Metanoia

I owe my dearest friend 'Cabe' for introducing me a new term today. Something that I've been experiencing and I am very aware of, but never knew the term until now. Metanoia.


From Wikipedia:

Metanoia (from the Greek μετάνοια, metanoia, changing one's mind) in the psychological theory of Carl Jung denotes a process of reforming the psyche as a form of self healing, a proposed explanation for the phenomenon of psychotic breakdown. Here, metanoia is viewed as a potentially productive process, and therefore patients' psychotic episodes are not necessarily always to be thwarted, which may restabilize the patients but without resolving the underlying issues causing their psychopathology.



In Carl Jung's psychology, metanoia indicates a spontaneous attempt of the psyche to heal itself of unbearable conflict by melting down and then being reborn in a more adaptive form. Jung believed that psychotic episodes in particular could be understood as existential crises which were sometimes attempts at self-reparation. Jung's concept of metanoia influenced R. D. Laing and the therapeutic community movement which aimed, ideally, to support people whilst they broke down and went through spontaneous healing, rather than thwarting such efforts at self-repair by strengthening their existing character defences and thereby maintaining the underlying conflict.


Beautifully put, whoever made that Wiki entry. I had a Metanoia about 10 days ago. What a melt down! But the result was, is, beautiful. Thank you all...

Also, you might want to read about Sandra Michaelson's Spiritual Bypass; a concept I just learned 10 days ago along with my latest metanoia. Read also Debra Goldman's article on the same topic. Eye-openers. You can also or pre-order Robert Augustus Masters' Spiritual Bypassing from Amazon.com; something that I am going to do next week.

Pic: Phoenix by Bamfette of DeviantArt