Richard Lloyd Jones: Its victims list is a long one that includes some of the most famous personalities of the 20th century. But it's the less well-known stories that make us catch our breath. The quiet, intelligent teenager down the street who overdoses. The cousin who doesn't make it to rehab. The childhood friend who gets in with the wrong crowd and is shot in a drug deal gone sour.
Today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, drugs and power. Well, it's been a while since I posted an episode of Thinking with Somebody Else's I've been a little busy with a new and related project to let you know about. A live radio call-in show I've been conducting with Dr. Cláudia Bernhardt-Pocheco, the Vice President of the International Society of Analytical Trilogy here in São Paulo.
Cláudia is a much-in-demand trilogical psychoanalyst with extensive international experience in treating all manner of human relationship, health, work, personal issues.
My idea for the past couple of years has been to create a forum where she and I could take live calls from people and offer our unique perspective on the problem. You see, I receive many emails from listeners to this podcast asking specific questions about problems or difficulties. There's the young woman from the Balkans who's terrified of AIDS, the young guy in North America who's concerned about his inability to stop sabotaging his relationships, the two brothers who struggle with depression.
I help them as much as I can. I do special podcasts on these themes. I write personally to all who write to me. I suggest books and other resources. But I cannot do what a psychoanalyst trained by Dr. Nerberto Keppe can do. Keppe's science of Analytical Trilogy is vast and provides an analysis of the human psyche that no one, not Freud or Klein or Jung or Rogers, any of them, was able to accomplish.
And that means that when this science is applied in a therapeutic way to personal or social issues the analysis that emerges is right on the target and that's what we want to do with this live call in radio show we're calling the program healing through consciousness and all the info is on our site healing through consciousness.com or of course by email to me at rich at rich jones voice.com The show actually is a marvelous opportunity to get some real overview of your problems or issues or questions about anything, so do join us for that, please.
Our podcast today is taken from one of our programs, actually, and entails Dr. Cláudia Pacheco's long response to a listener's question about drugs, that enormous social problem. And the war on drugs? Well, that's a deceiving name, actually. Anyone who saw Ridley Scott's American Gangster movie saw the movement of drugs into the U.S.
From the Vietnam War. Afghanistan opium production has climbed right back up to 96% of world production after the American-led invasion after 9-11. In some circles, the introduction of hallucinogenic drugs into the changing consciousness of the 60s was a direct plan to subvert that idealistic movement. And, of course, there's the CIA's Bluebird Project to always keep in mind, a planned study to analyze the effect of drugs on mind control.
And we can imagine what's happened with all that research, how that has been employed in American culture. So, when the question came up on our Healing Through Consciousness show, Dr. Cláudia Pacheco jumped right into the heat of it. She's no stranger to the issue, in truth, having published a searing critique of the role of governments and so-called law enforcement agencies in organized drug trafficking, that book she wrote back in the late 1980s.
The American Drug Multinational, she called it, and it pulled no punches. And Cláudia didn't pull any punches in how she answered our caller's question either.
I have a question about addiction. Recently in the news, two girls have died in Alberta. One was 15 years old, one was 14 years old, and they took the street drug ecstasy. This is a very common drug in our community.
Alberta and Edmonton in particular is known as the ecstasy capital of Canada. So I'm just really curious, what's at the root of addiction?
Richard: That's a great question.
Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco: Wow. We only
Richard: have 45 minutes left. It's a treaty, isn't it? Yeah, it's a treatise. Well, the root of
Cláudia: addiction has, we have many perspectives to understand a problem of addiction. It's a very complicated one because it requires an attitude of dependence and dependence on something to feel better.
So when you think that you depend on something to feel better, you start from the point that all the good, happiness, well-being, good things, freedom, relaxation comes from external things. That this is not something, that it is a result of an inner attitude of your being. So you look for something outside. You depend on the good that you see coming from outside.
Now, if we perceive that this expansion of... Because all drugs give a sensation of expansion of the being. Or sometimes an expansion of consciousness. Sometimes a decrease of inner tension. A decrease in censorship. A more freedom to live your being. And this is artificial now. The desire to have a better life and to be freer and to use better your talents is very genuine.
It belongs to the being. We are born to be free, to good, to do beautiful things, to live in happiness.
This is in the American constitution, by the way, so it's the universal right of every human being. But why, why we are so unhappy? And then comes a definition which is very short, solid, but that Keppe gives, but it's very, you can expand this a lot, all embracing in
Richard: a way, right? It covers many things. So
Cláudia: what is the being? Or what is the reason we are neurotic, unhappy, sick?
Keppe sees the neurosis, the psychosis, and the cause of all this insatisfaction and suffering as a result of an attitude. Attitude, and when I say attitude, pay attention, is not something that is instinctive, as Freud mentioned. It's not coming by nature. It's not mandatory. It's an attitude. It's, it's something that you can change if you become more conscious of this. So neurosis is an attitude of denying, omitting or misrepresenting the true reality, the true being, which is beautiful, truthful and good.
So this is a phrase and this phrase must be understood and applied. This is like a universal concept and must be applied to our everyday life. So you come and you say, okay, I'm a beautiful truthful being by nature, but why do I have this attitude that I deny to myself, I omit, I attack my being, and why society does not simplify or does not facilitate this kind of life?
So here comes a big and huge explanation that we must, I don't know, Richard, if we enter in this thing of the inversion. I
Richard: have a question that may lead us that way first though, Claude, because we have to treat the
Cláudia: question of the society, the inversions in society, and inversion is fundamental to Dr. Keppe's work. And I would like just to mention to Will, Will, our insatisfactions are coming mostly from inside of us, from our inverted attitudes against our beings and our lives.
But there is also this sensation which is horrible coming from the pseudo-society, society. The way this sick, ill society is organized. So we don't live the life we should be living. We
Richard: don't feel good in
Cláudia: this society. No, and it would be impossible to say that we live in a happy society. I want to
Richard: leave Will a little space because he may have a follow-up question, but I wanted to mention first, Cláudia, the incredible study that Dr.
Keppe has done about the human will. In his book, Liberation from the Will, which means to liberate. We separate ourselves from our free will. That's what he discusses in this book, which is completely revolutionary in Keppe's work. He talked about the fact that the human being has desires against this true nature that we have. And that may be something that leads to this question of addiction or part of it, right?
Cláudia: Yeah, this desire is Freud called the Thanatos complex, which would be the complex of death or the death instinct. And also some complexes related to sexual repressions and traumas. But this is a deviation of the... We are not just a bunch of instincts. We are much more than that. So happiness or well-being, the mental psychological well-being, is much more related to our inner psychological life and spiritual life, which is transcendental, by the way.
So how come we should, if we would be just, uh, accomplishing a good sex and being healthy, this would be very simple. We would be all, everybody would be much more balanced nowadays with the freedom of sex, and we don't see that. We see in every five people in the world, one is at least, no, in each four people, out of
Richard: every four people in
Cláudia: the world, yeah, at least one is mentally sick, heavily mentally sick.
So we see more than 1 billion people suffering from severe illnesses, mental illnesses. And this we speak about post-Freudian era. So?
Richard: So, we didn't meet the
Cláudia: point.
Richard: Right. Will, was there a follow-up question or any other observation you wanted to make while we got you on
the line? Yes, just a quick question. In this particular case, I'm speaking of an Edmonton where a 15-year-old and a 14-year-old girl died.
Obviously, somebody sold them the drugs and it was probably another young person, and we see this very commonly everywhere around the world, young people dealing drugs to young people. How does society deal with the drug dealer who is also a victim of inversion? How do we properly address this, making it worse? Yeah,
Cláudia: so I, I see this in a two steps kind of thing.
Well, one is the social problem, socio-economic, a socio-economic problem.
We see these drug cartels being organized, intentionally being organized to serve some powerful millionaires. And in this process, we even see the full involvement of banks, bankers, judges, policemen, and not only...
Richard: Customers, officials. Customers, officials. We don't see this just in a low-level ranking,
Cláudia: but also big, big high-ranking of this kind of thing. So I agree with some people that understand that if they would legalize drugs as they did with alcohol, they would make people see where are those drug dealers, who are they.
And they would not be able anymore to take profit from this criminal aspect. As long as they keep it as a crime, as illegal, this will even push people, make it stronger, stimulate all the process. And
so they don't pay taxes,
Cláudia: and this creates an environment of crime and violence, and the real responsible are hidden behind these curtains.
So this is a big, big challenge, to legalize drugs as a first step, and then to address the problem, address it also in two levels. One level would be the social understanding of the problem, which would create the bankruptcy of many banks. Big banks would go bankrupt if they would stop laundering money, which are billions of dollars every year, or trillions of dollars being laundered.
So we would see this falling apart. And not only that, but we should then address in every place, every community, all communities, homes, family, medias, schools, hospitals, to understand that if you take drugs, you're not benefiting yourself. You are destroying your brain. And this gives pleasure to the person. And it's it's really difficult for a person to admit that but this idea that taking drugs is something against society gives pleasure to many young people but in reality they are not they are not uh going against the the rulers of society they are feeding the rulers of society because they are becoming they are numbing their consciousness they are becoming easy puppets for them because you stop thinking you lose your intelligence you don't question anymore so you become an easy puppet and also you give money to them so you are a slave many times if you take drugs you lose your freedom totally lose your freedom thinking that
Richard: you're making a big personal statement away from the society
Cláudia: you're actually contributing to the sickest people yes and you are like becoming a slave of them even a bigger slave
Richard: just to illustrate this Cláudia i remember a statistic from catherine austin fitz from the solari institute i think it's called United States she worked for the department of department of housing i think the United States for many years she quoted department of justice statistics department of justice statistics saying that illegal crime profits that are laundered through the u.s banking system per year
this is at least 10 years ago i heard this is 500 billion to 1 trillion dollars per year of illegal crime profits a large part of that of course is drugs and so we have an enormous social problem that's not only the fault of the people who are addicted but also of the whole power structures of our planet who are stimulating this in direct ways because they make a lot of money there's a big profit margin and you're dealing with heroin and
Cláudia: cocaine big huge profits if you uh when i was in france uh the burial of petro was still eight dollars whoa and this was in 91 92.
So the heroine um so the heroine coming from the middle east in Asia, the gram cost around $300. Good heavens. The gram. So imagine a barrel compared to a gram. So it's unbelievable how more expensive and profitable drugs are. And you speak about tons of drugs being trafficked. Always
Richard: with Norberto Keppe's work, we see this focus on the personal aspect and the social aspect of an issue too. He explores the pathology of power extremely well, and his work helps us finally make real sense of the world. This is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones. Talk to you next time.
