Richard Lloyd Jones: At the turn of the 20th century, an Austrian psychiatrist began articulating a new vision of human behavior. Sigmund Freud postulated that no mortal could keep a secret, that betrayal of our real intentions oozes out of us through every pore. It was a monumental achievement, and one whose implications we haven't fully comprehended. Until now. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, we'll go beyond Freud to look more into the psychological roots of disease.
Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco is the vice president of the International Society of Analytical Trilogy and president of the STOP the Destruction of the World Association in São Paulo, Brazil. Since the 1970s, she's been working as a psychoanalyst using the discoveries and methods of the great Brazilian-Austrian psychoanalyst and social scientist Norberto Keppe to treat individuals suffering from a wide range of human physical and mental maladies.
Her highly successful book, Healing Through Consciousness, has been published in nine languages. Dr. Pacheco offers us a rare insight into the science of psychopathology developed by Norberto Keppe. A man the National Center for Scientific Research in France has called the most original, heterodox, contemporary writer in the world today. Dr. Pacheco, I received a bit of flack from listeners about the views expressed here on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head about AIDS.
And I wanted to go a little more deeply into the psychosomatic aspect of disease because this cuts to the essence of what I was trying to say in that program. Your institute here in Brazil is the world leader in psychosomatic research at the moment. What can you tell us about how human psychology works?
Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco: Richard, Freud started a very, very important discovery.
Unfortunately it was not developed enough. After he died his discovery was that we have an unconscious life and this unconscious life can be very dangerous for us. This freudian concept is known as instinct of death was not taken seriously by scientists and humanity people went more towards his sexual complexes and sexual theory. But this concept that we have inside of our unconscious life a drive a tendency towards self-destruction is an incredible important discovery that he did.
And Keppe developed further this concept as he developed as well the concept of inversion, which he himself discovered. Keppe saw that we suffer from a thing that he calls universal envy, which would be we are against our beings, our true beautiful and good essence. And doing so, we have this pull or this drive to attack life in ourselves.
And this must be addressed urgently. The concept of inversion and the concept that we have this inner intention to destroy our lives is absolutely essential if we want to survive. Cláudia,
Richard: it strikes me that this is probably going to be a shock to many listening today. We're not accustomed to thinking this way. We have a desire to destroy. We want to disrupt our lives.
Maybe you could guide us through this a little bit more, if you would.
Cláudia: Many times, people can't stand too much a stable situation, a good situation in their lives. For instance, if they have a good marriage, a good family, a good job, they find this is a boring kind of life. This is so frequent. And they want excitement, they want emotion, they want something different, so they want to change their lives.
So this expression, life-changing experience, is so frequent, but not seldom these life-changing experiences lead to a disaster.
We could consider, Jones, that we have in our inner selves an anti-person, like a contra, like a shadow of yourself, which would be this inverted aspect, you can be so intelligent, but the same intelligence can be used to justify your destruction. And we have to be very careful, because in the same way that we can reason and be so intelligent to do something useful, we can use our ideas and justify a big destruction.
And we have to pay attention because this happens all the time. Otherwise we would not have so many diseases increasing like ms like alzheimer like depression panic attacks anxiety and so many other related diseases like cancer depressive diseases they increased in number. Anxiety attacks, they increased in number. Even AIDS is a very emotional kind of disease, very self-destructive. So people must understand that, because we are committing suicide en masse.
Richard: Cláudia, I love this consideration, but I know many people struggle with the idea that there is something more to disease than bacteria and viruses. Collective human suicide, well, that is a strong statement. But we have to begin to see these deep psychological roots of our problems, don't we? Even if it's not so popular, it seems to me there's no other way out.
And you know, that's what we're trying to do on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, to challenge our accepted so-called wisdom, because many times it's not wise at all, and investigate deeper into what is going on. How powerful are our minds anyway,
Cláudia: Cláudia? The placebo effect proves how the mind is powerful in our body. If we think that a medicine, which is not in reality a placebo, is going to heal me, I'll get healed.
And I'll get healed from any disease.
So faith is a powerful energetic instrument we have to heal ourselves. But this means that "if I want to live I'll live. If I don't live it's because I want to die. If I don't get healed if I develop some disease in my body it's because I unconsciously I want that disease I want to die." Sometimes people use this counter placebo effect like if a doctor comes to you and he says "you have so many months to live or three months to live or four months to live" the chances for you to die soon will increase tremendously.
And this is very psychological so if we have so many diseases is increasing. This is a scientific proof that human beings are more than ever with a suicidal attitude. Human psychology.
Richard: It's a big world down there and an important one to explore. Thinking with Somebody Else's Head is providing the roadmap.
I'm Richard Lloyd Jones.
