A Private Interpretation of Reality: Heraclitus and OCD, with a Bergsonian Twist
A Private Interpretation of Reality: Heraclitus and OCD, with a Bergsonian Twist
The world of the waking [koinos kosmos] is one and shared, but the sleeping turn aside each into his private world [idios kosmos]
— Heraclitus of Ephesus
The pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus presents us with a contrast between the koinos kosmos or shared world that is accessible to those who are awake, and the idios kosmos, which is the private world of the sleeper. Heraclitus’ concern is not primarily psychological but ontological and epistemological. Wakefulness signifies attunement to the universal principle of reason (or logos in Greek) that orders reality and renders a shared world of meaning possible. Sleep, by contrast, functions as a metaphor for estrangement from this shared order, a condition in which individuals become confined to their own private nexus of significance and lose contact with what is universally intelligible.
Heraclitus’ distinction between the koinos kosmos and the idios kosmos provides a lens through which to understand obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The sufferer dwells in both worlds simultaneously: one ordered by the shared realities of common experience where it is patently evident that the door is locked, the cat is safe, and the stove is off; the other is the private world of possibility, responsibility, threat, and neurotic doubt, in which a tiny uncertainty can acquire enormous significance and ordinary events become entwined with what might happen, what should have been prevented, and what behaviors ought to be done to reduce even the tiniest risk. Much of the distress of OCD arises precisely from the friction between these competing worlds and the struggle to determine which should command belief and action.
The analogy between OCD and Heraclitus’ dualism is not total, however. Unless the sufferer is in a delusional state, he or she often retains insight into their own condition. Unlike someone wholly immersed in a dream or psychosis, they frequently know that they are caught between two worlds. Part of them remains anchored in the koinos kosmos and so may recognize that other people probably regard the feared danger as negligible. Yet another part feels compelled by the remarkably persuasive power of the idios kosmos. The suffering often lies precisely in this divided awareness.
There is, however, an intriguing Bergsonian twist to this distinction. For French philosopher Henri Bergson, who regarded Heraclitus as an important precursor of his own reflections on time and becoming, our perceptions are permeated by what he called the virtual: a real but non-actual dimension composed of the accumulated past, preserved in memory and capable of entering present experience.
The virtual is best understood as a multiplicity of interwoven memories, habits, tendencies, expectations, and meanings, all of which coexist within duration or lived time: (as opposed to clock time). Duration is an indivisible and continuous flow of consciousness, in which past and present interpenetrate. Consequently, perception is continually informed by the virtual. And though it remains oriented toward action, perception is infused with past associations, expectations, obligations, and meanings. The present moment therefore emerges not in isolation but as a contraction of a much larger virtual field, as latent significations are actualized through acts of remembrance and association.
If experience involves a continual interaction between present perception and the virtual, then Bergson’s account offers a distinctive way of understanding OCD. A naïve account might suggest that OCD consists merely in the imagination of possible catastrophes. But the problem may be that certain memories, habits, associations, and tendencies are being repeatedly actualized around particular perceptions, thereby acquiring an unusual authority over thought and action. One might even propose a phenomenological definition of OCD as a condition in which the actual present is persistently overdetermined by certain privileged strands of the virtual past. In short, what would otherwise remain in the twilight of the virtual is invested with practical significance, narrowing the range of possible interpretations available to experience. The problem, then, is not that intrusive thoughts emerge ex nihilo. Rather, a feared possibility that ought to remain peripheral is repeatedly elevated to the center of experience.
Strictly speaking, the virtual belongs to of the consciousness of everybody, not just those with OCD; it is the structure of memory and psychological time as such. Much of life unfolds in the penumbra, where memories, fears, associations, obligations, and unrealized possibilities drift through consciousness without demanding a response. In OCD, however, private associations acquire an exceptional intensity, presenting themselves with a force and immediacy that far exceeds their objective significance. They shape not only what is perceived but also how situations are evaluated, exerting a disproportionate and often distressing influence upon judgement and behavior. In short, what might otherwise remain a passing possibility to most people takes on the urgency of a present fact.
Bringing Heraclitus and Bergson into direct dialogue, we might say that the virtual contents of the idios kosmos subsist as dimly apprehended images at the threshold of awareness, awaiting actualization through recollection and association, while already exerting a formative influence upon perception. Indeed, Bergson himself talked of “these darkened images [that] come forward into the full light.” What should remain a twilight possibility is repeatedly treated as daylight reality, the result being that the light of the logos, of common sense, seems far less illuminating than the compelling glow of privately-feared meanings. In severe cases of OCD, the sufferer may lose sight of the logos, or shared world, almost entirely, as idiosyncratic associations that reside in the virtual acquire the status of objective realities. The result is a picture of the world increasingly detached from the checks and corrections afforded by common experience.
A final thought: Heraclitus’ distinction between idios kosmos and koinos kosmos was picked up in the twentieth century by psychoanalytic thinkers and cultural theorists, such as Ludwig Binswanger, Michel Foucault, and Rollo May. Binswanger did not regard the idios kosmos as merely an error; every human being has a private world. The problem occurs when the balance between private and shared existence breaks down. For Binswanger, mental illness can arise when someone becomes imprisoned within a private meaning-system that is no longer adequately checked by the common world.
For Foucault, Binswanger’s great insight is that the idios kosmos, as manifested in dreaming, is not simply a realm of fantasy opposed to reality. Rather, it discloses dimensions of human existence that often remain latent in the routines of waking life. The dream reveals possibilities, meanings, and orientations that belong to our being-in-the-world itself. Nevertheless, these existential structures may become distorted when detached from the corrective influence of the koinos kosmos, the common world of shared experience and rational discourse.
Rollo May learned much of his existential psychology from Binswanger and introduced these ideas to an English-speaking audience. May used these concepts to describe people who become trapped in a restricted private world and lose contact with shared reality. For May, the issue was broader than psychosis. A person may live in an idios kosmos whenever anxiety, rigidity, neurosis, or self-preoccupation prevents genuine participation in the shared world. It is possible, however, to find a creative balance between individuality and participation in the shared world. Indeed, anxiety, fantasy, and imagination should not be seen as obstacles but avenues into understanding how a person encounters the world.
Binswanger, Foucault and May, then, share a conviction that the private world is existentially meaningful rather than merely erroneous insofar as it is a disclosure of how reality is lived. The idios kosmos possesses phenomenological significance even when it departs from the koinos kosmos. When read in dialogue with Heraclitus and Bergson, they all seem to suggest that memories, meanings, fears, responsibilities, desires, and possibilities are not simply illusions to be overcome; they disclose something genuine about the way existence is experienced and interpreted. Yet their legitimacy depends upon their continuing relation to the shared world. The danger arises when the contents of the idios kosmos assume authority, directing thought and action according to subjective significances that cannot be validated by common experience.
Bibliography
Bergson, Henri. [1896] Matter and Memory. Tr., Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer. London: George Allen & Unwin (1911).
Foucault, Michel and Ludwig Binswanger. Dream and Existence. Ed., Keith Hoeller. Tr., Forrest Williams and Jacob Needleman. Seattle: Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry (1986).
Kahn, Charles H. The Art and Thought of Heraclitus: An Edition of the Fragments with Translation and Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1979).
May, Rollo. “Contributions of Existential Psychotherapy.” Existence: A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology. Eds., Rollo May, Ernest Angel, Henri F. Ellenberger. New York: Basic Books (1958).
