How does your toaster work?
If you are like me, you won’t find out until it doesn’t work. When mine stopped browning bread slices, I turned it over (not before unplugging it) and unscrewed the bottom and discovered its mechanism. Very interesting!
So it is with the soul. We discover how it works when something goes wrong. Mental illness can be one of those occasions.
For several years, I was the director of an agency serving homeless people, most of whom had one form or another of mental or emotional disability. A relative of mine suffered from depression and anxiety, with some dramatic, unusual symptoms. Starting when I worked at Stanford, and now at USC, I have spent a lot of time with students suffering from bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and other mental illnesses.
A turning point in my relationships with them came when I realized that the seemingly random and disconnected utterances of people in psychosis turned out often to have very deep significance. Their symbolic, ritualistic expressions were profound reflections of their subjective experience. I began to see that much of the content of their expressions was universal in nature: a window into the souls of us all. We take our inner lives for granted, not examining the structure of the psyche, until there is a breakdown of that system. Then its contents are revealed, and we get a look at our inner emotional and spiritual structure. This inner architecture is beautiful, but it’s not neat, tidy, and rational, and this can be a scary discovery.
When I was serving homeless people, many of them suffering from schizophrenia, I read a book that helped me greatly: The Far Side of Madness by John Weir Perry. Perry was a Jungian, from a school of psychology that is not embraced by a lot of folks in academia, but from which many insights can be gleaned. The book describes the subjective experience of the journey of the patient through schizophrenia, the collapse of his/her entire “cosmos” and the patient’s effort to re-establish order in it. The book reflected remarkably the stories of dozens of schizophrenics whom I knew well. I was staggered by the creativity of their efforts to bring order to the chaos they experienced. I began to see the heroism in their struggles, and this gave me a great deal of respect for them. I listened with new ears, and they responded positively when I took seriously what they had to say. It also inspired from me a new level of compassion for them, because their struggles were so tremendous. This went a long way in establishing trust that could translate into referrals to mental health professionals. Usually these patients needed medication of some kind, but they desperately needed their subjective experiences and expressions to be honored in the process.
The words and the actions of mentally ill people are often very meaningful, even if we don’t comprehend the meaning at first, or ever. This meaning has an intrinsic value that they need the rest of us to honor, even if we don’t get it. Even if medication or treatment is needed to dampen the symptoms, that does not mean that the symptoms are worthless. They need to be heard and respected even as the professional works to eliminate or resolve the processes that resulted in them.
The world’s religious literature can help us better understand people suffering from mental illness. It’s striking how many schizophrenics, who were not religious before their psychotic breaks, start using a lot of religious language and ritual after those episodes. This demonstrates that the real truth in the world’s religions is not “propositional”. It is not about dogmas that are somehow objectively “true”. Rather it is found in religion’s reflection of the structure of the psyche. Why do so many schizophrenics believe they are Jesus? Because the myths about him describe him as the savior of the whole cosmos. He came to re-order the universe by himself, bring heaven to earth, bring order to chaos, redemption out of suffering. He took on the sins of the world, just as the schizophrenic senses that the whole universe is broken and it is up to him or her alone to fix it. The loneliness, the rejection, the existential suffering of the Christ profoundly mirror the psychotic’s experience.
In turn, I’ve also learned a lot about religious texts from my efforts to understand the experiences of mentally ill people. What people in psychosis have to say is “insane” only if one tries to take it literally. Interpreted symbolically, one discovers they often are speaking in powerfully evocative poetry. To speak in straight prose might downplay the overwhelming intensity of their experience. The same can be said of religious texts which are problematic when viewed as statements of historical fact, but, when read through the lenses of symbol and myth, are seen to be rich with insight.
So it should be no surprise that in the gospel stories of Jesus, the people we’d now categorize as the mentally ill were the first to identify him as the Son of God. And to this day, many cultures identify as shamans and saints the very people we lock up in psychiatric wards. Mental illness causes great suffering, but we should not overlook the spiritual awakenings and the depths of compassion to which it can lead us all.