“We are delighted to share with you Watkins' 2022 list of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People – spiritual teachers, activists, authors and thinkers that change the world.”
So it has arrived. Watkin's Top 100. Pope Francis tops as usual. Our Greta Thunberg has received an honorable third place. And actress Gwyneth Paltrow at 9th? (Funny, we saw her in a movie earlier this week, and wondered where she went 🙂 )
The Taliban have taken over. It went quickly! I'm raising the topic so it gets its own section. Not for the spiritual, but the psychology. What to believe? They have held a press conference, promised a lot, seem more conciliatory this time. Have they matured yet?
I am an incurable development romantic, that you normally become a better, more sane person over the years... Of course it can be a compromising, a bit of a game, to try to get the outside world's acceptance. But it can be partly honestly known and meant. You are a fundamentalist, but not as blind and hot as when you were a young Koran school student, like ("Taliban" means student, I've learned), you "can't" care that way anymore, think anymore, not in the same way the present... Less an idealist, more a pragmatist... But it may turn out...
[...]
And, if you're going to engage in a bit of newage-new-spirituality-bashing... "Development" is central to such a philosophy, the great gradual evolution of the soul, and this single life is just a station on the way... Not much happens, you incarnate as an "adult ”, puts on a baby's body and the consciousness is blinded in some way... (You might even think things like mother was my partner before or father my little brother.)...
How it is with this, what is true or possible, or not, I will not say anything about that... But it seems to have the effect of making it difficult to see what actually happens during this single human life... I usually think about it as "maturity failure"... You may feel that you have developed in a more universal, evolutionary sense, spiritually, found peace. When, in fact, you have mostly become old.
"One of the things I'm wrestling with at the moment is hierarchy in spirituality, and the idea of 'higher' and 'lower'."
This is how the philosopher Jules Evans begins a long text from this day... He writes about the idea of development in general, and within new spirituality & new age in particular. Most of all, it's about Ken Wilber. A nuanced review of this giant.
https://julesevans.medium.com/ken-wilber-and-spiritual-hierarchy-5e163226d270
My retention of the text is above all two things. Partly because I now feel more respect for Wilber. He has nevertheless done a horse job in developing his model, with a large portion of psychology.
Partly, I am reminded of how ignorant I am of the very concept of spiritual evolution. That the human mind is probably not equipped to keep up with such models. Whether they are correct or not.
Against this, one might want to argue that even if people are on different levels, are differently developed spiritually (via reincarnation, etc.), there need not be anything idealizing/derogatory about it. No, in the best of worlds it wouldn't have to be that way. That it would, for example, feed one's own narcissism, as Evans talks about. (Or even a feeling of inferiority. But this is probably more rare in that case)
Theoretically, they could be separate things. But in practice? This is not a matter of will, I think. That's why I write "armed"', i.e. that it has to do with one's own constitution. Analogous to not having the conditions to lift a stone weighing 1 ton, or resist strong radioactive radiation, e.g. Even if you wished you could, or think you should be able to. Or at worst imagines that you can. If you can't do it now.
And what is the difference between a hopeful, alternative-thinking person, with sunshine in his eyes, and a grumpy, slightly paranoid misanthrope, then?
About thirty, forty years 😉
Here you will get an example of really weak, bad science. A quote I put in my pocket many years ago. And have picked it up many times since then. By (hold on!) an anonymous writer on a blog who referenced personal communication with an unnamed researcher... But what does it matter! When the intelligence itself is like gold. In the area where psychology and (new) spirituality overlap...
"I suspect that what's going on is that the New Age, now entering its third generation, has developed a theodicy. Now, this is a theological term, but it essentially means an explanation of the existence of evil – why bad things happen to good people.
For some of those in the New Age milieu – Foster Gamble, David Icke, Whitley Strieber, Duncan Rhodes and others, all incidentally in middle age and with a long term involvement in the New Age milieu – an explanation is needed as to why, if we've entered the Age of Aquarius, is the world less peaceful, equal and progressive than ever? Conspiracy theories offer such a theodicy – the New Age hasn't happened because evil people prevented it from happening.”
Muertos, 2012
A quote on the same theme. Here it is about the kind of psychology that talks about "elevated" states to strive for & achieve... Paul Vitz, from the book "Psychology as Religion", 1977:
"Second, as people aged, they realized that many of the things thought necessary for self-actualization would not be attainable in their lives. Besides interpersonal disasters, there were career failures, serious health problems, and many other disappointments. The discrepancy between the promised 'high' of the Maslovian self-actualization or Jungian individuation and the reality of their lives created a vast disappointment and 'credibility gap.' The belief that psychology could make you happy, that it was the answer, began to fade.”
Humanistic psychology, with prominent figures such as Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers?, arose among other things as a reaction against reductionism within both psychoanalysis and behaviourism. The view of such things as "spiritual experiences" was one of the areas where it was felt that contemporary psychology had too narrow a framework.
Abraham Maslow was interested in people's so-called "peak experiences", which possibly overlap with what the respondents talk about and think about. Maslow thought he could distinguish a category of individuals he called "self-actualized":
“In a brief summary, the most important characteristics of self-actualizing people can be said to be the following: A more accurate perception and acceptance of reality, including human nature; spontaneity, a healthy appreciation and creativity in everyday activities; relative isolation from the immediate physical and social environment and from culture at large; deeper, more satisfying personal relationships, most likely with a small number of other self-actualized people; strong feelings of identification and sympathy with all other people; democratic (non-authoritarian) character structure; non-hostile, philosophical humor; centering around problems outside themselves that reflect a broad set of values; clear moral and ethical principles consistently applied and an experience of dissolving prominent dichotomies and opposites.” (from Maslow, 1970; ref in Wulff, p.521)
This branch of humanistic psychology has now been transferred to what is today called Transpersonal Psychology (ooooo?). As the name suggests, representatives of this branch of psychology imagine a higher instance in the psyche, "beyond the personality".
Lukoff & Co
Some believe that there are experiences that risk being judged as, for example, psychotic reactions or such illness, which have a different etiology and often a different (more favorable) prognosis. Prior to the work on DSM-4, the psychiatrist Lukoff presented several arguments that in a future version of the manual it should be possible to differentiate these experiences. And mixed forms (Lukoff).
(Lukoff, ?) More pathologizing or dismissing in DSM-3. Better in DSM-4 (who writes about that? Rizzuto?) Lukoff and colleagues worked to introduce a “Spiritual emergency” category in DSM-4, and partially succeeded
Assagioli.
An early representative of such a view was the Italian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Alberto Assagioli, who, like Carl Gustav Jung, early on studied with Sigmund Freud but eventually, partly due to a lack of consensus on spiritual matters, broke with him. In an interview in Psychology Today (December 1974), with one Sam Keen, Assagioli explains how his approach differs from Freud's:
"We pay far more attention to the higher unconscious and to the development of the transpersonal self. In one of his letters Freud said, 'I am interested only in the basement of the human being.' Psychosynthesis is interested in the whole building. We try to build an elevator which will allow a person access to every level of his personality. After all, a building with only a basement is very limited. We want to open up the terrace where you can sunbathe or look at the stars. Our concern is the synthesis of all areas of the personality. That means psychosynthesis is holistic, global and inclusive”
(http://synthesiscenter.org/articles/0303.pdf, page visited 2014-12-19).
Freud & the First Psychoanalysts (Rizzuto)
Sigmund Freud.
Freud has had a great influence on the view of people's religiosity. In the almost hundred years that have passed since his death, much has happened, in theory and in practice, but that it was not so easy for the first generations of psychoanalysts, Ana-Maria Rizzuto, herself an analyst, writes:
"Freud himself […] insisted that people should not need religion, called it a cultural neurosis, and set himself up as an example of those who could do without it. Intentionally or unintentionally, he gave the world several generations of psychoanalysts who, coming to him from all walks of life, dropped whatever religion they had at the doors of their institutes. If they refused to do so, they managed to dissociate their beliefs from their analytical training and practice, with the sad effect of having an important area of their lives untouched by their training. If they dealt with religion during their own analyses, that was the beginning of the end of it" (Rizzuto, åååå?, p4).
Winnicott.
(Winnicott, 1981/2003) “It [transitional object] originates from external reality from our point of view, but not from the child's. Nor does it come from inner reality; it is not a hallucination”, p. 25
(Jemstedt, 1993, in the preface to Winnicott) “The child's relation to the transitional object is a nascent ability to maintain a dialectical process, between union and separation, between the symbol and what it symbolizes, between inner and outer, etc., and this dialectic creates mental space .”
The subject of paradoxicality appears in Winnicott when he deals with the transitional area and the transitional object. He urges the adult world to be careful when they approach the child's relationship with the paradoxical. "I want to draw attention to the paradox contained in the child's use of what I have called transitional objects. My contribution is to request that this paradox be accepted, tolerated and respected, and that no attempt be made to resolve it. By resorting to a severed intellectual function it is possible to resolve the paradox, but the price of this resolution is the loss of the value of the paradox itself.” (Winnicott, 1981/2003, p. 16) Elsewhere in the same writing, he develops the theme further: “It [transitional object] originates from external reality from our point of view, but not from the child's. Nor does it come from inner reality; it is not a hallucination” (p. 25)
Winnicott really makes himself a spokesman for the paradox. In his book Play and reality, he returns to the subject again and again. There is more already in the preface, and the very last sentences of the afterword address this topic. That the paradoxical nature of the child's experience must be respected.
), then I content myself with pointing out that - regardless of how our childhood was - an emphasis on the concrete, the simple, in how we look at life, should be able to tempt the psyche so that certain problems arise that remind one of childhood unhappily founded such "true and false self-structure". I think this can be relevant when we discuss a thought system like NA and the attitude to existence that this can stimulate.
The limitations of objectivity.
"Furthermore, there are a large number of adults who never achieve a reliable capacity for objectivity, and those who are the most reliably objective often lack contact with the richness of their own inner world" (Winnicott, 2004, p.69)
Bio about "precision", etc...
"Negative capability".
"The negative capability" which is an ability to endure not knowing, to be uncertain (Stiller, 2007).
Email that arrived the same day we went up to Valsan. From Jules Evans' blog, on Joyce and Keats. About negative capability
"John Keats, who suggested the poet needs a negative capability in which they can experience the Sublime without 'an irritable reaching after fact and reason'" (Jules Evans blog, see ref!!)
The "mystic" in psychoanalysis
Wilfred Bion has a concept he calls "O", which seems to be his attempt to reserve or isolate a deepest aspect of the psyche.
Hans Reiland (yyyy?) writes about "the object berore the objects" as an instance, a deepest point of reference, which exists beyond the internal objects (e.g. guardians and others) that were added later.
Bollas is yet another psychoanalyst who, based on object relations theory, tries to discern a point of reference that should lie beyond the "inner objects" that have been established above all in relation to the caregivers. He speaks of this deeper foundation as "the transformative object" (ooooo?)
Deep religiosity in psychoanalytic light.
The atheist's "relationship with God"
(Jones, 1991) Jones, on how even the atheist has a relationship with God. When he asks his students, they can always answer how the god is "that they don't believe in". How does the neo-spiritual god compare. It may not even be a living "anti-god".
Psychoanalysis can provide a deeper understanding of religion/atheism.
PERSONALITY ORGANIZATION
"An individual's basic personality structure can only be understood if two specific and interacting psychological dimensions are taken into account: the personality structure developmental level and the type of defense that dominates at this developmental level. The first dimension indicates the extent of the individual, or the type of pathology that predominates in the person (psychotic, borderline, neurotic, 'normal'). The other indicates his or her personality type (paranoid, depressive, schizoid, etc.)” (McWilliams, p67)
McWilliams (1994/2005) states four levels of personality structure: psychotic, borderline, neurotic, and "normal" (p. 67)
See DSM-4. Does it have four levels? "Mature"?
Other models settle for three levels, with the neurotic level as the highest. But of course it is possible to differentiate also in such a level, one should be able to speak of a higher and a lower level of neuroticism. Neurotic and "mature neurotic"? A person with severe neurotic problems, who seeks help, and after, for example, a longer psychotherapeutic contact, has gained access to greater inner mobility, gained a greater ability to reflect on himself and has been freed from troublesome symptoms, can in any case be said to have reached a higher neurotic level.
PDM (2006) defines personality as: "relatively stable ways of thinking, feeling, behaving, and relating to others". (p17)
By "thinking" PDM refers to "not only one's belief systems and ways of making sense of self and others, but also one's moral values and ideals" (p17)
“[A] continuum of severity, from a relatively healthy to a very disturbed level of personality structure. This continuum is conventionally, if arbitrarily, divided into healthy, neurotic, and borderline ranges of personality organization, the borderline range extending from the border of neurotic character organization to the border of psychotic conditions.” It is important to point out that "borderline" in a psychiatric context, "Borderline personality disorder" (DSM) refers to a certain type of borderline, namely a more lived-out, dramatic form, which was originally delineated for research purposes (p.21). The psychodynamic concept is broader and, if you will, more universal. It stems from a time in our lives when it was actually normal to perceive and interact with the world in this characteristic, often simplistic way, and which remains as a capacity well into adulthood.
PDM does not include psychotic in its P axis ), as the research status is unclear. However, one differentiates between borderline at a higher level, and a lower level, which in some cases occurs together with psychotic or psychotic-like symptoms, such as concrete or overgeneralized thinking (p. 26). "Toward the psychotic end of the borderline spectrum" (p.29)
In addition to this, PDM states "neurotic" as well as "healthy" (p.27)
It is important to understand that "Psychotic" refers to a kind of preparedness, weakness or fragility, which means that the person in difficult situations will have a greater tendency to react with psychotic symptoms. Not that the person has manifest psychotic symptoms. It is, as I said, a level of personality structure.
“Personality is what one IS rather than what one HAS. It certainly comprises more than one can see by scrutinizing a person's behavior" (p17)
PDM points out that we can all display borderline or psychotic-like symptoms under severe stress (p20)
The term "borderline" was coined or conceptualized in the 1950s, for those patients who were too disturbed to properly fit the neurotic diagnosis, but were too grounded in reality to fit the psychotic diagnosis (p21)
Psychodynamically based research has arrived at three types of borderline, one that is closer to the psychotic, with a risk of psychotic breakthrough, a form similar to the one that the DSM rings in, and a third that the PDM describes as "over-ideational, characterized by social isolation and withdrawal, more likely to receive the DSM diagnosis of paranoid, schizoid, or obsessive personality disorder”. (p21).
PDM describes this as “a person's center of psychological gravity”, although it is emphasized that the other levels can be there as well (p23)
Psychoanalytic and other concepts