A HOLOTROPIC EXPERIENCE
She begins to panic. The music has just
begun and its driving intensity of primitive-sounding drums brings a rush
of anxiety. She wants to get up and run out of the room and away
from all these people . . . to just forget all about this insane idea of
a new-age growth technique. But then she remembers what was said
during the preparation period; the facilitator remarking that all kinds
of feelings can come up and can cause one to think that one should be doing
something in the present about them . . . but that in fact one has merely
to stay with the feelings . . . that the way out of them is to let oneself
go deeply into them.
So she stays. In a shorter time than
she could ever have imagined, she has been carried beyond the crisis and
is feeling safe again. She renews her focus on the breathing, trying
to increase its rate and depth the way she was instructed.
After a period of time, she finds herself looking
at scenes from her recent past. Without even realizing it, she finds
herself weeping as she thinks about her former situation with the husband
she is in the process of divorcing. She feels a sad and stifling
heaviness about those thirty years and her attachment to him. Alternately,
it is scenes of her schizophrenic son that fill up her mind's eye; tears
stream down her cheeks as she feels that same heaviness about her attachment
to him.
Sorrow overwhelms her as she thinks about the
way her existence seems to have been diffused into all the others around
her — even, the scene is played before her, into her dear and now deceased
daughter — leaving nothing for her. She feels that the major theme
in her entire life experience has been heaviness . . . attachment, heaviness,
and sadness.
This goes on for some time, with different
scenes taking their turns in her mind. Visions of her mother and
scenes from her early childhood make their way before her. Throughout
them all, there is the thread of heaviness, the theme of darkness and dissolution.
There she is, standing and watching as her mother leaves her to make a
living in the big city, having arranged for her to be left in the care
of her grandmother. She feels a part of her left with her mother
that day. She remembers her father's sudden death; and then, with
sobs, remembers some of those good times with him on their sailing adventures.
She feels that part of her also had died and been taken away.
And through it all there is the music — now
driving, now carrying her along . . . providing a peg-rack to hang every
memory . . . seeming to fit exactly every nuance of feeling.
At some point further along, however, she feels
herself climbing up a dark hill. She reaches its crest eventually,
and, suddenly, it is all different. She feels that a huge weight
has been lifted from her. Before her mind's eye there looms an enormous
and fantastic sun, surrounded by rainbows. The effect is simply exhilarating.
But this also changes after a while.
Now she finds herself floating in space, floating free in the universe.
To her immense delight she flashes on the realization that she is ONE,
that she is no longer attached! She realizes with joy that she is
no longer diffused into those heavy experiences; no longer lost in those
heavy relationships. She feels free, strong and singular, for the
first time in her life.
The music seems to reflect these changes also.
Now it is distinctively uplifting; its pulsing and solitary tones seem
to wash through her, then to suspend and rock her in that vastness of empty
and uncluttered space. The knowledge that she is one and not many
remains with her, deepening in her consciousness. She feels radiant
and blissful; a Buddha-like child-smile models her face for a long time,
even after the music has stopped and people around her are beginning to
get up and make their way into the other room where drawing materials await.
Later, when she also draws her experience in
a "mandala" circle outlined on a large sheet of paper, she colors in a
bright white dove-like figure with wings outstretched rising up, as it
seems, with the half below it in darkness, the half above it all in light.
And only later again, after sharing her picture with the group and talking
about its meaning for her, does she recall that she was a cesarean birth
. . . and that the same pattern of being lifted from the darkness and pain
of the womb into the light of the world had been re-enacted in several
other significant incidents in her life.
When it is all over she is truly in awe and
reverence for the whole process of life. And she feels deeply connected
to these other wonderful dozen-odd workshop participants who have, it seems,
been magically put there to share this aspect of life's mystery with her.
The preceding account is from an actual experience
of a woman in her mid-fifties who participated in a weekend holotropic
breathwork workshop in the Bay Area. Although this one experience
by a self-described "recovering co-dependent" cannot reflect the diversity
of experiences that were had by the dozen people in that workshop, it contains
some elements that are typical. Of significance is the pattern of
encountering and feeling through layers of unpleasant feelings and memories
before coming to rest in underlying positive feelings of a more benign
and pleasant, indeed blissful and uplifting, nature. It is usual
for participants to report that they are left with feelings of openness,
warmth, and connectedness to the world of humans and nature; with a sense
of forgiveness for oneself and others; with renewed motivation for service
to others and for seeking peaceful solutions to conflicts in one's life;
with keen appreciation for life and for the living; and very often with
feelings of connection also with a positive spiritual force or higher power
that represents such qualities.
I will return to the political implications
of this pattern later. Presently, I wish to point out that this method
is at one and the same time a method of psychological growth, a means of
spiritual and philosophical quest, and a highly effective technique for
healing neurotic, as well as to some extent psychotic, psychopathology.
And it is the latter mode especially — its "psychiatric" use — that has
potentially revolutionary political implications.
POLITICS OF PSYCHOLOGY
But, one might ask, "What does psychiatry have
to do with politics?" "Plenty!" survivors of psychiatric hospitalization
would say. In fact a movement has developed of such people, who have
been victimized by the psychiatric establishment. They are holding
their own conferences, "alternative festivals," and even counter-conferences
alongside of APA meetings! And they are publishing their own counter-literature.1
Psychiatrists themselves have come out against the corporate/political
contamination of their profession.2
For in an increasingly brave-new-world fashion, traditional ("mainstream")
psychiatry and psychology have as their hidden agenda the effective functioning
of the individual within the mores, values, and economics of the dominant
culture. Their business being the creation of "good little Germans,"
there is little concern for human freedom or truth-telling. The two
prevalent modalities — behaviorism and psychoanalysis — are equally wedded
to the dominant cultural paradigm and heavily invested in its economic
success . . . regardless of any cost to lives or truth.
It should be admitted at this point that societies
have always sought to limit diversity for collective ends and, correspondingly,
have used various forms of mind-control. But a cross-cultural review
reveals that this practice has become increasingly insistent with the "advance"
of civilization. The fact is that simpler cultures, specifically
hunter-gatherer ones, were more tolerant of individual differences.
We know, for example, that they were able to fashion roles for some members,
who, if they lived in modern society, would undoubtedly be "put away."
Shamans are the traditional example of this.
But this is not to say that hunter-gatherer
peoples were just nicer and more tolerant types than their modern successors.
There were specific economic factors that came into play here. With
the amount of daily work required for survival averaging a mere four hours,
this "original leisure society" no doubt had its advantages over the pressure-cooker
complexity of contemporary societies. Having the run of the forest,
so to speak, and so much spare time for personal, creative, or playful
pursuits, it is easy to imagine them with more congenial attitudes toward
each other.
Freudian Mind-Fuck
I have previously noted the effects that the change
in this way of life — specifically, the introduction of horticulture —
has had upon our idyllic beginnings. The increasing mistrust and
corresponding rise in attempts to control Nature, exemplified by the "agrarian
revolution," brought drudgery, separation of humans from each other, repression,
and authoritarian personality modes along with its seeming benefits in
terms of security.
Yet it is with regret that I must credit Freud
(1961) for being the first to point out much of the reasoned exposition
of the effects of civilization on human consciousness in his Civilization
and Its Discontents. I say I regret this because I deplore the
superficiality of Freud's psychoanalysis and I regret the uses to which
he and his followers applied his insights. Most relevantly, I feel
that it is unfortunate that he concluded from his analysis that the repression
(oppression?) of individuals and of societies was/is necessary.
Freud was a poor anthropologist and partook
of much of the misinformation concerning non-literate peoples that abounded
in his day. He did not understand hunter-gatherer cultures the way
anthropologists have come to, so he concluded that humans were basically
beasts who had barely scraped their way to rise up above what would naturally
be a "savage" way of life. He saw the "beast" in humans and it never
occurred to him that it might be a product of repression rather
than a reason for repression. And this is all rather unfortunate.
For societies — and psychiatrists — that see human nature as basically
beastly will have ready justification for mind control . . . at all costs!
New Winds
But a new wind is sweeping our conceptions of
human nature. In politics we see its manifestations as empowerment
of the individual and giving a voice to all sectors. The feeling
that goes with this is a trust that in an ideal world all individuals,
no matter how different, have something to share, rather something to add
to the common good.
In psychology we see this in the form of new
ways of viewing human personality, psychology, and psychopathology . .
. and new ways of "healing."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN NOTES
1. See, for example, Dendron
News, published by the Clearinghouse on Human Rights and Psychiatry,
P.O. Box 11284, Eugene, OR 97440-3484. This particular newsletter
is a window on the myriad of publications and organizations that constitute
the movement. [return to text]
2. See especially Peter
R. Breggin, Toxic Psychiatry (1991); R. D. Laing, The Politics
of Experience (1967); and Thomas Szasz, The Myth of Mental Illness
(1961) and Insanity: The Idea and Its Consequences (1987).
[return to text]
CHAPTER FIFTEEN REFERENCES
Breggin, Peter R. (1991). Toxic Psychiatry.
New York: St. Martin's Press.
Freud, Sigmund. (1961). Civilization and
Its Discontents: Standard Edition. New York: W. W. Norton.
Laing, Ronald D. (1967). The Politics of
Experience. New York: Pantheon Books.
Szasz, Thomas. (1961). The Myth of Mental
Illness. New York: Harper & Row.
Szasz, Thomas. (1987). Insanity: The Idea
and Its Consequences. New York: Wiley.