Excerpts from: Trials of The Visionary Mind

Title: Trials of the Visionary Mind : Spiritual Emergency and the
Renewal Process
SUNY Series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology

Author: Perry, John Weir.

Publication: Albany State University of New York Press, 1999.

eBook ISBN: 0585090343

ISBN: 0791439887

Subject: Psychoses.
Jungian psychology.
Symbolism (Psychology)
Self-actualization (Psychology)

Language: English


By John Weir Perry

The individuals most apt to undergo an episode of the kind we are
examining are usually endowed with a highly sensitive makeup, so

that in childhood they were inclined to perceive falseness, defensiveness,
and hidden emotions more than others. The perception of such
characteristics is usually, of course, less than welcome in a family

accustomed to denial. These sensitive individuals accordingly were made

to feel in an awkward position because they perceived what others did not and
hence they were made to feel odd or wrongheaded, resulting in a sense
of being excluded from the oneness of the family circle and cast in
the role of the family scapegoat.

For the routine world becomes shattered so that no illusions are left
and only truth prevails, in that the usual dimensions of time and
space lose their validity.

Anger is essentially the raw, root material out of which evolves an
assertiveness most needed by a weakened ego, and sexual emotions are
the ground out of which evolves a capacity for an intimate and caring
relatedness to others. This sense of bonding is vital for those
individuals who have typically evaded closeness because of the fear of
being hurt. The acute episode aims to liberate both these affects and
yet the law-and-order orientation in our present-day hospital system
prevents the very process that nature is attempting.

Paranoid Patty's note:

It is encouraging to know that there have been a few psychiatrists and mental health professionals who were capable of actually hearing what was being said to them. This gives me hope that all is not yet lost. Perhaps one of the well trained members of the new ten minute diagnostic and labeling profession will pause long enough in writing out those scripts for heavy duty tranquilizers to say to him or herself, 'Golly Gee, you don't suppose at least some of what the crazy patients have been telling us could be TRUE do you? I wonder if that is why we get the fight or flight response? Could it be that it occurs when the patient we are "helping' realizes that he or she is caught in a paradoxical trap with no way out? Could it be that tranquilizers help temporarily because it is the excess of epinephrine that is the real problem, caused by being unable to get out of a predetermined trap which goes unrecognized by the majority of people including US? Could it be that WE are 'at cause' and the identified patient is actually reacting to us? Could it be that WE are actually the ones who are having trouble making sense of things? Oh, I forgot, I have also been trained to believe that if I am told by the patient that it is I who does not understand, that is just a trick of the patient trying to deny reponsibility for his or her bona fide 'illness.' Whew! That was close. I almost doubted myself for a second there!"