The Cosmic Axis of Schizophrenia

April 8, 2020

John Weir Perry is one of the all-time greats in psychiatry and specifically the work of reenvisioning “schizophrenia” yet sadly, no one seems to have heard of him.

I decided to give him the modern treatment, laying a sound bed underneath his epic description of the true arc of “schizophrenia,” when successfully moved through and completed, which, of course, our society fails to see, by and large, because we are out of touch with such processes.

I overlaid it with an animation from the European Southern Observatory that begins from an observatory in Garching, Germany and zooms out “to the end of the Universe.” This symbolizes the sacredphrenic’s orientation around a "cosmic axis,” as described by Perry. This audio is from a panel discussion that also included Alan Watts, Allen Ginsberg, and Claudio Naranjo on July 31, 1968.

Michael O’Callaghan once described John Perry thusly: “John Perry was a Jungian psychiatrist who founded an experimental residential facility called Diabasis, in San Francisco, California, during the 1970s. This was designed as a comfortable home where young adults, who were experiencing the initial days of their first "acute schizophrenic break,” could live in and be empowered to go through their Apocalypse on the way to greater health and happiness.

The results were amazing: without any treatment by medication, electroshock, or locked doors, full-blown "schizophrenics" were able to go through their ego-death and emerge on the other side, as Perry puts it, "weller than well." Instead of being sent to the mental hospital and/or taking medication for the rest of their lives, these certified "schizos" would live at the facility for the first three months, spend the following three in a half-way house, and then return to the outside world, never having any relapse of their "schizophrenia" again!”