Richard Lloyd Jones: This is Episode 8 of our Healing Through Consciousness podcast series, here on Thinking With Somebody Else's Head. Today, we cast a therapeutic eye on suicide. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones. Well, this is a relevant and sometimes disturbing topic for any who've experienced its devastating effects. The thought of someone taking his or her own life can leave us bewildered and even horrified. How could someone do that, we wonder? And why? And when we see it happening in teenagers and young adults, we're even more mystified.
They've got their whole lives ahead of them, we reason. And while that's true, it seems that opting out is becoming an increasingly common choice in many countries around the world, particularly in the so-called developed world. Lucky you are if you haven't been touched by this one. The guilt and anger that resides in the ones left behind is a real thing. Freud put forward that suicide was a result of aggression turned inwards, while Jung offered complex thoughts and ideas about the psyche's journey
needing to go through the totality of experience. And while all of that may play a part, it doesn't really help us in understanding and dealing with suicide. Roberto Kepi's science of integral psychoanalysis is, in my view, uniquely equipped to deal with all psychological, emotional, and spiritual crises. And in today's program, a real-life case study with a frequent listener to our programs, Jane, who brings her particular challenge in dealing with suicide.
I appreciate the opportunity to discuss this.
I feel like I'm very prodded by some inner voice to write, and in particular writing about some of the things that I've gone through in my life and I just seem to really resist that inner prompting and you know it's a writer's block but it you know I realize all of the you know just from listening and reading Dr. Kepi work that identifying those things that are in my way is the only way I'm really going to move past it.
Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco: Jane, what in your life you would like to write about? What intentions do you have with this writing? What is the purpose of this writing?
I had a lot of traumatic things that happened in my childhood. In particular, my mother took her own life, and I was seven when she died. And the journey to staying connected to God and not allowing, you know, anger and rejection of God to take over my perspective and to really move into healing and move into the path of forgiveness has been a real journey for me and something that I feel very good about.
And I think that I have something to share about that, the story of creating your own life, no matter what the conditions, and moving into healing and forgiveness. I think there's something there to share. And I just haven't really been able to move myself to do it.
Cláudia: When you say that you had the opportunity to go through the journey of forgiveness, what do you have in mind? Who would you forgive? well
first myself for feelings that are associated with her death and also my mother for
you know a sense early on in my life of abandonment forgiving my father for anything that he you know might have not done as best as he wanted to do in his heart given the conditions he was living in my brothers for their you know relating to me through their pain you
Cláudia: mentioned something about anger why did you feel angry or to whom and for for what reason
I guess well leaving me in a family of all men so I really didn't have a mother and and I really had to
fend for myself in a way it was kind of a lot of feeling of being unsupported and also i found my mother
Cláudia: how did she commit suicide uh hanging and what did she say what was happening in her life in in the life of the family what did this happen was she under medical care psychiatric
care yes Yeah. She had experienced abuse in her childhood and she had had her entire thyroid gland removed and half of the parathyroid. And in 1963, there just was not good medicine for balancing out the thyroid. And so she was diagnosed as schizophrenic.
so
Cláudia: jane can you see this in what a inner strain this person must be in order to do this violent act and spiritual distress and totally confusion a person must be in order to do something like this definitely yeah is it okay for you if we go through this subjects yes a little bit okay uh so i would ask you what do you associate your mother's suicide committing suicide with uh
rejection of life okay
Cláudia: rejection of life so now you are able to be aware that your mother
is a kind of mirror to your own attitudes of rejection of life that you yourself even though thanks god you don't have the same disease but you also have in your life in your inner self in your social life in your psychological life whatever you have had and you still have the tendency and the attitudes many times against yourself like a form of suicidal attitude can you see this yes fine so it's very important to acknowledge
as much as possible the ways you can be suicidal as we all are now when you think about writing the book this book what ideas come to your mind about this book um
the purpose i think is to share with people maybe concrete ideas of how to live through difficult times so it
Cláudia: would be to help other people so as a logical consequence if you put obstacles in writing the book what are you denying to do in your
life helping others
Cláudia: yes yes jane and by denying the help to others and being more
worried with yourself, your image, your concerns, your sentiments, your feelings. If you don't put as a main purpose in writing the book, the help to other people, you will be probably not able to write the book because you will always find excuses not to do it. Either it will be not good enough, it will show some flaws and some mistakes from your part, it will be not a perfect book.
Richard: This paragraph is not quite
Cláudia: right, that sentence is not quite phrased exactly as it should be, the title is wrong, yes.
Many, many egotistic, narcissistic preoccupations. So I think that if you become more aware of this egotistic, narcissistic approach, and this denial in helping others in first place, if you don't realize this, it will be difficult. But if you do, then you will do a beautiful work. It will be even a help to yourself because maybe there was a big component in your mother's suicide of egotism and narcissism of hers that ended up by this top of the self-destructivity.
each narcissistic or each egotistic attitude is a form of suicidal attitude in ourselves of self-destructivity and maybe i would like
Richard: to just say something about that jane if i could just slip in here that uh what we're talking about in terms of suicide in this case claudia is in effect is a a suicide a killing of our being right of who we are we don't allow that to come forward as much as we could and i think we're all guilty of right suicide in that sense right that you're talking
about
Cláudia: isn't that true boy richard that human beings using five percent maximum of their talents and capabilities a form of suicidal attitude yeah absolutely isn't a form of suicidal attitude to be living under a sensorial only aspect and cutting off the majority of our beings, the major part of our beings, which is the spirit, our spirituality, our transcendental life. So it's all a suicidal attitude that we adopt without acknowledging. Jane is lucky she's realizing this now.
She's able to speak about suicide in a very strong, personal, experimental way.
Richard: Which would help a lot of people.
Cláudia: Well, for sure. If she gives a trilogical approach to that even more, it would be of enormous help. Yeah. Thank you. Your mother, probably, Jane, if you would remember, how old were you? Seven, she said. Seven. But you may have some memories about the concept she had about life her philosophy of life and it would be so good if you would go through this memories
you know an opportunity of a an analysis or something because she probably felt also very victimized and people who feel victims they have a tendency to vindicate their feelings of being a victim or being attacked or being unjustly treated
Richard: or using that as an excuse
Cláudia: not to go forward, right? So committing suicide would be like a penalty, a vindication for all those who they believe were the guilty ones for their suffering. Yeah, makes sense.
I appreciate what
you're saying too about when you feel victimized, you kind of want to punish the guilty. I can see that in myself.
Cláudia: Yes, Jane, and this is very unfair. Every time we blame another person for our unhappiness, when we accuse someone for our own bad feelings, depression, unsatisfaction, we are being unfair, we are being projective, and we are feeding our pathology. We are feeding our unhappiness and unsatisfaction, because the way out is not this one. We need to understand that
the inner source of happiness is the only one that can be satisfactory. Well,
Richard: I really like watching Dr. Kepi's integral psychoanalysis in action, as was on display there, and Dr. Claudia Pacheco's analysis of Jane's writer's block. You know, Kepi has critiqued The Fundamental Error of Modern Psychology in his books. He says the big problem of psychology today is how the therapists censor the acknowledgement of any pathology. It's like everyone's terrified of admitting problems, and psychology feeds into that by looking at our difficulties
as something that need to be improved. This is a type of censorship because it leads us to think that we shouldn't have problems, which of course is impossible. And there's another aspect to this. the focus on problems always needing improvement ignores the fact that behind the difficulty lies a great sanity. The point is not to improve the pathology then, but to see it as a cover-up of our basic health. Problems don't exist by themselves, after all, but as impediments or
denials of our natural goodness. If we don't start from this point of natural health being the basis of life, no one will have interest in delving into problems because that'll just lead to an endless struggle to improve rather than a more refreshing view that problems only exist as denials of some healthy attitude or action. Problems need to be conscientized, not skipped over with anxious attempts to improve. A subtle point, but we could see in Jane's analysis that
the path to her writing her book comes through understanding how she's against it. So it's not a matter of creating a book-writing action plan, but of seeing that the only thing standing in her way is her resistance to doing the good thing of sharing her experience and knowledge with others. Well, in our next program, another case study analysis of youth and addiction. Compelling. And coming up next time on Healing Through Consciousness.
