SAINT LAWRENCE 13 1-07-26 Continued from Saint Lawrence 12 11-16-25
Continuation of the commentary on “History of State Hospitals” by Michael Foucalt.
Underpaid, hence unqualified help are incapable of rendering care. Patients are locked in, and therapy is denied. Immigrant professionals are incapable of understanding the American psyche. Chronic, low income patients fill state hospitals. These patients are more difficult to deal with, creating harsh conations. The clients with the greatest needs receive the least care.
The antiquated hospitals are much like prisons, and this does not lend itself to changes in the philosophy of therapy. Lacking funds, progressive therapies are impossible to initiate. Innovative change is resisted by unmotivated staff. Civil service law inhibits the hiring of the qualified, and the firing of incompetents. Red tape makes new programming difficult. Legislating funds for mental health is a low priority item. The O.M.H. (office of mental health) policy making is performed by the elite central office professionals who have no client contact. And patients are not better off on the street, where there is no treatment, no money for treatment, housing, or social services. Improvements are kept in the speculative realm by lack of initiative, authority, and funds. Paperwork keeps treatment in the administrative realm, instead of the therapeutic. Administrators are quick to criticize, and never present to praise initiative. Administrators and doctors often shirk responsibility, while false promises are made.
Most interestingly is the creation of the peon class. An emerging class of untouchable is identified. The pariah of the mentally ill steps in for the now non-existent leper.
Ye, there has been a legitimate move to deinstitutionalize. However there exists a lack of cohesion, development, and integration in outpatient services. The movement of the mentally ill into the community is creating a population of paupers and street people. This is not bad in itself. The crowding and drugging, the threat of assault and rape keep mental hospitals as less desirable, and more torturous, than a life of poverty on the street. +.
Underfunding, over regulation, and misdirection typify the scandalous inadequacy of state hospitals. State hospitals lack an advocate. Doctors have difficulty in communicating the systems needs to legislators. The system, phlegmatic and stagnant, lacks change. The individual advocate of change is swallowed by the system, becomes apathetic, or burns out. Talbot begins a discussion of techniques and beliefs needed to induce change, and create a system of truly effective hospitals. He begins with the need for public education and meaningful legislation. He states, however, that the state system, as a useless behemoth, is probably unchangeable. “The state system is a sick system, and like a patient needs analyses and treatment, though it may suffer terminal illness. State hospitals have failed in their mission. They are lacking resources and initiative. The continuity of care that operates on the local, county, state and federal levels must be established. The bureaucratic preoccupation with paperwork must be abolished. Mental Health needs champions for its cause. Funding practices must be personalized. The trend of big institutions is has been to shift attention away from the patient. Talbot prognosticates, the asylum is anachronistic. The state hospital, in its 150 year history, has never achieved its basic reasons for existence. As the public identifies the asylum as a clumsy parasite, its right to life will be revoked.
One of my own perspectives needs to be considered. There exists, perpetually, the problem of the incorrigible, the indigent and chronic. The wards serve as a dumping ground. There is a class of patients that are parasitic and predatory. This creates an environment where healing is difficult to achieve.
On the wards are patients seeking sainthood, and at the same time there are agents of hell. The battle extends into the psychic realm, and bears on both the inpatient and outpatient worlds. The battles won on the wards are victories in the outside world, as well.
Our psych wards house strong intercessors. And we have learned that a healer may earn his wings through what seems to be mental illness.
There are good people employed by the system, and what they contribute is huge.
IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO CNTRIBUTE FINANCIALLY, HERE IS MY ADDRESS;
MICHAEL MCLEAN
PO BOX 62
WATERPORT, N.Y. 14571
The next book we’re going to review is “TREATING THE MENTALLY DISABLED”. Published in 1988 by Gary McCuen.
It is time that patients rights groups and civil liberty lawyers focus more on the need for housing and care in the community. After twenty years, the wisdom of deinstitutionalization is being questioned. In America there are an estimated two million homeless. One third of these are mentally ill. The wisdom of discharging the non violent mentally ill on to the streets is being questioned.
Deinstitutionalization was conceived to cooperate with extensive outpatient clinics, houses and day programs. However, the provision of necessary outpatient services has not occurred, creating a legion of homeless. The obtrusion of the mentally ill on the streets has conceived a counter movement of reinstitutionalization.
However the horror of the mental hospitals begs description. Assault and rape and neglect are on the daily schedule. Life on the ward is worse than life on the street.
The schizophrenic on the street, for unknown reasons, becomes resistant to the elements. The missions provide a place to sleep, food, and work for those who are able. These soup kitchens provide a steady source of good food. Though life on the street is tough, the client toughens up quickly.+.
The street person has access to fresh air. For this reason alone street life is preferable to hospital life. Also, the street is safer than the asylum. Mysterious deaths occur in hospitals.
There were 559,000 institutionalized in 1955. 132,000 in 1980. Deinstitutionalization was begun in hope of a better life for the mentally ill. This philosophy of the early sixties coordinated with the advent of psychotropic medication. This created optimism. “Spinning the revolving door at state hospitals is more expensive than guaranteeing treatment in small home like residences. State officials could solve the problem at a savings by simply boosting the supply of community care. But instead, funds have been cut. Incidentally, mentally ill have three the death rate of the general population. Outpatient programs need a lot more funding and commitment. The problem is not in the theory of deinstitutionalization, but in actually building the needed facilities.+.
A national program with funds of 220 million a year is proposed, but with programming and funds brought down to the local level. Taking a second stab at deinstitutionalization, new solutions have been suggested: 1.) procure funding from national state, and local sources, but oversee programming locally. Develop a feel for individual and community needs. 2.) Implement a practice of one on one treatment. Send outreach teams into the ghettos and streets. 3.) Integrate hospitals and outpatient services under one authority, thus enabling a cohesive flow of treatment. 4.)Provide humane treatment.
Has deinstitutionalization worked? Yes and no. Our culture shows it’s lack of development when the only options are the streets, or the hell hole hospitals. Studies show that a healthy environment engenders better behavior. The deinstitutionalization movement echoes the moral treatment ideology of the nineteenth century. Clean, comfortable outpatient residences are required, as are outpatient clinics and vocational programs. To the degree that this movement has not succeeded, it is because of the inability to actualize the needed services, not because of the philosophy of deinstitutionalization.
Let us continue with the study now with the study of shamanism. Here are my reading notes on a book entitled “Elements of Shamanism” by Neville Drury. Published in 1989.
World interest in shamanism is awakening. One of shamanisms basic idea is reverence for nature, and the earth with all its creatures.
Shamanism is a visionary tradition, an ancient practice of utilizing altered states of consciousness to contact the gods, the spirits of nature and other worlds. The shaman journeys to other worlds and returns with revelations, or the power to heal.
Shamanism has its beginnings at the dawn of human existence. Anthropological research suggests religion and magic were born with the firs humans.
Sorcery and magical invocations are depicted anciently on cave walls. From early times, religion, art, and magic seem to have been intertwined. The sorcerer was able to control animals through hunting magic. The Paleolithic hunter sorcerer was a precursor to the native shaman. The typical native shaman uses animal guardian spirits, clan totems, and the transformation of consciousness, plant helpers and other devices as well.
The earliest stage of magical and religious thinking has been called animism. Prehistoric man apparently comprehended the idea of soul and spirit. Early man commonly believed that animals, plants, stones, and personal possessions also had a spirit and a soul. The origin of animism is thought to lay in the experience of dreams.
I remember one time when I was young, watching a sleeping dog. In his own language he growled and whined as if awake. The animals eyes were closed, but rapid eye movements were seen under the dogs eyelids. My point here is that if an animal dreams, early man could have had understandings in which dreams played an important role.
Early man, perceiving a waking life, and a dream life, then conceived of a spiritual life, or a life beyond the body. Animism is a belief in spirits. Spirits in everything created, like trees and stones. As well as a spirit realm independent of physical form. i.e. ghosts.
As the undifferentiated hordes began to split into clans, these clans identified themselves with animal totems, or guardians. These totems of identification signified a specific clan of greater importance than a single individual, and then evolved as a sacred sign of the spiritual world.
Understanding shamanism requires understanding of the altered states accessed through trance, magical and religious experience, epileptic seizures, schizophrenic behavior patterns, and the use of psychedelic drugs. It is important to understand the place, in shamanism, of familiar spirits, initiatory visions, magical dismemberment and rebirth, and the transformation into animal or bird form.
Shamanism is animism in practice. The shaman is the intermediary between planes of being. An Eskimo shaman states, “the greatest peril of human life is that our food consists entirely of souls.
The shaman is then able to perceive the world of souls, spirits and gods, and is able to travel these worlds. He or she is alert to dangers conceived in the spiritual realm; disease, famine, misfortune. He acts as a negotiator, in both directions. Only the shaman is able to behave as both god and human. In Christian tradition, it is the saint, or Saint, who acts bearing miracles and teachings as both god and human.+.
How then, does one become a shaman? The shaman, as a child, is very introverted, spending long periods by himself. He is often seized by mysterious illnesses.
The main difference between schizophrenics and shamans is that shamans are supported by their community in their state of mental derangement, while modern society, for the most part, regards schizophrenia as a negative aberration.
Regarding both schizophrenia and shamanic initiatory crises, “the experience is the most awesome and universal, the initiate seems to be living in the midst of a struggle between personified cosmic forces of good and evil, surrounded by animistically enlivened natural objects which are engaged in ominous performances. It is terribly necessary, and difficult, to understand.
The shamans, and mystics, of primitive societies are considered, and rightly, to be superior beings. The magical, religious powers also find expression in their mental capacities. The shaman is one who knows and remembers, one who understands the mysteries of life and death.
A distinguishing factor then, is the journey of the soul. The shaman voluntarily concourses with the spirits, and returns with sacred information to benefit society.
The Eskimo shaman descends to the sea bottom, and communicating with the sea goddess, Sedna, he atones for the sins of his people. For these sins suffocate the goddess with silt and dirt, and cause sickness, famine, or misfortune. The shaman strokes her hair to placate her. She intimates the sins the shamans people have committed, so that they can be confessed and forgiven.
The battle of good and evil pervades all mythologies. Owl are said to be an enemy in bird form.
Shamans battle by sending psychic arrows into their victims. A healing shaman may have to suck out the arrows that that convey disease. Bears and snakes are said to bring illness, which a shaman can heal.
Shamans learn, in part, through dreams, and the dreams of allies.
Shamanic cultures exist on all continents.
Sometimes shamanism weds Christianity, in the form of prayers to Jesus and Saint Mary.
Australian aborigines know how to sing a person to death.
Mexican and South American shamans use many different hallucinogens.
Australians stress the use of quartz crystals. Crystal of quartz are said to embody the essence of the “All Father”. Aboriginals also use out of body states to see things at a distance.
In Indonesia and Malaysia, they cut open the initiates head, take out the brains and wash and restore them, to give him a clear mind to see into the mysteries and disease. They put gold dust in his eyes, to see souls. They put barbed hooks on his finger tips, to enable him to seize souls. Lastly they pierce his heart with an arrow, to make him tender hearted and full of sympathy. Obviously an alternative reality is invoked. Most likely through drugs.
In most forms of shamanism, the healers travel in spirit to search for a sick person’s soul. In China, the most obvious link between Taoism and shamanism is found in the meditative practices of visualization and spirit travel. +.
One Deguchi Onisburo, after being assaulted, fell into a coma. He journeyed to the spirit worlds where he was granted magical powers. He ascended to Heaven. Upon returning he declared himself an ascended and served his people as a healer, teacher, and priest. He died in 1948 at the age of 78 years.
Despite differences, when we eliminate cultural variables, there is a remarkable consensus in shamanic societies about how the universe is structured.
The shaman’s universe exists on three levels. Man lives on the earth, a middle zone, between an upper world and a lower world. The three zones are usually linked by a central vertical axis, referred to as Axis Mundi, or axis of the world. It is characterized in different mythologies as the world tree, Tree of Life. The axis passes upwards and downwards through holes in the cosmic vault. It is through these that the shaman passes from one level of existence to another, and back again. Always, the shaman has some means of ascending to the cosmic skies or journeying to the underworld.
The Tree of Life is also a central theme in Jewish mysticism. A complex symbol describing the levels of existence between the transcendent hidden God in limitless light, and the ten lower spheres of being which reflect aspects of Divine Nature in the manifested world of creation. For the mystic, the essential purpose is to know God.
Sometimes a river, rather than a tree, unites levels of creation.
It is interest to note that every culture has a mythology, and a mystical heritage. This indicates, quite obviously, that every culture has had mystics and seers. Instead of seeing the seer as a unique incarnation, their presence could be considered an omnipresent and necessary phenomena.
I think that today’s world system is spiritually sterile where it negates the existence of everything the scientific mind cannot comprehend.
Siberian shamans generally have familiars like bears, or wolves. The Yakuts view bulls and bears as their strongest allies. The guardian spirit becomes an alter ego, a psychic counterpart on mystical planes.
The shaman projects his consciousness into an animal form. It is in this form or body he goes forth on his spirit journey. Eskimos believe they can change themselves into wolves, while Lapps can become bears or reindeers. This transformation can be dangerous. Sometimes shamans fight each other on the mystical plane with their mystical bodies. If a shaman is killed in this encounter, it is said he will die in real life, as well, for his essence will have been destroyed.+.
Sometimes the relationship between the shaman and his spirit guides is tenuous. It is the assistant spirits, the panther, bear, or tiger, for example, that provide for the shaman his power. The spirit guides, at times, control the situations and relationships. Sometimes there are spiritual marriages. Sometimes the shaman honors or worships his animal helpers, in dance, for instance.
Shamans depend very much on their spirit helpers, whether they are animal familiars, or cosmic denizens. The shaman is an intermediatory. He is effective on more than one plane of reality. This multidimensional adeptness is crucial to his ability to serve as a shaman. +.
RITUALS AND THE INNER WORLD
Ceremonial ritual is the outer enactment of an inner event. Those performing a ritual believe that what they are doing is not simply theatrical but accords with some sort of sacred inner reality. A belief that they are in union with a mystical drama, perhaps involving oneness with a God, or the embodiment of some transcendent power. The shaman, priest, or magician believes that he is tapping into a dimension which is much larger and more awesome than the works of familiar reality.
Shamanism is participating in a mystery, leaving the everyday realm, and for a sacred and special period of time, entering the Cosmos. Often sociologists are blind to what is occurring on the spiritual plane. The psychologist or the sociologist often believes the mystical rite is a mere hysterical charade.
The shaman imitates birds and animals, the souls of which are his source of power. Animal spirits of the underworld are responsible for the success of the hunt. Birds are identified with the weather. The souls of the shamans fly in trances and dreams.
The dancing and chanting shaman believes, and becomes the animal he dances. And by the open minded, phenomenal and mysterious occurrences can be observed.
The costumes, rituals, and instruments, especially the drum, are links to the other worlds.
The shaman’s drum and his song are his two most important tools. The drum has a special role in shamanism, for it is the vehicle that carries the shaman to the other world. It is often identified with a horse. The drum is a mode of transport. It is the monotonous rhythm of the drum that the shaman rides to the upper and lower worlds. The drum beat frequency is four to seven bears per second. What happens during the spirit journey is real in that dimension.
Song is another vital aspect of shamanism. “As I sing, I go through the air to a holy place, where God gives me power. I change, becoming Spirit only.
“As the World Tree stands at the center of the vast planes of the cosmos, song stands at the intimate center of the cosmos of the individual. At that moment when the shaman song emerges, when the sacred breath arises from the depth of the heart, the center is found, and the source of all that is divine has been tapped.
Michael Harner, the author of the book I am referring to, is successfully initiated as a shaman through the use of a hallucinogenic with South American tribals deep in the jungles of Peru. He has received mystical visions including insights into the creation of the world. +.
SACRED PLANTS – Which cause visions and hallucinations, are a central feature of shamanism in many regions of the world.
While “modern” society believes hallucinogens cause distortions of reality, shamanic cultures believe sacred plants open the doors to heaven. The Jivaro describe the familiar world as a lie. The only real world being the one experienced in a psychic or psychedelic state.
The text differentiates between sacred or psychedelic drugs and addictive analgesic drugs. LSD versus valium. Hallucinogens are not recreational, but transformative. One undertakes the vision quest to learn or to see, not to escape into a world of fantasy.
Sacred plants remove the barriers between humankind and the realm of Gods and Spirits, and from them one receives wisdom and learning. The regions richest in naturally occurring hallucinogenic plants are Central and South America. While Asia is comparatively lacking.
Peyote imbues powers, among them the power to predict things. And to see mystical truths and realities.
Psilocybin mushrooms, not discovered by western man until 1938, are used in healing rituals. Myth says they grow where Christ’s blood was sprinkled. In all cases, the mushrooms are taken at night, accompanied by the chanting of prayers.
Morning Glory is used to treat sickness or acquire the powers of divination. The seeds are ground into flour which is added to cold water, strained through a cloth, and then consumed. It is reported to cause a thousand visions. Again, it is said to be sacred. In order to redeem Morning Glory from Satanic implications, it is also called “the Seed of the Virgin”.+.