Complementary Opposites and Personality Development

During the past thirty years or so, there have been those with new insights that further unravel the mysteries of human consciousness and awareness as the knowledge and utility of holograms, fractal geometry, virtual reality and AI continue to expand. I am most optimistic as I look to the fusion of those areas within cognitive science where, perhaps mathematically speaking, physiological and psychological systems will have but one voice.

The life process, exclusive to each individual, continuously unfurls according to the influences from the thermal activity within the psyche.  All of one’s personal complexities eventually herd into a corral replete with idiosyncratic detail while life’s most elemental components remain untouched, outside in the binary finality of nature. 

The decision-making process constructs personal routines and habits that analogue as individualized mathematical iterations balancing reward v punishment with happiness v sadness.  The thermal activity of dharma and entropy within the psyche set the homeostatic guardrails of an individual’s normal behavior.  Every decision one makes retains a vestige of that psychic action and contributes to an individual’s synthesized countenance and character, one’s personality.

So, in order to dramatize how this comes together I’ve selected the following case study for a couple of very personal and, as it turned out, compelling theoretical reasons.  And, although I have encountered other very intriguing cases through the years, I have yet to experience any other instance as fascinating and clearly defined as Brenda’s.

The case dates from my clinical internship.  I remember Brenda’s psychodynamics so vividly because they relegated all of my academic coursework to the background and brought forward my avid extra-curricular interests in altered states of consciousness.  The case also brought to life, or rather confirmed, the intuitive attraction I had then to further study the universal and psychological subtleties innate to the I Ching and the continual interplay of yin and yang.        

Psychology grad students with an interest in clinical careers registered for a supervised internship in conjunction with one of the large state funded mental facilities CA had then.  I was offered a choice of either the Alcoholic or Geriatric wards for my supervised work.  After my prior experiences at Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute, I didn’t expect that antabuse therapy would be any different in CA than it was in PA.  And geriatrics, well, that was decidedly not an area of interest.  Either option was a no-go for me.   

I carefully explained all of this to my professor who went to the department head and pled my case to see if there was something else for me to cut my teeth on.  I was informed the next day that the hospital agreed because they thought this might be a good trial run to broaden the scope of clinical internships.  So, considering my background they decided to assign me to the Involuntary Admissions (IA) Ward.  This was my only alternative; take it or leave it.  I relished the idea.

You’re never exactly sure what you’re gonna get to see coming through Involuntary Admissions…the name says it all actually.  New arrivals are usually sedated by the time of their Intake interviews, and many of them show up featuring freshly treated cuts and bruises.

I met my assigned, one-on-one supervisor who meticulously explained the rules:  I was to sit in on the morning patient briefings and keep quiet during the interviews.  After listening to the morning’s lot, I would then explain my selection for which patient I wanted to interview further to my supervisor.  About an hour-or-so later, I would return and discuss my time with the patient and present my clinical assessments.

Monday mornings saw all of the weekend cases that were brought in by police, concerned relatives and/or neighbors.  Each individual was kept, by state law, on a mandatory 72-hour hold.  During that period a decision would be made whether an involuntary patient would be admitted to the hospital or released.

Enter Brenda, early thirties, clad in a hospital gown and slippers.  She looks disheveled, weak, and fairly sedated.  She was excessively intoxicated when she was brought to the hospital very late Saturday night by the police after multiple calls by neighbors hearing the unrelenting screams and crying of Brenda’s two children.  Both gauze-wrapped wrists stood out against her gray, short-sleeved patient gown.

With an orderly behind her, she’s standing there hunched over and motionless just inside of the door to the corridor as the psychiatrist scans her folder dutifully handed to him by the head psychiatric nurse.  Also seated at the conference table are the Head Nurse of the IA Ward, another psychiatric nurse (an intern perhaps), a hospital administrator (position unknown), a clinical psychologist (my supervisor) and me.    

The interview began as the psychiatrist laid Brenda’s folder down and asked her if she knew where she was.  She lifted her eyes as best she could and with slow, muted words indicated that she knew exactly where she was having been brought in by the police only three months prior for the same thing, drunk and disorderly conduct and repetitively beating her kids.   

Then there followed a few irrelevant questions about her job, social life, drinking habits and her kids, but nothing that would move any diagnostic or analytical needle.  Then the ever astute doctor asked about her wrists and her attempted suicide this time.  Then, most quietly, yet quite clearly, she stated that it was because the voice said she “had to” do it.  The psychiatrist had heard enough and nodded to the orderly to escort her out.

The good doctor didn’t pay much attention to what Brenda had just said, and if he did, he probably deemed it just another detail of her overall dysfunctional behavioral motif.  While he discussed Brenda with the others at the table, I turned to my supervisor and said that I wanted to have time talking with Brenda before her next set of scheduled drugs.  I wanted to find out more about that voice Brenda mentioned. 

The sparse research available then indicated that certain psychological phenomena can arise spontaneously in consciousness and indicated a decoupling of personal awareness from ego control.   Among the ample examples cited were visual and/or auditory hallucinations, telepathic and pre-cognitive dreams and out-of-body experiences.  The research also indicated that certain meditative techniques and esoteric disciplines are structured toward self-realization of an unattached ego.  As an aspiring clinician I felt that these altered states of consciousness deserved greater academic attention.

(Listening to Brenda’s intake interview prompted memories of Aida, a patient at EPPI who was directed in all her actions by the Devil – yeah, the actual biblical demon -- that followed her and seemed always to be sitting at the end of her bed constantly eliciting in her uncontrollable fear and extreme guilt.  I was part of Aida’s ECT {electroconvulsive therapy} team.  The therapy quickly cured her of any awareness of the demonic, and just as quickly ruined her personal capabilities to regulate virtually all aspects her life process.)

My supervisor gave me a thumbs-up to interview Brenda.  I immediately left the room before the others concluded their discussion.  It didn’t look promising for Brenda though. She’d probably be admitted to the hospital this time and for how long was anyone’s guess.  She’d definitely lose her current job, and the state would try to have her children reside with a relative before placing them in the custody of some state funded foster care facility.

I found Brenda flaccidly slumped into a chair in the Day Room in clear view of the attending nurse behind the laminated glass of her office.  Behind Brenda, and accessible from the ward’s Day Room, was an outdoor garden area with a couple of round, wrought-iron tables with chairs.  The area was enclosed on all sides by the glass-lined interior corridors of the hospital. 

Crouching down to her eye level so she wouldn’t have to strain looking up, I tapped on Brenda’s knee to get her attention.  She could hardly open her eyes and her breathing was barely detectable.  I asked if she’d like to go outside for some fresh air.  If I wasn’t acutely listening for it I would’ve missed hearing her faint assent.  I cleared things with the attending nurse and with my help we slowly stepped out into the warm, SoCal morning and helped ourselves to a couple of chairs by the nearest table.   

There was a long pause, perhaps five minutes or so before Brenda moves at all.  She is very weak and moderately narcotized.  Slowly, she then lifts her head partially, turns a bit and stares at me for a moment.  She spontaneously begins to cry.  Then, unsolicited through her sobbing, she begins to tell me her story.

As one might expect, Brenda had a bit more history than just two visits to a state mental facility.  Apparently, neighbors had called the police multiple times during the previous months because of the loud crying and wailing they would hear coming from Brenda’s two children.  The beatings only became more severe with time; and so did her drinking which caused the loss of two previous jobs.   

The precursors of her current behavior deterioration first surfaced not long after her divorce from a high school sweetheart a couple of years prior.  She wanted to impress upon me how seriously she deemed her responsibility to maintain the house and care for her children.  She felt a deep emotional loss from her divorce and regretted not having a partner in life.

Then, about a year ago, she confessed to her sister in Seattle that she felt incapable to raise and provide for her children on her own any longer.  With some difficulty, Brenda turned, looked at me directly and said “I hated being like that.”   

When she lost that second job she really broke down and lapsed into episodes of severe depression and physical exhaustion punctuated with spells of excessive drinking, guilt and feelings of unmitigated helplessness.  After several invitations, her sister finally convinced her to take a break and go to Seattle for a couple of weeks.  The kids would be okay; they could stay with cousin that lived not too far from Brenda.

Through all of this thumbnail history Brenda remained objective enough to see herself as a completely broken person incapable of managing her life’s needs.  She repetitively interjected how much she hated taking things out on her children and how much she truly loved them.  The conflict eventually resulted with her attempted suicide which she rationalized was done for the children so she wouldn’t hurt them anymore. 

Brenda had completely relinquished personal control of her life process to whatever the voice told her.  Essentially, Brenda had surrendered her élan vital to an aberration lodged within her awareness.  It was an idiosyncratic sublimation and ego detachment absolving her of all personal responsibility for her behavior.

Brenda said that when she left Seattle she was feeling optimistic about her life.  She looked forward to seeing her kids again.  She claimed to have had nothing to drink during her stay except for “that night” when her sister held a previously planned small get-together.

As fate would have it, she met someone that evening that checked all of the boxes.  And that’s when it started…the voice.  She heard it first that night right after everyone left.  “It came” to her, “in her head”, just as unintelligible whispers at first, but it was his voice.  She knew it!

During her first few days back home the voice was sporadic, unpredictable, garbled sounds or humming tunes, yet becoming more distinct and less muted each time.  Then, after a couple of weeks, his voice began “to speak” to her more frequently of their eventual happiness together.  He spoke seductively while telling her how their love for one another would be fulfilled and that it was only her children that stood in the way. 

Back home, small abrasive events with her children turned into unnecessarily harsh, physical punishments.  That’s when she began drinking excessively claiming that she did so hoping it would finally get rid of the voice.  I believed her when she said that she didn’t want to beat her children; but his voice was adamant and she was deathly afraid to disobey.  This fear intensified over time dovetailing with her inability to rationalize the voice’s ghostly, seductive and terrifying omnipresence.      

The voice became incessant; she began to hate it and didn’t want his affections anymore.  Interestingly, an acute self-awareness and disdain of her abusive drinking followed suit; but she didn’t stop drinking.  Brenda’s emotional and mental decisions eventually subjugated the love she had for her children to the verbal hallucinations and dictates from the voice.  Her behavior became severely chaotic and dysfunctional as it developed into a viscous cycle of guilt, excessive alcohol abuse, uncontrollable acting out, extreme feelings of unequivocal helplessness interwoven with self abasement all leading back to more guilt.                              

I asked Brenda about what happened after the first time she was brought to the hospital.  She said she was released after her mandatory stay. However, his voice remained uncontrollably entrenched in her awareness.  She was afraid that they were going to keep her this time.  She was worried for her children, and cursed the voice for saying that they were the reasons for her unhappiness.     

She then cried repentantly and lamented how she had beaten her children so harshly.  She said that’s when she began to contemplate killing herself…it was for her children so she wouldn’t hurt them anymore.  (This is the naked duality of what extreme psychic entropy can look like in an individual: irrationality attempting to balance moral behavior.  Maximum entropy would have been a successful suicide, a complete destruction of her personality system, the cessation of her life process.  At that end, dharma has no role.)

I felt clumsy and unprofessional because I wanted to dramatically show Brenda at that moment, a hug perhaps, that she was not alone.  I knew however that my supervisor and the hospital would never allow such a display.  I took her hand instead.  She looked at me, eyes tear-filled and glazed.  I asked if she heard the voice while she told me her story.  “No.” was her reply as she looked at me curiously.  I asked how his voice came to her.  Seemingly confused, she thought about that for several seconds, then lifted her gaze and said it was ESP.

Brenda, the person, was broken and powerless; her personality now molded by a psychic aberration.  All personal control of ego prowess had been unwittingly given over to his voice.  Her excessive drinking and eventual failed suicide didn’t solve her problems.  Every direction she had looked to for salvation turned out to be just another dead end.  She was overwhelmed and seemed committed to an unknown fate – and his voice – in the hospital.   

Back then I was just learning to appreciate some of the subtleties regarding the depth and breadth of human consciousness.   I didn’t yet understand the role of thermal systems within the psyche or the interplay of dharma and entropy.  In fact, I hadn’t yet encountered either of those two words in any of my readings.   

Conversely, I felt very comfortable with my growing appreciation for the I Ching and principle of tao. Intuitively* I perceived how tao displayed some of the more profound qualities of human consciousness and apparent universal behavioral propensities that span ideological and cultural distinctions among peoples.

The complementary balance and simplicity presented within the I Ching surfaced as I listened to Brenda speak about the voice and ESP.  She mentioned how sometimes the voice was not just in her head, but that she would hear it outside, speaking from another room, or from within the medicine cabinet as she brushed her teeth.  It brought to mind the book’s presentation of the two basic arrangements of the eight primary trigrams and the continuous interplay of yin and yang.    

After she finished we sat in silence for a couple of minutes.  She lifted her head almost all the way and made eye contact, but said nothing more.  Softly, I asked her if she knew much about ESP.  She just shook her head no.  I told her that I didn’t know much either, but that I had read some studies about it coming out of Duke University in NC.  I told her that it appeared as though ESP operated sorta like a CB radio.  Once it’s hooked up you have the power to receive.  And with that ability you also have the power to send; but you have to take the initiative to push the button on the mic to be heard.       

She stared at me for an extended moment...frozen, deer-in-the-headlights, pupils rapidly constricting.  I thought of Hexagram #3, Difficulty at the Beginning, with a vague recollection of a Miscellaneous Note: “Movement in the midst of danger brings great success and perseverance.”  She wanted to hear more so she could see more; but we both knew that there was nothing more for either of us to say.  I helped her up and back into the Day Room.  That was the last time I saw Brenda.

When I returned the following Wednesday and inquired about Brenda I was informed that she had been released from the hospital.  There was no further information provided by my supervisor and I had no follow-up, one of the drawbacks of Involuntary Admissions as opposed to the other wards where patients remain for extended periods.  So I had no idea what caused the change of what seemed an obvious decision for the hospital.  I was denied reading both the most recent nursing entries to Brenda’s chart and her psychiatric file. 

So, what can be gleaned psychologically – energy-wise – of Brenda’s condition?  Well, not long after her divorce her behavioral changes indicated that the degree of psychic entropy affecting her life process began to increase substantially.  Feelings and thoughts of inadequacy surfaced as she confronted being responsible for raising and providing for her children. 

However, the deeper conflict was willful sublimation providing a rationale absolving her from responsibility of her behavior.  This psychodynamic was later projected fully onto “the voice”; and that act finalized the negative plug-in to her life process

Brenda rationalized her well-being as something other than affirming life (for herself and her children) while suppressing what she knew was the right thing to do.  In her lucid moments she hated the conflict but could never muster the strength to deal with it effectively. 

Those would be the times when the homeostatic guardrails of Brenda’s normal behavior became overly tested and breached.   She forced herself to make life-altering decisions that impeded the impulse from dharma.  This first initiated, then exacerbated, depressive spells in both frequency and duration, and sped up her inward, disordered spiral toward a rationale of personal incompetence and unworthiness.

Such was the bedrock of her increasingly destructive and chaotic cycle of self-directed guilt, abusive drinking and violent acting out which only contributed to further inhibit any potential influence of dharma in her psyche.  The eventuality of her attempted suicide filtered out as the only thing that made sense to put an end to the extreme imbalance of her psychological well-being and resultant behavioral patterns.  Within that vortex of acute high entropy she formulated an end-of-life decision and then took action. 

She failed; yet her life force was not completely extinguished with her behavioral decision.  It is in such dramatic, psychodynamic, personal instances that dharma (and tao) can decisively affirm the life process and prevail over the natural tendency of entropy. 

Individually tailored, dharma will provide to one’s awareness the unobstructed, direct knowing of the complementary element to correct a behavioral pattern.  And further, the event will arise synchronistically and appear most auspicious to one’s time and circumstance.  The how and why this occurs, as it most certainly does, is indeed still part of the mystery of the grand mosaic of human consciousness. 

So, did those few words I offered about a CB radio reflecting the precepts of the I Ching make a difference in her behavior, and to the extent that the hospital would release her in light of the circumstances of her admission?  I can’t answer that, and I’ve no doubt that practicing clinicians will ardently argue that psychotherapy is never that facile.  But how could they definitively know?      

Certainly there is some truth in their time-intensive, psychotherapeutic techniques.  However, there is also truth to be gained from analyzing the most basic energy dynamics of the life process where one personally unveils idiosyncratic meaning and relevance with complementary opposites.  The advantage of applying this methodology is that it directs clinical guidance to seek a more propitious and timely means to a safe and autonomous corrective return of individual psychological health and self-reliance.  What may be a life-altering epiphany to some may be “It’s so obvious; why didn’t I think of that sooner?” to others.

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 * See Glossary: Intuitive Mind