- Recovery from “schizophrenia” and other “psychotic disorders” Containing opposites, spirits, and “schizophrenia” I need to remind everyone that blogs on “schizophrenia” should not be ignored by people who think it does not apply to them. This post too, is potentially meaningful to anyone regardless of diagnosis. “Schizophrenia” can be seen as revolving around having difficulty in containing opposites, such as love and aggression. In normal everyday culture, opposites are often contained simply by pretending they aren’t there and aren’t supposed to be there, while “under the table” they are allowed to coexist. In other words, hypocrisy is the rule. Those who end up defined as “schizophrenic” are often those who actually attempt to do what the culture says it does, which is to get rid of one opposite in favor of another. This sets off an internal war, as other parts of the self rise up to prevent any such elimination, since in reality both opposites are necessary to life. — At the same time, when people who are caught up in “schizophrenia” manage to recover, they do a huge service for the culture, because they find ways to accomplish the reconciliation of opposites in new ways, and often ways that are much less hypocritical than those common in the culture beforehand. — Of course, problems with opposites manifest as other disorders as well. Elizabeth Howell writes well about this in her chapter in the book “Psychosis, Trauma and Dissociation: emerging perspectives on severe psychopathology.” She writes that what we call borderline personality disorder emerges out of a pattern where a person alternates between being “hyperattached” which means ignoring abuse etc. in order to attach, and being totally focused on aggression, with no regard to one’s need for attachment. This follows from the abused child’s dilemna, of both needing to attach and needing to defend against abuse. read the rest here
- The Creativity Crisis — News Week — This seems a rather ominous thing to me. For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. What went wrong—and how we can fix it.