The Therapeutic Theater

Ways of Knowing, Modes of Acting": The Therapeutic Theater

world ratLife, as it is represented through various media, has a brainwashing effect on the spectator: he consumes a fabricated her than producing one of his own. The unconscious is constantly repressed, while the conscious is force fed images which basely appeal to the controlled linear processes of the brain. Psychiatrist C.G. Jung writes:

"The source of numerous psychic disturbances and difficulties occasioned by man's progressive alienation from his instinctual foundation, i.e., by his uprootedness and identification with his conscious knowledge of himself, by his concern with consciousness at the expense of the unconscious. The result is that modern man can know himself only in so far as he can become conscious of himself--his consciousness therefor orients itself chiefly by observing and investigating the world around him, and it is to its peculiarities that he must adapt his psychic and technical resources. This task is so exacting, and its fulfillment so advantageous, that he forgets himself in the process, losing sight of his instinctual nature and putting his own conception of himself in place of his real being. In this way he slips imperceptibly into a purely conceptual world where the products of his conscious activity progressively replace reality. Separation from his instinctual nature inevitably plunges civilized man into the conflict between conscious and unconscious, spirit and nature, knowledge and faith, a split that becomes pathological the moment his consciousness is no longer able to neglect or suppress his instinctual side." (1)

The prozac world we inhabit is a direct result of doctors eager to "fix" or "cure" disorders through administering prescription drugs. These drugs don't cure diseases, but rather numb their symptoms; the patient acts their daily ritual of dealing with life in a zombie like trance instead of confronting the horror, terror, and chaos essential to the Nature of the world so as to better understand the self and the self's place in it. It's easier to turn off the receptors that trigger emotions, ideas, or urges we don't like facing than to explore their origin. This method of treatment is not only dangerous, but frightening, because it threatens the very existence of humanity by crippling the self's internal communication necessary to forming individual identity. This calls for a radical change in the medical health care system (2)); where responsibility is placed on doctors to approach a patient's psychosis on