Peter M. Rojcewicz, PhD
Current political forces continue to deliver full body blows against virtually every sector of our national life. Funding to universities, the scientific community, and international philanthropic organizations have ended or have been radically reduced. Millions of Americans have lost Medicaid coverage. The free press is under sever attack for reporting actual events of the federal takeover of Washington, D.C. by armed troops wearing masks, ICE raids at baseball games, concentration camps for immigrants in Florida’s Everglades, and Gerrymandering legislative districts for votes. Our eco-sensitive national parks are now woefully understaffed. Libraries have books on DEI and gender politics pulled from shelfs. The Smithsonian faces stiff pressure to make ‘nice’ with the inhumanity of America’s history of slavery. The nation is traumatized. Our national identity and global image lie in tatters. Many believe we are losing our democracy. Where might we find hope beyond anxiety?
Polish psychiatrist and physician Kazimierz Dabrowski believed it possible that fragmentation of the personality can lead to positive outcomes. His personality theory of Positive Disintegration (TPD) turns the tables on anxiety, tension, and trauma. Dabrowski maintains that when traumatic events strike us and shatter the structure of personality and sense of self, we may paradoxically find opportunities for recovery and growth. We ask, “What has just happened? Am I still the same person I was before this shattering?” Such disintegration calls to mind the folk and shamanic theme of ‘gathering the bones together’, wherein people reconstruct themselves from broken pieces of their lives, holding on to parts of value and letting go of all that hasn’t served. By boldly entering into the disintegration, one has the ‘advantage’ of voluntarily achieving an autonomous, re-created personality beyond ‘primary integration’. This is a type of metanoia, i.e., a reorganization of the psychological factors comprising one’s ‘developmental potential’ that lead to new bodily perceptions, life purpose, vision, and values. Does the nation possess sufficient developmental possibility to effectively move through our present fragmentation into a positive disintegration?