TRANSCRIPT
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I’m now going to explore the four stages of psychological development on the path to emotional healthiness. From the least evolved to the most evolved, the four stages are dissociation, then depression, then grieving, then enlightenment.
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I’m going to define each of the four as I go along, but I’ll start with the least evolved one, which is dissociation. I’m going to talk about some of the ironies of these different stages. Dissociation is being split off from your traumas. Now, in the more conventional psychological sense, dissociation talks about being severely cut off from severe trauma. That is dissociation, but that’s extreme dissociation. The most extreme being what was previously referred to as multiple personality disorder, where a person is so disassociated from parts of themselves that when they do access those parts of themselves, it’s a completely different personality that’s actually like separated by a wall from other parts of them. That’s the theory behind it, and multiple personality is now known as dissociative identity disorder. Certain identities actually disassociate.
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When I refer to dissociation, I just mean being split off from your traumas, split off from whole parts of your own experience, split off from your pain, split off from your misery, and also consequently split off from a lot of your healthiness and a lot of your joy and your life force. But the irony is that people who are dissociated often seem fairly healthy, and they seem fairly normal because they are fairly normal. Because that’s what normal in our society is. We live in a very associated society. We live in a society that’s very split off from its rage, from its feelings, from its sadness, from its misery, from its suffering, and also from its incredible potential and its joy.
Now, one could say we live in a society where we perpetrate terrible wars on other people in the world. We have horrible poverty. We treat gay people terribly. We treat homeless people terribly. We, uh, treat certain minorities terribly. We treat women terribly. All true. These are all signs of dissociation because this is where individuals collectively express their dissociated, hated, suffering parts. And people who are dissociated split off their rage onto their children, and they act out in that way.
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In my conception of the four stages on the path to becoming really healthy, being dissociated is just downright primitive. It’s someone who has been traumatized, who’s really not even aware of it, and is really, really out of touch. So much so that they can think they’re doing great. The irony here is that the person who is at the most primitive stage of psychological development can believe that they’re actually at the most mature stage. And our dissociated world often agrees with them, totally mixing up healthiness with being split off from your feelings, which is why I say that dissociation mimics [Laughter] enlightenment.
The next stage up is when people actually take a psychological step forward. They step out of dissociation into suffering. The wall that’s splitting themselves off from their horrible traumas, their wounds, and all that misery and rot and anger and frustration and depression, the wall breaks open. It’s like a giant infection comes bursting out. And what does it come out into? It comes into depression, hopelessness, misery, suffering. The pain is not so dissociated; it’s there, but it’s just stagnant. It’s rotting. It feels terrible, and it’s miserable.
Interestingly, what I learned over a period of time is it’s when people are in the phase of suffering that’s when they come to therapy. That’s when they say, “I’m in pain. I need help. Do something to help me.” And what’s fascinating about the psychology field is the average conventional part of the psychology field says, “We will help you. We’re going to help you do what we’ve learned how to do. We’re going to help you learn how to devolve into dissociation.” And so many psychology methods, and especially psychiatric medications, and then electroshock therapy, all these different things, they take people from suffering and they bring them—the ideal is to bring them the relief of dissociation. See, dissociation actually feels a lot better. They teach people how to split off their miserable sides. They take their brain chemicals and adjust them through the medication and through the other methods that they have. And I think hypnosis actually can often do that too. Actually, oddly enough, to get someone hypnotized, they have to get into a sort of a dissociated state. And I think part of it’s teaching them how to stay [Music] there.
Now, a lot of people decide to become therapists and psychiatrists once they themselves have mastered the art of learning how to dissociate, and they want to help other people do the same thing. Do all therapists do that? Definitely not. Do most therapists do that? Help people learn how to dissociate better? I think my experience shows me that yes, most do that. Do all psychiatrists do it? No, but I think a very, very far, far majority of them do. That’s why they prescribe medication, because medication does not help people evolve. There’s no doubt about that. It can help people function better, but often people who are very dissociated do function much better than people who are very depressed, people who are in a lot of suffering.