The Queen of Wonderland

Our Alice theme character represents a confusing mix of two separate personalities that are separated by a curious looking-glass mystique that exists between consciousness and the unconscious psychic background. The psychic background is where dreams and fantasies originate and take place. Eating disorders also originate in this psychic background owing to a conflict between an individual’s conscious attitude and an archetypal factor that was provoked by the conscious’ attitude.

Our Alice character has two very different dimensions. In her conscious dimension she is a child, or a young lady who is suffering from anorexia nervosa. In her other dimension, the Alice character is the soul or the dream-personality who exists partly in the psychic background and partly in the conscious dimension in the form of inspirations and various other intuitive factors. When this dream-complex is influencing her consciousness, it put Alice in a trance-like state like a kind of fantasy realm. The dream-like complex involves more than Alice’s soul. It also involves, among other things, the archetype behind the voice that tells Alice that she is fat and ugly.

Sometimes this essay refers to “Alice” as a person with anorexia nervosa, and sometimes “Alice” refers to Alice as the dream-like personality in the fantasy-like psychic background, aka, Wonderland. Wonderland is a metaphor for the psychic background where dreams and fantasies originate. Alice as a person is almost completely unaware of “Alice” as a dream-like complex/personality who can also control Alice’s conscious thinking.

The confusing paradox of two Alice personalities can be clearly seen by the fact that when confronted with the facts about their medical condition, most anorexics will admit that they know they are dangerously underweight. Although Alice admits that her body is dangerously underweight, some overriding psyche factor compelled to her say that she sees herself as being healthy but overweight. This makes anorexia nervosa appear as if it were nothing more than a charade, but it isn’t, at least not from a proper understanding of the unconscious aspect of the psyche. Unfortunately, conventional psychology avoids understanding anything about the psyche background because this sort of understanding would conflict with the objectives of modern realism.

Alice hasn’t got a clue why she is compelled to believe something that she knows is obviously wrong except that some uncanny power seizes her with an overriding compulsion to identify with an anorectic persona. Because Alice is under the influence of an overriding unconscious factor, she will compulsively deny that she is underweight, thus undoing her conscious insight into her condition.

It is necessary to keep this paradoxical duality of the anorexic in mind, otherwise it is impossible to understand the psychological nature of eating disorders and cutting. It should also be noted that the model for the mind that I am using is based upon Jungian psychology, which is a very different view of the mind than that which is generally taught by conventional psychology. Although Jung’s concept of archetypes may be unfamiliar to some readers, I have carefully avoided using psychobabble in my writing. Very simply put, an archetype is like an instinct except that, while instincts are mainly concerned about biological factors, archetypes are mainly concerned about maintaining psychic equilibrium vis-…-vis the inherited nature of the being. That is, whenever the individual or some environment factor attempts to upset her psychic equilibrium, an unpleasant psychic reaction occurs. 
 

Please note: this was also published as the Introduction on: thequeenofwonderland.com