Authorial Intent and Psychosis: How Authors Make Meaning From Chaos
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Authorial Intent and Psychosis: How Authors Make Meaning From Chaos
A psychotic is one who loses control of their functions because they cede control of reality to fantasy. As an example, schizophrenia disorients the patient into fantasy worlds that they do not recognize as delusion. As Sigmund Freud, the father of scientific psychology, wrote in General Psychological Theory: Papers on Metapsychology, “Neurosis is the result of a conflict between the ego and its id, whereas psychosis is the analogous outcome of a similar disturbance in the relation between the ego and its environment (outer world).”
The inability to adapt to reality is a psychological ailment we all face to some degree. One cannot tolerate too much reality and constructs beliefs and creations to escape chaos. It is a primary mental resource for mapping meaning in order to live fully.
Writers and the struggle with reality
It is sometimes said that writers secure their sanity through their art. Otherwise, they would become unstable. Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, once said that groundbreaking Irish author James Joyce and his daughter, the dancer Lucia, were “two people going to the bottom of a river, one falling and the other diving.” He described Joyce’s writing as bordering on schizophrenia, a disorder of fragmented self and thought.
However, it must be noted that authorship is not a symptom of a merely diagnosable ailment. Rather, it is the diagnosis of ailment itself. Authors tend to struggle more with reality as sensitive beings facing it directly.
German author Thomas Mann in Magic Mountain used this heuristic to describe the ultranationalistic fervor of prewar Europe. In his essay “Thoughts in Wartime,” Mann wrote, “Deep in our hearts we felt that the world, our world, could no longer go on as it had. We were familiar with this world of peace and frivolous manners … A ghastly world that will no longer exist — or will not exist once the storm has passed! Wasn’t it swarming with vermin of the spirit like maggots? Didn’t it seethe and stink of civilization’s decay?”
This suggests a pensive mind reflecting on social ills more than a sick person who requires medication. Social dilemmas are the author’s premier fascination. Such a person is like a seismograph measuring the ground’s motion before an earthquake to determine its impact.
The search for meaning
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche offered such a diagnosis in The Antichrist. In “Diagnosing the Human Condition,” School of the Art Institute of Chicago undergraduate student Sean Leftwich wrote, “There is a certain concealment of the true meaning of the traditionally positive Christian terms that Nietzsche attacks here, promising life where there may be emptiness, and therefore promoting a hostility towards life, perhaps even a rejection of it.” Does this offer the redemptive value it purports? In a broad discussion of Christianity’s nihilism, Nietzsche constructed a vision of the human condition that finds meaning in its bare existence.
Jung is quoted as stating, “The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate.” The dialectic between the conscious and the unconscious illumines the principle of individuation. In Jung’s dynamic psychology, the unconscious holds archetypes that resonate with ancient meaning which become conscious through dreams and during psychotic states.
Jung also noted that mythical revelations are part of the psychological process of collective humanity. Can we take the author’s works as part of the mythical process of creating universal meaning within this context? Jung himself wrote, “The poet’s conviction that he is creating in absolute freedom would then be an illusion: he fancies he is swimming, but in reality an unseen current sweeps him along.” So yes, we can. Such revelations from the author unite humankind and unveil the seriousness of the world stage.
The author as the seeker of truth
By unveiling the unconscious psychology that causes suffering, the author delineates collective healing. Analogous to yin and yang, the dialectical process of the quest for freedom is one of synthesis in which dark contains light and light, dark. Akin to German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel’s view that self-consciousness requires others to realize itself, the binary of dark/light is universal self-recognition. This distillation of truth requires rejuvenation. Like the scapegoat of Christianity, the author bleeds to unveil the inner recesses of suffering within the human soul. This act of healing within the author is the secret of universal expression.
The tensions between opposites create rivalries and binaries that seem irreconcilable. Such are right and left on the political spectrum or good and evil in theological terms. The interconnected nature of these oppositions suggests the need for synthesis. Great leaders and thinkers reconcile the tensions of their era creatively and proactively.
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