～Fresh Start as a Psychiatrist, First marriage and divorce～
In the previous section, I discussed in details what psychoanalysis and Christianity have in common.
This idea actually sprouted in my mind about 8 years ago, when I came back from Tokyo to Kyoto, where I began to live with my old mother after I had got a divorce with my ex-wife.
I was driven by a strong compulsion to replace Christianity with Lacan’s psychoanalysis: to replace faith with skepticism, while thoroughly denying the former.
It was also at that period that my desire to be a writer began to grow bigger and bigger. －I was already writing a novel on the close relationship between psychoanalysis and Christianity.
It was actually a love story between two pretty girls, students of a Catholic missionary middle school.
Anyway…
Why did Christianity make intrusion into my thoughts, although I was a stubborn atheist? －This question will be answered afterwards.
At that time, I brought enormous passion to deny everything and to put everything in question.I had strong hatred and jealousy against those people who `believe’.
As for the love story, it didn’t come to an end, even though I wrote over 1000 pages.
Here, I’d like to rewind time by 20 years at a stroke.
I want go back to the age of 30, when I just made the first encounter with Lacan while in Keio University.
Radical skepticism of structuralists seemed to be a savior that could make a breakthrough out of the occluded world of conservatives.
I immediately went into Lacan’s psychoanalysis, neglecting the fact that I myself was occluded, not the World.
It was also an important motive to cure my own mental desease by myself.
Nevertheless, not a sign of Christianity was found in my mind at that time.
－I never dreamt of psychoanalysis connected to Christianity, believing the former to be a genuine human science,
I remember a brilliant student, 10 years younger than me.His favorate phrase was the following. －`Religion puts a period to everything.That’s the last thing we should be interested in.’
I was putting all my heart into Lacan’s psychoanalysis, which was a human science for me to find out the human Truth. －Practically every psychoanalyst arrogantly insists that Oedipus Complex is the human Truth.
Certainly, I have never met any thinkers more powerful than Jacques Lacan.He was such a great contributor to modern philosophy and psychiatry that any human sciences ignoring Lacan would not even qualified to talk about the Truth.
Nevertheless, after having made Christian, I will never worship him.I’d like to limit myself to admitting that Lacan was a genius who lived between God and Satan.
After 4 years of student life, I naturally thought as follows.
－`Although I studied earnestly psychoanalysis, it is yet an armchair theory. Why not practice it with living humans? But who would ever offer such a field to a dropout like me?’
I was actually planning to go back to my parents’ in Kyoto, tired of a drifter’s life.
I applied for several medical schools around Kyoto, but they all shut me out so I asked Keio University to pick me up as a psychiatric resident.
I was expecting nothing from it, quite sure that they wouldn’t allow me in either.
However…
They agreed willingly to accept me, to my surprise. －That might be thanks to mediation of Drs. TK and HH whose major was the French psychiatry.
I felt happy for sure but it meant I got stuck in Tokyo, which caused me a kind of hesitation and anxiety.
Nevertheless, I eventually started my career as a psychiatrist driven by a strong interest in learning.
While learning psychiatric medicine in general, I practiced intensive psychoanalysis for patients of the neurotic spectrum i.e.neurosis, depression, personality disorder, and so on.
As expected, as was written in the textbook, they began to vent their emotions against me while depending totally on me at the same time.
Facing such a situation, psychoanalysts need to act as the Father with Authority, which is extremely difficult for therapists like me who are still dependent themselves.
I eventually gave it up after 6 months.
✝Affinity to psychopathology
At the sight of my disappointment, Dr.HH offered me translation-related works, which meant translation of psychiatric articles written in French to put them on academic journals with some comments.
Dr.HH was a researcher in psychopathology but he was completely unfamiliar with philosophy or psychoanalysis.
`Psychopathology’ refers to a psychiatric research field dealing with psychotics (mainly schizophrenics) －what they call `mad’ people－so it is totally different in nature from psychopharmacology.
It was just at this period that I made a major change of direction.
－I began to prefer psychotic spectrum patients to neurotic ones; the latter need psychoanalysis and take a lot of time while the former are mainly treated with medicines and take less time.
Moreover, what psychotics told us seemed to be much more profound and interesting than what neurotics did; the former seemed to be closer to the Truth, in a paradoxical manner.
Jacques Lacan developed accurate and clear discussion for psychotics as well.
I finally became a kind of lazy psychiatrist who listens to psychotics eagerly but who is reluctant to struggle with neurotics.
It was also from this period that downfall of my life seemed to be accelerated.
－I got married with my ex-wife at that period.
She was also a doctor (physician), 4 years younger than me.I met her by chance and I married her without any consideration, just thinking my parents wouldn’t against our marriage.
－In short, I was craving for someone to depend on.
She was a strong-minded woman, good at work.She got pregnant soon after marriage.
When I blessed her, she said that she didn’t want a child.She reasoned that she wanted to continue her work and that she had no confidence to raise the child.
At that time, believing that it was unconditional joy for women to have children, abortion looked like a serious sin impossible to forgive.
I pleaded with her while crying to give birth to my child.
She agreed with me reluctantly after persuasion through day and night.
But suddenly, she began to make a weird confession.
Looking back from today, I think she felt so guilty that she couldn’t keep it to herself; but at that time I couldn’t understand at all why she said it.
She said as below.
－`I had practically the same experience before.It’s about another man who was my fianc.When I got pregnant with his baby, I didn’t have confidence to…’
Her words beat me up.I didn’t have enough generosity to accept her past.
After several days of daze, I decided to swallow everything and to raise the child with my full strength.
Our relationship seemed to get restored.
－After childbirth, she did her best to balance her work with household affairs.So did I.
But I had already lost affection for her.
I doted on my son.I could never scold him.－Just because I depended on him.
On the other hand, she put all her heart into our son’s education.－She made him go to all kinds of cram schools and hired many private tutors for him so she deprived him of every freedom.
Unable to play a role of good husband and good father any more, I finally began to give myself over to alcohol, hypnotics and antidepressants.
I used to frequent bad quarters, to have extramarital affairs, but I felt neither guilty nor ashamed. －It was a revenge on my wife.
Soon after marriage, I was sent to a psychiatric hospital, where I was to stay over 15 years.
As if to fill up emptiness in marriage life, I began to focus on my work.
But this `work’ was something completely different from treatment of mental illnesses.－As I already said, it meant listening to psychotics while taking notes, reading articles and books on psychiatry/philosophy and researches on pathography※
※This is a research field on artists with mental diseases and their works.I doted on this human science to a morbidsome extent.I’m planning to discuss it around the final part of my book.
Failure in marriage life made me suspicious of any kind of reality, so that I indulged deep in the world of psychotics, where every reality seemed to be inverted.And in the meantime, I was deprived of every humanity by Lacan’s way of thinking i.e.radical skepticism, which was a tool to decipher the psychotic world.
Typical symptoms presented by psychotics－schizophrenics above all－are hallucinations and delusions: especially the auditory hallucination and the delusion of persecution.
The origin of these symptoms could be discussed in details, starting from `Collapse of Set’ mentioned above in relation to `Logic of the One’.But I’d like to save this matter to another opportunity.
Nevertheless, I was especially interested in hallucinations/delusions related to our body, which are called `Cenestopathy’. －These symptoms looked like ampliphication of my own abnormal bodily perceptions.
I’d like to give some examples of Cenestopathy below.
－`My bowels are twisted, torn off, rotten.’ ; `Threads are twining around my spine.My spine feels limp like rubber.’ ; `I had both sides of my brain exchanged.My brain was replaced with another person’s.’
Although they are really weird and eccentric, hallucinations/delusions of this type can be explained clearly by means of Lacan’s idea. －The World is articulated and given Order by Language.
If Oedipus Complex/Castration/Primordial Suppression didn’t function properly, in other words, if the New Self were not born after death of the Old Self, human beings would be destroyed and disintegrated in a miserable and tragic manner, both in mind and in body.
In those days, I was seeking the Old Self.
What would happen if the Old Self, which was destined to die, continued to live? －Perhaps, I wanted to know the answer…
I used to collect many cases of Cenestopathy and present them at academic meetings.
One day, I suddenly received a letter from a well-known psychopathologist, who wrote: `Your inspiration is great! I want to make researches with you.’
He was Dr.TS an assistant professor of Tokyo Medico-Dental College (at that time), a person respected and hated at the same time by Lacan-worshipers because he was a genius attempting to turn over Lacan’s theory.
According to Dr.TS, my idea had something original to get over Lacan.
Flattered a lot, I foolishly tried to read his writings. －They were all Greek to me, like an extraterrestrial language.
Nonetheless, he instantly captivated me. －I thought `This is not human work.There you find the Truth itself.’
In the meanwhile, I came to know that his idea belonged to `post-structuralism’, which is a view of the World without the Father (without God of course).
－If the structuralism is an idea to eliminate the Father and God, post-structuralism could be compared to the World where exist only the Mother and women after complete elimination of the Father and God.
Lacan was yet too naïve, with regard to skeptical radicalism…
I’d like to give two big names of post-structuralists: Jilles Deleuze (philosopher) and Felix Guatari (psychiatrist), whose ideas could be eventually reduced to System Theory. －The World is a chronological succession of different systems, every element of each system interacting with one another.
That idea is surprisingly similar to Buddhism, for the both are based on `reincarnation※’.
※Nietzsche expressed this concept with the term Eternal Recurrence.
Post-structuralism developed a theory so complicated that it makes us crazy; its aim was to explain reincarnation in a theoretical manner.
I dare say that you should be almost crazy, without any kind of humanity, if you wish to understand their theory. －Just like myself.
I continued to think crazily about reincarnation.
For me, reincarnation was by no means an armchair theory because I often heard psychotics talk about reincarnation.
I thought as well that I couldn’t avoid reincarnation if I ever wished to face my own death.
Anyway…
In order that everything may be reincarnated, there should be some kind of `Power’ at work. －Post-structuralism, which had completely eliminated the Father/ God and denied Oedipus Complex, called this Power `Difference’ (Diffrence) or `Intensity’ (Intensit).
It means that there should be some kind of power at work creating distinction i.e.difference between elements of the system.
Anyway…
What an amazing miracle it was!
I was to experience salvation of the Lord Jesus, after going through this hyper-radical skepticism and far beyond this kind of human-made philosophy. －This salvation was given to me, after I had encountered the mathematical formula describing the Mbius Strip.
It took nearly 20 more years, however, for this miracle to be accomplished.
Now, I’d like to get back to the marriage life with my ex-wife.
The abnormal relationship between me, my ex-wife and my son resulted in a decisive catastrophe when my son became a middle school student. －He bagan to revolt against his mother, resorting to violence.
My ex-wife fought back and tried to control him so all the glasses and plates were broken on the floor, with all sorts of household stuffs flying about in the air.Our house was like a battlefield everyday.
I could do nothing but pretend to reconcile them, going back and forth between them.
On the day when they had the most terrible fight, my son ran away from home. －He was 14 years old.
To say it exactly, he took refuge in his grandmother’s house (i.e.my ex- wife’s mother) where he stayed since then on.
I and my ex-wife visited her house repeatedly to settle the matter, but she would never let us in, saying `You are not qualified to be his parents.I’m going to raise him!’
On the other hand, my son yelled me all sorts of insults. －`You are not my father.I’ve never seen a junk like you.Go to hell!’
Since then till today, he has been out of touch.
My ex-wife was gradually suffering a mental sickness.She began to vent her anger against me, swearing loudly and using violence.
I thought that she had `borderline prersonality disorder’ from the beginning and that stress made it obvious.
When we consulted Dr.HH, he gave her diagnosis of `manic depressive illness’.But despite medication, her mental state never improved.
Unable to stand any more, I ran away from her to Kyoto, where I began to live with my old mother in 2008.
For a while since then, I was keeping in touch with my ex-wife, who sounded relatively normal on the phone.
However, my mother-in-law began to make contact with me frequently, asking me to take care of my ex-wife.She used to say `She is raging about right now! She is out of her mind!’ －She was visiting her mother’s house almost everyday crying out loudly and breaking windows so she was obliged to call police.
I decided to get a divorce with her, thinking she might injure my son.I tried to take custody to protect him. When lawsuit finished after two years, my son enrolled Tokyo University and started to live on his own.
I hear that he is working now for the government.My ex-wife is perhaps working as a doctor, judging from the fact that I hear nothing of her.