Spirituality And Beliefs Essay, Research Paper
Spirituality and Beliefs: Implications and Impact on Mental Illness and Psychiatric Disability Introduction I wish to begin this paper by playing a short piece of music composed by Richard Einhorn and inspired by the life and writings of Joan of Arc. At the age of 13 in 1425 this shepherd girl from the village of Domremy in France began to hear voices. At sixteen these voices were telling her that she had been given a divine mission to reunite France. It is said that she heard the voice of God when the church bell rang. This piece is called ‘The Final Walk’ as she faces her execution. In 1920 nearly 500 years after her death at the hands of the church she was declared a saint. The basis of this paper have been the musings, conversations and reading over many years of a person who has been endeavoring to explain why it is that people who have been through the experience of a mental illness provide the potential of connection with deeper parts of who we are in a way that is not commonly found. I have welcomed the writings of consumers themselves to give light to this question, some studies, and the current resurgence of discussion about the nature and need for the spiritual dimension in life. It has been unfortunate that we have not recognized consumers as potential heroes of the journey of the ‘dark night of the soul’ but instead have negated the spiritual aspects of their psychic journeys. In so doing we have failed to listen to their desires that rehabilitation takes account of the meaning of where they have been and what they now understand as their own mental and spiritual well being. I acknowledge that my exploration of these issues is only a beginning. The place of the ’soul’ in recovery There was a time, not that long ago when the connection of spirituality and mental illness would not have been a valid topic when talking about rehabilitation, mental health and treatment of the mentally ill. In fact religious concerns were often seen as a symptom or even cause of mental illness (Pinches 1996; Smith 1994), so persons responsible for the treatment of the mentally ill would endeavor to medicate, hospitalize in order to control, suppress or terminate such spiritual or religious experiences (Watson). This to me was an unfortunate outcome, and not because of any desire to promote religious ideas, but because the beginnings of the profession of psychology, using the Greek meanings of the words was concerning the soul. Psyche means soul and psychology is the study of the soul, psychologist is servant or attendant of the soul with psychopathology meaning ‘the suffering of the soul’(Elkins). Therefore if we as mental health professionals were to reclaim the roots of our profession, as many people are trying to do today, we could not consider approaching the rehabilitation of a person with a psychiatric disability without considering the place of ’soul’ in their recovery. This by no means is a radical concept, but in an attempt to balance the more empirical nature of treatment, people in this profession are looking back and reclaiming the tradition which has always been there, but in practice often passed over or dismissed. Hillman wrote in 1975 ‘Where there is connection to soul, there is psychology; where not, what is taking place is better called statistics, physical anthropology, cultural journalism or animal breeding’ (Elkins). And Jung wrote in 1933 that of all his patients over the age of 35, not one was healed who did not develop a spiritual orientation to life (Elkins). Soul is a feminine concept with connotations of life and beauty. The soul is difficult to define, which gives us a clue about its nature. Soul reminds us that there is another world, far deeper, more meaningful than our logical processes. We encounter her when we feel stirred by another person, she is in the music that lifts us above ourselves, she is in the face of the child who helps us realise what is really important, she is the lump in the throat, the tear in the eye, the opening up when we face a stirring piece of art. The soul can be felt, touched but never defined. As David Elkins put it ‘She will slip through the net of every conceptual system and easily elude every scientific expedition that goes in search of her’. The reason I like and respond to what others have written about the soul, is that it helps me explain what it is about the relationships I have had over the years with people who have suffered from a mental illness. And I do not know why, and I have no proof or even a theory, but my connections with the people with whom I have worked has more often had a feeling or relation to soul, than what I have known in other situations and with other people. So my reason for reading, pondering and wanting to write these ideas has come from a desire to explain why the richness, and why the relationships seem to help me connect with my soul in the way that they do. Soul is associated with depth and unlike much of Western spirituality which is about overcoming, growing, ascending, transcending, soul means going down, descending into the valleys and experiencing the tragedies of life, of being in a place where the idea of climbing a mountain seems completely beyond reach. Soul is with us when everyone else has gone, when our ego is shattered, when alone in the night no one is interested in our pain and we wonder how we will survive until morning. And while no one would ever go looking for such pain or experiences, when it is past, and we look back, it is possible to be grateful for it, because it opens something within us, it gives us a depth, it makes us feel more human, and we know with some relief, that there is more to us than simply flesh and blood. Psychopathology is the most tragic cry of the soul, when a person is in deepest pain and confronted by death, meaningless, isolation and loneliness. If you know anything about the creative process, most musicians, writers, poets, artists have created their work, not from the mountain top, but from the place of the soul. For the last week our news bulletins have been full of the landslide at Thredbo. When the first survivor was pulled from under the rubble 66 hours after the collapse of the lodges, the word hero appeared as headlines. The rescuers were heroes and so was the first survivor. You can imagine the journalists breaking their necks to be the first to talk to that man. He potentially will be doing media interviews, be in the magazines and be writing his story of ‘My 3 days under the rubble and how I came through’, and he could make a lot of money out of it. I am not discounting the validity of his experience, but it is interesting who our society chooses as heroes. In symbolic terms his experience would not be unlike that of many people who have had a mental illness, in the dark for long periods of time, not knowing if human connection will ever be possible, not knowing if they will survive, being totally alone, unable to move, freedom being an illusion or a memory, facing everything that they have ever done and thought, alone. These are experiences of the soul or in mystical terms like the ‘journey of the dark night of the soul’. But do we make these people heroes? Do we acknowledge their value by placing bold medals on their chests as they march as survivors of an internal devastating war? Am I a saint or just mad? The Christian tradition has had a somewhat mixed response to people with a mental illness. The example of Jesus was not well sustained by the church. Jesus mixed with and healed many people ‘possessed with demons’ which was the way it was explained at that time. In fact the first person he ever commissioned to ‘tell his story of healing’ was a Gentile healed of a legion or 100 voices or personalities and the first witness to Jesus resurrection was a woman, Mary Magdalene who was also healed of ’seven demons’ (York 1992). These two people given roles of the highest importance are examples from what was set out as the foundations of the Christian method of dealing with mental illness. It was unfortunate that following this many people who saw visions, heard the voice of God were often tortured, killed, burnt and sometimes were later made into saints. In 1484 Pope Innocent the 8th authorized the extermination of ‘witches’ who were considered demon possessed. The Malleus Maleficarum was published with its detailed descriptions of categories and symptoms of witches. Some academics who have studied this Latin document now say that it so closely runs parallel to the Diagnostic Statistical Manual (the clinical basis for diagnosing mental illness today) that any psychiatrist reading it would be able to identify the modern equivalents for the categories of witches(York). Of course you can say, we are well above the concept of witches and our diagnosis and treatment of people today. I feel however that we have not moved far enough. The ambivalence which the church has demonstrated is really another response by the wider community. This response can be interpreted as ‘people with a mental illness may be difficult to know what to do with, but on the other hand they seem to have access to experiences which we cannot altogether discount as being totally invalid’. As a result I feel that in modern times we have not even considered the possibility that the experience is a valid spiritual experience. So all voices are bad, all visions should be repressed, and the person themselves is also negated as having little value. In our fanatical obsession with reason I think we have negated the unexplained and seemingly irrational and in so doing socialised the seer and the hearer into the role of recipient rather than giver of truth. Perhaps like human history has often shown we may have to wait 500 years to see it. The denial of spirituality in the concept of treatment and cure Sara Maitland wrote a lovely article in a recent OpenMind journal about the experience of hearing voices. The whole issue of hearing voices is a complex one. It is usually considered a definite sign that someone is experiencing a form of mental illness (Kirk 1992). The aim of treatment is to remove the voices. That is understandable given their potentially alienating, disturbing and even dangerous effects. Sara asks ‘Do all voice hearers want all their voices silenced at all times?’ She goes on to say that her voices are often companions, expressive and glorious and they give access to fascinating things about her, and that what she would like, would be skills to understand and decode the voices, not to repress them. “My voices seem to me to be very like having highly active and intelligent toddlers in the house: the exhaustion they cause does not mean you want them dead – it means you want them to behave better.” Sara also goes on to talk about how psychiatry has not taken much interest in the content of voices. At Joan of Arc’s trial she says that the content of Joan’s voices was the principle concern. And even though the outcome for Joan of Arc was not good, the Inquirers did take the time to ascertain the value of the content of her voices in relation to how she lived her life. Instead today to admit to voice hearing is enough to gain a label such as schizophrenia and so people deny hearing the voices as it means more medication or medical intervention or hospitalisation and the feeling that you are at risk. What Sara and other voice hearers are asking for is an exploration of what are the real meanings of their voices, and rather than a pathologizing and stigmatizing, a validation of their experience and some facilitation in being able to understand it (Maitland; Kirk). I have been grateful for the writings of other consumers who have spoken about the importance of their experiences as potential places of growth and validation, and the need for their experience to be understood from a spiritual framework (Cooper 1992). Some formal studies done on the benefits of the spiritual dimension in relation to a person’s recovery have shown that spirituality for some people is a real coping device, or it can be a source of social support, while for others it is a framework for understanding life events and providing meaning to what has happened (Sullivan 1993). Quoting Judith Miller’An impressive number of other clinicians and researchers have also suggested that for some individuals undergoing psychiatric episodes, the experience may actually be positive and reconstr