X-Message-Number: 30044
Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2007 06:45:55 -0800 (PST)
From: un person <>
Subject: fear of death overcome by dissociative trance?
--0-1616482643-1195656355=:43970
I got ahold of an ecopy of a book named THE CORRUPTION OF REALITY by Schumaker.
A review of it is appended below.
I am only just starting to read the book, but I can see already that it is a
work of genius.
From what I can see, the main thesis is that in order for us to function
(knowing that we will die and all the other burdens of reality that our
advanced cognitive abilities heap upon us) we need to be able to set aside
some of this terrible knowledge. We need to sort of forget it, the better to
function.
Schumaker posits that religion -- especially as it is practiced in primitive
cultures (with ritual trance practices) -- allows humans to do this. These
dissociative trance states allow us to compartmentalize this terrible
knowledge of death, or disorder, entropy, cold hard reality, etc.
Hyponosis is a form of this altered state.
Drug use, overeating, and other psychopathologies are attempts in western
cultures to find a way to compartmentalize and forget terrible knowledge.
Schumaker asserts that going into a trance state is a SKILL, a necessary one.
One that westerners have lost.
Schumaker is greatly influenced by Ernest Becker, who was a primary influence
on those who developed the Terror Management theories that are more or less
the catalyst for many of the recent fear of death discussions here on cryonet
(whether you realize it or not...).
Fascinating book. It also reinforces my theories (as often posted here on
cryonet and scoffed at, of course) that religion is a necessary part of
humanity (I say this as an atheist), and that the reason cryonics has not
taken off is that we have failed to integrate cryonics into religion.
enjoy!
(oh, and since cryonet is so anal compulsive on message length, I suppose this
book review will be truncated, so here is the url:
http://www.geocities.com/kidhistory/ja/book264.htm
The Corruption of Reality, John F. Schumaker. New York: Prometheus Books,
1995. 289pp.
Reviewed by Jerry S. Piven - Syracuse University
This book is a fascinating study of the relation between religion, hypnosis,
and psychopathology. Schumaker observes that most non-Western societies
involve hypnosis in their healing practices, and that all religion is founded
upon an unmistakably hypnotic component. Hence, the connection between the
hypnotic processes of religion and the capacity to heal. He concludes that
religion, hypnosis, and psychopathology are "overlapping manifestations of a
general human faculty" for dealing with emotional stress.
Because the human organism is beset by terror and anxiety, its increased
intelligence and awareness require the evolutionary strategy of seeking
sanctuary in illusion (i.e. shared group-fantasy) and self-deception to
survive. Schumaker follows Otto Rank and Ernest Becker in asking the question
"on what level of illusion were we meant to live?" Group-fantasy must
obfuscate reality for everyone in a community, or else it will be susceptible
to doubt. Hence these illusions are shared religious fantasies which relieve
anxiety on a social scale. Religion is a means of psychological dissociation
from pain and reality, a "strategic reality corruption designed to serve the
individual and society."
Schumaker envisions reality as the essential source of human strife, and our
capacity to transcend and regulate reality through illusion as man's central
psychological dynamic. When our capacity to dissociate fails, we are beset by
overwhelming anxiety and respond by creating our own self-deceptive shared
fantasies. Psychopathology is a personal version of illusion erupting when
social forms of dissociation and hypnosis fail. Thus religion, hypnosis, and
psychopathology as different versions of the same project: the need to
regulate reality.
The essence of normality is, as Becker asserts, the "refusal of reality."
Schumaker defines health not in terms of the mind in touch with reality, but
as the capacity not to perceive reality in certain ways. We tend to define
health in terms of the capacity to perceive reality accurately, but in
Schumaker's view, human beings must dissociate a portion of reality in order
not to go insane. Indeed, a growing body of evidence suggests that many
suffering from psychological symptoms are debilitated by their inability to
block out certain aspects of reality from conscious awareness.
Schumaker's analysis of religion and psychopathology in terms of illusion and
self-deception is persuasive and elegant. His thesis that normalcy consists of
pervasive avoidances of reality is highly compelling, and he uses the
brilliant yet largely ignored innovations of Becker and Rank very well to make
his case. We are given a tremendous amount of information on dissociation.
His citation and elucidation of empirical research on the subject is very
useful. His view that man's ability to function "normally" requires the
ability to obscure portions of reality and create illusions/shared fantasies
is supported by extensive literature.
But this book has very real faults. It is extremely repetitive. This is
necessary at times, but much of it recapitulates the same ideas without
improving upon the argument. Schumaker is innovative when he combines Freud
and Becker with recent empirical data, but he also recycles their material
unnecessarily.
A second key problem with Schumaker's argument is that it is pervaded by
discussions of dissociation, without really explaining the qualities of shared
fantasy that engender conception and corruption of reality. Dissociation
tends to be an avoidance of a portion of reality, and Schumaker thoroughly
explains how this works. However, psychological reality is not merely a
narrowed-down reality, a diminished perceptual set, but consists of a dynamic
fantasy life which actually corrupts and reshapes reality actively.
Unlike psychohistorians, Schumaker makes no real attempt to explain modes of
fantasy construction, what kinds of fantasies people have, and by what
dynamics they can replace reality. He assumes that fantasies are provided to a
society rather than generated in shared fashion by members. The dynamic is
interactive, and cannot be reduced to a merely passive situation where a
society simply inherits belief systems. Groups also change and discard beliefs
which no longer meet their needs, and they invent fantasies in reaction to
their current problems. According to Schumaker, individuals only construct
illusions when they have no socially cohesive fantasies to believe in. The
process is much more complex than constructing shared illusions when social
illusions are no longer satisfying. He also avoids the question of what
fantasies appeal to individuals and societies.
He wrongly assumes individuals have no illusions or psychopathology when
socially coherent fantasies are available. Avoiding these salient aspects of
psychodynamics gives an impression that human beings exist in tune with
reality to the extent that they merely avoid noticing what is painful. In fact
this is only a small part of cognition, perception, and reality distortion.
Psychopathology is not a lack of illusions. Trauma, developmental
vicissitudes, and experiences determine psychological functioning well before
the impact of religion on a community becomes psychologically salient for the
individual. Unloving or abusive parents, the death of loved ones, excessive
frustration and anxiety, can all engender pathology which will not be relieved
by socially prescribed fantasies, though one might pursue such fantasies in
hope for such relief. One might claim that if the parents were themselves
faithfully religious, they would not inflict their own pathologies on their
children, and hence their children would have no need to construct personal
symptoms. But this is false. Faithful parenting is not a bulwark against trauma
and debilitation. It obscures the underlying impact of parental/developmental
destructiveness.
Indeed, it might be the very socially cohesive fantasy itself which is
responsible for the parental abuse or developmental damage in the first place.
A variety of religious, sacred, and socially sanctioned parenting practices
are clearly destructive. Indeed, even without citing the countless examples of
socially sanctioned physical mutilation, torture, and abuse around the world,
one needs to look no further than into the heartland of the morally pure to
observe debilitating abuses and traumatic repressions. Social sanction is a
virtual guarantee that psychopathology will go unnoticed, rather than a
panacea against anxiety.
Schumaker's view also makes it seem that people believe whatever social
fantasy is provided to alleviate anxiety. In reality, communities have
fantasies that reflect the needs and anxieties of their particular situations,
even if they often have dynamics of fantasies in common. Not any fantasy will
do. Thus, we must understand that the illusory aspects of religious and
social belief are comprised not just of relief for anxiety, but specific
shared fantasies generated by developmental issues and social experiences. The
need for parental protection, to deny death, to control the environment
ritually, to define the sacred, profane, pure and impure, may derive from
similar dynamics; but their content varies according to the variations of the
culture. These fantasies are not interchangeable.
A further problem is that Schumaker never allows for the possibility that
development determines the extent to which people need illusions. He assumes
that those who are not religious have either dissociated their anxiety to find
another cohesive ideology to make it go away, they have dissociated their
anxiety in service of forming neurotic symptoms, they have dissociated their
anxiety to appear functional, or they are constitutionally (biologically)
endowed with a greater capacity for pain. Schumaker never considers whether
people need to evade reality to different degrees. Individuals vary intensely
with regard to how they experience separation from their parents, how
confidently they pursue their interests, how guilty they feel, how violent
they are.
Schumaker's central thesis, that reality is terrifying to everyone and that we
all engage in self-deceptions and corruptions of reality, must be granted.
But his view of religion and dissociation ignores that individuals vary not
only in terms of the kinds of reality which are satisfying or terrifying, but
that some are far more terrified than others. And this is not on the basis of
having socially coherent illusions alone, but because of vast differences in
development which render them more or less suggestible (psychologically, not
biologically), more or less inclined to deceive themselves, more or less in
need of illusions, more or less capable of perceiving and enduring reality.
Finally, Schumaker claims that the solution for modern neurotic misery is to
restore religion to a central place in both society and therapy. Lack of
spiritual communication in therapy has been noted by many. Individuals need to
come to terms with life, death, questions of meaning, loss, and anguish. Such
issues can often get too little attention, especially in an age of increasing
use of medication. Effort toward a more spiritual psychotherapy are reflected
in the work of existential psychologists, like Ludwig Binswanger and Rollo
May.
But the search for a spiritual connection is not the same as suggesting or
inculcating illusions, especially religious ones. The transition from the
spiritual to the religious can be a fine line which must not be crossed by
therapists if it means implanting illusions. Schumaker advocates a spiritual
journey, but what he actually prescribes is something far more questionable.
The use of deception in the clinic can be a serious abuse of power. Is the
therapist a Grand Inquisitor, who decides to fool the patient with miracle,
mystery and authority, because that is what the patient truly needs to
survive? Which illusions are acceptable? Who is to decide? Does the therapist
determine what illusions are necessary, just how much reality the patient must
escape? Knowing that human beings need some shared illusion to survive is not
the same as deciding for someone what illusions they need.
Schumaker says that therapists should explicitly attempt to provide a coherent
and religious world view which ameliorates the anxiety of social doubt and
the difficulty of faith in a society of contrasting belief and opinion. If we
suffer from a lack of socially coherent shared illusions, then we need to
therapeutically reinforce such illusions in order to form a convincing,
totalized illusion system impervious to doubt, threat, skepticism, and loss of
faith.
This is wrong, because implementing such a solution could only be accomplished
by fascistic means. A society would have to brainwashed and purged of
disbelief (or disbelievers) to truly eradicate any traces of contrary ideology
or skepticism which might interfere with a ubiquitous illusion. All contrary
opinion, questions, and creative thought must be censored to achieve a faith
immune from doubt. Scientific thinking and inquiry must also be censored
because they may lead to the collapse of belief. This tyranny is also
furthered by the necessity of deciding which fantasy system is going to be the
apposite and holy choice. The establishment of such a universal faith is
morally reprehensible and socially debilitating.
Even if faith were somehow bestowable by a therapist without doubt or
fascistic means, this still begs the question of whether faith is
psychologically healthy, and whether the inculcation of faith has any place in
the clinic. Even though we may to some extent need shared illusions to
survive, does this make them helpful in therapy?
Schumaker's conclusions seem to ignore such important therapeutic discoveries
that people function better when they are helped to confront their conflicts
and become aware of their problems. Ignorance of one's psychopathology only
allows conflict to flourish and supports a dysfunctional ignorance of
problems. Shared illusions offer some measure of immediate gratification, but
they also allow problems to persist without any awareness of the genuine
suffering conflicts usually cause.
The author claims that if we were truly religious, symptoms might not occur.
But this is fallacious. To claim that symptoms can erupt when faith diminishes
may be true, but this does not automatically make faith healthy.
Psychopathology can and does exist in religious individuals and religious
societies. Pathological symptoms, including mass hysteria, paranoia, psychotic
delusion, and mass violence, permeate the history of most religions. Just
because individuals in a society display traits in common, or are relieved of
certain forms of anxiety by a shared belief, does not in any way indicate the
health or morality of such illusions.
Schumaker's view defines successful treatment in terms of whatever reduces
pain, regardless of the consequences for the individual, or those he or she
interacts with. Shall we tell paranoiacs that their delusions are correct?
They will feel happy for the moment. Or is there perhaps another aim in
treatment?
The question of what illusions can actually be healthy is far more complicated
than Schumaker believes, and he does not recognize that illusions can not
only obfuscate genuine problems, but often create more suffering than they
supposedly alleviate. It is surprising that he does not realize this, since he
quotes Becker to the effect that "religion confers upon people a social
license to act out madness." To state that pathology appears in times of doubt
and loss of faith is obvious. To state that pathology is simply the opposite
of illusion is patently false. Certainly the solution is not mass avoidance of
reality. We've had quite enough of that already.
As with many great works, The Corruption of Reality provides a highly rich,
compelling, and innovative set of findings, but it falls apart when advocating
social solutions to human misery. The book's central thesis concerning the
pervasive human need for shared illusion/fantasy and the normalcy of reality
avoidance is well argued and of use for psychohistorians, but only if we are
clear about its problems.
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