The “Big Bang” Psychosis

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In the book, The Logics of Madness [Karnak Books, London, 2016], psychiatrist Salomon Resnik discusses a metaphorical designation that expresses an acute psychotic crisis: the “Big Bang” theory.

Resnik writes, “I find that in many schizophrenic patients the “Big Bang” theory plays a very important role. The acute psychotic crisis is experienced in a cataclysmic phenomenon …

“As Delsemme (1994, p. 366) puts it: ‘Our era has an open mind about the cosmic origins of the adventure of being human.’ The scientific fantasy or awareness of the Big Bang stimulates unconscious fantasies … In many people, and in particular in psychotics, the interest in metaphysical and cosmological preoccupations is fundamental.” [Page 12]

Resnik offers in his book a psychological [psychoanalytic] approach to delusions and fantasies.

But here I’m enthused with the idea that the “Big Bang” is usurped by psychiatry to explain psychotic episodes.

Firstly, Georges Lemaître, is the Catholic priest who is identified by science as the originator of the Big Bang idea:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre

Lemaître, of course, was no psychotic, but he was immersed in the Bible’s Genesis tale of the origin of creation: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth; the earth was waste and void; darkness covered the abyss … God said ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”  [Bible, Confraternity-Douay version, Catholic Book Publishing Co., NY, 1957]

The Big Bang designation came from astronomer Fred Hoyle, as a pejorative term that ended up being the accepted rubric of physicists.

(Hoyle was a "steady state" advocate.)

Lemaître’s expansion of the universe theory, preceded Hubble’s expansion “proof” and is accepted as the premise for the Big Bang scenario.

But Lemaître’s ideas stem from Lemaître’s theological leanings, I think; he wanted to apply Biblical (Catholic) belief to scientific theory, and thus his Big Bang suggestion does just that.

So there’s that.

But further, as I’ve often noted, there is a psychotic tinge to the demeanor and ideas of physicists.

That is, physicists remind me, when they become avidly agitated about their ideas, of a person relating a psychotic episode to their therapist.

(The perky infantilism displayed by physicists when they are explaining their area of “expertise” is obvious to cognoscenti.)

Thus, the Big Bang theory has its roots in a kind of madness, which explains why it doesn’t make sense to many. (Even some current physicists are losing faith in the Big Bang explanation of the universe’s origin.)

I’ll have more, upcoming, about Salomon Resnik’s ideas, as they intersect with Jose Caravaca’s Distortion Theory, Jacques Vallee’s “others” idea, and ufology, generally.

(The image above comes from the bbc.com)

RR