The Queen of Wonderland

 Queen Alice Receiving her subjects.

This site is about a new publication in progress that describes the psychological nature of compulsive self-harming behaviour from a Jungian psychological perspective that employs mythology and fairy tales in a creative way. This book is not going to be a typical rehash that is based upon every other book on anorexia nervosa or cutting. Everything in this book is new as far as it pertains to self-harming behaviour.

Before we begin, it must be understood that Alice’s adventures do not represent the conscious experience of her personality, but the dreamtime adventures of her dream-personality or soul.

 Preface:

by

Malcolm Timbers

copyright 2008

Foreword to the First Edition

This book is an attempt to explain, in plain language, the hitherto unacknowledged psychological factors that are behind a group of self-harming behaviours that have become somewhat of an epidemic among young women during the past thirty-five or so years. Unlike ever other book about self-destructive behaviour, almost everything discussed in this book is new as far as it pertains to self-destructive behaviour in the public arena of ideas. Privately, the ideas for this publication represent my research going back more than twenty years into the problem of destructive and self-destructive behaviour. However, it was only recently that I finally cracked the enigmatic code of anorexia nervosa.

Two years ago, I decided to split off this project from a larger project after I happened to crack the first bit of psychic code behind anorexia nervosa while working on the phenomenon of destructive disorders. The second bit of code, which turned out to be the key that completely separates the phenomenon of anorexia nervosa from destructive behaviour and reveals its archetypal meaning and purpose, was only cracked during the summer of 2007. Understanding the function of this second factor that operates in the psychic background of anorexia nervosa changed my whole outlook on the phenomenon and this necessitated a complete rewrite of the manuscript.

As I developed these ideas, I began to realize that what is manifested as self-harming behaviour is a normal psychic process that became self-destructive only because it was not understood and hence, the individual is unable to consciously deal with it. In other words, the psychological purpose of some forms of self-destructive behaviour were not self-destructive after all, but a form of self-harming behaviour that, paradoxically, had a resourceful purpose to it. It was only after I thought that I had the book almost finished, and I was working on its index, that I began to realize that this was the hidden purpose behind self-harming behaviour. I had to stop writing for a while and research the basis of this factor. Eventually, I discovered that this factor was actually the objective of a psychic process and that a self-destructive end in death is oftentimes the result of not being able to understand the cause, the meaning and the purpose of the anorexic quest. Henceforth, with a sincere desire to understand the meaning and purpose of the anorexic quest, no one should have to die from this malady.

From Chapter 2:

Modern psychology is not interested in helping anorexics to understand the meaning and purpose of their malady. They are only interested in finding ways to make their charges conform to modernism. Modern psychology misinterpreted the anorexic’s delusions as an attempt to forcibly modernize the way people think by denying the influence of the soul. Although modern psychology ostensibly treats the individual in a humanistic fashion, it proceeds as if the human mind were a machine that can be tweaked with drugs and programmed through an educational interface in order to make it perform in a satisfactory manner. This attitude assumes that anorexia nervosa is a learned behaviour that can be corrected by eliminating what they consider to be bad influences and re-educating the patients in order to instil idealistic norms. It is quite obvious that their programme isn’t working.

Self-harming behaviour may very well be the soul’s expression of alienation and rejection of an ego/body that has lost touch with its roots in the ancestral life of the soul.

It was difficult for me to realize that self-harming behaviour can actually have a meaningful purpose that can result in a positive mental development for some individuals. However, this can only happen if the anorexic can understand the nature of the psychic process that is transpiring in the background of her psyche. The reason that people are not able to understand self-harm is because people get a deep sense of foreboding about the profound change in attitude that is necessary for this understanding because it portends the demise of the ego attitude and everything about their life that has gone before.

Modernism is totally concerned with the ego and the body and this attitude has the effect of alienating the soul.

 A longer Introduction is posted at: https://actualboulder.sslpowered.com/thequeenofwonderland.com/index.html