There is no
simple – we could just about say “possible” – way to dispel a delusion, whether
it’s a person’s belief that he is being surveilled, the Narcissist’s awareness of
his perfection and unique specialness, or the belief in white supremacy.
Delusions are necessary to keep core, terminal pain at bay, and therefore to
maintain the person’s sense of identity. They are a matter of felt life and
death.
I know some men
who believe that all people, other than themselves, are stupid and untrustworthy.
When one has a necessary false belief, the irrationality or silliness of it is completely
extinguished, or rather never born, in the mind. Donald Trump, for example,
believes he is the one perfect being. It could happen in reality, he might
think, because it did happen: It is he.
Still, I
fantasize that I could take one of these men and say: “You are too intelligent
to limit yourself to a dull-axe way of thinking. You lose all complications of
the human race, the subtleties of psychology and the troubling contradictions of mood when
you constrict your mind to see everyone as good or bad, stupid or smart,
trustworthy or untrustworthy, perfect or imperfect. You are taking what could
be a great perceptiveness and a renaissance way of living and killing them.”
Of course, a
diehard delusional would argue this. He would, as I suggested, have to have a
feeling to cover a much worse feeling, and the cover feeling would have a spherical
network of defense. But maybe this simple polemical arrow could puncture the somewhat
less delusional. Maybe such a person could take that accurate compliment
and let it open his mind and heart. Who would want to be so awfully
constricted? Who, even a psychotic person, would want to have only one thought
and feeling, one color, one unmusical note for the rest of his life?
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Comments are welcome, but I'd suggest you first read "Feeling-centered therapy" and "Ocean and boat" for a basic introduction to my kind of theory and therapy.