GUILT . and . MEANING

part 1 - Catatonia . and . Faith

The links in the table on the left take you to sub-headings in this article.

I give a personal example of the rapid-onset type, which occurred during the early period of my own psycho-analysis.

My psycho-analysis had no definite starting date ; I did not even know that I had embarked on it. There was just a vague indication that something unusual was happening to me in the summer of 1987. I did not use a therapist to help me in my psycho-analysis, so I call it my self-analysis.

In the autumn of 1988, I embarked on a deep search for meaning in my life. I examined everything that I had ever done. Looking into my past, I examined my involvement in local politics, my social and sexual relationships, my practice of yoga and Buddhism, my standards of ethics. Over a period of some weeks I gradually found that meaning was absent or non-existent. I had already discovered, in my 20s, that there was no meaning in science. [¹]. Now I reached the conclusion that meaning was merely an ethereal will-of- the-wisp.

According to the predilection of the person, so science, religion, sex, etc may seem glamorous, but there is nothing underneath that glamour. I gradually understood that all religious and secular doctrines, ideas and practices were nothing more than a hollow panacea over a black hole of meaninglessness, a black hole of nihilism.

This inquiry had been predominantly intellectual in manner, but in November 1988 I followed it through to its psychological termination. I was sitting in my living room at home, looking vacantly out of the window into space - this attitude facilitates reverie and intuitive thinking in me. I was thinking about the complete absence of meaning in life, when all of a sudden my intellectual understanding was transposed into a totally intuitive one and I experienced the emotional impact of that understanding. The transposition was instantaneous and devastating. In the twinkling of an eye I went from sanity to insanity. The speed of the transition was unbelievable. There was no possibility of defence. My whole being was filled with fear and self-pity (as a mode of guilt). [²]. I was petrified. I could not move my body. My will collapsed completely. I just sat there, staring out of the window, immovable, in utter desolation. I had never before experienced such mental pain - the totality of the desolation is indescribable.

The pain was so intense that I could not endure it. Slowly I resurrected my will and withdrew from that state. I call it DOW - the Desolation of the Will, or the desolation produced by the total collapse of the will. I call it by this acronym because the nearest thing to an essence that a person has is his will ; all character and idealism is hung onto the strength or weakness of a person's will power. The medical name of this state is catatonia.

My hero of that time was Friedrich Nietzsche (who I consider to be the first of the modern depth psychologists). And now I had finally and faithfully followed him to his bitter end, to his insanity (which was also catatonia, though initially it oscillated with paranoia, its binary state). [³]. The experience lasted perhaps only minutes, but it was enough. From then on the spectre of DOW haunted me day and night for years.

I still had to continue my job at the local hospital where I was a porter. Despite my internal chaos I had to maintain the appearance of well-being and friendliness as usual. This requirement put me under enormous strain. In order to survive the experience of desolation I narrowed the range of my worldly attitudes. My interest in newspapers, television and radio dropped to near zero. I shut out as much of the world from my consciousness as I could, leaving only that which was necessary to carry on my job and my self-analysis.

DOW had an immediate effect on the level of my psychological awareness. Over the past few months of my self-analysis my subconscious mind had gradually come into my normal consciousness ; now it was permanently so. At any time I could switch my awareness between my levels of motivation, from subconscious to conscious to subconscious. I was aware of both levels simultaneously. Both my conscious and subconscious minds were permanently accessible, yet distinct. I inhabited them both together at once. They remained separate ; they could not be fused since I lacked full self-consciousness.

Eventually I managed to climb out of this desolation by finding faith (see below).

Two Routes to Catatonia

Interestingly, there are two routes to catatonia. In pursuing personal development the individual can follow the path of truth or the path of goodness.

Goodness was the hub of my inquiry into meaning. The early months of my self-analysis had revealed to me that hate was a dominant mood in my subconscious mind – this fact had shocked me. My spiritual idealism had been severely shaken. Therefore in my inquiry I searched for an external goodness to make up for the barrenness of my subjective one. So I started as a moralist and used the path of truth to try to discover how I could find goodness ; goodness would provide me with meaning in life. But this meaning was an external one, and I could not find any. I was crushed by the barrenness of objective goodness. [4]

Robert Pirsig, in his book ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’, describes the alternative route to mine. The hub of his inquiry into meaning was reason ; he wanted to validate the objectivity of truth. So he started as a rationalist and used the concept of quality (an aspect of the path of goodness) to try to discover meaning in life. He could not find any either. He was crushed by the barrenness of objective truth. Both he and I ended in failure. In both cases the end result was the same, catatonia.

Why did this desolation occur to me ? . I am an existentialist and I live my idea of life. Hence my inquiry into meaning was an inevitable aspect of my being. When a person engages in a deep inquiry into meaning he is actually seeking some fundamental belief which can give him emotional support for his intense idealism and his analytical or critical view of life. But he courts disaster if there are no ‘sign posts’ for him to follow, if there are no landmarks in the wilderness of the mind. When truth is used to examine one’s goodness, or when goodness is used to examine one’s truth, then the psychological termination for the unwary is catatonia.

By a deep inquiry I do not mean merely an academic intellectual exercise (such as the ‘Meditations ’ of Rene Descartes) but the necessity to make an emotional commitment to the process of exploration. The inquiry has to involve the critical examination of the major beliefs that the person lives by, in order to discover something that can change life for the better. In my inquiry, as I subsequently realised, I found no basis for any kind of objective goodness and so my world collapsed.

The philosophical reason for the failures of myself and Pirsig is that there is no pure objectivity to either goodness or truth. Both are relative features of reality (I use the term ‘relative’ in a new way).[5]. This means that they contain both objective and subjective features. Both goodness and truth depend on the person’s relationships to the external world. Goodness and truth are created or discovered by the subjective individual acting in an objective world. This leads to another result, that both have positive and negative (or pleasant and unpleasant) aspects to them. Therefore neither objective truth nor objective goodness can provide the emotional support that the critical inquirer is seeking.

Analysis of Catatonia

Catatonia is the result of losing all sense of meaning in life. This state of mind is maintained by specific emotions and by a specific belief, all of which are usually below the threshold of normal awareness. The emotions I call the emotional dynamics of the state of mind, since they maintain the influence of that specific belief by giving intensity to it. And the general name for the specific belief is an unconscious idea. [6]

• The emotional dynamics of catatonia are :

Catatonia = fear + guilt (mode of self-pity).

It is the guilt in self-pity mode that knocks out all meaning in life. Guilt is bad enough, but when combined with fear it produces one of the most intense forms of desolation of which life is capable. Interestingly though, it was not the worse form of psychic pain that I ever experienced - that was the desire for oblivion, but that still lay over the horizon. [7]

• What is the meaning of catatonia ?
  That is to say, what is the unconscious idea that sustains it ?

Now guilt in self-pity mode generates the complete rejection of any form of power or personal authority, whether religious or secular or sexual. Power is renounced because it is rendered meaningless. The guilt functions so as to induce the desire to sever attachments to power and thereby make oneself powerless. When fear is added to the guilt then catatonia becomes the ultimate expression of the fear of using power. The fear of using power, the fear of asserting oneself, is the unconscious idea that sustains catatonia. Therefore,

The unconscious idea of catatonia is :

I am afraid to exercise power.

When the fear of power arises in consciousness, then nothing in life has any meaning any more. [8]

• What does catatonia achieve ?

Fear of power neutralises the desire for power within all relationships and involvement in the world. In my view, a person's sense of identity has two main components : a social identity and an individual identity. [9]. The fear of power neutralises social desires. Hence it helps to neutralise a person's social identity. Also, I was putting little or no value on the search for meaning within myself, within my sense of individuality. Catatonia is the result of taking the fear and the lack of valuation to extremes.

Catatonia is the effect of a rejected individual identity and a failed social identity.

[Note : compare schizophrenia, in another article.
Schizophrenia is the effect of a rejected social identity and a failed individual identity.]

Genesis of Faith

In the year following my experience of catatonia I regularly plunged in and out of depression. I was aware that each time I entered depression I sank lower than the previous one, and it became harder to emerge from it. By the end of that year the intensities of my depressions were reaching new depths of sorrow. I could not stand the pain any more. I had been unable to find any way out of the meaninglessness, the nihilism, of my existence.

On the evening of the 20^th of November 1989, I reached the nadir of my life. I finally decided to completely abandon hope, then and there, as I lay in my bed. The bleakness of my mind was indescribable. I began to sink into total self-pity. I gave up. I began to descend into madness, from which I knew I would never return.

In the same moment that I gave up, almost in the same breath, a thought occurred to me. The problem of meaning had been created by my intellect. If my intellect could create the problem then it could also solve it. In that moment of realisation of the power of the intellect I affirmed complete, total faith in that intellect. I knew without a shadow of doubt that it would solve the problem of meaning, given enough time.

And from that moment of the genesis of my faith in my intellect (and hence my faith in myself ) the mind-fog of nihilism began to roll away. It rolled away, never to return except as a rare and minor irritant. It rolled away so fast that after four months it required a tremendous effort of imagination to try to recapture the utter despair of that night.

There is only one permanent way out of catatonia, and that is the attainment of faith - either in oneself, or in another person, or in god.

Note.
The attainment of faith always indicates that the person's soul is actively engaged in helping the ego. This help is what separates faith from belief. Belief involves the ego alone. [10]

My intellect produced all that I desired of it. Through study, awareness, contemplation and further experiences of mental disorder I gained the information necessary to think my way out of madness. As a thinker I think slowly : I cannot analyse an experience until it becomes familiar to me. Alas, this meant that in order to analyse madness I had to become thoroughly familiar with it in all its forms. My intellect is not brilliant except for my capacity for insight, and this comes from breadth of mind allied to empiricism. My strength lies not in adhering to narrow specialisms but in the ability to see the limitations and boundaries of tradition and orthodoxy in any realm of thought.

As a thinker I focus on how things are, not on how I would like them to be. My theorising is controlled by my idealism ; the influence of my psychological shortcomings is kept to a minimum. This predilection gives power to my intellect. My intellect is powerful rather than brilliant ; it is like a steamroller – it trundles along slowly, and nothing stops it. So long as it has relevant experiences to analyse, it flattens all (or nearly all ) the obstacles in its path. It flattened the problems of madness. But it took years to do so.

The power of the intellect is amazing, but its glamour wears off, sooner or later. I am a reluctant thinker. I think only because I have to. I think only because I have very difficult problems to solve. If I had no problems, I would be content just to practice meditation as the highlight of my life. Left to myself, I prefer will power to intellectual power. Intellectuality is great, but spirituality is greater still.

Two Views on Suffering

Traditional religions and traditional teachers place the emphasis on the avoidance of suffering, or on its control, or on its transcendence. Therefore what is taught focuses on morality, duty, the reward of a life in heaven, and other such precepts and promises. But in no case can the universality of suffering and violence be satisfactorily explained. Even the doctrine of karma is inadequate (since it does not incorporate any deep understanding of the subconscious mind). All traditions, whether Eastern or Western, are primarily non-intellectual.

I place the emphasis on the understanding of suffering. I am part of the modern current that winds its way through the ideas of Nietzsche, Freud, R D Laing, and others. The understanding of suffering and violence offers the possibility that such negative states of mind can be eventually eliminated, or at least ameliorated in their intensity. Hence the significance of the intellect in modern times.

The number in brackets at the end of each reference takes you back to the paragraph that featured it. The addresses of my websites are on the Links page.

[¹]. I saw that there is no meaning in science as a result of my experience of satori, or enlightenment. This event is described in the article Satori, on my website Patterns of Spirituality. [1]

[²]. A summary of the factors of some important emotions is :
Guilt = self-pity + self-hate.
Pride = vanity + hatred of other people.
Narcissism = love + vanity.
Jealousy = love + self-pity.
Anxiety = fear + vanity

My definitions, descriptions, and analysis of emotions are given in the three articles on Emotion. See Basic Ideas page. [2]

[³]. Nietzsche's madness has baffled every writer on him that I have read. It is usually thought to be the result of syphilis, but this cannot be correct. His madness took only a few moments to happen. Whereas syphilis produces a gradual decline in mental functioning over a period of years. Instant madness is always the result of rapid-onset catatonia. [3]

[4]. Articles on the pursuit of truth are given in section 1 on my philosophy website A Modern Thinker. [4]

[5]. Whether in physics or in psychology, my definition of relativity is :
In any relative relationship, a subjective effect is always tied to an objective effect.

My understanding of relative terms is explained in articles on my websites A Modern Thinker (on general philosophy) and Relative Mind, Relative Matter (on philosophy of science). [5]

[6]. See glossary for Emotional Dynamics. Unconscious ideas are described in the first article on Emotion, section Unconscious Ideas. [6]

[7]. Psychic pain occurs when the psychological pain is so intense that it affects the structure of personal identity in some way.
For the article containing a description of oblivion, see Narcissism - Mania and Manic Depression. Also, see article Depression and Autism, section Oblivion. [7]

[8]. In my view, catatonia belongs to a "family" of related disorders, with a common factor of dominant fear. See article Prediction. [8]

[9]. My view that a person has two identities is explained in the article on Confusion and Identity. [9]

[10]. There is an article on Faith on my websites The Strange World of Emotion and Discover Your Mind and Patterns of Spirituality. See Links page. [10]

Books

Pirsig, Robert. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

The articles in this section are :

Guilt & Meaning - part 1, catatonia and faith

Guilt & Meaning - part 2, trauma and slow-onset catatonia

Narcissism & Schizophrenia

Narcissism - Mania & Manic Depression

 

Jealousy & Kundalini Psychosis

Pride & Paranoia

Depression & Autism & other states of despair

Mind Loops

Copyright © 2003 Ian Heath
All Rights Reserved

The copyright is mine, and the article is free to use. It can be reproduced anywhere, so long as the source is acknowledged.

 

Ian Heath
London, UK

www.confusion.discover-your-mind.co.uk/index.htm

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