Depersonalization

[Triton]

Depersonalization
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Clinically, loss of soul is spoken of as "depersonalization". All
particular functions of ego-consciousness operate as before;
associating, remembering, perceiving, feeling, willing, and thinking,
remain intact. But one's conviction in oneself as a person and the
sense of reality of the world have departed. Everything and oneself
become automatic, unreal, emptied out. The personal sense of being, of
subjective interiority, of emotional importance and sense of "me-ness"
has vanished, and with this absence is lost too the sense of the
world….. and now the world is as if behind glass ; depth perspective
no longer seems to function as near and far merge into flatland.<o:p></
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The condition can be distinguished from depression since
depersonalization is less the inhibition of vital functions and the
narrowing of focus than it is a loss of personal involvement with and
attatchment to soul and world. We may each have experienced
depersonalization and derealization in less extreme degree. I refer to
those states of apathy, monotony, dryness, and weary resignation, the
sense of not caring and of not believing in one's value, that nothing
is important or all is voided, outside and inside.<o:p></o:p>


Jung attributes such states to the loss of soul. This loss is
familiar, for example, at the end of a love-affair. There is a loss of
vitality and reality, not only about the other person, the affair, and
love but also in regard to oneself and the very world itself. "Nothing
seems real anymore." "I feel dead, empty, mechanical like a robot." It
happens in men and women: Demeter's lost soul, when Persephone is
captured by an invisible dark power, brings the whole world of nature
to a stop.<o:p></o:p>


Depersonalization presents a striking similarity with what
anthropology has called :loss of soul". And in fact
"depersonalization" is "also used of a philosophy of the universe,
which no longer regards natural forces as manifestations of
supernatural agents or gods". Loss of soul means both the loss of
internal animation and external animism. Absence of imagination opens
one to the soul's immeasurable depths, revealing those depths as an
abyss. Not only are the guide and the bridge gone, but so too is the
possibility of a personal connection through personified
representations. For it is through imagination that the autonomous
systems of the psyche are experienced in personified form. Without it
the depths become a void, as the existentialist von Gebsattel says.
This happens because the guides who "personify the collective
unconscious" are not there to mediate the depths in personified images
with personal intentions. At the same time, the world outside is
perceived without its depths, losing perspective, becoming a souless
flatland.<o:p></o:p>


A self-knowledge that rests within a cosmology which declares the
mineral, vegetable, and animal world beyond the human person to be
impersonal and inanimate is not only inadequate. It is also
delusional. No matter how well we may know ourselves, we remain
walking, talking ghosts, cosmologically set apart from other beings of
our milieu. <o:p></o:p>



Relating imagination to the depersonalization symptom could take place
by revivifying images. In a somewhat similar condition where "the
patient's world had become cold, empty, and grey," Jung turned to
fantasy because: "Libido can never be apprehended except in a definite
form; that is to say, it is identical with fantasy-images".
Imagination is the particular province of soul: "image is psyche" says
Jung.<o:p></o:p>



The revivification of images reconstructs personal belief through
belief in a personified world with personal intentions and confidence
in oneself as a carrier of interior personalities. Grinnel has
described this as "psychological faith."<o:p></o:p>



From 'Anima' -by James Hillman