James Hillman makes a strong argument for the archetypal organization of our day-to-day experience.  Our entire psychological and emotional experience occurs within a brain, and as a result acquires the underlying structure of the brain’s organization into the very fabric of our experience.

We live in a brain, and our psychological and emotional experience occurs entirely within the context of our brain’s underlying organizational structure.  Hillman’s argument is that this underlying structure is archetypally organized – we are foundationally grounded in a psychology of mythos.

I agree.

I appreciate the cogent and coherent arguments from depth psychology – the psychoanalytic school of professional psychology.  I am easily conversant in the self-psychology of Kohut and Stolorow, and early childhood of Winnicott, Bowlby, Stern, and Tronick.  I am fluent in Erikson, Kernberg, and Masterson, and I can converse on Freud and Klein, but only if you buy me a beer first.

My domain in depth psychology, however, is Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell.  I have read every book written by Jung, including Psychology & Alchemy, Symbols of Transformation, and Mysterium Coniunctionis, with my favorite opening awareness through his Answer to Job.  I have read all of Joseph Campbell as well as his audiotape lectures, I am also fluent in Julian Jaynes and the Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, and I’ve read the Golden Bough and the Iliad as primary source material.  I found-find both the Golden Bough and Jaynes useful.

I understand depth psychology.  As human beings, we will be organizing our psychological response to pandemic on cognitive levels, on emotional levels, and on underlying archetypal foundations.  It is in the mythos of our unconscious understanding that our psychological response will rest.  For all of us, our deeper archetypal organizing mythos will guide us, for some it will be disorienting and they will become lost.

Delusions of Reference

There will be a substantial increase in delusions of reference regarding “signs” of coming apocalypse of all definitions – whatever fearful and grandiose delusions attach themselves to the underlying mythos of pandemic will find full expression in their delusions of reference.

Delusions of reference are psychotic delusions where the person sees “signs” in everyday events, and perceives “special meaning” in alleged connections of “coincidences” that no one else sees.

Underlying this perception of “special signs” and meanings that only the “select” can see, is a more foundational belief that they, themselves, are “special” in their ability to see these “special meanings” and “special signs,” and it this “special” status that will help protect them and ward off the coming “danger.”

Wikipedia Delusions of Reference: Ideas of reference and delusions of reference describe the phenomenon of an individual experiencing innocuous events or mere coincidence and believing they have strong personal significance. It is “the notion that everything one perceives in the world relates to one’s own destiny”, usually in a negative and hostile manner.

Clearly, the archetypal Horseman of Pestilence will carry powerful persuasive pull for the vulnerable, who will collapse into “possession by the archetype” and will lose their anchor to surrounding reality.  I’m confident that the 20th Century will be identified as the Horseman of War, with global warming portending the Horseman of Famine.

Are they delusional?  No.  Why?

There is a sub-cultural exception to delusions of reference. If a lot of people believe it (i.e., us) then it’s not delusional – it’s a “sub-cultural belief.”

Are Christians Delusional?

All Christians believe that Jesus, a man (sort of) died and then rose from the dead after three days and hung-out with his disciples talking to them as a normal-alive human. Thomas (“doubting Thomas”) even verified that the post-death living Jesus had the wounds of his death.

Resurrection from death after three days is not a reality-based possibility.  No one else has ever in the history of humanity resurrected from death after three days.  That is medically impossible.   Yet every Christian believes that his one human-creature (sort of) did it, resurrected into life from death after three days.

Are they delusional (a fixed and false belief that is maintained despite contrary evidence; contrary evidence = medical impossibility, never happened any other time)?

No.  Christians have a “sub-cultural exception” to the normal definition of a delusion.  So do some of the “religions” waiting for extra-terrestrials to come save the planet, so do crystal “energy healers” who wave rocks over people to “balance their energies,” so do the Mormons who believe Jesus also resurrected in America;

From ABC News:  After Jesus’ resurrection, according to the Book of Mormon, he visited America. In fact, America plays a special role in Mormonism. Mormons believe that when Jesus returns to Earth, he will first go to Jerusalem and then to Missouri.

Missouri?  To be clear, I am a Christian, although I would say I’m non-traditional (The Cloud of Unknowing).  I was also trained annually for over 12 years by a UCLA research project in schizophrenia in the rating of delusional disorder and psychotic patholgy.  I know what a delusion looks like, I know how to interview for a delusion, I know the gradations of a delusion on a 7-point scale from Mild to Extremely Severe, including delusions of reference.

Organizing our human experience into the archetypal mythos of War (World Wars 1 & 2), Pestilence (Covid-19), and Famine (global warming) and the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse will be considered a “sub-cultural belief.”

The psychology of pandemic will pull for archetypal organizations and delusions of reference – sub-culturally excepted.

Working with the Archetypal World

Alternatively to collapsing into delusions of reference, i.e., finding “special meaning” in simple life events in an effort to ward of “dangers” from the world (e.g., medical treatment by amulet), is to actively construct the archetypal narrative of our journey with pandemic.

This is the approach we would take in early childhood mental health in helping a young child ages 4 or 5 (the mythos years of active imaginings) form and construct a narrative meaning for their experience and anxieties.

As an early childhood psychologist, I would construct the following narrative of mythos for the young child:

Pandemic the Out-of-Control Panda

Set-Up:  Create imagery for a Panda; it is a lovable creature ordinarily, so as not to be too scary; and its alliteration with Pandemic immediately links both together in the child’s psychology – one won’t appear without the other, so the narrative will a have soothing effect every time the construct of pandemic is activated, and the association to China will symbolically explain why China is involved in the news media discussion.

Beginning:  The twirling-destructive panda (sort of chaotic and destructive, but small and not too dangerous) is creating all sorts of havoc (make it reminiscent of children being-out-of control and messy).  The panda started in China but soon came to all the people of the world, twirling and being destructive, making people sick with fevers and coughs (the child understand these sick symptoms; introduce “out-of-control” first and soften it, then introduce becoming sick, and anchor it in fevers and coughs to counteract information in the media about death).

Middle:  Pandemic, the out-of-control panda, is causing many-many people everywhere to become upset, in Italy, in Spain, in the U.S.  Our doctors and nurses, and everyone, is working very hard to calm the panda down, twirling and twirling and headed everywhere with its out of control chaos.  The doctors and nurses, and all of us, are coming together to help Pandemic stop twirling.

End:  We succeed.  Our wonderful doctors and nurses, and all of us working together, are able to calm down Pandemic, so he/she isn’t out of-control anymore, and panda smiles and is happy and friendly now, helping the doctors develop new medicines for other diseases, and helping to cure people from other pandemics that might come in the future.  Turn Pandemic into a helpful panda, once he/she calms down.

Gender:  Choose whatever gender you want for the panda, most children will want to self-identify so will choose the their own gender for the panda, for girls Pandemic will be a girl panda, for boys he’ll be a boy panda – self-identification helps with psychological healing from the mythos narrative.

Agency:  At the end of the middle and beginning of the end, emphasize how everyone is coming together to help Pandemic calms down… we’re putting Pandemic on a time-out, we’re going to stay in our houses, not go to school, not go to work, so our doctors and nurses can get Pandemic to CALM Down, Pandemic!

Resolution:  Whew, it worked, Pandemic has calmed down, and look, now that Pandemic has calmed down, he/she is working WITH the doctors to help them develop new medicines; alleviating the child’s fears and transforming an out-of-control situation by active agency (putting the panda on a social time-out) and external (“parental”) protection from doctors and nurses will move the underlying mythos of pandemic and its complex trauma through to resolution.

That would be a narrative-structuring approach for trauma in working with young children, and school-age children, and adolescents, and adults, the narrative and archetypal organization of our brains do not change across a lifespan, we all live in a brain, and all of our brains are organized on deeper archetypal structures.

Larger narratives of archetypal mythos organization will also emerge, with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse leading the way.  In professional psychology, it is immensely useful for trauma recovery to help the patient develop a coherent narrative for the traumatic event, bringing cognitive-narrative mediation to an overwhelming emotional anxious-fearful event.

All domains of professional psychology are active with pandemic; the humanistic-existential world of our primal anxieties and their resolution, the structuring stability of cognitive-behavioral psychology, the family systems support for maintaining and deepening social connection, and the depth-psychology of psychoanalytic knowledge to ground our psychological experience within the tapestry of our underlying mythos and archetypal understanding.

Craig Childress, Psy.D.
Clinical Psychologist, PSY 18857