Latest / Sri Aurobindo Studies / How Many People Have Psychic Powers Misdiagnosed as Psychotic Disorders?

Transcript

How Many People Have Psychic Powers Misdiagnosed as Psychotic Disorders? · Sri Aurobindo Studies

• 0:01
  In the movie 6th Sense, a psychiatrist meets up with a
• 0:05
  young boy who claims to see dead people and interact with them.
• 0:09
  The psychiatrist spends the better part of the film trying
• 0:13
  to understand the boy and bring him out of his delusion.
• 0:17
  In the end, it turns out that the psychiatrist gains the
• 0:22
  realization that he was shot by one of his earlier patients and
• 0:27
  he is himself a dead person. The child's experience was true.
• 0:33
  The perception of it from the side of psychiatry was
• 0:36
  misdiagnosed. In this case, the child with the
• 0:40
  psychic ability to interact with dead people helped heal the
• 0:44
  ghost of the psychiatrist. In what may be something of a
• 0:50
  characteristic incident, a young man began experiencing various
• 0:54
  types of spiritual experiences and receiving guidance about his
• 0:59
  life, focus and direction. He eventually dropped out of
• 1:02
  college and went off to study and practice yoga.
• 1:06
  After several years, he met his parents, who had objected
• 1:10
  strenuously to his change in life direction, his failure to
• 1:14
  complete college, and his lack of a career path.
• 1:19
  They insisted he meet with a psychiatrist to get himself
• 1:22
  straightened out. In this case, he refused, went
• 1:26
  on to a long life, committed to his yogic practice, integrated
• 1:30
  it into a full and balanced life, and eventually found his
• 1:35
  peace with his parents. How many such individuals face a
• 1:40
  similar circumstance? How many wind up on the
• 1:43
  psychiatrist's couch? How many try to conform to the
• 1:48
  family's insistent demands, thereby suppressing their
• 1:53
  spiritual aspirations? In many cases, the individual
• 1:58
  himself is confused about what is happening.
• 2:02
  He has imbibed a set of expectations, he feels the
• 2:06
  pressures from his family and friends, and he is subject to
• 2:10
  the norms of the society within which he lives.
• 2:14
  Suddenly, he finds that he is experiencing things that fall
• 2:18
  outside all of those norms and expectations.
• 2:22
  He finds his direction moving contrary to those that he has
• 2:26
  accepted throughout his life up to that time.
• 2:30
  He does not know how to adjust and reconcile the inner
• 2:34
  experiences with the outer life he is leading.
• 2:38
  This can lead to behaviour that appears disoriented and may
• 2:42
  actually mimic psychiatric disorder.
• 2:46
  Not because it is, but because the individual has not found the
• 2:50
  way to reconcile the inner experience with the outer life
• 2:55
  and he does not have the support and guidance needed to integrate
• 3:00
  them into a harmonious life. The solution is not to treat
• 3:05
  this as a disorder, but to go to the underlying experiences and
• 3:10
  help the individual appreciate the deeper and true sense of
• 3:15
  what he is experiencing, Doctor Dalal writes quote psychiatrists
• 3:22
  tend to look upon persons who apparently possess psychic
• 3:25
  powers as abnormal, that is suffering from a psychiatric
• 3:29
  disorder. Doctor Judith Orloff, the
• 3:33
  psychiatrist in Los Angeles and author of Second Sight, Thomas
• 3:38
  More 1997, writes that she displayed paranormal abilities
• 3:43
  since the age of nine, but for years refrained from speaking
• 3:48
  about them because her mother and others around showed no
• 3:52
  understanding of these abilities and gave her the feeling she was
• 3:56
  abnormal. It was only when, after an out
• 4:00
  of body experience, she was seen at an institute for ESP that she
• 4:06
  learned that she was gifted rather than psychiatrically
• 4:11
  I'll. According to her estimate,
• 4:14
  perhaps based mainly on her own practice of psychiatry, about
• 4:18
  25% of those who seek psychiatric help and are
• 4:23
  diagnosed as suffering from psychosis are in fact psychic
• 4:29
  rather than psychotic. End Quote Reference Sri Oro
• 4:35
  Bindu and the Mother Powers within Introduction page Roman
• 4:40
  11.