The Alchemy of Anorexia Nervosa

The Swiss psychiatrist C.G. Jung researched alchemical themes because, like mythology and fairytales, they metaphorically expressed the psychic processes that transpired in the background of the psyche in the language of the historical era in which these forms of expression were created. An analysis of alchemical themes can be used to understand the psychology of the unconscious in a contemporary context. Unfortunately the language of those old alchemical treaties is rather arcane and therefore difficult to make any sense out of it. Moreover, confusion was created when some alchemists used symbols in a way that was contrary to the way other alchemists used the same symbols. Oftentimes we are confronted with this same confusing problem when we try to analyse the themes that appear in modern art, literature and film. Nonetheless with a good understanding of Analytical Psychology one can discern definite symbolic patterns in the themes that are portrayed in these media.

Quite often the confusion between how certain themes and symbols are used in the arts can be attributed to cultural or personality differences of the authors. While studying the phenomenon of self-harming behaviour I became aware of a number of thematic patterns that were forming in the background of contemporary culture that was related to self-harming behaviour. I was hoping to write a book on the subject but quickly learned from the discourse concerning this topic on Internet forums that a serious analytical understanding self-harm was a taboo subject for conventional psychologists and the vast majority of people. While Gothic fantasy themes are hugely popular, almost nobody wants to know anything about the psychology of this phenomenon beyond superficial sociological explanations: e.g., the notion that anorexia nervosa is caused by fashion trends.

Like with the lemmings, there appears to be a dormant archetype of self-destructiveness in the psychic background and people feel that it is best to avoid this sleeping dog, least it bite its owner. Nonetheless, people become fascinated by news reports of the self-destructive antics of other people. For some individuals this fascination can have a contagious affect, which is no better illustrated than in the phenomenon of anorexia nervosa where its compulsions sometimes affects other individuals by way of suggestion.

While researching the phenomenon of anorexia nervosa, I became aware of a thematic pattern that appeared in popular Gothic fantasies fitted the pattern that occurs in the fantasies, symptoms and convictions of many anorexics. While working on this project, after having made this realization, I eventually got back to Jung’s work on alchemy and found that the same basic themes that are expressed in modern Gothic fantasies were also expressed in the alchemical treaties of the Middle Ages. In other words, understanding the psychological meaning behind the themes that occur in mythology, fairytales and alchemy can help us understand the underlying dynamics of disorders like anorexia nervosa and cutting.

While some conventional psychologists like accuses Jungian psychology of being unscientific because it deals with fantasy, some individuals have written books that accuse Jung of being a number of things such as an occultist, mystic and worse. Yet, the psychological authorities do not know, or more correctly, cannot admit to knowing the aetiology of anorexia nervosa and cutting, e.g., none of their official explanations can explain why anorexia nervosa, bulimia and cutting suddenly became an epidemic that began emerging in the late 1960s and 1970s. But the real reason for smearing Jung is that the individuals who do the smearing and their followers are afraid of waking the sleeping dogs and getting mauled badly. They are afraid of their own shadows, i.e., they are terrified of the stuff that lies dormant in the background of their own psyches, which is the subject of Jungian Analytical Psychology.

The purpose of The Art of Tragedy project is to explore the relationship between the aetiology of anorexia nervosa and cutting and the themes portrayed in Alchemy, mythology, fairytales and the modern Gothic fantasy stories that fascinate adolescents.

Alice's Adventures at Swan Lake

The Queen of Wonderland project involves a rather unique approach to understanding the complex issues surrounding the bedevilling problems adolescents face when they try to adapt to our artificial technological culture. Anthropologists have repeatedly pointed out that, despite the lack of modern medicine and conveniences, problems like major depression and autism are almost completely unknown in cultures where television does not exist, e.g., in the Amish community. Yet depression, along with a host of related disorders, is rife in our culture.

Although an individual's ego happily adapts to modern technological culture, there is a factor in our psychic background that doesn't. The psyche has its own rules: hardwired genetic rules. Trying to analyse and explain why depression and self-harming behaviour are so rampant in modern technological culture is not an easy task. The end results always appear to most people like psychobabble even when explained in plain language. This is because understanding what self-harm is about conflicts with what we are taught to believe, i.e., it appears as something alien or taboo. As a result, most people are content with simplistic explanations, the sort of stuff that explains nothing in fact.

This desire for uncomplicated simplification is the factor that inspired an Italian fashion designer to put up an appalling image of a nude anorectic model on billboards as an attempt to make adolescent girls conscious of the dangers of becoming anorectic. Yet, the problem of anorexia nervosa is increasing rather than decreasing among children. Fashion, in itself, is not the cause of anorexia nervosa as the authorities claim. A fashion designer's obsession with the thin figure in fashion is the result of the same kind of inspiration that is behind anorexia nervosa itself. There is another, i.e., a "setting-the-trap," factor involved in order for an adolescent to become triggered into developing anorexia nervosa. You can't set off a trap if you don't wind up the mechanism first. It is this setting-the-trap factor that sociologists, and conventional psychologists pretend to know nothing about. So they focus upon the triggering factor. Anything can trigger a trap. A dead branch can fall off a tree and land on the trap and set it off. Hence, the leitmotif, "many things contribute to the cause of self-harming behaviour," i.e., setting the trap off. What sets the trap off is largely irrelevant. But our leading authorities don't seem to get that simple fact. What is important is who or what set the trap in the children’s playground.

Because of the difficulties in explaining the setting-the-trap factor behind self-harming behaviour in a way that is understandable, I have chosen to analyse the themes and metaphors in modern stories of the Gothic variety to illustrate what is going on inside of an individual's psychic background who is plagued with unwanted feelings and compulsions. Typically, the Gothic heroine's struggles with homicidal demons and bloodsucking vampires represent metaphors for the heroine's underlying  struggles with the problems she experiences while adapting herself to modernism.

Being able to see and understand the metaphorical meaning in some of these themes requires a rather unusual ability that even the most highly trained professional analysts seem to lack because this kind of understanding is a cultural taboo. The theme that I like to use to illustrate this point is the so-called missing father in the Snow White fairytale. If you check the Internet for analyses of the Snow White tale, you will find that the consensus suggests that the father is missing. The father is missing only because modern analysts are trained to think in terms of the missing father. In actuality, the father is not missing from the Snow White tale. Typically, fathers are completely mystified by the mother-daughter conflict, so the father's role is mostly parenthetical to the actual conflict. But he is present nonetheless. The father appears as the mirror and the huntsman.

It is a regular occurrence for a wife to look her husband in the eyes, the mirror to the soul that always tells the truth, and ask if he still loves her. When he tells his wife that he loves her only, his eyes betray the actual truth; that he finds the daughter to be more lovely than his wife. The huntsman motif is a bit more complicated, so it will be only explained in the text of The Queen of Wonderland because it requires a reference to a psychiatric textbook to render the explanation credible.

In the Black Swan movie the father is truly missing and the daughter is at the mercy of the mother and the sorcerer. The storyline for the Black Swan movie was obviously cooked up out of psychiatric textbook cases, so its themes are something that any analyst can easily sink his teeth into. But there are some questionable seasoning ingredients that got thrown into the pot that were not in the textbook recipe, so no analysis of the movie is going to say anything about them. The Black Swan movie involves a Gothic style, so some of the themes parallel those that occur in self-harming behaviour. Because of this relationship, I am connecting some of themes that occur in the Black Swan movie with the themes that occur in other Gothic fantasies in my analysis for The Queen of Wonderland book.

The most serious omission the producers of the Black Swan movie made was not covering those drab concrete block walls with fake antique brick wallpaper as a way to impart the film with an atmosphere that accords with its Gothic style. And they really should have consulted with Dr. Lecter on how to prepare the swan for a Gothic banquet.

The good doctor Hannibal Lecter also appears in The Queen of Wonderland, but not as a human being. Most people make the mistake of interpreting Dr. Lecter as a human being, when he represents a spectral factor in the heroine's psychic background. That is, he is a modern representation of the God of the Underworld, Hades.

About The Queen of Wonderland

The Queen of Wonderland blog is an informal discussion of the subject matter of a project by that name. This project was started as a way of understanding the curious phenomenon of self-harming behaviour from an Analytical Psychological perspective. Since this style of psychology involves understanding the meaning and purpose of mythology, dreams and fantasy, I will be analysing the themes and motifs found in Gothic fantasies because they are a manifestation of the same artificial cultural influences that are behind the current epidemic of self-harming behaviour among adolescents.

The book uses Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as an introduction to a child's descent into the underworld, aka the twilight realm of fantasy. Our Alice represents every girl who has ever descended into the twilight realm in an attempt to find her true identity and the meaning and purpose of her life.

The main focus of The Queen of Wonderland is to understand the themes and metaphors that are found in Gothic fantasies. It is also about understanding the curious phenomenon of self-harming behaviour. Eating disorders are on the increase in children in the UK and this follows on the heels of an European programme aimed at discouraging girls from becoming infatuated with thin models.

About Fairy Moon Publishing: The Fairy Moon title was chosen because modern vampires are actually a manifestation of the mischievous fairies who bewitched maidens in the old fairytales. Gothic fantasies are a modern form of fairytales. The nameless maiden of the ancient Greek tale of the maiden's descent into the underworld represents the moon, who doesn't have a name either (Persephone didn't have a name until she was transformed into The Queen of the Underworld). Why doesn't the moon have a name? That's probably because the moon has a whole host of named gods and demons associated with it, and giving the moon a name would take away the gods' legitimate claim to represent the moon.

About myself. I am not going to talk about myself much because I am dealing with a culturally tabooed subject that can arouse angry responses from fanatics and sociopaths. You can probably guess that I have a passion for understanding the metaphorical meaning in fairytale themes. I should mention that I do not have Internet service, so I don't spend much time on the Internet. Hence, my web site and blog don't get updated very often.

This post was originally supposed to appear on a blog on my The Queen of Wonderland web site. Unfortunately that blog is not working (at that time. I have edited these old posts on 21 January 2014.)

The Art of Tragic Romanticism

The purpose of The Art of Tragic Romanticism is to explore the meaning behind the symbols, themes and metaphors of Gothic art, literature and film. I am presently working on two projects that parallel one another.

The Queen of Wonderland project attempts to explain, in plain language, the meaning behind the themes and metaphors that can be found in popular Gothic fantasies such as the Twilight series and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series. It also contains references to other popular Gothic fantasy series that are available on DVDs. My basic premise is that the same cultural influences that inspire intuitive individuals to create Gothic fantasies are the same influences that inspire a naïve adolescence to go on a healthy diet that turns into anorexia nervosa. In other words, the Gothic heroine’s struggles with vampires can be interpreted as a metaphor for an anorexic’s struggles with the demons of anorexia nervosa.

The Art of Tragedy explores these same themes and metaphors, but in the context of Jungian Analytical Psychology.