There is an essential difference between neurotic suffering, which arises from an inauthentic way of life, and the suffering that emerges from processes of spiritual awakening. Moreover, coping with suffering that is an expression of spiritual transformation requires an already established high level of psychological health — that is, the individual must have freed themselves from neurotic suffering. Otherwise, one may arrive at what the alchemists called the madness of lead, and what psychiatrists diagnose in its various forms as the most severe mental disorder — psychosis. For this reason, it is of great importance to distinguish between these two types of suffering, as well as between the corresponding differences in psychotherapeutic work with them.
The Two Types of Suffering
In the most general sense, neurotic suffering is connected with representations that distort the individual’s interaction with reality due to their unwillingness to accept facts of that same reality that are unpleasant to them. The suffering of the neurotic is an experience of secondary emotions whose function is to replace the authentic suffering that arises from direct contact with reality. These emotions are sustained by thoughts that “argue” with the facts of life — those not particularly pleasant truths about ourselves and about the world outside us, which lead us to close our eyes, to deny and reject them.
When, however, a person has a well-adapted personality, gives the best of themselves in meeting challenges and the inevitable difficulties and limitations of life, without falling into thoughts of self-pity, accusation, or self-accusation; when they have meaningful relationships with others and success in life, and yet nevertheless experience profound inner pain, we may speak of the beginning of a process of spiritual awakening and transformation. As a rule, such suffering appears causeless, or at least disproportionate in intensity to events or facts. A cause does exist, however, and it is found in the transpersonal layers of the human psyche — the world of archetypes. This is a dimension that lies beyond time and space, where all of us are One — deeply interconnected.
There is a category of people who, to a greater extent than others, possess a psychological predisposition to be in contact with the transpersonal layers of the human psyche. When the ego is insufficiently developed, the danger for such individuals lies in identifying with experiences from the archetypal realm and falling into psychosis — believing, for example, that they are the Savior Jesus Christ, or, conversely, the Antichrist. In this case, instead of neurosis — in which a person is at least aware that they have a problem — we are dealing with psychosis: thinking becomes possessed by ideas whose truth is not doubted, yet which are far removed from reality.
For this reason, an encounter with the archetypal requires the presence of a healthy ego center — an individual who has assumed responsibility for their own life and does not experience themselves as a victim of people or circumstances, who has developed critical thinking, and who is capable of containing experiences of great intensity within themselves without acting them out in the external world before having psychologically “processed” them.
Paradoxically, suffering arising from an encounter with archetypal pain (other terms for it are “the dark night of the soul” and the dense “pain body”) is experienced with much greater intensity, and this can give rise to confusion. One asks oneself how it is possible to have become emotionally more stable, more self-aware, and yet, in some way, the suffering has even increased. If, however, one is aware of the existence of the transpersonal layers of the human psyche, one will understand why. Knowing how to interact with experiences from the archetypal realm not only helps to avoid the danger of entering temporary psychotic episodes, but also enables the transformation of part of the collective unconscious. As Carl Jung says: “Alchemy represents the projection of a drama both cosmic and spiritual in laboratory terms. The ‘opus magnum’ [the great work] had two aims: the rescue of the human soul and the salvation of the cosmos. ”∗
Liberation from Neurotic Suffering
Gardening in Good Times
“Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I refer to psychotherapies that work with neurotic suffering as “gardening in good times”, because when a certain kind of psychological effort toward change is applied, the desired change is achieved. With the help of personal ego-will, an individual succeeds in changing their life for the better and in attaining higher levels of psychological health. More specifically, this means the development of clear ego-boundaries of responsibility and higher emotional intelligence. As a result, the person develops more fulfilling relationships with others, professional realization, and success. Psychotherapeutic work strengthens the ego through differentiation from the “collective conscious” (external prescriptions and the expectations of other people), supporting authenticity, the assumption of responsibility for one’s own life, and fidelity to one’s own nature — without this occurring at the expense of adaptability and connectedness with others.
Ego-oriented psychotherapies resemble the learning of gardening skills in good times. If a person acquires these skills and practices them diligently, they will enjoy a good harvest at the end of the year. Psychotherapies that operate at this level include cognitive, behavioral, systemic psychotherapy, and others.
The Pain of Incarnation
Gardening in Bad Times
“To this day God is the name by which I designate all things which cross my willful path violently and recklessly, all things which upset my subjective views, plans and intentions and change the course of my life for better or worse. “C.G. Jung (paraphrased)
The suffering that results from initiated processes of spiritual transformation is profoundly different from the neurotic suffering that arises from an inauthentic way of life. And because its causes are different, the way of dealing with it is different as well. It is like being a gardener whose trees have been scorched by frost. Or whose garden has been flooded with mud by an overflowing river. Or whose crops have been destroyed by hail. Everything one knows about gardening in good times suddenly appears utterly inappropriate to apply.
Within the human psyche there is also a source of “storms, frosts, hail, and floods” that is not subject to personal will. It arises from the deeper layers of the human psyche, which Jung calls the collective unconscious or the objective psyche. For this reason, differentiation here — unlike psychotherapeutic work with neurotic suffering — is carried out in relation to the contents that intrude from the “collective unconscious.” These are inner experiences which, although lived as personal, do not originate in the ego-psyche — for example, endogenous depression. What characterizes them is that they are experienced as profoundly destructive and resistant to change through personal will. Moreover, because of the deeply irrational reason for feeling this way, they can also be intensely frightening. Typically, there is either a strong disproportion between stimulus and reaction, or the cause is entirely absent.
“Gardening in bad times” teaches us the skill of survival through letting go of everything superfluous in order to care for what is most essential — the soul. As I have already written, some people suffer from these “natural disasters” more than others. For them, it is important to know that if they manage to pass through the period of destruction in the right way, good times will eventually come again. What is truly essential in this case, besides patience, is an understanding of the meaning of what they are undergoing — a deep, radical transformation of their personality. When the time comes for their garden to bear fruit once more, they will experience profound gratitude, wisdom, and reverence. They will know more clearly than ever that without the sun, the wind, the rain, the soil, and the force that causes plants to grow, such a harvest would not be possible.
Psychotherapies That Take the Transpersonal Level of the Human Psyche into Account
Perhaps the clearest differentiation between the two levels of work with the human psyche is presented in the analytical psychology of Carl Jung, whose principal contribution lies in providing scientific evidence for the existence of the collective level of the human psyche (the objective psyche) and for the reality of the archetypal world. Through knowledge of what ego inflation is, a person can successfully navigate the depths of their own psyche when life brings experiences that arise from deeper layers. And through the concept of individuation, they are also provided with a positive aim, through which suffering can be transformed into a means of spiritual transformation.
The theory of psychosynthesis developed by Roberto Assagioli perhaps most clearly demonstrates the need for different therapeutic approaches in dealing with different sources of psychological suffering, precisely because it gives them different names — personal psychosynthesis and spiritual psychosynthesis. Depression as an archetypal experience of the “dark night of the soul,” for example, is different from depression that results from a mental attitude unwilling to accept the unpleasant face of reality or that resists change. Accordingly, the means of treating them are different.
Humanistic psychology also takes these distinctions into account, assigning different names to therapeutic aims. The goal of personal development is self-actualization — the attainment of a more authentic way of life. Once this goal has been achieved, the next goal follows — self-transcendence, service to the Greater Whole. The transition from self-actualization to self-transcendence is a transition from the individual ego to the trans-individual / transpersonal, or Higher Self. Similar to Jungian analysis, humanistic psychology also warns of the danger of identification with the transpersonal layers, referring to it by another name — “spiritual bypassing.”
Transpersonal psychotherapy as developed by Stanislav Grof, in my view, most adequately meets the need for providing first psychological aid to people undergoing temporary psychotic episodes as a result of spiritual crises or the spontaneous awakening of kundalini. A significant contribution in this respect is made by Christina Grof, who shares her personal experiences of awakened kundalini. Many other transpersonal therapists also write on this topic, among whom perhaps the most widely known figure at present is the clinical psychologist David Lukoff, who, after passing through an episode of “temporary madness,” devoted his efforts to bringing greater understanding of the spiritual dimensions of psychotic episodes into mainstream psychiatric practice.
Differentiation and Integration
I would like once again to formulate the criteria for psychological health, because these are precisely the most important reference points for how we help others, or how we ourselves cope with the various forms of psychic suffering. At their core, they describe two parallel processes in the development of the human psyche. One is called differentiation, and the other — its opposite — integration.
Differentiation occurs through the mind’s capacity to make distinctions. Such distinction leads to separation, emotional independence, healthy ego boundaries, and the resulting healthy sense of responsibility. Initially, the ego does not exist in the psyche of the newborn — it is identical both with the whole of the unconscious and with the figures of the external environment. Only after a series of differentiations does what we call self-consciousness begin to take shape. The more developed our self-consciousness is, the higher the degree of differentiation that has been achieved, and the higher the level of our psychological health.
It may be said that the formation of the ego is a lifelong process of differentiation from the contents of the collective level of the human psyche. By the collective level of the human psyche here are meant both the inner experiences from the archetypal realm — that is, the “collective unconscious” — and the dominant social attitudes of a given historical period or social group — that is, the “collective conscious.”
In a certain sense, the challenge of the neurotic is to carry out differentiation from the collective conscious — to deal with their fears of disappointing others and of being branded as “bad” if they are different and fail to meet others’ expectations. The challenge of a person undergoing processes of spiritual transformation, by contrast, is to carry out differentiation from the collective unconscious — all those psychic contents that “intrude from within” their own psyche in the form of irrational experiences or visions of a numinous character.
The opposite of differentiation is integration. It unfolds in parallel with differentiation and constitutes the second fundamental criterion of mental health. Its essence lies in accepting those parts rejected by our conscious attitude — the so-called Shadow. On the level of the personal psyche, these are traits we do not see in ourselves but perceive in others through the defensive mechanisms of projection. When the conscious attitude is markedly inferior, strongly positive contents may also be found in the psychic shadow. A high level of integrity arises from a person’s capacity to endure the discomfort of seeing unpleasant truths about themselves in order to be whole and authentic.
When suffering arises from initiated processes of spiritual transformation — that is, when the contents come from transpersonal levels of the psyche — the integration of the “dark psyche” is called assimilation. The change in terminology indicates the different kind of effort involved in this process of experiencing and confronting the destructive forces within one’s own psyche — through knowing them and transforming the new knowledge into a creative contribution to the whole.
It becomes clear that the movement toward higher levels of psychological health is at once an analytical (distinguishing, differentiating) and a synthetic (uniting, integrating) process. As a result of this process, the individual develops a strong ego-center of consciousness that is highly differentiated and individual, and at the same time connected to humanity as a whole — capable of drawing strength and meaning from ideas that transcend their narrowly personal interests.
The parallel processes of analysis and synthesis lead to the most important criterion of psychological health — wholeness, in which a person can wisely hold together opposites within themselves. One can be authentic (faithful to one’s inner nature) and socially adapted (harmoniously interacting with others) at the same time; emotionally independent and yet highly empathic, receptive, and connected to others.
Most important of all, however — what protects against the “madness of lead,” as alchemy names the confrontation with contents from the collective unconscious — is the morality and integrity of the “alchemist.” This, too, is a crucial criterion of psychological health.
And so, this is the essence: the aim of successful psychotherapeutic work is liberation from neurotic suffering and the disclosure of meaning in inevitable suffering — meaning that arises beyond the concrete material conditions of human existence. It does so by supporting the development of a dual mode of thinking — analysis and synthesis, differentiation and integration. It resembles the weaving of a rug, or the birth of wisdom; and yet, in truth, it is the way in which we “making our souls” (the latter being a concept from James Hillman).
Kamelia Hadzhiyska
Sources: ∗C.G. Jung Speaking, Page 228
- PS The most important insights I have gained regarding psychotherapeutic work with human suffering are shared in the 29 Days Program. I regard it as a valuable tool for independent work, one that places processes of self-knowledge on a solid foundation. It does so by clearly distinguishing between the two levels of therapeutic work — ego psychology, which supports the development of emotional maturity, and a spiritually oriented approach, through which we come to understand the meaning of what is happening to us and transform the suffering arising from our frustrated desires into the gold of a new Self.
