development; obsessive-compulsive neurosis has its roots in the anal stage; phobias and conversion hysteria result from traumas incurred in the phallic phase and at the time of theOedipus andElectra complex; and so on (Fenichel 1945). Later developments in psychoanalysis have linked some very deep disorders – autistic and symbiotic infantile psychoses, narcissistic personality, and borderline personality disorders – to disturbances in the early development of object relations (Blanck and Blanck 1974 and 1979). As I mentioned earlier, this does not apply to Rankian and Jungian therapists who understand that the roots of emotional disorders reach deeper into the psyche. These conclusions are based on observations of therapists who use primarily verbal means. The understanding of psychogenic disorders changes radically when we employ methods involving holotropic states of consciousness that engage levels of the unconscious generally inaccessible to verbal therapy. Initial stages of this work typically uncover relevant traumatic material from early infancy and childhood that is meaningfully related to emotional and psychosomatic problems and appears to be their source. However, when the process of uncovering continues, deeper layers of the unconscious unfold and we find additional roots of the same problems on the perinatal and transpersonal levels of the psyche. Various ways of working with holotropic states – such as psychedelic therapy, Holotropic Breathwork, rebirthing, and primal therapy, or psychotherapy with people experiencing spontaneous psychospiritual crises – have shown that emotional and psychosomatic problems cannot be adequately explained as originating exclusively in postnatal psychotraumatic events. In my experience, the unconscious material associated with them typically forms multilevel dynamic constellations for which I have coined the term “systems of condensed experience“ or “COEX systems“ (Grof 1975, 2000). A typical COEX system consists of many layers of unconscious material that share similar emotions or physical sensations; the contributions to a COEX system come from different levels of the psyche. The more superficial and accessible layers contain memories of emotional or physical traumas from infancy, childhood, and later life. On a deeper level, each COEX system is typically connected to a certain aspect of the memory of birth – a specific BPM; the choice of this matrix depends on the nature of the emotional and physical feelings involved. For example, if the theme of the COEX system is victimization, this would be BPM II; if it is fight against a powerful adversary or sexual abuse, the connection would be to BPM III. For a positive COEX comprising memories of deeply satisfying and fulfilling situations it would be BPM I or BPM IV, and so on. The deepest roots of COEX systems underlying emotional and psychosomatic disorders reach into the transpersonal domain of the psyche. They have the form of ancestral, racial, collective, and phylogenetic memories, experiences that seem to be coming from other lifetimes (“past life memories”), and various archetypal motifs. Thus, for example, therapeutic work on anger and dispo18 (16) Stanislav Grof
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