When Healing Becomes Educating, Vol. 1 - Waldorf Research Institute

As many of us are aware, however, this phenomenon can lead to some
of the most frightening of phenomena which we as human beings may have
to encounter. When an ego fragmentation takes place, islands of our etheric
and astral bodies have become dislocated from the overall sphere of the ego
organization. It is here that the borderline between the realm of medicine
and psychiatry on the one hand and that of social and personal morality,
becomes almost indistinguishable. Those of you who are familiar with the
works of Scott Peck, particularly his book “People of the Lie,” will be aware
that he addresses this problem. He challenges contemporary psychiatry to
build a new scientific understanding of the realm of evil, stressing how until
the present time this realm has been considered to fall outside the scope
of science. This book was not written with dissociative identity disorders
particularly in mind, but I am sure that there is a close connection between
these phenomena and many of his descriptions. He relates much of what he
has to say to possession—a concept which, until recently, was considered to
be virtually medieval. I think that this book by Scott Peck is a clear example
of the condition that modern psychiatry finds itself in, when it attempts
to confront the spiritual nature of the human being. I believe his book is
courageous and, in many ways, quite masterly. However, it struggles with out
having any way of connecting the realm of substance with the realm of the
spirit.
And, as I began my talk by saying, I think that it is just this potential that
is unique to the anthroposophical contribution to psychiatry. The original
polarity between substance and creative spirit arose during the time of the
Fall on Old Lemuria. From this time onwards the creative world of the spirit
and the actual substantial happenings in matter started to separate. We are
now at the point in human evolution when out of their own nature these two
forces will continue to diverge ever more and more strongly. Steiner forecast
that by the end of the century we would be blighted by epidemics of mental
illness of one kind or another—and I am sure that amongst other things
anorexic disturbances and dissociative disorders are among the examples
that could be cited to bear out his prediction. I believe that ultimately the
task of mental illness is to stimulate in us the call to inner development, to
truly know ourselves. Whereas up until the present time we had a certain
license to decide not to follow this path, it is nowadays almost imperative
to do so if we are to confront and deal with problems, if not exactly in
epidemic, then certainly in escalating proportions. Modes of being that
were once regarded as extreme pathologies become ever more and more
common. Unless a sufficiently strong impulse is ignited in humankind
to hear this call, then this separation between substance and spirit will
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