Eliminate the disease, not the symptoms

If you ever happen to visit a bedlam, what you will see will not only be soul-stirring for you, but will also make you ashamed of being a human. Human beings are confined there, and their condition is worse than animals. Attempts to make them look like normal human beings through corporal punishment are proving futile.

It’s been happening for years that a person sighs within the four walls of a bedlam till his last breath. The main reason for this is that often doctors look at the external causes and symptoms of the patient and make a prescription. They do not want to take the pains of probing through the psychological background of the disease. As a result, a very few people are cured. Because doctors there ignore the mental actions and just see only the physical symptoms. Now, the analysis of an individual’s instincts, sexual pleasure, nervous pressure and mental confusion is being presented in a new way around the world: the patient is not locked in a bedlam, but treated by psychiatrists. This method is solving many social problems and is helping to create a society which is both healthy and calm.

Seen from any angle, our society today has turned into a big bedlam in which a majority of the people are suffering from mental disorders and their condition is worse than animals. According to Homer, man is not made of wood or stone, but is a lump of flesh with a heart and mind. He has feelings. Every good or bad thing affects him; abuse, cruelty, injustice, powerlessness cry out inside him; helplessness, hunger and poverty mourn with him. In such a society, people grow mad.

Henri Bergson has proved that “the human mind cannot be completely empty at any moment. Either we feel something or think something, or intend to do something or are actually doing something.” In 1880-1882, psychiatrist Josef Breuer recognised this fact that every mental illness is closely related to the past life, and if a patient is treated after discovering this relationship, they can recover very quickly. Later, Sigmund Freud also recognised this fact.

When 21-year-old Anna O was brought to Breuer for treatment, she was suffering from paralysis of certain organs and numbness at the same time. Eye movement was a difficult task for her and she had weak eyesight. She could not keep her head straight. She used to feel nauseated while eating food. Despite being treated by various doctors, she was not getting better. Breuer tried to treat her by narcotisation, but the patient did not seem to recover. However, he noticed that when the patient discussed her illness with him, she felt a little shy. He asked the patient to describe the circumstances of her illness. She then lighted on many dark corners of her life. As she revealed the secrets of her life, she felt better about herself. Breuer himself was surprised at how much medicine he had given the patient before and treated her in every possible way, but she could not recover. But now the patient began to recover after narrating her situation. When the patient described the incidents in detail and expressed her feeling about it through words, the various symptoms of the diseases immediately disappeared and never occurred again.

Once, during a discussion on neuroses, Freud pulled out a picture card showing a man trying to blow out an electric bulb. If you people want to catch the disease directly, you behave exactly like that stupid fellow: you should look for the switch that turns off the electricity. Freud says: “The purpose of our psychological life is to achieve pleasure and avoid agony.”

In his book, Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche writes: “The books written in German on the subject of agony are for the every man who has a third ear.” Now, there are only two options left in front of us. One, we continue to groan and then die. Two, create within ourselves the courage to face the situation. Remember, we also have a third ear. So, listen carefully to the voices that are telling us that our only purpose in life is to achieve happiness and avoid agony. So eliminate the disease, not the symptoms.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 27^th, 2023.

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