Richard Lloyd Jones: A couple of programs ago on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, we heard that if a sick person wanted to live, he'd live. If not, well, sayonara, baby. It seems the really strong medicine is between our ears. Today, we'll go a little deeper into the profound impact our mind plays on making us healthy or sick. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones. This is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, a program based on the wonderful work emerging out of Brazil at the International Society of Analytical Trilogy, founded by Brazilian-Austrian psychoanalyst Dr.
Norberto Keppe. You know, it would be difficult to overestimate the impact Keppe's clinical research findings could have on every area of human endeavor. And I say could because most of the human beings on the planet have never heard of him. Even though he's written close to 40 books on themes I consider essential if we're going to really improve our situation on this planet.
Themes like the origin of illness, the impact of our self-destructive will, and the pathology of power. It's provocative stuff, and as you may have noticed from the wild swing between positive and negative comments to this podcast, it stirs some pretty strong emotions. Well, when I started this program, I wanted to go deeply to the psychological, scientific, and even theological roots of our problems, because I saw that this discussion was simply not happening, either on the Internet or, much less, obviously, in the mainstream media.
So, I'm going to keep doing it, and thanks for your subscriptions. You know, a few thousand years ago, Socrates advised us to know ourselves. Today, thanks to Keppe's work, we can know ourselves a lot better. Helena Melander is a Swedish journalist who has written a number of very well-received articles in Sweden about our topic today, psychosomatic healing. Helena, paint the picture for us.
How do we see disease generally in the world today?
The general idea that we have about illnesses is that we get a virus or we have bad luck and that we are like victims of different diseases. Because of external causes or because of our genes or something in the family, etc. But what we can see looking at this psychological side of it is that there is always like a psychological first cause.
There can, of course, be external things that worsens the disease or that can like provoke the disease. But in general, we can see that there is something inside the human being that is the first step to the disease, because we have to see also why does one person get the disease and the other doesn't?
Richard: All right, well, the psychological impact on disease is a book we've opened in medical science today, but I have the impression it's like we get to the first page and then we scuttle back to the safety of physical treatment.
I really think we haven't fully accepted the impact of our psychological state, both individually and in society, the impact of that on our health. How do you see this, Helena?
We think that we can think what we want without any consequences. But that's not really what happens. I have interviewed several times Dr. Cláudia Pacheco that has written a book on this subject that is called Healing Through Consciousness.
And she explains there that there is a close link between our emotional aspect and our body. And this is not strange at all. This has been actually studied by very famous physicians. So we can say that the body reacts in the same way as we react emotionally. So if you are afraid, your body is afraid. The big problem is that the body cannot distinguish whether this fear is real or not.
So actually, we have a kind of defense system in the body that reacts if there is a fire, if there is a war, if we have to run away from some thieves or whatever, that can make us stronger with adrenaline, the noradrenaline. And these are reactions that are called stress, physical stress, and that are to help the organism to defend itself. But if I experience a fear that is not a real fear, but that is something inside of my mind, my body will not know that it's just like a kind of imaginary feeling.
Richard: Well, I know Dr. Pacheco has written a lot about this psychological fear and what it does to our hormones and brains, Helena. To me, it's very clear that this psychological stress we put ourselves under has to be the biggest contributor to our disease or health. I mean, we can't deny the impact of radiation, chemicals, trauma, etc., of course, but it still appears we mostly make ourselves sick.
What are some of the roots of this debilitating psychological fear, Helena? So,
for example, a big fear that people have is to see themselves as they really are. We are very afraid to admit that we do something wrong, that we don't have so constructive attitudes always. But many times sabotage for ourselves. That many times we have resistance to do what is good and at work.
Even when somebody makes mistakes and another one criticizes him for for that, this person will immediately start to defend and say no it was not me it was because of this because of that. So we are like we have a kind of perfectionism believing that we cannot do anything wrong and that we have to be like complete perfect human beings all the time.
For example we can see in this case that the person has a very defensive attitude. He or she thinks that other people are like criticizing her, other people are accusing her. Life is like dangerous, it's better to not act so much, not go out and face the challenges that life has to offer. But that you like all all the time have to defend yourself from some kind of enemy.
And we think this enemy is outside in our boss or in our partner or whoever, but actually this enemy is inside ourselves. And we are many times accusing ourselves, not being tolerant with our mistakes, having a very hard like demanding very much from ourselves. So this is a very stressful situation that the person has inside herself 24 hours a day, but that she's thinking that comes from others.
Right. Well,
Richard: we see this every day, I think, in various forms, in various ways. Can you give us a more concrete example, maybe a specific example from your research and your interviews here in Brazil, Helena?
I think that many times we can even use other people to sabotage for ourselves. So, for example, but I interviewed another woman who was actually cured from a very serious ulcer that she had for many years.
She was a psychiatrist working at a hospital. And the big problem was that her colleagues didn't work as much as she did. And often they abused a little bit the situation, saying like, oh, I'm sorry, I have to go home earlier today. Could you take the last shift? You know and she was always like the little angel who said okay no problem, but deep inside she was really angry about the whole thing.
So she always worked much more than the others and then one day she said no this is enough I can't do this anymore. So she decided to quit and to start a new profession and she started to work as a translator and she started kind of translation company with a partner. But the same thing happened again. And this partner, he just showed up very late in the day.
So she had to take all the responsibility to do all the work. And she was getting more and more angry. And at the same time, thinking like she was the big victim, she was the saint who was always solving all the problems. But actually, she wanted to sabotage for herself and she was like choosing unconsciously different situations that made her feel bad or that made her feel angry.
And of course all this anger that she was always carrying inside her was attacking her own body so much that she had this bleeding ulcer for more or less 10 years. Only when she started to do psychoanalysis here at the clinic she understood that it was not bad luck that she had like taken these people as a companion or colleague. But that she was like choosing these people unconsciously to attack herself, to attack her own work.
And this is what we do. I think it's difficult to understand this, but if we start to look at our own life we can perceive this. You
Richard: know it was jung who provided us with a psychological rule. Any inner situation that's not made conscious happens outside as fate. It appears that we are what we don't know about ourselves. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones.
