Reflections on Narcissism, Psychiatry, and R.D. Laing

November 5, 2023

Note: Yesterday, I posted what I see as a thoughtful, even, hopefully, a somewhat penetrating perspective on what is going on WITHIN us, re: our perception of the ongoing horrors of Israel/Palestine. And yet the post attracted far fewer readers than usual. What does this mean?

 

Yesterday afternoon, on a walk with a 31 year old male friend, I was told that all but one of his friends (and he has many friends) have recently gone to a psychiatrist “and got diagnosed!” What?

Usually with autism, he said, and often with other labels as well. He can’t help but see their preoccupation with analyzing the self as an extension of the narcissistic self-obsession of his generation, their preoccupation with “taking selfies” for social media accounts.

But there’s a difference: preoccupation with selfies doesn’t automatically lead to ingesting pharmaceutical drugs, whereas going to a psychiatrist to get diagnosed likely does.

So here we go. If his generation was out of touch with reality before, with the trans phenomenon also infecting their social disorder, are they now — seemingly gleefully! and all at once? — joining the vast majority of humanity that is on pharmaceutical drugs, thus altering, and possibly even destroying what they might have become, had they not been so hive minded

Oh, but wait! Statistically, it looks like they’ve been part of the vast crowd all along.

Number of People Taking Psychiatric Drugs in the United States

 

Back in the 1960s, at the suggestion of my quite unusual mentor at Boston University, I picked up R.D. Laing’s Politics of Experience and read it, but saw the the book as simple-minded.

One year later, I read the book again, and this time declared it the simple truth. 

Question: What had happened to me in between?

Psychiatrist R.D. Laing’s way of perceiving the world paralleled what was happening to me. An involuntary opening, which would have been scary as hell, had I not kept that book, plus Jung’s memoir, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, under my pillow at night. I was opening into a vastly expanded world that was actually shared by others! Not others that I knew personally, but that didn’t matter. As long as I was not the only one, I knew I was not crazy.

At this point in my long life, Laing’s anti-psychiatric attitude towards what his fellow psychiatrists deem madness is so deeply entertwined with my own that I tend to forget how it got started in me.

Here’s another Laing quote, and this one reminds me of the post I put up yesterday.

This one reminds me of current collective narcissism.

And this one hearkens back to our current flash point: Israel/Palestine.

 

SUFFERING IS AN INSIDE JOB

November 4, 2023

And guess what?

Do you suffer from the “I’ll be happy when . . .” syndrome?

So interesting. I’ve been recognizing and spelling out the ramifications of this phrase more and more lately, not realizing that it’s in fact a well-recognized syndrome, also called “conditional happiness.” Just internet search the phrase and you’ll get an eyeful, without even having to listen to any of the many youtube videos or podcasts on the subject.

In other words, I’ve been pondering the ramifications of the apparent inability of most people to BE HERE NOW, as Ram Das famously advised. For a fascinating discussion of both the story of Richard Alpert, or Ram Das, his quest in India, and various permutations of perspectives surrounding his 1971 book BE HERE NOW, which, one might say, ignited the consciousness revolution for us ’60s folks who were ready ready ready! — see this marvelous website:

The Legacy of Be Here Now

Way back then, when I was still “smoking dope” like all my peers (I wonder how many of them remain on this plane, and of these, how many still need weed to shift them into the NOW?) my ever-restless, searching, Sagittarian mind kept wondering about this notion, BE HERE NOW. Because whenever a fellow hippy would admonish me for my striving, saying “Hey man, just be here now” I’d respond, “Yes, but the Now can be large or small!” To which I would usually get either a puzzled look, or a shoulder shrug.

Now why would I say that? “The Now can be large or small?” Well, it came about through contemplating the, to me, impoverished notion of time’s arrow, where time moves from past through present to future in a straight line, plus noticing that most people were (and are!) either stuck in the past (nostalgic, wanting to repeat, or bitter, guilty, full of regret) or the future (ruled by expectations, wanting more more more of whatever it is we think we lack. I.e., the I’ll Be Happy When syndrome).

The present moment? Why it is conceived as a mere evanescent point on the straight line stretching from past to future, from birth to death. The point itself has no dimension! It’s just an made up posit, in “space.” Thus the very first dimension is the line, stretching between two points; the second dimension is the plane; the third dimension is the solid. But the point? Nothing! Zilch.

But wait a minute. What I noticed back then, without even being a professional meditator, was that when I stopped whatever I was doing and/or thinking, whenever I simply moved into the spacious presence within my own body and its reach into the world and within around me, then the Now was no longer a point, but a space! And that this space itself expands out and in forever!

All this is by way of backstory to posts I’ve been putting up lately, about “not taking sides.” I.e. not identifying with one point versus another in any straight-line 3D polarity. Rather. Consciously allow in whatever you’re internally feeling “now;” notice, for example, how an internet image of a pile of slaughtered babies, whether Palestinian or Israeli, makes you feel nauseated, a horrible aching in the heart. Notice how we then seek to identify “the cause” of this awful feeling, because we want to stop feeling that way, it hurts so much; i.e., we want to identify the perpetrator in order to at least, in our mind, not just judge, but banish to oblivion. If this person (or group, or nation state) is eliminated, then I won’t hurt any more. So make it stop! Please make it stop!

Let me repeat: whenever some perception from the outside world stimulates internal agony, then we seek to find and destroy the “cause,” because we want to stop suffering.

Thus the concept of dimensions. All that is taking place on earth now is set in the third dimension which utilizes the dynamic of polarity as fuel. Once we can not just stop identifying (and thus in this case, empathically suffering) with one of the points in any polarity while judging the other as wrong, bad, evil, but instead notice both points as real, and in this case, radiating with the immense energy of unimaginable suffering, not just now, but in the past (stretching back prior to the holocaust, when Jews were being judged, and sought to relocate in Palestinians’ homeland), then, when we simply stop thinking and step into our own bodily presence, this entire polarity disappears. We Are Here, NOW, having shifted into the spacious 5th dimension.

You might want to join me in watching this youtube documentary:

1948: Creation and Catastrophe

And, of course, this particular suppurating wound in the human species goes much further back than that, given that it takes place in the famous “holy land,” but I’m not familiar with the details.

All this is to simply advise, both myself, and everyone else still subject to programming by the usual one-side-or-other good vs evil dogma that creates continuous conditions for war, and which now, has ramped up to such an extent that we are one tiny step away from nuclear war . . . to let go of all of it, for at least this one moment in time, when we drop our minds into the silent, fathomless peaceful presence of our own bodily existence.

And then what happens?

Conclusion: both suffering and happiness have to do with whether or not we are truly present within our own bodies, which in turn, are continuous with the whole of the living, conscious, breathing natural world. The Cartesian mind/body split, ushered in formally over three centuries ago, heals when we allow the animated presence within embodiment.

 

This Now moment

expands into infinity —

silent, watchful, loving.