bipolar

[BARNETT WEISS]

Dear Adam:

First of all, I again thank you for taking the time to respond, though the response is so clinical and in some ways I feel lectured to by you as if I didn't know all that about taking a history etc. Perhaps you were writing that latter to some beginning students who might be lurking in the shadows. 

I think the entire classification model sucks and only serves to hinder real progress in our field. We are definitely thrown to it and respond with all our intellectual genius in the sorting out of our fears of our madness into some book that will control them like the shaking of the Shaman's sticks.  I don't really find the DSM +++ really useful as far as treatment goes though it certainly helps when it comes to filling out insurance forms when someone has insurance.  People are not static and those evaluative classifications make it seem as though someone really is A SCHIZOPHENIC, or A BIPOLAR or A NEUROTIC or a DEPRESSED PERSON and little more.   Nothing left of human beings anymore who have wandered away from village life into the jaws of war like power stuggles of War which is nothing more or less than a Racket consuming mostly the innocent and poor as the most decorated General in the history of the US Smedley Darlington Butler noted; or the mechanical industrial
 society where everything and everyone is replaceable. 

I like Langs rebellion against it all and am of that mind. THE unsolveble connundrums that lead to spinning ones mind around in attempts to analyse it like Coans. To me, it seems of similar mind was From-Reichman and Searles and for that matter, Moreno. Role clarity and competence, the disappearing competent social network around the person, the isolation taking place generated from the inside or the outside, the INDIVIDUAL vs THE COLLECTIVE, these are the stirring issues for me as I think they were for Moreno in his call for THE SCIENCE OF SOCIATRY.   

I am praying that my Son will be able to get into WIndhorse precisely because the model that they are working with is one that is generative for the entire group and not just for the IDENTIFIED PATIENT. It is a lot more like the healing circles of the indigenous people of the Americas as well as those I know of in Africa and Brazil where the individual's "madness" is seen as a message about the community and the community gathers round to nurture and learn from the one who has encapsulated these seemingly out of control energies. The message is often found and that person is reintegrated into the collective through various rrituals sometimes as a shaman (Russian word) healer for others who may tread that path in the future and so the madness becomes a gift to all. 

Spiritual Ancestral disjunctures are healed and the flow of life loving itself through the generations is acknowledged and generates the new energies to reclaim the future from the disintegrating forces that are always at work. Not entropy, rather power sought and gone awry. 
Here on this list serve, I have experienced some of what I had hoped for from the gathering of pioneers in action rituals derived from so many sources and gathered as a consequence of the all shaking thunder of the Words of the Father to which we have all answered with our souls dance. 

Finally, I think that nearly everything you asked for has been made available by people like Perceval and Custance and Michaux and Podvoll in their writings along with Searles and others.  Getting into the experience of these sequences of the mind disolving from "sanity" into madness and back again. Casteneda's attempts to put into novel form the experiences to a large extent that he had with Milton H. Erickson, MD prior to his writing of his journeys.  Lang's incredible challenge that seems to have been dropped as his therapeutic community disolved and he dissappeared. 

I am a wounded father burned by the blaze of madness that has touched my family most easily identified in my son. I can share my process with others and need to do so in writing to conserve it for others to use as they may.  It is a painful process to be sure, and I am slowly about it. 

I only asked for those who have some experience of seeing the madness through to the stage at which it becomes a resource rather than a deficit. I have been blessed with some responses such as that as well as generous outpourings of kind and gentle words of support. I could not ask for more. 
Thank you again and
Blessings all, Bud

Adam Blatner <adam at blatner.com> wrote:     v\:* {  BEHAVIOR: url(#default#VML) } o\:* {  BEHAVIOR: url(#default#VML) } w\:* {  BEHAVIOR: url(#default#VML) } .shape {  BEHAVIOR: url(#default#VML) }    st1\:*{behavior:url(#default#ieooui) }        The discussion copied by Joann about bipolar  reveals the turbulence in the field. Before the 1980s, the idea of bipolar  disorder happening to kids (earlier than mid-teens) was considered quite rare,  and even the diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder was not widely used,  especially for (again) kids.
      Another turbulence: The  difference between nomothetic research (generalities about statistsical  groups---which dominates much of modern academic practice) and ideographic  research (the case study, making a meaningful story about the many  particularities of a person's life story). 
       The problem  with ideographic research is that it was overly associated with psychoanalysis,  and that field is in turn overly associated with some major errors in the  field---as described in the book, "Madness on the Couch." 
       The trouble is that  in the 1950s-early 60s, psychoanalysis over-diagnosed, and treated  schizophrenia, autism, and other conditions as caused by family dynamics.  Evidence has accumulated to discount these views, but the shift away from  psychoanalysis should not, in my opinion, be allowed to discount the general  idea of seeking to understand and give proper weight to the story-nature of  pathogenesis (how problems arise). 
        In other  words, reading questions and answers and the general discourse about bipolar  disorder reinforces my thinking that we need a good formulation in each case.  (On my website is a paper on the art of case formulation, and the hundreds of  factors that need to be woven into the creation of a plausible life story.) We  need to weigh strengths as well as weaknesses, and identify the actual meanings  of events as experienced by the client (i.e., the existential-humanistic  approach) (in contrast to thinking in terms of categories devised by  professionals who may not be in contact with the individual client). This isn't  just Freudian, but the whole mixture of depth psychology approaches plus  humanistic psychology approaches---both of which have been pushed to the  periphery by trends in biological psychiatry. (While I respect these, they, too,  seem to have overshot their proper role in the work.)
  
      Going back to Bud's  original email, I'm not sure what kind of help you are asking for, Bud, since it  seems as if you have lined up at least one resource and perhaps several others  in which you have a good deal of faith. So the next step would be to see what  they (i.e., the docs at Windhorse?) have to say. My approach, if I had been  called in consultation, is to take a good history. This is a more comprehensive  task than it might seem, involving sources that include the patient, family  members, and others. When finished, if there are still questions, before  proceeding to various psychological or medical tests, get a consultation, come  up with more questions that hadn't been asked, and take the history again.  
           Warmly, Adam  
          
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Barnett J. Weiss, MA, LCSW
7410 Ridge Blvd 2D
Brooklyn, NY 11209
PREFERRED Contact Budweiss at verizon.net or Cell (917)-751-3395
Home/office: 718-680-4919
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