Pride . and . Paranoia

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

The unconscious idea that maintains paranoia is this : [¹]

Paranoia implies I can trust no one.

Fear is one of the grounds of paranoia. Once a person’s degree of evolution begins to make him sensitive to the nuances of personal relationships he becomes vulnerable to fear. In my view, fear is the first intense emotion felt by the new-born infant, since consciousness becomes confined to a physical body ; consciousness becomes bound within narrow limits. (In some other states of existence, such as heaven, consciousness is not so restricted). This fear is one of the roots of infancy trauma, but then the occurrence of the trauma buries the fear under a thick coating of guilt. The fear ceases to be evident. [²]

From my examination of Nietzsche’s madness I regard catatonia as being binary, or complementary, to paranoia. Nietzsche oscillated between these two states until he appears to have finally surrendered completely to catatonia. [³]. One of the roots of catatonia in an adult is trauma suffered in infancy. Whence my view means that the possibility of paranoia can also originate from the same occurrence of trauma.

The emotional factors of these two states are : [4]

Paranoia = fear + pride (mode of vanity).

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

Vanity and self-pity form a binary, and so can switch between each other. This relationship enables the vanity mode of pride to be binary to the self-pity mode of guilt, and hence facilitates the switching between paranoia and catatonia. [5]

For most people the paranoia gets diluted into anxiety. Anxiety equals the combination of fear and vanity. Hence anxiety can be considered to be a derivative of paranoia. For the sensitive adult, when he is in a social situation in which he feels that he cannot trust anyone, then his anxiety will increase to the point of switching over into paranoia. [6]

Persecution Complex

Harry Stack Sullivan discussed paranoia in his book ‘Clinical Studies in Psychiatry ’. He ran two themes together : ideas of persecution and the transfer of blame. I separate them.

A persecution complex arises from pride in the mode of vanity : this complex is actually the essence of paranoia.

whereas

The transfer of blame (from the individual to society) implies a factor of pride in the mode of hate : the transfer of blame is the basis of psychopathy.

The reason that these two themes seemed to be connected is because they both derive from the same source, which is pride ; however, they actually reflect different modes of pride.

By psychopathy I mean disorders such as willingness to commit multiple and mass murder, genocide, etc. It is the apparent absence of feeling towards the victims (this apparent absence of feeling really denotes the presence of the hate mode of pride). A traditional example is the gunfighter in the American Wild West. The psychopath finds it easy to kill because he has transferred blame to other people, other groups.

I strongly reject one aspect of Sullivan’s therapy for mental disorder. He had little success in his therapy with paranoid patients. He was prepared to manipulate them for therapeutic ends. He thought that paranoia was a product of schizophrenia and so wanted to regress the paranoid patient back to schizophrenia, which was easier to treat than paranoia. [7]. But he did not see this as being manipulation since he had ‘good’ intentions for the patient. Therefore he could not see that the paranoid patient’s claim of being persecuted was, at least in some ways, correct. If such a patient is being manipulated then he is being subjected to the same mentality of control that his parents are likely to have used ; he is being put into the situation that caused his problems in the first place.

What should be the basis of the therapist’s attitude to such patients ? . It has to be trust. If the patient does not trust the therapist then that patient cannot explore his fear. In both the infant and the adult the need for trust takes precedence over the need for love. This is why love alone cannot solve relationship problems in the adult. The need for trust is the most basic requirement for any harmonious social relationship. The reason is that only trust can remove fear.

Dream of Paranoia

What happens when distrust becomes complete, when fear rises to its greatest intensity ? . What does it lead to ? . What is the psychological termination of paranoia ? . This was revealed to me in a dream.

In the dream I was at work, cleaning the workshop, when a machine switched itself on and tried to absorb me. I had to exercise extreme willpower so as to make the machine seem normal again. Yet soon afterwards the external world tried to disintegrate completely. Again I had to use my willpower to try and hold off the disintegration until I got home. That was the dream. I call it the dream of total paranoia, in which the will shores up the appearance of normal reality. Total paranoia creates a paranoid psychosis.

My interpretation of the dream is that the total disintegration of the external world into chaos produces total fear. Fear de-stabilises the will. The problem within paranoia is how to stabilise the will despite the fear, how to stabilise the will so as to prevent one’s idea of the world from collapsing. Hence arises ‘paranoid insight ’, or ‘psychotic insight ’, the grasping onto an explanation that the person can use as the centrepiece of his attempt to stabilise his will.

The stabilised will becomes rigid, however, since any flexibility will allow the underlying fear to emerge and precipitate chaos.

Rigidity of will is used in lieu of strength of will. Therefore, in order to keep the will rigid, the paranoid insight has to remain unchanged and cannot be moderated.

This interpretation was clarified by my personal experience of the persecution complex at the very end of my self-analysis. I entered into a hostile relationship with my soul that lasted for several years. I felt persecuted by the spiritual world and became unstable for a time. My sole concern was to strengthen my will in order to survive the nightmare that life had become.

Paranoia is based on the idea that the individual’s desire for power is totally prevented by external forces. The world (or some person or some being) blocks all opportunities for the person to exercise his desire for power. When I am in this situation I interpret it to mean that I am being persecuted. This understanding then intensifies my fear of the world. I resort to a focus on developing my will power in order to stabilise myself. If through will power I still cannot exercise my desire for power then the world collapses into chaos. My life in the world is made meaningless.

Hitler

For an example of paranoia I give my views on Hitler. In ‘Mein Kampf ’ Hitler states that in his Vienna student days the greatest change that he ever experienced took place in him and he became a fanatical anti-Semite. During those Vienna days Hitler focused on a conspiracy theory that blamed Jews for Germany’s troubles ; this is an example of paranoid insight. A conspiracy theory extends the belief in the betrayal of trust beyond single persons to groups, and so is less likely to be found false. But it was only in World War I that he finally stabilised his will. In ‘Mein Kampf ’ he claims that he conquered the horror of the war and his will was victorious : he controlled his will by focusing it on the call of duty.

In World War II, fortune was with him till he invaded Russia. When the German army began to suffer defeat his external world began to crumble, shaking his belief in his own invincibility. Paranoia re-emerged and could only be kept at bay by making his will rigid and inflexible. So the German army was forbidden to retreat under any circumstances – it became impossible for Hitler to remain the successful and flexible political gambler and risk-taker that he once was. And as befitting paranoid psychosis his external world did in fact collapse in ruins in 1945.

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 introduce the use of the term "unconscious idea" in the first article on Emotion. [1]

[²]. The problems with fear and sensitivity are described in the article Sensitivity and Effects of Fear, on my website Discover Your Mind.

Infancy trauma is my name for psychological trauma that occurs in the first years of childhood. This distress occurs when the stresses and negative states of mind of the parents’ own lives are transmitted to the fledgling ego of the infant.

An article on Bonding focuses on some problems of a sensitive child and explains an unintentional source of infancy trauma. This is on my websites The Strange World of Emotion, or The Subconscious Mind, or Discover Your Mind.
In more detail, childhood trauma is analysed in the article Guilt and Meaning - part 2. [2]

[³]. A description of catatonia is in the article Guilt and Meaning - part 1.

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. Instant madness is always the result of rapid-onset catatonia. [3]

[4]. 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.
The emotional factors of catatonia are given in the article Prediction. [4]

[5]. The binary nature of emotions is explained in the first article on Emotion. [5]

[6]. Anxiety is an emotion, and is described in the first article on Emotion. [6]

[7]. In conventional psychiatry, schizophrenia and paranoia are sometimes run together to form one disorder – paranoid schizophrenia. This is incorrect. Whilst a person can suffer from both paranoia and schizophrenia at the same time, they do not combine into one disorder. They need to be treated separately. I assume that Sullivan attempted to regress paranoia back to schizophrenia because he thought that they represented two forms of one "illness". [7]

Books

Sullivan, Harry Stack. Clinical Studies in Psychiatry. W.W. Norton & co, USA 1973.

Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf.

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

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Ian Heath
London, UK

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

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