Ehrenzweig speaks of those who cannot descend to a state of psychological dedifferentiation because they have an aspect of the self that has crystallized at the surface level of the psyche. He mentions the aesthetic "mannerism" that he perceives the schizophrenic to be dependent upon, for his sense of normality. A natural counterpart of this aesthetic mannerism would be the tendency to treat reality through a lens of stereotyping vision (we can raise such issues here of gender and race).
Maintaining predictability on the level of normal social discourse is key in preventing the tenuously stable person's descent into psychosis. It is as if such people wanted to dive deep into the psyche, but part of them remains buoyant, as if a leg-rope on a buoy tugs their ankle, forcing them to rise again (or risk going crazy by attempting refusal to come to the surface -- a brave position for some to take indeed).
Psychological formations can cause one to become attached to representational normality as if it were a matter of one's sheer survival to keep oneself anchored to them. In his book, The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Unknown, Christopher Bollas describes a condition of "Normotic illness", whereby people are out of touch with the subjective world. He quotes the following from Winnicot on page 135:
In any case, the ability to dive down, to deflate ego as if it were a diving vest that needed to be emptied, is for the few.
I don't see why we cannot call these few the "shamans" of the intellectual subconscious.
Maintaining predictability on the level of normal social discourse is key in preventing the tenuously stable person's descent into psychosis. It is as if such people wanted to dive deep into the psyche, but part of them remains buoyant, as if a leg-rope on a buoy tugs their ankle, forcing them to rise again (or risk going crazy by attempting refusal to come to the surface -- a brave position for some to take indeed).
Psychological formations can cause one to become attached to representational normality as if it were a matter of one's sheer survival to keep oneself anchored to them. In his book, The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Unknown, Christopher Bollas describes a condition of "Normotic illness", whereby people are out of touch with the subjective world. He quotes the following from Winnicot on page 135:
[T]here are [those]who are so firmly anchored in objectively perceived reality that they are ill [in the sense of] being out of touch with the subjective world and with the creative approach to fact (Winnicot 1971).This is an extreme example of being trapped by surface accretions, whereby the surface "known" always stands in place of subjective possibilities governed by the sphere of the unknown (which could be made manifest via the intuitive imagination to the conscious mind).
In any case, the ability to dive down, to deflate ego as if it were a diving vest that needed to be emptied, is for the few.
I don't see why we cannot call these few the "shamans" of the intellectual subconscious.
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