Overcoming the Destructive Inner Voice: True Stories of Therapy and Transformation by Robert W. Firestone

Author:Robert W. Firestone [Firestone, Robert W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781633882522
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 2016-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

Looking back at my experience with Dr. Rosen, I remember several reasons that caused me to regret my necessary departure. First, I was committed to the psychotic patients I was treating. I especially wanted the best for Norm and Cynthia. And, in addition to my caseload at Rosen's, I was also helping several young people therapeutically, who drove out from the city. They were artists and students, and I felt a special fondness for them. The thought of abandoning all of these people prematurely was unacceptable to me.

Second, Pete and I had organized and participated in a small therapy group, which included the two of us, our wives, and Jim Aldrich, a nervous and excitable graduate student in psychology from Yale. We were all learning a great deal about ourselves, and we were strongly motivated to continue.

The final reason was the most important of all: I was engrossed in a creative venture that was tantamount to an obsession. My mind was consumed by the attempt to unravel the riddle of psychopathology. My major point of concentration was the means by which those who were hurt or damaged attempted to defend themselves. If I could explain the mechanisms of defense that bent a person out of shape and accounted for various forms of mental aberration, and their causal relationship, I might have my finger on the pulse of a curative process.

I considered that mental illness was directly analogous to the physical malady of pneumonia; the body's defense against a threatening microorganism leads to fluid in the lungs, which can eventually become life-threatening. The body's defensive reaction is what does the most damage.

Schizophrenia, which was popularly thought of as a split personality, is the result of various combinations of biological predisposition and emotional trauma. Mental-health professionals are polarized in their approach, emphasizing one or the other aspect as more critical, and there is a legitimate difference of opinion. As a psychologist, I was essentially concerned with the mental component. I felt that problems of emotional maladjustment were similar to the situation in pneumonia in that they were determined not only by painful childhood events as causative agents, but even more so by how individuals defended themselves against the trauma they suffered. In all forms of psychopathology, the same defenses that originally sustained the hurt child adversely affected the adult in later life.

I observed that in the historical development of schizophrenic patients, their primary defense was a retreat into fantasy. When things got too rough for these people, they chose to retreat from real life and to live in their imaginations. They became excessively dependent on fantasy, which acted like a drug. The more they were addicted to imagining, the more they became dysfunctional, and the worse things got. In a manner similar to those who exhibit chemical dependency, they were involved in a downward spiral that ruined their lives.

I was stimulated by my growing insight and engrossed in the process of tracking down the mystery of mental disorder. In what way did

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