We all know the oscillating phases of inner states, which alternate between
periods when forceful energies are available, facilitating action and creativity,
and periods of low energy which are more favourable to rest and inactivity.
These variations in energy levels have, most certainly, a multi-factorial
origin wherein there is a narrow inter-relation between chronological cycles,
especially the endocrine cycles, lunar phases (police stations and obstetric
departments are overworked during full moon periods), meteorological conditions
and probably a number of other little known cosmic cycles.
If we observe in ourselves the effects of these variations in energy, we become aware that they either exacerbate or reduce the acquired tendencies of the personality, a conglomerate of conditionings which reacts in a more or less stereotyped manner. The extrovert will be even more extroverted during "high" phases, and the introvert will be more introverted during "low" phases. If there is some latent psychological suffering, it will be amplified or attenuated in the same manner.
These natural cycles seem therefore to act as an amplifier where the volume is variable. The sound quality keeps a certain constancy (that is to say the way in which these energies come to be expressed) but its intensity may change.
In the light of inner experience we may compare these phases to periods of expansion, as a dilating heart in diastole, and to periods of contraction, as a contracting heart in systole.
As we usually live in a state of conflict and resistance, we do not know how to live these variations with the flexibility of a reed which bends with the wind without ever breaking. Inactive periods are often rejected, both by society and by the individual who depends on a compensatory hyperactivity, although these periods could be perfectly appropriated for meditation. Dynamic phases are better accepted, as they are accompanied by strongly marked expressions of vitality, but they sometimes carry along with them regrettable incidents linked to impetuosity.
How can we consider the so-called manic-depressive who is simply living a caricatured reinforcement of ordinary phenomena?
According to the fluidity of the receptor (the receptor being the indissociable structure of body-mind-emotions), variations in energies will either be lived harmoniously - and will therefore only bring about but almost imperceptible changes in behaviour and in interior states, or they will reinforce previously existing personality tendencies - whether they are orientated towards extroversion and hyperactivity, or towards introversion with a tendency towards isolation and desolation (depression, melancholia and guilt).
The dying fire is stirred up by the bellows.
When we open a psychiatry textbook to the page on manic-depressive psychosis, manic excitation is often described as a sudden attack which, when left untreated, may last several months, and which is accompanied by all the symptoms of excitation. These may be mental (flight of ideas, cock-and-bull story and word games) or physical (insomnia, motor agitation, ambulatory disturbances, talking and writing incessantly). Delirious ideation is described as ideas of grandeur, megalomania, being inaccessible to reason. These episodes may either recur in more or less the same manner, and then we speak about unipolar mania, or the may alternate with periods of depression, and here they are referred to as bipolar mania. The same terminology is used for cyclic depressions qualified as either unipolar (recurrent depression) or bipolar (with alternating manic periods).
If, once more, we leave the books in order to refer to inner experience, we will be able to confirm that during these periods of expansion described in the introduction, many feelings and experiences will arise: being able to break the narrow spacio-temporal limits within which we habitually live, communicating naturally with the world and the cosmos, or having a sharper global perception.
If our emotions have not been purified by interior work and if, in addition, our mental perspective remains immature, the personality, the ego, takes into account those feelings which it experiences and attributes them to itself as a sign of its grandeur and omnipotence. This validates us in the illusion of being a separate entity who, this time, possesses unlimited powers.
It is as though we are at these moments unified with a superior source of energy which we may call life. But this union does not remain consciously inhabited except in a temporary way. The separating mind isolates the source of its organs of expression - the body, the personality. One's personality then appropriates this experience, makes it its own, and identifies itself with the experience saying: "I am this unlimited power, I am the All, I am the cosmos, I am the world, I am God".
Although these phrases remind us of certain well-known mystical writings, they remain the expression of a dual, and not a mature, mode of being, in which the experiencer and the object of experience (transcendent feelings, for example) remain separate. The experiencer has not yet disappeared into the experience. The fusion remains partial. The belief of being a separate individual entity has not yet been completely dissolved.
It seems that in a maniac state of mind, similar experiences are lived. But both emotions and thoughts remain egocentric; moments of jubilant joy alternate with periods of violent anger, in which all the accumulated tensions and dissatisfactions of life reappear, stirred up by the burning breath of a superior energy. Spite may then appear, and even a fall into dark depression.
But this joy is not accomplished. It is not the fruit of a deep comprehension and of an absolute certitude that the object of every search is already present, that the much desired plenitude is not another exterior object, but an interior reality which underlies all desire.
It consists rather of a foretaste of the joy of being liberated from the constraints of the personality. But the roots of imprisonment, the belief in the reality of the I-thought, are not eradicated. A lapse back into the meanderings of conflictual thought is therefore inevitable, until understanding has completed its work of transformation.
A mirror-image explanation could be made for the depressed, who remains enclosed in the belief that the long sought after happiness is inaccessible, not aware of the fact that the search is wrongly oriented, pursuing a quest towards an exterior object and forgetting the ineffable light of the interior realm.
Real therapy is then announced: decrease of the basal tension level - more easily accomplished outside a crisis situation - through deep relaxation and meditation; awakening of the sense of discrimination through exploration of the object of the interior quest, the observation of the mind's aptitude in creating illusions experienced as reality; a clear vision of the role of the self-image in the creation of suffering, interior conflict, of feelings of isolation and of separation.
What is the place of therapies offered by today's conventional psychiatry?
Medication which is meant to appease excitation, such as neuroleptics or some anti-hypertensive drugs (such as clonidine) may perhaps avoid a hospitalisation or reduce the period of crisis and therefore diminish the danger of tedious repercussions (more than one household has been ruined by the frenetic expenses of a husband subject to manic attacks!). Drugs which are meant to regulate the mood, that is which are used to diminish the intensity of energetic waves, such as Lithium or carbamezapine, will avoid, space out or limit relapses, but at the price of blunted creativity and emotions. All these remedies, which are indisputably efficient on the level of symptoms, obviously carry along with them a number of side-effects. This is the price one has to pay for a stabilisation of symptoms.
Even though these therapies may sometimes be necessary, they should not make us lose sight of the fact that each crisis is an opportunity for self-understanding which is offered to us, and also a release of unresolved inner tensions.
The therapist should therefore be well-informed so as to be able to regulate, with the co-operation of the patient, a therapy using various means and adapted to changing situations. But he/she should never loose sight of a crisis being the expression of suffering, either latent or obvious, that liberation from suffering is the dearest desire of both "care-taker" and "care-giver", and that the price of liberation is very high, as it requires the dissolution of all beliefs, images and constructs about ourselves, and their conscious resolution in the absolute silence which precedes creation.
Translated from French by Karen Hagen Liste, 1994