The Mandala Experience: Visions of the Center in Schizophrenic and Fictional Accounts of Disintegration

[Doug Millison]

[..] Schizophrenia is commonly viewed as a paradigm of disintegration and
breakdown.  It may surprise some to discover that schizophrenic experience
often includes visions of the center, and that these visions can provide a
sense of well-being to the disoriented sufferer of psychic breakdown.1 
Concerning the meaning of the center, Derrida once listed all the names
which it has been called in the history of metaphysics; "It could be shown
that all the names related to  . . . the center have always designated an
invariable presence--eidos, arché, telos, energeia, ousia (essence,
existence, substance, subject) alétheia, transcendentality, consciousness,
God, man, and so forth" (Derrida 279-80).  In the visions of
schizophrenics, the center is most often experienced as an ultimate source
of supernatural power; the power to heal and the power to protect.  The
center is thus not associated with a specific religion or even a personal
god.  C. G. Jung observed that the encounter with the center is often
accompanied by the production of a certain kind of visual art by the
individual known as a mandala or centralized pattern:


As a rule a mandala occurs in conditions of psychic dissociation or
disorientation, for instance  . . . in schizophrenics whose view of the
world has become confused, owing to the invasion of incomprehensible
contents from the unconscious.  In such cases it is easy to see how the
severe pattern imposed by a circular image of this kind compensates the
disorder and confusion of the psychic state--namely, through the
construction of a central point to which everything is related, or by a
concentric arrangement of the disordered multiplicity and of contradictory
and irreconcilable elements.  This is evidently an attempt at self-healing
on the part of Nature, which does not spring from conscious reflection but
from an instinctive impulse (my emphasis, Jung, Mandala Symbolism 3-4).


    He also hinted that a mandala may be "acted out" by movement in a
circular pattern around a center, the center being the mandala.   His
conclusions about schizophrenics were confirmed by J. Weir Perry, who
studied schizophrenia for forty years and wrote many books about it,
including The Self in Psychotic Process.  He observed the symbol of the
center as well as many other symbols in the visions and drawings of
schizophrenics.

    The appearance of the center as a powerful locus of healing, which I
call the "mandala experience," can be seen in the life of John Nash, who
suffered from schizophrenia and has recently become famous for the
depiction of his life in the movie entitled A Beautiful Mind.  The tendency
to experience the center as a constructive force in the midst of psychic
distress and disintegration raises questions about whether one can also
find such hitherto undetected moments of constructiveness in fictional
accounts of disintegration which have been compared to schizophrenic
breakdown.  One such account is Kafka's Description of a Struggle, a work
in which a symbol of the center appears in the midst of such a psychic
disintegration.   However, first I will give an account of the "mandala
experience" as discovered by Jung during what has been called his
"schizophrenic" breakdown. [...]

continues at:
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2002/truema01.htm