Rethinking Madness by Paris Williams

Author:Paris Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Paris Williams
Published: 2014-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Maintaining Survival of the Self

Within the context of the DUI model, I suggest that the psyche sustains the existence of the self by maintaining a tenable balance between duality and unity. On one hand, the psyche must ensure that enough duality (i.e., dialectical tension) is maintained so that the self is not flooded with overwhelming unitive/transliminal experiences that it cannot integrate. In other words, an adequate degree of dualistic self/other split must be maintained in order to maintain a secure sense of self. On the other hand, the psyche must ensure that the degree of duality (the dialectical tension) does not become so strong as to result in the loss of one's window of tolerance, which results in intolerable suffering and therefore also threatens survival of the self (see Figure 23.1).

Another way to put this is that the psyche must ensure that the self maintains enough of a sense of duality to continue to exist, but it must also ensure enough connection with unity so that it does not experience the intolerable suffering and existential annihilation of being cut off from its source. Before discussing the strategies that the psyche uses to maintain this equilibrium, let's first turn to look more closely at how our experiences of duality and unity have the potential to overwhelm us and represent existential threats to the self.

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