I've been reading "Neurotic Styles" by David Shapiro (a quick search failed to turn up a Wikipedia link) as part of a greater attempt to understand the inner workings of my own psychology. Turning one's own subjective experience into an object to be studied is made much easier with a text that was fashioned by somebody who is a professional at such a task. Otherwise you are plagued with blind spots. It is difficult to escape the subjective experience because it is through that experience that your life unfolds. Self-reflection only goes so far.
I find it curious that my attention has shifted so significantly to my own inner life. It seems as though the more disastrous one's efforts to move about in the world, the more occasion there is for one's attention to wander further into one's own inner workings. It makes sense from a practical perspective. If you can't move about in the world effectively you should really make an attempt to understand why. But I'm pretty bored of myself at this point. I do hope I can get back off my feet and resume my attention on the world (though some of it still remains). The inner world is just as expansive and rich as the outer of course. You can always find patterns that seem to be repeated across nested systems, whether they are found in one's own emotional movements, the earth and the oceans, or the cosmos.
Neurotic Styles delineates four crystalline analyses of distinct pathological neural functions. There is the obsessive compulsive, paranoid, hysterical, and impulsive styles - this book was published in 1965, when the language of psychoanalysis was still widely in use. The styles can be mixed and matched, and then coupled with any other condition you can think of such as depression or bipolar disorder. The human brain, along with its pathologies, is quite complex!
Now I'm only through the obsessive compulsive section, which is the first, but I believe that I function with a mix of obsessive compulsive and paranoid styles. We will see what traits turn up. As far as I understand, the hysterical style has to do with a preponderance of emotional affect, while the impulsive style has to do with uncontrollable actions and thoughts. The paranoid style is pretty self-explanatory: a constant fearful sentry leering over your shoulder.
The obsessive compulsive section almost describes the mechanics of my thoughts and perceptions to a "T." Though we are always a mix of many things, so some of the characteristics I don't share. There is a rigidity of attention: the laserlike focus on certain things and a refusal to break concentration. Also an internal nagging navigator so to speak: always planning courses of action, setting goals, scolding arbitrary failures based on self-created ideals and etc. There is this loss of pure experience; there is always a mediating layer of thought which seeks to valuate and direct experiences, so there is a difficulty to simply be and take in the world unfiltered. This is something I am always fighting against, whether through meditation and music or whatever else.
Such a mode of function confers certain advantages and disadvantages. For engaging in highly technical work - putting together a written work, researching details and facts, understanding complex subject matter - OCD is a godsend. But when it comes to experiential modes of interaction such as conversation, daily practical actions, sex, relating with others on a human level, etc., it creates a living hell that is only amplified upon emotional perturbation. You can dampen the effects of OCD with meditation, certain drugs, and the general redirection of emotional energy away from your superego. But that's the kicker! Our society feeds off of a strengthening of the very organs which generate OCD. I should explain further.
I think OCD is a symptom of over-complexity. The region of the brain in which it is activated seems to be the region that is used the most for complex, logical tasks, which is what this society is demanding in ever greater amounts. We've reached a point of over-saturation, in which more complexity is leading to a breakdown in thought. There are only so many resources available for complex processes that require more and more, and on top of that, complexity seems to dampen communication. Increasing complexity is how our civilization has solved so many problems and there is a deeply ingrained impulse (perhaps one of our collective driving motors) to increase complexity to solve yet more problems. Good god this is what I'm doing now!
You see a lot of people suffering from OCD these days, and for good reason. We continue to rely on this mode of function for survival, even though it is now becoming counter productive. With basic economics, our actions are continually forced in the direction of complexity: complex disciplines pay off because capital needs them. And our appetites for entertainment demand greater complexity as well.
There is something striking though, about the way in which we assign labels of "pathology" to these neurotic styles. They're all adaptive. The technical OCD people craft complex tools to survive with. The paranoid people ascertain threats. The impulsive people spread ideas, communications, and materials to others. The hysterical people exercise our emotional capacities. Why are all these styles considered pathologies?
All of these styles arise from what could be construed as an "inflammation" of classic archetypal figures. Each of us is a certain constellation of traits that has a certain quality, and together we all fit into this pluralistic society of ours. Pathology seems to occur when we are foiled in our attempts to enjoy life, or live a decent life, or feel a sense of dignity or accomplishment. Pathological styles take their content in part by the characters we are. Each of us breaks along a certain seam, or shape of character, and that break manifests as one of the pathological styles.
It seems strange to call the characteristics of a certain person who might be a little different from "normal" something that is "pathological." After all, what is normal? It seems to be whatever is "statistically significant," to borrow the brilliant term from a philosopher I am having trouble identifying, thought it seems to have originated from a statistician by the name of Robert Fisher. The normal person is whomever is present in abundance, and so society takes its definite shape from the accumulation of the people power and total mass of "normal."
But then pathology itself suggests the need for a cure. But we shouldn't be trying to cure what is simply outside of what is statistically significant. The richness and diversity (and sustainability) of our world is characterized by difference, not sameness.
So why call these deviations pathologies? And why are these pathologies occurring at greater frequencies?
Well, I'm exhausted and becoming distracted. I'll attempt to finish this thought with another post.
