S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 2 - 2 Fa l l 2 0 1 6 7 Stanislav Grof only one aspect of the problem. Perinatal matrices are not defined as stages of the psychobiological evolution of the fetus, but as experiential patterns that occur in self-exploration of adults involving NOSC. They are thus primarily related to psychospiritual evolution and only secondarily serve as indirect evidence for the importance of the early psychobiological events. In other words, they are much more than simple records of the original fetal experience. Besides containing distinct fetal elements, they also function as an important interface with the archetypal and historical domains of the collective unconscious and with species consciousness. For this reason, they cannot be simply reduced to a fetal fulcrum. I will return to this point later in this paper. 3 The Psychological Importance of Biological Death Another major difference between my own observations and Ken’s model involves the psychological importance of biological death, both in connection with the perinatal level and independently from it. In his early writings, Sigmund Freud expressed the opinion that the problem of death is irrelevant for psychology, since our unconscious does not know linear time and thus does not recognize and acknowledge our mortality and impermanence. However, later clinical observations related to the phenomena that seemed to challenge his concept of the “pleasure principle” led him to the conclusion that it is impossible to have a viable psychological system without including the phenomenon of death as an essential element (Freud 1955). This realization represented an important turning point in Freud’s theoretical speculations. To account for psychopathological disorders that seemed to defy the “pleasure principle” (such as sadomasochism, automutilation, and violent suicide), he formulated in the last two decades of his life a psychology that was significantly different from his early writings. In his final version of psychoanalysis, he described the psyche as a system reflecting the conflict between two opposing forces, the sexual instinct, Libido or Eros, and the death instinct, Destrudo or Thanatos (Freud 1964). According to a statistical survey conducted by Brun (1953), ninety-four per cent of psychoanalysts refused to follow Freud in this final stage of his thinking. The observations from NOSC clearly show that Freud was essentially correct in his assessment of the importance of death for psychology, even though they do not specifically support his understanding of Thanatos. These new findings show that what Freud refers to as Thanatos is not a biological instinct, but a psychological force reflecting the individual’s encounters with life-threatening events from postnatal biography and, particularly, from the perinatal period. These connections make the element of biological death essential for the understanding of the disorders that defy Freud’s “pleasure principle” and a variety of other psychological phenomena (Grof 1985). In addition, the psychological representation of death has deeper sources in the archetypal domain of the collective unconscious in the form of eschatological deities and motifs and also plays an important role in karmic experiences. Freud saw Thanatos as a biological instinct and did not recognize the deep psychological connection between death and the trauma of birth. He also refused to accept Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious and its archetypal dynamics. And, as a materialist, he wanted to anchor psychology deeply in biology and was not ready to give serious attention to the karmic dimension of the psyche. However, in his general awareness of the psychological importance of death and in his (unfortunately superficial and fleeting) recognition of the possible significance of birth, Freud was far ahead of his followers, whose writings Ken uses as his main sources. Ken does not simply ignore Freud’s later writings like the majority of his followers. He actually keeps the term Thanatos, but changes the meaning of this concept in a way that dilutes and trivializes Freud’s insights. For Freud, Thanatos was a brutal force that operates throughout our life and finally reduces us back to the inorganic state. For Ken, Thanatos is a relatively meek evolutionary mechanism associated with the transformation of consciousness from one level to the next. It is instrumental in the process of abandoning one developmental stage and moving to the next one (Wilber 1980). This involves generally a long and slow transition that is part of natural evolution, a kind of psychological equivalent of the first and second teething. The problems that might occur during these developmental transitions have a different degree of relevance than acute emergency situations that threaten the individual’s survival or body integrity. In an extensive critique of the way various theorists use the term Thanatos and of the resulting confusion (Wilber 1983), Ken emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between biological death and the “ego-death”, or “death” and “Death”. However, he himself entirely misses the psychological importance of the experiences associated with life-threatening events and makes no distinction between “dying” to a developmental level and the experiences associated with biological death. He equates dying with abandoning the exclusive identification with a particular structure of consciousness, which makes it possible to transcend that structure and
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MzgxMzI=