ENERGY

ENHANCEMENT MEDITATION

MEDITATION HEAD

 HOME PAGE

 

GAIN ENERGY APPRENTICE LEVEL1

THE ENERGY BLOCKAGE REMOVAL PROCESS

LEVEL2

THE KARMA CLEARING PROCESS APPRENTICE LEVEL3

MASTERY OF  RELATIONSHIPS TANTRA APPRENTICE LEVEL4

 

STUDENTS EXPERIENCES  2005 AND 2006

 

MORE STUDENTS EXPERIENCES

 - FIFTY FULL TESTIMONIALS

2003 COURSE

THE MASK OF SANITY

Section 4: Some questions still without adequate answers

Part 1: What is wrong with these patients?

64. Aspects of regression

 

 

Energy Enhancement          Enlightened Texts         Psychopath           The Mask Of Sanity

 

 

64. Aspects of regression

The persistent pattern of maladaptation at personality levels and the ostensible

purposelessness of many self-damaging acts definitely suggests not only a lack of strong

purpose but also a negative purpose or at least a negative

398 THE MASK OF SANITY

drift. This sort of patient, despite all his opportunities, his intelligence, and his plain

lessons of experience, seems to go out of his way to woo misfortune.47 The suggestion

has already been made that his typical activities seem less comprehensible in terms, of

life-striving or of a pursuit of joy than as an unrecognized blundering toward the

negations of nonexistence.8,207

Some of this, it has been suggested, may be interpreted as the tantrum, like

reactions of an inadequate personality balked, as behavior similar to that of the spoiled

child who bumps his own head against the wall or holds his breath when he is crossed.

It might be thought of as not unlike a man's cutting off his nose to spite not only his

face, but also the scheme of life in general, which has turned out to be a game that he

cannot play. Such reactions are, of course, found in nearly all types of personality

disorder or inadequacy. It will perhaps be readily granted that they are all regressive.

Behavior against the constructive patterns through which the personality finds

expression and seeks fulfillment of its destiny is regressive activity although it may not

consist in a return, step by step, or in a partial return to the status of childhood and

eventually of infancy. Such reactions appear to be, in a sense, against the grain of life or

against the general biologic purpose.

Regressive reactions or processes may all be regarded as disintegrative, as reverse

steps in the general process of biologic growth through which a living entity becomes

more complex, more highly adapted and specialized, better coordinated, and more

capable of dealing successfully or happily with objective or subjective experience. This

scale of increasing complexity exists at points even below the level of living matter. A

group of electrons functioning together make up the atom which can indeed be split

down again to its components. The atoms joining form molecules which, in turn,

coming together in definite orderly arrangement, may become structurally coordinating

parts of elaborate crystalline materials; or, in even more specialized and complex

fashion, they may form a cell of organic matter. Cells of organic matter may unite and

integrate to form the living organism we know as a jellyfish. Always the process is

reversible; the organic matter can decompose back into inorganic matter.

Without laboriously following out all the steps of this scale, we might mention

the increasing scope of activity, the increasing specialization, and the increasing

precariousness of existence at various levels up through vertebrates and mammals to

man. All along this scale it is evident that failure to function successfully at a certain

level necessitates regression or decomposition to a lower or less complicated one. If the

cell membrane of one epithelial unit in a mammalian body becomes imporous and fails

to obtain nutriment brought by blood and lymph, it loses its existence as an

SOME QUESTIONS STILL WITHOUT ADEQUATE ANSWERS 399

epithelial cell. If the unwary rabbit fails to perceive the danger of the snare, he soon

becomes in rapid succession a dead rabbit, merely a collection of dead organs and

supportive structures, protein, fat, and finally, inorganic matter. The fundamental quest

for life has been interrupted, and, having been interrupted, the process goes into

reverse.

So, too, the criminal discovered and imprisoned ceases to be a free man who

comes and goes as he pleases. A curtailment in the scope of his functioning is suffereda

regression in one sense to simpler, more routine, and less varied and vivid activities.

The man who fails in another and more complex way to go on with life, to fulfill his

personality growth and function, becomes what we call a schizophrenic. The objective

curtailment of his activities by the rules of the psychiatric hospital are almost negligible

in comparison with the vast simplification, the loss of self-expression, and the personal

disintegration which characterize his regression from the subjective point of view. The

old practice of referring to the extremely regressed schizophrenic as leading a vegetative

existence implies the significance that is being stressed.

Regression, then, in a broad sense may be taken to mean movement from richer

and more full life to levels of scantier or less highly developed life. In other words, it is

relative death. It is the cessation of existence or maintenance of function at a given

level.

The concept of an active death instinct postulated by Freud87 has been utilized by

some 8,207 to account for socially self-destructive reactions. I have never been able to

discover in the writings of Freud or any of his followers real evidence to confirm this

assumption. In contrast, the familiar tendency to disintegrate, against which life evolves,

may be regarded as fundamental and comparable to gravity. The climbing man or

animal must use force and purpose to ascend or to maintain himself at a given height.

To fall or slide downhill he need only cease his efforts and let go. Without assuming an

intrinsic death instinct, it is possible to account for active withdrawal from positions at

which adaptation is unsuccessful and stress too extreme.

Whether regression occurs primarily through something like gravity or through

impulses more self-contained, the backward movement (or ebbing) is likely to prompt

many sorts of secondary reactions, including behavior not adapted for ordinary human

purposes but instead, for functioning in the other direction. The modes of such

reactivity may vary, may fall into complex patterns, and may seek elaborate expression.

In a movement (or gravitational drift) from levels where life is vigorous and full

to those where it is less so, the tactics of withdrawal predominate. People with all the

outer mechanisms of adaptation intact might, one would think, regress more complexly

than can those who react more simply. The

400 THE MASK OF SANITY

simplest reaction in reverse might be found in a person who straightway blows out his

brains. As a skillful general who has realized that the objective is unobtainable

withdraws by feints and utilizes all sorts of delaying actions, so a patient who has much

of the outer mechanisms for living may retire, not in obvious rout but skillfully and

elaborately, preserving his lines. The psychopath as we conceive of him in such an

interpretation seems to justify the high estimate of his technical abilities as we see them

expressed in reverse movement.

Unlike the general with the retreating army in our analogy, he seems not still

devoted to the original contest but to other issues and aims that arise in withdrawal. To

force the analogy further we might say that the retiring army is now concerning itself

with looting the countryside, seeking mischief and light entertainment. The troops have

cast off their original loyalties and given up their former aims but have found no other

serious ones to replace them. But the effective organization and all of the technical

skills are retained.

F. L. Wells has expressed things very pertinent to the present discussion. A

brief quotation will bring out useful points:294

The principle of substitutive reactions, sublimative or regressive in character, has long

been known, but Kurt Lewin's (1933) experimental construction of the latter is especially

apt, if not unquestionable mental hygiene. A child, for example, continually impelled to

open a gate it is impossible for him to open, may blow up in a tantrum, grovel on the

ground, till the emotion subsides sufficiently for him to become substitutively occupied, as

with fragments of gravel and other detritus he finds there, by which he forgets his distress

about the gate. Lewin, perhaps unaware of the status of this and allied observations (and

their symbols) in psychiatric history, gives it the name "going out of the field": the

background is that enunciated by Woodworth and by James before him, not to say Adolf

Meyer, Janet, Jung, and the psychoanalytic group generally. The human personality has the

adaptive property of finding satisfactions at simpler levels when higher ones are taken

away, fortunately so if this keeps him out of a psychosis, otherwise if it stabilizes him in

contentment at this lower level ("going native") or if the satisfactions cannot be found

short of a psychosis (MacCurdy, 1925, p. 367). All such cases have the common regressive

factor of giving up the higher-level adjustment (opening the gate) with regressive relief at a

lower level (playing with the gravel).

Another illustration given by Wells emphasizes features of the concept that are

valuable to us:291

Consider, for example, the group of drives that center about the concept of selfmaintenance,

the "living standards" of civilization. This

SOME QUESTIONS STILL WITHOUT ADEQUATE ANSWERS 401

means the pursuit of the diverse means to surround oneself with the maximum of material

comfort in terms of residence, food, playthings, etc., for the purchase of which one can

capitalize his abilities. That the normal individual will do this to a liberal limit is taken in

the local culture as a matter of course, probably more liberally than the facts justify. For

this pursuit involves a competitive struggle beset also with inner conflicts (e.g., ethical),

which by no means everyone is able to set aside. Among regressions specific to this

category are those undertakings of poverty common to religious orders, but this regression

is quite specific, since these orders often involve their members in other "disciplines" from

which the normal individual would flee as far (Parkman, 1867, Chap. 16). It is quite

certain, though hard to demonstrate objectively, that many an individual in normal life

regresses from these economic conflicts only in less degree. He does not take the vow of

poverty like the monastic, nor does he dedicate himself to the simplified life of the "South

Sea Island" stereotype, but he prefers salary to commission, city apartment to suburban

"bungalow," clerical work to (outside) sales.

A thought expressed by William James in 1902 and quoted by Wells deserves

renewed attention:"294

Yonder puny fellow however, whom everyone can beat suffers no chagrin about it,

for he has long ago abandoned the attempt to "carry that line," as the merchants say,

of Self at all. With no attempt there can be no failure; with no failure no humiliation.

So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and

do. It is determined by the ratio of our actualities to our supposed potentialities; a

fraction of which our pretentions are the denominator and the numerator our success:

thus, Self-esteem = Success/Pretensions. Such a fraction may be increased as well by

diminishing the denominator as by increasing the numerator. To give up pretensions

is as blessed a relief as to get them gratified; and where disappointment is incessant

and the struggle unending, this is what men will always do. The history of evangelical

theology, with its conviction of sin, its self-despair, and its abandonment of salvation

by works, is the deepest of possible examples, but we meet others in every walk of life.

… How pleasant is the day when we give up striving to be young-or slender! Thank

God, we say, those illusions are gone. Everything added to the self is a burden as well

as a pride.

Something relevant to the points now under consideration may be found also in

Sherrington's comment on reactions (or inlaid precautions) against unbearable pain or

stress in the human organism. He says:257

Again in life's final struggle the chemical delicacy of the brain-net can make distress

lapse early because with the brain's disintegration the mind fades early - a rough world's

mercy towards its dearest possession.

402 THE MASK OF SANITY

There are, it seems, many ways for this to occur without signs of any change

which we yet have objective means to detect, chemically or microscopically. Such

changes may occur under the stimulus of agents that do not have direct physical

contact with the brain or with any part of the body.

Withdrawal, or limitation of one's quest in living, appears in many forms. The

decision for taking such a step may be consciously voluntary, but it seems likely that

many influences less clear and simple may also play a part. In the earliest years of

human life a great deal of complicated shaping may occur, with adaptive changes to

promote survival by an automatic refusal (inability) to risk one's feelings (response) in

the greatest subjective adventures. In adult life such decisions sometimes emerge in

clear deliberation.

The activity of the psychopath may seem in some respects to accomplish a kind

of protracted and elaborate social and spiritual suicide. Perhaps the complex, sustained,

and spectacular undoing of the self may be cherished by him. He seldom allows

physical suicide to interrupt it.47 Be it noted that such a person retains high intelligence

and nearly all the outer mechanisms for carrying on the complicated activities of

positive life. It is to be expected then that his function in the opposite (regressive)

emotional direction might be more subtle than those of a less highly developed biologic

entity. The average rooster proceeds at once to leap on the nearest hen and have done

with his simple erotic impulse. The complex human lover may pay suit for years to his

love object, approaching her through many volumes of poetry, through the building up

of financial security in his business, through manifold activities and operations of his

personality functions, and with aims and emotions incomparably more complicated and

more profound than that of the rooster. When complexly organized functions are

devoted to aimless or inconsistent rebellion against the positive goals of life, perhaps

they may enable the patient to woo failure and disintegration with similar elaborateness

and subtlety. His conscious or outer functioning may at the same time maintain an

imitation of life that is uniquely deceptive.

Perhaps the emptiness or superficiality of life without major goals or deep

loyalties, or real love, would leave a person with high intelligence and other superior

capacities so bored that he would eventually turn to hazardous, self-damaging,

outlandish, antisocial, and even self-destructive exploits in order to find something fresh

and stimulating in which to apply his relatively useless and unchallenged energies and

talents.

Like so much of what is often called dynamic interpretation of psychiatric

disorder and of human behavior, these thoughts are purely speculative

SOME QUESTIONS STILL WITHOUT ADEQUATE ANSWERS 403

and without the slightest support of evidence. They are offered with no pretense

whatsoever of constituting a scientific explanation.

The more experience I have with psychopaths over the years, the less likely it

seems to me that any dynamic or psychogenic theory is likely to be established by real

evidence as the cause of their grave maladaptation. Increasingly I have come to believe

that some subtle and profound defect in the human organism, probably inborn but not

hereditary, plays the chief role in the psychopath's puzzling and spectacular failure to

experience life normally and to carry on a career acceptable to society. This, too, is still

a speculative concept and is not supported by demonstrable evidence.

 

Next: Section 4: Some questions still without adequate answers, Part 1: What is wrong with these patients?, 65. Surmise and evidence

 

Energy Enhancement          Enlightened Texts         Psychopath           The Mask Of Sanity

 

 

Section 4, Part 1

 

  • Psychopath Hervey Cleckley THE MASK OF SANITY, Section 4: Some questions still without adequate answers, Part 1: What is wrong with these patients?, 61. A basic hypothesis
    Psychopath Hervey Cleckley THE MASK OF SANITY, Section 4: Some questions still without adequate answers, Part 1: What is wrong with these patients?, 61. A basic hypothesis, Now that we have proceeded with our task through the stages of (1) presenting observations of the gross material and (2) sifting and tabulating as conveniently and intelligibly as we were able the pertinent residue of our data, let us attempt the next step. This will consist in searching for some concept or formulating some theory that might satisfactorily account for the facts observed. Much of the material appears contradictory, not only in the ordinary world of average or normal living but even in the world of mental disorder commonly granted to be less readily comprehensible in terms of ordinary reason at energyenhancement.org

  • Psychopath Hervey Cleckley THE MASK OF SANITY, Section 4: Some questions still without adequate answers, Part 1: What is wrong with these patients?, 62. The concept of masked personality disorder or defect
    Psychopath Hervey Cleckley THE MASK OF SANITY, Section 4: Some questions still without adequate answers, Part 1: What is wrong with these patients?, 62. The concept of masked personality disorder or defect, Let us consider further the concept of disorders or defects that are deeply or centrally located. The contrast between such a pathology and one that is peripheral and visible can be demonstrated readily in speech disorders. The man whose tongue has been severely mutilated will not be able to pronounce his words clearly. Perhaps he can only mutter unintelligibly. Even a child or a savage can see where the trouble is and understand why function is disrupted. If the hypoglossal nerves are cut, the tongue, although itself unmarred, will not move and words cannot be uttered at energyenhancement.org

  • Psychopath Hervey Cleckley THE MASK OF SANITY, Section 4: Some questions still without adequate answers, Part 1: What is wrong with these patients?, 63. Further consideration of the hypothesis
    Psychopath Hervey Cleckley THE MASK OF SANITY, Section 4: Some questions still without adequate answers, Part 1: What is wrong with these patients?, 63. Further consideration of the hypothesis, In attempting to account for the abnormal behavior observed in the psychopath, we have found useful the hypothesis that he has a serious and subtle abnormality or defect at deep levels disturbing the integration and normal appreciation of experience and resulting in a pathology that might, in analogy with Henry Head's classifications of the aphasias, be described as semantic. Presuming that such a patient does fail to experience life adequately in its major issues, can we then better account for his clinical manifestations? The difficulties of proving, or even of demonstrating direct objective evidence, for hypotheses about psychopathology (or about ordinary subjective functioning) are too obvious to need elaborate discussion here at energyenhancement.org

  • Psychopath Hervey Cleckley THE MASK OF SANITY, Section 4: Some questions still without adequate answers, Part 1: What is wrong with these patients?, 64. Aspects of regression
    Psychopath Hervey Cleckley THE MASK OF SANITY, Section 4: Some questions still without adequate answers, Part 1: What is wrong with these patients?, 64. Aspects of regression, The persistent pattern of maladaptation at personality levels and the ostensible purposelessness of many self-damaging acts definitely suggests not only a lack of strong purpose but also a negative purpose or at least a negative drift. This sort of patient, despite all his opportunities, his intelligence, and his plain lessons of experience, seems to go out of his way to woo misfortune.47 The suggestion has already been made that his typical activities seem less comprehensible in terms, of life-striving or of a pursuit of joy than as an unrecognized blundering toward the negations of nonexistence at energyenhancement.org

  • Psychopath Hervey Cleckley THE MASK OF SANITY, Section 4: Some questions still without adequate answers, Part 1: What is wrong with these patients?, 65. Surmise and evidence
    Psychopath Hervey Cleckley THE MASK OF SANITY, ASection 4: Some questions still without adequate answers, Part 1: What is wrong with these patients?, 65. Surmise and evidence, If, in the so-called psychopath, we have a patient profoundly limited in ability to participate seriously in the major aims of life, how, we might inquire, did he get that way? Reference has been made to the traditional viewpoint from which it was assumed that an inborn organic defect left these people 'constitutionally inferior' or 'moral imbeciles.' Such a congenital defect, it must be readily admitted, may exist and may account for the failure to experience life normally and hence to react sanely at energyenhancement.org

 

 

 
ENERGY ENHANCEMENT
TESTIMONIALS
EE LEVEL1   EE LEVEL2
EE LEVEL3   EE LEVEL4   EE FAQS
NEWSLETTER SIGN UP
NAME:
EMAIL:

Google

Search energyenhancement.org Search web