DEALING WITH OUR DEMONS: A SHAMANIC PERSPECTIVE

I normally like to watch something while I have my dinner. This evening I listened to something - 'In the Psychiatrist's Chair'' from 1985, in which RD Laing was interviewed. The guy was in his late 50s at the time, and despite being something of a groundbreaking psychiatrist, he still suffered from heavy depression, such that he could hardly move sometimes, and he drank a lot. He was very open about this. And he described the depression as something meaningless that came upon him, and he saw the same pattern in his father and grandfather, in all of whom it started around mid-life. But that was that. It just seemed to be this meaningless and unfortunate phenomenon that it was his lot to deal with. He did feel, though, that it would be ungrateful to the powers-that-be were he to just end it all.

And I thought that isn't how I see my 'demons'. Not that I have suffered to the same extent that RD Laing has, so it may not be comparable. But since I can remember it has been like there has been a big hole in me, that expresses itself as bleakness and anxiety and fear and pointlessness. And it gets hold of me in unfamiliar situations where I don't know anyone, or when I have a practical difficulty to deal with.

And it wasn't until my mid-50s that I began to get a proper handle on it. Before that, it was only partly conscious, and in the driving seat more than I would have wanted. So a proper demon pursuing me! And I've done the usual thing of trying to psychoanalyse it, and I don't know how much truth there is in that. And I've looked at it ancestrally, and there may be something in that.

But really it wasn't until I started to relate to my demon as a spirit with whom I could be in sympathetic relationship that it started to sort. That began by relating to it as a young child, or as a series of them, and holding their hands and re-assuring them. That worked, but it also has an early childhood-psychoanalytic implication to it. I think that has truth, but is also reductive.

And really all I can say is that it is a spirit, and where it comes from is a mystery, but it is associated with me, so I'd better be in relationship with it. And it feels deeply personal, and it may have an ancestral aspect, and I wouldn't want someone trying to soul-retrieve it away. There is a lot in it, and I love what was my demon, who still gives me grief.

And with the spirit perspective that Shamanism gives me, I would never say that my suffering was meaningless, as RD Laing seemed to conclude about his own. There is always something in it if we learn to listen, there is probably something very big in it. And it will probably take years and years, and we will change profoundly along the way.

Incidentally, there was a good film that came out last year, Mad To Be Normal, with David Tennant playing RD Laing.

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