The Dark Night of the Soul and Positive Disintegration
This episode covers some potentially heavy and depressing subjects intended for mature adults. If you are sensitive to depressing or existential topics, please consider if you’re in an appropriate mental state to continue. There’s nothing wrong with choosing to skip this episode or come back to it later.
The human condition is one of being born into a vast and nearly incomprehensible universe with the capability of questioning our existence and its meaning. As far back as the earliest historical records, it's clear that humans have always wrestled with immense existential questions. Where did we come from? What happens when we die? What guiding force, if any, controls the events of the world around us? How should we live our lives and make decisions for ourselves? What does it all mean?
We restlessly search for answers, turning to religion, philosophy and the sciences to try to understand the meaning around us. Sometimes the process of questioning becomes intense and emotional, casting a shadow over our daily lives as the feeling of confusion and restlessness grows.
In the 16th century, Spanish poet St. John of the Cross wrote an untitled poem which would later come to be commonly known as la noche oscura del alma - the dark night of the soul. In this short poem, the protagonist sets out on a spiritual journey into darkness seeking unification with God. The story of the poem tells us that the path to finding God requires discarding the sensual perception of the material word and walking into the darkness with only the guiding light of the soul - which is said in the poem to be brighter than the light of the midday sun.
Although the poem is Christian in origin and nature, the dark night of the soul has come to be used as an expression of a particular form of existential crisis which may be experienced by people of any religious orientation, including those who are not religious or spiritual in any way. It refers to a period of time in which a person's philosophical, spiritual or existential bedrock is challenged and a person finds themselves struggling to come to grips with the nature of life and its biggest questions.
To underscore the point that this process is not inherent to any particular religion, there’s a great article from Psychiatric Times. The article starts by quoting two sources to define the concepts of demoralization and despair. The first, from an Italian study of kidney transplant patients:
“Demoralization is a syndrome clinically separated from depression. It is characterized by a combination of distress and subjective incompetence; the loss of meaning and purpose in life; the lack of perceived social support; a sense of being trapped and personal failure; a cognitive attitude of pessimism, and hopelessness/helplessness. Demoralization is a syndrome clinically separated from depression. It is characterized by a combination of distress and subjective incompetence; the loss of meaning and purpose in life; the lack of perceived social support; a sense of being trapped and personal failure; a cognitive attitude of pessimism, and hopelessness/helplessness.”
The second, a more succinct definition:
“an overarching psycho-spiritual crisis in which victims feel generally disoriented and unable to locate meaning, purpose, or sources of need fulfilment.”
The biggest commonality here is the loss of meaning and purpose in life, as well as a general feeling of helplessness and disorientation to one’s place in the world. A person who finds themselves in a dark night may experience emotions and patterns typical of a person who is severely depressed, but it’s important to make the distinction that this is not a physiological form of depression but one that involves a profound sense of spiritual or existential questioning.
From my own experience in similar bouts of existential depression, I can say that I felt a heavy sense of confusion and unimportance. All of the values that I had held felt meaningless. The things I enjoyed felt hollow and petty. I looked at the activity of people around me in society, and it all felt absurd. They all seemed unaffected, totally unaware of the sense of crisis that was the only thing I could focus on. I remember feeling as though all of humanity were together on a sinking ship, and I alone had recognized the danger while everybody else felt that everything was fine. I wanted to shake them and ask them how they were all okay and acting normal. How were they acting completely fine despite having the knowledge of their eventual inevitable death, the tragedies that surround us daily, how the vast sea of time will quickly wipe away each of our personal achievements and how the universe would go on uncaring? I felt a sense of grieving for myself each day. All of life had the quality of a strange lucid dream I was trapped in, impermanent and meaningless.
This was my experience, but it may not be everybody’s. Frantic researching and reading to make sense of it all is how I came to learn of the phrase “dark night of the soul”. Despite not being religious, I identified with it entirely. It felt like I had a name to describe the state I was trapped in. I’m doing much better now, some years later, which has strengthened my belief in the concept that this is a transformative process. I have clinical depression and have had it most of my life. But the type of existential crisis I experienced in this time was something so distinct and different, something that I believe fully could not have been resolved through treating depression clinically alone.
Although it is referred to as a dark night, this brings to light a major difference. In a true dark night, one would only have to wait for the night to pass and the sun to rise. However, the theme of the original poem was not of the darkness of the night, but of one’s willingness to walk through the darkness to uncover something within themselves. It’s necessary that a person who finds themselves in this state, as in the original poem, is willing to to take the walk through darkness, if they want to find themselves in a better state.
Referring back to the article I mentioned earlier, the author references another author by the name of Thomas Moore. Moore, a former Catholic monk and psychotherapist, wrote a book entitled Dark Nights of the Soul: A Guide to Finding Your Way Through Life’s Ordeals. An interesting quote from Moore underlies the idea that a Dark Night is a process that requires participation from the individual in question.
“The dark night calls for a spiritual response, not only a therapeutic one.” The dark night calls upon the affected person “to remain in the present, not bound or deluded by the past and not imprisoned in a fixed and defensive idea about the future…the most difficult challenge is to let the process take place, and yet that is the only release from the pressure of the dark night.”
When we look at this phenomenon through a lens of secularity and psychoanalysis, there is another psychological framework to which it can be compared. The idea of positive disintegration is a theory of personal development put forward by Polish psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski. Positive Disintegration posits that the integration of human personality happens at several stages, which people are not guaranteed to go through. As a person is faced with emotional crises, they may respond by either breaking down and restructuring old paradigms, or by falling back to their own ways. Those who successfully break down their current integration and re-evaluate their moral and emotional standings will progress to a higher level of integration and become more aware of themselves and others. Ultimately, as a person reaches a higher state of integration, their personality will have been modified as the result of intentional and deliberate acts of change, as the individual will challenge the ideals around them and will build an identity of values based on the way they believe life should be.
With this comparison, you can see how the two ideas are often considered related. In the Dark Night of the Soul, a person must choose to go forward through a time of intense uncertainty in order to re-align with their values. In Dabrowski’s theory of positive disintegration, times of emotional duress are used as opportunities for building a heightened sense of social and moral integration and ultimately building an identity more in line with the values and beliefs that a person consciously decides they both identify with. In both cases, intense negative feelings are not to be avoided, but to be faced and used as a catalyst for driving higher personal development - at least, if a person is to complete the transformative process and reach a state of higher emotional and potentially spiritual well-being.
If you’re listening to this so far and thinking that you identify with what you’re hearing here, as I did at one time, what should you do? I’m not a professional, but here are some things I’ve found through my own experience.
The first and most important thing is to remember that it’s a process, and the discomfort you’re feeling is for a reason. It’s catalyzing personal change and growth. It may feel in the moment like it’s all you will ever feel, and that it will last forever. Taking time to really understand that it’s part of a process will help you keep the perspective to weather it, and keep going.
Next, engage with things that have spiritual or philosophical significance to you. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be religious, but anything that helps you feel connected with the world around you and your place in it. Read philosophy, meditate, journal, spend time sitting in nature. If you do have religious beliefs or are searching for what yours are, considering spending time with spiritual leaders or mentors. When you come across a crisis such as this, it’s something that has to be faced and considered in order to come through to the other side.
Spend time around loved ones and doing activities you enjoy. It may be very difficult, as the questions and emotions you’re going through may be immensely distracting and things you enjoy may start to feel empty. But in my experience, a dark night has a way of making everything in your life feel pointless and meaningless. Continuing to surround yourself with the things you value, even when it’s difficult, can help keep you grounded if you start to spiral.
And of course, if you have the means, try to find help professionally through a counselor, therapist, psychologist, or any other kind of guidance. Find a loved one you can confide in and talk through things with if nothing else. They may not be able to provide the answers for you, but they can help you organize your own thoughts, and learn techniques to calm yourself down when things feel overwhelming.
In the end, pain is an unfortunate but necessary part of human life. Pain is an indication that something is wrong or requires attention. Those experiencing a dark night of the soul - or going through the process of positive disintegration - are a prime example of how pain and discomfort can be an unavoidable but ultimately transformative experience.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode, and maybe learned something to think about going forward. And if you’re going through a difficult time right now and identified with the topics discussed, hopefully you’ve found some comfort in hearing a name for your experiences and knowing that others have gone through them and come out the other side in a better place. Until next time, it’s been a pleasure as always. Thank you.
