I think in wiser cultures the invisible burden is recognised, and pain is embraced in its transformative capacity. There are rituals in which the individual gives up a tiny piece of flesh in order to release some dead part of their life. I think we have much to grieve - many of us too much so as we dwell on the insane fringe of a repugnant mainstream society.
Ritual. This what our present-day societies lack. Rituals are the retelling of events which link us to our source, whatever one believes this to be. They are the re-enactments of stories, mythologies, which contain deep meanings to our psyche, both individual and collective. There is a 'magic', a transcendant factor, to a ritual which draws the individual out of the monotonous chaos of everyday life into a realm of imagination, the process of imaging. It is images which speak to the psyche in a more direct manner than words. When one performs a ritual, one 'becomes' the original participants of the original event. One transcends linear time into transcendant time.
With the lack, or even absence, of ritual in life, one begins to create one's own rituals. If one's psyche and one's memory contain strong 'negative' events, then the rituals constructed by the psyche will be of the kind to both re-state and expunge these events. The ritual of 'cutting', and it is a ritual, performs two functions. First, it re-enacts and makes visible the memories of the originating 'negative' events which produced the pain and self-abnegation. This 'brings forth into the world' the source(s) so that one may be conscious of them. Secondly, the ritual, in an attempt to expunge these memories, and their source(s), performs a physical action akin to 'cutting out' that which caused the pain. A ritual is always a physical event.
But there is a problem with self-ritual. Being as this ritual is performed in secret and solitary, there is no 'other to project onto' the source of the pain, there is only one's self. In other words, there is no scapegoat or saviour to absorb the sins (sources of pain) but one's self. One becomes the totality of the ritual, the one who hurts, the one who is the source of the hurt, and the one absorbing the 'sins' of the hurt. You can see the spiral which develops here.
The individual becomes, simultaneously, the re-enactor (the inflictor) of the source of the pain, the pain itself, the expunger of the pain, and the scapegoat/saviour of the pain. Self-healing and self-loathing become intertwined, thus multiplying the confusion and complexity of the individual's pain. Nothing is resolved. Nothing is healed. The individual returns to a benumbed and detached state to escape the cycle until it re-emerges.
Rituals of this sort must be externalised onto a scapegoat. Often, if one pursues therapy, one's therapist becomes the 'priest' performing the ritual and the scapegoat absorbing the 'sin'. This produces a love/hate relationship toward the therapist as the individual respects, or even reveres, the therapist for being the assistor, the 'redeemer', in the healing, yet loathes the therapist for becoming the absorber, the embodiment, of the sins/pain.
In Chistian mythology, Satan takes on both the role of the scapegoat and the source (the embodiment) of the sins of all Humankind, whereas Christ is the redeemer (healer) and the priest performing the ritual of expunging the sins.
Also, in Christian folk-lore, there is one who is named 'The Sin-eater'. This is one who, through a certain ritual, absorbs ('eats') the sins of another immediately prior to death so that the other may enter sinless into Heaven. This Soul-eater is loathed and reviled, but is tolerated because of his usefulness. According to folk-lore, this Sin-eater is condemned to live until such time as he finds another willing to become a soul-eater. The new soul-eater then consumes all the sins the former one absorbed and, as his existence progresses, will add more sins to this total. These Sin-eaters existed primarily from Medieval times into the Renaissance.
On a side note, I think the Catholic church lost much of its power when they shifted the Latin Mass into English, removed the rood screen, and let the congregation see the ritual performed. The 'mystery' of this ritual was stripped from it and what spoke to the psyches of the congregation was now speaking to the consciousness and became common and subject to analysis. Rituals contain a 'mystery' to them, a unknown underlying current which promotes the transcendance of the every-day. To remove this mystery is to remove the sacredness, the feeling of sanctuary, of the ritual.
There needs to be rituals to address the solitary pain of individuals. These rituals cannot be born of analysis or constructed logically or empirically, they must be intuited; they must be drawn from the archetypes within the psyche. This is not something for the psychologists or psychiatrists, no matter how pure their motives. Rituals involve mythology and mystery. They are the realms of poets and shamans.
Strong disease needs strong medicine, and without the shaman to show us the way we are left in our own hands with only a compulsion and feral instincts to half illuminate possible responses.
Shamans, when healing the sick, enter a state of trance in order to discover the spirit infecting the one ill. The shaman will recognise this spirit and know how to fight or deal with the spirit. This spirit may not be necessarily detrimental in its natural state, but when combined with a human spirit, there is a struggle for dominance. Sometimes the shaman, in order to deal with the illness, will absorb the spirit into him/her self. It is not uncommon for the shaman to be ill him/her self for days while the shaman struggles with the spirit to expel it or to live with various spirits within so that they may not infect others again. The shaman has undergone rigid training in the rituals and myths of the group, including a 'death/rebirth' ritual which marks one as a shaman. For this, the shaman is both revered and feared by the group, but a necessary factor in the cohesiveness of the group.
The role of shaman in our 'modern' societies has gone to various functions of our societies. Priests, pastors, psychiatrists, psychologists, popular music idols, and 'New Age' gurus to name a few. But these 'shamans' are, for the most part, not learned in the deep mythological metaphorical meanings of the 'mystery' and 'magic' of the rituals they perform or develop. A ritual must connect back though time, not merely be a performance of actions.
Until we infuse our societies with rituals which have mythological and metaphorical meaning to our psyche, both individual and collective, as well as our modern-day progressive life, individuals will construct their own rituals which will be virtually ineffective and definitely damaging to the individual and to our species as a whole.
I'll try to keep them shorter next time.
