Pratica di Shadowing: Mental Illness as a Crisis of Meaning in Modern Society - Impara a parlare inglese con YouTube
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Modern society is characterised by many things,
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Modern society is characterised by many things,
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but perhaps most notably by the remarkable scientific and technological advancement,
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as well as capitalism, individualism and hedonism.
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We are wealthier than our ancestors,
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we live in more safe and comfortable environments,
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we have more access to food and other basic needs.
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Why then have we seen a massive spike in mental illness?
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The bulk of evidence concludes
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that there seems to have been a significant rise in the incidence of lunacy in the 19th century,
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and that this increase consisted largely of patients with the illness we now call schizophrenia.
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One of the most widely ramifying features of modernity is the intense focus on the value and power of the individual self,
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to turn away from the search of an objective external order
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and to instead turn inward and become aware of our own connectivity.
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This becomes a pervasive feature of human experience and self-knowledge in the 19th century.
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Western culture is dominated by individualism,
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subjectivism and relativism, with the rise of a new character type that dominates our age,
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the psychological man, who is intent upon the conquest of his inner life.
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Mental illness must also be viewed in line with a modern social structure,
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with bureaucratisation, technologisation, secularization, and rationalization of the modern world on the level of individual experience.
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The conditions of modern life,
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with its rational forms of social organization,
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are more complex, conflicting, and require potentially disorienting cognitive requirements.
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While there is an emphasis on individuality,
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one must also simultaneously adapt to society's evolving needs.
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The problem arises when these two are in contradiction,
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leading to a sense of inner division.
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In the myth of mental illness,
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psychiatrist Thomas Sass criticises the psychiatric establishment who uses mental illness as a metaphor to describe an offending
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or disturbing pattern of behaviour under the wide-ranging term schizophrenia as an illness or disease.
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Sass wrote, if you talk to God, you are praying.
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If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.
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If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist.
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If you talk to the dead, you are a schizophrenic.
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While many behave and think in disturbing ways,
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this does not mean they actually have a disease.
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Unlike physical illness and disease,
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mental illness is judged from certain psychosocial, ethical or legal norms.
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Transgressing these is not a consequence of illness,
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but of the attempt to confront and tackle the problems in living.
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Sass does not suggest that mental illnesses do not exist,
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rather he is claiming that many such phenomena is a consequence of the attempt to confront
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and to tackle the problem of how to live,
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and to identify such phenomena as a disease
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or an illness is to hide the very real problems in living that people face.
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With increasing understanding of himself and of the world,
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modern man feels that he is free to direct his own life and must take responsibility for it.
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We are, as Jean-Paul Sartre asserted,
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condemned to be free, condemned to shoulder the burden of our freedom and responsibility without being able to seek refuge in others.
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We must be responsible for ourselves,
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for we have no other way of experiencing ourselves or the world as being in any other mode than our own existence.
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We cannot have our existence depend on somebody else,
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for that would contradict the very core of our being.
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We can ask for other people's opinions,
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but the choice ultimately lies in us.
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Many cannot stand this dizzying freedom.
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Kierkegaard says that one can either get lost in the infinite,
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a state of analysis paralysis,
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where one thinks of the infinite possibilities but never acts,
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or get lost in the finite,
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becoming an imitation, a number,
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a cipher in the crowd.
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The latter is a finitude's despair,
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or what we would now call depressive psychosis.
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One cannot imagine any alternate ways of life and release himself from the trivial obligations that give him no value.
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It is as if one has literally died to life,
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but must remain physically in this world.
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One lives dyingly.
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Eventually, one faces the why of existence.
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As Albert Camus writes, Rising,
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streetcar, four hours in the office or factory.
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Meal, streetcar, four hours of work.
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Meal, sleep.
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And Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday day,
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according to the same rhythm.
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This path is easily followed most of the time,
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but one day the why arises,
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and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.
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Camus' absurd person is one who has seen through the ridiculous repetitions of daily life.
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He is conscious of his Sisyphean condemnation.
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We all have to push our own boulders and watch it roll back down.
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If what we do does not satisfy our why of existence,
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we must search for other alternatives or risk falling into an existential crisis.
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A nauseating sensation of trying to justify one's existence,
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which can lead to suicide.
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One of Western civilization's most significant events is the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century,
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a period which undermined the values that society had hitherto relied on,
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namely on the religious view.
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This engenders the most profound cultural,
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sociological and psychological repercussions, leaving many facing a crisis in discerning a meaning
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or purpose for their existence and struggling to tackle the problems in living that this gives rise to.
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While we previously had ready answers to the problem of how life ought to be lived
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and what its overall meaning and purpose was,
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since faith in the existence of God gave us the reassurance that we are partaking in a divine project,
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we are now slowly experiencing the consequences of what Nietzsche proclaimed as the death of God,
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whose full consequences would elude many people as he made clear.
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This tremendous event is still on its way,
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still wandering, it has not yet reached the ears of men,
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this deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars,
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and yet they have done it themselves.
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This realisation forces us to be faced with the terrifying question,
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has existence any meaning at all?
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The modern age is characterised by a sense of disorientation,
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of not knowing what to do with one's life.
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One notable figure who has attempted to respond to this existential crisis and the psychological manifestations of meaninglessness is Viktor Frankl,
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who had been left in an existential vacuum.
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The meaning crisis and mesoniosis of modern times is the unheard cry for meaning.
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Frankl believes this is the cause of much of modernity's increase in mental illness.
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It is the struggle to confront the existential vacuum.
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He writes, Such widespread phenomena as depression,
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aggression and addiction are not understandable unless we recognise the existential vacuum underlying them.
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Frankel's therapeutic response to those experiencing such phenomena is to reorient the person to the meaning or the purpose of their existence,
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to confront the question of the meaning of their existence,
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to explore the question and,
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ultimately, to provide a positive answer to it.
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meaning to one's life is not to be understood as some idle
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or academic curiosity that one engages in when more fundamental needs have been met.
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The striving to search for and to possess a meaning
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or a purpose for one's life is said to be the primary motivational force in man.
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Without a meaning, all of life's struggles,
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strivings and projects become ultimately futile.
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Frankel believes that this sense of futility is what characterises addiction, aggression and depression.
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There is nothing in the world that would
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so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life.
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Frankel concludes, in a word,
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each man is questioned by life,
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and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life,
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to life he can only respond by being responsible.
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Modern man is in desperate need for the hero journey.
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In Man and His Symbols,
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Jungian psychologist Joseph Anderson describes the importance of the hero myth as a universal pattern throughout the world.
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The hero descends into darkness to slay a dragon,
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rescue a damsel in distress and gather the treasure.
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The early weakness of the hero is balanced by the appearance
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of strong guardians who enable him to perform the tasks that he cannot accomplish unaided.
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Their role is the development of one's strengths and weaknesses,
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in a manner that will equip one for the arduous tasks which life confronts him.
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This can be linked to being dependent on one's parents.
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It is only when one becomes independent and confronts the world by himself
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that the individual has passed his initial test and can enter the mature phase of life.
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In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Carl Jung's research brought him into the burning question,
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what actually takes place inside the mentally ill?
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He writes, To my mind,
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therapy only really begins after the investigation of that wholly personal story.
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It is the patient's secret,
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the rug against which he is shattered.
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If I know his secret story,
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I have a key to the treatment.
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In most cases, exploration of the conscious material is insufficient.
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In therapy, the problem is always the whole person, never the symptom alone.
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We must ask questions which challenge the whole personality.
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Jung treated many schizophrenic patients who were considered a lost cause.
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The paradox of schizophrenia is that there is both a dissolution of the self in the world,
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but also the dissolution of the world in the self.
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Eternal punishment, but divine omnipotence.
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The patient doubts that it is really him who is thinking his thoughts.
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Reality might as well be a train of illusions produced in him by evil scientists.
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It is the most profound form of self-contradiction,
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to be both God and a worm." Jung,
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however, found out
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that many people who were diagnosed with schizophrenia actually had ordinary depression as a result of traumas
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and difficult life experiences that had been repressed.
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He tells the story of an 18-year-old girl who had been abused at the age of 15.
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She retreated into isolation and concealed herself from people.
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She was taken to a mental hospital and remained in a catatonic state.
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Over the course of many weeks,
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Jung gradually persuaded her to speak.
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After overcoming many resistances, she told Jung
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that she had been living on the moon said that she did not like this world,
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and that the moon was beautiful and life there was rich in meaning.
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He writes, as a result of the incest to which she had been subjected as a girl,
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she felt humiliated in the eyes of the world,
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but elevated in the realm of fantasy.
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The consequence was complete alienation from the world, a state of psychosis.
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She became extra mundane, as it were,
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and lost contact with humanity.
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She plunged into cosmic distances,
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into outer space where she met with a winged demon.
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By telling me her story,
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she had in a sense betrayed the demon and attached herself to an earthly human being.
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Thereafter, I regarded the sufferings of the mentally ill in a different light,
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for I had gained insight into the richness and importance of the inner experiences.
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In his book Tribe, Sebastian Junger argues that Throughout history,
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humans have had a strong instinct to belong to small groups or tribes.
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These tribes gave people a purpose and understanding of life.
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However, this tribal connection has been obliterated in modern society.
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During wars with the Indian tribes,
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many European settlers were taken as prisoners and held within the tribes.
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After they had a chance to escape and return to their modern society,
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many refused to do so.
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They preferred the primitive society over their modern one.
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On the contrary, not one tribesman wanted to flee to modern society.
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We have evolved genetically to live in an interdependent group in order to survive,
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and this creates equality as everyone plays a necessary role in the tribe.
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They work 12 hours a week to survive,
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in contrast to the average 40 hours a week that many westernized societies require.
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The tribes collaborate for survival,
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each day they go to hunt and gather,
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and in the evening they return to share the food.
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People often believe that modern life with all its efficient technology has allowed for more leisure time,
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however, the exact opposite is true.
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Modern life is characterised by a desperate cycle of work,
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financial obligation, and more work, sacrificing personal freedom.
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One might argue, however, That modernity has allowed for a sense of independence,
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which primitive man could never have achieved,
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leading to a sense of freedom,
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but can also lead to a feeling of alienation and depression.
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We have not yet been genetically adapted to our environment,
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the enormous changes of agriculture and the industrial revolution have hardly begun to affect our gene pool.
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In other words, even though we live in more complex societies,
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we are still hardwired to be hunter-gatherers.
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Today, we can be surrounded by a group of people and yet feel completely alone.
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This is not something we have experienced until quite recently.
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We are wired to belong to a group where we feel valued by our contributions to it,
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and without a group, many fall into a sense of meaninglessness.
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Sociologist Emil Durkheim first noticed the positive effects of war on mental health,
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the suicide rate, homicide and admission to psych wards drop down.
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Likewise, in natural disasters, people overwhelmingly devote their energy to the community rather than themselves.
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Adversity produces pro-social behaviours in which one is likely to abandon his self-interest and sacrifice himself for others,
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acting as a unified society,
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sending people back into a more ancient way of life.
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Modernity has disrupted the social bonds that has always characterised the human experience.
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It breeds comfort, allowing people to act selfishly.
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This shows an increase of mental illness In modern society's deep lack of a sense of community,
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which the tribe had historically provided us,
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we have much to learn from our ancestors in this regard.
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The world hangs on a thin thread,
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and that is the psyche of man.
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We are the great danger,
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how important it is to know something about it,
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but we know nothing about it.
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Jung warns us that we are pitifully unaware of our unconscious,
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we have become too rational,
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and have lost contact with our primitive instincts,
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leading to a dissociation in the psyche of modern civilization.
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He writes,
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ideas has put him at the mercy of the psychic underworld,
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he has freed himself from superstition or so he believes,
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but in the process he has lost his spiritual values to a positively dangerous degree,
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his moral and spiritual tradition has disintegrated and he's now paying the price for this breakup in worldwide disorientation and dissociation.
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The surface of our world seems to be cleansed of all superstitious and irrational elements,
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However, a realistic picture of the human mind reveals many primitive traits
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which are still playing their role just as if nothing had happened during the last centuries.
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Man feels himself isolated in the cosmos because he no longer has a deep relation with nature.
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When a primitive society's spiritual values are exposed to the impact of modern civilisation,
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its people lose the meaning of their lives,
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their social organisation disintegrates and and they themselves morally decay.
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As Ernest Becker writes, anthropologists have long known that
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when a tribe of people lose their feeling that their way of life is worthwhile,
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they may stop reproducing, or in large numbers simply lie down and die beside streams full of fish.
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Food is not the primary nourishment of man.
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Unlike primitive man, modern man has lost contact with nature and his relationship with animals and trees through mystical participation.
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We may have advanced in the outer world,
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but our inner world is still delicate and fragmentary.
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A famous fictional example of the modern dissociation is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
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In the story, Jekyll's split took the form of a physical change,
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rather than, as in reality, an inner psychic state.
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Jung writes, we can be possessed and altered by moods,
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or become unreasonable and unable to recall the important facts about ourselves or others.
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We talk about being able to control ourselves,
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but self-control is a rare and remarkable virtue.
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There is a world of difference between a conscious decision to split off and temporarily suppress a part of one's psyche,
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and a condition in which this happens spontaneously,
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without one's knowledge or consent and even against one's intention.
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The former is a civilised achievement,
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the latter a primitive loss of a soul,
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or even a pathological cause of a neurosis.
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In order to heal the split in the psyche,
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Jung tells us to explore our unconscious through self-reflection and dream journaling.
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We must understand that there are things within us that are beyond our control,
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which are autonomous personalities.
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Here is where we find the vital insights for our lives,
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and where the primitive aspects that form part of the original mind are preserved as archetypes.
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Despite our differences, we all share a collective unconscious which adapts itself to the particularities of the individual's life.
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We have been so busy with the question of what we think,
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that we entirely forgot to ask what the unconscious psyche thinks about us.
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I hope you found this video valuable.
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You can help support the channel on Patreon or by liking,
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commenting or sharing the content.
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Perché praticare parlando con questo video?
Questo video esplora il tema delle malattie mentali nella società moderna, un argomento complesso e fondamentale che può stimolare conversazioni significative. Praticare l'inglese con YouTube, in particolare attraverso l'analisi di contenuti come questo, offre l'opportunità di affrontare argomenti rilevanti e di sviluppare una terminologia specifica. Inoltre, il contesto di discussione intorno a temi socioculturali aumenta la tua abilità di esprimerti con fiducia e chiarezza. Utilizzando tecniche di shadowing in inglese, puoi migliorare la tua pronuncia e il tuo ritmo parlato, rendendo l'apprendimento dell'inglese più coinvolgente e interattivo.
Grammatica ed Espressioni nel Contesto
Durante il video, l'oratore utilizza diverse strutture grammaticali e espressioni chiave. Eccone alcune:
- “We are wealthier than our ancestors”: Questa costruzione comparativa è utile per esprimere differenze tra situazioni passate e presenti.
- “One of the most widely ramifying features of modernity”: Frasi come questa mostrano come l'eloquenza possa essere usata per argomentazioni più profonde.
- “Mental illness must also be viewed in line with a modern social structure”: Utilizzare costruzioni passivo-aggiuntive può rendere il discorso più accademico e formale.
Imparare l'inglese con YouTube, utilizzando video con contenuti informativi, ti permette di affinare queste complesse strutture nella tua pratica quotidiana.
Trappole di Pronuncia Comuni
Nel video, ci sono alcune parole e frasi che potrebbero risultare difficili da pronunciare:
- “schizophrenia”: Assicurati di pronunciare correttamente le sillabe, poiché è una parola lunga e complessa.
- “individualism”: Fai attenzione alla pronuncia delle vocali nel suono “i” e “u”.
- “bureaucratisation”: Questa parola può risultare complicata, è fondamentale praticarla a fondo nel contesto di discorsi più ampi.
Affrontare queste pronunce attraverso il shadow speak e altre tecniche di shadowing in inglese ti aiuterà a migliorare. Non dimenticare di ascoltare attentamente l'oratore e imitare il suo ritmo e la sua intonazione per massimizzare il tuo apprendimento.
Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?
Shadowing è una tecnica di apprendimento delle lingue supportata da studi scientifici, originariamente sviluppata per la formazione dei traduttori professionisti e resa popolare dal poliglotta Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Il metodo è semplice ma potente: ascolti un audio in inglese di madrelingua e lo ripeti immediatamente ad alta voce — come un'ombra che segue il parlante con un ritardo di solo 1–2 secondi. A differenza dell'ascolto passivo o degli esercizi di grammatica, lo shadowing costringe il tuo cervello e i muscoli della bocca a elaborare e riprodurre simultaneamente i modelli di discorso reale. La ricerca dimostra che migliora significativamente la precisione della pronuncia, l'intonazione, il ritmo, il discorso connesso, la comprensione dell'ascolto e la fluidità del parlato — rendendolo uno dei metodi più efficaci per la preparazione alla prova di speaking dell'IELTS e per la comunicazione reale in inglese.
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