Defining psychosis as a process reversal and as an unusual or extreme state implies that the client’s ability to exist in a given environment is disturbed. This means that the psychiatrist has to be acutely aware of her client’s resistances to the world and also of her own resistances to the client, for process reversal polarizes the environment. The world around an individual in the midst of a process reversal always becomes her opposite, just as the client becomes the secondary process for the world. Without understanding what is happening, a therapist usually finds herself acting out the opposite part of a client’s pattern, the cop to the robber, the optimist to the depressive and so on, instead of making both processes more accessible to the client.
If the therapist becomes antagonistic to the patient s state, both are in for trouble. Creative work with an extreme state requires you to be outside the state and outside of its polar opposite, while simultaneously getting inside and fully empathizing and appreciating it. But the latter is only possible when you are not caught in it.
The psychiatrist is faced with many unanswered questions. Why is one client susceptible to one type of process reversal rather than another? Our knowledge at present indicates only how patients become psychotic and how to deal with them. We know that individuals with weak primary processes become schizophrenic under stress, in contrast to becoming physically ill. Individuals with strong primary processes, on the other hand, become psychosomatically ill and experience process reversal as a temporary fever or debilitating handicap. Where there is an edge against violence, epilepsy is common. The following hypothesis needs testing as well; people attached to a primary process of peace become addicted to drugs or endorphine effects such as those produced by physical exercise. What kinds of belief systems are present before the onset of catatonic states? Can retardation be altered through processing?
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A further problem in enclosed spaces is the enforced breathing of recycled and potentially contaminated air. Studies by Dr. Dick suggest that good ventilation can help disperse nasty cold (and flu) viruses. The “old wives” who spun tales may have known this when they recommended opening the bedroom window at least a little while you sleep. At home or work, a forced-air ventilation system can help, if it is kept in working order. If the air is heated by radiators or an electric baseboard, consider using fans to help keep it circulating. On a plane, of course, there’s nothing you can do to cleanse the air, which makes keeping yourself well hydrated all the more important. Those who believe in the protective value of vitamin С (despite the lack of scientific evidence) might also try taking about 1,000 milligrams of vitamin С just before a plane trip and perhaps a second dose after landing.
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Sleep is essential for the proper functioning of the nervous system. The nerve cells most easily affected by lack of sleep are the inhibitory neurons which are responsible for our inhibitory reserves. We need our inhibitory functions to make u tolerant, patient and able to forgo our needs temporarily so as to fit in with the needs and rights of others. We know from personal experience how just being without sleep for a day or two can make us impatient and irritable and, later, quite disinhibited.
Without adequate sleep the nervous system is unable to process information adequately; anxiety symptoms will occur when we try to get through our usual workload without having had sufficient sleep. People who say they’re becoming ‘unraveled’ ‘frayed at the edges’ from lack of sleep, are using imagery similar to William Shakespeare’s, in Macbeth, Act II, where he has Macbeth saying:
Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast. . .
Shakespeare says it all, really, in describing the recuperative function of sleep and its relationship to stress breakdown.
But how much sleep is enough sleep? I think it is best for the body to decide. If a person needs an alarm clock to wake up in the mornings, that person is not having adequate sleep.
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