Grief leaves its stamp on the human soul more and more as many shapes and systematizes impersonal society, which he gradually and steadily transforms from a field of love and cooperation into a field of competition and psychic alienation.
Man has come to live as a stranger among strangers, using an impersonal and superficial language of communication with people, who have ceased to be “near” but have become individuals, whose interpersonal relations are intertwined in a maelstrom of economic and professional relations and conflicts, remaining psychically unknown to each other, having their joy and sorrow, their expectations and hopes closed off, within the carefully circumscribed boundaries of themselves, living and culminating their existential anguish in an inner dialogue without end or, on the contrary, suppressing every inner voice and attempt at uplift, plunging their lives into the quagmire of material bliss and accepting the morbid silence of indifference, which is interrupted by the occasional worldly echo, which, however, cannot counteract the ever-increasing background of hidden sorrow.
Sadness and anxiety make up today, as never before in history, the secret chord of human misery, which, transferred from the individual to the social sphere, becomes a cry of despair and an appeal for help, which usually remains unanswered.
The existential anguish of man within the dimensions of modern society.
If man is young, in the age of quests and the intensity of existential anguish, the anguish of doubt and the anguish of responsibility, he usually struggles for the transcendence of himself and for the experience of the absolute, which is essentially timeless, connected in time only with the experience of limiting situations.
His anxiety and anguish sometimes assume the dimension of a psycho-social crisis, which fixes him in the search for a system of values on which to base the basis of his personality and constitute the motivation of his social functioning. The whole effort to find his true and authentic being, the solidification of which will allow the harmonious formation of his social being as well, will be based on the value system he seeks.
Τhe search for the absolute sometimes takes on the dimensions of martyrdom, of the great agony, of life or death, of existence or the dissolution of mental and spiritual non-existence.
Τhe search for models, which could serve as guides for finding authentic values and the harmonious and authentic form of identification of the ego, is an agonizing process, which often includes the element of enthusiasm and deep commitment. The example of Kierkegaard, who in his agonizing philosophical quest, in the end with special respect to all those who lived the agony of the ultimate and followed the path of martyrdom and sacrifice, who remained devoutly faithful to their principles, the search for the ultimate, in accordance with the psychological processes of the youthful period, has a great and weighty significance throughout the inner life of the individual.
Τhe search for the ultimate on the basis of a stable evaluative system of personality structure, provides the individual with the psychological self-reliance that makes him normally responsible and able to function without seeking attachments and social supports. It gives him the ability to act without asking to be fed by the social space, having within him the source of true and indefatigable content.
As Kierkegaard points out, the ideal for the helper is to be alone. The greatest value of help is recommended to prevent the one being helped from becoming dependent on the helper. Help, which leads to dependence, is not really help.
Not finding the absolute and compromise in the limited social frameworks, becomes a source of anxiety and stress which is all the more acute as the thirst for truth awakens the individual from the compromising alignment with social reality and brings him into the space of pure expectations of the inner man.
The truth that awaits the young man is beyond the dimensions of the old technocratic human logic and full theoretical knowledge. The individual with the inner sensitivity of the inner man knows in depth that truth is found in the model of love and sacrifice through which the space of true freedom, the freedom of the children of God, is defined.
Psychopathological reactions of modern man
Departure from the truth always has tragic consequences through the inner life of the individual. THE CONSEQUENCES, which are a consequence of the disturbance of the homeostatic balance, are sometimes obvious, taking on the dimensions of mental illness or sociopathic behavior, sometimes the behaviors do not manifest themselves but are a true inner testimony of the individual, who lives in the bleak inner space of grief and contradictions, but struggles to demonstrate harmonious social behavior, hiding very well the disharmonious elements of his soul, like the physically afflicted, he tries diligently to hide the wounds of his body.
The relevance and limited value of the phenomenological criteria
Through the definition of mental health and the demarcation between healthy and mentally ill experience, the phenomenological criteria have always applied and still apply, determined through the overall behavioral pattern of the individual of his actions, his words, even his facial expressions., These elements are indicators, showing the extent of its homeostatic balance, or the gravity of its internal disharmony.
The deeper processes, unless there is a gateway to their externalization, become indistinguishable and poorly understood when they are not in harmony with the schema of the expressed behavior, directly with the type of social functionality, indirectly with the forms of art.
The weakness and vulnerability of the phenomenological criteria is evident, insofar as it is possible to carefully conceal a disturbed psychic life, either by means of the relevant social withdrawal, or by means of particularly cautious behavior manifested within acceptable social contexts.
At the same time, it is possible that absolute mental harmony and very good mental health can be perceived as morbid because of the projected disordered pattern of social behavior, as is the case with the “crazy” saints for Christ, who are becoming insane through Christ and have become an object of mockery and reverie to men. Their apparent behavior, that’s which they themselves have shown at times and in such a provocative manner before the people, was contrary to the usual accepted form of Christian social behavior. Their daring behavior, on the contrary, which is always secretly expressed, bears the stamp of deep love, sacrifice and the spirit of healthy sociability.
From a psychiatric point of view, the saints in question are a unique phenomenon of people who have managed to successfully express the phenomenological aspect of mental illness, keeping their personality stable and their homeostatic balance unchanged, despite the constant overwhelming difficulties they faced within their social space, Expressing unceasingly the testimony of love and faith, and bearing perpetually the cross of martyrdom and contempt.
On the contrary, in the presence of a disturbed mental background, all possible efforts to maintain harmonious social behavior and conceal the inner drama usually fail in the end, especially when an exogenous trauma or aggravating factor is exerted and the individual visibly enters the space of mental illness or falls into the same morbid state of sociopathic reactions or flight from reality.
Stavros I. Balogiannis
Professor of Neurology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Director of the A Neurology Clinic of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
We would like to thank the Holy Metropolis of Drama for permission to republish the reports and conclusions of the conference held on 21-23/5/1995.
