Curing Depression

Carl Jung

Now here is another brain teaser for your therapist, or should I say mind teaser, the notion of curing someone with depression. Sadly, this is one of the most common causes of problems in marriages, and while we look for help from the professionals they take advantage of that vulnerability with a platform that doesn’t get to the root causes of depression. All the while, we spend about $12 billion a year on therapy and $15 billion on pharmacology drugs to treat “mental illnesses”, particularly depression.

I even find it hilarious that there is an ad on TV promoting a drug called Abilify that begins by stating that 2/3rds of people suffering from depression still have depression symptoms after taking traditional “medicine”, in essence admitting the inability of the medical approach to curing people. After all, our “mental illnesses” are biologically based, hence the medical approach to a “cure”, and there is really nothing that can be done mentally.

But there was a psychologist who actually did cure people, the one-time heir apparent to Freud by the name of Carl Jung. I refer to Jung as the greatest psychologist who ever lived basically because of the fact that his objective was to cure his patients.

Let me relate to you one of his patients whom he did cure, a patient suffering from depression. Ironically, the professionals of his day actually diagnosed her with Schizophrenia. Boy I can imagine the response from the professionals if I would have titled this post “Curing Schizophrenia”, because as most people realize after 100 years of propagating the biology conclusion, Schizophrenia is incurable.

The discovery of a cure for schizophrenia

Jung describes in his autobiography the first case where he cured a patient in the story of a woman who was diagnosed with schizophrenia. “I still recollect very well a case which greatly interested me at the time. A young woman had been admitted to the hospital, suffering from ‘melancholia.’ The examination was conducted with the usual care: anamnesis (recollection of the past), tests, physical check-ups, and so on. The diagnosis was schizophrenia…The prognosis poor.”

“This woman happened to be in my section. At first I did not dare to question the diagnosis. I was still a young man then, a beginner, and would not have had the temerity to suggest another one. And yet the case struck me as strange. I had the feeling that it was not a matter of schizophrenia but of ordinary depression, and resolved to apply my own method. At the time I was much occupied with diagnostic association studies, and so I undertook an association experiment with the patient. In addition, I discussed her dreams with her. In this way I succeeded in uncovering her past, which anamnesis had not clarified. I obtained information directly from the unconscious, and this information revealed a dark and tragic story.

Before the woman married she had known a man, the son of a wealthy industrialist, in whom all the girls of the neighborhood were interested. Since she was very pretty, she thought her chances of catching him were fairly good. But apparently he did not care for her, and so she married another man.

Five years later an old friend visited her. They were talking over old times, and he said to her, ‘When you got married it was quite a shock to someone-your Mr. X’ (the wealthy industrialist’s son). That was the moment! Her depression dated from this period, and several weeks later led to a catastrophe. She was bathing her children, first her four-year-old girl and then her two-year-old son. She lived in a country where the water supply was not perfectly hygienic; there was pure spring water for drinking, and tainted water from the river for bathing and washing. While she was bathing the little girl, she saw the child sucking at the sponge, but did not stop her. She even gave her little son a glass of the impure water to drink. Naturally, she did this unconsciously, or only half consciously, for her mind was already under the shadow of the incipient depression.

A short time later, after the incubation period had passed, the girl came down with typhoid fever and died. The girl had been her favorite. The boy was not infected. At that moment the depression reached its acute stage, and the woman was sent to the institution.

From the association test I had seen that she was a murderess, and I had learned many of the details of her secret. It was at once apparent that this was a sufficient reason for her depression. Essentially it was a psychogenic disturbance and not a case of schizophrenia.

Now what could be done in the way of therapy? Up to then the woman had been given narcotics to combat her insomnia and had been under guard to prevent attempts at suicide. But otherwise nothing had been done. Physically, she was in good condition.

I was confronted with the problem: Should I speak openly with her or not? Should I undertake the major operation? I was faced with a conflict of duties altogether without precedent in my experience. I had a difficult question of conscience to answer, and had to settle the matter with myself alone. If I had asked my colleagues, they would probably have warned me, ‘For heaven’s sake, don’t tell the woman any such thing. That will only make her still crazier.’ To my mind, the effect might well be the reverse. In general it may be said that unequivocal rules scarcely exist in psychology. A question can be answered one way or another, depending on whether or not we take the unconscious factors into account. Of course I knew very well the personal risk I was running: if the patient got worse, I would be in the soup too!

Nevertheless, I decided to take a chance on a therapy whose outcome was uncertain. I told her everything I had discovered through the association test. I can easily be imagined how difficult it was for me to do this. To accuse a person point-blank of murder is no small matter. And it was tragic for the patient to have to listen to it and accept it. But the result was that in two weeks it proved possible to discharge her, and she was never again institutionalized.”

Wow!! He was able to cure schizophrenia. But he had to be careful about how he handled the fact that he had found a cure. “While I was still at the clinic, I had to be most circumspect about treating my schizophrenic patients, or I would have been accused of woolgathering. Schizophrenia was considered incurable. If one did achieve some improvement with a case of schizophrenia, the answer was that it had not been real schizophrenia.”

Now there are a couple of interesting elements to this story. First is Jung’s use of the word murder to describe the experience. Common sense would tell us today this was simply an accident, for it is obvious by the impact it had on the woman that she did not want to kill her little girl, her actions were driven by an unconscious drive. Our legal system today defines murder as a conscious act. In fact, the objective of psychology in the legal system is to determine whether the cause of the criminal act was a conscious or an unconscious one. That is why it is call “premeditated”.

But for Jung what was important was the impact the behavior had within the psyche of his patient. What is important is how the psyche views an act that it was responsible for, and unconsciously the woman did see the little girl drink the water, which she knew was not clean. Jung’s objective as he states is to “undertake the major operation” of removing the cancer of this experience from her psyche, getting her to the point of realizing that it wasn’t her fault, and if she forgives herself then she can eradicate the experience from her psychic life. And it worked!!! He was able to cure a woman who was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Which leads us to the other point, and that is the ethical problem that is faced with the notion that there is a root cause behind our psychic imbalances. Behind every negative experience there is the other side of the story. Something had to have gone wrong for the impact to be so large as to cause a mental problem. So you have to take into consideration there was a negative behavior that caused the mental problem in the first place. If your objective is to find fault then you cannot get to the truth.

If Jung had not realized he was not judging the woman but trying to help then he would not have pursued the path to the cure, the solution. With rape, for example, the point is to cure the patient not convict the rapist from the perspective of the person who got raped, because the point is eradicating the psychological impact on the person who got raped. Of course, society and morality dictates the rapist is responsible for his actions but the point here is the psychological impact on the person who was raped.

Hypnosis is another good therapy technique for remembering past negative experiences but is not widely used because of the potential for suggestion and because once something is revealed that is negative we feel we have to convict the negative behavior, not cure the patient. I saw a case once on T.V. where through hypnosis a therapist was able to determine that a father had raped his daughter. Now if this were true then the point should have been to cure the girl of the mental response to this experience. But what did the therapist decide to do? Go public with the diagnosis. Yes, they tried to convict the father until it was determined the therapist put the notion that the girl was raped into her head during hypnosis. Again, the question is faultfinding versus problem solving. Psychological health occurs when we confront our demons, but the point is not to find fault with the cause of our problems.

There is one more significant point to this story. Therapy today is passive, where the therapist guides the patients through their negative emotions. Again, the “how does that make you feel” question. While what is true about therapy is the patient is responsible for affecting his or her own cure, this path implies the notion that the therapist cannot present the thoughts behind the problem because then the patient doesn’t make the discovery on his or her own. Jung’s approach was the opposite, in that he introduced the thoughts behind the problem, not the feelings.

Hiding the discovery

And how did Jung respond to curing his patient. He had to keep it quiet for fear of the response of his peers. “There were other reasons that caused me to say nothing to my colleagues about this case. I was afraid of their discussing it and possibly raising legal questions. Nothing could be proved against the patient, of course, and yet such a discussion might have had disastrous consequences for her. Fate had punished her enough! It seemed to me more meaningful that she should return to life in order to atone in life for her crime. When she was discharged, she departed bearing her heavy burden. She had to bear this burden. The loss of the child had been frightful for her, and her expiation had already begun with the depression and her confinement to the institution.”

And the source of the trauma was lost love.

No one has ever died for slaying their dragons, but a lot have for not…it’s called suicide.

by Tim Kellis

http://HappyRelationships.com/

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