IMBALANCE:

The term “chemical imbalance” is often used as though groveling before sheer fact, yet thinkers and meditators alike have known for a long time that the mind is not simply a slave to matter. In large part, what you choose to think determines how you feel, and, as I have established previously, this choice is not one of absolute freedom that must be judged according to an absolute rubric, but rather it is conditioned by forces outside of one’s control. Consider the Ideal of Balance, for instance. We ordinarily think of Balance by analogy to moderation, such as in Aristotle’s virtue of the mean or the Buddhist Middle Way. Yet imagine a situation wherein there is no middle ground available. Suppose you have a parent who is never ambivalent to you. Your mother may praise you for doing things that you were supposed to, and for some brief time you might feel good about yourself for having volunteered to such a task. Yet the moment that you abstain, now you are condemned for not having fulfilled your duty. Desperate to restore your honour, you perform the chore again, only to be met with the same praise you had heard before. It might feel false to you the second time around, though this is only because you have all ready begun to think in absolutes. This is not altogether inappropriate, since you have only been presented with absolutes; in such a situation, so long as your identity depends upon the approval of the parent, there is no distinction between being less miserable and being more happy, and feeling good about yourself can only be won by avoiding feeling bad. It is only inappropriate to question the sincerity of your judge because she is in fact ESPECIALLY sincere; her entire emotional outlook depends entirely upon your choice. And this is certainly the very conception of manic depression. All psychoanalysis amounts in large part to the excavation of upbringing, and the most successful psychology accepts this role successfully, just as the child has no choice but to accept, so he or she becomes the model for both innocence and the proverbial tabula rasa.

Dm.A.A.