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Questioning the Validity of Mystical States: Opinions and Objections
Published in Andrew C. Papanicolaou, A Scientific Assessment of the Validity of Mystical Experiences, 2021
My own reason of dismissing them here is this: None of these “explanations” of depth psychology ever became a verifiable scientific theory. They remained, at best, elaborations of ancient myths and many missed the point of the original formulations of these myths and reduced all behavior and mentation to a handful of ill-defined, purely conjectural psychic mechanisms all of them in principle inaccessible to any form of falsification.
Imagine Health! Imagery in Medical Self-Care
Published in Anees A. Sheikh, Imagination and Healing, 2019
Though the previously mentioned psychophysiologic aspects of imagery represent a significant opportunity to those interested in self-care, a perhaps even more remarkable potential exists in the receptive and symbolic aspects of imagery. These functions of imagery have been utilized extensively in various forms of depth psychology, including Jungian analysis, where it is termed “active imagination,” and in the work of Ira Progoff, who terms it “twilight imaging.” Gestalt psychologists and psychosyntheses guides make frequent use of imagery techniques to evoke, modulate, and transform psychically charged material. Imagery is used in psychology both to help identify and change dysfunctional thought patterns and to mobilize inner strengths and personal resources that may help the patient to become whole again [40].
Consciousness disconnected: The title, some definitions, and ways of thinking about consciousness
Published in Derek Steinberg, Consciousness Reconnected, 2018
By psychology I refer primarily to psychodynamic (or ‘depth’) psychology and to social psychology. (‘Depth’ psychology is a term I have noticed only in one or two places, for example as the title of an excellent book by Dieter Wyss (1966)). I mention it to denote a whole group of psychological schools of the unconscious mind, for example Freudian psychoanalysis, Jungian analytical psychology, Kleinian psychology, and all kinds of anthropological, philosophical and existential schools, all to do with that aspect of the mind which combines some qualities of subjectivity and narrative consciousness, and yet is either just out of reach of the conscious mind, or so ‘beneath the surface’ that its existence and contents are simply inferred.
On Addiction, Complexity, and Freedom: Toward a Liberation-Focused Addiction Treatment
Published in Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 2019
The strengthening of the ego or the Healthy Adult Mode is a central goal of all psychotherapeutic approaches (Harris 1969; Lobestael 2008; Rafaeli, Bernstein, and Young 2010). “This is the part of the self that is centrally involved with internal emotional regulation, the development of successful interactions and relationships with others, and the ability to live a self-directed, assertive, and meaningful life” (Kellogg and Tatarsky 2012, 115). Intertwined with this is the work of liberation. As Rollo May (1981) wrote: “I propose that the purpose of psychotherapy is to set people free” (19). Contemporary psychological and psychotherapeutic approaches to addiction treatment that serve this goal can be seen as emerging from the interaction and integration of four disparate forces: (1) the research-based interventions that have been supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse; (2) the understandings and insights from the depth psychology traditions; (3) the utilization of the full range of cognitive, behavioral, experiential, existential, and meditative techniques and interventions that are frequently used in mainstream psychotherapy, and (4) the philosophies and strategies that have emerged from the Harm Reduction movement (Bigg 2001; Denning and Little 2011; Kellogg and Tatarsky 2012; Tatarsky 2002; Tatarsky and Kellogg 2010).
Hey Wait! I Just Thought of Something Else! Advaita and Clinical Hypnosis
Published in American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 2018
Jon K. Amundson, Marc W. Ross, Debra Campbell
Within clinical practice, the differing notions of self versus selfing have been in evidence as well. Starting with Freud, the idea of the three-party self-system elucidated in the Superego/Ego/ID description of the psyche, stands out (Rorty, 1991). Far from a unity of personhood, the dynamic inter-change between the superego and the ID results in a by-product referred to as the ego! Freud’s sense of the ego as by-product is further amplified in later analytic thinking. For example, Rubin (2004, 2011) abandons “self” for “self-representation,” a feeling or sense of self, at best. Lacan (1971) also categorically declares the ego/self to be an imaginary construction: that any sense of self is a product of historical machination involving definitions from outside (the “other”), and inner fantasy or imagination: the “self” called out or created by and through contingency (Purser, 2011). Assagioli (1971) further contributes from depth psychology, a Minsky like society of mind perspective, in his sense of articulation of “sub-personalities” and mind as aggregate or congress of such. Jung, similarly described the “complex” as an autonomous, emotionally charged association, leading to a sense of possession, with a seeming mind and direction of its own (Hillman, 1975).
The Ideology of Transference: Laplanche and Affect Theory
Published in Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 2018
This essay, however, suggests that instead of using affect to multiply angles from which to understand subjective action and experience, when it comes to explaining psychological experience, Affect Theory has persistently equated psychology with determinism tout court. Instead of using the attention to “sensations” and “surfaces” to complicate psychological phenomena, close readings produced in Affect Theory consistently treat all depth as the privileging of Truth over vibrations, and all psychology as bad depth-psychology. The granular complicatedness of “affect” is often treated by Affect theorists as in need of protection from more simplistic deterministic models; as if explaining why a given person did something automatically reifies and consolidates the otherwise sensory-laden, inchoate material subject. As Ruth Leys (2011, p. 310) argues in her seminal critique of Affect Theory’s “anti-intentionalism,” “a materialist theory that suspends considerations of meaning or intentionality in order to produce an account of the affects as inherently organic (indeed inherently mechanical) in nature” is necessarily committed to an idea of emotions as “inherently objectless” so that, even though “I laugh when I am tickled,” “I am not laughing at you.”