The Traumatized Self, Neuroses & Psychospiritual Consequences

In July 2002, I was invited to deliver a keynote lecture at the Third World Congress of Psychotherapy, "Anima Mundi," in Vienna. My lecture was titled "Spirituality, Culture and the Wounded Self". It could also be called, "The Errors Inbuilt in the Human Self and Their Correction", or pompously, "From Here To Eternity" since it embraces the "here and now" moment with the course the self is bound to take in liberating itself from what Buddhists call "obscurations"–(errors). Psychotherapy aims at correcting the biographical error of the self accumulated during a lifetime. Spiritual paths aim at correcting the transcendental error of the self or Separation from the Divinity, loss of our Buddha nature etc. The cultural error is corrected in synchrony with the biographical one because they are intimately interrelated. The culture imprints the self. If the self changes it impacts upon the culture, and vice versa. A Russian inherits the Russian modality of the self with its errors, a Spaniard the Spanish and so on.
What follows is the abstract prepared for the Vienna conference:
As physicists search for Grand Unified Theories ("GUTS"), so students of the mind attempt to integrate its emotional, mental and, ultimately, spiritual aspects. The author presents an initial step in this direction, based upon the conceptualization of the errors permeating the human self.

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I) The Biographical or Neurotic Error:

This error has its roots in the parental and social denial of the absolute, unconditional lovability of the self in its most pristine form as embodied in the human child. In a paper on Anaclitic Psychotherapy published in the journal Psiquis in 1986, I postulated that the primeval self of the child consists mainly of an innate ("hardwired") premise of self-knowledge–mostly of an emotional nature. It was termed "the Lovability Principle" defined as "the one hundred per cent certainty that we are lovable and will be mirrored as such by our parental figures." This innate premise can only become operative through kindling via parental confirmation. Otherwise, no matter how intelligent the individual may be, the emotional self remains stunted.
If the Lovability Principle is disconfirmed, the child/parent affective bond is damaged inducing sub-clinical but cumulative anaclitic reactions—anger, pain, despair, and eventually detachment—all reactions that I consider to be at the root of the psychophysiology of neurosis. The child has no capacity to assimilate an unloving/disconfirming parental introject into the self proper and must deny that sad reality via defensive exclusion. The child's mind detaches from that of the parent(s) and splits into two entities: the Lovability Principle asserting "I'm lovable" and the parasitic introject affirming: "no, you are not! [but implicitly: 'I am!!']." Disconfirmation is the ontological trauma par excellence. Neuroses are thus differentiated from any model of body disease by being, in fact, informational injuries.

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II) The Male-Mind and The Cultural Error:

In the process of defining customs and mores, cultures are also providing "prescriptions for being." Most, if not all cultures, are imprinted by a male-self corrupted by an ancient narcissistic error negating the Lovability Principle as epitomized in the dysfunctional injunction: "for a real man lack of love ought not to hurt." This injunction is enforced at the expense of the feminine aspects of our emotional self such as tenderness, love, compassion and other soft ("weak") feelings that are suppressed in favor of developing hard "masculine" ones glorifying domination and power. This is portrayed, for instance, in the implicit admission of "weakness" contained in the common expression "he broke down and cried." In consequence, "goodness" is not cultivated as an innate attribute of the child's emotional self but coercively branded into him/her as an unfelt mental self-rule.

 

Be stronger! Photo Courtesy of Stock.xchng   Joaquin, I told you: If you cannot fight them (they are too many) just join them -as I am doing. The way they are going treating the planet reminds me of an old joke: The father surprises the little boy masturbating. What are you doing he asks? You know you will go blind! But i like it the little boy replies. Then it all depends how thick you want the glasses. Photo courtesy of People Magazine November 30 2009

First, through its child rearing practices, the male state cripples the emotional self of the young boy who as an adult will tend to act out the damage (the self of the female is simply demeaned). Confronted with that acting out, the male-mind state, unable to recognize its shortcomings, feels forced to erect punitive, repressive regulations flavoring the citizen as "potentially bad and unruly" but the state's laws and institutions as the "good” or the “common good” (certainly better than the individual citizen). The citizen is supposed to trust the state but the state does not trust its citizens. It's in that sense that we could say that male-mind democracy is an oxymoron. We live at best in proto-democracies. Full-fledged democracy without a top-heavy power structure has yet to be invented.

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Catholic Church shamed by Irish abuse report

Cultures therefore are the hosts of those errors to be transmitted from generation to generation–much as the influenza virus hosts in chickens and pigs in between human infections. Being modeled after the structure of the male-mind, cultures are mostly emotionally mute, repressive, and dysfunctional because the male-self is by choice (or teaching) a false one–a contra natura self at the root of the "cultural error." Cultures systematically disparage the wisdom embodied in the emotional self, that "folder" of the self containing the Lovability Principle and its derivatives, such as morality, kindness etc. In fact, in "advanced" cultures the mental self has become synonymous with the self.
The cost of male-mind narcissism has been appalling. An unembellished view of human history reveals that most of the time it has consisted of a river of blood propelled by male-mind causes that go into the history books as "great" kingdoms, battles, empires, generals and what not. "Manhood" attributes such as physical power, sophisticated weaponry–and above all in our current times–the scientific method and techno/scientific savvy, have become extensions of our "God by default" selves. Not a very sane God though: during the last century alone, over two hundred million human beings were slaughtered in assorted male-mind "glorious enterprises."

 

WHY IS THIS CALLED A SPORT? BLOOD GORE ULTIMATE FIGHTING CHOKE PUNCH KICK PUMMEL FIGHTING CHOKE PUNCH KICK PUMMEL

III) The Spiritual Self and The Transcendental Error:

The original fragmentation of the human mind. The deformation of the male-mind is traceable to the transcendental error that took place eons ago when, in the ultimate narcissistic gesture, the human mind defied the Divinity's under the dictum: "two Gods is a crowd." The human mind thus underwent its original traumatic fragmentation–known as "the fall from Grace," loss of our "Buddha nature," etc. As we deny, as individuals, the painful childhood trauma of our defiled lovability via defensive exclusion, so we collectively deny the spiritual trauma as well via the same mechanism of defense.
Furthermore, as loss of the parental bond triggers an anaclitic reaction, the Separation from God triggers the same phenomenon, if of infinitely greater magnitude. In undoing this error, mystics traverse the steps (anger; pain; despair; detachment) of an excruciating anaclitic reaction vividly portrayed in the writings ("Dark Night of the Soul") of the sixteenth century Spanish mystic, St. John of the Cross.

CONCLUSION:

Misled by the male-mind, blissfully ignorant of its shortcomings, humanity is creating an onerous imbalance between self-knowledge (for which no Nobel Prize is granted) and techno/scientific "know how." This fact betrays the very purpose of life: to correct the transcendental error of the mind by recovering our "Christ Mind" or "Buddha nature." Our present trajectory could inexorably make a prophecy out of the famous dictum of the late Spanish humanist-physician Gregorio Maranon: "the danger of our times are the barbarians [alien to self-knowledge] that master the techniques."
In our field, the "biological revolution"—if unconstrained by the old wisdom "gnoscete ipsum" ("Know Thyself")—could lead, in a not too distant future, from Prozac to Aldous Huxley's "soma," the pill that "cures" all psychic ailments in a Brave New World.

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Is that what's it all about? Photo Courtesy of Stock.xchng

There is no greater impediment to overcoming the transcendental error than to live under the yoke of a neurosis (biographical error) in an emotionally dysfunctional culture. Psychotherapy, if properly understood, could play a much needed role in helping us to recover part of our long lost sanity.

Thank the following persons for their contributions: Daphne H. Fontaine, Suzanne Frenette,
Ali Hemani, Lisette D. Jolicoeur, and Kenneth Lilley.

Prior to them, during the truly pioneering times I was assisted by a few who with low pay, long hours but lots of generosity and courage blazed the way and cleared the bush -sometimes as human cobayas themselves -suffering but never complaining or giving up.
This work is as much mine as it is theirs.
Among them: Andre Mercure, Jean Meunier, Bob Rohrberg, Michel Bourque, Eric Marchand and above all Ms. Lisette D. Jolicoeur.

And last but by no means least, a special mention for a beautiful, intelligent, loving and generous human being of extraordinary patience and skills by the name of Doris Bilodeau.

God bless you all. You earned my love and gratitude. Your recompense is waiting much , much bigger than you ever could imagine because you all have scored innumerable "karmic points." And that is  the real "game" down here in Planet Earth.

Joaquin F. Sousa-Poza, M.D., D.(M.)Sc, F.R.C.P.(C)