I don't see most psychology the way it is currently practiced as being of very much value. What I have found is that shamanism goes deeper into the unconscious than this. One regresses backwards through all the stages of consciousness -- ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. When one goes back to the earliest state of consciousness --which is roughly equivalent to the early childhood state and the reptilian stage of our evolution -- we find the origins of identity. There is not much consciousness here. Rather there is an inherent instability of identity, a shifting and moving, without boundaries between the self and the other.
This stage is the origin of identity, because once a child starts to grow up and become an adult, the instability of the boundaries between self and other is reduced. Things become more stable. Nonetheless, there remains more instability of identity than most people are aware of. Aspects of early childhood consciousness that can and do carry over onto an adult level are projective identification, dissociation, splitting of consciousness, and magical thinking. These things don't affect our conscious identity (which has now gained some solidity, at least in our own minds) but they do affect the way that we adapt to existing political systems. In fact, they facilitate the adaptation, more often than not.
So it is that identities are not solid and discrete in practical reality (although we still conceptualise them as such) but symbiotic unions (the leader and the led) and co-dependency is the norm within all institutions as such. Our unconscious minds facilitate this cooperation with others, without our conscious minds realising it. We take on roles -- mostly because we are pressured into them. We become mummy figures, or sycophants or dominating authoritarians -- all in response to others' unconscious pressures on us to play a certain role.
2 comments:
I'm sure this is true.
Note: I found in this house a 1973 book on meditation, written by a clinical psychologist, and it is quite amazing because one sees how much more advanced psychotherapy was then than now. Its regression must have to do with its general commercialization and cheapening, because this writer is a really educated person.
Anyway, he keeps saying that all these old old traditions, shamanism, mysticism, etc. are in fact therapeutic in ways moderns wouldn't disagree with if they knew about them. What strikes me is that he keeps saying, "Of course, no psychotherapist would object to the idea that ... [insert ancient truth or practice ]." I keep thinking: "Oh yes, they would object! These things go directly against their program, and they would object most wholeheartedly!"
This shows how much society may have actually regressed (at least in some of its layers) in the last 35 years.
Also: 1973, that was my last year of high school, so this writer's level of sophistication is what I was used to in the olden days. 15 years or so later it was another world; I remember blinking and thinking I'd been reborn in Fascism (and I guess that was true).
So that's my rant for this noontime.
These days we protect commercial interests by keeping people sick. They must not believe in an actual cure for anything, but must rely eternally on the authority of the therapist -- as a very young child relies upon its parent. Such naive trust is the therapist's reward for getting qualified.
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