Als we over dromen beginnen komen we bij Jung uit en we weten wat de wetenschap daar over zegt hé.
Ok, dat zegt stichting SKEPP en de wetenschap over Jung.
'The work with holotropic states of consciousness has made it possible to bring clarity and simplification into the hopeless labyrinth of Western schools of psychotherapy and to create a comprehensive map of the psyche as described in an earlier chapter, which also provides a bridge to the spiritual traditions of the East. In this module, we will follow the development of the maps of the human psyche from a historical perspective. We will show which ideas from the founders of these schools withstood the test of time and have been supported by the findings of holotropic research, and which need to be modified or replaced.
'We will begin the story of the search for the map of the human psyche with the father of depth psychology, Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud, and also Alfred Adler, Wilhelm Reich and Otto Rank.
(knip - stuk tussen uitgelaten, zie note onder)
...and the list of famous psychoanalytic renegades would not be complete without Carl Gustav Jung, who was initially one of Freud’s favorite disciples and the designated “crown prince” of psychoanalysis. Jung’s revisions were by far the most radical and his contributions were truly revolutionary. It is not an exaggeration to say that his work moved psychiatry as far beyond Freud as Freud’s discoveries were ahead of his own time. Jung’s analytical psychology is not just a variety or modification of psychoanalysis; it represents an entirely new concept of depth psychology and psychotherapy.
Jung was well aware that his findings could not be reconciled with Cartesian-Newtonian thinking and that they required a drastic revision of the most fundamental philosophical assumptions of Western science. He was deeply interested in the revolutionary developments of quantum relativistic physics and had fruitful exchanges with some of its founders, including Wolfgang Pauli and Albert Einstein. Unlike the rest of the theoreticians of psychoanalysis, Jung also had a genuine understanding of the mystical traditions and a great respect for the spiritual dimensions of the psyche and of human existence. Jung was the first transpersonal psychologist, although he didn’t call himself one.
Jung can also be considered the first modern psychologist. The differences between Freudian psychoanalysis and Jung’s analytical psychology are representative of the differences between classical and modern psychotherapy. Although Freud and some of his followers proposed rather radical revisions of Western psychology, only Jung challenged its very core and its philosophical foundations—monistic materialism and the Cartesian-Newtonian paradigm. As June Singer so clearly pointed out, he stressed “the importance of the unconscious rather than of consciousness, the mysterious rather than the known, the mystical rather than the scientific, the creative rather than the productive, [and] the religious rather than the profane” (Singer 1994).
Jung’s concept of the human psyche represented a major expansion beyond Freud’s biographical model. His radical departure from Freud’s psychoanalysis started when he was analyzing a collection of poetry and prose by the American writer Miss Frank Miller, which was published in Geneva by Theodore Flournoy and became known as the Miller Fantasies (Miller 1906). He discovered that many motifs in her writing had parallels in the literature of various countries around the world, as well as different historical periods. His book Symbols of Transformation, inspired by this research, is a work of major historical importance as a landmark of his break with Freud (Jung 1956).
These observations were further confirmed through the analysis of patients’ dreams, fantasies, and the hallucinations and delusions of his schizophrenic patients, along with his own dream life. This convinced him that we do not have only the Freudian individual unconscious, a psychobiological junkyard of rejected instinctual tendencies, repressed memories, and subconsciously assimilated prohibitions, but also a collective unconscious, the manifestation of an intelligent and creative cosmic force, which binds us to all humanity, nature, and the entire cosmos.
Jung’s collective unconscious has a historical domain, which contains the entire history of humanity, and the archetypal domain, which harbors the cultural heritage of mankind—mythologies from every culture that has ever existed. In holotropic states of consciousness, we can experience visions of characters and scenes from these mythologies, even if we do not have any previous intellectual knowledge of them. Exploring the collective unconscious, Jung discovered universal principles governing the dynamics of this domain of the psyche. He first referred to them as “primordial images”—using a term that he borrowed from Jacob Burckhardt; later he called them “dominants of the collective unconscious” and, finally, “archetypes.” According to the understanding that has emerged from Jungian psychology, consciousness research, and scholarly mythological research, archetypes are timeless, primordial cosmic principles underlying and informing the fabric of the material world (Jung 1959).
Jung put great emphasis on the unconscious and its dynamics, but his concept of it was radically different from Freud’s. Jung did not see the human being as a biological machine. He recognized that humans can transcend the narrow boundaries of their egos and of the personal unconscious and connect with the Self that is commensurate with the entire cosmos. Jung saw the psyche as a complementary interplay between its conscious and unconscious elements, with a constant energy exchange and flow between the two. According to him, the unconscious is not governed by historical determinism alone, but also has a projective, finalistic, teleological function. The Self has a specific goal or purpose for each of us and can guide us to it. Jung referred to this as the individuation process.
Studying the specific dynamics of the unconscious through the association experiment, Jung discovered its functional units, for which he coined the term complexes. Complexes are constellations of psychological elements—ideas, opinions, attitudes, and convictions—that are clustered around a nuclear theme and associated with distinct feelings (Jung 1960). Jung was able to trace complexes from biographically determined motifs to archetypes of the collective unconscious (Jung 1959).
In his early work, Jung saw a similarity between archetypes and animal instincts, and thought that they were hard-wired in the human brain. Later on, while studying instances of extraordinary coincidences, such as dreams or visions, with events in the external world (synchronicities), he concluded that the archetypes must be in some way influencing the very fabric of the world (Jung 1960a). As they seemed to represent a link between matter and psyche or consciousness, he referred to them as psychoids, borrowing a term coined by the founder of vitalism, Hans Driesch.
Comparative religion and world mythology can be seen as unique sources of information about the collective aspects of the unconscious. According to Freud, myths can be interpreted in terms of the characteristic problems and conflicts of childhood, and their universality reflects the commonality of human experience. Jung found this explanation unacceptable; he repeatedly observed that the universal mythological motifs (mythologems) occurred in individuals for whom all intellectual knowledge of this kind was absolutely out of the question. This suggested to him that there were myth-forming structural elements in the unconscious psyche that gave rise both to the fantasy lives and dreams of individuals and to the mythology of peoples. Dreams can thus be seen as individual myths, and myths as collective dreams.
Freud showed a very deep interest in religion and spirituality throughout his life. He believed that it was possible to get a rational grasp of the irrational processes and tended to interpret religion in terms of unresolved conflicts from the infantile stage of psychosexual development. In contrast to Freud, Jung was willing to accept the irrational, paradoxical, and even mysterious. He had many religious experiences during his lifetime that convinced him of the reality of the spiritual dimension in the universal scheme of things. Jung’s basic assumption was that the spiritual element is an organic and integral part of the psyche. Genuine spirituality is an aspect of the collective unconscious and is independent of childhood programming and the individual’s cultural or educational background. Thus, if self-exploration and self-analysis reach sufficient depth, spiritual elements emerge spontaneously into consciousness.
Jung also differed from Freud in his understanding of the central concept of psychoanalysis, that of the libido. He did not see it as a strictly biological force aiming for mechanical discharge, but as a creative force of nature—a cosmic principle comparable to Aristotle’s entelechy or Henri Bergson’s élan vital. Jung’s genuine appreciation of spirituality and his understanding of libido as a cosmic force found their expression in a unique concept regarding the function of symbols. For Freud, a symbol was an analogous expression of, or allusion to, something already known; its function was comparable to that of a traffic sign. In psychoanalysis, one image is used instead of another one, usually of a forbidden sexual nature. Jung disagreed with this use of the term symbol and referred to Freudian symbols as signs. For him, a true symbol points beyond itself into a higher level of consciousness. It is the best possible formulation of something that is unknown, an archetype that cannot be represented more clearly or specifically.
What truly makes Jung the first modern psychologist is his scientific method. Freud’s approach was strictly historical and deterministic; he was interested in finding rational explanations for all psychic phenomena and tracing them back to biological roots, following the chains of linear causality. Jung was aware that linear causality is not the only mandatory connecting principle in nature. He originated the concept of synchronicity—an acausal connecting principle that refers to meaningful coincidences of events separated in time and/or space. Jung’s willingness to enter the realm of the paradoxical, mysterious, and ineffable also included an open-minded attitude toward the great Eastern spiritual philosophies. He studied and commented on the I Ching, Bardo Thödol, Secret of the Golden Flower, and awakening of Kundalini. Among his esoteric interests were also astrology, mediumship, and other psychic phenomena (Jung 1958, 1967, 1970, 1995, 1996).
The observations from psychedelic experiences and other types of holotropic states of consciousness have repeatedly confirmed most of Jung’s brilliant insights. Although even Jung’s analytical psychology does not adequately cover the entire spectrum of phenomena occurring in holotropic states, it requires the least revisions or modifications of all the schools of depth psychology. On the biographical level, Jung’s description of psychological complexes bears some similarity to COEX systems, although the two concepts are not identical. Jung and his followers were aware of the importance of the death-rebirth process in mythology, and studied its various forms from ancient Greek mysteries to the rites of passage of aboriginal cultures. However, Jung was not able to see the close connection between this process and biological birth.
Jung, who discovered and described the vast domains of the historical and archetypal collective unconscious, was not able to accept that birth is a psychotrauma and plays an important role in the human psyche. In an interview, which is now available under the name Jung on Film, Richard I. Evans asked Jung what he thought about the theory of his colleague Otto Rank attributing psychological significance to the trauma of birth. Jung laughingly dismissed this idea: “Oh, birth is not a trauma, it is a fact; everybody is born” (Jung 1957).
Jung’s most fundamental contribution to psychotherapy is his recognition of the spiritual dimensions of the psyche and his discoveries in the transpersonal realms. Observations from holotropic states have brought strong support for the existence of the collective unconscious and the archetypal world, Jung’s understanding of the nature of libido, his distinction between the ego and the Self, the recognition of the creative and prospective function of the unconscious, and the concept of the individuation process.
All these elements can be independently confirmed by observations in psychedelic and Holotropic Breathwork sessions, even with unsophisticated subjects. Material of this kind also frequently emerges in sessions guided by therapists who are not Jungians, and even those who have no knowledge of Jungian psychology. In a more specific way, analytical psychology is very useful in understanding various archetypal images and themes that surface spontaneously in experiential sessions. Deep experiential work has also independently confirmed Jung’s observations on the significance of synchronicity.
The differences between the concepts presented in this encyclopedia and Jung’s theories are relatively minor as compared to the far-reaching correlations. It has already been mentioned that the concept of the COEX system is similar, but not identical to Jung’s description of a psychological complex. Jungian psychology has a good general understanding of the process of psychospiritual death-rebirth as an archetypal theme, but does not recognize the perinatal level of the unconscious and the importance of the trauma of birth.
Perinatal phenomena, with their emphasis on birth and death, represent a critical interface between individual biography and the transpersonal realms. Deep experiential confrontation with this level of the psyche is typically associated with the sense of a serious threat to survival and with a life-death struggle. Death-rebirth experiences have an important biological dimension; they are often accompanied by a broad spectrum of intense physiological manifestations, such as feelings of suffocation, pain in different parts of the body, tremors, cardiovascular distress, hypersalivation, sweating, nausea and vomiting, and on rare occasions, unintentional urination.
In Jungian analysis, which uses more subtle techniques than psychedelic therapy or some of the new powerful experiential approaches, the emphasis is on the psychological, philosophical, and spiritual dimensions of the death-rebirth process, while the psychosomatic components are seldom, if ever, effectively dealt with. In experiential psychotherapy, one always encounters an amalgam of actual fetal memories of biological birth and concomitant themes from the archetypal and historical collective unconscious. Swiss psychologist Arny Mindell and his wife Amy have introduced the missing somatic elements into Jungian analysis by developing what they call process psychotherapy (Mindell 2001).
In the transpersonal realm, Jungian psychology seems to have explored certain categories of experiences in considerable detail, while entirely neglecting others. The areas that have been discovered and thoroughly studied by Jung and his followers include the dynamics of the archetypes and the collective unconscious, mythopoetic properties of the psyche, certain types of psychic phenomena, and synchronistic links between psychological processes and the world of matter.
There seem to be no references, however, to transpersonal experiences that involve authentic identification with other people, animals, plants, and inorganic processes that can mediate access to new information about these elements of the material world. Considering Jung’s deep interest and scholarship in the Eastern spiritual philosophies, it is surprising that he seemed to pay very little attention to past incarnation memories, which are of critical importance in any form of deep experiential psychotherapy. Despite the above differences, Jungians seem, in general, to be the most conceptually equipped to deal with the phenomenology of holotropic states of consciousness, provided they can get used to the dramatic form the experiences take and become comfortable with them. Knowledge of Jungian psychology and mythology is essential for safe and rewarding psychonautics.
Fragment uit: The Way of the Psychonaut Volume One: Encyclopedia for Inner Journeys
Copyright © 2019 by Stanislav Grof, M.D., Ph.D.'
Note: Stanislav Grof bespreekt de heren Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Wilhelm Reich, Otto Rank uitgebreid maar heb ik tussenuit gelaten wegens te lang.
Wie Jung zegt, zegt dromen, maar ja, daar kan je als vrijdenker niets mee, want wat de wetenschap over Jung zegt is duidelijk....
Maar los van wat de wetenschap over Jung (en dromen) zegt kunnen sommige dromen redelijk intens zijn ja.
Tip: Ayahuasca word wel is wakker dromen genoemd.
