Thursday 9 August 2012

Oracle, Conscience, Responsibility


I am going to post extracts  and shall try to understand or link them - I have been trying this for the last 18 years when a series of unpleasant teaching dreams hinted at a connection. I was robbed of my innocence without being granted any compensating wisdom. Am no wiser, but the question has again arisen - How responsible are we for the actions of people around us. How responsible is Cook for Page's action? I mean morally. Misty Page

There are a lot of people without conscience, or rather they project their conscience on other people. People without a centre -- Somewhat like Smerdyakov and Ivan. Ivan knows that he is responsible for Smerdyakov's action. Jung-People develop a neurosis for want of a conscience.

First an extract from Jung about being an oracle
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From C.G.Jung - Memories, Dreams, Reflections
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It was at the wedding of a friend of my wife's; the bride and her family were all entirely unknown to me. During the meal I was sitting opposite a middle-aged gentleman with a long, handsome beard, who had been introduced to me as a barrister. We were having an animated conversation about criminal psychology. In order to answer a particular question of his, I made up a story to illustrate it, embellishing it with all sorts of details. While I was telling my story, I noticed that a quite different expression came over the man's face, and a silence fell on the table. Very much abashed, I stopped speaking. Thank heavens we were already at the dessert, so I soon stood up and went into the lounge of the hotel. There I withdrew into a corner, lit a cigar, and tried to think over the situation. At this moment one of the other guests who had been sitting at my table came over and asked reproachfully,
 "How did you ever come to commit such a frightful indiscretion?" 
"Indiscretion?" 
"Why yes, that story you told." 
"But I made it all up!" 
To my amazement and horror it turned out that I had told the story of the man opposite me, exactly and in all its details. I also discovered, at this moment, that I could no longer remember a single word of the story--even to this day I have been unable to recall it.
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1. Did this barrister guy lack a 'conscience' which Jung becomes for him?
2. Origin of torture/confession - can get anything out of an oracle ?
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Jung again - Strong minds oppressing weak - 
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An American colleague sent me a patient. The accompanying diagnosis read "alcoholic neurasthenia." The prognosis called him "incurable." My colleague had therefore taken the precaution of advising the patient to see also a certain neurological authority in Berlin, for he expected that my attempt at therapy would lead to nothing. The patient came for consultation, and after I had talked a little with him I saw that the man had an ordinary neurosis, of whose psychic origins he had no inkling. I made an association test and discovered that he was suffering from the effects of a formidable mother complex. He came from a rich and respected family, had a likeable wife and no cares-- externally speaking. Only he drank too much. The drinking was a desperate attempt to narcotize himself, to forget his oppressive situation. Naturally, it did not help. His mother was the owner of a large company, and the unusually talented son occupied a leading post in the firm. He really should long since have escaped from his oppressive subordination to his mother, but he could not summon up the resolution to throw up his excellent position. Thus he remained chained to his mother, who
had installed him in the business. Whenever he was with her, or had to submit to her interference with his work, he would start drinking in order to stupefy or discharge his emotions. A part of him did not really want to leave the comfortably warm nest, and against his own instincts he was allowing himself to be seduced by wealth and comfort. After brief treatment he stopped drinking, and considered himself cured. But I told him, "I do not guarantee that you will not relapse into the same state if you return to your former situation" He did not believe me, and returned home to America in fine fettle. As soon as he was back under his mother's influence, the drinking began again. Thereupon I was called by her to a consultation during her stay in Switzerland. She was an intelligent woman, but was a real "power devil." I saw what the son had to contend with, and realized that he did not have the strength to resist. Physically, too, he was rather delicate and no match for his mother. I therefore decided upon an act of force majeure. Behind his back I gave his mother a medical certificate to the effect that her son's alcoholism rendered him incapable of fulfilling the requirements of his job. I recommended his discharge. This advice was followed--and the son, of course, was furious with me. Here I had done something which normally would be considered unethical for a medical man. But I knew that for the patient's sake I had had to take this step. His further development? Separated from his mother, his own personality was able to unfold. He made a brilliant career--in spite of, or rather just because of the strong horse pill I had given him. His wife was grateful to me, for her husband had not only overcome his alcoholism, but had also struck out on his own individual path with the greatest success. Nevertheless, for years I had a guilty conscience about this patient because I had made out that certificate behind his back, though I was certain that only such an act could free him. And indeed, once his liberation was accomplished, the neurosis disappeared.
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From The Golden Notebook
A SHORT NOVEL Two people together, in any kind of relationship-mother, son; father, daughter; lovers; it doesn't matter. One of them acutely neurotic. The neurotic hands on his or her state to the other, who takes it over, leaving the sick one well, the well one sick. I remember Mother Sugar telling me a story about a patient. A young man had come to see her convinced he was in desperate psychological trouble. She could find nothing wrong with him. She asked him to send along his father to her. One by one all the family, five of them, arrived in her consulting room. She found them all normal. Then the mother came. She, apparently 'normal,' was in fact extremely neurotic, but maintaining her balance by passing it on to her family, particularly to the youngest son. Eventually Mother Sugar treated the mother, though there was terrible trouble getting her to come for treatment. And the young man who had come in the first place found the pressure lifting off him. I remember her saying: Yes, often it's the most 'normal' member of a family or a group who is really sick, but simply because they have strong personalities, they survive, because other, weaker personalities, express their illness for them.
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It was during the mid 80s and I had not yet started reading Doris Lessing. I was caring for a young woman (though older than me), who was schizophrenic. While discussing schizophrenia with friends, some one raised the question whether it was hereditary or genetic in origin. Then a  friend volunteered info - she knew of a case of identical twins where one was normal and the other was schizophrenic.  Then I had a flash of illumination(?), something as if I had always known and blurted out - "Why, separate the twins, the ill one will improve and normal one will suffer". This friend was surprised and said that something like that actually happened! Now schizophrenia is again one of the most abused/over used terms meaning virtually anything. 

Then I started spinning out a story-I have the draft which is about 10 pages long and was written in a couple of hours- based on two sisters Chhaya and Maya (Maya being the name of a childhood friend) - set in Delhi of 1983 with AP politics in the background and Rajiv Gandhi slowly taking the hues of Sanjay. The story was not difficult to write, based on real life, involving two myna fledglings which had fallen out of their nest that we sisters were taking care of . But I wanted to get the background right, that was the real story, I even went to Centre for Education and Documentation at Sulaiman Chambers- They had paper clippings- Somehow it was not satisfactory. Someone suggested that I go to TOI. But I was very timid then and time has always been in short supply. And I also learnt something about writing process - even when you write entire chunks from your own real life, it can stand for something very very different. I used to be shocked that Thomas Mann could take episode from his life involving his sister who committed suicide for being an artistic failure into his novel Doctor Faustus.   Then I read Doris Lessing. 

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