' I Do Not Exist ' - Pathological Loss of Self after a Buddhist Retreat

Eve is plagued by a waking nightmare.‘I do not exist. All you see is a shell with no being inside, a mask covering nothingness. I am no one and no thing. I am the unborn, the non-existent.’– fromPickering (2019).Dr. Judith Pickering is a psychotherapist and Jungian Analyst in Sydney, Australia. Her patient ‘Eve’ is an “anonymous, fictionalised amalgam of patients suffering disorders of self.”   Eve had a psychotic episode while attending a Tibetan Buddhist retreat.“She felt that she was no more than an amoeba-like semblance of pre-life with no form, no substance, no past, no future, no sense of on-going being.”Eve ' s fractured sense of self preceded the retreat. In fact, she was drawn to Buddhist philosophy preciselybecauseof its negation of self. In the doctrine of non-being (an ātman), “there is no unchanging, permanent self, soul, or essence in living beings.” The tenet of emptiness (śūnyatā)— that “all things are empty [or void] of intrinsic existence”— was problematic as well. When applied and interpreted incorrectly,śūnyatā andan ātmancan resemble or precipitate disorders of the self.Dr. Pickering noted:‘Eve’ is representative of a number of patients suffering bothderealisation anddepersonalisation. They doubt the existence of the outer world (derealisation) and fear that they do not exist. In place of a sense of self, they have but an empty core inside (depersonalisation).How do you find your way back to yoursel...

Source: The Neurocritic - June 15, 2019 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs