Bipolar Disorder, ADHD and Man’s Soul

Bruno Bettleheim

One of the lagniappes of psychoanalysis is the philosophical attitude it takes towards mental illness. There is no cure for life. In fact in Charlie Kaufman’s masterpiece Syndechoche, New York (2008) that is precisely the mysterious illness that afflicts the main character, Caden Cotard, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. The DSM-5 offers a smorgasbord of diagnoses that offer the illusion or delusion that there is some sort of cure for mental states which is achieved by 1)naming them 2)medicating them and 3)making them insurable. This is not to say that there aren’t severely ill patients who don’t benefit greatly from medication. But these days every other person you talk to is either bipolar, ADHD or if their behavior is more over the top, borderline. And having received one of these diagnosis a buffet of medications awaits these sufferers. It’s not surprising that the Times recently ran a front page piece about the abuse of  attention deficit disorder diagnoses, emphasizing the beneficial effect the diagnoses are having on the profits of the drug companies (“The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder,” NYT, 12/14/13). What’s most disturbing is that much of the medicating is being done willy-nilly by the worst kind of practitioners, those suffering from the arrogance of not knowing how little they know. Moliere would have had fun writing a parody of these Tartuffe’s of psychiatry. Perhaps he might have called it “Le docteur imaginaire.” When Bruno Bettleheim wrote Freud and Man’s Soul :An Important Reinterpretation of Freudian Theory back in l982, he was dealing with the American psychoanalytic  establishment’s need to use language as way of making psychoanalysis more scientific sounding. The fact is that while analysis may be quite helpful to the small number of patients who have the time and money to afford it, it’s hardly what one would classify as a scientific discipline. And that’s probably the good part. Psychoanalysis might not be the cure for ADHD or bipolar disorder, but it offers a broad view of human existence that attends to the one part of the human being that you can’t locate on an MRI or FMRI for that matter--the soul.

Kumare

                                                                                Kino Lorber

Belief is a commodity and a sometimes coveted one at that. Certain parts of India manufacture gurus the way Manhattan produces real estate tycoons and it wouldn’t be surprising to find that some eventually invested in Manhattan real estate. Vikram Gandhi’s Kumare: The True Story of a False Prophet, a documentary about a mock guru, is Moliere’s Tartuffe with a little bit of Jerzy Kosinski’s Being There thrown in. Gandhi put one over in Arizona, a part of the country that attracts spiritual seekers, some of whom have come to tragic ends--like those who died in a sweat lodge--under the influence of a zealot named James Arthur Ray who eventually was jailed for his crimes. Nothing this invidious happens in Kumare to the extent that is it is a send up with a spiritual message itself. The fact that people saw things in Gandhi’s created character, just the way they projected themselves on to Chance or Chauncey Gardener (played by Peter Sellers in the movie of the Kosinski novel) is precisely the director’s spiritual and philosophical intention. Gandhi wanted “his followers" to find the guru in themselves. Happiness and even feelings of divinity are two by-products of belief and Gandhi’s unwitting subjects, who include a lawyer who deals with death penalty cases, a troubled woman leaving her marriage, a recovering addict, an acoustic theologist and the members of a sect who chant “kabam” and use vision boards, refuse to relinquish their belief even as Gandhi aka Kumare tells them “I am not who you think I am.” The film could easily have been a skit on Saturday Night Live, but the director gets his cake and eats it too. Satire can be revealing, but it is rarely edifying and instructive in a positive way. The idea an illusion can function as a mirror that is also empowering is almost visionary!

Tartuffe

Moliere’s Tartuffe parodied the idealization of soothsayers and seers who sell salvation. Tartuffe was for all intensive purposes trafficking in indulgences by which money would be paid for grace. Moliere’s play was not an attack on Catholicism, but surely it was characters like Tartuffe that Luther was complaining about when he tagged his 95 Theses up on the door of the church in Wittenberg. Today the lingua franca of salvation has shifted from the mind or soul to the body and it’s fitness instructors who are our new gurus. Devotees chase spinning instructors around gyms in Chicago, New York and LA, in the way they once sought out major chefs like Ducasse, Bouley, Batali or famous doormen like Marc Benecke of Studio 54, seeking out the grail of propreoceptivity. Near riot conditions have prevailed outside of some popular spin classes and there was even a legal suit when one agitated rider threw another off a bike at the 85^th branch of Equinox. Devotees of boot camps are willing to endure extremes of pain doled out by their drill sergeants while acolytes of great weightlifters practice their power clings, dead lifts and dips. Power lifting is what it’s called and if you feel that mass is for the pope you might go to see one of the practitoners of plyometrics (jumping and fast movements that are used by those training for the decathalon), pilates which employs a suspicious sounding instrument called the reformer or yoga. Naturally yoga has its own crowds of bona fide Indian gurus who practice Ashtanga Vinyassa. If that’s not enough for you, then you’re going to have to practice jiu jitsu, karate, thai boxing or MMA (mixed martial arts) where you will be seduced by the promise of submission. In von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel(1930), Professor Rath (Emil Jannings) falls in love with a beautiful cabaret singer Lola Lola (Marlene Dietrich) and sacrifices his dignity as his unrequited love turns him into a pitiable creature. A modern day sequel of The Blue Angel should be made about the aficionados of celebrity trainers teaching what in high school used to be a hated class called “gym.”