The Holotropic Mind

by Stanislav Grof

  The most important requirement for the therapist employing non-ordinary states of consciousness is not to master specific techniques and steer the client in the desired direction, but to accept and trust the spontaneous unfolding of the process. It is essential to do this unconditionally, even if at times the therapist does not intellectually understand what is happening. This task challenges most professionals who depend on the theoretical guidance of their particular school of thought. With no effort on the part of the therapist, symptoms clear and personal transformations occur as a result of the unfolding of an unpredictable array of experiences—which may be biographical, perinatal, transpersonal, or all three. In Holotropic Breathwork™, in the work with spiritual emergencies, and in thousands of psychedelic therapy sessions in my earliest research, I have seen many dramatic healings and positive personality changes, which have completely eluded all my efforts at rational understanding.

  In work with non-ordinary states of consciousness, the roles of therapist and client are quite different from those in traditional psychotherapy. The therapist is not the active agent who causes the changes in the client by specific interventions, but is somebody who intelligently cooperates with the inner healing forces of the client. This understanding of the role of the therapist is in congruence with the original meaning of the Greek word therapeutes, which means "the person who assists in the healing process." It is also in agreement with C. G. Jung's approach to psychotherapy, wherein it is believed that the task of the therapist is to mediate for the client a contact and exchange with his or her inner self, which then guides the process of transformation and individuation. The wisdom for change and healing comes from the collective unconscious and surpasses by far the knowledge that is intellectually available to the therapist.

  While both therapist and client may occasionally feel frustrated because of the lack of rational understanding in the healing process, the dramatic positive changes that clients achieve, in relatively short periods of time, are more than sufficient compensation. In this kind of work, it becomes clear that it is impossible to use a rigid conceptual framework that forces clients' issues into preconceived pigeonholes. As Jung suggested, there is no guarantee that what we observe in a particular therapeutic session has already been seen before and can be understood in terms of existing schools. The psyche is without boundaries and has seemingly infinite resources and creativity. For this reason, it is possible that in any therapeutic encounter we may very well witness or experience phenomena that have never before been observed. This makes therapeutic work an exciting ongoing adventure, filled with discovery and new learning at every turn.

  The Roots of Human Violence and the Current Global Crisis

  Among the most important implications of the new model of the psyche are insights of sociopolitical nature. Traditional science's attempts to offer plausible explanations for the atrocities that characterize much of human history have been generally unconvincing, leaving much to be desired. The image of man as the "naked ape" who harbors murderous instincts that are a heritage from his animal past, fails to account for what the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm called "malignant aggression," which is uniquely human. While animals fight for food, sexual opportunity, and territorial concerns, no animal in nature comes even close to duplicating the senseless cruelties committed by human beings. Psychological efforts to explain our violence in terms of the biographical model of human consciousness have been equally frustrating and inadequate.

  Just as we recognized the failure to account for individual psychopathology in terms of the traditional biographically oriented model, the inadequacy of these same methods becomes even more obvious when applied to the mass psychopathology of bloody wars, revolutions, cruelties of totalitarian regimes, the bestiality of concentration camps, and genocide. As with extremely violent behaviors of individuals, emotional pain experienced in infancy and childhood simply does not account for aberrant behavior of such proportions.

  Psychological traumas associated with experiences shaping our psyches after our births are not sufficient to explain the horrors of Nazism, the atrocities of a Stalin regime, or the monstrous behavior associated with Apartheid. But when we add the perinatal and transpersonal perspectives that we find expressed in non-ordinary states of consciousness, events such as these begin to be more understandable. The trauma of birth involves a life-and-death struggle, with a potential for becoming the basis for many extremes of emotion. As an event that we all share, it has the potential for bringing about mass scale psychological aberrations, with perhaps hundreds of thousands of people sharing a common experience of tremendous unconscious rage. The archetypes of the collective unconscious could also be sources of mass psychopathology, since they are endowed by extraordinary psychological power, cutting across all individual boundaries.

  War is complex, of course, and involves many factors, including historical, political, economic, as well as psychological roots. We should not assume that war can be reduced to psychological factors only. However, while the more tangible aspects of the conflicts existing between nations have been receiving much attention, the psychological dimensions and roots of these crises have been ignored. Here modern consciousness research offers some interesting insights and clues. In non-ordinary states, the material that emerges from the unconscious frequently includes themes of war, totalitarian regimes, revolutions, the horrors of concentration camps, and genocide. Scenes expressing these themes can be extremely intense, experienced with a full range of emotions and physical sensations of both the victims and perpetrators.

  When the sessions are dominated by BPM II, the person connects with the feelings of the child who is stuck in the birth canal before the cervix opens. This is often accompanied by scenes from human history experienced in the role of the victim. Such experiences involve identification with the population oppressed by a totalitarian regime, with civilians suffering in a war, with inmates of concentration camps, and with the downtrodden of all ages. Sequences of this kind occur even in sessions of people who have never personally experienced these situations in real life; and yet, their unconscious has intimate knowledge of all the emotions and sensations involved.

  When the process moves to BPM III, the person identifies with the child struggling to escape from the birth canal after the cervix opens. At this point, the nature of the accompanying sociopolitical experiences changes dramatically. There are still scenes of violence but now the individual also identifies with the role of the aggressor. The process oscillates between identification with the victim and perpetrator; occasionally, one can also become an external observer. The predominant theme here is revolution; the oppression has become intolerable and the tyrant has to be overthrown. The goal is to attain freedom where one can "breathe" again. The experiences involve scenes from the French or the Bolshevik revolutions, the American Civil War, and other fights for freedom. And the actual moment of birth is often accompanied by scenes depicting the victories in various revolutions or the ends of wars.

  The rich and comprehensive nature of emotions and sensations involved in these experiences suggest that they are not individually fabricated from sources such as adventure books, movies, and television shows. After witnessing thousands of therapy sessions in which material of this kind was involved I am thoroughly convinced that it originates in the collective unconscious. When, in our inner exploration, we reach the memory of the trauma of birth, this seems to open the gates into the collective unconscious where we access experiences of people who underwent similar predicaments in real life.

  The Tyranny of the Shadow Self

  After examining material of this kind for more than twenty years, I have been inevitably drawn to the very real possibility that the perinatal level of our unconscious, the part of our psyches that "knows" so intimately the history of human violence, may actually be partially responsible for wars, revolutions, and similar atrocities. Let me bring in another piece of evidence that does not come from modern consciousness resear
ch, but from careful historical research.

  Following the publication of my first book, Realms of the Human Unconscious, I received a letter from Lloyd de Mause, a New York psychoanalyst and journalist. De Mause is one of the founders of psychohistory, a discipline that applies the findings of depth psychology to history and political science. Psychohistorians study such issues as the relationship between the childhood history of political leaders and their system of values and decision-making processes. They also try to establish links between childrearing practices of a particular time and the nature of wars and revolutions. Lloyd de Mause was very interested in my findings concerning the trauma of birth and its possible sociopolitical implications, because they supported his own research.

  For many years, de Mause had been studying the psychological aspects of the periods preceding wars and revolutions; it interested him how military leaders can successfully mobilize masses of peaceful civilians and transform them into killing machines. His approach was very original and creative—in addition to the analysis of historical sources, he drew data of great psychological importance from popular caricatures, jokes, dreams, personal imagery, slips of the tongue, side comments of speakers, and even doodles and scribbles on the edge of the rough drafts of political documents. By the time he contacted me, he had analyzed in this way seventeen situations preceding the outbreak of wars and revolutionary upheavals, spanning many centuries—from antiquity to most recent times.

  He was struck by the extraordinary abundance of figures of speech, metaphors, and images related to biological birth that he found in this historical material. Military leaders and politicians describing critical situations and making declarations of war typically use terms that apply equally well to perinatal distress. They accuse the enemy as "choking and strangling us," of "squeezing the last breath out of our lungs," of "confining" us, and "not giving us enough space to live" (Hitler's Lebensraum). Equally frequent are allusions to dark caves, tunnels, and confusing labyrinths, dangerous abysses into which we might be pushed, and the threat of engulfment or drowning. Similarly, the promise of resolution comes in the form of perinatal images: leaders promise to guide us to the "light on the other end of the tunnel," to "lead us out of the labyrinth," and guarantee that after the oppressor is overcome, everybody will again "breathe freely."

  The subjects of Lloyd de Mause's research included Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Adolph Hitler, Khrushchev, and Kennedy. He also found birth symbolism in the statements of Admiral Shimada and Ambassador Kurassa before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Particularly chilling was the use of perinatal language in connection with the explosion of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. The airplane was given the name of the pilot's mother, Enola Bay; the bomb had been nicknamed "The Little Boy," which was painted on its side; and the code sent to Washington to signal its successful detonation was "The baby was born." Since the time of our correspondence, Lloyd de Mause has collected many additional historical examples and refined his thesis that our memories of perinatal trauma play an important role in violent social activity.

  Further support for these ideas can be found in Sam Keen's excellent book The Faces of the Enemy. Keen brought together an outstanding collection of war posters, cartoons, and caricatures from many different historical periods and cultures. He demonstrated that the way the enemy is described and portrayed during a war or revolution is a stereotype that shows very little variation and has very little to do with the actual characteristics of the culture involved. According to Keen, the alleged images of the enemy are essentially projections of the repressed and unacknowledged shadow aspects of our own unconscious minds. Although we would certainly find in human history instances of "just wars," those who initiate warring activities are typically substituting external targets for elements in their own psyches that should be properly faced in personal self-exploration.

  Sam Keen's theoretical framework does not specifically include the perinatal domain of the unconscious. However, the analysis of his material reveals a preponderance of symbolic images that are characteristic for BPM II and BPM III. The enemy is typically depicted as a dangerous octopus, a vicious dragon, a multiheaded hydra, a giant venomous tarantula, or an engulfing Leviathan. Other frequently used symbols include vicious predatory felines or birds, monstrous sharks, and ominous snakes, particularly vipers and boa constrictors. Scenes depicting strangulation or crushing, ominous whirlpools, and treacherous quicksands also abound in pictures from the time of wars, revolutions, and political crises. The juxtaposition of paintings from non-ordinary states of consciousness that depict perinatal experiences with the historical pictorial documentation collected by Lloyd de Mause and Sam Keen offer strong evidence for the perinatal roots of human violence.

  According to the insights provided jointly by observations from nonordinary states of consciousness and the findings of psychohistorians, we all carry in our deep unconscious powerful energies and emotions associated with the trauma of birth that we have not adequately mastered and assimilated. For some of us, these aspects of our psyches can be completely unconscious, while others can have varying degrees of awareness about their influence. When material of this kind is activated from within, or by real events in the external world, it can lead to bizarre individual psychopathology, including violence for which there seems to be no visible cause. It seems that, for unknown reasons, the awareness of the perinatal elements can increase simultaneously in a large number of people; this creates an atmosphere of tension, anxiety, and anticipation. A leader such as Hitler is perhaps more strongly influenced by perinatal energies than others in his culture while at the same time having the power to manipulate the collective behavior of an entire nation. With these two factors aligned it is easy for him to disown his unacceptable (and unconscious) feelings (the "Shadow self" in Jung's terminology) and project them onto an external situation. The collective discomfort is blamed on the enemy and military intervention is offered as a solution.

  War provides the opportunity to abandon psychological defenses that ordinarily keep the dangerous perinatal tendencies in check. Freud's superego, a psychological force that demands restraint and civilized behavior, is replaced by the "war superego": we now receive praise for the same behaviors that are unacceptable or even criminal in peacetime—murder, indiscriminate destruction, and pillaging. Once war erupts, the destructive and self-destructive impulses can be given free rein. The perinatal elements that we normally encounter in a certain stage of the process of inner exploration and transformation (BPM II and BPM III) are now manifest in real situations outside us, either in hand-to-hand combat on the battlefield or in the form of television news. Various no exit situations, sadomasochistic orgies, sexual violence, bestial and demonic behavior, explosive energy releases, and scatology—which we ordinarily associate with perinatal imagery—are all enacted in wars and revolutions with extraordinary vividness and power.

  Acting out unconscious impulses—whether these occur individually, in self-destructive behavior or interpersonal conflict, or collectively, through wars and revolutions—does not result in transformation, as would occur by bringing the same material to full consciousness, since insight and therapeutic intention are missing. Even when violent behavior results in victory, the goal of the unconscious birth memory—which was the driving force behind such events—is not achieved. The most triumphant external victory does not deliver what the unconscious expected or hoped for: an inner sense of emotional liberation and spiritual rebirth. Immediately following the initial intoxication of triumph comes a sober awakening followed by bitter disappointment. And it usually does not take long before a carbon copy of the previous oppressive system emerges from the ruins, since the same unconscious forces continue to operate in the individual and collective unconscious of the people. When we look carefully at history, we see this same cycle occurring again and again, whether the events involved are called the French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution, or World War II.

  Fo
r many years, at the time when Czechoslovakia had a Marxist regime, I conducted deep experiential work in Prague. During this period, I collected a great deal of fascinating material concerning the psychological dynamics of Communism. Issues related to Communist ideology typically emerged while my clients were struggling with perinatal energies and emotions. It became obvious that the passion revolutionaries feel toward their oppressors receives powerful psychological reinforcement from their revolt against the inner prisons of their perinatal experiences. And, conversely, the need to coerce and dominate others was expressed time and time again as an effort to overcome the fear of being overwhelmed by one's own unconscious. The murderous entanglement of oppressor and revolutionary thus seems to be an externalized expression of the turmoil experienced in the birth canal. This is not to say that there existed no external political problems to overcome; the point is that perinatal themes, felt with incredible intensity, dictated the ways in which these conflicts were perceived and acted out.