Others ~ Selected Correspondence

Therapy

I recognize major parts of the concept or method, described in Actual Freedom, from a book I read about cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). This book (only available in Swedish and not very scientific, more practical) also recognizes the phenomena of pure consciousness experience (PCE), as something important. Even more interesting is that the described approach to ease fear and psychological pain is almost identical compared with the methods described on the Actual Freedoms web site. The results described are of course much different. CBT aims to help people with severe psychological problems, depression, panic attacks or phobias, to overcome their problems and then to be able to act as normal people in the society. Actual Freedom has as I see it a much more radical goal. What I find interesting is the similarities in method.

CBT have a good reputation as a proven effective treatment method. This gives credibility also for Actual Freedom’s method, despite the methods different goals. No 19

I find it interesting that in actualism, we not only seek but we find. Psychic and psychological self-immolation is a final resting place where the contradictory and conflicting drives and instincts are not only stilled but eliminated totally, along with every last vestige of the alien psychological entity taking up residence in this flesh-and-blood body. Freud may have been a psychological and psychic adventurer (he regarded himself as such), but he stopped short, like so many before him. ‘Integration’ and cure ala Freud is a complacent resignation to living within the Human Condition, a kind of fiddling with the controls.

Our age, and particularly our parent’s generation, was enormously influenced by psychoanalytic theory and psychoanalysis. I myself received costly and long-term analytic therapy when younger. Psychoanalysis, and it’s successors like Object Relations and Ego Psychology, maintained the view that the very first few years of life are of enormous impact in determining what occurs subsequently in later life. Lately, I have been questioning this view. I find that remembrances and understandings that I have of what happened in my childhood years have gone into and, in some way, been incorporated into an image of myself that I have being a certain way. In this way, I think sometimes that my understandings of childhood events have contributed to a mythology and identity that I have of myself, that they have gone into ‘who’ I think I am, not what I am – a flesh-and-blood body sensately and apperceptively aware. Thus, they are part and parcel of ‘my’ memories, why I think ‘I’ behave the way I do, etc, etc. We have long stressed here on this list that one need not go so far back in time to uncover that which is impeding being happy and harmless in the present moment. The goal is being happy and harmless, not endlessly rehashing doubtful analyses of childhood happenings. Gary to Peter

The more pragmatic practitioners of psychology and psychiatry freely admit that the aim of any analysis and treatment is to return their patients to normally neurotic, such that they can reasonably function within the range of limits set by society’s laws and regulations. Thus the aim is to reduce paranoia to ‘normal’ fear, to return violent behaviour to ‘normal’ aggression and to return manic depression to ‘normal’ sadness. In extreme cases, the previous practice of incarceration in straight jackets has been replaced by incarceration in chemical straightjackets.

Much of psychiatry, psychology, and social work are really very conservative activities, concerned with dealing with extreme aberrations and returning the patient or client to ‘normality’ as soon as possible. As most social work students soon find out, much of their practice as social workers is going to be concerned with social control issues. As a social worker, you become a representative of so-called ‘normal’ society to your clients. You embody the time-honoured ethics, values, and mores of the greater society, the society that subsidizes you by giving you employment. Were you not to represent these mores and values, you would not long find yourself employed in the field. Mental health work, I find, is extremely controlling and paternalistic. I have often been amazed at how condescending mental health workers, including myself, are towards their clients. While I can think of worse ways to make a living, there is a great deal about it that I am dissatisfied with. In the paragraph you wrote above, I think you have hit on why these activities do not work – they attempt to return the suffering client or patient to the pattern of normality valued by the society, the same pattern of normality that has produced the causalities in the first place. It is like treating war neuroses behind the lines in a tidy field hospital and then immediately returning your cured charges to the front lines. Changing the pattern of society, as the social engineers and politicians would have us do, would not work because we are that pattern. We are violent. We are aggressive. We are fearful and acquisitive, etc, etc.

Curiously, the therapy that seems to be the most effective is what is known as cognitive therapy – a very pragmatic approach to reducing fears and phobias in particular.

I have had a bit of experience with what is called cognitive or cognitive-behavioural therapy, and it does it work. But I have the same reservations about it that I have about most ‘healing’ activities. It is not radical enough. It is my opinion that it is not radical at all. It only seeks to help the patient reduce or diminish emotions to ‘normal’, rather than eliminate them totally. As an approach, I feel it is an over-intellectualized approach to life. It too, like most systems of therapy, is concerned with helping the sufferer fit into the warp and weave of society, to be able to adjust and cope. While these are certainly worthwhile activities and restore some people to a level of functioning that is much better than what they had before, it does not go far enough. I think the keyword in all this is reducing. Perhaps in actualism some will settle for the intermediate goal of reducing their fears and phobias, but they may be afraid to advance to extinction in toto.

The Freudian approach to therapy is summarized in the quote from your last post –

Given these postulates it follows, first, that sexuality and aggression are built into the human organism. They cannot be eliminated . Second, as drives, they create a pressure, a psychosomatic state of tension, and hence the aim of discharge (tension-reduction).

This approach to therapy was widely used in some spiritual groups, most notably the Rajneeshees, and has proved a spectacular failure, as it has in the real world. Many disciples and followers are still undergoing therapy after 20 years or more and the only ones who seemingly benefit are the therapists themselves. Most of the Rajneesh therapies now blatantly aim to do nothing other than whip up the emotions via discharge, venting or tension-release, giving the ventor a chemical rush that can induce temporary feelings of gratitude, euphoria or unconditional love. Many spiritual people believe that this emotional game-playing has meant they have studied the human psyche in operation and received some cure or healing, whereas they have but scratched the surface of their psyche – if at all.

Yes. I was watching a program on TV recently about rage in America. There was a section of the program about a married couple where the woman was an inveterate ‘rage-aholic’ and had terribly abused her husband over and over again. Their marriage was on the rocks and, in desperation, she admitted herself to a rage treatment centre based on the alcoholism treatment model. She underwent intensive therapy of all sorts, group and individual, to learn how to deal with her anger. On ‘family day’, hubby came to the centre and they sat face to face in front of the other patients and had a prepared list of their long-suppressed gripes, resentments, and grievances to confront one another with. This done, they weepily embraced one another and vowed not to repeat the same patterns that had led to such destruction in their relationship. This section of the program was a rather characteristic portrayal of standard anger treatment: the intense emotional ‘catharsis’ coupled with cognitive-behavioural techniques for ‘anger management’. Suffice it to say, I was rather sceptical of the whole approach. It often satisfies the insurance companies and the treatment industry to have such expensive treatments for anger, a common human problem. Whether or not they are effective, is another matter. It would be interesting to follow up the participants in this treatment and see if there are really any long term gains.

From what I understand about the current research into memories, it appears we are only capable of remembering the last time we remembered an event and we do not necessarily have an accurate recall of the event itself. It is a bit like accessing the last current updated file on your computer and the older ones fade away or get lost or deleted in the mists of time. Many studies have been done which throw doubt on the accuracy of memory recall in criminal cases and point to the susceptibility of memory recall to influence by the interrogators. Similarly, some doubts are beginning to be expressed about the accuracy of many childhood memories and their susceptibility to influence by therapists, guides, psychiatrists etc.

Interesting you should mention because I was just watching a program on the brain and one of the things they were covering was memory. They were doing some experiments with memory and they were showing the unreliability of memory and the tendency of the mind to mix up memories of some past event and memories of stimuli subsequently introduced that were extremely similar to the original event. Gary to Peter

I liked what I have heard about the success of cognitive therapy, but I have little knowledge in psychology/ psychiatry/ sociology fields. At some stage, no doubt, more will be investigated and written about this particular area of study of the Human Condition. Gradually the emphasis in investigation and dealing with neurosis and psychosis will have to turn from coping and ‘normalizing’ – as in reducing the more extreme symptoms – to finding fixes and cures and thus eventually to seeking elimination – and actualism provides the method to completely eradicate one’s own malice and sorrow.

The next 30 years are going to be fascinating indeed ...

Yes, I agree, if we do not blow each other up in the mean time. As for the success of cognitive therapy, from what I see around me, the proponents of passionate feeling and ‘soulful’ approaches to therapy are winning the day hands down, at least in the circles I find myself in. Also, I think most extremely creative, charismatic originators of these therapeutic systems have overblown expectations of the generalized applicability of their approach for Humanity at large, even approaching messianic proportions. Freud certainly did, and his system of thought became almost a court religion in the US and abroad for a time. Cognitive therapy’s success, as far as I am concerned, is extremely limited, but it has been empirically proven as effective with sufferers of a wide range of conditions. There are also other approaches that are claiming spectacular success. I was looking into something called Emotional Freedom Therapy recently. But the further I looked, I got turned off. So far I agree with what you have said – it is a method for coping and normalizing, not eradicating malice and sorrow at their source.

The underlying instinctual behaviour is identical in all humans of all races and cultures. The only difference in the so-called civilized communities – those with efficient police and legal systems – is that innate human aggression is usually more covert and expressed as constant psychological and psychic warfare, rather than the physical warfare of more primitive hunter-gatherers.

I had understood Le Doux’s research involved proactive stimulation in mice but only an observation of the circuitry involved in response to stimulus in humans. I may be wrong about this as I have not followed the experiments in medical detail. It is, however, apparent that any experimentation that begins to uncover our genetically-encoded passions will be met with considerable ethical and moral objections – but you are beginning to discover this experientially in your investigations into how ‘you’, as a social identity and instinctual being, are programmed.

What I am discovering is that any attempt to uncover the instinctual passions that operate in all human beings will be met with fierce resistance, and that includes ‘me’.

As ‘I’ am these instinctual passions, ordinary morals, ethics, and societal values keep me away and ward me off from direct examination of these seething passions, primarily for fear of going off the rails. Aggression, for instance, I have experienced as something so threatening, so powerful and dynamic, so primitive and raw, that it seems almost that it must be controlled. Last night I had, for instance, the most violent dream with the most bizarre violent content. It is interesting to trace all this back to its source and see the primitive instinct of aggression rearing its ugly head again and again. I think with practice and persistence, one gains confidence in withstanding these storms of emotions and realizing that they are not going to destroy one. But it is powerful stuff. As Richard has said it is not for the weak in the knees. In the same way that there is a thrilling aspect to fear that one can use to one’s advantage in ‘self’-investigations, I think there is a similar aspect of aggression, so normally suppressed, that can be used to one’s advantage. Becoming aware of one’s own innate and latent aggression can energize the process of eradicating one’s own malice and sorrow.

I do like what the scientists are discovering for it accords with my own experience as to how ‘my’ psyche operates and how ‘my’ instinctual passions operate.

The only way to discover how your own psyche operates is by observation, awareness and contemplation which is where running the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ until it becomes a constant undercurrent, is essential. You get to understand the indoctrination program and associated feelings that give substance to ‘you’ as a social identity and then you get to feel the instinctual passions that are ‘you’ as an instinctual being. By undertaking this process of investigation into your own psyche your understanding then becomes experiential – understanding is verified empirical observation.

What I look for in neurobiological research is empirical, verifiable evidence – facts – and what I look for in studies of the human psyche is common-to-all experiences and methods that work – that produce verifiable permanent results. These facts, as opposed to what are theories, postulations or ideals, can then be used to verify my experience and research. The diagrams of the brain’s operation in the instinct section of the web-site came from the input of Richard, Vineeto and myself, based mainly on Le Doux’s work. These diagrams still stand the test of time almost two years after.

Each day is a fascinating opportunity to study oneself and find out how ‘I’ tick. But the goal is to become happy and harmless via the complete elimination of one’s psyche with its’ associated affective and imaginative faculties. This is where actualism, which may be indebted to other approaches, parts ways and strikes out on its own into uncharted territory. Because there is one who has self-immolated, others may use his findings for themselves to experiment and research for themselves, using themselves as their ‘guinea pigs’, so to speak – no, that may frighten some off – it may be more appealing to regard oneself as a naturalistic researcher, for instance a researcher searching in the mists for a rare and elusive animal that one is only permitted occasional glimpses of. Gary to Peter

From my experience with the junkies I can understand that any treatment for ‘drop outs’ has to provide strong alternative values, i.e. spiritual values, to infuse a deeper meaning to life than what the people had before they escaped into addiction. Until now, this spiritual injection has consisted of Western or Eastern religion or mysticism. As you describe, it is a conditioning to turn to God instead of using addictive substances when life is too tough to bear.

The spiritual approach to recovery has become so institutionalized, so enshrined, especially here in the USA, that any questioning of it or suggestion of an alternative is tantamount to heresy. There are, in my opinion, powerful political and social agendas masquerading as a treatment industry wedded to the spiritual approach to recovery. Of course, there are the usual pecuniary interests too. Hard research evidence on the effectiveness of the AA methodology suggests that it is not as effective as many like to believe. But public policy here in the US is not based on research, rather it is based on hearsay and who speaks the loudest and throws the most money at a social problem.

Even were it based on sound scientific research, there are always the powerful moral, ethical, and other biases of the researchers to contend with. On a personal note, I looked into these things myself, and while I have no qualms with what others do, it has been and still is extremely important for me to look beyond the surface appearance of things and ask those basic questions that attempt to get to the core of a matter. I have sometimes incurred the wrath of those who would rather remain blissfully unaware than think for themselves. Gary to Vineeto

When I was a Rajneeshee, it was well accepted that therapists were in an ideal position to be recruiting agents for the religion – there are none more susceptible to indoctrination into whatever church or faith than the vulnerable and despairing. The compassion business is good business for God and His or Her little helpers.

On the subject of AA, I thought to include the following link (http://www.peele.net/lib/twelve.html), a forward to a book by a woman with horror stories of what happened to her when she attended AA. The forward was authored by a writer that I much appreciate for exposing the corruption of the spiritual approach to treatment of AA, a treatment approach which has become the hallmark of the American treatment industry. It is a lot like what happens to people who join religions and cults of every stripe. There is incredible abuse and betrayal that goes on. When you are attending AA, all you have to do is look around you to see some very unhappy people, many of whom are on a power-trip and God-infected. Gary to Peter

The only other thing I would mention is that there is another easy way of understanding the nature of the animal instinctual programming that I have run across and that is to observe children. Granted that the children that I work with as a social worker have, in many cases, been horribly abused by their parents and caretakers, but they seem not to have developed the internal controls that are inculcated by society as morals, ethics, and values, and the underlying instinctual package is plain for all to see. The malice and sorrow of these little people, their fights with one another, their pain and suffering, is readily apparent. The children are very obviously in a primitive survival mode almost all the time. The destructiveness of these self-centred passions is something I wrestle with everyday in my work.

How do you wrestle with this? From a pure AF point of view, nobody is helped by empathetic responses to these painful situations, but the program runs deep.

Actual Freedom could be interpreted by some as cold detachment. This is probably residual catholic programming on my part as my estimation of my own power to effect change has diminished rather significantly over the last few years. Still, the question lingers. Guilt moves in mysterious ways (not).

I meant the word ‘wrestle’ both figuratively and literally. In a figurative sense, one is helping the children with their feeling responses to situations, whether by using a sort of Cognitive-Behaviour therapy (learning to think about what one is doing rather than blindly react).

But I also meant quite literally I ‘wrestle’ because sometimes physical restraint is applied if the child is physically out of control. Wrestle is really the wrong word. We call it ‘therapeutic holding’, which is a way of pinning the child on the floor when they are punching, kicking, throwing things, etc. It is designed to be a benign use of force to get them to calm down. As soon as they stop fighting and begin to relax, you begin to relax your hold on them progressively. I must say I have had mixed feelings about this holding activity. But it serves to point up to me that in our society, in childhood, one must learn ‘self’-control early lest one learn it later in life at the point of a gun. In this type of situation, one must monitor oneself constantly to ensure that one is not overreacting. Empathy is rather hard to muster up when someone is spitting in your face or trying to bite your hand off.

I think you are right that AF could be interpreted as cold detachment. However, there are other responses to painful situations besides empathy. One does not abandon caring for others by seeing the futility of empathy. It has taken me awhile to sort out these things for myself.

Working in a profession that stresses the value of empathy so much I have had to really think deeply about this all. By observing the other people that work with, I don’t think my response to these situations is markedly different than others. If my emotional reactions to highly emotional situations is attenuated or diminished, I think it has some real value in the situation in helping to calm things down. I think it is a big strength in dealing with highly enraged individuals. Gary to No 38

Interestingly I yesterday received in a mail message advocating a therapy to cure anger. I found myself after having read the message, ready to wipe the floor with the suggested method called EFT (I don’t know where that stands for). But suddenly I became aware that the message only had been a trigger for my own reaction so ... in other words, as I did some quick backtracking as I noticed being triggered.

EFT therapy would be Emotional Freedom Therapy, something which has been touted as having extremely positive results with all kinds of problems and issues. I myself looked into EFT upon hearing about it a couple of years ago. There are free introductory seminars or lessons being offered by persons over the Internet, as I recall a kind of instant messaging forum that was moderated by the chief practitioner. EFT is making some rather extreme claims of ‘curing’ people of various kinds of problems, complexes, and phobias. The method, from what little I know of it, utilizes almost a kind of hypnotic suggestion and light touching of radial lines in the face. The specific prescription for the treatment of the particular problem is a kind of mish-mash of suggestion, self-hypnosis, and light therapeutic touching. It can be done by the person themselves and does not require the ‘therapist’.

As I wished to free myself from the strangle-hold that negative moods and emotions had on me, I was interested in giving it a whirl. I never did take my Introductory Lesson. The trouble that I have with these techniques are that they claim extremely positive results but involve little investment of time and energy in order to reap the benefits.

Although Actual Freedom is not a therapy technique, it does have some features of a self-help process – but more exactly, it is a method of self-immolation help. One of the reasons why the method appeals to me is that it involves hard work and ‘effort’ in the sense that it is up to me to apply the method and diligently practice attentiveness and it takes the nerves-of-steel part, which says to me that this Actual Freedom does not come easily nor is it achieved overnight. People in primitive cultures believe in shamans and witch doctors, and belief and faith in doctors of various sorts is a strong ingredient of even medical treatment, so I think that belief and faith is part of what is at work when a method which involves so little time and effort on one’s part effects a ‘miracle’ cure. Gary to No 23

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