Jung comments, “…an unknown ‘something’ has taken possession of a smaller or greater portion of the psyche and asserts its hateful and harmful existence undeterred by all our insight, reason, and energy, thereby proclaiming the power of the unconscious over the conscious mind, the sovereign power of possession.” When we are possessed we are not free, we are not masters in our own house. When we are possessed by the unconscious, we become dissociated from ourselves such that, as Jung writes, there is “a tearing loose of part of one’s nature; it is the disappearance and emancipation of a complex, which thereupon becomes a tyrannical usurper of consciousness, oppressing the whole man. It throws him off course and drives him to actions whose blind one-sidedness inevitably leads to self-destruction.”
Aren’t we also talking about cults here?
How about the tendency in the “high” countries of the first world to suicide?
It’s worth wondering why the higher the standard of living, the higher the number of suicides in the western world.
The Canadian teen suicide statistics are alarming. Between 1952 and 1992 the national suicide rate increased by 78%. but by comparison the teen suicide rate for the same period increased more than 600%. If any disease or bacteria was causing such an alarming rise in the number of deaths it would surely be considered an epidemic.
Females account for 75% of attempted suicides, usually by drug overdose. But males are actually six times more likely to be successful and choose more violent methods such as shooting or hanging. About one-third of teen suicides are done by young people who have attempted it before.
Suicide rates are five to seven times higher for First Nations teens than other young people in Canada. The suicide rates amongst the Inuit youth are some of the highest anywhere in the world. They are 11 times higher than the Canadian national average.
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