Farbod Fadaei's essay 'The Current State of Society and the Concept of the Limit Situation'

The Current State of Society and the Concept of the Limit Situation

Dr. Farbod Fadaei — Psychiatrist

The concept of "limit situations"[1] was coined by Karl Jaspers — the German psychiatrist and philosopher. Although he briefly alluded to this concept in his book General Psychopathology, he initially did not consider it relevant to psychiatry, but rather regarded it as a philosophical subject concerning existence. Five years later, Jaspers provided an extensive exposition of this concept in the books Psychology of Worldviews and Philosophy. Subsequently, a conceptual discussion gradually emerged about the predisposing factors for the onset of mental illnesses, particularly depressive episodes, as examples of limit situations, and the possibility of preventing these illnesses by employing this concept was debated.

When the medical model of illness was complemented by the application of the concept of crisis and crisis intervention in the 1970s, the clinical application of the limit situation gained importance. With the application of the concepts of crisis and limit situation, suicide — which was not considered a psychiatric condition by insurance companies — was added to the financial coverage cases of insurance companies. According to Jaspers, limit situations are characterized by inescapable rational contradictions that pose an obstacle to the continuation of the individual's usual life path. Struggle and war, feelings of guilt and culpability, unpredictable events and severe hardships, death, and suffering are among the limit situations.

At present, the limit situation in all its forms is observable in society, which I will elaborate on:

1— Struggle and War: Struggle is defined as the necessity of decision-making and action in the dualistic states of the mind. At present, fighting for tangible existence against the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) disease is inescapable. Man is alive, but death is his inevitable fate. Man needs to choose between struggle against threat and conflict, or compromise with it. Since life without struggle is impossible, struggle grants the individual validity and power.

2— Feeling of Guilt or Culpability: When a person acts based on a decision they have made, they are forced to set aside other options. In the current conditions of countries, there are at least four instances of this situation:

First) The physician's decision-making in allocating priorities for various patients; for example, regarding the use of a ventilator for a young patient or an elderly patient afflicted with Corona, when the number of devices is scarce, which group takes priority? Does the patient's social, economic, or political status play a role in the physician's decisions? In stating the issues, should the physician only consider medical realities, or do other expediencies also play a role in their decision-making?

Second) The physician or nurse may ask themselves whether they have used all their capabilities for the patient's recovery. For instance, has fatigue and the need for sleep prevented them from providing better service? An Italian female nurse ended her life because she thought she had not been able to help Corona patients sufficiently.

Third) The ordinary individual who has faced the illness and death of those around them may experience this feeling of guilt that perhaps they played a role in that person's affliction, or perhaps they could have provided better service but did not. This situation, especially with a prior background, may lead to severe depression and even suicide.

Fourth) Statesmen may also experience such feelings regarding the consequences of their decisions, for example, imposing traffic restrictions, quarantine, and the provision of production and service affairs.

3— Fate, destiny, and adverse events: This limit situation is observed in almost all members of society. The person asks himself: Why did this event (the coronavirus pandemic) happen? What will be the impact of this event on my life and on those I know? The individual needs to take a stance. He must decide to use what remains of his freedom to exercise his will and to posit values. Man must confront this inescapable rational contradiction: Is the world coherent and orderly, or chaotic and disordered? He is thus compelled to seek a remedy for this contradiction. Religions have striven to overcome such contradictions. The Christian belief in predestination can be considered in this category. At times, a person may seek refuge for himself in other forms. A severe psychological shock may reduce the individual's ability to cope to such a degree that he loses the capacity for a positive reaction. Jaspers employs here the metaphor of a soft-bodied creature that has lost its shell.

4— Death: Death, as the end within life and the end of life, is another category of the limit situation. Death is the antithesis of striving, endeavoring, growth, and reproduction. Finality in its essence, and inevitable death as a natural entity, are existential limit situations that the individual, in the context of the coronavirus illness, may confront either in himself or in others.

5— Suffering: Suffering[2] refers to the existential forms of passivity. Its other meaning is an object or being that is not the active part of a process. Suffering, or pathos, in this sense, is an inescapable existential characteristic. Man generally must bid farewell to the world before reaching his ultimate goals. This is accompanied by great suffering for him. These goals may be material or abstract. The individual may confront this situation through a belief in eternal life, or conversely, through the denial of all meaning and purpose, from a nihilistic standpoint.

Methods of Reacting to Limit Situations

The reaction to limit situations may manifest as a feeling of insecurity, denial, or various forms of evasion. These are reactions that were observed among the people and the leaders of most countries during the coronavirus pandemic. Although the feeling of insecurity was widespread, in many countries they resorted to denying the disease, which is in fact a kind of unconscious policy to escape the feeling of insecurity. Evading what had to be done in the face of the disease's spread, for instance, imposing restrictions or quarantine, was another type of reaction that created a kind of false sense of calm. In fact, the primary method for man to protect himself against limit situations is adaptation and adjustment, or even retreating into a protective shelter.[3]

Jaspers used the metaphor of the "protective shelter" to refer to doctrinal and ideological certainty, personal lifestyles, and protective relationships for avoiding limit situations and postponing them. He calls this type of existence (Existenz) "crawling under the fortifications within the boundaries"; because the restriction of growth is the price paid for this type of existence. This term conveys contempt and disgrace; for Jaspers extols struggle within limit situations. At the same time, religious faith accompanied by awareness, effort, and struggle plays a positive role. According to Jaspers, limit situations cause the illumination of the contradictory structure of existence, and lead toward something that has been termed "existential emergence"; that is, reaching a higher level of self-awareness and depth of feeling, in cases where mastery over the limit situation is achieved.

Jaspers originally used the term shelter[4] to describe fixed worldviews. In his view, people tend to keep their worldviews fixed because they consider them correct. This worldview may be a way of life, an image of the cosmos, or an arrangement of values. Of course, a shelter does not necessarily have to be fixed and static; it may be in flux, undergoing correction, or progressing, because every shelter requires a thoughtful element. At the same time, within every shelter there is a tendency to absorb unfamiliar aspects and to justify the unpleasant aspects of one's experience. Hence, fixed worldviews can provide possibilities for neutralizing certain challenging aspects of limit situations.

It cannot be denied that human beings are incapable of living permanently outside a "shelter." The concept of the shelter, according to Jaspers, provides an existential analysis of psychotherapeutic processes. Using this concept, one can conclude that mental illness affects an individual's worldview. The individual suffering from mental illness adapts the "shelter," rearranges it, or fundamentally constructs it.

A "shelter" may hold special, albeit small, privileges for the individual. For example, it can provide justifying explanations for mistakes or the unusual and unpleasant matters of one's life; or perhaps it furnishes a more or less coherent interpretation of the transformations and symptoms brought about by the individual's mental illness. The shelter can also have a protective aspect against more distressing influences and may offer options for how the individual should live. This can be attributed, to some extent, to the coherence and the successful assimilation and internalization of mental illness into the individual's "shelter."

Outcome

Based on what has been said, it can be expected that psychotherapeutic processes will enable the individual suffering from mental illness to create a kind of "shelter" that allows them to cope with the inescapable challenges of their limit situations. Effective psychotherapy even allows the individual to set aside their dysfunctional shelter and build a new one. This usually means rebuilding one's house. As a result, their worldview becomes broader and more open-minded.

Jaspers says: it is better for the therapist to realize and accept that a certain amount of philosophizing is needed in the course of treatment; but this does not mean that philosophizing by the therapist is essential. Jaspers is well aware of the fact that the psychotherapist's task is not primarily philosophical discussions with patients during therapy sessions. As every trained psychotherapist knows well, therapeutic goals must be set at the beginning of the psychotherapy process, and these goals must be SMART; that is, Specific and Simple, Measurable and Manageable, Accessible and Attractive, Relevant and Reality-based, and Time-bound. Nevertheless, a certain amount of philosophizing cannot be avoided during psychotherapy, especially because the question of the meaning of psychotherapy arises from time to time. This points to the existential dimensions of this special relationship.

Beyond the therapeutic perspective and the application of limit situations for understanding psychiatric issues, Jaspers believes that philosophy awakens the human being, shows them the paths that lie before them, and furthermore increases the human being's knowledge of themselves, the world, and God. Through philosophical thought, the human being attains a profound insight into the world. An insight based on which they consider the world as God's creation and God's cipher, and through this divine cipher and sign, they hear His call.

In Jaspers' philosophy, God is discussed under the title of Transcendence or the Transcendent and the Encompassing. Passing through the lower levels of existence, transcending them, and attaining the specific human existence or the existential station is one of the meanings of transcendence. Transcendence, in one sense, is used to mean the existence superior to the world, or God. Jaspers uses transcendence in both senses.

According to Jaspers, human existence is due to its relation to the Transcendent (God); otherwise, it would not exist at all. The movement toward the Transcendent is inherent in the essence of human existence. Jaspers's views on the relationship between man and God are influenced by Kierkegaard, who believed that belief in God is attained not through recourse to cause-and-effect relations in the world, but through the necessity and exigency of the human being's presence before such an entity. Jaspers also specifies that a God proven through argument is not God.

.

---

.

Endnotes:

[1] Grenzsituation

[2] pathos

[3] Gehäuse

[4] Gehäuser

.

---

.

Ettela'at Newspaper: Wednesday, 27 Farvardin 1399 - 21 Sha'ban 1441 - 15 April 2020 - Issue No. 27534

PDF file of this article from Ettela'at Newspaper

.

---

.