The dawn of a new Psychotherapy

In the beginning of the 21st century, the conditions and facts of our materialistic western culture make it imperative for a new directive in psychotherapy. Looking through a wider scope, the signs of this new directive are already clear. They point to a synthesis of Religion (in terms of ‘esoteric teachings’, not clerical religion) and Science, as a lively force, what Schure (2006) saw as our only opportunity to evolve as a culture and to succeed, again, in creating and educating souls for the good and salvation of humanity. We have lost the spiritual dimension of Life and the rites of passage from birth to death of older times. We have medicalized birth, old age, and death, and we have overlooked our indisputable connection with other beings, and we are standing at a crossroads (we have reached a nodal point). We are called upon to re-view Existence and all that it entails, from the beginning. Schure writes that Science and Religion, these guardians of culture, have both lost their supreme gift, their very magic of great and powerful education (p. 24).

      Through the invention of Psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud sought to explain, and thus offer relief for the eternal suffering of the human soul, but largely neglected its spiritual aspect and focused mainly on the mental manifestations and distortions of it. Carl G. Jung, looking for what the science of modern medicine was missing, dared to turn towards ancient esoteric teachings (Religion) and suggested that what was needed to cure the soul, was an immersion into the unconscious without expectations, so as to gain awareness and therefore solve human suffering. Wilhelm Reich argued that mental disorder derives from the generalized and socially acquired ’emotional plague’, this miasma of our civilization imposed by clerical religion and the state, which suppresses, distorts and impairs our physical capacity for self regulation, balance and health. In the early 20th century, the science of Psychology talked about neurosis, about mental disorder. Today we talk more about psychic trauma, whether it be gestational, developmental, shock trauma, integenerational, collective. We know that as a species we mainly suffer from attachment trauma and this is the basis of mental disorder, this is the core of our inability to cope with psychic pain. We also know that, despite it being outside our awareness, we are undoubtedly the recipients of intergenerational trauma that runs through our DNA, and this is often the root of our suffering and the cause of various health problems we face in our lives.

      Having been saturated with Descartes’ body-mind separation for centuries, we strive to understand, manage, and heal psychic trauma on an individual and collective level, without succeeding. Psychiatric hospitals are still full, the use of pharmaceuticals is more widespread and excessive than ever, and people are divided according to their disorder. Psychopathology, with its several diagnoses, is a way to distance ourselves from what scares us, from what we ideally would have wanted to be. In reality, all diagnoses are just different manifestations of Existence throughout the centuries, and our adaptation to our Culture. One thing is certain. We are all traumatized beings. Simply to exist on this planet is a great challenge, and the chances of not experiencing trauma of any sort, are zero. Our vulnerability during the gestational period and the first years of our life, our mammalian brain’s need for attachment and security, the very real dangers of unpredictable Nature, and the inability of our cortex to control our emotions and give us the assurance of self-sovereignty, leaves us indeed with very little. We are still as weak and defenseless as we were from the beginning of our history as a species, we are still struggling with evil, we are afraid of the darkness and the rage of Nature, we still look upwards to the sky seeking redemption for our human despair.

      What has changed? We have seemingly succeeded in prevailing over the natural environment, with the constructs of our minds and hands, but at the same time we have distanced ourselves from our own nature. Both religion and science claim that they speak the Truth, in hostile opposition to each other, while at the same time the esoteric teachings of all the religions that have developed since the beginning of our civilization, which integrate these two as a Science of Science (Schure, 2006) have been studied by a precious few.

      The prevailing idea is that the body is ‘only’ matter; that the soul is something metaphysical and therefore impossible to explain by the hitherto-accepted laws of physics; that the spirit is solely a religious phenomenon or construct, and cannot be studied by science; that the existence of emotions and their spontaneous expression are problematic, and thus need to be suppressed, controlled, underestimated, and compared to the logical and analytical mind; that the left hemisphere of our brain is more useful than the right, for survival and creativity. These are some of the deep-seated perceptions and beliefs that have contaminated our collective unconscious and our personal history. Intuition, on the other hand, is considered an inexplicable mystery, at best, or an inaccurate, well-intentioned emotional construct at worst (Lieberman, 2000, p. 109). However, at such a gridlock point of disconnection from the matrix of original Knowledge and Truth, humanity is seeking to move towards reconnection.

      The philosopher Mark Johnson argues that, in our perception, the separation of mind and body creates an unsustainable schism between metaphysics and epistemology (1987). Today scientists such as Candace Pert (Pert, 1997), the “mother” of psycho-neuroendocrine-immunology, and Jaak Panksepp (1998, 2012), the main inventor of the term “affective neuroscience”, have so far managed (using scientific methodology and language) to approach and prove that emotions, thoughts and the physical body are one, and that all animals share the same 7 emotional systems that we need in order to be able to respond adequately to the environment, in order to survive. Through their work, they both emphasize how important our feelings are for our survival, and that there is deep wisdom in the ancient parts of our brain. Panksepp has argued that human behavior is determined by the emotional brain and not by the functions of the cortex (representation and perception) as cognitive neuroscience has advocated for the last 30 years (Panksepp et al. 2012). Also, Stephen Porges’ recent discovery of the function of the Vagus Nerve [1] in regulating the nervous system forces us to revisit our “neurotic” attitude towards the physical body, and re-view it, not only as the manifestation of our pathology, but as the basic tool of healing our trauma. Thus our bodies contain both trauma and its resolution.

      The recently invented method TRE® (Trauma Release Exercises [2], Berceli, 2008), based on the same principles as Vegetotherapy [3] developed by Wilhelm Reich [4] and Ola Raknes [5], restores the natural tendency and physical ability of the human body for reflex tremor as the wise means of the nervous system to eliminate shock from the body – something that we ceased to regard as a problem or a manifestation of a problem, with the invaluable contribution of Peter Levine [6]. As he explains, the reason that trauma is ‘trapped’ in our nervous system and thus affects our neurophysical, endocrine and immune systems is because we have culturally restricted this natural reflex tremor that follows a traumatic event (Levine, 1997). This decline was called the ’emotional plague’ by Wilhelm Reich (1976), as I mentioned above, a term describing our lack of tolerance for the organism’s spontaneous manifestation of emotions and pleasure. Dan Siegel, the “father” of Interpersonal Neurobiology [7], also argues that we have the ability to transcend our ordinary thoughts and actions by mobilizing our deepest self and its wisdom, transcending the limitations of our historical experience.

      It is not by chance or coincidence that we are progressing towards somatic-centered forms of psychotherapy, the widespread adoption of yoga and other methods of holistic reconnection and retrieval of ancient pan-human ‘esoteric’ knowledge. This can be seen in the shift of scientists like Bruce Lipton and Gregg Braden towards neurobiologically-informed spirituality, in the new paradigm proposed by Ervin Laszlo [8] as well as in the development of psychotherapeutic methods that incorporate the element of spirituality into the process of healing such as Transpersonal Psychology [9] since the early 1970s and more recently CRM® (Comprehensive Resource Model [10]). It is when we have been disconnected for long time, that we fortunately tend towards reconnection – seeking homeostasis – and this seems to be already happening within humanity. However, I do not believe that re-introducing an old practice or methodology that humankind used to use, would be suitable or applicable in today’s western society. A different application of the old knowledge on modern reality and modern consciousness is necessary, as well as the creation of a new common interdisciplinary “language” that accepts the embodied lived knowledge, the intuitive functions, and the implicit knowledge and memory of the body as valid and capable of leading us to healing trauma, and educating us at the same time.

      In recent years neuroscience findings have contributed to shifting the paradigm of Psychotherapy so that we no longer speak in philosophical and analytical terms, but in neuro-biological ones. The new, global movement in the field of Psychotherapy that is taking place nowadays, encompasses our body as well as our spiritual dimension as beings. Human consciousness is advancing very fast and our lives are too short to fully grasp the enormous changes that are already taking place. There is now a collective understanding that psychic trauma begins at the time of our conception, but also that it is transmitted to the next generations when it has not been resolved by the ancestors. We know that the heart organ is not just a blood pump but an electromagnetic center in its entirety, perhaps more powerful than the brain, which communicates upwards, defining the functions of the brain [11] and that aligning the brain with the heart is a crucial factor in the manifestation of what we desire and think (Braden 2008, 2009). We know that we not only have the ability to go from mind to body, but also from body to mind, through the processes of “top-down” and “bottom-up” (Taylor et al. 2010).

      No method so far has the absolute solution to human suffering, but the only certain thing is that it is imperative for Psychotherapy to operate centrally from the heart, to explore the manifestations of the psyche through the physical senses, and to guide the individual to re-member who they really are as a spiritual being. When individuals integrate their true, core self into their daily life they will be able to act responsibly as citizens of this world. If only we truly experienced who we are, and how we are able to coexist and interact with every living, organic and inorganic element on the planet, this would make us superior beings. So far we are not. I believe that by realizing “who we are”, in our core self, we will be able to see the death we disseminate as a species, the violence we reproduce onto ourselves and to other species that we exploit, capture, torture, and slaughter daily. We are blind to what we do precisely because we are disconnected from our deeper animality and our higher spirituality. We have become only head, and we need to find our heart and the rest of our body.