Richard Lloyd Jones: Most place its origins on chemical imbalances, or poor nutrition, or heredity, or even on bad karma from past lives. But with the new discoveries in psycho-socio pathology, it's now possible to lay the blame squarely on our shoulders. Let's face it, if we're sick or troubled somewhere in our psychology, that's what we want. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and today I'm Thinking with Somebody Else's Head the true origin of illness.
I know, there are many people writing these days about sickness and health from a more holistic perspective, but somehow no one has defined the origins of illness quite as completely as Norberto R. Keppe. That's a big claim to make, of course, and probably needs some backup. Keppe created the Department of Psychosomatic Medicine at the Clinical Hospital of the University of São Paulo, the largest hospital in Latin America, back in the 60s.
Here's how it worked in those days. The most hopeless cases, the ones the medical doctors couldn't get their heads around, ended up in Keppe's office for a little of his innovative psychoanalytical technique. And many times, they walked out healthy. From allergies to heart problems to gastrointestinal problems to serious terminal diseases, he kind of worked magic on them. His results continued at his own private clinic and continue to this day, offering a revolution in treating any type of disease.
And the core of Keppe's work is this. Illness is an aberration. It's a sign that we're doing something to distort or negate our true and healthy nature. And that blockage can be identified and treated, restoring the natural health that underpins all of our life. Where Freud got lost in the pessimism of seeing us as having this pathological unconscious full of bad intentions and animal instincts and proposing that this was natural and unavoidable.
Keppe restores hope by seeing us as naturally good and healthy beings in essence, but with many inverted attitudes against that sanity, attitudes which can be treated and controlled. There's a deeply spiritual aspect to Keppe's work, then, that focuses the discussion of why we in our society are so sick on the human psychological life, something his work throws mega-spotlights on. Keppe understands the human psyche better than anyone in history since Jesus, and we have much to gain by turning to his wisdom.
By the way, we'll be exploring the implications and impact of his work in many areas of human activity at our World Conference of Analytical Trilogy this coming September 2008 in San Diego. You can get more information at our website, www.wcatus.org. Hope you join us there. And another piece of information for you, we're currently in production for our teleclass series.
Yes, the very one we've been promising you for a long time now. We've been a little slow getting that off the ground. We get kind of busy around here, and it's a push to do those extra things. But I appreciate your patience, and if you'd like more information on that, If you haven't got information already, just write me, rich at richjonesvoice.com. Today, psychoanalyst Leo Lima, who's worked closely with Norberto Keppe for over 25 years, takes us on a journey to the origins of illness.
Leo, you talk about this subject by first saying that we shouldn't talk about disease, actually, because that's just a symptom. What are you talking about here?
Leo Lima: You know, symptoms are signs of another thing. For example, when you see smoke, it could be a sign of a fire. It could be a sign of someone cooking, right? So the physical diseases as we see them, they are a sign of another problem.
So we don't consider them a problem in themselves. Of course they are a problem, but not the origin of the problem. So many times clients come for analysis with physical diseases, with these symptoms, rheumatism and many diseases. They come and they start talking because as psychoanalysts, we don't use medicines, we don't use any kind of treatment besides talking to the person. And they come and they start talking about their symptoms.
And then we say, no, don't talk to me about your symptom. Talk about your life in general. So they say, today I have a headache or I have hypertension. I have diabetes and it started last year. No no, talk about your life in general. What you did today, you know, how is your life, what you do, where do you work, why. Because somewhere in the way they think and they feel, I mean, when they talk about their lives, we will see problems there.
And these problems are causing his diabetes, his rheumatism and other symptoms. Do
Richard: you have a specific example that might just help us to understand this in a concrete way, Leo? For
Leo: example, high blood pressure is typical of a person who is afraid of seeing his problems. Meaning, you know, when we say problems, we don't mean that the person is a victim of his boss, a victim of his wife or husband, you know, a victim of society, but that he is conducting his life in a way that is not good for him.
For example, a person who's very aggressive, that's not good for him. We don't want to be moralistic here, you know, to say behave this way or behave that way. But when people behave in an aggressive way, that is not good for their health. When people are too afraid of something because they make an image of themselves too high and they are afraid of facing it in reality.
So, that's the main cause of people being afraid. So, this person, because of this idealization he makes about himself, he becomes afraid. So, in many attitudes people have that are not healthy for him, physically and psychologically. And then, these people have to, they end up with physical symptoms. For example, anger. When they are very angry about something, many times it's because they want to impose their ideas.
And when they have to admit that they cannot impose their ideas and follow someone else's ideas, they get angry.
Richard: It's not, though, the repressed anger that causes the problem. In other words, they're not supposed to just go and express the anger all over the place, right?
Leo: No, because it gets worse. The more you express, the more exciting, you know, bad you are.
Richard: And the hormones that get released in the body are very strong in this case, right?
Leo: Exactly. So, this anger, which is not physical, it's something psychological, it's an emotion, and then it starts in your mind, shall we say, in your psychological life, goes to the body, and then you might have a high blood pressure, you might have a headache. So, this is how attitudes, which are not physical, become physical symptoms. You
Richard: talked about fear, Leo, as being caused by this difference in vision between what we think we are and what we have to see that we are, right?
That we have this big difference between the image we have of ourselves and actually what happens in reality. And this reminds me of what the great German psychiatrist at the beginning of the development of psychiatry discovered, was that behind every serious illness was an enormous megalomania. Can you talk a bit about the role of this psychopathology in the creation of disease in our body?
Leo: So, when you have these ideas, idealized ideas about yourself, you think you are superior, right? You put goals that you cannot reach. So, this megalomania makes people suffer because they are afraid of facing reality. You work with the media, you work with voice, you know the very common fear of speaking in public, right? Which is very common. Maybe almost everyone has a bit of it.
So, you know what this means. When you have to face a public, you will be checked by yourself, not by the public, because the public many times is just listening to what you're saying, not to you. But the person thinks he is the most important person in the world. Everybody's looking at him, not listening to what he's saying. And this may check his expectations about himself.
If they are too high, he are afraid of facing reality.
So it's very much connected to megalomania. The same thing with being shy or timid. People think it's a complex of inferiority. But in fact, behind this feeling of inferiority, there is a feeling of superiority. Because if the individual feels that he's inferior, he would feel okay. He says, "I know I'm inferior, so what's the problem?" But because he thinks he's too superior, when he sees that he's not, then he doesn't accept that.
Richard: He doesn't want to go into the situation where he might feel that kind of thing. You talked about the real diseases not being physical but being psychological. Let's come back to that point, Leo. So if we see a lot of symptoms, which we do, my gosh, there's every possible kind of situation that's happening in North America. We have this crisis of depression, of hyperactivity, bipolar thing.
There's symptoms showing up everywhere. This must indicate a lot of psychological difficulties. What do you see as the key? These psychological problems that are underlying these physical symptoms that we're seeing everywhere today.
Leo: Behind all problems, usually it's envy. Envy is not what people usually think it is. Usually people think that envy is when you desire, you want, you wish to have something you don't have.
A car, a house, etc. To live in another city. But in fact, envy means not to be willing to see something and something good. So if a colleague of mine at work has many abilities, it's something good. If I'm envious, I don't want to admit his abilities. So I will make bad comments about him to diminish him. Or even if I don't say anything, I may just feel this envy and not accept, not be happy.
With his happiness, with his brilliance, with his performance, good
Richard: performance.
To undermine him in some way and say, well, it's easy for him because he's got such and such education or the boss likes him. These are subtle ways of taking away the value this person has.
Leo: The value you see. So when you don't want to admit values in other people, this is envy. And usually envy is the basis of our pathology and originates other pathologies, for example.
Then if you are envious, you will be in a bad mood, you might be aggressive. So aggression is developed because of that envy. So behind many problems, many pathologies, pathological attitudes, usually it's envy. This is one of the major causes. And eventually they
Richard: might develop a physical disease. In fact, probably almost always they will. Can you talk a bit more about envy and the history of envy?
Because this is really not understood in our society at all.
Even in the dictionary, they give a very false idea of the true etymological root of this word. It was developed or discovered first by Freud and then, I understand, by Melanie Klein. Talk a little bit about the history of the study
Leo: of envy. Well, what happened was that Freud, at the end of his life, He had this insight when he perceived psychotics.
Psychotics are people who have serious problems, psychological problems, psychiatric hospitals. He noticed, analyzing and studying the psychotic people in psychiatric hospitals, he thought that they might have a big envy. But he didn't put that into his theories. He was in the end of his life. Perhaps he didn't have time to redo all, he review all his ideas and we don't know. But he didn't mention, he just made a comment, it seems, in his biography, it said.
So he perceived envy, but he didn't use in his body of theories.
And then a disciple of his, Melanie Klein, the base of her work was envy. She worked a lot with envy. And she gave a big contribution to psychoanalysis because of that. But the origin of this word, envy, because envy comes from Latin invidere. And this word beginning, in, means a denial. For example, when you say tolerance, intolerance, patience, impatience.
Richard: Stability, instability.
Leo: So, it's the opposite.
So, videre in Latin means to see. And envy daddy means not to see. So when you, as I said, when you don't want to see, not that you don't see because your eyes, your sight is weak, you see very well, but you don't want to admit what you see, good things. So when you don't want to admit what's good, you will reject it, and this is the real envy.
Yes,
Richard: and Melanie Klein did her first studies, or a lot of her studies, with children, even babies, and she noticed that the baby had this, some babies had this more tendency to reject the mother's breast, feeding, the love and affection of the mother than other babies did.
This was what really catapulted her study of envy. But she only went as far as seeing it as the rejection of the mother, that this baby who was rejecting the breast, rejecting to be fed, was rejecting the mother. But Dr. Keppe sees it in a much deeper way, this rejection, doesn't he?
Leo: Exactly, because she saw the basic thing, which started everything else.
She saw that when babies go against what's good, the breast, the good breast, mother meaning affection, meaning protection, meaning being fed, which is basic. Without that, the child could die. So they reject what's most important in their lives. And this is understood in adult life when people reject what they depend on, jobs. And Dr. Keppe perceived that this is philosophical. I mean, people reject what's good in general, good principles in life, health.
So he talked about an universal envy, meaning not only the good mother, the good breast, but everything the person sees value.
He says in
Richard: his book The Origin of Illness, which is directly about envy as applied to psychopathology and to our physical, social health, mental health too, he says "goodness is always difficult to accept." I think it's the first sentence in that book, which is a big place to start, because we don't think this, Leo. We don't exactly think oh my gosh I'm looking for bad things in my life.
It's something very hidden from us. Can you talk a bit about this idea that goodness is difficult
Leo: to accept? Yes, because Dr. Kapp shows that usually people think that they don't like what's bad. So people make criticisms, they criticize things, they point out mistakes, always complaining about something. And they point out a complaint about a mistake, something they, they disapprove. They don't see that many times you point out a mistake, you use, let's say, a real mistake to hide what's behind.
For example, someone makes a mistake and then someone points it out, say look you're doing this wrong, but in fact he sees many qualities in that person, and he takes the opportunity when the person makes a mistake to emphasize that mistake and to undermine the person's value. So hidden behind a criticism against something bad, it could be rejection of something, an attack of something good.
So this is what's most difficult for people to accept, what's good, because then we have to, to be grateful. For example, life has many good, good things, and people usually complain about problems, people concentrate, for example, because this show is about physical diseases, people take a lot of pleasure talking about their diseases. You know, it's an inverted, it's a kind of psychological pleasure, but people like, have you noticed when people have physical disease, they like talking about it.
Usually in hospitals, when patients meet in the waiting room, one wants to be worse than the other, showing their surgeries, the cuts and everything. "I
Richard: have 10 stitches, but I have 12."
Leo: Exactly. They have a lot of pleasure because when you are ill, physically ill, you need attention. So it's a way of attacking people, making people worried about
Richard: you. You said it like this in a lecture recently.
You said that consciously we want health, but inconscientized, unconsciously, we don't.
Leo: Yes, there is a case of a client. Dr. Kapp mentions this example in one of his books. His patient came to him, and she was very much afraid of a disease that she had had in the past, and she was afraid that that was going to come back. And he said, "But why are you afraid of that?
Is there any sign? Did the doctor say anything about that?"
She says, "no, I went to the doctor. He said, I'm okay. So Dr. Kapp said, you see, you think you want to be healthy and you are afraid of having the disease, but you only think about it. The doctor told you you are okay and you insist on thinking, concentrating. You want to have this disease. You only think of that. So what we are really afraid is what is good, of what we are afraid, and we attack what's really good.
What's good is difficult for us to accept because then you have to be humble, you have to see the values of other people, of nature, and then you have to be humble, be grateful."
Richard: Let's think of some more examples to help drive that point home, Leo, because you're touching on something I think that really separates Dr Keppe's work from anything else going around in the world today, any of the psychotherapy or even spiritual or philosophical teaching.
He's talking directly about this issue of human beings that we want to reject exactly what's good for us. And let's use some more examples to try to drive that point home, because that is unknown for most of us.
Leo: Yes. For example, you see, geniuses are so rare in history, aren't they? Yes. You can count them. Yes. So, why? Because people have no gifts everyone has gifts everyone He's intelligent.
Why some people are more brilliant than others? Because we deny our qualities. By using your qualities, you will make people happy. You make yourself useful. The society will profit from your gifts. So people deny developing their gifts. People know how to sing. They never sing. People know how to write. They never write. So this is envy because you're are going against something good and you don't want other people to share this good you have of yours, your gifts, and you take pleasure in attacking people, not making them happy.
Unconsciously people don't notice this clearly, but this exists inside, and people will
Richard: say well I, I don't sing because I'm afraid, I'm afraid of success, I'm afraid of others will think, I don't have time, you find a lot of excuses. So people are using these excuses to avoid seeing the deeper problem underneath, which is the envy that we have against our own talents
Leo: and abilities.
Because the way I'm speaking about the unconscientized motivations, it's not something rational. So we are saying yeah people don't want good, it's not logical, we are not talking about logical things, we are talking a psychoanalytical way, deep motivations that people are not aware of, but they are there. And as we analyze people and we analyze ourselves, we find these reasons. So we are just sharing the conclusions with your listeners.
It's not something rational, logical that people accept. All this is hidden things, but these are the basic motivations causing many diseases. And when people analyze these kind of diseases, their symptoms disappear. You know, many serious diseases, including AIDS, including cancer. There are many, many cases of terminal patients who are alive after 10 years. So it really heals when you go to the origin, which is this attitude, basic attitude against life.
And if you are against life, what can you have left? Dr.
Richard: Keppe told me one time that he felt that every time a person feels insecure or feels afraid of doing something, that this is a way of sabotaging him or
Leo: herself. "Exactly, because everybody has gifts, you have conditions to live, if you are alive life is giving you what you need, right.
So if you, if you feel insecure is because you are somehow not using what
Richard: you have."
So if we're not using the full potential that we feel, it's because of an attitude that we have inconscientized against our own abilities. Is this what
Leo: you're saying? "That's right. So we are not victims of the environment here, talking about diseases. We are not victims even of hereditary because you can have inherited a physical disease. Diabetes, for example, is inherited. And the disease never manifests.
In yourself. You can be a bearer, but it doesn't manifest. Why? Because you're not a victim of hereditary. You either develop it when your immune system is weakened because of these psychological attitudes, pathological attitudes of envy. Then you get very weak in terms of your immunology, and then you develop this disease. So you're not victims. It's a basic attitude of going against life." Dr.
Keppe
Richard: says in his book that there is no such thing as an illness by itself, or anguish or ill feeling, because if we didn't have envy, then no sickness would exist in human life.
This is a fundamental point in his work. "Yes,
Leo: it's a fundamental point because there is an idea in our civilization which believes in two things, good and evil. And there was a philosopher on the second century which says that evil is a denial of good. When he said, he didn't develop his thought, but if you think about it, it implies that everything that exists by itself is good.
And it also implies that everything that's not good It's because you are denying what's good. So there is no good and evil. Evil would be a rejection of good. In this topic of health, there is no health and illness. There is only health, basically in nature in itself. Now, when you go against life, when you are envious, you reject good things, you spoil, you destroy your health.
Then you are sick. But, I mean, it's not something that is found in nature spontaneously."
Only health.
Richard: Or the destruction of health, right? "Yeah, as an attitude, not in nature. This means that any time we have a physical symptom, we're doing something to obstruct the natural health that we have." Underneath the sick person, then, must be a very healthy base with
Leo: a lot of attitudes against, right? "Exactly. If the person were not healthy, how could he be sick?
Sickness would be his natural state. If you say sick, it means something is wrong. Something is here which was not supposed to be here. It's something alien is here because health is underneath it. A health being spoiled, being attacked." But people don't perceive they are doing this. As I said, it's unconscious ties. Not unconscious, but I mean people try to hide what they know.
We hide our consciousness. People basically have consciousness. They are very aware of what they do, what they feel.
They're not ignorant. They're not unconscious. But we try to hide because we think it's better to hide. And it's not. So people hide what they know and then get these
Richard: bad results. So how do we live healthy lives from this psychological perspective, Leo? Obviously, we need exercise and good food and the correct sleep and everything. But psychologically, what can we do to make our lives healthy, as healthy as possible?
Leo: Nothing. No, what I mean is that we don't need to create health. We don't need to create what's good. This has already been created. It's there. This is the basis of life. What we have to concentrate and how and when and where we are spoiling it, we are destroying it. Because as I say, we don't perceive we are doing this. Or we perceive, but we don't want to pay attention.
So then the good reality, shall we say, will flourish because it's there already.
And we are destroying it without perceiving it.
Richard: Keppe's landmark book on human psychopathology is called The Origin of Illness. Write me for more information on that, rich at richjonesvoice.com. Oh, and one more thing. If you like what we're doing here, please pass on the podcast to your friends, okay? This is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones.
