you being pretty sure the views are incompatible results from misevaluating how well you understand what they're saying -- hence the discussion of why that communication is hard.
Which is why I asked you to elaborate on why you think the views are incompatible. Which you declined to do.
So I'm not really sure what else to say if you don't want to get in to specifics of how you interpreted the concept and why you think the two models are incompatible.
I said they weren't equivalent, and earlier I asked which explanation is more likely.
s/complimentary/complementary/
1) a model which stigmatizes you for life and rejects you as a functioning member of society and has the supra legal power to subject you to a vast array of human rights abuses including but not limited to: indefinite detention, solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, forced drugging, and other forms of psychological torture[1].
2) a model which accepts and respects you as a member of society
[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/29gr27/redditors...
* Which model is more likely to prevent someone with mental illness from harming himself or others because of incorrect diagnosis?
* Which model is more likely to lead to scientifically sound treatments for his malady?
* Which model is more likely to encourage people to generally think rationally about the real world around us?
>The tradeoffs of Science vs everything else have proven to be worth it over and over.
I hate to invoke Godwin's law here but it is worth noting the key role "science" and psychiatry played in propagating the Holocaust[1]. If we're going to play the science card, we should make sure it's objective.
[1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23511221
Edit: curious you spell Science with a capital "S"
The problem with psychiatry isn't that they aren't trying or that they're not going about it the best way that we know how. The problem is that the human mind is still too complex at the macro level to be easily testable. But Science has shown again and again that it's the best way to go about determining how reality works. We shouldn't abandon it now and prefer delusional thinking because it has a minor winner in making a patient feel better. That said, tell the patient whatever he may want to hear in the psychiatric ward. Just don't try to pass it off as legitimate outside of the mental institution.
Regarding capitalization: Sometimes I find it helpful capitalize schools of thought that embody more than just a casual set of principles. I can do some science in the lab, but not really have a lot of trust in Science as a way to live life, run society, and generally approach problem solving. I do the same thing when writing about being liberal vs being "a Liberal".
I agree this is the root problem, which is why I think psychiatry, if it wants to be a legitimate medical science, should adhere to medical ethics, i.e. primum non nocere. Otherwise, psychiatry patients are akin to lab rats.
And, fortunately, there is growing research with psychedelics and "alternative" substances such as MDMA, Ibogaine, psilocybin, and even LSD as legitimate forms of healing PTSD, trauma, and various ailments people suffer from.
I really appreciate everyone's comments here. Hundreds of thousands of people have read this post. 15,000 people have joined a private facebook group to share their stories. Wow.
This post is 7 years old. Now I'm a relationship student and teacher and run The Smart Couple Podcast to help individuals and couples learn better tools and skills for long-term partnership. I also founded The Relationship School™ because I believe the source of so many of the world's problems are relational in nature. My aim is to eventually bring relationship education to teens and young adults everywhere.
Thanks for reading and engaging guys!
Respect, Jayson
My youngest brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia a decade ago. I've watched him cycle through horrible psychotic episodes for years until he gained insight into his illness and agreed to start taking medicine. It's only since then that he's been freed from the voices that tormented him, and the paranoid delusions he would obsess over. He would tell you that there's nothing spiritual about the symptoms of his illness.
I'd also note that the guy who posted this also recently posted an article on LSD micro-dosing. Tells you a bit about where he's coming from...
In modern terms, it can be described as mind reprogramming. Moreover, in my view, all of the useful techniques for inducing and successfully guiding such a process, come out of the western mystical tradition and include tools such as the Tarot and the Hermetic Qabala.
The modern non-mystical paradigms (psychology, new age spirituality and religion) and various disparate shamanic systems are lacking too much in terms of understanding and are thus too imprecise and even dangerous if taken too far.
(1) http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=716ACCF7F16455CD2EE...
You'll note first of all that many of them disagree with one another as to what is really going on in the world. Is it spirits that are controlling what happens in the world, or is it ghosts, or ancestor, or God, or gods, or demons, or what? It's any or all of them or none of them, depending on which mystic, magician, Kabbalist, or shaman you ask. If they had some kind of understanding of what was going on, you'd think they could at least agree on the baseline of what was happening, but they don't.
Next, it's quite possible to be effective while being mistaken about the nature of the underlying phenomenon or the mechanism (figuratively speaking) at work. There's a great Radiolab episode on placebos that has a number of very entertaining examples on this front.[1]
Finally, history has shown that human fallibility and potential for self-deception is vast if not unlimited, and the potential for abuse of controlling the narrative around the nature of the world is great. I'd be very wary of anointing any world view as the one that has the secret key to understanding.
And when it comes to the techniques, the western esoteric tradition is without equal. Moreover, in many cases, the techniques have been obscured behind layers and layers of metaphysics (occult knowledge) and a superficial examination of the material will quickly lead one to reject it. Which is why traditionally, such knowledge was passed down in chains of transmission through teacher-student relationships.
These days, most of that knowledge is no longer occult ("hidden") but it's been obscured by vast amounts of garbage, a lot of it falling under the so called new age/wicca/esoteric psychology categories.
From a certain perspective, that could be true. But it very much depends on your perspective.
For instance, what is actually going on when you, say, sign that contract with the handsome cloven-hoofed gentleman at the crossroads, could very much matter. It could matter much more than the symptom relief or other worldly benefits you might experience from the "technique".
Similarly, whether it's a loa mounting you or just an expression of your subconscious could also very well matter.
Whether the knowledge which is not occult or esoteric reveals anything of value that once was also really depends on who you ask. Some might say the really secret knowledge has never been revealed to profane outsiders, and is kept secret for the elect, and what has been published is false, no matter what some others might claim. Many also believe that the true knowledge is only passed on directly from teacher to student, sometimes non-verbally or even supernaturally, and can not be expressed in words.
But who knows how to separate the wheat from the chaff here? Certainly not me.
By this term, I am referring to a consistent stream of philosophy and induced brain-change practices, that provided the underlying foundation for Christianity and Judaism (the bible and the Zohar were written by qabalists). Some scholars place its beginnings in ancient Greece and Egypt.
Of course, if one goes looking for these practices in modern Christian texts, one will come away empty as they've been diluted to uselessness or removed altogether. But if one looks at early Gnostic texts or immerses him/herself in the Western esoteric tradition then said practices will be laid out in a clear manner. They spell out a consistent system that is well-defined and amazingly sophisticated. It is humbling to think that "primitive savages" possessed a better understanding of the human mind hundreds of years ago, than most scientists do today.
Robert Sapolsky is a genius. Listen to this lecture, please.
I help them first with some simple meditations: it really helps them to learn to focus. Focus on the body and emotions. Often their thinking has run wild and that causes them to overstress and think unclearly. By just breathing and if possible, feeling they can get their senses back slowly. It already helps with people that have a light psychosis.
The spirits, as I perceive them, are often in a psychosis themselves. Others are in a huge depression, or in an extreme panic. They can feel like a cloud enveloping the mind. It draws us into their world, if we are not grounded well. That is why people that are close together can get into the same psychiatric problem.
People often call these spirits the "negative voice" or inner demon. But it is a bit more complex than that. Spirits are part of the consciousness of people that have died, and have not returned to their source. They lost contact with themselves, and with reality. They identify themselves with anything that they can attach themselves to. So when you are very stressed due to work or life, it can happen that a spirit joins your experience and identifies itself with you. And suddenly you "lose your mind". In deeper stages this can lead to depression or psychosis or other psychiatric problems. https://imgur.com/gallery/SOS4E
By removing the spirits, a person can recover his/her own mind. I have often spoken with people in total panic and seen them calm down in a few minutes after removing the spirits. Depression and psychosis take a bit longer, because there are more factors involved. But there have been some improvements.
In scientific sense it all seems impossible, since we have no models for spirits or consciousness or whatever. I am working on that on http://www.reddit.com/r/paradigmchange
Medicine can help to slow everything down, but does not magically remove the psychosis or depression. It makes it less active. Modern medicine works by slowing down so much that most stress can go away, after which the patient can recover. Sadly that means that the patient can sometimes fall back into the same psychosis or depression if the medicine is stopped or when it has grown less effective.
To heal better, it is always good to learn to meditate and regain control over your own mind. Mindfulness can already be effective. Enjoying some peace in nature works very well too.
Upon what do you base this claim?
Finally I've got help from a professional physician and psychiatrist (not the same person) and now I'm taking pills to treat my inherited hypothyroidism and Type 2 Bipolar Disorder. The only thing left is to find a good shrink (probably CBT) 'cause living with untreated BPD for a long time leaves your mind in a overshadowed state with a lot of negative self-believes and harmful mental habits.
Right. You'll tell that to the guy who put me on a police watch list and cost me a job opportunity because he reported me (and two other persons) for computer fraud and illegal access to his computers. Because he thought he had seen photographies of his sister's wedding on my computer screen. And I was hand in hand with koreans forcing him to sleep so they can launch missiles over Japan.
/anger
tldr; Nope, mental illness such as bpd, schiz., etc., are illnesses that have real consequences.
the antisocial behavior of the person who harassed you is a result of poorly treated mental health issue. to use the shamanic model, this would be a person who has not been properly guided through a spiritual transformation and therefore is living in a state of painful unintegrated delusional paranoia. a shaman's job would be to help them complete that transformation and cease their antisocial behavior.
Exactly. It's not a significant transformation in consciousness and a necessary stage on the path of human development.
Seriously, « That what we sometimes [0] call depression, bi-polar, psychosis, schizophrenia, might actually be a significant transformation in consciousness and a necessary stage on the path of human development [1]. » is loaded with so much personal development and alternative medicine red flags I am not surprised the only way to defend it is already to start a word definition war.
[0] derogatory wording. Emphasis is mine [1] are we referring to « humanity » or to that « individual » ? The whole sentence reads like it's the former approach.
I don't think we have anything else to discuss. Have a nice day.
This stuff is interesting to think about, but I find it lacking substance to explain reality with any sort of consensus.
even within the positivist worldview you are advocating it is wise to consider that there are, in fact, non-falsifiable premises underlying some of our most important tools. mathematics requires axioms. the standard model of physics requires non-falsifiable assumptions about initial conditions. there is no escaping this. not everything is falsifiable.
I don't think we can redefine "suffering" to be a state of spiritual exaltation and pat ourselves on the back for a job well done. You are excusing a departure from the progress we've made in understanding the human mind because: not everything is falsifiable, so may as well throw rigor out the window?
I fundamentally disagree with this statement. But then, I'm just an engineer, not a real scientist.
Regardless, I'm interested to hear elaboration on how you could fundamentally disagree that engineers must achieve a rigorous consensus on the facts before e.g. landing a rocket booster on a moving target in an ocean, after propelling to low earth orbit.
Rigorous consensus on the facts is a completely different statement and objective than what you originally mentioned, which was "understand the reality of a problem". you're moving your target here and that discredits your argument.
We can certainly (and are required to) have a rigorous consensus on the facts in order to do good engineering (yes, even software engineering). That doesn't mean we must "understand the reality of the problem". I can fix a bug in my code without understanding the theory of computation. I do know a lot about the theory of computation, but it just doesn't come up in my day to day problem solving. That's the point. The facts that are required to begin solving a problem are a very restricted sub-domain of the set of all possible facts that pertain to the problem, and are relatively independent of also having an understanding of the fundamental theories underlying the domain.
I meant "understanding the reality of a problem" insofar as that understanding can be achieved by more than just the internals of one person's mind by achieving "a rigorous consensus on the facts" from a group/team/society.
If the team of engineers at SpaceX responsible for landing that rocket booster had a mixture of people who
1) worked with the known facts governing physics, and 2) believed that chariots are pulling the sun across the sky, or that the concept of gravity is a poor approximation of the spiritual energy binding all things,
then I doubt they would have gotten close to success. They would have fundamental disagreement on the "reality of the problem" (need to land an object on a floating target) because they'd have no consensus on the facts of the constraints involved (gravity, thermo/aerodynamics, degrees of freedom, confidence intervals, probably a bunch more I can't imagine). Those constraints constitute the reality of the problem.
More to your point of fixing bugs, just because you don't understand every tenet of theories of computation, does not mean that you can substitute whatever explanations you imagine for how computers work and they become truth in reality.
ok, but let's back up a bit and remember what kind of thing we're discussing. we're discussing the unusual mental states that some people experience which causes them some form of suffering. a psychiatrist might call it schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or psychosis.
the subject in question is very much about the internals of one person's mind. if you're trying to argue that rocket engineering and mental health services are equivalent I think you've got a lot of explaining to do. if, on the other hand, you acknowledge that mental health services are not the same kind of thing as rocket engineering, then maybe we have some grounds to find agreement on.
I wouldn't ask a shaman to have anything to do with building rockets. I might ask a shaman to have something to do with mental health services though. Do you see the distinction?
Each provides a tractably computable approximation to a scale that the preceding ones can't be worked through at, while also discovering emergent properties that manifest at that scale.
There's no reason to think that our dominant paradigms in any of those fields are the only sensible way to approximate the underlying phenomena, and other (radically different) models might be able to express features present models struggle with.
Purely anecdotal, of course, but everything I have ever seen confirms a very clear positive correlation between mental illness and all sorts of dabbling in various squishy 'spiritual' matters. I don't know which way the influence goes, but suspect both, really.
The strong version: I believe that if you encounter serious mental health issues, and you start seeking cure in this strange mumbo jumbo alt.reality, you will very likely never get well again.
[Typos edited]
The problem of the article is that it ignores physiology which is evidently related to mental illnesses. A lot of illnesses have genetic factor.
I actually don't like calling inherited conditions illnesses. And I'm talking about anything including diabetes. You can't get sick with bi-polar disorder or diabetes. They're given from birth. You can't be completely cured and have to maintain yourself with medications for the rest of your life.
Next to that, there are also plenty of people that manage to wean themselves off medication after they've been on it for a few years. It's not something you're necessarily stuck with for the rest of your life.
I'll try. This is an interesting story of how the traditional pseudoscience of shamanism can meet halfway the modern pseudoscience of psychiatry. In this new paradigm mental health patients can live fulfilling lives by helping saner people hang on to their delusional beliefs.
There is no problem with any of this as long as objective reality does not exist.
Moreover, since we have circumstantial evidence that objective reality does not exist (see the various interpretations of quantum physics) I see no problem with any of that.
"I believe"
This person claims he can see spirits perturbing the mentally ill. He claims he has the cure for schizophrenia. What kind of science or unbiased analysis is going on here that is OT for HN?
The shaman's perspective also had some interesting food for thought about the implications of western society's lack of ritual for the right of passage into adulthood.
That doesn't mean we have to jump on the first outlandish theory of them channeling the dead because it 'sounds cool'
"Dogmatic belief in science" is an oxymoron. Science is skepticism defined. Science doesn't rely on belief, it relies on evidence. Belief plays no part. In fact, the existence of belief is why science exists -- it's a tool to to overcome belief. If we were cured of belief, what we now call "science" would be called "thinking".
The Platonic ideal of Science may exist in a realm of pure logic, but scientists and students are human and always subject to biases, preferences, hunches, and gut feelings.
It's quite possible for misguided science education to convey the lesson that anything a scientist says is true, and you need not understand or question it. That's dogmatic belief in science.
Yes, and that's why science exists. If there were no "biases, preferences, hunches, and gut feelings," there would be no need for science -- we would be able to think rationally, we would have no need for the unnatural discipline imposed by science.
> It's quite possible for misguided science education to convey the lesson that anything a scientist says is true ...
That's not science, that's religion. Science is based on skepticism and the rejection of all authority.
The motto of the Royal Society, the oldest scientific society still in existence, is nullius in verba, "take no one's word for it." The Society explains their motto this way: "It is an expression of the determination of Fellows to withstand the domination of authority and to verify all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment."
> That's dogmatic belief in science.
A dogmatic belief in science is something that fresh religious converts experience, and they've entirely missed the boat. To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
That might be their motto, but that's certainly not their practice.
It's simply impossible to personally reproduce every scientific study one reads about, for lack of time, money, staffing, knowledge, skill, etc. So even if some scientist wanted to reproduce every one exactly as it was done, they couldn't do it.
Modern science is an edifice built largely on trust. Scientists mostly trust that what they read about in scientific journals and books (especially ones outside their specialty), or that someone somewhere has verified it, or could in principle. Like ants, scientists mostly focus on building their little bit of the whole, and not try to rebuild the entire anthill every day.
Imagine if some physicist set out to try to personally reproduce every physics experiment in history to see if the results square up with what he's read about. Maybe if he lived a thousand years, had hundreds of billions in funding and mastery of every branch of physics he could do it. But realistically, it's not even conceivable as a possibility for a single human being.
But even if this hypothetical physicist superman could do it, the "scientific world view" (if we may call it such) is based on so much more than physics. As soon as he was finished with physics, this superman would need to move on to every other branch of science, to personally verify the rest. Not bloody likely, to say the least.
The skepticism that scientists do have tends to be at the local level, much like a couple of ants tugging at a little twig. They never tug at every grain of sand in the entire anthill. At best, they could maybe tug at a part of the foundation, and maybe the whole anthill will collapse and then they'll build themselves another one.
To whom does "they" refer? You're speaking as though scientists define science. That would be like arguing that, because murders are committed, therefore laws against murder serve no purpose.
Because of how science is structured, properly trained practitioners know what to doubt (i.e. everything but empirical evidence) -- claims are assumed to be false until supported by empirical evidence (the null hypothesis). The alternative is pseudoscience, which uses the opposite presumption -- a claim is assumed to be true until proven false.
In science, theories remain theories regardless of the evidence -- some theories have more weight than others, but all are open to falsification using new evidence.
In pseudoscience, because ideas are assumed true until proven false, and because most things cannot be proven false, we have Bigfoot, alien abductions, and virgins claiming to have been raped and taken seriously[1].
Take your pick, but don't assume science is defined by how it's practiced.
p.s. I was just reading a scientific paper and found this:
(from https://psychcentral.com/news/2017/04/10/genetic-link-to-str...)
"Culverhouse noted that finally, when it comes to this gene and its connection to stress and depression, the scientific method has done its job.
“Experts have been arguing about this for years,” he said. “But ultimately the question has to be not what the experts think but what the evidence tells us. We’re convinced the evidence finally has given us an answer: This serotonin gene does not have a substantial impact on depression, either directly or by modifying the relationship between stress and depression." (emphasis added)
Call it what you like. It exists, and it's a problem. You're just nitpicking over terminology now.
Yes, people who don't understand science is a problem. But that doesn't conflate religion and science.
Call it whatever you like, but belief is not science. Were this not true, you could argue that, because murders are committed, therefore laws against murder serve no purpose. But in fact, the opposite is the rational conclusion.
> You're just nitpicking over terminology now.
Yes, nitpicking about the difference between science and religion, as though they're interchangeable. In religion, something is true because you believe it. In science, something is probable solely to the degree that it's supported by empirical evidence. There are no two words with more disparate meanings.
How ironic. You've just articulated the postmodern position -- that there are no objective truths that can be conveyed from one person to another, that everything is a subjective observation[1] -- in a message that, to serve any purpose at all, requires and presumes what it has just denied. You might as well have said, "This exchange serves no purpose, I'm merely exercising my wrists."
So I'll take you at your word.
> ... you can't even truely trust that what any of your senses tell you is even real.
Correction: you can't do that. I can.
One more thing: s/truely/truly/
For sure, Science, unlike dogma, prides itself on changing belief in the face of conflicting evidence.
In theory, anyway.
In practice, I have a PhD in Computer Science and Geography.
Do I understand climate models? No, they're not my field.
Do I have the time to verify them? Certainly not.
How do I know then that the field of climate science is getting it right? I have to trust the institutional process, which as Kuhn points out is far from perfect.
If they're getting it wrong, it's not likely to be me that figures it out, so for the time being the rational course of action is to accept the consensus of experts.
tldr; belief in science.
Though cynically speaking you're right, people who trot out that phrase usually don't understand the above.
What would you call that?
For example, have a shaman go into a room and describe the spirit he sees. Then have another shaman go into the room, and see if his description matches.
Or, write about how many schizophrenic people this shaman has actually cured. Interview the patients, do a profile of their lives before and after, and explain the process that was used.
While this article is interesting from a cultural perspective, I still don't see how it is OT for HN.
what did they see?
If you are suffering from depression, please seek medical help.
I'm afraid that I must respectfully disagree with you. I'm not sure if you have suffered from depression, but I have. And I have been fortunate enough to systematically work through it with therapy. I know that the cause of the depression was not a chemical imbalance my brain, with all other aspects of my life being fine - but was in fact directly related to my own beliefs about myself and the world that we live in, and how these beliefs were impeding my actions and the set of actions I believed were available to me.
While I think the underlying ideas behind the article are not correct (the mountains were not speaking to me at least!), I am firmly of the belief that the pain of depression is a great driver for self-exploration which is done best in a kind environment. Pills that kill the senses are not the solution your mind is asking for.
If you have not had depression, or if you have it and have not overcome it, then I think you should do some user research by talking to people that have both had it and moved through it. If you have not done this then I think you should hold onto your current opinions loosely.
J
Tell me, how does dementia lead to the birth of a healer? How does someone regressing mentally, with their ability to communicate being completely lost, with their behaviors becoming more and more childlike to the point where they can't even feed themselves, how does that signify becoming a healer?
The only blessing in watching my grandmother's decline like this is that it was swift. Six months of hell, of watching someone you love becoming frustrated at their inability to communicate even the most basic thing. Of watching them forget how to take basic care of themselves. Of watching a simple door lock with the code printed right above it being sufficient to keep them from using that door. Of watching them play with a child's woodworking set because they no longer know the difference between that and the beautiful works they used to make with wood.
Fuck this shit. Birth of a healer my ass.
I'd be a bit less angry if they hadn't generalized it like that. A bit: how many "healers" have been lost to their visions, or to their depression? I have a feeling they'd simply sweep that under the rug as a natural consequence of seeing the spirits that others can not.
AFAIK dementia patients don't generally get involved in the oppressive and demeaning psychiatric system. It's a horrible business.
It is important to listen to the experiences of the "neurodiverse" to understand how we need to make life better for them. It's true that schizophrenia is generally a disaster that destroys the life of the sufferer and the people around them. What needs to be more widely recognized is the psychosocial aspect of illnesses like schizophrenia, e.g. the extent to which they are caused by toxic families and/or social circumstances. This is where "healing" becomes relevant: a psychotic problem can be an opportunity to change and escape from a toxic situation. Of course, it often has the opposite effect, when the patient is pathologized, medicated, and told that they are the problem.
As for how dementia is handled in the US? With full time care in lockup facilities. The few families who try and handle the care themselves fail most of the time, since it requires around the clock alertness and care, lest the person with dementia hurt themselves at 3 in the morning.
Also, most of the "neurodiversity" and "unusual mental states" proponents try to tell me that my ADD is a benefit to my life, that I would have made a great hunter gatherer. Which is, as the person actually suffering from the ADD on a daily basis, complete and utter horseshit. I know I couldn't have survived in such a lifestyle, because I'd die of starvation if I was required to hunt to survive.
Hunting requires moving in silence; ADD means I'm constantly bumping into things. Hunting requires sometimes interminable amounts of waiting; I'd get antsy after ten minutes and have to move. Hunting means being able to concentrate so when the right moment comes, you're ready to strike; ADD means I'd be thinking about ways to improve my spear and bow as a buck passes me by.