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So-called 'schizophrenia' is not a 'mental illness' but an intense transpersonal or spiritual process or experience which represents spiritual awakening and has been designated as 'spiritual emergency' (See the writings of Christina and Stanislav Grof).
Much needless suffering results from ignorance of the nature of the human personality or 'human nature'. Insights into the workings of human nature are provided by the healthy process of healing in which the individual experiences the psychic overload of uncontrollable spiritual growth and crisis i.e. spiritual emergency or so-called 'schizophrenia'.
Schizophrenia has been described as a nonspecific disease by the psychiatric profession. This supposedly devastating condition was originally named by German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926). Kraepelin believed that the condition involved irreversible mental deterioration' and coined the term 'dementia praecox' - Latin for 'prematurely out of one's mind'. It later became clear that the term was a misnomer and a new term was coined in 1910 by Swiss psychiatrist noted for his kindness and humanity Eugen Bleuler (1857-1939). Bleuler, teacher of Carl Jung, was professor of psychiatry at the University of Zürich where he headed the famous Burghölzli Clinic. He coined the term 'schizophrenia' to mean 'splitting of the mind' since the condition seemed to involve a mental split between thought and emotion. The term is derived from German 'schizophrenie' from Greek 'skhizein' meaning 'to split' and 'phren' of unknown origin meaning 'heart or mind'. According to Greek etymology, 'schizophrenia' actually means 'broken soul' or 'broken heart'. There is still no universally accepted definition. The term has been applied to many so-called 'mental illnesses' which represent a set of socially and culturally unacceptable thinking and behaviour patterns and which other people greatly dislike thus making it a model of 'unwanted conduct'. The condition is largely misunderstood as a result of people's fear of the unknown.
It turns out that schizophrenia is not a disease or a 'mental illness'. In fact the condition is not a hopeless one but a brilliant one. Schizophrenia is a personal 'story' which involves a natural and temporary self-organising transformative process or crisis of transformation, a 'psychospiritual crisis'now known by its new name - 'spiritual emergency' - the term coined by psychiatrist Stanislav Grof. Spiritual emergency is a self-healing process involving the dissolution and removal of illusions and false beliefs which originate in the programming of social conditioning and which give rise to pathological thought complexes. These prevent the person from making the accurate evaluations of their social environment which they need in order to make effective decisions for social adaptation.
Effective decision-making for appropriate sociability depends on transcendance of the limited sense of self or 'ego'. In a period of crisis, the person instinctively surrenders to an organismic process involving the temporary separation of thought and emotion ('ego-loss') in order to confront their thoughts without having to deal with the emotional implications. Ego-transcendance purifies and sharpens consciousness and therefore results in clarity and a true perception of reality. Accurate perception is a function of moral consiousness or 'intuition' of ratonal conscience and depends on complete moral or 'spiritual development'characteristic of the human psyche or human personality i.e. 'human nature'. Consequently the apparent 'craziness' of spiritual emergency is an indication of the passage into a higher consciousness state required for effective adaptability.So-called schizophrenia is therfore a part of the human condition and a concern of so-called 'depth psychology' which is concerned with the 'beyond ego' or 'transpersonal' dimension of the human psyche or 'human nature'. The transpersonal dimension of the psyche is the source of motivation for human creativity…human productiveness and creativity or 'work'. Depth psychology is also known as 'spiritual psychology' or 'transpersonal psychology'.
