“Without passing through very difficult experiences and even something like psychoneurosis and neurosis we cannot understand human beings and we cannot realize our multidimensional and multilevel development toward higher and higher levels.”
“Suffering, aloneness, self-doubt, sadness, inner conflict; these are our feelings that we have not learned to live with, that we have failed to appreciate, that we reject as destructive and completely negative, but in fact they are symptoms of an expanding consciousness. Dr. Kazimierz Dabrowski has spent 45 years piecing together the complete picture of the growth of the human psyche from primitive integration at birth; the person with potential for development will experience growth as a loosening of the stable psychic structure accompanied by symptoms of psychoneuroses. Reality becomes multileveled, the choices between higher and lower realms of behavior occupy our thought and mark us as human. Dabrowski called this process positive disintegration, he declares that psychoneurosis is not an illness and he insists that development does not come through psychotherapy but that psychotherapy is automatic when the person is conscious of his development. To Dabrowski, real therapy is autopsychotherapy; it is the self being aware of the self through a long inner investigation; a mapping of the inner environment. There are no techniques to eliminate symptoms because the symptoms constitute the very psychic richness from which grow an increasing awareness of body, mind, humanity and cosmos… Without intense and painful introspection and reflection, development is unlikely. Psychoneurotic symptoms should be embraced and transformed into anxieties about human problems of an ever higher order. If psychoneuroses continue to be classified as mental illness, then perhaps it is a sickness better than health.” [1]
“Unless we change our thinking… our understanding of psychogenic emotional and psychosomatic disorders and their therapy will remain superficial, unsatisfactory, and incomplete. Psychiatry and psychology will be unable to genuinely comprehend the nature and origin of spirituality and appreciate the important role that it plays in the human psyche and in the universal scheme of things. These revisions are therefore essential for understanding the ritual, spiritual, and religious history of humanity, shamanism, rites of passage, the ancient mysteries of death and rebirth, and the great religions of the world. Without these radical changes in our thinking, potentially healing and heuristically invaluable experiences (“spiritual emergencies”) will be misdiagnosed as psychotic and treated by suppressive medication.” [2]
The phases of recovery from psychosis are detailed here
While I keep myself grounded in a biopsychosocial model of psychosis and schizophrenia these days (mainly because of my almost pathological tendency to seek an overly mechanical wordview that lets me analyse the shit out of it…), my late prodromal/FEP days pulled me in a different direction – towards the spiritual. While I didn’t think it was well received by psychiatrists at the time, I don’t see spiritual interpretations and approaches to dealing with psychosis to be bad. That said, I don’t want to stop anyone from continuing under the care of a doctor/psychiatrist, on the condition that they have respect for one’s spiritual beliefs. Here is a thesis from Adelaide of all places…
Psychosis has long been recognised as a severe mental disorder characterised by derangement of personality, disorganised thought, and a loss of contact with reality. Certain mystical and alternate states, which have been practiced throughout history by various cultures, have also been deemed as pathological through the lens of western psychiatry even though many of these states provide beneficial contributions to the individual and their community. A number of similar states have been found in modern society and have been termed “Spiritual Emergencies”. The aim of this research was to determine whether “spiritual emergency”. (SE) is a valid concept and to outline the differences between SE and psychosis. One-hundred-and-nine participants from the general public completed a questionnaire developed for this research, comprised of measures of psychosis and ten spiritual emergency subscales. Results indicated that participants who were prescribed medication or previously experienced a psychotic episode scored higher on the SE subscales. One strong factor was found to underlie all the SE subscales and a significant relationship was found between this factor and the measure of psychotic experience. It is open to interpretation as to whether psychosis is nothing more than SE or whether SE is nothing more than psychosis. The implications of these findings are discussed.
The Mystical, Near-Death, Meditation and Spiritual Practice, Visionary and Shamanic types of spiritual problems have been associated with crises (“spiritual emergencies”) where a person has difficulty functioning. Each of these problems has a section on Therapy
There are also a number of therapeutic strategies that apply to all spiritual crises. Stanislav Grof, MD, and Christina Grof, founders of the Spiritual Emergence Network, describe a spiritually-sensitive approach:
“The most important task is to give people in crisis a positive context for their experiences and sufficient information about the process that they are going through. It is essential that they move away from the concept of disease and recognize the leading nature of their crisis…
Whether attitudes and interactions in the narrow circle of close relatives and friends are nourishing and supportive or fearful, judgmental, and manipulative makes a considerable difference in terms of the course and outcome of the episode…
[Therapy] should not be limited to talking and should allow full experience and direct release of emotion. It is absolutely essential to respect the healing wisdom of the transformative process, to support its natural course, and to honor and accept the entire spectrum of human experience”
Interventions can range from support for a time-limited crisis, with possible involvement of relatives, friends, support groups, and medical persons, to intensive long-term psychotherapy. Choice of specific interventions depends on the intensity, duration, and type of spiritual problem, and also on the individual and their support network.
Therapeutic Interventions for Acute Crises
Therapy with spiritual emergency patients in crisis (“spiritual emergency”) can include the following 9 interventions.
An exploration of “how further spiritual development can occur when the spiritual ideal and the linear nature and trajectory of the practitioner’s ego structure are disrupted and their foundations destroyed, making space for the individual to live in an expanded state of consciousness” can be found here and how “variation in an individual’s characterisation of anomalous experiences is nuanced by pre-existing beliefs and affective factors” here
Table 1 outlines a general framework for intervening at the interfaces between emotional, existential, and spiritual distress in the domains of depressed individuals’ core concerns, to foster a more healthy spirituality. Whereas insight-oriented and cognitive behavioral approaches can help depressed individuals to distinguish distressing emotions from their actual basis in life experience, spiritually oriented interventions can help them use their knowledge and experience of their spirituality (in its ultimate sense, where God or morality are involved) to put these experiences into a larger perspective.
“Table 2 suggests ways that specific spiritually informed interventions can address the existential dimension of depressive concerns. For example, patients whose existential concerns center around identity, and who are therefore vulnerable to experiencing doubt or disorientation when depressed, may benefit from a humanistic emphasis on connecting with what most fulfills and best defines them. If religious, they may also benefit from grounding their identity in their relationship to God, for example, through a process of spiritual direction.”
advancingschizophreniatherapeutics 