The Map of the Psyche: The Truth of Mental Illness

Copyright © 2013 Timothy R. Nuske

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Balboa Press rev. date: 10/04/2013

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Map of the Psyche: The Basics

Simple Psyche Says

Section 1 - Pyramid Map

1.1. Freud’s Model of the Conscious

1.2. Conscious Model and Trait Theories

1.3. Moral Compass

1.4. Moral and Trait Theories

1.5. 3-D Pyramid Model

1.6. Emotions

1.7. Using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS)

Section 2 - Star Map

2.1. Shapes, Symbols, and Sacred Geometry

2.2. Psyche and Merkaba

2.3. Personal and Collective Unconscious

2.4. Sex in the Psyche

Section 3 - Inner Processes

3.1. Ego

3.2. Persona

3.3. Self

3.4. Consciousness

3.5. Psyche Meets Quantum

3.6. Psyche Meets Spirit

Section 4 - Mental Illness

4.1. The Truth of Mental Illness

4.2. Anxiety Disorders

4.3. Mood Disorders

4.4. Somatoform and Dissociative Disorders

4.5. Eating Disorders

4.6. Personality Disorders

4.7. Schizophrenia

Conclusion

References

Warning! Do not stop taking psychiatric drugs abruptly! While the adverse effects of psychiatric medications may be potentially harmful, it can be more dangerous to stop taking them ‘cold turkey’, as doing so may bring about withdrawal, rebound, or relapse symptoms. It is a free-will choice to remain on such medications, and for those whom they help function better and for whom they deliver the desired result may wish to continue taking them, but anyone who wishes to stop taking the drugs should only do so with professional guidance, always gradually and at a medically advised pace (though you know your body best), and with the assistance and understanding of friends and family.

The information and theory contained within this book have not been approved by the mainstream medical community or by any government regulatory bodies. The information is presented as is, and the reader assumes all risk from the use, non-use, or misuse of this information. This book is not designed for self-diagnosis or treatment and is not a substitute for personalized and professional care. The psyche is described from a psychological perspective using a psychological language, and is aimed towards professional healers, especially those in the field of mental health (psychologists and psychiatrists, therapists, counsellors, et al.); however, since everyone has a psyche (a mind), anyone may read this book.

Preface

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

—Ecclesiastes 1:9

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

—Apple Inc.

I am not a professional writer or researcher. I am not rich or famous, and I do not want to be. I am not even a licensed or practicing psychologist. I just see things differently than most. As a child, I grew up in the country and was happy, intelligent, and athletic, even if I was a little shy. Before my teen years began, my family and I moved closer to the city. I enjoyed the last couple years of primary school and even excelled. And then came high school. I was picked on and bullied for being different. I was mentally, emotionally, and physically assaulted. Classmates spread rumours and lies about me. Some of the few friends I trusted turned out to be not so trustworthy. It was actually a ‘friend’ who was, at least in part, responsible for the rumours and lies. People frequently talk at me, or about me, but very few people have ever bothered to talk to me. I asked for help, but nobody could or would help me. I had no one to talk to and no one to turn to. It is a theme that has repeated itself ever since. I had no way to defend myself, so my mind did what it needed to do in order to survive. Mental walls and barriers were erected to protect me from an increasingly hostile environment. From my mid-teens through my mid-twenties I became trapped inside my own mind, locked in by walls designed to keep others out. I was diagnosed primarily with major depression, yet I could fit the diagnostic criteria for a whole lot more (around half of the almost four hundred diagnosable mental disorders) throughout that lengthy period and beyond.

I was put through the mental health system and was labelled, drugged, and involuntarily detained. I needed help but instead found a broken system that made things much worse. Shortly after being prescribed medications, I went through a particularly difficult experience I had trouble coping with. It was also around this time, when I was labelled and medicated, that I began to self-harm (and years later, I began to self-medicate). In an attempt for just a short respite from what haunted me, I consumed a handful of psychiatric drugs (these were not suicide attempts), and was involuntarily committed to a mental hospital within twenty-four hours of consuming the pills because they made me hallucinate. One man, a psychiatrist, had the power to label me as ‘crazy’ and have me detained. He did not know me, he knew nothing of what I was experiencing or feeling, he knew nothing of my past or what was troubling me—I mentioned taking the drugs, but he instead focused on the other, more obvious ‘symptoms’—and in fewer than ten minutes of a one-sided and extremely condescending conversation, one man who knew nothing about me had the power to strip me of my freedom, my rights, and my dignity. The treatment I was made to comply with before being released after my drug-induced psychosis was psychiatric medications; the very same offending chemical compounds that had sent me loopy in the first place. There was no talk, no therapy, no help, and no shoelaces or belt; they just gave me drugs. I survived the Western mental health system because I avoided it from that point forward. If the problem was my mind, then my mind should be able to fix it. I didn’t know it would take so long or be so painful.

After a decade and during another distressing period (caused by another ‘friend’ that wasn’t), I finally hit bottom. I felt alone in the middle of a metaphorical ocean, struggling to keep my head above water. I was used to the darkness and depression. That was my ‘normal’. Then, over the course of three days and nights, I was pulled down even farther and experienced a darkness more profound than ever before. It was an experience commonly referred to as the Dark Night of the Soul, though I did not know what it was at the time. The darkness and negativity was so thick I could only describe it as a tar-like sludge. It consisted of every negative emotion I could name, and many I could not, all rolled into one. And I was swimming in it. I felt each emotion for a fraction of a second and could barely identify one before it changed to another. I had no idea what was happening and had nobody to ask for help. I thought I was finally going insane. How do you escape your own mind? How do you hide from your own thoughts, emotions, and memories? I felt completely alone. So I did the only thing I could. I began to question my own madness.

Why me? led nowhere because I wasn’t the only person who had ever gone through something like this. My life experiences may be different and unique, but the mental states themselves are apparently common (although the sludge of negativity was a new experience even for me). There are even books full of labels to define many of those mental states (like the DSM). Others have felt and behaved the way I did, even if different experiences led them to that point. So I questioned more. The information regarding the why, who, what, and when was useful, but it did not help me fix my problem. Eventually I looked at things in a way that would change my life: I finally looked at the where. If going down resulted in more darkness and negativity, then what would happen if I went up? Ten years of darkness and depression were gone in a fraction of a second with just two words: think higher. What felt like invisible shackles weighing me down just disappeared. Like shifting from the crushing depths of an ocean to the dizzying highs in the sky in an instant. This shift was even more intense (from my perspective) because I had been experiencing what is called anhedonia—the inability to experience pleasure or positive emotions—for at least six months prior. I felt lighter, happier, and more energetic, and I even smiled and laughed for the first time in months (and even years). I thought I’d somehow cured my mental illness. But instead of being happy for me because I was no longer depressed, those around me saw the radical change in my external behaviour and not my shift in inner perception. Several people even voiced their concerns. One said I should see a psychiatrist, and another suggested that I may suddenly have/be bipolar. I wasn’t crazy. I was cured! (Or so I thought.) I didn’t know what happened or how to explain it, but regardless of how others perceived me, I knew I was not crazy or mentally ill. Or maybe I really did go insane and these are just the rantings of a madman.

Within six months of my awakening and perceptual shift, in 2009, I began studying psychology at a university (uni) with the slogan Discoverer’s Welcome. Although I could identify with and understand much of what I was taught, some of the assumptions did not make sense or ran opposed to my own personal experiences. Like, how could two words correct a biochemical imbalance in the physical brain? How could a thought cure an illness? Or how could a real biological disease suddenly and instantly morph from one to another (from depression to bipolar) or disappear entirely? My experiences alone offered fairly substantial evidence that such mental states are not caused by a chemical imbalance (unless chemicals are first ingested) or a real illness or disease, yet this was exactly what we were being taught. My developing the map of the psyche began as an attempt to understand and explain my own experience with mental illness (MI), but the language I was taught to describe it was not adequate or accurate enough. So I looked outside of the boxed educational system and learned so much more.

Three months into my first year at uni and I had difficulty remembering so many different theories. And then the pieces started to fit together. My first attempt to connect different psychological theories/processes was a failure because I was in a rush to piece together something that seemed so blindingly obvious to me but with only an introductory knowledge. Patience is a virtue, yet it is one I frequently lack. To explain my own experiences with MI, I first needed to learn how the mind functioned. And I needed to learn how to write and research. Psychology was the field, but the language I was being taught was insufficient to explain what I was seeing or had experienced. Although I could see how many psychological theories and processes were related (though I did not initially know what I was looking at), it was a year before I found what I needed, and another year to understand it and put it all together.

I stumbled upon Carl Jung by accident; mentioned briefly near the end of a textbook was his Seven Sermons to the Dead. This was my first taste of Jung, but I still did not know who he was (I even mispronounced his name). While Sigmund Freud was discussed often throughout my psychology course, Jung was barely mentioned unless I brought him up. The Seven Sermons were written in a Gnostic fashion, which piqued my interest and reignited my curiosity and thirst for knowledge. I spent my first end-of-year uni holiday exploring fields of knowledge outside of psychology that I had only just discovered and become fascinated with, and every uni break since has been spent researching and writing the psyche. I was led from Gnosticism to alchemy, mythology, philosophy, physics, spirituality, the occult, and many more. Eventually I came full circle when I acquired Jung’s Map of the Soul and discovered that Jung had already explored and tied in together many of the fields I had only just recently encountered and dove into myself. The language I needed to explain how the mind functions was already laid out in detail by Jung over half a century ago.

By the end of my first year at uni I had written an article on the original pyramid model of the psyche. Six months later I produced an article on