This video was excellent, touching and haunting for me. Thank you Anon. Reminds me of one of my favorite poems "Hail to You" by psychologist Dr. Kazimierz Dąbrowski(see pic).
Dąbrowski rejected the idea of psychoneurosis, the "mental illness" terminology of his day. Rather, he deems the variety of "neurotic" behaviours as human nature - a growth process of developing a fully integrated personality. As we mature our personalities, we integrate new experiences coming from the world(external milieu) into our personality(inner mileau).
If we experience loss or trauma, we integrate those experiences to our being, and hopefully resolve the conflict between the internal and external milieu through a process of Positive Disintegration. This is where we tear our personality down, rebuild and reintegrate ourselves with these new experiences. Sometimes this process causes the "psychoneurotic" behaviours as we integrate and mature.
Dąbrowski was a contemporary of Abraham Maslow. His theories on Positive Disintegration blow Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs out of the water. Maslow looks one-dimensional and backward by comparison.
Guess who won out on the prevailing theory? Who's taught in every psych 101 class? Maslow. Freud. Skinner. DSM-5. Just as Big Pharma has no interest in a real cure, there's no money in healthy personality development. Big Psychotherapy is in bed with Big Pharma, poisoning our minds, stifling development and failing the human race!
So what of us? We by and large know this. Why does this video bring us to tears? Why the hypersensitivity to the world, the intensity of feeling, the Dark Night of the Soul?
A generalisation I can make is that most people also go through this process, but accept the world as it is. People go through all sorts of contortions to accept what is. I get to the next step, the next job, more pills, I'll have a place in Heaven someday, etc… They are trapped in loops and circuits of the system.
Our difference is we do not accept this world as presented. We seek answers outside of the system, making our Dark Nights that much Darker. The existential horror of it is we do not know the extent of the system we are trapped in, or with certainty why we are truly here, or if there is any certainty to be had at all. We do have feelings however, that it ought to be a better place.
As with the video, as with personality, the Soul goes through that same Positive Disintegration process. Maybe that is the grand reason why we are here. Enrichment. To understand suffering and the Dark, the fight and anxiety of it. To awaken, mature and ascend again to greater heights with our newfound integrated experiences. To suffer and grow and help others grow.
References:
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_disintegration
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazimierz_D%C4%85browski