Jung & The Value of Anxiety Disorders
There may be a tendency to depend on drugs, but Jung’s theory could prove key to some people
"I am not altogether pessimistic about neurosis. In many ways we have to say, “Thank heaven he could make up his mind to be neurotic.” Neurosis is really an attempt at self cure…It is an attempt of the self regulating psychic system to restore the balance, in no way different from the function of dreams — only more forceful and drastic.” Carl Jung — The Tavistock Lectures
Anxiety disorders amongst people across the globe appear to be at an unprecedented high level. Of course, we cannot know that for sure, but our media is saturated with stories and statistics that point towards something of an epidemic of anxiety and depression.
Did we replace something bad for us, with something abominable for us?
We all thought the party had long since ended on the streets of my hometown. Where once there were 53 bars, there are now less than 20, my hometown has a population of 20,000. Nowadays, that’s a bar for every 1,000 people, which is a more than a decent return, but back in the day, there were only 10,000 of us, so there was a bar for every 200 of us. An obscene amount. I recall them all been jammed on all days of the week and at all times of the day. The Colony’s five barmen were always crammed behind the counter, they came into work 30 minutes before opening, just to pour stout in anticipation of the moment when the door was unlocked and the thirsty mouths would flood in. Jumbo’s Clown Room threw gigs, seven nights a week and the place was always rafters. Saturday Night Under The Plastic Trees at the Brosna Mani Rabbit Lions Club (I am not making this up) always had a queue of over a hundred heads begging to be let in to dance, to drink and to party.
As a people, we loved nothing more than getting lost in Stygian darkness and Rabelaisian drunkenness. Sounds gloomy, and our hindsight appears to agree, but back when we were doing it, it was a lot of fun, I don’t recall anyone calling time on it. If you weren’t drinking, you were one of two things — on antibiotics or pregnant. Our main street, The Sodium Glare was saturated in drink, every third or fourth building dealt in drink.
No longer. They are replaced now with a heap of fitness establishments offering TRX, BJJ, MMA, HIIT; there are a murder of coffee shops and a sprinkling of juice shops; tattoo parlours are happily humming away alongside pretty nail bars. But more than anything else, they are replaced by hairdressers, barbers and pharmacies. There are over 30 of the former two and a dozen of the latter, remember there are only 20,000 of us. There are no bookshops (there used to be four) and no record-shops (there used to be three). So for a bald man who is never sick or takes medication and who loves to read and listen to music, I am now something of an erratic.
That’s okay. It is better that our citizenry is healthy, fit, looks good and meets in sober surroundings. This is good. For to wallow in lust and drunkenness, the soul detaches from the body, the Being is shattered, for madness consists of pulling apart the body and the soul. But why is everyone so unhappy nowadays? Plagues of Depression, Anxiety, Loneliness and Fear scour our town. Or am I wrong? Jesus, I hope so.
But I don’t think I am wrong. Depression is the 10th leading cause of early death in the world and where I come from suicide is the leading cause of death in young men. Were we always this unhappy? I don’t know. When I was growing up , some villages near my hometown possessed a propensity for suicide, people would deadpan, “it must be something in the water.” Performing guards of honor in our school uniforms, at funerals of teenagers who had taken their own lives was not rare. Listening to Guns and Roses’ November Rain or Queen’s Who Wants To Live Forever in a church, while catatonic parents shook and struggled to stay conscious happened more than once. So, back then it wasn’t all sweetness and sunshine but it does appear to be more widespread nowadays.
Why? I don’t know, of course I don’t know, who knows? The businesses on our Main Street, would make you think that we are less dependent on toxic substances. But it seems the party has not ended, indeed it was never a party, we were self medicating and we have just taken it indoors, behind the curtain. People are at home drinking wine, swallowing prescription drugs, plodding about virtual worlds. We don’t see them, but we’re told about them, many of us are them.
Did we replace something bad for us, with something abominable for us? Estimates reckon about one in four adults — are taking medicines for pain, depression or insomnia, which they can find hard to stop. What are these medicines? Can we call them that? Medicines? They are antidepressants, opioid painkillers, benzodiazepines mostly prescribed for anxiety, gabapentinoids for neuropathic pain and z-drugs for insomnia.
Turns out, this has being going on for some time — America’s drugs and opioid crisis has been raging since the Nineties, but its getting worse. Drug overdoses are currently the biggest killer of Americans under 55.
Eleanor Hall, writes in The Telegraph —
“music writer and investigative reporter Ben Westhoff examines in his groundbreaking new book, Fentanyl, Inc, out this month in the US and next month in the UK (that) prescription drugs …such as Xanax, Oxycontin, Percocet and the new and particularly lethal synthetic opioid Fentanyl…are the big killers. Over 70,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses in 2017 (28,000 of which were from Fentanyl alone), and opioid deaths are expected to increase 147 per cent by 2025….Americans are more likely to die from an opioid overdose than a car accident.”
Melissa Healy writing about the Multi-district Litigation 2804 case in the Los Angeles Times, writes —
“Greed drove opioid manufacturers to oversell and overproduce the drugs, the lawsuits allege. Greed drove companies that distribute prescription drugs to oversupply pharmacies, they add. And greed drove pharmacies to over dispense the drugs to patients who were becoming hooked.”
Healy continues —
(the defendants) “argue they are blameless because they adhered to the complex laws that govern their operations. Manufacturers say they briefed doctors on opioids’ risks as they were understood at the time and produced the drugs under the watchful eyes of the FDA and the Drug Enforcement Administration. Distributors maintain they followed DEA rules as they warehoused the drugs, recorded their volumes and whereabouts, and shipped them to drugstores as they were needed to fill prescriptions. Pharmacies say they dispensed the drugs as ordered by doctors and under rules dictated by state legislatures and pharmacy boards.”
The latter smacks of Just Say No — the sanctimonious utterance proclaimed from the ivory tower by latter day Marie Antoinettes. It is not helpful. Even if the judgement states that the fault lies with the misuse of drugs rather than their availability, surely a benevolent society would be moved to protect its citizenry? Surely, they would put measures in place to ensure that people are protected?
Obviously, when you are purchasing drugs from a drug dealer you know it isn’t a good thing, but when you are using a prescription written by your doctor to purchase drugs from a pharmacist, there is a strong case to be made for assuming that you don’t know that it isn’t a good thing. After all we are patients not customers.
Are we solely dependent on drugs to assail anxiety? Or is there another method?
Jung’s Theory
Jung seen the symptoms of anxiety being a signal to us that we need to change our lives. To cope with our anxiety by taking drugs, might just get us by, but it does not remove what is causing the neurosis.
"We should not “get rid” of a neurosis, but rather to experience what it means, what it has to teach, what its purpose is." Carl Jung — Civilisation in Transition
Jung believed that that which causes the neurosis is in our present not in our past.
"In constructing a theory which derives the neurosis from causes in the distant past, we are first and foremost following the tendency of our patient to lure us as far away as possible from the critical present…It is mainly in the present that the affective causes lie, and here alone are the possibilities of removing them." Carl Jung — Theory of Psychoanalysis
Jung did not deny that our neurotic suffering may have started in our childhood or was due to our upbringing. But rather he concentrated on the present because he believed that what was causing the neurosis was a conflicted way of life in the here and now.
The Fates
In his essay — The Significance of the Father in the Destiny of the Individual, Jung quotes the following from the Stoic philosopher Cleanthes —
The Fates lead the willing, but drag the unwilling
In Greek mythology, The Fates are a group of three weaving goddesses who assign individual destinies to mortals at birth. Clotho spins the ‘thread’ of human fate, Lachesis measures it and Atropos cuts it — thus determining the individual’s moment of death.
Jung believed that we are set life tasks that are not of our choosing and so can be conceptualised as our fate. These life tasks are stuff like —
The biological drive to pass on our genes
Need to achieve psychological independence from our parents
To cultivate a social life
To contribute to our society
To find a purpose
Eventually to face up to death
But we also possess the desire for inertia and self sabotage. If we can face up to doing these tasks, they mark a path forward. But if we allow our laziness and fear to prevail, we become the unwilling whom fate drags forward.
Jung recognised that greater forces may make some of the tasks that were outlined for us, impossible, but if this is the case we must accept the situation and direct our energies to those tasks that are possible.
But usually the tasks are possible, what holds us back is a moral incapacity. Either we are too lazy or too afraid. The neurotic tends to lay blame on the obstacles in their path.
"The neurotic draws back from his life tasks not because of any real impossibility but because of an artificial barrier invented by himself…From this moment on he suffers from an internal conflict. Now, the realisation of his cowardice gets the upper hand, now defiance and pride. In either case his (energy) is engaged in a useless civil war, and the man becomes incapable of any new enterprise…His efficiency is reduced, he is not fully adapted, he has become — in a word — neurotic” Carl Jung — The Theory of Psychoanalysis
The energy required for the set tasks does not dissipate. If we fail to move forward, we tend to regress to more immature pursuits and this is what generates the symptoms of the neuroses — pervasive anxieties, compulsive behaviours, phobias, depression, apathy or excessive or intrusive thoughts. Not good stuff. However, they serve a purpose, signalling to us that we are descending down a dangerous life path.
For although we emotionally regress, our physical clock ticks on, the mirror reveals to us what we really are. We are out of sync with the march of time. We will wonder what caused us to be an outlier to conformity, what made us choose this terrible path?
Jung reckoned that there was no individual answer to this, rather each individual case is unique. It could be genetic or out upbringing but for most is a blend of both the genetic and environmental.
How do we break the cycle of our neurotic suffering?
If we are willing to acknowledge our conflicted way of life, what can we do to resolve it?
Jung did not believe in looking back and trying to untangle the boring family romance, rather he thought the best thing to do was to construct something new, specifically a new attitude to life, we must look forward not back.
"The perpetual hesitation of the neurotic to launch out into life is readily explained by his desire to stand aside and not get involved in the dangerous struggle for existence. But anyone who refuses to experience life must stifle his desire to live — in other words, he must commit partial suicide" — Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation
The neurosis is demanding a new adaptation. We need a dedication to life and we need to develop our personality. We, not others must be the final authority. We must escape the family drama. You were the cog in a system, now you must become the centre of a new system.
First Step
The first step is simple in theory but difficult in practice. We need a clearer picture of who we are and where we are heading. We can no longer falsify reality, blame our flaws or our environment. Self acceptance must become the rule. We may fear what we see, but the practice of self acceptance is liberating. The energy that we have expelled in trying to hide our flaws can be used to go forward. If you are brave enough, it is very advantageous to turn to someone you trust for an honest assessment of your character.
We must recognise where we are heading if we remain neurotic. People at first think that if they can avoid what causes their symptoms then a relatively comfortable life is possible. But this path often leads to a hell of our own making. Stuff snowballs. Jung believed although not easy to accept ourselves, it is far easier than what lies down the track if we don’t.
"Flight from life does not exempt us from the law of age and death. The neurotic who tries to wriggle out of the necessity of living wins nothing and only burdens himself with a constant foretaste of ageing and dying, which must appear especially cruel on account of the total emptiness and meaninglessness of his life" — Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation
A neurosis offers us a path that is far more fulfilling than the one we currently tread. Indeed, recovery from a neurosis can generate a resilience and strength not found in those who have never had to combat one. A neurosis is only a curse if we remain forever caught in it.
Second Step
After self acceptance, we need action. We need to stop being mere observers. We need to venture into the world with all its unforeseen possibilities.
Jung believed that we have to make these decisions ourselves, otherwise we remain infantile to the authority that tells us to or guides us. The neurotic must remain cautious of conformity. Some people are neurotic because of an acute sense of the inadequacy of the dominant way of life in their society.
"So it comes that there are many neurotics whose inner decency prevents them from being at one with present day morality and who cannot adapt themselves as long as the moral code has gaps in it which is the crying need of our age to fill" — Carl Jung, Some Crucial Points in Psychoanalysis
These people are not ill because they lack the ability to live like everyone else rather they have not found a form to fit in with their higher aspirations. They are born to be bearers of new cultural ideals. Rather they are neurotic if they conform and bow down to authority and turn from the freedom to which they are destined.
We should imagine ourselves free from the neuroses, free from social ridicule, what would we choose to do? Who would we want to become? What are you in your dreams? In your fantasies?
"Whereas the neurosis and the troubles that attend it are never followed by the pleasant feeling of good work well done, of duty fearlessly performed, the suffering that comes from useful work and from victory over real difficulties brings with it those moments of peace and satisfaction which give the human being the priceless feeling that he has really lived his life." Carl Jung — General Aspects of Psychoanalysis
Many people never heed the call of their neurosis urging them to a more fulfilling life, maintaining that before they tread that path they must first conquer their symptoms.
But if we agree with Jung that our symptoms are primarily a result of our choice to stay on the sidelines, then such a choice will result in failure, we will only prevail if we are willing to move forward in the presence of our fear and anxiety. And in this regard there is no formula for our deliverance.
We must take the risk and make the leap.
"Only boldness can deliver from fear. And if the risk is not taken, the meaning of life is somewhat violated, and the whole future is condemned to hopeless staleness" — Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation
For further expansion on this subject, I would recommend the Academy of Ideas’ — Carl Jung on Overcoming Anxiety Disorders.
About the Creator
Will Russell
Freelance Writer
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