"What's really important about shamanism, in my opinion, is that the shaman knows that we are not alone. By that I mean, when one human being compassionately works to relieve the suffering of another, the helping spirits are interested and become involved."
source https://www.shamanism.org/articles/article01.html
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Certified Shamanic Counselor (CSC)®
What It Means if Someone is a Harner Certified Shamanic Counselor (CSC)®
Harner Shamanic Counseling (HSC) is a method of spiritual learning combining core shamanism with important systemic and technical innovations made by Michael Harner for personal life-enlightenment. HSC is based upon the ancient principles of shamanism, not of psychology or other modern Western systems. It is essential, therefore, that the Counseling Trainee know shamanism well and practice it regularly in daily life.
The sequential steps and requirements for certification* (October 24, 2006 rev.):
1. Successful completion of the FSS Basic Workshop, The Way of the Shaman.
2. Acceptance into, and successful completion of, the FSS Five-Day Harner (Method) Shamanic Counseling Training.
3. Submission of (a) audio cassette recordings of the applicant's own sessions as a client during the Five-Day Course; and (b) a 4,000-5,000-word typewritten essay answering the following question: "What should the standards be for the shamanic counselor, and how do I meet these standards?"
4. After acceptance into the Certification Program (which is not a guarantee of certification), the Counseling Trainee must participate in at least 20 meetings of a core shamanic drumming circle, whether already ongoing or set up by the Counseling Trainee. A brief typewritten report on this participation must be delivered as indicated in step 6 (below). It should include the dates and town identification of each of the meetings.
5. Successful completion of at least 125 additional hours (not including the Basic workshop or the Shamanic Counseling Training Course) of core shamanic training in FSS courses. The 125 hours should consist of advanced weekend and five-day workshops in core shamanism and/or the Two-Week Intensive and the Three-Year Program. These hours may be accumulated both before and after being admitted to the Certification Program. A typewritten list of these workshops and courses, indicating the years and places taken, and the faculty members, must be delivered as indicated in step 6. Please note that repetition of a workshop or course does not count in the crediting of hours, although it is useful training.
6. Submission of a total of 25 hours of audio cassette recordings of shamanic counseling work by the trainee with one or more clients.
The minimum material expected on a tape is: the pre-journey introduction and discussion; the journey; the summation; and the discussion afterward. At least 15 hours of the tapes must represent work after admission into the Certification Program. All tapes must be delivered at least 60 days before the Teaching Examination. At the same time the trainee must also provide written reports, as indicated in steps 4 and 5.
The Review Committee will audit and evaluate this taped work. The evaluations are for Committee deliberations only. However, the Committee will suggest remedial work when appropriate.
7. Successful completion of a Five-Day Teaching Examination in Shamanic Counseling.
8. An Oral Examination on Shamanism and Shamanic Counseling (may be waived at the discretion of the Foundation).
9. Final evaluation for Certification.
10. Certification.
* As of 2008, the Foundation for Shamanic Studies ceased offering certification in Harner Shamanic Counseling. This cessation does not affect those who already are Certified Shamanic Counselors (CSC).
* About FSS
* Workshops
* Join the Circle
* Contact FSS
* Privacy Policy
Copyright © 2000-2010 The Foundation for Shamanic Studies
Harner Shamanic Counseling (HSC) is a method of spiritual learning combining core shamanism with important systemic and technical innovations made by Michael Harner for personal life-enlightenment. HSC is based upon the ancient principles of shamanism, not of psychology or other modern Western systems. It is essential, therefore, that the Counseling Trainee know shamanism well and practice it regularly in daily life.
The sequential steps and requirements for certification* (October 24, 2006 rev.):
1. Successful completion of the FSS Basic Workshop, The Way of the Shaman.
2. Acceptance into, and successful completion of, the FSS Five-Day Harner (Method) Shamanic Counseling Training.
3. Submission of (a) audio cassette recordings of the applicant's own sessions as a client during the Five-Day Course; and (b) a 4,000-5,000-word typewritten essay answering the following question: "What should the standards be for the shamanic counselor, and how do I meet these standards?"
4. After acceptance into the Certification Program (which is not a guarantee of certification), the Counseling Trainee must participate in at least 20 meetings of a core shamanic drumming circle, whether already ongoing or set up by the Counseling Trainee. A brief typewritten report on this participation must be delivered as indicated in step 6 (below). It should include the dates and town identification of each of the meetings.
5. Successful completion of at least 125 additional hours (not including the Basic workshop or the Shamanic Counseling Training Course) of core shamanic training in FSS courses. The 125 hours should consist of advanced weekend and five-day workshops in core shamanism and/or the Two-Week Intensive and the Three-Year Program. These hours may be accumulated both before and after being admitted to the Certification Program. A typewritten list of these workshops and courses, indicating the years and places taken, and the faculty members, must be delivered as indicated in step 6. Please note that repetition of a workshop or course does not count in the crediting of hours, although it is useful training.
6. Submission of a total of 25 hours of audio cassette recordings of shamanic counseling work by the trainee with one or more clients.
The minimum material expected on a tape is: the pre-journey introduction and discussion; the journey; the summation; and the discussion afterward. At least 15 hours of the tapes must represent work after admission into the Certification Program. All tapes must be delivered at least 60 days before the Teaching Examination. At the same time the trainee must also provide written reports, as indicated in steps 4 and 5.
The Review Committee will audit and evaluate this taped work. The evaluations are for Committee deliberations only. However, the Committee will suggest remedial work when appropriate.
7. Successful completion of a Five-Day Teaching Examination in Shamanic Counseling.
8. An Oral Examination on Shamanism and Shamanic Counseling (may be waived at the discretion of the Foundation).
9. Final evaluation for Certification.
10. Certification.
* As of 2008, the Foundation for Shamanic Studies ceased offering certification in Harner Shamanic Counseling. This cessation does not affect those who already are Certified Shamanic Counselors (CSC).
* About FSS
* Workshops
* Join the Circle
* Contact FSS
* Privacy Policy
Copyright © 2000-2010 The Foundation for Shamanic Studies
LOVE!!
On this day of your life, lenora, I believe God wants you to know...
....that your job, your invitation from the Universe, is to give people back to themselves.
You can do this every day, in a hundred ways. Why not practice it with the first three people you encounter after reading this?
It is really a very easy thing to do -- yet it can affect a person mightily. All you have to do is look for the best in that person, and then show it to them, right then and there. Describe it. Admire it. Thank them for it.
Do this for three people every day and watch how your whole life can change. At last you will realize what you are doing here. All the rest will be just stuff and nonsense.
Love, Your Friend....
neale
....that your job, your invitation from the Universe, is to give people back to themselves.
You can do this every day, in a hundred ways. Why not practice it with the first three people you encounter after reading this?
It is really a very easy thing to do -- yet it can affect a person mightily. All you have to do is look for the best in that person, and then show it to them, right then and there. Describe it. Admire it. Thank them for it.
Do this for three people every day and watch how your whole life can change. At last you will realize what you are doing here. All the rest will be just stuff and nonsense.
Love, Your Friend....
neale
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Co-Occurrence with Mental Disorders
http://www.spiritualcompetency.com/dsm4/lesson4_1.asp
LESSON 4 Co-Occurrence with Mental Disorders
Spiritual Issues of Persons with Mental Disorders • Co-Diagnosis with Axis I Disorders
Spiritual Issues of Persons with Mental Disorders
As reviewed in Lesson1 Background of DSM-IV Category, clinical literature has tended to pathologize religiosity in persons with mental disorders. One example is the assertion by Albert Ellis[1], that: "The less religious [patients] are, the more emotionally healthy they will tend to be" ( p. 637).
One study examined 44 psychiatric patients suffering from depression, anxiety disorders, and personality disorders to see if religious involvement was linked with neurotic behavior. Forty-five psychologically healthy subjects served as a comparison group. Results show that patients who had little or no religious commitment were just as likely to have depression, anxiety or other personality disorders as patients with higher levels of religious commitment. Being highly religious was not a risk factor for psychopathology, as has been often taught in mental health training programs.
Feifer S, Waelty U Psychopathology and religious commitment--a controlled study. Psychopathology 1995;28(2):70-7).
The recent (2001) Handbook of Religion and Health reviewed over 1600 studies, and found that across mental and physical disorders, religion is overwhelmingly associated with positive outcomes. There is evidence that religious practices speed recovery in mental disorders. For example, a recent study found that psychiatric patients who regularly attend church and pray recover more quickly than their nonreligious counterparts.
See Religion and spirituality in the lives of people with serious mental illness.
Therefore, therapy should consider the spiritual resources and needs of persons in recovery.
Sudies have also found that hospitalized psychiatric patients are as religious as the general population, and they turn more to religion during crises.In The religious needs and resources of psychiatric inpatients, Fitchett et al., 1997 found that 88% of the psychiatric patients reported three or more current religious needs. Psychiatric patients had lower spiritual well-being scores and were less likely to have talked with their clergy. The study concluded that religion is important for psychiatric patients, and they may need assistance to find resources to address their religious needs.
One example of how religious beliefs can negatively affect health outcome is the belief that sin leads to one's illness. Of 52 psychiatric inpatients, 23% believed that sin-related factors, such as sinful thoughts or acts, cause illness. Such beliefs are associated with negative health outcomes.
Sheehan W, Kroll J Psychiatric patients' belief in general health factors and sin as causes of illness. Am J Psychiatry 1990 Jan;147(1):112-3
At St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C., the Chaplain Program conducts a "Spiritual Needs Assessment" on each inpatient, concluding with a treatment plan that identifies religious/spiritual needs and problems.The program defines the role of pastoral intervention and recommended religious/spiritual activities. (For a lesson on instruments and approaches to assessing spirituality, see the course on Spirituality and Recovery from Mental Disorders.)
Co-Diagnosis with Axis I Disorders
In the DSM-IV, the diagnosis of Religious or Spiritual Problem is an Axis I condition and can be assigned along with a co-existing Axis I disorder. The APA Task Force on Religion and Psychiatry [2] reported: "The religious convictions of patients can be used effectively in therapy. Religion can be a usable support system for the patient even when the therapist believes the patient's religious system has no objective value."
Explicit and nonjudgmental attention to religious concerns can add significantly to the quality and effectiveness of clinical work. Indeed, struggles of faith are embedded in the life course of many patients in acute treatment. Religious and spiritual problems can be associated with the full range of DSM-IV mental disorders since the integrity of the individual is challenged in all illnesses.
Alcohol and Drug Dependence and Abuse
Twelve Step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous dominate addiction treatment in mental health settings, and religion/spirituality plays a central role. The first of the 12 steps mentions "A power greater than ourselves." The final step mentions a "spiritual awakening." Five of the 12 steps make a specific reference to God, and the phrase "as we understand Him" appears twice. The founders of A.A. did not ponder whether religious and spiritual factors are important in recovery, but rather if it is possible for alcoholics to recover without the help of a higher power. Jung told Bill W., the co-founder of A.A., that "craving for alcohol was the equivalent, on a low level, of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness." Jung maintained that recovery from addiction required a religious experience: "Inasmuch as you attain to the numinous experience, you are released from the curse of pathology." (See History of Early A.A.'s Spiritual Roots.) Similarly, some theorists and clinicians have approached addictions as essentially spiritual crises, not mental disorders [3].
The strong relationship between religious/spiritual commitment (e.g., church attendence) and the avoidance of alcohol and illicit drugs is well-established. However, not much is known about the religious/spiritual dimensions of addiciton treatment. Religious/spiritual variables have been neglected in research. Such variables include measures of perceived purpose or meaning in life, changes in values and beliefs, shifts in religious/spiritual practices, clients' religious/spiritual value systems, acceptance of particular treatment goals and strategies, and the impact of religious/spiritually-oriented interventions on treatment outcome. Miller recommended that these variables be considered in research in order to "improve our understanding of the addictive behaviors, and our ability to prevent and treat these enduring problems [4]." It is known that patients in alcohol treatment who bcome involved with a religious community after treatment have lower recidivism rates than those who do not. (See Association of spirituality and sobriety during a behavioral spirituality intervention for Twelve Step (TS) recovery.)
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
In obsessive-compulsive disorder, some individuals present with what they consider scrupulous devoutness, but upon further assessment, the use of religion is a metaphor for the expression of compulsive requirements. Superficially, religious rituals and obsessive-compulsive behaviors share some common features: the prominent role of cleanliness and purity; the need for rituals to be carried out in specific ways and numbers of times; and the fear of performing the rituals incorrectly.
Greenberg and Witzum [5] describe an individual whose concern with correctly saying his prayers led him to spend nine hours a day in prayer instead of the usual 40-90 minutes of other ultra-orthodox Jews. Persons in this religious community with obsessive-compulsive disorder became so preocuppied with some detail or area of religious practice that they ignored or violated other tenets of their faith. In these individuals, scrupulous devoutness involved the use of religion to express compulsive needs. (However, the authors also concluded that ultra-orthodox Jews were not at higher risk for obsessive-compulsive disorder.) In such cases, Greenberg and Witzum recommend meeting together with the patient's religious leader present and that "During assessment, the terms and symbols of the religion of strictly religious patients should be used ...[to] enable the patient to feel as comfortable as possible" (p. 557). When these religious factors warrant independent clinical attention and are explicitly addressed in treatment, Religious or Spiritual Problem should be coded along with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
Greenberg and Witzum have proposed the following criteria for differentiating obsessive-compulsive behaviors from religious practices:
1. Compulsive behavior goes beyond the letter of the religious law.
2. Compulsive behavior is focused on one specific area and does not reflect an overall concern for religious practice.
3. The choice of focus of obsessive-compulsive behavior is typical of the disorder (e.g., cleanliness and checking, obsessive thoughts of blasphemy toward God or fear of illness).
4. Many important dimensions of religious life are neglected.
Psychotic Disorders
Co-occurrence of a Religious and Spiritual Problems with psychotic disorders occurs frequently, especially in manic psychosis. One study of hospitalized bipolar patients found religious delusions were present in 25% and their hallucinations were brief, usually grandiose, usually religiou s. Goodwin and Jamison (Manic-Depressive Illness) have also noted the prominence of religious and spiritual concerns in persons with manic-depressive illness.They suggest that there, "have been many mystics who may well have suffered from manic-depressive illness--for example, St. Theresa, St. Francis, St. John" (p. 362). Mystical features can occur along with a psychotic disorder. For such patients, Religious or Spiritual Problem could be coded along with the concomitant Axis I disorder.
There is cross-cultural support for the overlap of psychosis and religious experiences. Anthropologists have observed that,
highly similar mental and behavioral states may be designated psychiatric disorders in some cultural settings and religious experiences in others...Within cultures that invest these unusual states with meaning and provide the individual experiencing them with institutional support, at least a proportion of them may be contained and channeled into socially valuable roles. (Prince [6]
In Ken Wilber's [7] spectrum model of consciousness, psychosis is neither prepersonal (infantile and regressive) nor transpersonal (transcendent and absolute); it is depersonal--an admixture of higher and lower elements:
[Psychosis] carries with it cascading fragments of higher structures that have ruinously disintegrated" (p. 64). Thus, psychotic persons "often channel profound spiritual insights. (p. 108)
But psychotic persons are incapable of differentiating the transpersonal from the regressive prepersonal at the time of the experience. Afterwards, while in recovery, they are often able to sort thorough their experiences and separate the wheat from the chaff. Psychotherapy can salvage the valid religious/spiritual dimensions of the experience. James Hillman has stated that recovery means recovering the divine from within the disorder, seeing that its contents are authentically religious.
Transpersonal psychotherapy can be especially valuable in the postpsychotic period because it promotes the integration of the healthy parts of religious/spiritual experiences in psychosis. (See Lesson 6.2 on Psychotherapy)
Jerome Stack, a Catholic Chaplain for 25 years at Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk, California, observed that many people with mental disorders do have genuine religious experiences:
Many patients over the years have spoken to me of their religious experiences and I have found their stories to be quite genuine, quite believable. Their experience of the divine, the spiritual, is healthy and life-giving. Of course, discernment is important, but it is important not to presume that certain kinds of religious experience or behavior are simply "part of the illness."
During manic episodes in particular, people have experiences similar to those of the great mystics.
Sally Clay, an advocate and consultant for the Portland Coalition for the Psychiatrically Labeled, has written about the significant role that religious experiences played in her recovery. She had been hospitalized for two years diagnosed with schizophrenia at the Yale-affiliated Hartford Institute of Living (IOL). While there, she had a powerful religious experience which led her to attend religious services.
My recovery had nothing to do with the talk therapy, the drugs, or the electroshock treatments I had received; more likely, it happened in spite of these things. My recovery did have something to do with the devotional services I had been attending. At the IOL I attended both Protestant and Catholic services, and if Jewish or Buddhist services had been available, I would have gone to them, too. I was cured instantly--healed if you will--as a direct result of a spiritual experience.
Many years later Clay went back to the IOL to review her case records, and found herself described as having "decompensated with grandiose delusions with spiritual preoccupations." She complains that "Not a single aspect of my spiritual experience at the IOL was recognized as legitimate; neither the spiritual difficulties nor the healing that occurred at the end."
Clay is not denying that she had a psychotic disorder at the time, but makes the case that, in addition to the disabling effects she experienced as part of her illness, there was also a profound spiritual component which was ignored. She describes how the lack of sensitivity to the spiritual dimensions of her experience on the part of mental health and religious professionals was detrimental to her recovery. Nevertheless, she has persevered in her belief that,
For me, becoming "mentally ill" was always a spiritual crisis, and finding a spiritual model of recovery was a question of life or death. Finally, I could admit openly that my experiences were, and always had been, a spiritual journey--not sick, shameful, or evil.
The Wounded Prophet by Sally Clay
Mental health programs can, through their structures and culture, create environments that promote this spiritual work. New Recovery Center at Boston University is an example of a program that has adopted a recovery model incorporating a spiritual component. Curricular options include such courses as "Connectedness: Some Skills for Spiritual Health," "Hatha Yoga," and a "Recovery Seminar." This guided exploration of personal recovery is the center's flagship course.
People recovering from mental disorders have rich opportunities for spiritual growth, along with challenges to its expression and development. They will find much-needed support for the task when they are guided to clinically explore to explore their spiritual lives.
For more information on integrating spirituality into recovery, see the Spiritual Competency Resource Center course
Spirituality & Recovery from Mental Disorders
References
1 Ellis, A. (1980). "Psychotherapy and atheistic values: A response to A, E. Bergin's "Psychotherapy and Religious Issues"." Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 48: 635-639.
2 American Psychiatric Association. (1990). "Guidelines regarding possible conflict between psychiatrists' religious commitments and psychiatric practice." American Journal of Psychiatry 147: 542.
4 Grof C (1993) Thirst for wholeness: Attachment, addiction and the spiritual path. San Francisco: HarperCollins.
oka & J. Morgan (Eds.), Death and spirituality. Amityville, NY: Baywood.
4 Miller, W R (1990) Spirituality: The silent dimension in addiction research. Drug and Alcohol Review 9:259-266.
5 Greenberg, D. and E. Witztum (1991). "Problems in the treatment of religious patients." American Journal of Psychotherapy 45(4): 554-565.
6 Prince, R. H. 1992 Religious experience and psychopathology: Cross-cultural perspectives. In J. F. Schumacher (Ed.), Religion and mental health, (pp. 281-290). New York: Oxford University Press.
7 Wilber, K. (1993) The pre/trans fallacy. In Walsh, R. Vaughan, F. (Eds.) Paths Beyond Ego. Los Angeles: Tarcher.
LESSON 4 Co-Occurrence with Mental Disorders
Spiritual Issues of Persons with Mental Disorders • Co-Diagnosis with Axis I Disorders
Spiritual Issues of Persons with Mental Disorders
As reviewed in Lesson1 Background of DSM-IV Category, clinical literature has tended to pathologize religiosity in persons with mental disorders. One example is the assertion by Albert Ellis[1], that: "The less religious [patients] are, the more emotionally healthy they will tend to be" ( p. 637).
One study examined 44 psychiatric patients suffering from depression, anxiety disorders, and personality disorders to see if religious involvement was linked with neurotic behavior. Forty-five psychologically healthy subjects served as a comparison group. Results show that patients who had little or no religious commitment were just as likely to have depression, anxiety or other personality disorders as patients with higher levels of religious commitment. Being highly religious was not a risk factor for psychopathology, as has been often taught in mental health training programs.
Feifer S, Waelty U Psychopathology and religious commitment--a controlled study. Psychopathology 1995;28(2):70-7).
The recent (2001) Handbook of Religion and Health reviewed over 1600 studies, and found that across mental and physical disorders, religion is overwhelmingly associated with positive outcomes. There is evidence that religious practices speed recovery in mental disorders. For example, a recent study found that psychiatric patients who regularly attend church and pray recover more quickly than their nonreligious counterparts.
See Religion and spirituality in the lives of people with serious mental illness.
Therefore, therapy should consider the spiritual resources and needs of persons in recovery.
Sudies have also found that hospitalized psychiatric patients are as religious as the general population, and they turn more to religion during crises.In The religious needs and resources of psychiatric inpatients, Fitchett et al., 1997 found that 88% of the psychiatric patients reported three or more current religious needs. Psychiatric patients had lower spiritual well-being scores and were less likely to have talked with their clergy. The study concluded that religion is important for psychiatric patients, and they may need assistance to find resources to address their religious needs.
One example of how religious beliefs can negatively affect health outcome is the belief that sin leads to one's illness. Of 52 psychiatric inpatients, 23% believed that sin-related factors, such as sinful thoughts or acts, cause illness. Such beliefs are associated with negative health outcomes.
Sheehan W, Kroll J Psychiatric patients' belief in general health factors and sin as causes of illness. Am J Psychiatry 1990 Jan;147(1):112-3
At St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C., the Chaplain Program conducts a "Spiritual Needs Assessment" on each inpatient, concluding with a treatment plan that identifies religious/spiritual needs and problems.The program defines the role of pastoral intervention and recommended religious/spiritual activities. (For a lesson on instruments and approaches to assessing spirituality, see the course on Spirituality and Recovery from Mental Disorders.)
Co-Diagnosis with Axis I Disorders
In the DSM-IV, the diagnosis of Religious or Spiritual Problem is an Axis I condition and can be assigned along with a co-existing Axis I disorder. The APA Task Force on Religion and Psychiatry [2] reported: "The religious convictions of patients can be used effectively in therapy. Religion can be a usable support system for the patient even when the therapist believes the patient's religious system has no objective value."
Explicit and nonjudgmental attention to religious concerns can add significantly to the quality and effectiveness of clinical work. Indeed, struggles of faith are embedded in the life course of many patients in acute treatment. Religious and spiritual problems can be associated with the full range of DSM-IV mental disorders since the integrity of the individual is challenged in all illnesses.
Alcohol and Drug Dependence and Abuse
Twelve Step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous dominate addiction treatment in mental health settings, and religion/spirituality plays a central role. The first of the 12 steps mentions "A power greater than ourselves." The final step mentions a "spiritual awakening." Five of the 12 steps make a specific reference to God, and the phrase "as we understand Him" appears twice. The founders of A.A. did not ponder whether religious and spiritual factors are important in recovery, but rather if it is possible for alcoholics to recover without the help of a higher power. Jung told Bill W., the co-founder of A.A., that "craving for alcohol was the equivalent, on a low level, of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness." Jung maintained that recovery from addiction required a religious experience: "Inasmuch as you attain to the numinous experience, you are released from the curse of pathology." (See History of Early A.A.'s Spiritual Roots.) Similarly, some theorists and clinicians have approached addictions as essentially spiritual crises, not mental disorders [3].
The strong relationship between religious/spiritual commitment (e.g., church attendence) and the avoidance of alcohol and illicit drugs is well-established. However, not much is known about the religious/spiritual dimensions of addiciton treatment. Religious/spiritual variables have been neglected in research. Such variables include measures of perceived purpose or meaning in life, changes in values and beliefs, shifts in religious/spiritual practices, clients' religious/spiritual value systems, acceptance of particular treatment goals and strategies, and the impact of religious/spiritually-oriented interventions on treatment outcome. Miller recommended that these variables be considered in research in order to "improve our understanding of the addictive behaviors, and our ability to prevent and treat these enduring problems [4]." It is known that patients in alcohol treatment who bcome involved with a religious community after treatment have lower recidivism rates than those who do not. (See Association of spirituality and sobriety during a behavioral spirituality intervention for Twelve Step (TS) recovery.)
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
In obsessive-compulsive disorder, some individuals present with what they consider scrupulous devoutness, but upon further assessment, the use of religion is a metaphor for the expression of compulsive requirements. Superficially, religious rituals and obsessive-compulsive behaviors share some common features: the prominent role of cleanliness and purity; the need for rituals to be carried out in specific ways and numbers of times; and the fear of performing the rituals incorrectly.
Greenberg and Witzum [5] describe an individual whose concern with correctly saying his prayers led him to spend nine hours a day in prayer instead of the usual 40-90 minutes of other ultra-orthodox Jews. Persons in this religious community with obsessive-compulsive disorder became so preocuppied with some detail or area of religious practice that they ignored or violated other tenets of their faith. In these individuals, scrupulous devoutness involved the use of religion to express compulsive needs. (However, the authors also concluded that ultra-orthodox Jews were not at higher risk for obsessive-compulsive disorder.) In such cases, Greenberg and Witzum recommend meeting together with the patient's religious leader present and that "During assessment, the terms and symbols of the religion of strictly religious patients should be used ...[to] enable the patient to feel as comfortable as possible" (p. 557). When these religious factors warrant independent clinical attention and are explicitly addressed in treatment, Religious or Spiritual Problem should be coded along with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
Greenberg and Witzum have proposed the following criteria for differentiating obsessive-compulsive behaviors from religious practices:
1. Compulsive behavior goes beyond the letter of the religious law.
2. Compulsive behavior is focused on one specific area and does not reflect an overall concern for religious practice.
3. The choice of focus of obsessive-compulsive behavior is typical of the disorder (e.g., cleanliness and checking, obsessive thoughts of blasphemy toward God or fear of illness).
4. Many important dimensions of religious life are neglected.
Psychotic Disorders
Co-occurrence of a Religious and Spiritual Problems with psychotic disorders occurs frequently, especially in manic psychosis. One study of hospitalized bipolar patients found religious delusions were present in 25% and their hallucinations were brief, usually grandiose, usually religiou s. Goodwin and Jamison (Manic-Depressive Illness) have also noted the prominence of religious and spiritual concerns in persons with manic-depressive illness.They suggest that there, "have been many mystics who may well have suffered from manic-depressive illness--for example, St. Theresa, St. Francis, St. John" (p. 362). Mystical features can occur along with a psychotic disorder. For such patients, Religious or Spiritual Problem could be coded along with the concomitant Axis I disorder.
There is cross-cultural support for the overlap of psychosis and religious experiences. Anthropologists have observed that,
highly similar mental and behavioral states may be designated psychiatric disorders in some cultural settings and religious experiences in others...Within cultures that invest these unusual states with meaning and provide the individual experiencing them with institutional support, at least a proportion of them may be contained and channeled into socially valuable roles. (Prince [6]
In Ken Wilber's [7] spectrum model of consciousness, psychosis is neither prepersonal (infantile and regressive) nor transpersonal (transcendent and absolute); it is depersonal--an admixture of higher and lower elements:
[Psychosis] carries with it cascading fragments of higher structures that have ruinously disintegrated" (p. 64). Thus, psychotic persons "often channel profound spiritual insights. (p. 108)
But psychotic persons are incapable of differentiating the transpersonal from the regressive prepersonal at the time of the experience. Afterwards, while in recovery, they are often able to sort thorough their experiences and separate the wheat from the chaff. Psychotherapy can salvage the valid religious/spiritual dimensions of the experience. James Hillman has stated that recovery means recovering the divine from within the disorder, seeing that its contents are authentically religious.
Transpersonal psychotherapy can be especially valuable in the postpsychotic period because it promotes the integration of the healthy parts of religious/spiritual experiences in psychosis. (See Lesson 6.2 on Psychotherapy)
Jerome Stack, a Catholic Chaplain for 25 years at Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk, California, observed that many people with mental disorders do have genuine religious experiences:
Many patients over the years have spoken to me of their religious experiences and I have found their stories to be quite genuine, quite believable. Their experience of the divine, the spiritual, is healthy and life-giving. Of course, discernment is important, but it is important not to presume that certain kinds of religious experience or behavior are simply "part of the illness."
During manic episodes in particular, people have experiences similar to those of the great mystics.
Sally Clay, an advocate and consultant for the Portland Coalition for the Psychiatrically Labeled, has written about the significant role that religious experiences played in her recovery. She had been hospitalized for two years diagnosed with schizophrenia at the Yale-affiliated Hartford Institute of Living (IOL). While there, she had a powerful religious experience which led her to attend religious services.
My recovery had nothing to do with the talk therapy, the drugs, or the electroshock treatments I had received; more likely, it happened in spite of these things. My recovery did have something to do with the devotional services I had been attending. At the IOL I attended both Protestant and Catholic services, and if Jewish or Buddhist services had been available, I would have gone to them, too. I was cured instantly--healed if you will--as a direct result of a spiritual experience.
Many years later Clay went back to the IOL to review her case records, and found herself described as having "decompensated with grandiose delusions with spiritual preoccupations." She complains that "Not a single aspect of my spiritual experience at the IOL was recognized as legitimate; neither the spiritual difficulties nor the healing that occurred at the end."
Clay is not denying that she had a psychotic disorder at the time, but makes the case that, in addition to the disabling effects she experienced as part of her illness, there was also a profound spiritual component which was ignored. She describes how the lack of sensitivity to the spiritual dimensions of her experience on the part of mental health and religious professionals was detrimental to her recovery. Nevertheless, she has persevered in her belief that,
For me, becoming "mentally ill" was always a spiritual crisis, and finding a spiritual model of recovery was a question of life or death. Finally, I could admit openly that my experiences were, and always had been, a spiritual journey--not sick, shameful, or evil.
The Wounded Prophet by Sally Clay
Mental health programs can, through their structures and culture, create environments that promote this spiritual work. New Recovery Center at Boston University is an example of a program that has adopted a recovery model incorporating a spiritual component. Curricular options include such courses as "Connectedness: Some Skills for Spiritual Health," "Hatha Yoga," and a "Recovery Seminar." This guided exploration of personal recovery is the center's flagship course.
People recovering from mental disorders have rich opportunities for spiritual growth, along with challenges to its expression and development. They will find much-needed support for the task when they are guided to clinically explore to explore their spiritual lives.
For more information on integrating spirituality into recovery, see the Spiritual Competency Resource Center course
Spirituality & Recovery from Mental Disorders
References
1 Ellis, A. (1980). "Psychotherapy and atheistic values: A response to A, E. Bergin's "Psychotherapy and Religious Issues"." Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 48: 635-639.
2 American Psychiatric Association. (1990). "Guidelines regarding possible conflict between psychiatrists' religious commitments and psychiatric practice." American Journal of Psychiatry 147: 542.
4 Grof C (1993) Thirst for wholeness: Attachment, addiction and the spiritual path. San Francisco: HarperCollins.
oka & J. Morgan (Eds.), Death and spirituality. Amityville, NY: Baywood.
4 Miller, W R (1990) Spirituality: The silent dimension in addiction research. Drug and Alcohol Review 9:259-266.
5 Greenberg, D. and E. Witztum (1991). "Problems in the treatment of religious patients." American Journal of Psychotherapy 45(4): 554-565.
6 Prince, R. H. 1992 Religious experience and psychopathology: Cross-cultural perspectives. In J. F. Schumacher (Ed.), Religion and mental health, (pp. 281-290). New York: Oxford University Press.
7 Wilber, K. (1993) The pre/trans fallacy. In Walsh, R. Vaughan, F. (Eds.) Paths Beyond Ego. Los Angeles: Tarcher.
Possession
LESSON 3.10 Possession
Table of Contents
Description • Possession and Psychopathology • Associated Clinical problems • Treatment • Case Examples • WWW Library
Description
In possession, the person enters an altered state of conscious and feels taken over by a spirit, power, deity, or other person who assumes control over his or her mind and body. Generally, the person has no recall of these experiences in the waking state. Such experiences have a long human history and many religions offer rituals and healings to protect participants from unwanted possession. The oldest theories about the etiology of mental disorders identifies spirit possession as the causal agent. One of the signs of Christ's divinity was his ability to cast out demons from people who were possessed.
However, the deliberate induction of possession states is part of valued religious rituals in many cultures, and is probably the most popular form of union with the divine throughout human history. Possession-oriented rituals have been documented in accounts from ancient Egypt, and in the earliest forms of Kabbalistic practice. Possession was a recognized phenomenon in ancient Greece where the Delphi oracle spoke through women possessed by spirits. Possession is a central feature of Haitian voodoo ceremonies where specific deities are invited to 'ride' the bodies of the worshipers during ceremonies. It is also found in Balinese ritual drama where the dancers become the entity they are portraying.
Possession also appears in early Christianity in a positive light, particularly in the form of "speaking in tongues." Many contemporary forms of evangelical Christianity consider it desirable to be possessed by the Holy Spirit, with physical manifestations that include shaking and speaking in tongues. St. Paul was worried by the phenomenon, and found it necessary to lecture the Corinthian Christians on the need to carefully manage speaking in tongues:
If therefore, the whole church assembles, and all speak in tongues, and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are mad?. . .do not forbid speaking in tongues, but all things should be done decently and in order. (I Corinthians, 14)
Spirit possession cults have continued to proliferate, even in the secular West, and many spirits and their mediums are part of local as well as global cultures (Behrend and Luig, 2000). Possession states still occur both in the context of non-Judaeo-Christian religious practices and in some cases of initiation ceremonies involving ritual ordeals. Anthropologist James Randall Noblitt, found that,
trauma is used in a variety of the initiation ceremonies which are conducted in preindustrial cultures and which may be associated with the development of possession states. Our theory is that ritual trauma is a primary cause of the dissociation of identity which one finds in shamanistic, and sorcery-oriented preindustrial cultures as well as the "occult underground" in modern Euro-America.
Possession and Psychopathology
While possession is a common experience in many cultures, in Western industrialized cultures, such experiences are not normative and may lead to inappropriate diagnoses of dissociative or psychotic disorders. Anthropologist Ruth Inge-Heinz, PhD [1], who has studied possession experiences in many cultures, has commented on the deleterious effects of mislabeling an individual in a state of dissociation as having a mental disorder:
The concept of what constitutes a 'healthy mind' differs considerably from one culture to another...How devastating it can be to affix the label of 'mental illness' to any extraordinary state of consciousness! A dissociative state of mind does not necessarily qualify an individual for being put into a straight jacket. Many dissociative states occur in Southeast Asia, for example, in a culturally conditioned and controlled setting. (pp. 28–29)
The DSM-IV lists Dissociative Trance Disorder as a diagnosis requiring further study. Possession and possession trance are listed under the diagnosis Dissociative Disorder Not Otherwise Specified . The definition includes,
Possession trance, a single or episodic alteration in the state of consciousness characterized by the replacement of customary sense of personal identity by a new identity. This is attributed to the influence of a spirit, power, deity, or other person. (p. 729)
The DSM-IV Casebook includes a case example of this in which a woman reports,
"Sometimes God enters my body, which gets hot when I have visions." (p. 420)
In this state, she is presumed by herself and others to be possessed by dead ancestors, and to be able to foresee the future.
The Casebook notes that,
This woman has symptoms that would be considered psychotic if they were experienced by someone from a society that did not share the beliefs of her [Guinean] culture. She believes she has special powers and she has. . .hallucinations. In her local society, however, these phenomena are quite common. Her culture ascribes to her the role of healer and accepts her unusual experiences as normal for someone in that role. Indeed she is a successful healer. . .Local culture would assign her the role as a healer, an her behavior would not be seen as something to be treated. (p. 421)
Despite this acknowledgment of the nonpathological nature of her experience in its cultural context, the Casebook, authored by many of the same people who developed the DSM-IV, assigns a diagnosis of a mental disorder to this case: Dissociative Disorder Not otherwise Specified!
Yet possession is also known to be associated with dissociative disorders that are not socially sanctioned and occur outside of the normal part of a collective cultural or religious practice. There is clearly a spectrum of dissociative experiences from nonpathological to pathological. (See Disintegrated experience: the dissociative disorders revisited)
Possessions are dysfunctional when there is impairment in social or occupational functioning or marked distress. The criteria described in Lesson 5.1 Differential Diagnosis can be helpful in making a differential diagnosis.
Associated Clinical Problems
Possessed persons often feel their behavior is beyond their control. Bizarre behavior such as choking, projectile vomiting, frantic motor behavior, wild spasms, and contortions along with grotesque vocalizations can be a frightening experience both for the person possessed and for others witnessing it.
Treatment
A key issue as with most spiritual emergencies is determining whether the person is in the midst of an episode of mental disorder or having a spiritual problem:
Demon possession and mental illness, then, are not simply alternative diagnoses. . .Furthermore, demon possession is essentially a spiritual problem, but mental illness is a multifactorial affair, in which spiritual, social, psychological and physical factors may all play an aetioIogical role. The relationship between these concepts is therefore complex. Differential diagnostic skills may have a part to play in offering help to those whose problems could be of demonic or medical/psychiatric origin. However, spiritual discernment is of at least equal, if not greater, importance in such matters.
Chris Cook, Demon Possession and Mental Illness: Should we be making a differential diagnosis?
The differential diagnostic criteria described in Lesson 5 Differential Diagnosis should be used with special consideration for the patient's religious community and its practices. Support for the patient must include social integration of the experience within his/her community. The treatment guidelines in Lesson 6.1, especially those involving grounding, are especially important in coping with the physical aspects of possession. If the individual is connected with a group whose practices include possession, then collaboration with leaders of that religious community should be part of the treatment plan.
Case Examples
A Case Study of Possession in the Dojo
by David Lukoff, PhD
WWW LIBRARY on Religion and Spirituality
The WWW Library on Spirituality and Religion includes the Yahoo directory of possession and exorcism sites, accounts of possession, and scientific perspectives on dissociation.
References
1 Heinze, R. I. (1982) Shamans or mediums: Toward a definition of different states of consciousness. Journal of Transpersonal Anthropology, 6(1&2), 25-44.
Table of Contents
Description • Possession and Psychopathology • Associated Clinical problems • Treatment • Case Examples • WWW Library
Description
In possession, the person enters an altered state of conscious and feels taken over by a spirit, power, deity, or other person who assumes control over his or her mind and body. Generally, the person has no recall of these experiences in the waking state. Such experiences have a long human history and many religions offer rituals and healings to protect participants from unwanted possession. The oldest theories about the etiology of mental disorders identifies spirit possession as the causal agent. One of the signs of Christ's divinity was his ability to cast out demons from people who were possessed.
However, the deliberate induction of possession states is part of valued religious rituals in many cultures, and is probably the most popular form of union with the divine throughout human history. Possession-oriented rituals have been documented in accounts from ancient Egypt, and in the earliest forms of Kabbalistic practice. Possession was a recognized phenomenon in ancient Greece where the Delphi oracle spoke through women possessed by spirits. Possession is a central feature of Haitian voodoo ceremonies where specific deities are invited to 'ride' the bodies of the worshipers during ceremonies. It is also found in Balinese ritual drama where the dancers become the entity they are portraying.
Possession also appears in early Christianity in a positive light, particularly in the form of "speaking in tongues." Many contemporary forms of evangelical Christianity consider it desirable to be possessed by the Holy Spirit, with physical manifestations that include shaking and speaking in tongues. St. Paul was worried by the phenomenon, and found it necessary to lecture the Corinthian Christians on the need to carefully manage speaking in tongues:
If therefore, the whole church assembles, and all speak in tongues, and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are mad?. . .do not forbid speaking in tongues, but all things should be done decently and in order. (I Corinthians, 14)
Spirit possession cults have continued to proliferate, even in the secular West, and many spirits and their mediums are part of local as well as global cultures (Behrend and Luig, 2000). Possession states still occur both in the context of non-Judaeo-Christian religious practices and in some cases of initiation ceremonies involving ritual ordeals. Anthropologist James Randall Noblitt, found that,
trauma is used in a variety of the initiation ceremonies which are conducted in preindustrial cultures and which may be associated with the development of possession states. Our theory is that ritual trauma is a primary cause of the dissociation of identity which one finds in shamanistic, and sorcery-oriented preindustrial cultures as well as the "occult underground" in modern Euro-America.
Possession and Psychopathology
While possession is a common experience in many cultures, in Western industrialized cultures, such experiences are not normative and may lead to inappropriate diagnoses of dissociative or psychotic disorders. Anthropologist Ruth Inge-Heinz, PhD [1], who has studied possession experiences in many cultures, has commented on the deleterious effects of mislabeling an individual in a state of dissociation as having a mental disorder:
The concept of what constitutes a 'healthy mind' differs considerably from one culture to another...How devastating it can be to affix the label of 'mental illness' to any extraordinary state of consciousness! A dissociative state of mind does not necessarily qualify an individual for being put into a straight jacket. Many dissociative states occur in Southeast Asia, for example, in a culturally conditioned and controlled setting. (pp. 28–29)
The DSM-IV lists Dissociative Trance Disorder as a diagnosis requiring further study. Possession and possession trance are listed under the diagnosis Dissociative Disorder Not Otherwise Specified . The definition includes,
Possession trance, a single or episodic alteration in the state of consciousness characterized by the replacement of customary sense of personal identity by a new identity. This is attributed to the influence of a spirit, power, deity, or other person. (p. 729)
The DSM-IV Casebook includes a case example of this in which a woman reports,
"Sometimes God enters my body, which gets hot when I have visions." (p. 420)
In this state, she is presumed by herself and others to be possessed by dead ancestors, and to be able to foresee the future.
The Casebook notes that,
This woman has symptoms that would be considered psychotic if they were experienced by someone from a society that did not share the beliefs of her [Guinean] culture. She believes she has special powers and she has. . .hallucinations. In her local society, however, these phenomena are quite common. Her culture ascribes to her the role of healer and accepts her unusual experiences as normal for someone in that role. Indeed she is a successful healer. . .Local culture would assign her the role as a healer, an her behavior would not be seen as something to be treated. (p. 421)
Despite this acknowledgment of the nonpathological nature of her experience in its cultural context, the Casebook, authored by many of the same people who developed the DSM-IV, assigns a diagnosis of a mental disorder to this case: Dissociative Disorder Not otherwise Specified!
Yet possession is also known to be associated with dissociative disorders that are not socially sanctioned and occur outside of the normal part of a collective cultural or religious practice. There is clearly a spectrum of dissociative experiences from nonpathological to pathological. (See Disintegrated experience: the dissociative disorders revisited)
Possessions are dysfunctional when there is impairment in social or occupational functioning or marked distress. The criteria described in Lesson 5.1 Differential Diagnosis can be helpful in making a differential diagnosis.
Associated Clinical Problems
Possessed persons often feel their behavior is beyond their control. Bizarre behavior such as choking, projectile vomiting, frantic motor behavior, wild spasms, and contortions along with grotesque vocalizations can be a frightening experience both for the person possessed and for others witnessing it.
Treatment
A key issue as with most spiritual emergencies is determining whether the person is in the midst of an episode of mental disorder or having a spiritual problem:
Demon possession and mental illness, then, are not simply alternative diagnoses. . .Furthermore, demon possession is essentially a spiritual problem, but mental illness is a multifactorial affair, in which spiritual, social, psychological and physical factors may all play an aetioIogical role. The relationship between these concepts is therefore complex. Differential diagnostic skills may have a part to play in offering help to those whose problems could be of demonic or medical/psychiatric origin. However, spiritual discernment is of at least equal, if not greater, importance in such matters.
Chris Cook, Demon Possession and Mental Illness: Should we be making a differential diagnosis?
The differential diagnostic criteria described in Lesson 5 Differential Diagnosis should be used with special consideration for the patient's religious community and its practices. Support for the patient must include social integration of the experience within his/her community. The treatment guidelines in Lesson 6.1, especially those involving grounding, are especially important in coping with the physical aspects of possession. If the individual is connected with a group whose practices include possession, then collaboration with leaders of that religious community should be part of the treatment plan.
Case Examples
A Case Study of Possession in the Dojo
by David Lukoff, PhD
WWW LIBRARY on Religion and Spirituality
The WWW Library on Spirituality and Religion includes the Yahoo directory of possession and exorcism sites, accounts of possession, and scientific perspectives on dissociation.
References
1 Heinze, R. I. (1982) Shamans or mediums: Toward a definition of different states of consciousness. Journal of Transpersonal Anthropology, 6(1&2), 25-44.
Alien Encounters
LESSON 3.9 Alien Encounters
Table of Contents
Description • Alien Encounter Experience and Psychopathology • Associated Clinical problems • Treatment • Case Examples • WWW Library
Description
The recent (2000) book Varieties of Anomalous Experience published by the American Psychological Association Press includes this definition:
Alien abduction experiences are characterized by subjectively real memories of being taken secretly and/or against one's will by apparently non-human entities, usually to a location interpreted as an alien spacecraft (i.e., a UFO).
(p. 254)
In addition to reports from the U.S., accounts from England, Mexico, Brazil, Chile and Australia show the same content themes:
capture, examination
communication with aliens
otherworldly journey
theophany (receipt of spiritual messages)
return to earth
Such extraordinary experiences, which to many seem sheer fantasy, are prevalent and cannot be ignored in clinical practice. Professionally, I personally have worked with schizophrenic and PTSD patients who have reported alien encounter experiences. I have also seen people with no mental disorder who reported such experiences.
John Mack,MD a Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, makes the clinical case for the need to explicitly address such extraordinary experiences:
I began to see people in 1990 who seemed of sound mind but were describing experiences which simply did not fit into any kind of psychiatric category of which I could conceive. Child abuse, psychosis, neurosis, organic brain disease, fantasy-prone personality... No diagnostic category came close to explaining what I was seeing.
Studying Intrusions from the Subtle Realm audio or trasncript of talk by John Mack, MD
Alien encounters are included within this course on religious and spiritual problems because such extraordinary events function for some individuals as transcendent experiences.
Prevalence
Gallup Polls reveal how widespread beliefs are in UFO-related phenomena.. Fifty percent of a representative sample of the U.S. population reported that they believe there is life on other planets. This is up from 34% in 1966. UFO sightings are also widespread. The Gallup Poll asked a representative national sample:
Have you, yourself, ever seen anything you thought was a UFO?
12% answered Yes.
The Next American Spirituality : Finding God in the Twenty-first Century by Timothy Jones, George, Jr. Gallup
A 1997 Time/CNN poll found that 22% of Americans believe that the earth has been visited by space aliens. There are now thousands of cases of alien encounter published, and researchers have studied over 1700 cases. Whitley Strieber (who wrote Communion a best-selling book about his abduction experience) claims to have received over a quarter of a million letters from people about their similar experiences. Based on an extrapolation from a group of students, another researcher suggested 15 million Americans may have had such experiences. (Statistics from Varieties of Anomalous Experience, p. 256)
After Effects
Both positive and problematic effects are reported by alien abduction experiencers. Bullard analyzed 270 abduction reports and found a range of physical and psychological after effects.
11 cases: Injuries such as cuts, bruises, & puncture wounds
22 cases: Eye problems
23 cases: Skin burns and irritation
13 cases Gastrointestinal distress
14 cases: Equilibrium and balance problems
12 cases: Thirst and dehydration
13 cases: Healing from a preexisting ailment
Fear, anticipation, anxiety, and recurring nightmares were also frequently reported, as were paranormal experiences and personality changes.
Association with Spirituality
Many report that their lives have been radically altered on a deep spiritual level by their encounters with aliens. They developed a heightened reverence for nature and human life, and transformed their lives in ways similar to what happens with people after an NDE. Kenneth Ring, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Connecticut and one of the world's chief authorities on near-death experiences, conducted research indicating that both alien abduction and NDE may be,
in effect alternate pathways (Ring's emphasis) to the same type of psychospiritual transformation...that expresses itself in greater awareness of the interconnectedness and sacredness of all life and necessarily fosters a heightened ecological concern for the welfare of the planet. (The Omega Project)
Reality of Alien Encounters
Regarding the problematic question of the reality of the experience, Jung took the following position (that I share) regarding the physical reality of flying saucer reports, as they were called in the early 1950s:
As a psychologist, I am not qualified to contribute anything useful to the question of the physical reality of UFOs. I can concern myself only with their undoubted psychic aspects, and in what follows shall deal almost exclusively with their psychic concomitants.
(Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies, p.7)
In fact, there have been accounts of moon beings since the days of Plutarch. With the advent of powerful new telescopes in the 1800's, there were many reported "sightings" of winged demons on the moon's surface. Current fascination with extraterrestrial life has achieved greater prominence than ever before, as evidenced by reports of encounters with space aliens in media news, nonfiction first person accounts such as Communion, science fiction literature and movies such as ET, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Signs. The question of extraterrestrial life has also become an important topic in stretching the scientific imagination to its limits..
Structurally there are parallels between alien encounters and ancient mythic patterns which can be traced back to 30,000 BC. The shaman's journey shares many elements with alien abduction. The abductee is taken taken aboard a spaceship ("other worlds" or a "cosmic pillar" in a shamanic journey), is forcibly examined (which parallels the painful dismemberment of the shaman). Then the abductee returns with a message (just as the shaman returns with songs and other instruments of healing). Ralph Metzner, PhD, considers space alien/UFO themes to be a variation of the shaman's "upper world journey":
experiences in which we are granted a preview or vision of our life or of some aspect of the world. They are usually accompanied by insights, intuitions, and new images; and they often instigate a mood of playful and euphoric creativity. (The Unfolding Self: Varieties of Transformative Experience, p. 118)
The concept of "believed in imaginings" (subjectively compelling distortions in the perception of reality) is also relevant to this question. Theodore R. Sarbin, PhD points out that the popular belief in the existence of angels is considered normal by mentally "healthy" people while belief in the existence of aliens is considered abnormal and a sign of mental illness. Yet, insofar as angels and aliens are both hallucinations (that is, self-reported imaginings), there is no difference between believing in angels and believing in aliens. Moreover, people who believe in angels are just as adamant in claiming the reality of angels as are those who insist on the reality of aliens. The difference between these two hallucinations has to do with the off-putting effect of these self-reported imaginings on others (See: Sarbin, T. Towards the Obsolescence of the Schizophrenia Hypothesis in Challenging the Therapeutic State: Critical Perspectives on Psychiatry and the Mental Health System by David Cohen, Editor).
Alien Encounter Experiences and Psychopathology
While some patients have delusions involving alien abduction (I personally have worked with two patients who did [1], psychopathology cannot explain all of the phenomena associated with these experiences. A recent summary of research on Alien Abduction Experiences concluded,
While psychopathology is indicated in some isolated alien abduction cases, assessment by both clinical examination and standardized tests has shown that, as a group, abduction experients are not different from the general population in term of psychopathology prevalence.
(Varieties of Anomalous Experience, p. 268)
John Mack,MD, who has studied over 200 alien abductees and written two books on this phenomenon during the past 10 years, found,
The reports, for example, surely sound delusional, or like hallucinations. They even defy our physical laws, suggesting some sort of psychosis. Abductees are often anxious, or suffer from bodily aches and pains, indicating some form of neurosis. Their recall of what they have been through is frequently spotty, so perhaps they have an organic impairment of the brain, for example temporal lobe epilepsy. The experiences are traumatic and often contain reproductive or sexual intrusions, which seems to point to a history of rape or possible childhood sexual abuse.
[However] Psychiatric evaluations and psychological studies of abductees, including several of my own cases, have failed to identify consistent psychopathology. Abductees may, of course, suffer from mental and emotional distress as a result of their often traumatic experiences, and a few have been found to have accompanying psychiatric conditions. Many come from troubled family backgrounds. But in no instance has the emotional disorder provided an explanation for the abduction experience. (See Blowing the Western Mind by John E. Mack, MD.)
In PEER's survey of abduction experiencers, the percentages of the sample seeking help for psychological symptoms were mostly comparable to the proportions in the general U.S. population:
depressive symptoms (17 percent)
schizophrenia (1 percent)
bipolar (1 percent)
However, at 17%, the sample was about two times more likely to seek help for anxiety as the general population. The findings are similar to those of other researchers of encounter experiencers, who have found a low incidence of serious psychopathology among individuals reporting such experiences (John Mack, MD Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters).. Thus a client's report of a alien encounter experience cannot be assumed to be related to psychopathology.
Associated Clinical Problems
Alien encounter experiencers often suffer from post-traumatic symptoms such as nightmares, trouble concentrating, phobic avoidance of situations and objects symbolically linked to the encounter material
Other symptoms and potential problems following their experience include:
1. Anxiety and irritability
2. Intrusive thoughts about aliens and abduction
3. Labile mood
4. Disorientation, derealization, and depersonalization
5. Psychic experiences presumed to be from an extraterrestrial source (e.g., telepathic messages)
6. The belief that their thoughts are being shared with an extraterrestrial being
7. Change in spiritual or religious values, beliefs, and practices
(The Differential Diagnosis of Close Extraterrestrial Encounter Syndrome by Richard Boylan, Ph.D.)
In surveys returned to PEER on abduction experiences, 7 percent of the sample described their memories in a manner that made PEER staff wonder about preexisting or coexisting psychopathology because the reports showed pervasive lack of coherence, grandiosity, or paranoia. But for the rest, the experience itself seemed to be the major cause of distress and associated symptoms.
Treatment
Some alien encounter experients seek therapy to help them integrate their anomalous experiences. The issue of hypnotizing such persons to obtain a fuller account of the experience is controversial and tied up with the larger debate about "false memories." Aggressive use of suggestive memory recovery procedures can increase distress and feelings of helplessness.
The risk of providing therapy can be minimized, and positive outcomes best assured, when the focus of treatment deals with education clients about possible explanations for the AAE, encouraging them to understand the AAE in terms of its meaning in their life, and otherwise working on coping strategies that transcend the inevitable inconclusiveness about the AAE's objective reality. (Varieties of Anomalous Experience, p. 271)
The Program for Extraordinary Experience Research (PEER) was established in 1993 by John Mack,MD to forge an approach to alien encounter experiences that addresses their clinical dimensions and also leads to a scientific understanding of the phenomenon.
PEER's efforts to deepen the understanding of abduction reports have shown that it is difficult in our culture to credit and trust extraordinary experiences...The listener attempting to comprehend what is being communicated may find it easier to dismiss the experience and the experiencer as irrational.
There are some unique challenges to working with alien experiencers. Many therapists find their own values challenged by the assertions of abductees, and this can interfere with their trust and empathy for the client:
What we hear may seem so bizarre or impossible from the standpoint of the world view in which we were brought up that our minds rebel and want to intervene with the reality-testing confrontations that psychiatrists know so well. But to do this would abort communication and destroy trust. We are, of course, aided in this curious "suspension of disbelief" by the fact that we are concerned only with the authenticity and honesty of the client's report, and the presence or absence of psychopathology or another biographical experience that might account for it. There is no injunction to establish the literal or material actuality of the reported experiences...I do not consider that abduction reports necessarily reflect a literal, physical taking of the human body (John Mack, MD Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters, p. 29, 31).
The clinical approach developed at PEER involves being able to tolerate not knowing about the reality status of the experience, while paying attention to the feelings and struggles of the person involved. PEER also uses a combination of hypnosis and a breathing technique as treatment in helping the abductees confront and move through the terrifying memories of the experiences.
Therapists also need to be sensitive to and acknowledge the growth potential in such extraordinary experiences. That speaks to the need to avoid judging the reported phenomena by the standards of normal awareness; rather, therapists should consider whether this unusual experience points to new possibilities for the client that are alternatives to or even superior to their prior functioning. As with other forms of spiritual emergency, therapy with alien abductees involves the integration of spiritual issues raised by the experience. The therapist's role is helping experients learn
what meaning these experiences have for them, and in what reality they hold the experiences. We are very clear in our work with them that we can never say for certain what these experiences are. This is a mystery. But they need to integrate and understand how to bring their experiences into their world.
PEER operates a clinic in the Boston area for both treatment and research. Clients are allowed to return as often as needed to integrate their experiences and obtain suppport while living in a society that does not recognize the vast new realms of the psyche to which they have been opened. They have published an
Integrating Extraordinary Experiences by Roberta Colasanti,LCSW
Case Examples
UFO Encounters -- Four Classic Cases
WWW LIBRARY of Religion and Spirituality
The WWW Library of Religion and Spirituality includes interviews with John Mack, MD and articles on the symbolic and archetypal dimensions of alien experiences.
References
1 Lukoff, D. (1988). Transpersonal therapy with a manic-depressive artist. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 20(1), 10-20.
Quiz QUIZ EXERCISE 22:
Table of Contents
Description • Alien Encounter Experience and Psychopathology • Associated Clinical problems • Treatment • Case Examples • WWW Library
Description
The recent (2000) book Varieties of Anomalous Experience published by the American Psychological Association Press includes this definition:
Alien abduction experiences are characterized by subjectively real memories of being taken secretly and/or against one's will by apparently non-human entities, usually to a location interpreted as an alien spacecraft (i.e., a UFO).
(p. 254)
In addition to reports from the U.S., accounts from England, Mexico, Brazil, Chile and Australia show the same content themes:
capture, examination
communication with aliens
otherworldly journey
theophany (receipt of spiritual messages)
return to earth
Such extraordinary experiences, which to many seem sheer fantasy, are prevalent and cannot be ignored in clinical practice. Professionally, I personally have worked with schizophrenic and PTSD patients who have reported alien encounter experiences. I have also seen people with no mental disorder who reported such experiences.
John Mack,MD a Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, makes the clinical case for the need to explicitly address such extraordinary experiences:
I began to see people in 1990 who seemed of sound mind but were describing experiences which simply did not fit into any kind of psychiatric category of which I could conceive. Child abuse, psychosis, neurosis, organic brain disease, fantasy-prone personality... No diagnostic category came close to explaining what I was seeing.
Studying Intrusions from the Subtle Realm audio or trasncript of talk by John Mack, MD
Alien encounters are included within this course on religious and spiritual problems because such extraordinary events function for some individuals as transcendent experiences.
Prevalence
Gallup Polls reveal how widespread beliefs are in UFO-related phenomena.. Fifty percent of a representative sample of the U.S. population reported that they believe there is life on other planets. This is up from 34% in 1966. UFO sightings are also widespread. The Gallup Poll asked a representative national sample:
Have you, yourself, ever seen anything you thought was a UFO?
12% answered Yes.
The Next American Spirituality : Finding God in the Twenty-first Century by Timothy Jones, George, Jr. Gallup
A 1997 Time/CNN poll found that 22% of Americans believe that the earth has been visited by space aliens. There are now thousands of cases of alien encounter published, and researchers have studied over 1700 cases. Whitley Strieber (who wrote Communion a best-selling book about his abduction experience) claims to have received over a quarter of a million letters from people about their similar experiences. Based on an extrapolation from a group of students, another researcher suggested 15 million Americans may have had such experiences. (Statistics from Varieties of Anomalous Experience, p. 256)
After Effects
Both positive and problematic effects are reported by alien abduction experiencers. Bullard analyzed 270 abduction reports and found a range of physical and psychological after effects.
11 cases: Injuries such as cuts, bruises, & puncture wounds
22 cases: Eye problems
23 cases: Skin burns and irritation
13 cases Gastrointestinal distress
14 cases: Equilibrium and balance problems
12 cases: Thirst and dehydration
13 cases: Healing from a preexisting ailment
Fear, anticipation, anxiety, and recurring nightmares were also frequently reported, as were paranormal experiences and personality changes.
Association with Spirituality
Many report that their lives have been radically altered on a deep spiritual level by their encounters with aliens. They developed a heightened reverence for nature and human life, and transformed their lives in ways similar to what happens with people after an NDE. Kenneth Ring, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Connecticut and one of the world's chief authorities on near-death experiences, conducted research indicating that both alien abduction and NDE may be,
in effect alternate pathways (Ring's emphasis) to the same type of psychospiritual transformation...that expresses itself in greater awareness of the interconnectedness and sacredness of all life and necessarily fosters a heightened ecological concern for the welfare of the planet. (The Omega Project)
Reality of Alien Encounters
Regarding the problematic question of the reality of the experience, Jung took the following position (that I share) regarding the physical reality of flying saucer reports, as they were called in the early 1950s:
As a psychologist, I am not qualified to contribute anything useful to the question of the physical reality of UFOs. I can concern myself only with their undoubted psychic aspects, and in what follows shall deal almost exclusively with their psychic concomitants.
(Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies, p.7)
In fact, there have been accounts of moon beings since the days of Plutarch. With the advent of powerful new telescopes in the 1800's, there were many reported "sightings" of winged demons on the moon's surface. Current fascination with extraterrestrial life has achieved greater prominence than ever before, as evidenced by reports of encounters with space aliens in media news, nonfiction first person accounts such as Communion, science fiction literature and movies such as ET, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Signs. The question of extraterrestrial life has also become an important topic in stretching the scientific imagination to its limits..
Structurally there are parallels between alien encounters and ancient mythic patterns which can be traced back to 30,000 BC. The shaman's journey shares many elements with alien abduction. The abductee is taken taken aboard a spaceship ("other worlds" or a "cosmic pillar" in a shamanic journey), is forcibly examined (which parallels the painful dismemberment of the shaman). Then the abductee returns with a message (just as the shaman returns with songs and other instruments of healing). Ralph Metzner, PhD, considers space alien/UFO themes to be a variation of the shaman's "upper world journey":
experiences in which we are granted a preview or vision of our life or of some aspect of the world. They are usually accompanied by insights, intuitions, and new images; and they often instigate a mood of playful and euphoric creativity. (The Unfolding Self: Varieties of Transformative Experience, p. 118)
The concept of "believed in imaginings" (subjectively compelling distortions in the perception of reality) is also relevant to this question. Theodore R. Sarbin, PhD points out that the popular belief in the existence of angels is considered normal by mentally "healthy" people while belief in the existence of aliens is considered abnormal and a sign of mental illness. Yet, insofar as angels and aliens are both hallucinations (that is, self-reported imaginings), there is no difference between believing in angels and believing in aliens. Moreover, people who believe in angels are just as adamant in claiming the reality of angels as are those who insist on the reality of aliens. The difference between these two hallucinations has to do with the off-putting effect of these self-reported imaginings on others (See: Sarbin, T. Towards the Obsolescence of the Schizophrenia Hypothesis in Challenging the Therapeutic State: Critical Perspectives on Psychiatry and the Mental Health System by David Cohen, Editor).
Alien Encounter Experiences and Psychopathology
While some patients have delusions involving alien abduction (I personally have worked with two patients who did [1], psychopathology cannot explain all of the phenomena associated with these experiences. A recent summary of research on Alien Abduction Experiences concluded,
While psychopathology is indicated in some isolated alien abduction cases, assessment by both clinical examination and standardized tests has shown that, as a group, abduction experients are not different from the general population in term of psychopathology prevalence.
(Varieties of Anomalous Experience, p. 268)
John Mack,MD, who has studied over 200 alien abductees and written two books on this phenomenon during the past 10 years, found,
The reports, for example, surely sound delusional, or like hallucinations. They even defy our physical laws, suggesting some sort of psychosis. Abductees are often anxious, or suffer from bodily aches and pains, indicating some form of neurosis. Their recall of what they have been through is frequently spotty, so perhaps they have an organic impairment of the brain, for example temporal lobe epilepsy. The experiences are traumatic and often contain reproductive or sexual intrusions, which seems to point to a history of rape or possible childhood sexual abuse.
[However] Psychiatric evaluations and psychological studies of abductees, including several of my own cases, have failed to identify consistent psychopathology. Abductees may, of course, suffer from mental and emotional distress as a result of their often traumatic experiences, and a few have been found to have accompanying psychiatric conditions. Many come from troubled family backgrounds. But in no instance has the emotional disorder provided an explanation for the abduction experience. (See Blowing the Western Mind by John E. Mack, MD.)
In PEER's survey of abduction experiencers, the percentages of the sample seeking help for psychological symptoms were mostly comparable to the proportions in the general U.S. population:
depressive symptoms (17 percent)
schizophrenia (1 percent)
bipolar (1 percent)
However, at 17%, the sample was about two times more likely to seek help for anxiety as the general population. The findings are similar to those of other researchers of encounter experiencers, who have found a low incidence of serious psychopathology among individuals reporting such experiences (John Mack, MD Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters).. Thus a client's report of a alien encounter experience cannot be assumed to be related to psychopathology.
Associated Clinical Problems
Alien encounter experiencers often suffer from post-traumatic symptoms such as nightmares, trouble concentrating, phobic avoidance of situations and objects symbolically linked to the encounter material
Other symptoms and potential problems following their experience include:
1. Anxiety and irritability
2. Intrusive thoughts about aliens and abduction
3. Labile mood
4. Disorientation, derealization, and depersonalization
5. Psychic experiences presumed to be from an extraterrestrial source (e.g., telepathic messages)
6. The belief that their thoughts are being shared with an extraterrestrial being
7. Change in spiritual or religious values, beliefs, and practices
(The Differential Diagnosis of Close Extraterrestrial Encounter Syndrome by Richard Boylan, Ph.D.)
In surveys returned to PEER on abduction experiences, 7 percent of the sample described their memories in a manner that made PEER staff wonder about preexisting or coexisting psychopathology because the reports showed pervasive lack of coherence, grandiosity, or paranoia. But for the rest, the experience itself seemed to be the major cause of distress and associated symptoms.
Treatment
Some alien encounter experients seek therapy to help them integrate their anomalous experiences. The issue of hypnotizing such persons to obtain a fuller account of the experience is controversial and tied up with the larger debate about "false memories." Aggressive use of suggestive memory recovery procedures can increase distress and feelings of helplessness.
The risk of providing therapy can be minimized, and positive outcomes best assured, when the focus of treatment deals with education clients about possible explanations for the AAE, encouraging them to understand the AAE in terms of its meaning in their life, and otherwise working on coping strategies that transcend the inevitable inconclusiveness about the AAE's objective reality. (Varieties of Anomalous Experience, p. 271)
The Program for Extraordinary Experience Research (PEER) was established in 1993 by John Mack,MD to forge an approach to alien encounter experiences that addresses their clinical dimensions and also leads to a scientific understanding of the phenomenon.
PEER's efforts to deepen the understanding of abduction reports have shown that it is difficult in our culture to credit and trust extraordinary experiences...The listener attempting to comprehend what is being communicated may find it easier to dismiss the experience and the experiencer as irrational.
There are some unique challenges to working with alien experiencers. Many therapists find their own values challenged by the assertions of abductees, and this can interfere with their trust and empathy for the client:
What we hear may seem so bizarre or impossible from the standpoint of the world view in which we were brought up that our minds rebel and want to intervene with the reality-testing confrontations that psychiatrists know so well. But to do this would abort communication and destroy trust. We are, of course, aided in this curious "suspension of disbelief" by the fact that we are concerned only with the authenticity and honesty of the client's report, and the presence or absence of psychopathology or another biographical experience that might account for it. There is no injunction to establish the literal or material actuality of the reported experiences...I do not consider that abduction reports necessarily reflect a literal, physical taking of the human body (John Mack, MD Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters, p. 29, 31).
The clinical approach developed at PEER involves being able to tolerate not knowing about the reality status of the experience, while paying attention to the feelings and struggles of the person involved. PEER also uses a combination of hypnosis and a breathing technique as treatment in helping the abductees confront and move through the terrifying memories of the experiences.
Therapists also need to be sensitive to and acknowledge the growth potential in such extraordinary experiences. That speaks to the need to avoid judging the reported phenomena by the standards of normal awareness; rather, therapists should consider whether this unusual experience points to new possibilities for the client that are alternatives to or even superior to their prior functioning. As with other forms of spiritual emergency, therapy with alien abductees involves the integration of spiritual issues raised by the experience. The therapist's role is helping experients learn
what meaning these experiences have for them, and in what reality they hold the experiences. We are very clear in our work with them that we can never say for certain what these experiences are. This is a mystery. But they need to integrate and understand how to bring their experiences into their world.
PEER operates a clinic in the Boston area for both treatment and research. Clients are allowed to return as often as needed to integrate their experiences and obtain suppport while living in a society that does not recognize the vast new realms of the psyche to which they have been opened. They have published an
Integrating Extraordinary Experiences by Roberta Colasanti,LCSW
Case Examples
UFO Encounters -- Four Classic Cases
WWW LIBRARY of Religion and Spirituality
The WWW Library of Religion and Spirituality includes interviews with John Mack, MD and articles on the symbolic and archetypal dimensions of alien experiences.
References
1 Lukoff, D. (1988). Transpersonal therapy with a manic-depressive artist. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 20(1), 10-20.
Quiz QUIZ EXERCISE 22:
Visionary Experiences
LESSON 3.7 Visionary Experiences
Table of Contents
Description • Associated Clinical problems • Treatment • Case Examples • WWW Library
Description
Visionary experiences involve the activation of the unconscious archetypal psyche which then dominates consciousness. This is the part of the mind which produces dreams and also myths. Anthony Wallace, PhD [1] an anthropologist, has documented several cases where individuals underwent what seemed to be psychotic episodes and subsequently developed an entirely new mythology and way of life for their social group. For example, in late 1700, Handsome Lake created a new society among the Iroquois Indians on the basis of the visions he had while incapacitated for 6 months.
Visionary experiences have played a pivotal role in the evolution of cultures, particularly when rapid cultural change is occurring due to foreign interventions or indigenous changes. Cultural turmoil activates the psyches of many individuals and sometimes creative cultural innovations emerge from this process (See John Perry, Far Side of Madness).
Mythologist Joseph Campbell in The Mythic Image has traced the process whereby new visions (often expressed in new myths) have guided human cultural evolution. First came early homo sapiens' fascination with fire, then with the animal world and the world of the planted seed. This was followed most recently by a far-reaching fascination with the planets and the stars. Campbell has argued that the pursuit of these realms in myth has directed human activity and enabled humans to surpass themselves.
Neither reason, nor environmental contingencies have determined our collective and individual destinies, but as the poet Robinson Jeffers called them, 'visions that fool him out of his limits.' (Campbell Myths to Live by p. 249)
The psyche continues to generate myths that speak to present situations and issues, often speaking its myths through the voice of dreams. But another potent source of cultural and personal mythmaking is the psychotic mind.
In Perry's view, a visionary experience can be a renewal process in which components of the psychotic individual's make-up are undergoing change.. The psychosis can serve,
as the psyche's own way of dissolving old states of being, and of creatively bringing to birth its new starts-its own way of forming visions of a renewed self and of a new design of life with revivified meanings in one's world. (John Perry, Far Side of Madness p. 11)
Associated Clinical Problems
When the psyche is activated to such an intense degree during visionary experiences, the individual can appear quite psychotic. Beliefs that meet the DSM-IV criteria for delusions, particularly grandiose ones, as well as hallucinations are usually present. At Diabysis, where people in visionary states were allowed to go through the full cycle of their visionary state, most resolved in 6-8 weeks without medication. For many, the experience became a turning point in their life toward growth. Yet during the acute phase, when psychotic symptoms are usually present, the individual can be seriously disabled and can benefit from residential treatment.
Treatment
Psychotic symptoms do indicate the need for special care. Judgment can be quite impaired and persons in the midst of visionary experiences can act recklessly and endanger themselves as well as others. Unlike other forms of spiritual emergence in which people are usually able to function in consensus reality, persons having visionary experiences can require round-the-clock surveillance. One of the main options needs to be considered to provide a safe container while the person is going through the experience. Several model residential programs have been developed including Kingsley Hall, Diabysis and Soteria, none of which, unfortunately, are open today.
In Far Side of Madness, John Perry, MD described his treatment of a 19-year-old male at Diabysis who presented with a number of grandiose delusions including that he was an "ace airman" and a second George Washington leading the defense of the country against the Russian communists who were trying to capture the world. At other times, he was Emperor of the Germans, Prince Valiant, and Christ. Yet Perry viewed these grandiose delusions as part of a positive transformative process in which the psyche is engaged in a mythic process.
Even though a psychiatrist, Perry did not prescribe any antipsychotic medication to squelch the psychotic symptoms. Rather than suppress or ignore the expression of the patient's psychotic experiences, Perry encouraged it since
therapy should follow the psyche's own spontaneous movements. . .you work with what the psyche presents. (p. 136)
While the patient was in residential treatment at Diabysis, he met with Perry three times a week. In an early session, Perry had this patient draw, and a number of images of death emerged including being cremated, and being buried and clawing his way out of the grave. The whole psychotic renewal process took about 6 weeks, although the patient spent some additional time at the residential treatment center integrating the episode.
Case Examples
Expanded version of the "ace-airman" case described above
The Myths in Mental Illness case is an example of a visionary experience as well as a mystical experience.
Wayne Gooding
Russell Shorto's account from GQ Magazine of the visionary experiences of a 23-year-old college graduate. He went through a spiritual emergency that resulted in hospitalization and spent several months in recovery before he was able to return to college. Also included are his own reflections on this experience and the many parallels he found to the experiences of mystics and spiritual adepts throughout the ages.
WWW LIBRARY of Religion and Spirituality
The WWW LIBRARY of Religion and Spirituality contains interviews with John Perry, MD and articles on visionary experiences.
References
1 Wallace, A., Stress and rapid personality changes. International Record of Medicine, 1956. 169(12): p. 761-774.
Quiz QUIZ EXERCISE 19:
Table of Contents
Description • Associated Clinical problems • Treatment • Case Examples • WWW Library
Description
Visionary experiences involve the activation of the unconscious archetypal psyche which then dominates consciousness. This is the part of the mind which produces dreams and also myths. Anthony Wallace, PhD [1] an anthropologist, has documented several cases where individuals underwent what seemed to be psychotic episodes and subsequently developed an entirely new mythology and way of life for their social group. For example, in late 1700, Handsome Lake created a new society among the Iroquois Indians on the basis of the visions he had while incapacitated for 6 months.
Visionary experiences have played a pivotal role in the evolution of cultures, particularly when rapid cultural change is occurring due to foreign interventions or indigenous changes. Cultural turmoil activates the psyches of many individuals and sometimes creative cultural innovations emerge from this process (See John Perry, Far Side of Madness).
Mythologist Joseph Campbell in The Mythic Image has traced the process whereby new visions (often expressed in new myths) have guided human cultural evolution. First came early homo sapiens' fascination with fire, then with the animal world and the world of the planted seed. This was followed most recently by a far-reaching fascination with the planets and the stars. Campbell has argued that the pursuit of these realms in myth has directed human activity and enabled humans to surpass themselves.
Neither reason, nor environmental contingencies have determined our collective and individual destinies, but as the poet Robinson Jeffers called them, 'visions that fool him out of his limits.' (Campbell Myths to Live by p. 249)
The psyche continues to generate myths that speak to present situations and issues, often speaking its myths through the voice of dreams. But another potent source of cultural and personal mythmaking is the psychotic mind.
In Perry's view, a visionary experience can be a renewal process in which components of the psychotic individual's make-up are undergoing change.. The psychosis can serve,
as the psyche's own way of dissolving old states of being, and of creatively bringing to birth its new starts-its own way of forming visions of a renewed self and of a new design of life with revivified meanings in one's world. (John Perry, Far Side of Madness p. 11)
Associated Clinical Problems
When the psyche is activated to such an intense degree during visionary experiences, the individual can appear quite psychotic. Beliefs that meet the DSM-IV criteria for delusions, particularly grandiose ones, as well as hallucinations are usually present. At Diabysis, where people in visionary states were allowed to go through the full cycle of their visionary state, most resolved in 6-8 weeks without medication. For many, the experience became a turning point in their life toward growth. Yet during the acute phase, when psychotic symptoms are usually present, the individual can be seriously disabled and can benefit from residential treatment.
Treatment
Psychotic symptoms do indicate the need for special care. Judgment can be quite impaired and persons in the midst of visionary experiences can act recklessly and endanger themselves as well as others. Unlike other forms of spiritual emergence in which people are usually able to function in consensus reality, persons having visionary experiences can require round-the-clock surveillance. One of the main options needs to be considered to provide a safe container while the person is going through the experience. Several model residential programs have been developed including Kingsley Hall, Diabysis and Soteria, none of which, unfortunately, are open today.
In Far Side of Madness, John Perry, MD described his treatment of a 19-year-old male at Diabysis who presented with a number of grandiose delusions including that he was an "ace airman" and a second George Washington leading the defense of the country against the Russian communists who were trying to capture the world. At other times, he was Emperor of the Germans, Prince Valiant, and Christ. Yet Perry viewed these grandiose delusions as part of a positive transformative process in which the psyche is engaged in a mythic process.
Even though a psychiatrist, Perry did not prescribe any antipsychotic medication to squelch the psychotic symptoms. Rather than suppress or ignore the expression of the patient's psychotic experiences, Perry encouraged it since
therapy should follow the psyche's own spontaneous movements. . .you work with what the psyche presents. (p. 136)
While the patient was in residential treatment at Diabysis, he met with Perry three times a week. In an early session, Perry had this patient draw, and a number of images of death emerged including being cremated, and being buried and clawing his way out of the grave. The whole psychotic renewal process took about 6 weeks, although the patient spent some additional time at the residential treatment center integrating the episode.
Case Examples
Expanded version of the "ace-airman" case described above
The Myths in Mental Illness case is an example of a visionary experience as well as a mystical experience.
Wayne Gooding
Russell Shorto's account from GQ Magazine of the visionary experiences of a 23-year-old college graduate. He went through a spiritual emergency that resulted in hospitalization and spent several months in recovery before he was able to return to college. Also included are his own reflections on this experience and the many parallels he found to the experiences of mystics and spiritual adepts throughout the ages.
WWW LIBRARY of Religion and Spirituality
The WWW LIBRARY of Religion and Spirituality contains interviews with John Perry, MD and articles on visionary experiences.
References
1 Wallace, A., Stress and rapid personality changes. International Record of Medicine, 1956. 169(12): p. 761-774.
Quiz QUIZ EXERCISE 19:
Shamanic Crisis
LESSON 3.8 Shamanic Crisis
Table of Contents
Description • Associated Clinical problems • Treatment • Case Examples • WWW Library
Description
Shamanism is humanity's oldest religion and healing art, dating back to the Paleolithic era. Originally, the word shaman referred specifically to healers of the Tungus people of Siberia. In recent times, that name has been given to healers in many traditional cultures around the globe who use consciousness altering techniques in their healing work.
Historically, shamanism has been confused with schizophrenia by anthropologists because shamans often speak of altered state experiences in the spirit world as if they were "real" experiences. While the shaman and the person in a psychotic episode both have unusual access to spiritual and altered state experiences, shamans are trained to work in the spirit world, while the psychotic person is simply lost in it.
But in many traditional cultures, psychotic episodes have served as an initiatory illness that calls a person into shamanism. Mircea Eliade writes:
The future shaman sometimes takes the risk of being mistaken for a "madman". . .but his "madness" fulfills a mystic function; it reveals certain aspects of reality to him that are inaccessible to other mortals, and it is only after having experienced and entered into these hidden dimensions of reality that the "madman" becomes a shaman. (Mircea Eliade. Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries. New York: Harper and Row, 1960. Page 80-81)
As the person accepts the calling and becomes a shaman, their illness usually disappears. The "self-cure of a psychosis" is so typical of the shaman that some anthropologists have argued that anyone without this experience should be described only as a healer. The concept of the "wounded healer" addresses the necessity of the shaman-to-be entering into extreme personal crisis in preparation of his/her role in the community as a healer (Halifax, Joan. Shamanic Voices. New York: Dutton, 1979)..
Traditional cultures distinguish between serious mental illness and the initiatory crisis experienced by some shamans-to-be. Anthropological accounts show that babbling confused words, displaying curious eating habits, singing continuously, dancing wildly, and being "tormented by spirits" are common elements in shamanic initiatory crises. In shamanic cultures, such crises are interpreted as an indication of an individual's destiny to become a shaman, rather than a sign of mental illness. If the illness occurs in an appropriate cultural context, the shaman returns from the crisis not only healed, but able to heal others.
For example, the Siberian shaman Kyzalov entered a state of "madness" lasting for seven years which resulted in his initiation as a shaman. He reported that during those years he had been beaten up several times, taken to many strange places including the top of a sacred mountain, chopped into pieces and boiled in a kettle, met the spirits of sickness, and acquired the drum and garment of a dead shaman. In our society today these experiences would be considered evidence of a psychotic disorder and could possibly result in hospitalization. Yet when Kyzalov recuperated, he reported that, "the shamans declared, 'You are the sort of man who may become a shaman; you should become a shaman. You must begin to shamanize.' " (Halifax, Joan. Shamanic Voices. New York: Dutton, 1979)..
Referring to the "wounded healer" concept, Kalweit argues the shamanic crisis is:
A sickness that is understood as a process of purification, as the onset of enhanced psychic sensitivity giving access to the hidden and highest potentials of human existence, is therefore marked by very different characteristics than those ascribed to pathological conditions by modern medicine and psychology, namely that suffering has only negative consequences. According to the modern view, illness disrupts and endangers life, whereas the shaman experiences his sickness as a call to restructure this life within himself so as to hear, see and live it more fully and completely in a higher state of awareness. (Dreamtime and Inner Space: The World of the Shaman by Holger Kalweit, p. 91)
Associated Clinical Problems
Individuals in Western cultures occasionally experience similar problems:
We have seen instances where modern Americans, Europeans, Australians and Asians have experienced episodes that bore a close resemblance to shamanic crises...People experiencing such crises can also show spontaneous tendencies to create rituals that are identical to those practiced by shamans of various cultures. (Grof, S., & Grof, C. (Eds.). (1989). Spiritual emergency: When personal transformation becomes a crisis. Los Angeles: Tarcher). p. 14-15)
The themes common to shamanic crises include:
Descent to the Realm of Death, confrontations with demonic forces, dismemberment, trial by fire, communion with the world of spirits and creatures, assimilation of the elemental forces, ascension via the World Tree and/or Cosmic Bird, realization of a solar identity, and return to the Middle World, the world of human affairs. (Halifax, Joan. Shamanic Voices, p. 7)
But as with shamans in traditional cultures, when persons in this type of spiritual emergence receive proper guidance, they too can return from the experience positively transformed.. In a traditional society, shamans cure people's illnesses, guide recently deceased souls, and restore a community's psychic balance as well. For many people in contemporary western societies, shamanic crises are precipitants to their choice of a career in the health professions, such as psychology and nursing.
Treatment
Treatment for people in a shamanic crisis follows the basic approach described in Lesson 6.1 Spiritual Crises. During the integration stage (Lesson 6.2 Psychotherapy), contact with traditional shamans and reading of literature on shamanism can be helpful adjuncts to therapy. In my own spiritual emergency, shamans played a role in recovery. The spiritual potential inherent in my experience lay dormant until contact with shamanic teachers enabled me to connect with that dimension.Years later, in the altered states of consciousness induced by shamanic practices, I re-experienced, for the first time since my psychotic episode, a feeling of oneness with the universe. Once again, I was communicating with divine spirits, and comprehending the meaning of life itself. Instead of repressing these ecstatic experiences which had brought painful memories, I was now learning to trust them again. Such experiences are a major component of shamanic life: "Shamans do not differ from other members of the collectivity by their quest for the sacred, which is normal and universal human behavior, but by their capacity for ecstatic experience" (Eliade Shamanism, p. 107). However, these teachers and their shamanic practices taught me how to exercise voluntary control over entry into and out of ecstatic states. I also learned how to keep them contained within appropriate social contexts. (Full account of how shamans helped with the integration phase).
Case Examples
Traditional Initiatory Crisis
WWW LIBRARY of Religion and Spirituality
The WWW Library of Religion and Spirituality contains interviews with anthropologist Michael Harner, PhD, articles and guides to online resources.
Table of Contents
Description • Associated Clinical problems • Treatment • Case Examples • WWW Library
Description
Shamanism is humanity's oldest religion and healing art, dating back to the Paleolithic era. Originally, the word shaman referred specifically to healers of the Tungus people of Siberia. In recent times, that name has been given to healers in many traditional cultures around the globe who use consciousness altering techniques in their healing work.
Historically, shamanism has been confused with schizophrenia by anthropologists because shamans often speak of altered state experiences in the spirit world as if they were "real" experiences. While the shaman and the person in a psychotic episode both have unusual access to spiritual and altered state experiences, shamans are trained to work in the spirit world, while the psychotic person is simply lost in it.
But in many traditional cultures, psychotic episodes have served as an initiatory illness that calls a person into shamanism. Mircea Eliade writes:
The future shaman sometimes takes the risk of being mistaken for a "madman". . .but his "madness" fulfills a mystic function; it reveals certain aspects of reality to him that are inaccessible to other mortals, and it is only after having experienced and entered into these hidden dimensions of reality that the "madman" becomes a shaman. (Mircea Eliade. Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries. New York: Harper and Row, 1960. Page 80-81)
As the person accepts the calling and becomes a shaman, their illness usually disappears. The "self-cure of a psychosis" is so typical of the shaman that some anthropologists have argued that anyone without this experience should be described only as a healer. The concept of the "wounded healer" addresses the necessity of the shaman-to-be entering into extreme personal crisis in preparation of his/her role in the community as a healer (Halifax, Joan. Shamanic Voices. New York: Dutton, 1979)..
Traditional cultures distinguish between serious mental illness and the initiatory crisis experienced by some shamans-to-be. Anthropological accounts show that babbling confused words, displaying curious eating habits, singing continuously, dancing wildly, and being "tormented by spirits" are common elements in shamanic initiatory crises. In shamanic cultures, such crises are interpreted as an indication of an individual's destiny to become a shaman, rather than a sign of mental illness. If the illness occurs in an appropriate cultural context, the shaman returns from the crisis not only healed, but able to heal others.
For example, the Siberian shaman Kyzalov entered a state of "madness" lasting for seven years which resulted in his initiation as a shaman. He reported that during those years he had been beaten up several times, taken to many strange places including the top of a sacred mountain, chopped into pieces and boiled in a kettle, met the spirits of sickness, and acquired the drum and garment of a dead shaman. In our society today these experiences would be considered evidence of a psychotic disorder and could possibly result in hospitalization. Yet when Kyzalov recuperated, he reported that, "the shamans declared, 'You are the sort of man who may become a shaman; you should become a shaman. You must begin to shamanize.' " (Halifax, Joan. Shamanic Voices. New York: Dutton, 1979)..
Referring to the "wounded healer" concept, Kalweit argues the shamanic crisis is:
A sickness that is understood as a process of purification, as the onset of enhanced psychic sensitivity giving access to the hidden and highest potentials of human existence, is therefore marked by very different characteristics than those ascribed to pathological conditions by modern medicine and psychology, namely that suffering has only negative consequences. According to the modern view, illness disrupts and endangers life, whereas the shaman experiences his sickness as a call to restructure this life within himself so as to hear, see and live it more fully and completely in a higher state of awareness. (Dreamtime and Inner Space: The World of the Shaman by Holger Kalweit, p. 91)
Associated Clinical Problems
Individuals in Western cultures occasionally experience similar problems:
We have seen instances where modern Americans, Europeans, Australians and Asians have experienced episodes that bore a close resemblance to shamanic crises...People experiencing such crises can also show spontaneous tendencies to create rituals that are identical to those practiced by shamans of various cultures. (Grof, S., & Grof, C. (Eds.). (1989). Spiritual emergency: When personal transformation becomes a crisis. Los Angeles: Tarcher). p. 14-15)
The themes common to shamanic crises include:
Descent to the Realm of Death, confrontations with demonic forces, dismemberment, trial by fire, communion with the world of spirits and creatures, assimilation of the elemental forces, ascension via the World Tree and/or Cosmic Bird, realization of a solar identity, and return to the Middle World, the world of human affairs. (Halifax, Joan. Shamanic Voices, p. 7)
But as with shamans in traditional cultures, when persons in this type of spiritual emergence receive proper guidance, they too can return from the experience positively transformed.. In a traditional society, shamans cure people's illnesses, guide recently deceased souls, and restore a community's psychic balance as well. For many people in contemporary western societies, shamanic crises are precipitants to their choice of a career in the health professions, such as psychology and nursing.
Treatment
Treatment for people in a shamanic crisis follows the basic approach described in Lesson 6.1 Spiritual Crises. During the integration stage (Lesson 6.2 Psychotherapy), contact with traditional shamans and reading of literature on shamanism can be helpful adjuncts to therapy. In my own spiritual emergency, shamans played a role in recovery. The spiritual potential inherent in my experience lay dormant until contact with shamanic teachers enabled me to connect with that dimension.Years later, in the altered states of consciousness induced by shamanic practices, I re-experienced, for the first time since my psychotic episode, a feeling of oneness with the universe. Once again, I was communicating with divine spirits, and comprehending the meaning of life itself. Instead of repressing these ecstatic experiences which had brought painful memories, I was now learning to trust them again. Such experiences are a major component of shamanic life: "Shamans do not differ from other members of the collectivity by their quest for the sacred, which is normal and universal human behavior, but by their capacity for ecstatic experience" (Eliade Shamanism, p. 107). However, these teachers and their shamanic practices taught me how to exercise voluntary control over entry into and out of ecstatic states. I also learned how to keep them contained within appropriate social contexts. (Full account of how shamans helped with the integration phase).
Case Examples
Traditional Initiatory Crisis
WWW LIBRARY of Religion and Spirituality
The WWW Library of Religion and Spirituality contains interviews with anthropologist Michael Harner, PhD, articles and guides to online resources.
David Lukoff's Experience Talk at Ruth Inge Heinz's Annual Conference on Shamanism
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Resources
Personal Experiences
The Spiritual Emergency Resource Center (spiritual-emergency.com)
David Lukoff's Experience Talk at Ruth Inge Heinz's Annual Conference on Shamanism 1990 http://www.spiritual-emergency.com/experiences/exp-lukoff-print.html
The future shaman sometimes takes the risk of being mistaken for a "madman"...but his "madness" fulfils a mystic function; it reveals certain aspects of reality to him that are inaccessible to other mortals, and it is only after having experienced and entered into these hidden dimensions of reality that the "madman" becomes a shaman." Mircea Eliade1 found that a psychotic episode has served as the initiatory crisis marking, for some shamans, a call to the healing profession. For example, the Siberian shaman Kyzalov entered a state of "madness" lasting for seven years which resulted in his initiation as a shaman. He reported that during those years he had been beaten up several times, taken to many strange places including the top of a sacred mountain, chopped into pieces and boiled in a kettle, met the spirits of sickness, and acquired the drum and garment of a dead shaman. Being "tormented" by spirits, babbling confused words, displaying curious eating habits, singing continuously, and dancing wildly are other common elements in initiatory crises; in our society today these experiences would be considered evidence of a psychotic disorder and could possibly result in hospitalization. Yet when Kyzalov recuperated, he reported that, "the shamans declared, 'You are the sort of man who may become a shaman; you should become a shaman. You must begin to shamanize.' "2
All mental and physical illnesses, accidents, and other ordeals, by creating psychospiritual crises, open the door to the shamanic world of spirits and nonordinary reality. In contemporary society, psychotic states of consciousness retain their power to awaken shamanic tendencies and talents. It proved to be so in my case, and for others whom I have met, worked with as a therapist and written about. My psychotic episode took place in a non-shamanic cultural and psychological context, but it bears a distinct relationship to a shaman's initiation: 1) it contained thematic and imagistic parallels to the initiatory crises of professional shaman; 2) it served as my calling to the mental health profession just as the shaman's crisis calls him/her to the role of healer; 3) it was integrated with the aid of traditional shamans and their practices.
Since I live in a contemporary Western society which does not recognize the social role of an ecstatic healer who cavorts with spirits, my psychotic episode did not initiate me as a shaman. I have devised the term "shamanistic initiatory crisis" to describe my experience. As anthropologist Ruth-Inge Heinz noted, "The term 'shamanistic' is used for shaman-like activities, e.g., activities which may be carried out by somebody other than a shaman, while the term 'shamanic' indicates that these activities are carried out by somebody who actually is a shaman."3 Therefore, shamanistic is the appropriate term.
My psychotic crisis occurred 18 years ago. After coming to the conclusion that, at 23 years of age, I was spending all of my time learning about other people, and did not know my own self, I dropped out of the doctoral program in social anthropology at Harvard University. I gave away all of my possessions, from bed to books, that would not fit into my backpack. I started travelling — hitchhiking across the country, up into Canada and down into Mexico, even to Hawaii. In Palo Alto, six months later, I awoke just after midnight. Although I had slept for only two hours, I felt rested — in fact, I was full of energy and eager to get back to writing in my journal. But first a quick trip to the bathroom. While there, I stopped in front of the mirror and gazed at my reflection. Suddenly I noticed that my right hand was glowing, giving off a white light. My thumb was touching my forefinger in the ancient mudra position of the meditating Buddha. Immediately the meaning of this sign was clear to me: I had been Buddha in a previous life. Then another thought came: Buddha had been reincarnated as Jesus Christ. Therefore, I had also been Jesus Christ. Now, in this moment, the luminous image in the mirror was awakening me to my true purpose: to once again bring the human race out of its decline. My journal writing was actually the creation a "new Bible", a Holy Book which would unite all people around the common tenants of a single belief system. Instead of unifyng just one social group, as Buddha and Christ had, my mission was to write a book that would create a new worldwide society free of conflict and full of loving relationships.
I had been trained well. Undergraduate studies in ancient civilizations at the University of Chicago and a masters degree in social anthropology at Harvard had give me a comprehensive and scientific understanding of the way societies function and change. This knowledge, added to the wisdom inherited from my previous incarnations, prepared me for my sacred mission. Experiences during the past few days had also been designed as exercises to develop my skills. The previous day, while reading Suzuki's Manual of Zen Buddhism, I had solved the riddle of Zen teachings and become "enlightened." I was now freed from dependence on society's rigid norms and narow perceptions of reality. I had acquired the intellectual freedom and creativity of an enlightened being. In addition, I had unravelled the mysterious process by which the Zen Master creates the enlightenment experience in others. Thus, I deemed myself fully prepared to design a cultural revolution in which everyone would become enlightened.
I was ready now. My life's mission had been communicated to me during this single glance in the bathroom mirror. I headed for the table where my journal, now to be a "Holy Book," lay open. Over the next five days and nights, I worked with only short breaks for meals and naps. I found I could contact the "spirits" of eminent thinkers in the social sciences and humanities to help me with the task of writing the new "Bible." As I reflected on their relevance for my work, I would "become" these people of wisdom, and "think their thoughts with them." I had discussions with contemporary people including R. D. Laing, Margaret Mead, Claude Levi-Straus, Bob Dylan and Abby Hoffman. People who were no longer living also communicated with me: Durkheim, Locke, Hobbes, Rosseau, Mead, Voltaire, Adam Smith, Jefferson, Freud, Jung, and, of course, Buddha and Christ. In my book were listed brief summaries of the "messages" I had obtained from each of them. At times during the writing, the clarity of my thoughts and the beauty of my vision for the future brought tears to my eyes. Initially I assumed a penname "The Scholar" to allude to the erudite origins of this project, and I soon realized that "The Scholar" was my new reincarnated identity. After five days of writing, the book was finished. Its 47 pages contained a combination of parables, poems and instructions on how to organize the new society. I originally planned to leave five copies in front of Cody's bookstore in Berkeley, California. In 1971, Cody's was the center of a communication vortex of hippies and freaks, who would be first to herald my new Bible and circulate it to others. However, when the 10 copies were made and bound in spiral notebooks, I mailed eight to friends and family, wanting those closest to me to be the first ones enlightened. Some expressed real interest. Others were casual. Some did not respond. No one reported becoming immediately enlightened; no one expressed a desire to join my mission to change the world. Nevertheless, I was sure that the revolution I was to lead would materialize.
Over the next five months of waiting, I was so preoccuppied with my mission that I didn't work to earn money. I "crashed" at many friends' homes. They were compassionate and generous in supporting me, both financially and psychologically. None of them ever treated me as though they thought I were crazy. They gave me food and shelter and let me read their books. They listened to my new ideas and talked to me about religion and life.
My sense of being the reincarnation of Buddha and Christ slowly dissipated over the next two months. I don't remember a specific moment when I broke through this delusion. I just thought about myself less and less as the Supreme Being while I worked on revising the book. Although I began to realize that it was not to be a new "Bible," I still believed that there were many brilliant and novel ideas and syntheses of previous thought. I would publish it as a best-selling book. In early spring of the the next year, I went to live by myself in my parent's summer cottage in Cape Cod. I continued working on my book; however, my health rapidly deteriorated. It began with headaches and insomnia; my head felt as though it would burst with pain after an hour of reading and many nights I could not sleep. I felt miserable and depressed. Then I had a recurrence of an illness I had suffered 10 years earlier, Crohn's disease, a serious condition affecting the intestines producing internal bleeding. I forced myself to keep reading, taking aspirin and other medication for the headaches.
At the same time that it was becoming physically difficult for me to read, it was also becoming more imperative. In giving up my grandiose identity as the Supreme Being, I now turned my attention to becoming a renowned author. My research led me to many books on religion and social change, and I began to see that my ideas were not so original. While reading Roszak's The Making of a Counterculture, I realized that my "vision for a new society" was nothing more than a stock "60's" Utopian plan that had led to the founding of numerous communes.
These realizations further lowered my low self-esteem by making me aware of the folly of my actions during the height of my crisis. I was embarrassed at the thought of having sent a semi-incoherent "Holy Book" to all my closest friends and family. Now I questioned whether I had anything worthwhile to say in the book, which had been my raison d' etre for the previous several months. I felt totally lost and confused. I was still quite sick physically with Crohns' symptoms, headaches, and insomnia. I was even considering the possibility of committing suicide with medications. The image of my skeleton spontaneously appeared to me on several sleepless nights.
Two months after moving to Cape Cod to be alone, I was walking near the bay, ruminating about the events of the last six months and feeling depressed. Suddenly I heard a voice speaking to me. I was startled. The voice distinctly said, "Become a healer." At that time, lost in self-recriminations about the past, I did not think of myself as even having a future! However, this voice--the only one I've ever heard emanating from outside of myself--set a whole new train of events in motion. Although the voice was not accompanied by the ecstatic emotion of my first rebirth as The Scholar, it initiated my path toward a new lifestyle and profession.
I decided to leave Cape Cod and go to my parents' home in New Jersey to recuperate. There I took classes in yoga and participated in encounter groups. Then I joined a program at a personal growth center and trained in a multitutde of healing practices. These included gestalt therapy, transactional analysis, primal therapy, bioenergetics, massage and psychodrama. Eventually I became a group leader and member of the training staff at the Forest Hospital Growth Center outside of Chicago.
Although I had many opportunities during my personal group and individual therapy sessions to explore the experiences surrounding my crisis, at no time did I bring them up. I avoided looking at the events that had led me into the vocation of being a psychologist, including the hearing of a disembodied voice telling me to "Become a healer." I simply did not talk or think about these early events in my career.
Entering a doctoral clinical psychology program three years after this experience, and then later working as a psychologist with psychotic patients at Camarillo State Hospital and at UCLA, I learned that my crisis was a psychotic episode. Taking LSD four days before the episode began had probably triggered its onset. It was not an "LSD Psychosis" or what the current nomenclature terms a "Halucinogen Delusional Disorder" because the extraordinary events started days after the LSD was out of my system. The LSD had initiated a train of mental events which were amplified over the next four days by intensive reading of books on Zen, introverted journal writing, social withdrawal and little sleep. These preoccupations and behaviors culminated four days later in the events in front of the mirror and my life did not return to normal until six months later. Although transient visual and auditory hallucinations occurred my episode fits the diagnostic criteria for "Delusional Disorder, Grandiose Type" due to my preoccupation with having a special identity, extraordinary abilities and a mission to save the world.
Although this level of understanding sheds some light on what happened, nothing in my training as a psychologist encouraged me to explore my psychotic episode further. From the medical model psychiatric perspective, psychosis brings no potential for transformation, only the risk of recurrence. The new "Bible" and all my copious notes sat in a sealed box that moved with me from one living abode to another but was never opened--physically, mentally or spiritually. Some seven years after this episode, during my psychology internship at Camarillo State Hospital in California, I entered into Jungian analysis. Soon after starting therapy, I had a dream in which a large red book appeared. My analyst, Dr. Margaret Johnson, asked for my associations about the book. Memories of my "Holy Book" leaped into my consciousness. Sensing my discomfort, she questioned me further. I had not discussed my psychotic episode with anyone in seven years, and my heart raced at the prospect of sharing my story with someone in my own profession. Recognizing therapy as a sacred place where one can safely tell secrets, I blurted out the details of my experience--being a reincarnation of Buddha and Christ whose mission was to save the world by writing the new "Bible". At the end of our discussion she said, "Well, I don't think that's craziness. Sounds like something important was happening to you on a deep level." She invited me to bring the book to the next session. The sealed box would soon be reopened--physically and mentally.
While the next two sessions focused on this phase of my life, my lingering discomfort with its aspects of grandiosity and inflated identity kept me from delving very deeply into the experience. However, I realized that my book and the events that had surrounded its writing could be analyzed like a dream, examining personal and universal symbols. True to my "scholar" nature, I began research on psychotic episodes and their parallels to various myths. I turned to writing case studies on the "MYths in Mental Illness" which were published in a professional journal. REF My Jungian analysis and scholarly work provided me with a "dictionary" of symbols for interpreting my own experience.
However, the spiritual potential inherent in my experience lay dormant until contact with shamanic teachers enabled me to connect with that dimension. Upon finishing my doctorate in psychology in1980, I became an Assistant Research Psychologist in the Clinical Research Center for Schizophrenia at UCLA. At the same time, I became a staff member of The Ojai Foundation, a new educational reteat center north of Los Angeles. In this semi-wilderness location, the first structure we erected on the land was a teepee. A sweat lodge was soon added. This hospitable and appropriate setting for training in shamanic practices was created by medical anthropologist Joan Halifax, an author and expert on shamanism. Daily life included chanting; drumming was a frequent activity. Pipe ceremonies marked special events and frequently were held at sunrise. The New Year's Celebrations were ceremonies modelled after the Peyote Ceremony with a water drum and singing stick passed around the circle throughout the night.
The Ojai Foundation was host to many traditional shamans and Native American medicine people who held retreats where they shared ceremonial healing techniques. During the next few years, I attended programs by Wallace Black Elk and Grace Spotted Eagle, Prem Das, Sun Bear and Wabun, Hyemeyohsts Storm, Oh Shinnah, Grandfather Semu Huaute, Rolling Thunder, Harley Swiftdeer, Thomas Banyacya, Evelyn Eaton, Adam Fortunate Eagle, and Elie Hien. Their extended visits after the retreats enabled those of us living on the land to get to know them more intimately and to participate in private ceremonies, prayer sessions and sweats.
In the altered states of consciousness induced by these shamanistic practices, I re-experienced, for the first time since my psychotic episode, a feeling of oneness with the universe. Once again, I was communicating with divine spirits, and comprehending the meaning of life itself. Instead of repressing these ecstatic experiences which had brought painful memories, I was now learning to trust them again. Such experiences are a major component of shamanic life: "Shamans do not differ from other members of the collectivity by their quest for the sacred--which is normal and universal human behavior--but by their capacity for ecstatic experience" (p. 107, emphasis added). Shamanistic practices enabled me to reclaim a culturally-disapproved and repressed dimension of my being that psychosis had revealed: my capacity for ecstasis--the union with higher forces and understanding. However, these teachers and my daily shamanistic practices taught me how to exercise voluntary control over entry into and out of ecstatic states. I also learned how to keep them contained within appropriate social contexts.
During these years, I learned about power animals and discovered some of my own, including the owl, the coyote and the lizard. Times of solitude and spiritual reflection in wilderness settings taught me how to follow my inner voices. These vision quests helped me to draw guidance from the wilderness within. For instance, a dream in which my file cabinets appeared covered with beads and feathers made me aware that these tools for academic work are my power objects. One morning bicycling to work, I came across a dead barn owl. This connection with my first power animal reminded me of my dream. I spent nearly an hour intently working to sever its wings and claws using a sharp stone tool. Now that beaded owl claw hangs over the file cabinets in my office. I learned to communicate with trees by being in their presence, listening to their spirit voices. I made a connection with the spirit of the ocean as I stood kneedeep in the water feeling the power of the waves tugging at my legs. These spirit teachers along with more traditional teachers, helped me create a personal mythology based upon my inner life. Parallels Between Psychosis and Shamanic Initiation The key themes in shamanic initiation are ascent into the upper world, descent into the lower world, dismemberment and rebirth.4 These four themes were present in my experience. First, I ascended into a kind of heaven where I felt myself to be chosen for a mission to change the world and "became" the gods Christ and Buddha. Then I descended into a hellish realm which represented my dismemberment--constant headaches, insomnia, intense abdominal cramps and internal bleeding--during which I envisioned my death. At the end of my experience I felt reborn through an audible call to become a healer. Thus, the story of my psychotic episode follows the classic four-part thematic structure characteristic of shamanic initiatory crises.
Many images that appeared in my experience also parallel the symbolism of shamanic initiations. Shamans frequently have experiences, as I had, of becoming enlightened and being enveloped in light. Referring to "the disciple's 'lighting' or 'enlightenment,'" Eliade writes: "the experience of inner light that determines the career of the Iglulik shaman is familiar to a number of higher mysticisms."4 He mentions the Upanishads, yoga, the Tibetan Book of the Dead and Christian mysticism. Another common initiatory motif which was part of my crisis is discussed at length by Eliade in his book in a section on "Contemplating one's own skeleton." Lastly, the theme of rebirth also occurs in many traditions. Joseph Campbell wrote: "The inward journey of the mythological hero, the shaman, the mystic and the schizophrenic are in principle the same; and when the return or remission occurs, it is experienced as a rebirth."5
Of course a key difference between my psychotic episode and the shaman's initiatory crisis is the way it is viewed by our respective societies. From the contemporary Western perspective, it would be considered a mental illness. However, in shamanic societies, such experiences often mark an individual as an ecstatic healer. Another difference relates to the type of divine figures encountered. The shaman encounters animal spirit guides; I met Christ and Buddha. When contacting spirits of the dead, I did not communicate with dead shamans, but the "spirits" of numerous people, leading figures from the Western cultural tradition--both dead and alive. My preoccupation with writing a book to change the world is also not a shamanic theme. However, it is somewhat parallel to the shaman's quest to acquire power objects, songs and drums which can be used to heal others. Shamanistic Crisis as a Calling to a Mental Health Profession Psychologist Jean Achterberg has pointed out that crises and illnesses bestow upon the shaman the wisdom to serve the community as a healer. She then goes on to observe that , Such events can occur and have occurred in the lives of health professionals in the modern world and have led to vocational choice. Being disabled, or having a serious disease, or being in recovery from an addiction, or even having a child with a significant handicap has been the wounding or the initiation for many in the health care field.6
Etymologically, "vocation" stems from an earlier meaning: the hearing of a divine voice summoning one to a religious career. My vocation as a mental health professional followed an audible summoning to the healing profession in the midst of my psychotic episode. During my years of teaching graduate psychology students, giving workshops, and receiving correspondence from readers of my articles, I've learned that many mental health professionals have been "called" to their profession by a psychotic or depressive episode.
My psychotic experience has continued to guide me in my profession. I believe that my crisis awakened certain healing abilities that contribute to my work with psychotic patients. For example, it is relatively easy and rewarding for me to empathically enter the delusional reality of psychotic patients. Most mental health professionals seem to find an "abyss of difference" (as Jaspers, one of the fathers of modern psychopathology, described it) between the "normal" and the psychotic mind. Through my psychotic experience, I became aware that psychotic patients have needs beyond pharmacologically-based treatments. At Camarillo State Hospital, I developed the first holistic health program for schizophrenic patients. It incorporated jogging, meditation, stress management and art therapy along with a weekly "Growth and Schizophrenia" group therapy program. These therapy sessions helped them to develop a positive attitude toward their illness and improve their self-esteem by pointing out parallels between their experiences and those of of shamans, mystics, and artists. My clinical work has also involved harnessing the creativity of psychotic patients by having them write and draw about their experiences. Several of these writings have been published and the art works displayed. More recently my concerns led me to develop and publish articles on sex and AIDS education programs for patients with serious mental illnesses.
Had I been diagnosed with a psychotic disorder, hospitalized and medicated, I'm sure that a positive integration of my experience would have been much more difficult to attain. With this in mind, I published an article detailing operational diagnostic criteria for distinguishing mental disorders from spiritual emergencies: crisies which carry the capacity for self-renewal. Shamanistic Practices and the Integration of Psychotic Episodes In 1967, psychologist Julian Silverman noted the similarities between the crises involved in psychosis and those in shamanic initiations. He also lamented the lack of a supportive social milieu in contemporary Western culture as compared with traditional shamanic socieities where he social role of the shaman legitimates free access to altered states of consciousness. "For the schizophrenic, the absence of such culturally acceptable and appropriate [access] only has the effect of intensifying his suffering over and above the original anxieties...for the crisis solutions of the schizophrenic are totally invalid ones in the eyes of the great majority of his peers."7 Becoming a shaman to help integrate psychotic experiences is no longer a viable option for most individuals in contemporary mainstream Western society. There is little cultural support for such a role in which accessing altered states of consciousness is acceptable. However, in the two decades since Silverman pointed out this lack, the option of utilizing shamanism to integrate psychotic crises has been revived by the neo-shamanic movement. Joan Townsend points out the practical training that this movement provides: "While one could 'learn' shamanism one's own by extensive research and experimentation, it is not a very practical alternative. The experience of participating in a shamanic group, even if only for a few days, provides an orientation and a qualitatively different experience so improtant for a true knowing." REF Today individuals can receive support during their crises and validation afterwards through participation in the extensive range of training opportunities available at place like The Ojai Foundation and programs such as Michale Harner's. In my case, by pursuing shamanistic practices I changed my self-perception about this very significant episode in my life. I felt reassured after Cheyenne Medicine Chief Hyemeyohsts Storm informed me that the medicine wheel teachings of his people allowed them to distinguish a temporary psychosis, which is brought on by spirits to communicate "teachings," from a chronic mental illness. I like to think that in an earlier era my shamanistic initiatory crisis would have marked me as a shaman-elect and I would have been apprenticed to a master shaman to learn to control these abilities. While presenting my views in various workshops and classes I have led, I encountered many others who were drawn to shamanistic practices by episodes of mental breakdown/breakthrough. In one workshop, "Psychosis: Mysticism, Shamanism or Pathology?" my co-leader, Joan Halifax, explained how her inspiration for establishing The Ojai Foundation was an outgrowth of her own descent into psychosis. Shamanism had provided a map to guide her back to wholeness. She created an educational center where people would be welcomed into a healing community. Guided by authentic shamans, novices learned self-control over entry into and exit from ecstatic states of consciousness. During a retreat in Ojai, Lakota shaman Wallace Black Elk shared how his initiatory visions led to his hospitalization by those who did not understand the spiritual dimension of his experience.
Today shamanistic techniques are increasingly being employed in counseling, psychotherapy and medical treatments. During his years of work treating psychotic patients, Jungian analyst John Perry found that a primary function of an acute psychotic episode is to enable the individual "to learn to perceive symbolic meanings as they pertain to the living of one's psychic life, and thus to keep connected with the ever-enriching wellsprings of the emotions which nourish that life."8 In integrating my shamanistic initiatory crisis, I found the literature on shamanism and neo-shamanism provided archetypal and experiential parallels to those psychotic experiences. Awareness of such correspondences allowed me to translate my culturally discordant psychotic experiences into a personally meaningful mythology. Contact with shamans and shamanistic practices provided my training in self-control of ecstatic states and journying to spirit worlds. Shamanistic practices, pursued with the guidance of knowledgable therapists or trustworthy traditional teachers, are an ideal way to extract a symbolically rich personal mythology from a psychotic crisis.
FOOTNOTES 1. Eliade, Mircea. Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries. New York: Harper and Row, 1960. Page 80-81.
2. Halifax, Joan. Shamanic Voices. New York: Dutton, 1979. Additional examples of psychotic-like experiences associated with shamanic initiatory crisies can be found in Kalweit, H. When insanity is a blessing: The message of shamanism. In: Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis. Los Angeles: Jeremy Tarcher, 1989.
3. Heinz, Ruth-Inge. Proceedings of the International Conference on Shamanism II. Berkeley, CA:, 1984. p. vi.
4. Eliade, Mircea. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972. (quote is on page 107).
5. Campbell, Joseph Myths To Live By. New York. Bantam Books, 1972. p. 237.
6. Achterberg, Jeanne. "The Wounded Healer". Shaman's Drum, Vol. 11, 1987-8. p.20.
7. Silverman, Julian. "Shamans and Acute Schizophrenia". American Anthropologist. Vol. 69, 1967. p. 28-29. Current diagnostic nomenclature reserves the category of schizophrenia for chronic and severe psychotic disorders. However, Silverman's thesis applies to several of the less severe types of psychotic experiences. See Lukoff, David. "The Diagnosis of Mystical Experiences With Psychotic Features". Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, Vol. 17, No. 2,1985.
8. Perry, John. The Far Side of Madness. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974. p. 1
9. Joan Townsend "Neo-Shamanism and the Modern Mystical Movement" in Shaman's Path, edited by Gary Doore (1988), Boston: Shambala Publications. p. 82.
10. Michael Harner "Our Shamanic Heritage" Noetic Sciences Review, p. 12.
11. See Michael Harner "Shamanic Counseling", Stanislav Grof "The Shamanic Journey: Observations from Holotropic Therapy", "The Inner Life of the Healer: The Importance of Shamanism for Modern Medicine", Frank Lawlis "Shamanic Approaches in a Hospital Pain Clinic" and Lewis Mehl "Modern Shamanism: Integration of Biomedicine with Traditional World Views" in Shaman's Path, edited by Gary Doore (1988), Boston: Shambala Publications.
13. Feinstein, David and Krippner, Stanley Personal Mythology: The Psychology of Evolving Self Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher, 1988.
Resources
Personal Experiences
The Spiritual Emergency Resource Center (spiritual-emergency.com)
David Lukoff's Experience Talk at Ruth Inge Heinz's Annual Conference on Shamanism 1990 http://www.spiritual-emergency.com/experiences/exp-lukoff-print.html
The future shaman sometimes takes the risk of being mistaken for a "madman"...but his "madness" fulfils a mystic function; it reveals certain aspects of reality to him that are inaccessible to other mortals, and it is only after having experienced and entered into these hidden dimensions of reality that the "madman" becomes a shaman." Mircea Eliade1 found that a psychotic episode has served as the initiatory crisis marking, for some shamans, a call to the healing profession. For example, the Siberian shaman Kyzalov entered a state of "madness" lasting for seven years which resulted in his initiation as a shaman. He reported that during those years he had been beaten up several times, taken to many strange places including the top of a sacred mountain, chopped into pieces and boiled in a kettle, met the spirits of sickness, and acquired the drum and garment of a dead shaman. Being "tormented" by spirits, babbling confused words, displaying curious eating habits, singing continuously, and dancing wildly are other common elements in initiatory crises; in our society today these experiences would be considered evidence of a psychotic disorder and could possibly result in hospitalization. Yet when Kyzalov recuperated, he reported that, "the shamans declared, 'You are the sort of man who may become a shaman; you should become a shaman. You must begin to shamanize.' "2
All mental and physical illnesses, accidents, and other ordeals, by creating psychospiritual crises, open the door to the shamanic world of spirits and nonordinary reality. In contemporary society, psychotic states of consciousness retain their power to awaken shamanic tendencies and talents. It proved to be so in my case, and for others whom I have met, worked with as a therapist and written about. My psychotic episode took place in a non-shamanic cultural and psychological context, but it bears a distinct relationship to a shaman's initiation: 1) it contained thematic and imagistic parallels to the initiatory crises of professional shaman; 2) it served as my calling to the mental health profession just as the shaman's crisis calls him/her to the role of healer; 3) it was integrated with the aid of traditional shamans and their practices.
Since I live in a contemporary Western society which does not recognize the social role of an ecstatic healer who cavorts with spirits, my psychotic episode did not initiate me as a shaman. I have devised the term "shamanistic initiatory crisis" to describe my experience. As anthropologist Ruth-Inge Heinz noted, "The term 'shamanistic' is used for shaman-like activities, e.g., activities which may be carried out by somebody other than a shaman, while the term 'shamanic' indicates that these activities are carried out by somebody who actually is a shaman."3 Therefore, shamanistic is the appropriate term.
My psychotic crisis occurred 18 years ago. After coming to the conclusion that, at 23 years of age, I was spending all of my time learning about other people, and did not know my own self, I dropped out of the doctoral program in social anthropology at Harvard University. I gave away all of my possessions, from bed to books, that would not fit into my backpack. I started travelling — hitchhiking across the country, up into Canada and down into Mexico, even to Hawaii. In Palo Alto, six months later, I awoke just after midnight. Although I had slept for only two hours, I felt rested — in fact, I was full of energy and eager to get back to writing in my journal. But first a quick trip to the bathroom. While there, I stopped in front of the mirror and gazed at my reflection. Suddenly I noticed that my right hand was glowing, giving off a white light. My thumb was touching my forefinger in the ancient mudra position of the meditating Buddha. Immediately the meaning of this sign was clear to me: I had been Buddha in a previous life. Then another thought came: Buddha had been reincarnated as Jesus Christ. Therefore, I had also been Jesus Christ. Now, in this moment, the luminous image in the mirror was awakening me to my true purpose: to once again bring the human race out of its decline. My journal writing was actually the creation a "new Bible", a Holy Book which would unite all people around the common tenants of a single belief system. Instead of unifyng just one social group, as Buddha and Christ had, my mission was to write a book that would create a new worldwide society free of conflict and full of loving relationships.
I had been trained well. Undergraduate studies in ancient civilizations at the University of Chicago and a masters degree in social anthropology at Harvard had give me a comprehensive and scientific understanding of the way societies function and change. This knowledge, added to the wisdom inherited from my previous incarnations, prepared me for my sacred mission. Experiences during the past few days had also been designed as exercises to develop my skills. The previous day, while reading Suzuki's Manual of Zen Buddhism, I had solved the riddle of Zen teachings and become "enlightened." I was now freed from dependence on society's rigid norms and narow perceptions of reality. I had acquired the intellectual freedom and creativity of an enlightened being. In addition, I had unravelled the mysterious process by which the Zen Master creates the enlightenment experience in others. Thus, I deemed myself fully prepared to design a cultural revolution in which everyone would become enlightened.
I was ready now. My life's mission had been communicated to me during this single glance in the bathroom mirror. I headed for the table where my journal, now to be a "Holy Book," lay open. Over the next five days and nights, I worked with only short breaks for meals and naps. I found I could contact the "spirits" of eminent thinkers in the social sciences and humanities to help me with the task of writing the new "Bible." As I reflected on their relevance for my work, I would "become" these people of wisdom, and "think their thoughts with them." I had discussions with contemporary people including R. D. Laing, Margaret Mead, Claude Levi-Straus, Bob Dylan and Abby Hoffman. People who were no longer living also communicated with me: Durkheim, Locke, Hobbes, Rosseau, Mead, Voltaire, Adam Smith, Jefferson, Freud, Jung, and, of course, Buddha and Christ. In my book were listed brief summaries of the "messages" I had obtained from each of them. At times during the writing, the clarity of my thoughts and the beauty of my vision for the future brought tears to my eyes. Initially I assumed a penname "The Scholar" to allude to the erudite origins of this project, and I soon realized that "The Scholar" was my new reincarnated identity. After five days of writing, the book was finished. Its 47 pages contained a combination of parables, poems and instructions on how to organize the new society. I originally planned to leave five copies in front of Cody's bookstore in Berkeley, California. In 1971, Cody's was the center of a communication vortex of hippies and freaks, who would be first to herald my new Bible and circulate it to others. However, when the 10 copies were made and bound in spiral notebooks, I mailed eight to friends and family, wanting those closest to me to be the first ones enlightened. Some expressed real interest. Others were casual. Some did not respond. No one reported becoming immediately enlightened; no one expressed a desire to join my mission to change the world. Nevertheless, I was sure that the revolution I was to lead would materialize.
Over the next five months of waiting, I was so preoccuppied with my mission that I didn't work to earn money. I "crashed" at many friends' homes. They were compassionate and generous in supporting me, both financially and psychologically. None of them ever treated me as though they thought I were crazy. They gave me food and shelter and let me read their books. They listened to my new ideas and talked to me about religion and life.
My sense of being the reincarnation of Buddha and Christ slowly dissipated over the next two months. I don't remember a specific moment when I broke through this delusion. I just thought about myself less and less as the Supreme Being while I worked on revising the book. Although I began to realize that it was not to be a new "Bible," I still believed that there were many brilliant and novel ideas and syntheses of previous thought. I would publish it as a best-selling book. In early spring of the the next year, I went to live by myself in my parent's summer cottage in Cape Cod. I continued working on my book; however, my health rapidly deteriorated. It began with headaches and insomnia; my head felt as though it would burst with pain after an hour of reading and many nights I could not sleep. I felt miserable and depressed. Then I had a recurrence of an illness I had suffered 10 years earlier, Crohn's disease, a serious condition affecting the intestines producing internal bleeding. I forced myself to keep reading, taking aspirin and other medication for the headaches.
At the same time that it was becoming physically difficult for me to read, it was also becoming more imperative. In giving up my grandiose identity as the Supreme Being, I now turned my attention to becoming a renowned author. My research led me to many books on religion and social change, and I began to see that my ideas were not so original. While reading Roszak's The Making of a Counterculture, I realized that my "vision for a new society" was nothing more than a stock "60's" Utopian plan that had led to the founding of numerous communes.
These realizations further lowered my low self-esteem by making me aware of the folly of my actions during the height of my crisis. I was embarrassed at the thought of having sent a semi-incoherent "Holy Book" to all my closest friends and family. Now I questioned whether I had anything worthwhile to say in the book, which had been my raison d' etre for the previous several months. I felt totally lost and confused. I was still quite sick physically with Crohns' symptoms, headaches, and insomnia. I was even considering the possibility of committing suicide with medications. The image of my skeleton spontaneously appeared to me on several sleepless nights.
Two months after moving to Cape Cod to be alone, I was walking near the bay, ruminating about the events of the last six months and feeling depressed. Suddenly I heard a voice speaking to me. I was startled. The voice distinctly said, "Become a healer." At that time, lost in self-recriminations about the past, I did not think of myself as even having a future! However, this voice--the only one I've ever heard emanating from outside of myself--set a whole new train of events in motion. Although the voice was not accompanied by the ecstatic emotion of my first rebirth as The Scholar, it initiated my path toward a new lifestyle and profession.
I decided to leave Cape Cod and go to my parents' home in New Jersey to recuperate. There I took classes in yoga and participated in encounter groups. Then I joined a program at a personal growth center and trained in a multitutde of healing practices. These included gestalt therapy, transactional analysis, primal therapy, bioenergetics, massage and psychodrama. Eventually I became a group leader and member of the training staff at the Forest Hospital Growth Center outside of Chicago.
Although I had many opportunities during my personal group and individual therapy sessions to explore the experiences surrounding my crisis, at no time did I bring them up. I avoided looking at the events that had led me into the vocation of being a psychologist, including the hearing of a disembodied voice telling me to "Become a healer." I simply did not talk or think about these early events in my career.
Entering a doctoral clinical psychology program three years after this experience, and then later working as a psychologist with psychotic patients at Camarillo State Hospital and at UCLA, I learned that my crisis was a psychotic episode. Taking LSD four days before the episode began had probably triggered its onset. It was not an "LSD Psychosis" or what the current nomenclature terms a "Halucinogen Delusional Disorder" because the extraordinary events started days after the LSD was out of my system. The LSD had initiated a train of mental events which were amplified over the next four days by intensive reading of books on Zen, introverted journal writing, social withdrawal and little sleep. These preoccupations and behaviors culminated four days later in the events in front of the mirror and my life did not return to normal until six months later. Although transient visual and auditory hallucinations occurred my episode fits the diagnostic criteria for "Delusional Disorder, Grandiose Type" due to my preoccupation with having a special identity, extraordinary abilities and a mission to save the world.
Although this level of understanding sheds some light on what happened, nothing in my training as a psychologist encouraged me to explore my psychotic episode further. From the medical model psychiatric perspective, psychosis brings no potential for transformation, only the risk of recurrence. The new "Bible" and all my copious notes sat in a sealed box that moved with me from one living abode to another but was never opened--physically, mentally or spiritually. Some seven years after this episode, during my psychology internship at Camarillo State Hospital in California, I entered into Jungian analysis. Soon after starting therapy, I had a dream in which a large red book appeared. My analyst, Dr. Margaret Johnson, asked for my associations about the book. Memories of my "Holy Book" leaped into my consciousness. Sensing my discomfort, she questioned me further. I had not discussed my psychotic episode with anyone in seven years, and my heart raced at the prospect of sharing my story with someone in my own profession. Recognizing therapy as a sacred place where one can safely tell secrets, I blurted out the details of my experience--being a reincarnation of Buddha and Christ whose mission was to save the world by writing the new "Bible". At the end of our discussion she said, "Well, I don't think that's craziness. Sounds like something important was happening to you on a deep level." She invited me to bring the book to the next session. The sealed box would soon be reopened--physically and mentally.
While the next two sessions focused on this phase of my life, my lingering discomfort with its aspects of grandiosity and inflated identity kept me from delving very deeply into the experience. However, I realized that my book and the events that had surrounded its writing could be analyzed like a dream, examining personal and universal symbols. True to my "scholar" nature, I began research on psychotic episodes and their parallels to various myths. I turned to writing case studies on the "MYths in Mental Illness" which were published in a professional journal. REF My Jungian analysis and scholarly work provided me with a "dictionary" of symbols for interpreting my own experience.
However, the spiritual potential inherent in my experience lay dormant until contact with shamanic teachers enabled me to connect with that dimension. Upon finishing my doctorate in psychology in1980, I became an Assistant Research Psychologist in the Clinical Research Center for Schizophrenia at UCLA. At the same time, I became a staff member of The Ojai Foundation, a new educational reteat center north of Los Angeles. In this semi-wilderness location, the first structure we erected on the land was a teepee. A sweat lodge was soon added. This hospitable and appropriate setting for training in shamanic practices was created by medical anthropologist Joan Halifax, an author and expert on shamanism. Daily life included chanting; drumming was a frequent activity. Pipe ceremonies marked special events and frequently were held at sunrise. The New Year's Celebrations were ceremonies modelled after the Peyote Ceremony with a water drum and singing stick passed around the circle throughout the night.
The Ojai Foundation was host to many traditional shamans and Native American medicine people who held retreats where they shared ceremonial healing techniques. During the next few years, I attended programs by Wallace Black Elk and Grace Spotted Eagle, Prem Das, Sun Bear and Wabun, Hyemeyohsts Storm, Oh Shinnah, Grandfather Semu Huaute, Rolling Thunder, Harley Swiftdeer, Thomas Banyacya, Evelyn Eaton, Adam Fortunate Eagle, and Elie Hien. Their extended visits after the retreats enabled those of us living on the land to get to know them more intimately and to participate in private ceremonies, prayer sessions and sweats.
In the altered states of consciousness induced by these shamanistic practices, I re-experienced, for the first time since my psychotic episode, a feeling of oneness with the universe. Once again, I was communicating with divine spirits, and comprehending the meaning of life itself. Instead of repressing these ecstatic experiences which had brought painful memories, I was now learning to trust them again. Such experiences are a major component of shamanic life: "Shamans do not differ from other members of the collectivity by their quest for the sacred--which is normal and universal human behavior--but by their capacity for ecstatic experience" (p. 107, emphasis added). Shamanistic practices enabled me to reclaim a culturally-disapproved and repressed dimension of my being that psychosis had revealed: my capacity for ecstasis--the union with higher forces and understanding. However, these teachers and my daily shamanistic practices taught me how to exercise voluntary control over entry into and out of ecstatic states. I also learned how to keep them contained within appropriate social contexts.
During these years, I learned about power animals and discovered some of my own, including the owl, the coyote and the lizard. Times of solitude and spiritual reflection in wilderness settings taught me how to follow my inner voices. These vision quests helped me to draw guidance from the wilderness within. For instance, a dream in which my file cabinets appeared covered with beads and feathers made me aware that these tools for academic work are my power objects. One morning bicycling to work, I came across a dead barn owl. This connection with my first power animal reminded me of my dream. I spent nearly an hour intently working to sever its wings and claws using a sharp stone tool. Now that beaded owl claw hangs over the file cabinets in my office. I learned to communicate with trees by being in their presence, listening to their spirit voices. I made a connection with the spirit of the ocean as I stood kneedeep in the water feeling the power of the waves tugging at my legs. These spirit teachers along with more traditional teachers, helped me create a personal mythology based upon my inner life. Parallels Between Psychosis and Shamanic Initiation The key themes in shamanic initiation are ascent into the upper world, descent into the lower world, dismemberment and rebirth.4 These four themes were present in my experience. First, I ascended into a kind of heaven where I felt myself to be chosen for a mission to change the world and "became" the gods Christ and Buddha. Then I descended into a hellish realm which represented my dismemberment--constant headaches, insomnia, intense abdominal cramps and internal bleeding--during which I envisioned my death. At the end of my experience I felt reborn through an audible call to become a healer. Thus, the story of my psychotic episode follows the classic four-part thematic structure characteristic of shamanic initiatory crises.
Many images that appeared in my experience also parallel the symbolism of shamanic initiations. Shamans frequently have experiences, as I had, of becoming enlightened and being enveloped in light. Referring to "the disciple's 'lighting' or 'enlightenment,'" Eliade writes: "the experience of inner light that determines the career of the Iglulik shaman is familiar to a number of higher mysticisms."4 He mentions the Upanishads, yoga, the Tibetan Book of the Dead and Christian mysticism. Another common initiatory motif which was part of my crisis is discussed at length by Eliade in his book in a section on "Contemplating one's own skeleton." Lastly, the theme of rebirth also occurs in many traditions. Joseph Campbell wrote: "The inward journey of the mythological hero, the shaman, the mystic and the schizophrenic are in principle the same; and when the return or remission occurs, it is experienced as a rebirth."5
Of course a key difference between my psychotic episode and the shaman's initiatory crisis is the way it is viewed by our respective societies. From the contemporary Western perspective, it would be considered a mental illness. However, in shamanic societies, such experiences often mark an individual as an ecstatic healer. Another difference relates to the type of divine figures encountered. The shaman encounters animal spirit guides; I met Christ and Buddha. When contacting spirits of the dead, I did not communicate with dead shamans, but the "spirits" of numerous people, leading figures from the Western cultural tradition--both dead and alive. My preoccupation with writing a book to change the world is also not a shamanic theme. However, it is somewhat parallel to the shaman's quest to acquire power objects, songs and drums which can be used to heal others. Shamanistic Crisis as a Calling to a Mental Health Profession Psychologist Jean Achterberg has pointed out that crises and illnesses bestow upon the shaman the wisdom to serve the community as a healer. She then goes on to observe that , Such events can occur and have occurred in the lives of health professionals in the modern world and have led to vocational choice. Being disabled, or having a serious disease, or being in recovery from an addiction, or even having a child with a significant handicap has been the wounding or the initiation for many in the health care field.6
Etymologically, "vocation" stems from an earlier meaning: the hearing of a divine voice summoning one to a religious career. My vocation as a mental health professional followed an audible summoning to the healing profession in the midst of my psychotic episode. During my years of teaching graduate psychology students, giving workshops, and receiving correspondence from readers of my articles, I've learned that many mental health professionals have been "called" to their profession by a psychotic or depressive episode.
My psychotic experience has continued to guide me in my profession. I believe that my crisis awakened certain healing abilities that contribute to my work with psychotic patients. For example, it is relatively easy and rewarding for me to empathically enter the delusional reality of psychotic patients. Most mental health professionals seem to find an "abyss of difference" (as Jaspers, one of the fathers of modern psychopathology, described it) between the "normal" and the psychotic mind. Through my psychotic experience, I became aware that psychotic patients have needs beyond pharmacologically-based treatments. At Camarillo State Hospital, I developed the first holistic health program for schizophrenic patients. It incorporated jogging, meditation, stress management and art therapy along with a weekly "Growth and Schizophrenia" group therapy program. These therapy sessions helped them to develop a positive attitude toward their illness and improve their self-esteem by pointing out parallels between their experiences and those of of shamans, mystics, and artists. My clinical work has also involved harnessing the creativity of psychotic patients by having them write and draw about their experiences. Several of these writings have been published and the art works displayed. More recently my concerns led me to develop and publish articles on sex and AIDS education programs for patients with serious mental illnesses.
Had I been diagnosed with a psychotic disorder, hospitalized and medicated, I'm sure that a positive integration of my experience would have been much more difficult to attain. With this in mind, I published an article detailing operational diagnostic criteria for distinguishing mental disorders from spiritual emergencies: crisies which carry the capacity for self-renewal. Shamanistic Practices and the Integration of Psychotic Episodes In 1967, psychologist Julian Silverman noted the similarities between the crises involved in psychosis and those in shamanic initiations. He also lamented the lack of a supportive social milieu in contemporary Western culture as compared with traditional shamanic socieities where he social role of the shaman legitimates free access to altered states of consciousness. "For the schizophrenic, the absence of such culturally acceptable and appropriate [access] only has the effect of intensifying his suffering over and above the original anxieties...for the crisis solutions of the schizophrenic are totally invalid ones in the eyes of the great majority of his peers."7 Becoming a shaman to help integrate psychotic experiences is no longer a viable option for most individuals in contemporary mainstream Western society. There is little cultural support for such a role in which accessing altered states of consciousness is acceptable. However, in the two decades since Silverman pointed out this lack, the option of utilizing shamanism to integrate psychotic crises has been revived by the neo-shamanic movement. Joan Townsend points out the practical training that this movement provides: "While one could 'learn' shamanism one's own by extensive research and experimentation, it is not a very practical alternative. The experience of participating in a shamanic group, even if only for a few days, provides an orientation and a qualitatively different experience so improtant for a true knowing." REF Today individuals can receive support during their crises and validation afterwards through participation in the extensive range of training opportunities available at place like The Ojai Foundation and programs such as Michale Harner's. In my case, by pursuing shamanistic practices I changed my self-perception about this very significant episode in my life. I felt reassured after Cheyenne Medicine Chief Hyemeyohsts Storm informed me that the medicine wheel teachings of his people allowed them to distinguish a temporary psychosis, which is brought on by spirits to communicate "teachings," from a chronic mental illness. I like to think that in an earlier era my shamanistic initiatory crisis would have marked me as a shaman-elect and I would have been apprenticed to a master shaman to learn to control these abilities. While presenting my views in various workshops and classes I have led, I encountered many others who were drawn to shamanistic practices by episodes of mental breakdown/breakthrough. In one workshop, "Psychosis: Mysticism, Shamanism or Pathology?" my co-leader, Joan Halifax, explained how her inspiration for establishing The Ojai Foundation was an outgrowth of her own descent into psychosis. Shamanism had provided a map to guide her back to wholeness. She created an educational center where people would be welcomed into a healing community. Guided by authentic shamans, novices learned self-control over entry into and exit from ecstatic states of consciousness. During a retreat in Ojai, Lakota shaman Wallace Black Elk shared how his initiatory visions led to his hospitalization by those who did not understand the spiritual dimension of his experience.
Today shamanistic techniques are increasingly being employed in counseling, psychotherapy and medical treatments. During his years of work treating psychotic patients, Jungian analyst John Perry found that a primary function of an acute psychotic episode is to enable the individual "to learn to perceive symbolic meanings as they pertain to the living of one's psychic life, and thus to keep connected with the ever-enriching wellsprings of the emotions which nourish that life."8 In integrating my shamanistic initiatory crisis, I found the literature on shamanism and neo-shamanism provided archetypal and experiential parallels to those psychotic experiences. Awareness of such correspondences allowed me to translate my culturally discordant psychotic experiences into a personally meaningful mythology. Contact with shamans and shamanistic practices provided my training in self-control of ecstatic states and journying to spirit worlds. Shamanistic practices, pursued with the guidance of knowledgable therapists or trustworthy traditional teachers, are an ideal way to extract a symbolically rich personal mythology from a psychotic crisis.
FOOTNOTES 1. Eliade, Mircea. Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries. New York: Harper and Row, 1960. Page 80-81.
2. Halifax, Joan. Shamanic Voices. New York: Dutton, 1979. Additional examples of psychotic-like experiences associated with shamanic initiatory crisies can be found in Kalweit, H. When insanity is a blessing: The message of shamanism. In: Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis. Los Angeles: Jeremy Tarcher, 1989.
3. Heinz, Ruth-Inge. Proceedings of the International Conference on Shamanism II. Berkeley, CA:, 1984. p. vi.
4. Eliade, Mircea. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972. (quote is on page 107).
5. Campbell, Joseph Myths To Live By. New York. Bantam Books, 1972. p. 237.
6. Achterberg, Jeanne. "The Wounded Healer". Shaman's Drum, Vol. 11, 1987-8. p.20.
7. Silverman, Julian. "Shamans and Acute Schizophrenia". American Anthropologist. Vol. 69, 1967. p. 28-29. Current diagnostic nomenclature reserves the category of schizophrenia for chronic and severe psychotic disorders. However, Silverman's thesis applies to several of the less severe types of psychotic experiences. See Lukoff, David. "The Diagnosis of Mystical Experiences With Psychotic Features". Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, Vol. 17, No. 2,1985.
8. Perry, John. The Far Side of Madness. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974. p. 1
9. Joan Townsend "Neo-Shamanism and the Modern Mystical Movement" in Shaman's Path, edited by Gary Doore (1988), Boston: Shambala Publications. p. 82.
10. Michael Harner "Our Shamanic Heritage" Noetic Sciences Review, p. 12.
11. See Michael Harner "Shamanic Counseling", Stanislav Grof "The Shamanic Journey: Observations from Holotropic Therapy", "The Inner Life of the Healer: The Importance of Shamanism for Modern Medicine", Frank Lawlis "Shamanic Approaches in a Hospital Pain Clinic" and Lewis Mehl "Modern Shamanism: Integration of Biomedicine with Traditional World Views" in Shaman's Path, edited by Gary Doore (1988), Boston: Shambala Publications.
13. Feinstein, David and Krippner, Stanley Personal Mythology: The Psychology of Evolving Self Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher, 1988.
PART II
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Resources
Personal Experiences
PART II
I decided to leave Cape Cod and go to my parents' home in New Jersey to recuperate. There I took classes in yoga and participated in encounter groups. Then I joined a program at a personal growth center and trained in a multitutde of healing practices. These included gestalt therapy, transactional analysis, primal therapy, bioenergetics, massage and psychodrama. Eventually I became a group leader and member of the training staff at the Forest Hospital Growth Center outside of Chicago.
Although I had many opportunities during my personal group and individual therapy sessions to explore the experiences surrounding my crisis, at no time did I bring them up. I avoided looking at the events that had led me into the vocation of being a psychologist, including the hearing of a disembodied voice telling me to "Become a healer." I simply did not talk or think about these early events in my career.
Entering a doctoral clinical psychology program three years after this experience, and then later working as a psychologist with psychotic patients at Camarillo State Hospital and at UCLA, I learned that my crisis was a psychotic episode. Taking LSD four days before the episode began had probably triggered its onset. It was not an "LSD Psychosis" or what the current nomenclature terms a "Halucinogen Delusional Disorder" because the extraordinary events started days after the LSD was out of my system. The LSD had initiated a train of mental events which were amplified over the next four days by intensive reading of books on Zen, introverted journal writing, social withdrawal and little sleep. These preoccupations and behaviors culminated four days later in the events in front of the mirror and my life did not return to normal until six months later. Although transient visual and auditory hallucinations occurred my episode fits the diagnostic criteria for "Delusional Disorder, Grandiose Type" due to my preoccupation with having a special identity, extraordinary abilities and a mission to save the world.
Although this level of understanding sheds some light on what happened, nothing in my training as a psychologist encouraged me to explore my psychotic episode further. From the medical model psychiatric perspective, psychosis brings no potential for transformation, only the risk of recurrence. The new "Bible" and all my copious notes sat in a sealed box that moved with me from one living abode to another but was never opened--physically, mentally or spiritually. Some seven years after this episode, during my psychology internship at Camarillo State Hospital in California, I entered into Jungian analysis. Soon after starting therapy, I had a dream in which a large red book appeared. My analyst, Dr. Margaret Johnson, asked for my associations about the book. Memories of my "Holy Book" leaped into my consciousness. Sensing my discomfort, she questioned me further. I had not discussed my psychotic episode with anyone in seven years, and my heart raced at the prospect of sharing my story with someone in my own profession. Recognizing therapy as a sacred place where one can safely tell secrets, I blurted out the details of my experience--being a reincarnation of Buddha and Christ whose mission was to save the world by writing the new "Bible". At the end of our discussion she said, "Well, I don't think that's craziness. Sounds like something important was happening to you on a deep level." She invited me to bring the book to the next session. The sealed box would soon be reopened--physically and mentally.
While the next two sessions focused on this phase of my life, my lingering discomfort with its aspects of grandiosity and inflated identity kept me from delving very deeply into the experience. However, I realized that my book and the events that had surrounded its writing could be analyzed like a dream, examining personal and universal symbols. True to my "scholar" nature, I began research on psychotic episodes and their parallels to various myths. I turned to writing case studies on the "MYths in Mental Illness" which were published in a professional journal. REF My Jungian analysis and scholarly work provided me with a "dictionary" of symbols for interpreting my own experience.
However, the spiritual potential inherent in my experience lay dormant until contact with shamanic teachers enabled me to connect with that dimension. Upon finishing my doctorate in psychology in1980, I became an Assistant Research Psychologist in the Clinical Research Center for Schizophrenia at UCLA. At the same time, I became a staff member of The Ojai Foundation, a new educational reteat center north of Los Angeles. In this semi-wilderness location, the first structure we erected on the land was a teepee. A sweat lodge was soon added. This hospitable and appropriate setting for training in shamanic practices was created by medical anthropologist Joan Halifax, an author and expert on shamanism. Daily life included chanting; drumming was a frequent activity. Pipe ceremonies marked special events and frequently were held at sunrise. The New Year's Celebrations were ceremonies modelled after the Peyote Ceremony with a water drum and singing stick passed around the circle throughout the night.
The Ojai Foundation was host to many traditional shamans and Native American medicine people who held retreats where they shared ceremonial healing techniques. During the next few years, I attended programs by Wallace Black Elk and Grace Spotted Eagle, Prem Das, Sun Bear and Wabun, Hyemeyohsts Storm, Oh Shinnah, Grandfather Semu Huaute, Rolling Thunder, Harley Swiftdeer, Thomas Banyacya, Evelyn Eaton, Adam Fortunate Eagle, and Elie Hien. Their extended visits after the retreats enabled those of us living on the land to get to know them more intimately and to participate in private ceremonies, prayer sessions and sweats.
In the altered states of consciousness induced by these shamanistic practices, I re-experienced, for the first time since my psychotic episode, a feeling of oneness with the universe. Once again, I was communicating with divine spirits, and comprehending the meaning of life itself. Instead of repressing these ecstatic experiences which had brought painful memories, I was now learning to trust them again. Such experiences are a major component of shamanic life: "Shamans do not differ from other members of the collectivity by their quest for the sacred--which is normal and universal human behavior--but by their capacity for ecstatic experience" (p. 107, emphasis added). Shamanistic practices enabled me to reclaim a culturally-disapproved and repressed dimension of my being that psychosis had revealed: my capacity for ecstasis--the union with higher forces and understanding. However, these teachers and my daily shamanistic practices taught me how to exercise voluntary control over entry into and out of ecstatic states. I also learned how to keep them contained within appropriate social contexts.
During these years, I learned about power animals and discovered some of my own, including the owl, the coyote and the lizard. Times of solitude and spiritual reflection in wilderness settings taught me how to follow my inner voices. These vision quests helped me to draw guidance from the wilderness within. For instance, a dream in which my file cabinets appeared covered with beads and feathers made me aware that these tools for academic work are my power objects. One morning bicycling to work, I came across a dead barn owl. This connection with my first power animal reminded me of my dream. I spent nearly an hour intently working to sever its wings and claws using a sharp stone tool. Now that beaded owl claw hangs over the file cabinets in my office. I learned to communicate with trees by being in their presence, listening to their spirit voices. I made a connection with the spirit of the ocean as I stood kneedeep in the water feeling the power of the waves tugging at my legs. These spirit teachers along with more traditional teachers, helped me create a personal mythology based upon my inner life. Parallels Between Psychosis and Shamanic Initiation The key themes in shamanic initiation are ascent into the upper world, descent into the lower world, dismemberment and rebirth.4 These four themes were present in my experience. First, I ascended into a kind of heaven where I felt myself to be chosen for a mission to change the world and "became" the gods Christ and Buddha. Then I descended into a hellish realm which represented my dismemberment--constant headaches, insomnia, intense abdominal cramps and internal bleeding--during which I envisioned my death. At the end of my experience I felt reborn through an audible call to become a healer. Thus, the story of my psychotic episode follows the classic four-part thematic structure characteristic of shamanic initiatory crises.
Many images that appeared in my experience also parallel the symbolism of shamanic initiations. Shamans frequently have experiences, as I had, of becoming enlightened and being enveloped in light. Referring to "the disciple's 'lighting' or 'enlightenment,'" Eliade writes: "the experience of inner light that determines the career of the Iglulik shaman is familiar to a number of higher mysticisms."4 He mentions the Upanishads, yoga, the Tibetan Book of the Dead and Christian mysticism. Another common initiatory motif which was part of my crisis is discussed at length by Eliade in his book in a section on "Contemplating one's own skeleton." Lastly, the theme of rebirth also occurs in many traditions. Joseph Campbell wrote: "The inward journey of the mythological hero, the shaman, the mystic and the schizophrenic are in principle the same; and when the return or remission occurs, it is experienced as a rebirth."5
Of course a key difference between my psychotic episode and the shaman's initiatory crisis is the way it is viewed by our respective societies. From the contemporary Western perspective, it would be considered a mental illness. However, in shamanic societies, such experiences often mark an individual as an ecstatic healer. Another difference relates to the type of divine figures encountered. The shaman encounters animal spirit guides; I met Christ and Buddha. When contacting spirits of the dead, I did not communicate with dead shamans, but the "spirits" of numerous people, leading figures from the Western cultural tradition--both dead and alive. My preoccupation with writing a book to change the world is also not a shamanic theme. However, it is somewhat parallel to the shaman's quest to acquire power objects, songs and drums which can be used to heal others. Shamanistic Crisis as a Calling to a Mental Health Profession Psychologist Jean Achterberg has pointed out that crises and illnesses bestow upon the shaman the wisdom to serve the community as a healer. She then goes on to observe that , Such events can occur and have occurred in the lives of health professionals in the modern world and have led to vocational choice. Being disabled, or having a serious disease, or being in recovery from an addiction, or even having a child with a significant handicap has been the wounding or the initiation for many in the health care field.6
Etymologically, "vocation" stems from an earlier meaning: the hearing of a divine voice summoning one to a religious career. My vocation as a mental health professional followed an audible summoning to the healing profession in the midst of my psychotic episode. During my years of teaching graduate psychology students, giving workshops, and receiving correspondence from readers of my articles, I've learned that many mental health professionals have been "called" to their profession by a psychotic or depressive episode.
My psychotic experience has continued to guide me in my profession. I believe that my crisis awakened certain healing abilities that contribute to my work with psychotic patients. For example, it is relatively easy and rewarding for me to empathically enter the delusional reality of psychotic patients. Most mental health professionals seem to find an "abyss of difference" (as Jaspers, one of the fathers of modern psychopathology, described it) between the "normal" and the psychotic mind. Through my psychotic experience, I became aware that psychotic patients have needs beyond pharmacologically-based treatments. At Camarillo State Hospital, I developed the first holistic health program for schizophrenic patients. It incorporated jogging, meditation, stress management and art therapy along with a weekly "Growth and Schizophrenia" group therapy program. These therapy sessions helped them to develop a positive attitude toward their illness and improve their self-esteem by pointing out parallels between their experiences and those of of shamans, mystics, and artists. My clinical work has also involved harnessing the creativity of psychotic patients by having them write and draw about their experiences. Several of these writings have been published and the art works displayed. More recently my concerns led me to develop and publish articles on sex and AIDS education programs for patients with serious mental illnesses.
Had I been diagnosed with a psychotic disorder, hospitalized and medicated, I'm sure that a positive integration of my experience would have been much more difficult to attain. With this in mind, I published an article detailing operational diagnostic criteria for distinguishing mental disorders from spiritual emergencies: crisies which carry the capacity for self-renewal. Shamanistic Practices and the Integration of Psychotic Episodes In 1967, psychologist Julian Silverman noted the similarities between the crises involved in psychosis and those in shamanic initiations. He also lamented the lack of a supportive social milieu in contemporary Western culture as compared with traditional shamanic socieities where he social role of the shaman legitimates free access to altered states of consciousness. "For the schizophrenic, the absence of such culturally acceptable and appropriate [access] only has the effect of intensifying his suffering over and above the original anxieties...for the crisis solutions of the schizophrenic are totally invalid ones in the eyes of the great majority of his peers."7 Becoming a shaman to help integrate psychotic experiences is no longer a viable option for most individuals in contemporary mainstream Western society. There is little cultural support for such a role in which accessing altered states of consciousness is acceptable. However, in the two decades since Silverman pointed out this lack, the option of utilizing shamanism to integrate psychotic crises has been revived by the neo-shamanic movement. Joan Townsend points out the practical training that this movement provides: "While one could 'learn' shamanism one's own by extensive research and experimentation, it is not a very practical alternative. The experience of participating in a shamanic group, even if only for a few days, provides an orientation and a qualitatively different experience so improtant for a true knowing." REF Today individuals can receive support during their crises and validation afterwards through participation in the extensive range of training opportunities available at place like The Ojai Foundation and programs such as Michale Harner's. In my case, by pursuing shamanistic practices I changed my self-perception about this very significant episode in my life. I felt reassured after Cheyenne Medicine Chief Hyemeyohsts Storm informed me that the medicine wheel teachings of his people allowed them to distinguish a temporary psychosis, which is brought on by spirits to communicate "teachings," from a chronic mental illness. I like to think that in an earlier era my shamanistic initiatory crisis would have marked me as a shaman-elect and I would have been apprenticed to a master shaman to learn to control these abilities. While presenting my views in various workshops and classes I have led, I encountered many others who were drawn to shamanistic practices by episodes of mental breakdown/breakthrough. In one workshop, "Psychosis: Mysticism, Shamanism or Pathology?" my co-leader, Joan Halifax, explained how her inspiration for establishing The Ojai Foundation was an outgrowth of her own descent into psychosis. Shamanism had provided a map to guide her back to wholeness. She created an educational center where people would be welcomed into a healing community. Guided by authentic shamans, novices learned self-control over entry into and exit from ecstatic states of consciousness. During a retreat in Ojai, Lakota shaman Wallace Black Elk shared how his initiatory visions led to his hospitalization by those who did not understand the spiritual dimension of his experience.
Today shamanistic techniques are increasingly being employed in counseling, psychotherapy and medical treatments. During his years of work treating psychotic patients, Jungian analyst John Perry found that a primary function of an acute psychotic episode is to enable the individual "to learn to perceive symbolic meanings as they pertain to the living of one's psychic life, and thus to keep connected with the ever-enriching wellsprings of the emotions which nourish that life."8 In integrating my shamanistic initiatory crisis, I found the literature on shamanism and neo-shamanism provided archetypal and experiential parallels to those psychotic experiences. Awareness of such correspondences allowed me to translate my culturally discordant psychotic experiences into a personally meaningful mythology. Contact with shamans and shamanistic practices provided my training in self-control of ecstatic states and journying to spirit worlds. Shamanistic practices, pursued with the guidance of knowledgable therapists or trustworthy traditional teachers, are an ideal way to extract a symbolically rich personal mythology from a psychotic crisis.
FOOTNOTES 1. Eliade, Mircea. Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries. New York: Harper and Row, 1960. Page 80-81.
2. Halifax, Joan. Shamanic Voices. New York: Dutton, 1979. Additional examples of psychotic-like experiences associated with shamanic initiatory crisies can be found in Kalweit, H. When insanity is a blessing: The message of shamanism. In: Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis. Los Angeles: Jeremy Tarcher, 1989.
3. Heinz, Ruth-Inge. Proceedings of the International Conference on Shamanism II. Berkeley, CA:, 1984. p. vi.
4. Eliade, Mircea. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972. (quote is on page 107).
5. Campbell, Joseph Myths To Live By. New York. Bantam Books, 1972. p. 237.
6. Achterberg, Jeanne. "The Wounded Healer". Shaman's Drum, Vol. 11, 1987-8. p.20.
7. Silverman, Julian. "Shamans and Acute Schizophrenia". American Anthropologist. Vol. 69, 1967. p. 28-29. Current diagnostic nomenclature reserves the category of schizophrenia for chronic and severe psychotic disorders. However, Silverman's thesis applies to several of the less severe types of psychotic experiences. See Lukoff, David. "The Diagnosis of Mystical Experiences With Psychotic Features". Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, Vol. 17, No. 2,1985.
8. Perry, John. The Far Side of Madness. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974. p. 1
9. Joan Townsend "Neo-Shamanism and the Modern Mystical Movement" in Shaman's Path, edited by Gary Doore (1988), Boston: Shambala Publications. p. 82.
10. Michael Harner "Our Shamanic Heritage" Noetic Sciences Review, p. 12.
11. See Michael Harner "Shamanic Counseling", Stanislav Grof "The Shamanic Journey: Observations from Holotropic Therapy", "The Inner Life of the Healer: The Importance of Shamanism for Modern Medicine", Frank Lawlis "Shamanic Approaches in a Hospital Pain Clinic" and Lewis Mehl "Modern Shamanism: Integration of Biomedicine with Traditional World Views" in Shaman's Path, edited by Gary Doore (1988), Boston: Shambala Publications.
13. Feinstein, David and Krippner, Stanley Personal Mythology: The Psychology of Evolving Self Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher, 1988.
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Personal Experiences
PART II
I decided to leave Cape Cod and go to my parents' home in New Jersey to recuperate. There I took classes in yoga and participated in encounter groups. Then I joined a program at a personal growth center and trained in a multitutde of healing practices. These included gestalt therapy, transactional analysis, primal therapy, bioenergetics, massage and psychodrama. Eventually I became a group leader and member of the training staff at the Forest Hospital Growth Center outside of Chicago.
Although I had many opportunities during my personal group and individual therapy sessions to explore the experiences surrounding my crisis, at no time did I bring them up. I avoided looking at the events that had led me into the vocation of being a psychologist, including the hearing of a disembodied voice telling me to "Become a healer." I simply did not talk or think about these early events in my career.
Entering a doctoral clinical psychology program three years after this experience, and then later working as a psychologist with psychotic patients at Camarillo State Hospital and at UCLA, I learned that my crisis was a psychotic episode. Taking LSD four days before the episode began had probably triggered its onset. It was not an "LSD Psychosis" or what the current nomenclature terms a "Halucinogen Delusional Disorder" because the extraordinary events started days after the LSD was out of my system. The LSD had initiated a train of mental events which were amplified over the next four days by intensive reading of books on Zen, introverted journal writing, social withdrawal and little sleep. These preoccupations and behaviors culminated four days later in the events in front of the mirror and my life did not return to normal until six months later. Although transient visual and auditory hallucinations occurred my episode fits the diagnostic criteria for "Delusional Disorder, Grandiose Type" due to my preoccupation with having a special identity, extraordinary abilities and a mission to save the world.
Although this level of understanding sheds some light on what happened, nothing in my training as a psychologist encouraged me to explore my psychotic episode further. From the medical model psychiatric perspective, psychosis brings no potential for transformation, only the risk of recurrence. The new "Bible" and all my copious notes sat in a sealed box that moved with me from one living abode to another but was never opened--physically, mentally or spiritually. Some seven years after this episode, during my psychology internship at Camarillo State Hospital in California, I entered into Jungian analysis. Soon after starting therapy, I had a dream in which a large red book appeared. My analyst, Dr. Margaret Johnson, asked for my associations about the book. Memories of my "Holy Book" leaped into my consciousness. Sensing my discomfort, she questioned me further. I had not discussed my psychotic episode with anyone in seven years, and my heart raced at the prospect of sharing my story with someone in my own profession. Recognizing therapy as a sacred place where one can safely tell secrets, I blurted out the details of my experience--being a reincarnation of Buddha and Christ whose mission was to save the world by writing the new "Bible". At the end of our discussion she said, "Well, I don't think that's craziness. Sounds like something important was happening to you on a deep level." She invited me to bring the book to the next session. The sealed box would soon be reopened--physically and mentally.
While the next two sessions focused on this phase of my life, my lingering discomfort with its aspects of grandiosity and inflated identity kept me from delving very deeply into the experience. However, I realized that my book and the events that had surrounded its writing could be analyzed like a dream, examining personal and universal symbols. True to my "scholar" nature, I began research on psychotic episodes and their parallels to various myths. I turned to writing case studies on the "MYths in Mental Illness" which were published in a professional journal. REF My Jungian analysis and scholarly work provided me with a "dictionary" of symbols for interpreting my own experience.
However, the spiritual potential inherent in my experience lay dormant until contact with shamanic teachers enabled me to connect with that dimension. Upon finishing my doctorate in psychology in1980, I became an Assistant Research Psychologist in the Clinical Research Center for Schizophrenia at UCLA. At the same time, I became a staff member of The Ojai Foundation, a new educational reteat center north of Los Angeles. In this semi-wilderness location, the first structure we erected on the land was a teepee. A sweat lodge was soon added. This hospitable and appropriate setting for training in shamanic practices was created by medical anthropologist Joan Halifax, an author and expert on shamanism. Daily life included chanting; drumming was a frequent activity. Pipe ceremonies marked special events and frequently were held at sunrise. The New Year's Celebrations were ceremonies modelled after the Peyote Ceremony with a water drum and singing stick passed around the circle throughout the night.
The Ojai Foundation was host to many traditional shamans and Native American medicine people who held retreats where they shared ceremonial healing techniques. During the next few years, I attended programs by Wallace Black Elk and Grace Spotted Eagle, Prem Das, Sun Bear and Wabun, Hyemeyohsts Storm, Oh Shinnah, Grandfather Semu Huaute, Rolling Thunder, Harley Swiftdeer, Thomas Banyacya, Evelyn Eaton, Adam Fortunate Eagle, and Elie Hien. Their extended visits after the retreats enabled those of us living on the land to get to know them more intimately and to participate in private ceremonies, prayer sessions and sweats.
In the altered states of consciousness induced by these shamanistic practices, I re-experienced, for the first time since my psychotic episode, a feeling of oneness with the universe. Once again, I was communicating with divine spirits, and comprehending the meaning of life itself. Instead of repressing these ecstatic experiences which had brought painful memories, I was now learning to trust them again. Such experiences are a major component of shamanic life: "Shamans do not differ from other members of the collectivity by their quest for the sacred--which is normal and universal human behavior--but by their capacity for ecstatic experience" (p. 107, emphasis added). Shamanistic practices enabled me to reclaim a culturally-disapproved and repressed dimension of my being that psychosis had revealed: my capacity for ecstasis--the union with higher forces and understanding. However, these teachers and my daily shamanistic practices taught me how to exercise voluntary control over entry into and out of ecstatic states. I also learned how to keep them contained within appropriate social contexts.
During these years, I learned about power animals and discovered some of my own, including the owl, the coyote and the lizard. Times of solitude and spiritual reflection in wilderness settings taught me how to follow my inner voices. These vision quests helped me to draw guidance from the wilderness within. For instance, a dream in which my file cabinets appeared covered with beads and feathers made me aware that these tools for academic work are my power objects. One morning bicycling to work, I came across a dead barn owl. This connection with my first power animal reminded me of my dream. I spent nearly an hour intently working to sever its wings and claws using a sharp stone tool. Now that beaded owl claw hangs over the file cabinets in my office. I learned to communicate with trees by being in their presence, listening to their spirit voices. I made a connection with the spirit of the ocean as I stood kneedeep in the water feeling the power of the waves tugging at my legs. These spirit teachers along with more traditional teachers, helped me create a personal mythology based upon my inner life. Parallels Between Psychosis and Shamanic Initiation The key themes in shamanic initiation are ascent into the upper world, descent into the lower world, dismemberment and rebirth.4 These four themes were present in my experience. First, I ascended into a kind of heaven where I felt myself to be chosen for a mission to change the world and "became" the gods Christ and Buddha. Then I descended into a hellish realm which represented my dismemberment--constant headaches, insomnia, intense abdominal cramps and internal bleeding--during which I envisioned my death. At the end of my experience I felt reborn through an audible call to become a healer. Thus, the story of my psychotic episode follows the classic four-part thematic structure characteristic of shamanic initiatory crises.
Many images that appeared in my experience also parallel the symbolism of shamanic initiations. Shamans frequently have experiences, as I had, of becoming enlightened and being enveloped in light. Referring to "the disciple's 'lighting' or 'enlightenment,'" Eliade writes: "the experience of inner light that determines the career of the Iglulik shaman is familiar to a number of higher mysticisms."4 He mentions the Upanishads, yoga, the Tibetan Book of the Dead and Christian mysticism. Another common initiatory motif which was part of my crisis is discussed at length by Eliade in his book in a section on "Contemplating one's own skeleton." Lastly, the theme of rebirth also occurs in many traditions. Joseph Campbell wrote: "The inward journey of the mythological hero, the shaman, the mystic and the schizophrenic are in principle the same; and when the return or remission occurs, it is experienced as a rebirth."5
Of course a key difference between my psychotic episode and the shaman's initiatory crisis is the way it is viewed by our respective societies. From the contemporary Western perspective, it would be considered a mental illness. However, in shamanic societies, such experiences often mark an individual as an ecstatic healer. Another difference relates to the type of divine figures encountered. The shaman encounters animal spirit guides; I met Christ and Buddha. When contacting spirits of the dead, I did not communicate with dead shamans, but the "spirits" of numerous people, leading figures from the Western cultural tradition--both dead and alive. My preoccupation with writing a book to change the world is also not a shamanic theme. However, it is somewhat parallel to the shaman's quest to acquire power objects, songs and drums which can be used to heal others. Shamanistic Crisis as a Calling to a Mental Health Profession Psychologist Jean Achterberg has pointed out that crises and illnesses bestow upon the shaman the wisdom to serve the community as a healer. She then goes on to observe that , Such events can occur and have occurred in the lives of health professionals in the modern world and have led to vocational choice. Being disabled, or having a serious disease, or being in recovery from an addiction, or even having a child with a significant handicap has been the wounding or the initiation for many in the health care field.6
Etymologically, "vocation" stems from an earlier meaning: the hearing of a divine voice summoning one to a religious career. My vocation as a mental health professional followed an audible summoning to the healing profession in the midst of my psychotic episode. During my years of teaching graduate psychology students, giving workshops, and receiving correspondence from readers of my articles, I've learned that many mental health professionals have been "called" to their profession by a psychotic or depressive episode.
My psychotic experience has continued to guide me in my profession. I believe that my crisis awakened certain healing abilities that contribute to my work with psychotic patients. For example, it is relatively easy and rewarding for me to empathically enter the delusional reality of psychotic patients. Most mental health professionals seem to find an "abyss of difference" (as Jaspers, one of the fathers of modern psychopathology, described it) between the "normal" and the psychotic mind. Through my psychotic experience, I became aware that psychotic patients have needs beyond pharmacologically-based treatments. At Camarillo State Hospital, I developed the first holistic health program for schizophrenic patients. It incorporated jogging, meditation, stress management and art therapy along with a weekly "Growth and Schizophrenia" group therapy program. These therapy sessions helped them to develop a positive attitude toward their illness and improve their self-esteem by pointing out parallels between their experiences and those of of shamans, mystics, and artists. My clinical work has also involved harnessing the creativity of psychotic patients by having them write and draw about their experiences. Several of these writings have been published and the art works displayed. More recently my concerns led me to develop and publish articles on sex and AIDS education programs for patients with serious mental illnesses.
Had I been diagnosed with a psychotic disorder, hospitalized and medicated, I'm sure that a positive integration of my experience would have been much more difficult to attain. With this in mind, I published an article detailing operational diagnostic criteria for distinguishing mental disorders from spiritual emergencies: crisies which carry the capacity for self-renewal. Shamanistic Practices and the Integration of Psychotic Episodes In 1967, psychologist Julian Silverman noted the similarities between the crises involved in psychosis and those in shamanic initiations. He also lamented the lack of a supportive social milieu in contemporary Western culture as compared with traditional shamanic socieities where he social role of the shaman legitimates free access to altered states of consciousness. "For the schizophrenic, the absence of such culturally acceptable and appropriate [access] only has the effect of intensifying his suffering over and above the original anxieties...for the crisis solutions of the schizophrenic are totally invalid ones in the eyes of the great majority of his peers."7 Becoming a shaman to help integrate psychotic experiences is no longer a viable option for most individuals in contemporary mainstream Western society. There is little cultural support for such a role in which accessing altered states of consciousness is acceptable. However, in the two decades since Silverman pointed out this lack, the option of utilizing shamanism to integrate psychotic crises has been revived by the neo-shamanic movement. Joan Townsend points out the practical training that this movement provides: "While one could 'learn' shamanism one's own by extensive research and experimentation, it is not a very practical alternative. The experience of participating in a shamanic group, even if only for a few days, provides an orientation and a qualitatively different experience so improtant for a true knowing." REF Today individuals can receive support during their crises and validation afterwards through participation in the extensive range of training opportunities available at place like The Ojai Foundation and programs such as Michale Harner's. In my case, by pursuing shamanistic practices I changed my self-perception about this very significant episode in my life. I felt reassured after Cheyenne Medicine Chief Hyemeyohsts Storm informed me that the medicine wheel teachings of his people allowed them to distinguish a temporary psychosis, which is brought on by spirits to communicate "teachings," from a chronic mental illness. I like to think that in an earlier era my shamanistic initiatory crisis would have marked me as a shaman-elect and I would have been apprenticed to a master shaman to learn to control these abilities. While presenting my views in various workshops and classes I have led, I encountered many others who were drawn to shamanistic practices by episodes of mental breakdown/breakthrough. In one workshop, "Psychosis: Mysticism, Shamanism or Pathology?" my co-leader, Joan Halifax, explained how her inspiration for establishing The Ojai Foundation was an outgrowth of her own descent into psychosis. Shamanism had provided a map to guide her back to wholeness. She created an educational center where people would be welcomed into a healing community. Guided by authentic shamans, novices learned self-control over entry into and exit from ecstatic states of consciousness. During a retreat in Ojai, Lakota shaman Wallace Black Elk shared how his initiatory visions led to his hospitalization by those who did not understand the spiritual dimension of his experience.
Today shamanistic techniques are increasingly being employed in counseling, psychotherapy and medical treatments. During his years of work treating psychotic patients, Jungian analyst John Perry found that a primary function of an acute psychotic episode is to enable the individual "to learn to perceive symbolic meanings as they pertain to the living of one's psychic life, and thus to keep connected with the ever-enriching wellsprings of the emotions which nourish that life."8 In integrating my shamanistic initiatory crisis, I found the literature on shamanism and neo-shamanism provided archetypal and experiential parallels to those psychotic experiences. Awareness of such correspondences allowed me to translate my culturally discordant psychotic experiences into a personally meaningful mythology. Contact with shamans and shamanistic practices provided my training in self-control of ecstatic states and journying to spirit worlds. Shamanistic practices, pursued with the guidance of knowledgable therapists or trustworthy traditional teachers, are an ideal way to extract a symbolically rich personal mythology from a psychotic crisis.
FOOTNOTES 1. Eliade, Mircea. Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries. New York: Harper and Row, 1960. Page 80-81.
2. Halifax, Joan. Shamanic Voices. New York: Dutton, 1979. Additional examples of psychotic-like experiences associated with shamanic initiatory crisies can be found in Kalweit, H. When insanity is a blessing: The message of shamanism. In: Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis. Los Angeles: Jeremy Tarcher, 1989.
3. Heinz, Ruth-Inge. Proceedings of the International Conference on Shamanism II. Berkeley, CA:, 1984. p. vi.
4. Eliade, Mircea. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972. (quote is on page 107).
5. Campbell, Joseph Myths To Live By. New York. Bantam Books, 1972. p. 237.
6. Achterberg, Jeanne. "The Wounded Healer". Shaman's Drum, Vol. 11, 1987-8. p.20.
7. Silverman, Julian. "Shamans and Acute Schizophrenia". American Anthropologist. Vol. 69, 1967. p. 28-29. Current diagnostic nomenclature reserves the category of schizophrenia for chronic and severe psychotic disorders. However, Silverman's thesis applies to several of the less severe types of psychotic experiences. See Lukoff, David. "The Diagnosis of Mystical Experiences With Psychotic Features". Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, Vol. 17, No. 2,1985.
8. Perry, John. The Far Side of Madness. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974. p. 1
9. Joan Townsend "Neo-Shamanism and the Modern Mystical Movement" in Shaman's Path, edited by Gary Doore (1988), Boston: Shambala Publications. p. 82.
10. Michael Harner "Our Shamanic Heritage" Noetic Sciences Review, p. 12.
11. See Michael Harner "Shamanic Counseling", Stanislav Grof "The Shamanic Journey: Observations from Holotropic Therapy", "The Inner Life of the Healer: The Importance of Shamanism for Modern Medicine", Frank Lawlis "Shamanic Approaches in a Hospital Pain Clinic" and Lewis Mehl "Modern Shamanism: Integration of Biomedicine with Traditional World Views" in Shaman's Path, edited by Gary Doore (1988), Boston: Shambala Publications.
13. Feinstein, David and Krippner, Stanley Personal Mythology: The Psychology of Evolving Self Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher, 1988.
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