Psychology And Shamanism

The history of psychology, and then psychiatry, is particularly interesting. Prior to the theories of Freud and Jung, mental patients were dismissed and not listened to at all. All sorts of means were used to "silence the voices", and perhaps the most common was the method of completely ignoring the symptoms. For instance, when a patient would begin relating their delusions, the doctor would attempt to change the subject with something perfectly banal, like, "What nice weather we're having,".

Then came the explorers of the unconscious. In the 60's, R.D. Laing took a revolutionary position when he advocated meeting the patient half-way; actually entertaining the delusions of the patients, and discovering an inner logic to them (however removed from the logic of normal consciousness), and leading them out of the darkness by validating the illness as a genuine shamanic journey of purgation and (as Jung would say) individuation.

Laing was especially controversial in that he related the illness, not merely to the individual, but to the family, and to the culture. These sensitive individuals were merely the litmus tests, so to speak, indicating a much larger problem in the culture. Rather than turn them into scapegoats, he attempted to learn from them about the defects of the family unit, and the society as a whole.

These advances were overshadowed in the following decades, when doctors began turning more and more to drugs, and explaining (or, rather, explaining away) the illness as a mere "chemical imbalance". This was a reassertion of the dominator mentality which underlies Western Civilization; a mentality which was threatened by the spirit of the 1960's, when the culture had it's first major encounter with the shamanic medicines of the natural world.

The feeling now was to again suppress the symptoms, -- which may be delusions or visions, depending on a number of variables, including the doctor's perspective. The "one size fits all" mentality of the western mind is here evidenced in full effect. In order to get on with "business as usual", anyone who challenged the popular conceptions of reality was to be dealt with as sick, and the "cure" was to be a flooding of untested chemicals into the brains of these patients, with the effect that they would be, once again, rendered impressionable to the popular mores of the day, or (if this could not be achieved), rendered almost entirely unconscious. This is what we call treatment today.

So, how do we distinguish between mental illness and visionary health? This is perhaps the hardest question for any of us to answer, being, as we are, securely embedded in a culture which is itself rooted in delusions of conquest, competition, acquisition, hierarchy, and slavish devotion to the Protestant work-ethic. The words of Jesus apply here, "Physician, heal thyself!" We must heal our own psychic fragmentation before we can attempt to see clearly into the mind of another. Ultimately, the question is too subtle for an answer. It is something we will always be wrestling with, as long as we continue to incarnate here.

Anyone who challenges the basic, fundamental assumptions upon which their own culture rests, will automatically be seen as a threat, and probably as mentally ill. The problem is compounded by the fact that, as I've already indicated, anyone who challenges these assumptions is stigmatized, and subject to all sorts of pressures, which can result in mental illness. Furthermore, to challenge one's culture is also to challenge oneself, for we have internalized the views and expectations of our culture on such a deep level, and the division goes, not between the visionary and his community, but right through the heart of the visionary himself.

This split is a form of mental illness, but it is also a process in the journey to a higher synthesis. Unfortunately, because the culture is so backwards, it is at a loss as to how to treat the patient. His confusion is only increased, and he remains lost in the underworld of his fragmentation, unable to complete the shamanic journey. Or, the journey is aborted, and he is sequestered in a state of false security, where the great problems of the human condition do not occur to him -- often, this is the best we can do.

The rare exception is the person who is given permission to explore his visions and his madness; the two appear to go hand-in-hand (every vision is also a message alerting us to a corresponding madness). As in shamanic cultures, the individual is supported by the culture even as he cuts himself off from it. Shamans tend to live at the outskirts of their villages, and although they are positively instrumental in the governing of their communities, always remain somehow above, beyond, and outside of the nucleus of their communities. This "otherness" is not something to be "cured", or done away with, but honored and deeply respected.