How MY desire function was activated in Grade Twelve

I wasn’t consciously making this connection when I wrote yesterday’s blog on the grade twelve curriculum of Heilkunst, but in my own personal life, a very formative event happened to me in my grade twelve English class, related to eventually connecting with my true life’s work. I had been a quintessential math and science geek in high school, until the moment my grade twelve English teacher introduced us to the basic concepts of Jungian psychology, in order to contextualize the book we were about to read, Fifth Business, by Robertson Davies. Jung’s concepts of anima and animus, individuation, synchronicity, the collective unconscious, amongst others, were unlike anything I’d ever encountered. This opening into an entirely different world lit up a core element of my desire function, which involved my need to connect to a knowledge base that illuminated the inner workings of the mind and consciousness. It also matched the other side of my desire function involving healthcare and therapeutics.

I did complete my high school curriculum more weighted in the maths and sciences, but in university I enrolled in a four year Bachelor of Arts in Psychology program, which was to be the germination of this seed planted in grade twelve. What had been awoken within me in that English class was almost completely put back to sleep by the dry, mechanistic approach to psychology which is dominated by the inert sciences of brain chemistry rather than the rich, living world of the mind, myths, and understanding of different states of consciousness.

Through my whole four year program, there were only two classes which were of any true interest to my core desire function. One which included a historical look at Freud, Jung, and the others of the Psychoanalytic school (mind you, Reich was completely absent from the curriculum, even though he was another prominent follower of Freud), and the other which took an “outside the box” approach, and focussed on various esoteric and non-Western approaches to Psychology.

Having nearly died of thirst through the desert of this curriculum, I plunged into a restorative phase of studying music very intensively for a few years, as an instinctual gesture to connect myself back to a field which contained life. This was a necessary moment of rest and restoration, and a stepping stone towards finding the true oasis of my discovery and study of medical Heilkunst, which represented the true embodiment of my desire function within a single field of study. It is the point where a true life science, including both mind and body, brings together both a dynamic philosophy with a very practical and effective approach to therapeutics. It is neither idealistic, nor materialistic.

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