VOLUME 1 ISSUE 1 SPRING 2015

and Grant Maxwell (Buchanan 1994, 2001, 2002 and 2005; Griffin 1989, 1996; Quiring 1996; Gibson 1998, 2006, 2010; Maxwell 2011). Having spent more than half a century studying holotropic states of consciousness, I have no doubt that there exist transpersonal experiences, which areontologically real and are not products of metaphysical speculation, human imagination, or pathological processes in the brain. By the term “ontologically real”, I refer to a category of experiences which not only possess the subjective sense of reality, but whose contents also seem to reveal something of the nature or essential qualities of being or existence. It would be erroneous to dismiss all transpersonal experiences as products of fantasy, primitive superstition, or manifestations of mental disease, as has so frequently been done. Anyone attempting to do so would have to offer a plausible explanation why these experiences have in the past been described so consistently by people of various races, cultures, and historical periods. He or she would also have to account for the fact that these experiences continue to emerge in modern populations under such diverse circumstances as sessions with various psychedelic substances, during experiential psychotherapy, in meditation of people involved in systematic spiritual practice, in near-death experiences, and in the course of spontaneous episodes of psychospiritual crisis. Detailed discussion of the transpersonal domain, including descriptions and examples of various types of transpersonal experiences can be found in my various publications (Grof 1975, 1987, and 2000). In view of this vastly expanded model of the psyche, we could now paraphrase Freud’s simile of the psyche as an iceberg by saying that everything Freudian analysis has discovered about the psyche represents just the tip of the iceberg showing above the water. Research of holotropic states has made it possible to discover and explore the vast submerged portion of the iceberg, which has escaped the attention of Freud and his followers, with the exception of the remarkable renegades Otto Rank and C. G. Jung. Mythologist Joseph Campbell, known for his incisive Irish humor, used a different metaphor: “Freud was fishing while sitting on a whale.” 5.3 The nature, function, and architecture of emotional and psychosomatic disorders To explain various emotional and psychosomatic disorders that do not have an organic basis (“psychogenic psychopathology”), traditional psychiatrists use a superficial model of the psyche limited to postnatal biography and the individual unconscious. This model suggests that these conditions originate in infancy and childhood as a result of various emotional traumas and interpersonal dynamics in the family of origin. There seems to be general agreement among schools of dynamic psychotherapy that the depth and seriousness of these disorders depend on the timing of the original traumatization. Thus, according to classical psychoanalysis, the origin of alcoholism, narcotic drug addiction, and manic-depressive disorders can be found in the oral period of libidinal Spirituality Studies 1 (1) Spring 2015 17 (15)

RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MzgxMzI=