[D-G] Mystic, psychosis, , "Normopaths" (from Guattaris de la borde)

hwenk hwenk at web.de
Tue Jan 27 05:55:58 PST 2009


Dear Ruth,


First, although in meditation a stillness of mind without words may be 
achieved,
the intellectual abilities, including the literal ones, are much enhanced.

The question of clarity is interesting to blame the diagnosises by
psychiatrists and to understand what is going on.
Even in non medical cases.
Therefore, even if someone has a lot of disturbances and is
able to think nonethless clear regarding the everday standards,
there is no need to give him such a diagnosis and the bad therapy and 
stigmatisation.
To look at it neurologicaly, "psychotic" episods have to be made a virtue 
of necessity.
According to western neurology, thinking is bound to the whole neocortex - 
( half the brain is involved in seeing), with some special emphasis on the 
right frontal lobe as  "end".
There is neorologocical chemistry too. This has lead in Indian
philosophy to the, astonishing as scientifc  achievement,  differentiation 
between manas and buddhis. A little like mind and reason here.
Manas is mind, buddhis is something like reason. Buddhis are more 
electrical, but manas  ist the normal common sense and usual
brain chemistry and dynamics.
Now, of course an episod of psychosis is connected to some disturbance or 
change in the manas - buddhis functioning, in some way connnected to 
electrochemicals and brain dynamics.
For the first one has to take in account, that a lot of psychiatric cases 
did not have any qualified mesurement of the brain before getting a case for 
the medicine.
The second is that the disturbance and change may be very little as cause, 
much as effect.
Enhanced brain dynmics is in genreal a sign of medical psychiotic
episods.

Especially the upcomimg buddhis have to be supported very strong, otherwise 
some more awful state become solid.
And, as pointed out earlier, the self-defence and social strategical
behaviour and cleverness gets to small, compare toteh veen more difficult 
social situation.
Medical drugs don't do that, and in Yoga you have to make very intensive 
asanas for a couple of years, bringing blood to the head to bring manas and 
buddhis and more to a well functioning.

This dures often much longer and takes more efforts, than the
patience of western medical studies is organized to
accept.

In Deleuze Guattari, this is described that a  full rhizome has to be build 
up in the brain and a full body without organs has to be made.

The "romantic" in schizophrenia lies in this situation.
Probably a  release of some brain chemsitry, in my eyes connected to the 
removal of some
biochemical repressors in the DNA (from Monod's "chance and necesstity" - 
more important for D&G than occuring in the secondary literature) or 
difficulties due to normal brain growing and functional division occure.
These repressors are often only removed under very very
hard stress for the person.
This conception is something lika a golden key to the understanding of the 
wholy very ill treated processes in the psyche.
But that need not to be there in every medical case.
Especially, as there are a lot of "should not be medical cases" medical 
cases.
This stress the possibility for outer causes for the outbusting of 
"episods".
A severe double bind situation over years  may produce something like that.
These double bind often occurs in new situations of beginning a profession 
after study, changing the work or leaving or getting a new sexual partner.
Indian and other philosophy know, that then a process in direction
full functioning of the brain and growing/melting together of the brain
(rhizome) takes place, if approbiate asanas are made.
They know furthet, that he brain changes are very very fine, leading to a 
theory of  substances finer than our known brain chemistry.

I do not know what you have done in Auroville.

May be even, you are follwing a bad tradition in this  list and make some 
lie.

I got the impression, the experience in operating on such a deep
neurological and existential level only by asans is not very widespread.
So, your suffering can be turned into "gold".
Westen medical drugs prolongs and stables the suffering by
stupefying.
Of course, that is a question of "measure" of stupefying.
It is possible that IQ measurments under medical drugs may be better than in 
acute episods, especially in the handeled below more complicared cases.
But that is not the measurment aginst the real good functioning of a healed 
brain.
The immersion of abilty tests like IQ to a "normal reality" is very deep,
thus, as I wrote before, defiencies are hard to rule out.

The  development of Buddhis, manas is very connected to clear thinking, 
although this is of course ocupied with the new experiences, which may make 
the impression of being  confuse, because it takes a while to spereate the 
feeling of brain neurlogy and the content of the usuual representaions of 
the involved brain processes.
There are unsusal experience too.

In general, as the expereinces are simply taken as "hallucinatory",
no real effort to see how much clear thinking is there regarding the unusual 
situation includingthe stress is made.
The second effect is to leave the person simply alone with these in reality 
quite general, well known and treated by a vast culture experience.
It is like to bring you to a factory with a lot of machines without any hint 
or even hindering evrery hint to the knowledge and sciene
of machine building, electrical engineering and work organisation.
This factory is your brain.
You know, that in the foreword of 1000 Plateaus the thesis:
"The unconciosness is a factory, not a theatre" was listed as
a main one of the Anti-Oedipe.
Of course, as a former repair electrician I can tell you, machines can be 
severe damged or even be destroyed.
Even the whole factory may be made to produce on a very low level.
Neuroleptics have an effect in this direction.

Here, the crime of psychiatry in "pathologizing" these cases is severe.
Neurologists and psychiatrist must know that.

"Clear thinking" means healthy development of the manas, buddhis (reason) 
can  therefore be taken as an indicator of how much and good the  new 
braindynamics have been integrated by the usual main processes in the 
neocortex.
If this is the case the whole time, no invincible problem should be there. 
High intensity will probably stay.  Being blocked and pain
is listed in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali as known obstacles, to be 
removed - in general by approbiate asanas.
.

Of course, medicine shows that there are sometimes processes which
seem to destroy the abilitiy to think clear and are very hard to turn
into the buddhi, manas direction -  the damaged machines.
The "mystical" cases instead can have a lot of trust in following and 
reading the lots of practical and theoretical yoga or Indian philosophy
literature, as they are on very often run ways, due to the structural and 
material similarities of human brains and bodies.
This similarity is a needed as an assumption for the science of medicine in 
general.

The others are  more   complicated "pathological" cases for yogis too.
Therefore the "clearcut distinction" of clear thinking and concentration is 
important. The "pathological" case may far more often not need to be treated 
with medical drugs than actually done,
but there has to be more monotoring, more care and more treatment - to speak 
harmless.

Unfortunalty, cases of simulating madness as motives of severe crimes
or drug careers in a dead end are a part of the medico-juridical 
dispositive.
But, high intesities, a inclination to br seducable to drugs and the 
development of buddhis, manas are intervowen.
The role of alcohol in western culture ("in vino veritas") is proverbial.

So, real acute pschosis  is mostly like new land in the brain, new dynamics, 
other arrangrements, some
change of brain chemistry.
The wild elephant you experienced is to be tamed, not to
half stupefy, which even worse makes the the rest half
more reptile like and even wilder and stronger.


To end, I got the impression, in Auroville  they are no real specialist
for cases like you or you have not taken all ressources there.
The treatment of even deep potential "mystical  experience" cases
by yogic or sufic or other non medical drug techniques is very seldom
on the height and the duration.
If anyone in course of his experiences has beeen broken in his 
professional/educationl career he should not worry too much.
To to come in full clear thinking and concentration in a
normal way is, undergoing such states and experiences, very hard.
You can spend an € of psychic effort only one times.
If structural brain arrangement consumes more than the half of your
psychic property, you have a sever handicap for  quite some time.
Not investing it, will make you a beggar for an even longer time.


I hope, this will (make) clear the clearcut mark of clear thinking.



greetings Harald Wenk


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Super Dragon" <superdragon at addlebrain.com>
To: <deleuze-guattari at lists.driftline.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 25, 2009 1:41 PM
Subject: Re: [D-G] Mystic, psychosis, ,"Normopaths" (from Guattaris de la
borde)


> Hello Wouter Hwenk
>
> The question of clarity is an interesting one-clear in relation to what?
> According to the DSM, psychosis is manifest as disordered thinking in so
> far as it is not ordered by the order words of the DSM!
>
> Te clarity described by different kinds of yogic traditions is the clarity
> achieved when order words break down. Yet most also describe a disciplined
> and focused method precisely to avoid the chaotic immeersion in psychotic
> experience. You both seem to know your way around the literature and
> proabably know more than I about this but I would want to draw a line
> between a disciplned mediational technique and the states of consciousness
> that can be achieved and the seeming randomness of florid psychosis-this
> may be constrolled mediationally-indeed I have worked quite hard at doing
> this but meditatation is still an apparatus of capture.
>
> As I understand lacan, psychosis is what occurs when the father's law is
> not internalised or if it breaks down. One of the things I have observed
> in my own episodes and the episodes of colleagues is the construction of
> new linguistic rules in th episodes. These are quite often paranoic
> rules-being persecuted by various agencies, for example, is one that
> inflates the importance of the person experiencing this and shores up
> primary narcisism. Experiencing myself as  a spaceship, alternatively, was
> a transient way of constructing my own big Other at the fringes of this
> logic-and also narcissitic (but very necessary at the time). So I'm not so
> into romanticizing what happens in psychosis as revolutionary-some of it
> is ultra paranoic. For example, delusions are like religion in so far as
> they only attend to the evidence that supports them-This sets up the
> production of closed repetitions at another level of embodiment. Because
> this evidence is experienced through the senses, it is
>  real for the expereincer. The ontological status of this real is highly
> ambiguous. It is not real ( as in not actual) for everyone else in the
> room. So for these people, the reality is unextended and virtual. For the
> experiencer, the reality is actual and extended. This embodied ambiguity
> occupies a space that confounds the father's law. If Lacan's 'real' is
> discursively founded on lack than the reality of the person who expereince
> psychosis cannot 'be'-yet it undoubtedly is for many people that I know.
> This is enough for me to support a conception of the real based on
> plenitude. But I would still not link psychosis with clarity (despite the
> oceanic moments where it feels like all is clear). Rather, I would suggest
> this perception is the ultimate in the grandiose self
> deception-encountering being as a clamour, alternately, is more like an
> unclarity that deafens-I don't really have words for it and as stated
> earlier, one could not live there for long. The advice about saving
>  a bit of land is very sound in this respect and, in my view, psychotic
> delusions are much more about the fictive construction of land than the
> deterriorialiation of land as such. Maybe, making new territories (David
> Wood talks about time shelter) is what the de and resubjectifications of
> psychosis are about. However, I can only speak for the lands I have made
> and abandoned. They are of little interest to anyone but myself. It would
> be interesting to hear from another pathway through expereinces of
> psychosis.
>
> Cheers
> Ruth
>
>
> Sloughing one's skin.-The snake that cannot slough its skin perishes.
> Likewise spirits which are prevented from changing their opinions; they
> cease to be spirits (Nietzsche: Daybreak:V:573)
>
>
> --- wku at ziggo.nl wrote:
>
> From: "Wouter Kusters" <wku at ziggo.nl>
> To: <deleuze-guattari at lists.driftline.org>
> Subject: Re: [D-G] Mystic, psychosis, , "Normopaths" (from Guattaris de la
> borde)
> Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2009 02:30:02 +0100
>
> Hello everybody,
>
>> This article tries to seperate psychosis from mystical experience.
>
> To separate AND to connect them
>
>> Now, im "Kundalini Yoga" by Satyanda this is clear cut, referring to the
>> work of Motoyama:
>> If you can think clear and concentrated, it is not psychotic.
>>
>> Let us remark, that "clear" does not mean according to the mainstream of
>> actual public opnion.
>> This "people say" goes much deeper, also as a measure,
>> as one may think superficial.
>> "Concentrated" may be a little bit more "formal" and perhaps
>> not so much controversal in concrete cases.
>> But, as is will argue, even here "people say" is more
>> effective present, then tolerable.
>
> Clear and concentrated in the loose sense of the words, as predicates not
> pertaining to psychosis. let me tell you this: psychosis is (can be) the
> most clear lucid state thinkable - at least as I experienced.
> Concentration
> is another thing. Usually we say that someone is able to concentrate when
> he
> can remain during a certain amount of time withion conventionally defined
> boundaries of some domain of discourse. In psychosis conventio0ns
> dissolve...which means that the usual "agendas" of what belongs and what
> does not belong to a 'proper' stretch of discourse are overridden.
>
>> Real coherence and concentration as mesure is also indicated by a
>> remark of
>> Jaspers, who declares genuine
>> pathological thinking as confused.
>
> Yes, indeed, but it is exactly this Jaspers who at the one hand opened up
> the phenomenologiocal approach for all kinds of psychopathology, but...at
> the same time closed the door for so-called incomprehensible psychotic
> discourse. Key figures in German phenomenological psychiatry who did leave
> open the door for assessments interpretations of psychosis were
> Binswanger,
> Konrad, Von Gebsattel, etc. Most prominent and more readable is of course
> the still classic work of Louis Sass ion Madness and Modernism (Of course
> for those who read Dutch...the classic work in our little language is my
> own
> "Pure madness" (2005).
>
>
>> This is the case for a Lacanian psychonalytic understanding too.
>> Especially Guattari and Deleuze  have their professional
>> background in these things from Lacan.
>> Left Lacanist was an etiquette in this direction.
>
> Lacan is quite overrated when iot comes to understanding what a psychosis
> phenomenologically means. Of course, you may say, we are not interested in
> phenomenology, but what is the alternative considering psychosis? I mean
> we
> are not discussing senseless dead academic texts, but real practices in
> psychiatry. In other words...should we send another bunch of 'cultural
> theorists with books of deleuze and lacan in their hands, knowing
> beforehand
> what they will meet, of should we send some open-minded phenomenologists
> over there? I can tell you from a patient's perspective: Give me the
> open-minded ones.
>
> Anyway...who cares?
>
> wk
>
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