The Insanity Myth

Winston Delano Cabrall

• Publisher: Winston D. Cabrall
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780994472021
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Medical Law
• Index: Psychology

The Insanity Myth is a discourse on the psychology and neurology of psychosomatic disorders or so-called "mental illnesses" and "altered states of consciousness," given as part of the classic argument between the medical sciences and the humanities, in this case neurology/psychiatry and the "uncovering therapies." The work aims to reach a broad audience of those interested in subjective material and, although some of the neurological material may be considered complex, interested readers will be able to follow at the behavioural level. For example, the segment on migraine, analytical of the work of J.W. Lance on its neurology and treatment, explains why migraine occurs and offers the option of a natural, rather than a medicated, approach to sufferers.

Presented in essay format, a spectrum of disorders are all part of the larger discourse, addressing the works of others on early memory, ranging from such diverse sources as: Penfield's "permanent record of the stream of consciousness," Persinger's helmet device for electronically stimulating the brain, to some ancient rituals of primitive cultures relating to the human need to release early memory emotional content. Also looked at are modern psychotherapy, the role of LSD and other drugs in the 1960's, and some more esoteric principles such as samadhi and beatitudes. Crucial elements of emotional development, both childbirth and instinctual trauma are discussed. The following which relate to the topics more generally outlined above are also examined:

• Nathan's work on the neural retention of physical pain (as memory) and his approach to psychoanalysis
• The phenomena of phantom limbs, epilepsy, deja vu, and religious visions
• Schizophrenia, the dopamine hypothesis, the role of serotonin, and panic attack
• Maslow's B-cognition, moral imperatives and essential instinctoid nature, as well as Jung's definition of insanity and God
• Empiricism in science and the humanities and my summation of the "argument" between them.

The closing segment relates to "body-work" which encompasses my own research on muscular tensions, psychosomatic pain, massage, and some methodology to deal with common separations of body and mind--whether simply used to focus and breathe one's way through a bout of indigestion or to go deeper to open the unconscious and make way for the release of deeply held un-verbal content ("affects derivative of instinct," as Freud would have put it).

The Insanity Myth is the summation of my personal investigations into psychosomatic disorders or so-called mental illnesses. No claims are made about psychotherapy as a means for "curing" people. I intend only to offer my theories on the root of mental problems and suggest th

Segment 1: Introduction

The Insanity Myth is about the nature of human consciousness (memory). It conveys a model of consciousness and explains the nature of so-called “mental illnesses” and other “altered states of consciousness,” such as the religious, mystical or spiritual kind. It is also a critique of the scientific medical and psychiatric establishment, its ideas, hypotheses, opinions, and treatments of the so-called “mentally ill.” In this, I have attempted to vivify the subjectivity and engage established scientific, religious, esoteric, and secular opinions and beliefs in fair and lively debate.

Drawing from real case investigations, and from the works of those recognized as best in the fields of psychology and neurology, but holding at philosophically valid at worst, I will try to remember to weaken any premise that is not verifiable by proven scientific fact (readers may understand that there are some facts that apply to every human being, as potential, that can only be known, as fact, through personal experience, i.e., treated as verified among any two or more people who have had such an experience. For example, persons discussing their experience of samadhi—or perhaps their unique experience of being born—whether by way of undergoing a primitive ritual of the kind Emboden (1972) mentions (Seg. 14), or through neo-psychoanalysis such as Janov’s primal therapy, mentioned occasionally throughout this book).

Overall, my intention is to offer a strong bridge between neurology and psychology.

For whom do I write? I write for all those interested in esoteric and rational psychologies of consciousness, including those who suffer from psychosomatic afflictions, e.g., symptoms, such as so-called migraine, depression, panic, phobias, manias, visions, psychoses, and schizophrenia—in short, for all those who wish to deepen their understanding of “Consciousness.” It is also for the families, therapists and other supporters of those declared “mentally ill,” to help relieve them of the awful weight of feeling that they have to do something, other than become an even more loving, accepting and caring family or support group (if I may be entirely clear: stop trying to fix “the patient”).

Why have I written this book? Aside from the fact that I enjoy writing, I felt compelled to sum up what I have understood of human consciousness and behaviors through unorthodox experiment and research over many years. This had led me to feel uniquely placed to contribute toward solving some of the long-held scientific, religious, and esoteric mysteries, which keep science and the humanities apart.

Although psychology, psychotherapy, and neurology have been the dominant interests in my life from an early age, I have developed, unintentionally, apart from the academic establishment. My scholarship results from personal experience, observation, experimentation and reading from the sciences, humanities, and arts. I do not refer to myself as a sociologist, theosophist, counselor, psychologist, or psychotherapist, nor artisan—I have always been the stuff of these. I understand that taking this position is simply human nature; but if I do have a significant understanding of these inherent traits (to observe and remember), perhaps something in my life experiences has stressed the importance of taking, from an early age, an analytical perspective.

Now, some ten years past the hands-on unofficial practice of depth-psychotherapy, I am not focused on curing or changing people, but on relating to others and in affecting the quality of given and imposed subjective discourses. Implicitly, I will be dismissive of, if not attacking, verbs, e.g., “depressed,” converted to nouns (“depression”) and used as the name of an illness rather than a precursor to resolving of a negative state of consciousness.

I have titled this work The Insanity Myth, not because I think insanity is a myth, that is, an illusion, but to posit that it is the medical/psychiatric misunderstanding of insanity that is unreal. My hope here is to temper the arrogance of the established medical perspective, to bring it more openly into the debate. My intention is to indicate, on irrefutable grounds, that so-called “mental illnesses” or psychosomatic afflictions as I have categorized them, concern the individual’s difficulty in representing the past in the present—i.e., that “mental illness” means one is suffering to evolve or adapt to past and current personal and worldly circumstances.

Additionally, I write in support of integrative methods of psychology and psychotherapy (i.e., the “uncovering therapies” mentioned variously throughout the book and pointedly in Seg. 18), as opposed to the repressive methods of orthodox psychology and psychiatry that persist in the use of shock treatments and toxic drug therapies that, once started, rarely ever end, or end well.

My effort here is intended to be remedial of the term “insanity” and seeks to reinstate the importance of symbolism, metaphor and allegory in understanding the unconscious, no matter how bizarre episodic expressions of its content may seem.

In this endeavor, I challenge the prevailing medical or psychiatric practices and the neurophysiological and biological sciences upon which the pharmaceutical industry bases the development of its drugs for treating “mental illnesses.” Throughout this book, I base my arguments on the sciences of neurophysiology and pharmacology. The reader should be able to easily determine if my explanations and theoretical considerations are well supported by the published science and psychology that I have drawn from. However, from the outset, I am also engaging in a friendly, philosophical calling upon the sciences of neurology and medicine, which, in my view, often foster opinions, hypotheses and theories about psychosomatic conditions and psychotherapy, and pass these along as if equal in weight to the factual neurology they present. My objective in publishing is to ask that these, admittedly deserving men/women of science, or religion, for that matter, avail themselves of the right of reply.

As an example of the unreasonable attitude of the neuro-sciences toward the humane or esoteric social sciences and “spiritual” experience, I have focused a great deal on Peter Nathan’s book, The Nervous System (1983). Nathan (MD, FRCP), an eminent London-based neurologist, wrote from the 1960’s to the mid-1980’s. Although he gives an excellent description of the nervous system and, of special interest, some neurological and anecdotal evidences of psychosomatic and religious experiences, he also conveys the rather empirical arrogance I am “tilting” at. For example, by belittling psychology and religiosity (archaic psychologies) and attacking psychoanalysis (an early integrative psychotherapy) and its founder Sigmund Freud and others, by name, some nine times throughout the book. (I find it entertaining that he is “at Freud’s throat” on page one, and still “at him” in the last page!)

Why should Nathan bother to depart from his excellent explanations of the nervous system to attack psychoanalysis? In my opinion, it is because psychoanalysis had become a threat to his professional identity. As I see it, in writing The Nervous System, Nathan was making a direct response to that threat. From about the early 1960’s what Freud had to say about “nervous” disorders and disturbances of mind was making a huge impact on the intellectual and artistic circles of society—in the theatre, in books and in films, people, seemingly everywhere, were talking as if knowledgeable, if not suddenly enlightened, about all that we hold the brain responsible for, that is, mind, complexes, hysterias, affects derivative of instinct, split-personalities, fears, phobias, and “nervous” complaints. In my view, eminent neurologists such Nathan had no popular standing with non-medical professional people or the public generally, because at that time, neurophysiologists had thought it unimportant to write for the laity. The result was that Nathan felt upstaged, as everyone, it seemed, was aflame with Freud’s theories concerning the subconscious and unconscious processes, applauding, negating, arguing and testing what Freud had to say about the workings of the mind, i.e., memory, character and personality. Consider Nathan’s initial attack on psychoanalysis that, although somewhat veiled, occurs in the very first page of his Introduction! I say that he was unable to restrain himself from attacking Freud from the moment his pen hit the page. Indeed, having barely established neurology’s place in the hierarchy of medical science professionalism, he wrote:

As the adjective “nervous“ has popularly come to mean anxious, apprehensive or frightened, it will be avoided in this book; the adjective “neural” will be used instead, which is present practice in neurology. (p. xiii)

Nathan’s apparent disassociation from the term “nervous” indicates he was unsettled, even annoyed, by all the sudden popular usage of that word, for which, as we will see ahead, he blatantly blamed Freud! For example, he endeavored to strengthen his criticism of Freud and psychoanalysis by further stating that:

Psychoanalysis, psychotherapy or psychology can be understood by those who have had no education in biology, whereas neurology, like the rest of medicine, requires some knowledge of physics, chemistry and anatomy. (p. xiii)

This statement seems less than true since those educated enough to read in psychotherapy and psychology would be capable of understanding neurology (although they may need to study related texts at the same time). He was being elitist, was he not?

To sum up Nathan’s attitude thus far, I restate his remarks above (and add mine in bold type and brackets), which I say are implicit in what he writes:

As the adjective “nervous” has popularly come to mean anxious, apprehensive or frightened [something exacerbated by Freud’s careless application of the term in referring to psychosomatic disorders which are in fact symptoms of neural disorders of the nervous system] it will be avoided in this book. The adjective “neural” will be used instead, which is present practice in neurology, [that unlike] “a book on psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and psychology that can be understood by anyone who has had no education in biology [as all you novelists, artists and film-maker intellectuals should understand] whereas neurology like the rest of medicine, requires some knowledge of physics, chemistry and anatomy.

Is this a fair analysis of his meaning? Why didn’t he say simply, “A book on psychoanalysis can be… etc.?” Was it because that would have been too obvious an attack on psychoanalysis, at least in beginning the book? I can think of no other reason. Further on (and again on his last page) the attack dared be more conspicuous; this is unfortunate as Nathan took the position that there was a huge group or category of imaginative writers and intellectuals who were being misled by Freud’s subjective ideas concerning “nervous” disorders. I say that Nathan was concerned that this group (that he failed to acknowledge included people from all walks of life) was unfairly popularizing Freud’s theories, and that this was, in some way, obscuring neurology’s growing evidence about the neural causes of “character and personality” of the “mentally ill” (I will come to this ahead).

I consider Nathan’s rejection of psychoanalysis as exemplary of the long-standing argument between science and psychoanalysis and the “uncovering” therapies generally. I say that the contentious aspect in this argument is that psychoanalytic theory and practices imply (and can demonstrate) that there are moral imperatives to do with how we treat, especially, infants, children and the “mentally ill,” and apparently many scientists are offended, if not outraged, by this suggestion (see Seg. 18).

The overall difficulty I have with Nathan, for example, is his refusal to give any consideration to psychoanalysis as the unintended, socially generated herald of a new confessional, the purpose of which was to address the stalling of evolution of humans by bringing the growing problem of repressed memory (often in the form of the ugly past) to consciousness, as understood and resolved; i.e., it was acceptable to Science for the corrupted Church to babble-on in esoteric terms about “sin,” but the new confessional was threatening to widen that category and get specific about the nature of sin (and not simply sweep it under the God carpet).

Nathan makes clear his position, holding that psychoanalysis was nothing more than “a stimulus to 20th century psychology” and therefore as redundant as “phrenology” (the discredited theory that character and personality could be reliably established by studying the shape of a person’s skull (p. 178)).

Though I appreciate Nathan’s excellent explanation of the brain and nervous system (updated and improved over the years), his book is also an example of the late last-century rise of neuroscience and its obsession with burying forever the use of Freud and his psychoanalysis. (I’ve noticed that it is always the outdated Freud that neurologists attack in their books, but never, apparently, the updated and improved psychoanalysis of today.)

It is my intention to explore and explain the psychology and neurology of psychosomatic phenomena, and to question the neurologists’ interpretation of these conditions. With the help of neurologists, I have attempted to provide a better understanding of both the neurology and psychology of consciousness, particularly the occurrence of migraine (Seg. 10), and pain as memory (Seg. 5). Segment 10 is itself a thesis on migraine.

While we may know or suspect that the practice of psychology, e.g., psychoanalysis, may be very different or unique to a practitioner, and is subject to a practitioner’s competence and compatibility—that cannot be verified by representative title alone, this is of no consequence here: my concern is with the Ideal. I am hinting here at a currently evolving understanding of integrative psychotherapies, for which I consider psychoanalysis to be a founding component. So, I will consider, mention or refer to neopsychoanalytic, esoteric, and neo-esoteric psychotherapeutics, primitive and religious systems and practices, as also integrative (of the past) wherever they conform in theory and practice to what I indicate as “better practice” toward my implicitly given “Ideal.”

The reader may take note...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• Caveat
• Segment 1: Introduction
• Segment 2: Mental Illness
• Segment 3: Neurology and Religious Experience
• Segment 4: The Unconscious and Unconscious Contents
• Segment 5: Trauma Memory
• Segment 6: Instinctual Trauma Characterised
• Segment 7: Assimilating Unconscious Contents
• Segment 8: Creative Catharses and Beatitudes
• Segment 9: Fear of the Unconscious
• Segment 10: The Psychology and Neurology of Migraine
• Segment 11: There is Always Something There to Remind Us
• Segment 12: Persinger’s Helmet
• Segment 13: Anorexia Nervosa
• Segment 14: A Perspective on Drugs Their Use
• Segment 15: The Dopamine Cycle and the Subgenual Prefrontal Cortex
• Segment 16: Hallucinations
• Segment 17: Modern Childbirth
• Segment 18: Empiricism Further Defined
• Appendix I: List of Diagrams
• Appendix II: Glossary of Terms
• Bibliography