Phil - I am so sorry I missed this. I see this as an illness of our times, one that my youngest son was hit by. . I remember watching my youngest son Quentin as he stood on the threshold of change as a young teenager. He had lived so intensely in the world of his childhood. He had managed to fill that world with wondrous imagination and deep feelings and fears. It was a world in which he drew, and created in writing, spoke and lived without hesitation and goals, other than perhaps gaining my and his mother’s admiration and entrance into that place.
However, I was witness to an awful enemy that entered that world like a destroying army. It tore down the castles, and put torch to the villages and harvests of his soul. It seemed to me that in his case there was no gradual transition from childhood, only a tearing open and a destruction of all that had been held dear, and was still deeply needed and loved.
If I can put a name to the enemy he was laid low by, if I can point to a form, then I would say it is called by many names, some of them being Cynicism, Despair, Commercialism, Materialism. Whatever its right name is, it robs hope from some children. It tears down their ability to create a world for themselves, and instead forces on them a view of the world - no, not a view, but what feels like a concrete reality - that is barren and where nothing grows except in connection with industrial factories, economic necessities, sexual and social manipulation. It is like a cage in which the soul feels itself trapped. Quentin graphically described this world again and again in his writings. He had been diagnosed as suffering clinical depression, so some of the imagery in his stories is very precise.
That world could in no ways be described as pleasant. It had been explained to me at quite an early stage in my stay at the sanatorium, that my perception of my environment, and life in general, was tragically flawed. This made me, said the white-coats, prone to behaviour which normal people found frightening. I could not fully grasp this concept, there being no way by which I could experience what was described as a sane view of the world. And so I lived in constant unreality; trusting not a single thing my senses told me, and despising what I supposed was a devilish and insidious contagion that tainted all my thoughts with madness. I became very insular and spoke as little as possible.
What can she do? If it can be pointed out to her how the villains that got into her and tore down her inner life she might be helped. I believe that the article
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/integration-meeting-oneself/ might have some pointers. Also -
http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/martial-art-of-the-mind/ From my own experience I feel it is one that has to be lived through and met with determination and perseverance - difficult to come by. In one school my son attendant where he suffered panic attacks, he was told to go to the nurse’s quarters when he had an attack. One day as he went because he had an attack, he lay down on the couch, and without warning the nurse slapped him hard on the face. He attacked her and the nurse called male attendants and was told Quentin had attacked her. They tied him up with ropes like a bloody animal and took him to hospital. No mention was made of the nurse hitting my son.
Tony