Friday, November 30, 2012

Irrational Rationality

Well, I thought I had 'tao' basically finished, and then I found out that Jay Earley from IFS also practices the diamond approach. His article on the relationship between the two is quite a bit different from mine, and mentions some things that I didn't. Apparently his books are primarily focused on IFS as 'therapy', ie goal/problem oriented, whereas the DA is very open-ended. He has worked with some DA students, but generally he keeps IFS and DA separate. Since I have the opportunity, I'm planning to shoot him some questions and see if I can get some clear(er) answers before I rewrite (and yes, I've been slacking).

Today, however, I want to talk about a disturbing trend that I've seen gurgling from the annals of the interwebz. There are a few people who hold 'rationality' as an ideal, and profess that all people should live with 'rationality' as their primary standard. In IFS, you might say they had an over-analytical part, and moreover that they're trying to tell everyone that we should be led by over-analytical parts as well. Speaking 'rationally', though, my bigger complaint is that they often use logic in ways it is not meant to be used, or in ways which are incorrect or not logic at all. At the same time, they have no problem regularly begging for donations for their vaporware projects. There are two main offenders that I'm aware of, Stefan Molyneux of freedomainradio and the folks at lesswrong, who also run the singularity institute and the Center for Applied Rationality. After I've deconstructed them to death, I'll discuss what 'rationality' really is and what it really means.

Stefan Molyneux, 'Universally Preferable Behavior', and 'Real-time Relationships'

Stefan Molyneux is a libertarian activist who has an endless collection of podcasts about libertarianism, austrian economics, psychology, atheism and what he deems 'objective ethics'. While he makes some good points about government, and introduced me to anarcho-capitalism and austrian economics, I can't say that I agree with much else that he says. Several Austrian Economists have pointed out that he has no idea what he's talking about, both in regards to economics (a topic for another time) and to ethics, which is a consistent pattern with most anything he says.

"UPB"

Molyneux's pride, glory, and primary source of income is convincing people that he has discovered something miraculous; a system of 'objective' and 'universal' ethics, which he calls "Universally Preferable Behavior". His definitions of 'objective' and 'universal' are far from standard, however, as is the 'logic' he uses to justify his conclusions.

At first, he acknowledges Hume's observation that you cannot derive an 'ought' from an 'is', and that there is no objective quality of 'better':

As Hume famously pointed out, it is impossible to derive an “ought” from an “is.” What he meant by that was that preference in no way can be axiomatically derived from existence. It is true that a man who never exercises and eats poorly will be unhealthy. Does that mean that he “ought” to exercise and eat well? No. The “ought” is conditional upon the preference. If he wants to be healthy, he ought to exercise and eat well. It is true that if a man does not eat, he will die – we cannot logically derive from that fact a binding principle that he ought to eat. If he wants to live, then he must eat. However, his choice to live or not remains his own.
Similarly, there is no such thing as a universally “better” direction – it all depends upon the preferred destination. If I want to drive to New York from San Francisco, I “ought” to drive east. If I want to drive into the ocean from San Francisco, I “ought” to drive west. Neither “east” nor “west” can be considered universally “better.”
It is true that very few people do drive into the ocean, but that does not mean that it is universally true that nobody ought to drive into the ocean. Principles are not democratic – or, if they are, we once more face the problem of rank subjectivism, and must throw the entire concept of ethics out the window.


 and acknowledges that a theory must be consistent with observed phenomena in order to be considered valid:
If I say that gravity affects matter, it must affect all matter. If even one pebble proves immune to gravity, my theory is in trouble.
and that preferences cannot be objective:
Preferences do not exist objectively within reality.
but then (actually out of order in the book) he contradicts himself, saying:
When I say that some preferences may be objective, I do not mean that all people follow these preferences at all times. If I were to argue that breathing is an objective preference, I could be easily countered by the example of those who commit suicide by hanging themselves. If I were to argue that eating is an objective preference, my argument could be countered with examples of hunger strikes and anorexia.
and makes arbitrary leaps over the is/ought gap:
If you correct me on an error that I have made, you are implicitly accepting the fact that it would be better for me to correct my error. Your preference for me to correct my error is not subjective, but objective, and universal.
Nevermind the fact that he states originally that behavior is what is objective, universal, and to be preferred but here he clearly states that it is the subjective preference which is 'objective and universal'.

And, to finish it off, he 'proves' his theory in his most favorite way of doing so, circular logic (that's a fallacy for those not aware):
  1. The proposition is: the concept “universally preferable behaviour” must be valid.
  2. Arguing against the validity of universally preferable behaviour demonstrates universally preferable behaviour.
  3. Therefore no argument against the validity of universally preferable behaviour can be valid.
 Overall the book is nothing but a bunch of pseudo-logical rhetoric designed to convince overanalytical people that morality is objective and universal. The actual content of the book is nowhere near as organized as my deconstruction of it (which I strained to manage) which makes it much easier to hide all the self-contradiction and blatant fallacy. In spite of its "logical" facade, the actual arguments are predominantly emotional, with very little real logic or reasoning and absolutely zero evidence to support the claims he makes. The rest of the book only goes downhill from what I've mentioned, with false dichotomies and the same fallacies repeated in variations.

RTR

Molyneux's other major work he calls "Real-time Relationships" or RTR for short. In spite of its name, the primary focus of RTR is neither being in the moment, nor mindful awareness of one's feelings. Instead it encourages people to analyze every social interaction they have and to judge whether the other person/people are interacting morally or not.

In spite of the fact that Stefan often refers to IFS, both UPB and RTR make assumptions and recommendations that are in direct contradiction to the theory and teachings of Dick Schwartz. Molyneux often advises people to disown their families and to leave abusive relationships. While I agree that you have no obligations to stay in abusive relationships, he also promotes an attitude of judgment towards everyone (x is a bad/immoral person) and blame especially towards 'bad' parents. He also likes to play therapist, although he has never been trained in IFS or anything else, and obviously shows little comprehension of psychology in general.


Lesswrong, SI and CAR

In contrast to Stefan Molyneux, the folks at lesswrong are techno-socialists. They profess that in a short while we will develop a superhuman AI which will either make human effort completely obsolete or else destroy humanity terminator style. They too promote an absolute standard of 'rationality' which they claim will solve all of humanity's problems. However, the fallacies that plague lesswrong's arguments have some general differences from those of Molyneux. They're also somewhat better organized, which makes it much easier to dissect.

Lesswrong's Bayesian Machine

The cornerstone of lesswrong's 'rationality' is bayesian logic and game theory. In their distorted view of reality, human-level intelligence, and for that matter all truth can be achieved using only these things. They seem to be blissfully ignorant of visually-driven thought experiments, meta-logic, epistemology and ontology. They only vaguely acknowledge that psychology exists, mentioning obscure concepts like 'ugh-zones', which describe a very real aversion to confronting psychological 'burdens', but relegate their importance to the sole fact that they interfere with 'rationality' by producing cognitive bias. Their model is extremely oversimplified, to say the least, and not nearly as useful as they claim it to be.

The Singularity Institute Mugs You

Springboarding off their dramatically oversimplified view of psychology and intelligence, they then take a great leap into fantasy land, predicting that in 50 years we will have a superhuman AI that will either be the ultimate nanny or the terminator. Thus, they claim, we need to start now to develop 'friendly AI' just like in an Isaac Asimov book. Even if you ignore the economic and physical problems with their vaporous theory, and the fact that they aren't actually doing AI research, and the fact that real human intelligence cannot be summarized with bayesian networks, their explanation for how we will achieve this is an insult to anyone with any knowledge of computer science.

Namely, they invoke Moore's Law, claiming that since computing power tends to double every two years or so, that we will necessarily have superintelligent computers just around the corner. Ignoring (and this is a lot of ignoring) the problem that Moore's law is soon doomed to face the reality of the limits of atomic scale, the real problem is that Moore's law does not apply to AI research at all. Yes, desktop computers have become much more powerful since they were first introduced; orders of magnitudes more. However, computers still do basically the same mechanical, deterministic tasks. Computing power does not equal intelligence, so no matter how fast or how complex a desktop computer becomes, it will not become a shred more intelligent, except perhaps by means of very complex software. Software which depends on AI research that they're not doing, and which moves far slower than Moore's law.

In fact, SI doesn't actually do anything at all except self-flagellating and 'brand building' (ie taking people's money). Givewell declined to recommend SI, commenting that they didn't actually accomplish anything, and furthermore that their argument was pascal's mugging. I consider that an accurate assessment.

The Center for Applied Fallacy

As part of their campaign to 'rationalize the world', they split off an extra branch of SI which is aimed at imposing 'rationality training' on unsuspecting layfolk. Through this effort, they hope to brainwash the world into becoming good little 'rational' techno-socialists, ready to accept the blessings of their all-benevolent technological singularity dictator in 50 years. They also have an entrepreneurship program, associated with ycombinator, which has become known for ripping off investors with fraudulent tech startups. The only good thing I can say about it is that, given their general ignorance of psychology and complete lack of charisma, they aren't likely to succeed.

So What Is 'Rationality'?

In NLP, we would call the word 'rationality' a nominalization. A nominalization is a verb, which through the magic of the ambiguity of language has been converted into a noun. The verb from which 'rationality' is derived is 'to reason'. So what does it mean to reason? Put simply, reasoning is the capacity to represent and solve problems without having the actual problem in front of you. Reasoning includes thought experiments, meta-analysis, logic, questioning and hypothesis.

In the past there has been much controversy over whether reasoning or empiricism is more useful for discovering truth, and even whether 'truth' can be known at all (it can't, but that's a topic for another time). Over the past century, however, we've pretty much come to the conclusion that they must be used together (reason + evidence = science) in order to achieve results, and even then there is an uncertain element that requires imagination (ie, coming up with theories that interpret the raw data).

Far from being an ideal to live up to, reasoning is something which requires constant questioning of everything in order to remain useful. It is, at best, combined with evidence under proper conditions in order to come to a better understanding of how things work, and at worst fundamentally limited in accuracy thanks to the map-territory distinction and recursive complexity. While there is a definite place for reason and evidence in discovering truth, there is also far more to life and being human. Both lesswrong and Stefan Molyneux seem to be trying, in contrast, to reduce humans to mere machines.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Consumed by Consumerism

Alright, I've been busy polishing up the "Tao of Psychology" series, making minor corrections, adding clarifications, rewording things and so on. I'm basically happy with it now, so I don't expect to be doing any more editing on that in the future. I had also been contemplating rewriting manifesto and sins, but ultimately I decided they don't need it for the moment. I'll probably end up rewriting them at some point so that they flow better, but it's not a top priority. I'm still far from running out of ideas of things to write, although I feel like I need a short break after writing 'tao'. I've already got ideas for the next few articles, so expect business as usual.

Today I want to talk a bit about consumerism (durr) and how your money disappears on things you don't need. For many people, no matter how much money they make, it always seems like it disappears just as quickly. They like to spend their time 'going shopping', they associate entertainment with spending money, they load up on debt, buy an expensive car, and always need to have the latest toy to show off. They keep "perfect" lawns and then spend more money spraying poisons on those lawns to keep them 'perfect'. These people then end up working till they're 60 if they're lucky, usually at some job they despise, and then 'retire' to a life of vegetation and maybe growing vegetables if they actually have enough money and health by that point to maintain hobbies like gardening.

Those that aren't so lucky end up in a retirement home somewhere where they're ignored and rot until there's nothing left of them (or until the bed sores dig completely through their body). Others will end up working as a greeter at wal-mart until they fall apart. There's a term for this lifestyle; it's called the 'rat race', and even if you win you're still a rat.

Impulse Buying

For most people in the developed world, buying things is a matter of desire. Whatever catches your attention this minute is where your money goes, no real thought goes into how much value you're actually getting for your money. As a result, most of that crap ends up piling up around your house and pretty soon you're throwing expensive things away because you really had no use for them in the first place.

Consider a set of knives, for example. If you buy a set of knives at wal-mart, you end up with a bunch of knives, most of which you have no use for, and all of which are equally dull no matter which way you turn them. For the price you paid, you could have gotten a few good (or at least decent) knives that you would actually use. If you buy a cheap pair of shoes, you end up replacing them within a year, often less. For the price you would pay to replace cheap shoes every year you could buy a nice pair of shoes that would last ten years and be far more comfortable. Then you have garbage like this which works even less well than wal-mart knives.

Most of this stuff will get used once (or at least a good attempt!), or maybe a few times, and then it's off to the landfill, along with the mountains of packaging it all came in. Other stuff may sit around in your drawers and on your counters, maybe to come out for a minute once a year. And this junk is where the majority of your money ends up going.

Rat Food

The rat race wouldn't be complete without genuine rat food. Not coincidentally, a large chunk of where people's money disappears to is the overpriced and nutritionally bankrupt packaged/instant foods, fast foods, and eating out in general. Not only does eating that kind of food relieve you of your hard earned dollars, but it also leaves you feeling like a caged rat. If you ever get the chance to visit a country where the people eat fresh produce as the norm, you can see a huge difference in how the people carry themselves, their general attitudes, and the striking lack of obesity and other problems which are epidemic at least in the US.

Cost wise, it's not even a fair comparison. Just as an example, a TV dinner might cost you $2.50, and feed you for one meal, whereas for $4.00 I can buy a 10lb (4kg) bag of potatoes that I can cook out of for two whole weeks. For the cost of 7 TV dinners (ie one meal a day) I could eat for a whole week, and much healthier at that.

Technological Inferiority

In the modern world, we all assume that technology is making our lives easier, better, and more productive. Is this really true though? With the advent of cars, we can now travel farther in less time than was ever before possible. However, you also have to change the oil and spark plugs ($), get things repaired on it ($$$), buy gas regularly ($$$), have your tires rotated, balanced, aligned and occasionally replaced ($$), potentially clean it and other things like putting air in the tires which are fairly time consuming. Then, on top of that you get to sit in rush hour traffic for hours a day going to and from the city just so you can work to pay for all that.

Then you have cell phones and computers. While they started out as practical business devices, they've since evolved to become (mindless) entertainment centers; expensive, complicated, and with their own associated upkeep costs. Now you have a generation of children who live with their faces glued to a phone, and who are so shallow and mindless that they stand no chance of contributing anything meaningful to the world.

And of course the myriad of plastic gadgets and knick-knacks that you can buy for just $19.95! They'll change your life forever by annoying you for several minutes before you give up on trying to make them work and throw them away.

Life in general has, without question, become more complicated, faster paced and more stressful in modern times because of technology. We were probably better off when the most complicated thing we had was a watermill.

Bad Habits

Habits and hobbies alike can also be a life-sucking money pit. The most popular 'hobby' in the western world today is undoubtedly TV. Even the 'educational' stuff on TV generally isn't, it rots your brain, shortens your lifespan, shortens your attention span, and results in delinquency amongst children, who learn to rely on it for attention and to keep themselves entertained. Additionally, TV is both the platform through which consumerism is indoctrinated in the masses, and one platform by which governments keep their citizens intentionally misinformed.

There are of course other hobbies which are destructive to one's wallet. Shopping for instance, if taken on as an activity and source of entertainment in itself, is the fastest way to see your money disappear. Malls are an epicenter of mindless indulgence and useless junk. Going out to eat, watching movies and taking expensive vacations are equally bad. Drugs or alcohol of course also cost money, and even more so if you drink your alcohol in a club or bar.

There are also hobbies which can save you or even make you money. Gardening, for example. If you're skilled and well-educated on soil systems, you can grow a significant part of the food you would normally have to buy. Not only do you save money, but what you get is fresher, and with good choices of breed and soil management much more flavorful and nutritious as well. Knife sharpening is another, not only is it a very zen sort of activity, but people will pay you to sharpen their knives. You can even make a career of it. Watch, clock or bike repair are also similar. Most of these require some investment in equipment and learning, but can easily pay for themselves. There's a large list of other crafts that fit into this category (soap making, tailoring, etc), your imagination and preferences are the only limits.

Economic Consequences

In order for a market to run efficiently, it is necessary that consumers are well educated about the products they buy, and that they choose quality over junk, given the same or similar price. If consumers will buy any garbage that is sold to them, then garbage is what the economy will gear itself to produce. Likewise, the health of an economy and the wealth of a nation both depend on savings and investment. When the average person buys a house, a car or a college degree using debt rather than saving money, then wealth cannot be built and inevitably decay and poverty will result. An economy which both accumulates debt more than savings and which produces garbage more than things of value is doomed to collapse. Similar catastrophes are bound to occur wherever people act without making the effort to understand the consequences of their actions.

Further Reading

If you want to learn more about how not to be a consumer, and how you can live comfortably for ~$7,000 a year, check out Early Retirement Extreme.

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Tao of Psychology Part 7: A Secular Spirituality

The book "Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert A. Heinlein tells the story of a human boy named Mike who was born and raised on Mars by Martians following the death of his parents and all of the other colonists. When a later mission 'rescues' him and returns him to earth, he is shown to have learned superhuman capabilities from the martians. He can control his breathing, heart rate, muscle growth, and even his sense of time. After struggling for some time to fit in with the other humans, he visits several churches, hoping that the 'old ones' of earth could help him to understand what it means to be human. He finally comes to a realization of the contradictoriness of human nature, which gives him the revelation he needed both to understand his own humanity and to fully understand the teachings of the Martian 'old ones'.

After that, he becomes inspired to start a church in order to teach the people of Earth the things he has learned. He finds that the only way he can do this is by teaching them to speak martian as the human languages completely lack the words needed to describe what he knows. His church becomes very wealthy and prosperous, and several of the other large churches declare him a heretic, sending hoards of angry believers against him. Ultimately, he decides to allow them to have their way, peacefully allowing himself to be martyred to show them the true nature of their hate.

It's often said that the real world is stranger than anything in science fiction, but in this case I'd say they're not too far apart. While humans can't actually make objects disappear into another dimension with our thoughts, or breathe the martian atmosphere (95% CO2, which often freezes), we can learn to control our autonomic functions, our sense of time, and to transcend the artificial limits of personality to find higher meaning in life and reach profound states of awareness. We don't have to learn martian to do it, either. (although Ericksonian language might as well be)

Mr. Ali observed that if parents (or peers or teachers, etc) fail to recognize, mirror and support a child's developing essential nature, the child will dissociate and create self-image parts to protect that nature in whatever way they can. These parts become the story we tell ourselves about ourselves; our 'life story'. By seeing this story objectively for what it is, we can learn to unwrite it, to transcend it and live in the present instead of the past or the future. We can learn to stop our incessant inner 'doing', to center ourselves in being and to transcend the limitations of attachment to the body.

We can do this without invoking gods or ghosts, and without requiring belief in the absence of evidence. Ericksonian Hypnosis can further aid in teaching these things experientially instead of by mere advice or dogma, and to more fully unleash the potential of the human mind both in the inner journey and in living in the world. It is my conviction that this is truly the path which will allow humans to transcend war, prejudice and totalitarianism, and to evolve as a civilization to work towards what is really important and what really does good.

Zen Hypnosis

Recently, while I was digging for free resources on Milton Erickson, I stumbled across uncommon knowledge and their sister sites, uncommon forum and hypnosisdownloads. At first I took little interest in their hypnosis audio, as Erickson commented that no single induction fits perfectly for all people. However, after experiencing a definite effect from a mere text induction (that wasn't directed at me), I decided that it might be worth looking into to see if they had anything that resonated well with the theory I have described. Although it's scattered around randomly, it turns out they have a lot of things which are exactly what I was looking for in terms of converting IFS/DA into a hypnotic format.

Now that I've had the chance to try some of these, I can say more about it. Their inductions suck, so it's bring-your-own-trance. Some of them, particularly the ones Roger Elliot narrates, have very good, very Ericksonian suggestions though, and would be quite useful if you've learned autohypnosis already.

Intro


Harmony with Nature: Unguided visualization to boost inner peace and harmony.

Hypnotic Body Scan Relaxation: Teaches you how to quickly and deeply relax every muscle in your body. An easy way to naturally learn to enter a trance, and extremely useful in general.

Clarity

Know Yourself: Introduces you to the many facets of you.

Cloud Nine: Helps you to have a very zen-like experience, and to connect with your sense of inner harmony.

Mindfulness Meditation Training: Helps you to become more centered in the present, to become more detached from your emotional states, and to gain a wider perspective on things.


These three provide the fundamental skills needed to begin unwinding your personality, and help you to discover a sense of inner calm that underlies all of the chaos you normally experience.

Heart

Strength of Character: Helps you to achieve a deep self honesty, from which your indestructible inner strength and perseverance arise.

Trust Your Instincts: Teaches you to become aware of subtle physiological signals your body sends you, to find and believe in the truth in your heart, and to combine your instincts with your reasoning ability to improve your judgment.

The Meaning of Life: Teaches you to access your inner sense of meaningfulness, and to create greater meaning in your life through it.


These three work synergistically with the last three to amplify the effect of meditation, increase centeredness and awaken your inner guidance.


Intuition

Awaken Intuition: Teaches you to gain access to the subtle and powerful abilities of discrimination of your unconscious.

Learn from Your Mistakes: Become your own best teacher, learn how to learn from your past experience and improve yourself without self-punishment.

Expand Your Comfort Zone: Learn to expand your boundaries gradually, to invite more excitement into your life.

Others' Shoes: Teaches you how to experience what it's like to be another person, and come to understand people better in general.

Misc

Super Senses: (at the bottom) Self-explanatory.



Other Hypnotic Techniques

Recently I found a bunch of related hypnotic techniques through hypnosis.org. Cal Banyan's regression therapy, C. Roy Hunter's parts therapy and spiritual part therapy, ego state therapy and Michelle Beaudry's "Spa of the Inner Mind" unguided imagery and "The Forgiveness Pyramid". From what I understand, connecting with your inner spiritual guidance is a simple and straightforward process, and would be easy to integrate with other techniques.

And that, my friends, is the end of this series. (finally!)

Tao of Psychology Part 6: Erickson Revisited

Surprise! More Milton Erickson :P. In all seriousness, though, in my first article on Erickson, I primarily covered the general character of his therapy and methods. I didn't, however, say much about trance or hypnosis, what those are, how they work and what you can do with them. While I won't be giving any instructions on how to actually induce a trance (ok I lied, sort of), I will be describing what you can do with one, how that relates to what I've been discussing, and some of the latest findings in neuroscience and how that relates to trance.

What is Hypnosis?

While the word 'hypnosis' might bring up images of swinging watches, 'hypnotic gazes' and the like, hypnosis can easily be defined as any communication which causes a change in thinking in another person. Advertisement is hypnosis, teaching is hypnosis, negotiation is hypnosis, even social situations are hypnosis. All of our mental problems can be ascribed to hypnosis, and any successful treatment is also hypnosis.

More specifically, hypnosis affects people on an 'unconscious' level, where responses seem 'automatic', and not voluntary or controlled. "Un-conscious" literally refers to anything that isn't conscious. When you walk down the street, you don't think "ok now left foot go there, now right foot go there, now left foot.." and so on. You just walk, and your unconscious does all the rest. Your unconscious regulates your breathing and immune response, it filters your experience and it performs all the skills you've mastered and no longer need to think about. It also has the reigns on all of those latent mental abilities that you always hear about how we don't use them.

 

Characteristics of Trance

 You can't really talk about 'hypnosis' without also talking about 'trance', although like hypnosis there's a lot of superstition surrounding the phenomenon. Really a trance is just a mental context. When you go to work, you probably put yourself into a 'work trance'. When you 'fly into a rage', you're invoking an 'angry trance'. People who are good at performing or playing music will put themselves into a 'performance trance'. As you might guess, we're in some sort of trance or another all the time.

However, in most of these trances, 'consciousness' is in the foreground; reacting, watching and making the usual fuss. In a 'hypnotic trance', the unconscious is brought to the foreground, which is what makes this sort of trance different and special. It is not, as many hypnotists do their best to convey, a state of 'increased suggestibility'. You do not become a mindless slave or automaton. Rather, you gain more direct access to your more subtle inner machinations, to your imaginative abilities, to your autonomic functions, and to many other abilities that you probably didn't know you had.

There are certain profound differences in awareness that characterize a "trance" as opposed to the normal "waking state". Awareness of 'external reality' is essentially traded for 'internal reality', leading to what is called "rapport", where the person ignores and/or gives no significance to external reality objects. Instead, ideas are given reality, and additionally examined very closely to relevance to the subject as a person. While a person in a trance is very receptive to ideas, they will reject or defeat any ideas which they find objectionable or harmful. It is this very engaged ideation which allows access to various physiological and intellectual capacities. Also, as a result of a limited awareness of reality contexts, a person in a trance may fail to find amusement in things which they normally would in the waking state (like practical jokes).

Outwardly, there are observable differences between someone in a 'hypnotic trance' and someone who is 'normally awake'. Probably the most obvious and profound indicator is that their pupils dilate like satellite dishes. It's almost impossible to miss. They also tend to relax their muscles and take on a sort of spaced-out or stuporous look. Their movements take on a strange rigidity (catelepsy), their attitude becomes more child-like, they lose awareness of most things in reality unless you specifically point them out, and they become very literal in the way they interpret what is said to them (due to the literal interpretation of ideas). Check out the video links at the end of the first Erickson article for examples.

Light vs Deep Trance

 Most hypnotists seem to recognize that there are 'light' and 'deep' trances, and some even add in a 'medium' category, although for reasons I'll explain I don't consider that distinct. Basically, in a 'light' trance, the conscious mind is still 'awake', and can even participate in eliciting and experiencing hypnotic phenomena. In a light trance, you're generally limited to associative phenomena like positive hallucination, although you can also elicit dissociative phenomena in a localized way. For example, you could develop amnesia for your name in a light trance, but if you developed amnesia for the entire experience the trance would automatically 'go deep'. It's really a sliding scale, with fine variation in how far you've 'drifted off', but at some point you really 'zone out', which is called 'deep trance'.

In 'deep' trance, your consciousness has either gone away, or to sleep, or is simply in a state where it is so comfortable that you just don't care about anything. You don't care enough to try to move, or to speak, or to pay attention to anything in reality. In a 'deep' trance, it's possible to elicit all of the associative phenomena with profound lucidity, and to elicit all of the dissociative phenomena like negative hallucination, amnesia and anesthesia in a global way.

Hypnotic Phenomena

There are a number of specific phenomena associated with trance as they are easily identified as unusual and are easy to elicit consistently. There are also many more than I could list, some profound and some subtle, which cover a wide range of experiences and capabilities above and beyond what is well studied. I'll try to give some examples of both to give you a pretty decent overview and an inkling at what sorts of things are possible with hypnotic phenomena.

Some basic phenomena:
  • Ideomotor activity (and automatic writing)
  • Positive hallucination (experiencing something that isn't there in any of the senses)
  • Negative hallucination (not experiencing something that is there)
  • Anesthesia/analgesia
  • Hyperesthesia (amplification of senses)
  • Amnesia
  • Hypermnesia (extreme recall)
  • Time distortion (time seems faster or slower than what the clock says, sometimes extremely so)
  • Control of breathing, heart rate, body temperature, blood pressure, blood flow (to specific areas, has even been used to reduce bleeding during surgery) and immune response (amongst other things)

Erickson also often used hypnosis to awaken people's 'intuition'. He took the position that the unconscious could be aware of more things and process them faster than consciousness can (modern science agrees, more below). He used this to help people improve their performance in sports, to make creative leaps, and went into a trance himself to improve his awareness of his client's state and to allow himself to instantly respond to whatever they did during therapy.

To give a firsthand account of something similar, back in my "pickup" days, I had the opportunity to see someone who was 'in state'. I decided in the moment to see if I couldn't go into a trance to 'copy' that state, and so I defocused my eyes and watched him for a moment; and as he moved and interacted I could see sort of 'swirls' occurring around his elbows and other joints, and soon I felt a strange new feeling arising from my center. This expanded like a flame, and then when I went to walk away it didn't even feel like my body. I moved like he did, almost exactly, and at his pace (which I had to slow down). Later I was making small talk with some customers and it didn't even sound like me (although it wasn't like him either). I was more confident, easygoing and personable than I have ever been; normally I hate making small talk at all.

Of course, that experience didn't last, but it was astounding how I was able to 'absorb' so completely what someone else felt and how they moved. Especially when it was something so alien to my own experience.

There is another case of Erickson's which I think is illustrative. He once had a blind woman come to him because she thought hypnosis might help her see. Having no sense of sight, it was difficult to distract her and limited the kinds of hypnotic phenomena he could elicit. After much effort, he finally managed to get her to manifest arm levitation, and left her only with the suggestion that she would be surprised. Later, she found that she could walk and move easily and smoothly like a sighted person. Being blind all her life, she had built up her senses of hearing and touch over her lifetime which she was able to synthesize so that she could move gracefully without thinking about it.

Posthypnotic Suggestion

By linking a hypnotic suggestion either to a class of experiences or to a future time, it effectively becomes a posthypnotic suggestion. When the trigger for the suggestion is activated, the person goes into a 'posthypnotic trance', during which time they carry out the suggestion. This may persist until the suggestion is fully carried out, or it may only last a moment and then the person wakes up with residual hypnotic phenomena.

Hypnotic Sophistication

To Erickson, unless you intended to purposefully deceive him (and probably even then), he considered you a good subject as a matter of fact. However, he often spoke of a distinction between subjects in terms of "sophistication", which I did not understand for a long time.

In order for a person to carry out a suggestion such as "stay in trance, but act as if you were awake", or "you have an interesting experience, and learn important things", they must first be able to manifest basic hypnotic phenomena such as ideomotor activity and hallucination. The more abstract and complex the suggestion, the more sophisticated the subject must be in order to carry it out.

Autohypnosis

Many of Erickson's first experiences with trance were autohypnotic. You can learn autohypnosis through a posthypnotic suggestion, and/or you can also learn to do it in a 'naturalistic' way which Erickson described. His method was simple: Gather, in your mind, all of the impressions which are relevant to what you want your unconscious to do, focus on them clearly in consciousness, and then set them in the back of your mind for safe keeping, with the knowledge that your unconscious will respond when it has come up with a solution. It may respond like a bolt of lightning out of the blue, or intuitively without you noticing that something has changed, or perhaps in a dream, but you won't know until it does. Of course, sophistication helps, but it isn't necessary to get a good response.

Hypnosis & Neuroscience

While modern neuroscience has found out virtually nothing about trance itself, or hypnosis in general, it has found some fascinating things about representation and memory which are linked to trance phenomena.

It was found that for the primary senses (VAKOG) each could be trained so that you can remember and name more details of things you've seen. Hypnotic games with hallucination and hyperesthesia can achieve the same thing without having to do 'flash card' type work. Nikola Tesla, for example, gained his engineering skill because as a child, he was in such boring and captive circumstances that he found himself drifting off to daydream worlds regularly. Later, when he learned engineering, he figured that because he already had such imaginary prowess that simulating engineering in his head would be easy. Turned out he was right.

They've also found that reaction time can be reduced, regardless of age. This can be trained through martial arts practice, or ironically through first person shooter games like Halo(tm). Posthypnotic suggestions have also been used to aid in improving reaction times.

Previously I mentioned how memory champs use the method of loci to memorize obscenely large bits of information (like 18,000+ digits of pi). The method of loci is a combination of visual representation and anchoring, both skills which can be practiced and improved through hypnosis.

Other experiments have used people as living computers. They showed some subjects pictures of helicopter pads and had them become familiar with what one looked like on a satellite photo. They then hooked the subjects up to an EEG and rapidly flashed many satellite photos in front of them while measuring the output. They found that even though the person wouldn't have any conscious awareness of it, whenever they saw a helicopter pad in a photo their brain would register an 'aha' response, telling the computer to search that frame to find a pad. The photos were cycled fast enough that they could barely see anything at all.

Closing Thoughts

Hypnosis not only offers the possibility of directly teaching the fundamental skills and states needed for inner work, but also the possibility of awakening the latent potential of the human intellect and human action.  It can be used to bypass and break up rigid conscious states, and to achieve rapid change and growth. It's faster and more powerful than meditation, and I almost consider it to be a way of life. Ultimately, it's something you'll have to experience for yourself.

Links


Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Tao of Psychology Part 5: The Diamond Approach

Woah. I posted a few comments yesterday on wikihyp which I also linked back here, and when I went to check my stats later that night I found I had as many views yesterday alone as I have since I started writing this. I'm not sure whether that's actually because there were that many people reading through, or if it was because individual posts were being counted as 'views' when they hadn't been from my previous traffic. Anyway, I was a bit skeptical of Joe at first, but after reading through a bit about what he's doing I find that I agree with the majority of everything he says. He seems to have a very solid grasp of what I consider to be the most important aspects of Erickson's technique and therapy, and puts the ASCH to shame in that regard. Joe and Craig Galvin and James Tripp are all doing awesome stuff, and I highly recommend checking them out. It seems there's an 'underground Ericksonian' movement that's much bigger than I was aware of. Previously, I left off talking a bit about the Diamond Approach and how it helped me to make sense of IFS. Today I want to cover that in some depth and hopefully leave you with a good sense of what it's all about.

Hameed Ali (pen name "AH Almaas") originally studied physics in college, and was working on his PhD when he happened to attend a class by Claudio Naranjo. Claudio had been working on synthesizing psychology and spirituality, which he saw as being one and the same. Mr. Ali had a profound spiritual experience which led him to question if he was really doing something meaningful with his life, and decided from then on that he would study psychology and spirituality.

He worked and studied with Claudio for several years, along with spiritual teachers from Sufism, Taoism, and Buddhism, developing himself spiritually and discovering parts of himself that he didn't even know existed. Shocked that nobody seemed to have an explanation for the things he was experiencing, he began recording his experiences and comparing them with people he worked with. Eventually he came together with a comprehensive theory and practice to explain and reproduce the profound revelations he had, which he called "The Diamond Approach".

EDIT 11/09/13: Since I've had quite a bit of experience with this stuff now, I've decided to edit this to include my own observations. I can now personally confirm the validity of most of the basic concepts within the diamond approach, as well as some things which I observed to be quite different.

 

Fundamental Narcissism

The heart of Mr. Ali's theory revolves around what he terms 'fundamental narcissism'. He realized that most people, including 'normal' people, mostly don't experience reality or themselves as they really are. Instead  they experience their identifications and beliefs about themselves and the world. In the early days of NLP, Richard Bandler often commented to that effect as well. Identifications and beliefs are rigid and "opaque" to the "true self" (as in IFS), which prevents people from experiencing their 'spiritual' nature - all the things we consider good and often idealize such as strength, will, love and compassion.

The sum of these beliefs and identifications make up our 'self-image', which we experience instead of our selves. The self-image can contain elements which we see as being bad, for example a person might say "I'm dumb" or "I'm shy" or "I'm unlovable". It can also contain elements which we are highly attached to and consider vital to who we are; "I'm an American" or "I'm a Christian" or even "I'm smart and good looking". The work in the Diamond Approach focuses on seeing through these fixations in order to reveal true nature or "essence". As the buddha often said, it is our attachments which cause our suffering. "Enlightenment" is merely the process of letting go of these attachments, and "realizing" the aspects of the true self. Seen in this way, "enlightenment" and "self-actualization" are two aspects of the same process.

The same dynamics as IFS apply (although I think Mr. Ali probably recognizes more things as being parts than IFS does) with exiles trying to get attention and managers and firefighters trying to stop them from manifesting. Mr. Ali also emphasizes that, whenever a part is being experienced internally we also project aspects of parts onto the world outside. Sometimes we project our parents onto other people, either by idealizing (projecting essence onto others) or re-enacting abuse, and sometimes we project an inner child onto someone else and act out the part of the parent (although both roles are played by inner children). Projection also occurs more subtly in the way we define our everyday reality; for example if you think of a spoon as "a small metal shovel used for transporting food to your mouth", you won't be able to experience the spoon as it really is in your hand in the moment. Words and analytical ideas are unable to capture even such a mundane experience.

The 'self-image' is said to often be experienced as an entity many times in therapy. It always appears as a sort of 'coating' or 'shell', blocking the person from the world, although the form changes each time it is encountered. It's often hard, sticky, or heavy, and at the highest levels, it's seen 'directly' as a sticky fluid that 'screens out' reality and prevents it from being seen clearly.

In my experience, the personality usually appears as a sort of barrier which clouds my thoughts. At first it appeared hard and solid, very much like running into a brick wall. After dealing with many issues, getting knocked down and then recovering and getting back into things, it now feels more like a cloud of silly putty, thick and sticky. In all cases it has a character of unpleasantness, which I can only describe as being filthy and disgusting. It usually appears when I've had enough experience with an issue that I become fully aware of it.

Holes and Space

In his own work and in his work with other people, Mr. Ali noticed that once he managed to work through the defensive emotions, he often came across an experience which is described as being like an inner "black hole". A sort of deficient emptiness, a lacking, which when approached would bring on intense fear and disorientation. It was like if you 'fell in', you'd get lost down a bottomless pit mario style. This was also a recurring experience in therapy, each person inevitably had many of these which might appear in different places in the body, and they all seemed to mark the 'center' of a given cluster of issues.

He found that if the fear surrounding these 'holes' was dealt with, the hole itself would become less threatening. There might still be some disorientation, but mostly it just became a calm emptiness. When clients focused on this emptiness, reliably it would transform itself, becoming a spaciousness which began to expand until it became boundless. Sometimes this 'space' would be clear and open, sometimes it was full of presence, and sometimes it was more black and void-like. In every case, however, after the space had fully expanded, a profound state of the 'true self' would then emerge from it, revealing the source of the sense of lacking.

Once that point had been reached, the cluster of parts involved became 'fully understood' and no longer reappears. He also found that, following each such experience, the person would gain a subjective sense of having "more time" and having "more space", and over time they would gain an increasing 'general faith' in life which begets a realistically optimistic attitude.

He also mentions that most therapists stop before reaching that point. The fear and disorientation of the 'holes' tend to discourage them from trying. In 'self therapy', they even mention the phenomena, saying 'it's like there's nothing there, an emptiness where my self is supposed to be'. Because they avoid or miss the experience, the self never materializes (or at least not completely).

In my own experience, "holes" have usually always been associated with either fear, anger, jealousy and other personal emotional conflicts. The very issues which modern society would have us believe we should "compromise" on tend to be those most important to actually fight about. Furthermore, unlike Mr. Almaas's account, I find it rare to ever deal with a hole without a great deal of trauma and catharsis in the process, and other times I experienced essence without any particular "hole" identified with it. In general, "understanding" a hole for me has meant understanding the absurd limiting beliefs I had and acknowledging them.

 

The Aspects of the True Self

 One of the strongest aspects of the diamond approach is the extensive discrimination and description of the aspects of the 'self'. I have now had personal experience with most every aspect which Mr. Almaas described, and can relate them to their significance and to how I came to experience each.

Mr. Ali notes that the parts of the self-image are in imitation of the aspects of the true self which they ironically suppress. Anger mimics strength, compulsion and effort mimics will, neediness mimics love, pity and empathy mimic compassion and so on. The imitations never achieve the glory or the effectiveness of the real thing, however.
  • Strength

    Strength is warm, firey and energetic. Strength supports movement and action, and is the primary focus of Tummo. Strength is revealed by deciding on an action and taking it, even when it requires fighting against your worst fears, and by fighting against any imbalanced emotional exchange you come against. You could say it's developed by the practice of walking off of (emotional) cliffs.
  • Will

    Will is solid, supportive, secure and radiates certainty sort of like an inner mountain. Will also supports action, providing the steadfastness required to persist, and allowing you to act without efforting or nagging yourself. Will is also inextricably related to sexuality and sexual security. In the 'natural' school of 'pick up', will is referred to only as 'state', and Milton Erickson's 'anticipated response' drew heavily on will. Will, like strength, is gained through emotional "fighting", but comes through finding enjoyment in things that you are proud of, in spite of possible judgment from others. Will is also the antithesis of spoiled, bratty behavior, and can be used like an emotional demolition tool against such behavior.
  • Love

    Love is a warm, smooth melting feeling, like an embrace of liquid gold. This is, of course, what most people attempt to experience through a relationship. Usually, the need for the other person to provide that experience causes tensions which ultimately destroy the relationship. Nonetheless, most issues around love will require another person as an object of that love in order to clarify them, and issues surrounding any aspect of essence will tend to affect your perception of love first and foremost. I only experienced love after first having experienced strength (in a fight revolving around love), and thanks to the admiration of certain sweet persons who helped me out when I needed it.
  • Compassion

    Compassion is a gentle, healing energy which makes pain easier to bear. Note that it doesn't make pain 'go away', nor does it do anything to try to. Instead, it helps you to 'stick with it' until the pain is healed. For me, compassion arose very easily when I did not expect it, simply acknowledging that I was attacking myself was sufficient.
  • Joy

    Joy is light, warm and energetic. Joy also includes the experience of curiosity and engagement, ie 'being in the zone'.
  • Peace

    Peace is empty, clear, silent, and well, peaceful. Peace allows you to 'cut through the noise' to get to the heart of things. I first experienced peace through practicing mindfulness meditation.
  • Value

    Value is royal, noble and holy. Value is a matter of feeling important, as though your existence is valid and meaningful, and was one of the most traumatic issues to work through.
  • Nourishment

    Nourishment is the experience of being filled with wholesomeness, literally as if you were drinking it. Nourishment is the only aspect of essence directly tied to the enjoyment of food, you could say it's literal 'chicken soup for the soul'.
  • Awareness

    Awareness is a clarity, developed by continuing to look and listen to everything that is said and done, even when it's unpleasant or scary, and responding to what is actually there. Conscious awareness begets greater awareness, and is a necessary practice for clarifying essence.
  • Knowingness

    Knowingness starts with acknowledging that there are things that you don't know. Until you acknowledge that you don't know something, you cannot begin to investigate it and find out. Knowingness is also developed by acknowledging that there are things that you know but don't know that you know (perhaps because you don't want to).
  • Brilliance

    Brilliance is something like a cross between a lightning bolt and liquid sunlight. Mr. Ali mentions that people often mistake it for god because it is so glorious, and it provides a liquid-like ability to seep through experience and reveal inner truth as though it were transparent. Brilliance is the source of major "aha!" moments where the common threads of different ideas come together. Most of my experience with brilliance has been indirect, I only realize after the fact that I've somehow outsmarted myself.
  • Personal Essence

    Personal essence is sort of the 'center' which integrates all of the aspects of the true self into a whole person. It adds a 'personal' character to all the aspects as this happens.
  • The Essential Self

    Also called 'the point'. It is like an infinitely small, but very bright point of pure beingness. It is like an individual, personal version of the absolute, and has a characteristic of indestructibility to it, too small to cut, too short lived to kill, and shining without light. I experienced this spontaneously shortly after strength and love.

You might notice that (some of) these sound familiar. They're the very traits which society venerates under various names: "courage", "kindness", and of course the #1 most cliche of all, 'love'. I don't believe that there is any coincidence that across a variety of cultures and religions around the world, the same basic values turn up consistently. Likewise, certain activities, whether they pay well or not, often become a 'calling' for people simply because they embody these characteristics in a physical form. On the other hand, there are careers such as being an advertising executive which no one would claim has any deep meaning. We even have words like "deep" and "shallow" which we use to describe them.

 The Process of Inquiry

The actual practice of the Diamond Approach incorporates elements of Object Relations Therapy and the Feldenkrais Method, although both have been modified to fit the DA framework. The primary practice of inner work is referred to as 'inquiry', and involves being mindful of your emotions while keeping an open and curious attitude towards them. By directing that open curiosity towards your emotions, and questioning them (even if it's just the attitude of a question) until they're fully understood, you work through your parts and reveal the 'holes', ultimately revealing the self. Feldenkrais is used often when a person gets 'stuck', or when the teacher notices tension in the student that they aren't aware of.

Mr. Ali does recognize the sort of paradox that occurs where, in order to work with parts and free the self, the aspects of the true self are necessary first. In IFS, this is explicitly recognized and managed by getting the parts to 'back off' so that the true self can be temporarily revealed and do the work. In DA, however, he only vaguely recognizes that sometimes the student is 'in sync' and work can happen, and when they take 'the wrong attitude', that they won't be able to get anywhere. He kind of runs around in circles with it, but never reaches a solid conclusion of how to get 'in sync' with any consistency. He also recommends using anger to access strength and to force your way through inner defenses, which causes many problems and has limited success.

There is another aspect of inquiry that has to do with giving things up. As Jesus (supposedly) said in the Bible, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs in the kingdom of heaven". In the process of revealing the self, you end up giving up your identity, your beliefs, your parents, your conceptions of reality, even the solid ground you think you're standing on. In contrast, the aspects of the self are fickle, fluid, ephemeral and constantly shifting. They offer nothing to grasp onto, and disappear into thin air if you try to fix them into place and build an identity from them. As the buddha pointed out, it is our attachments that stand between us and enlightenment.

The Three Stages of "The Journey"

Mr. Ali uses the metaphor of a journey to describe the process of self-realization. In this journey, the soul is both the guide and the destination. He recognizes three main 'phases' of this journey, each with its own unique focus and revelations.

 The First Phase

 During the first phase, a person basically has little or no access to their self. Most of the focus of this phase is learning to access the self and free some of the aspects of it in their basic form. At this point, the self is experienced as bits of greatness here and there scattered within a sea of parts.

The Second Phase

After the first phase, students now have much greater access to the basic aspects of the self. This makes the work much easier and allows it to proceed more quickly; simply becoming aware of a part is enough to heal it very quickly. However, the parts become more subtle and difficult to detect. They try to cling to the newly revealed self and its aspects, and become possessive of them.

In the second phase, working through parts does not usually reveal new aspects. Instead the aspects are transformed into a purer manifestation. While most people have heard of 'unconditional love', here it is revealed that strength, will, compassion and so on can also become unconditional. "Unconditional" in this sense does not mean for me, all the time, without me having to do anything. That is the egoic idea of 'unconditional'. In this sense, 'unconditional' means the intrinsic nature of everything and everyone, everywhere, always. The experience of unconditional aspects is clearer, brighter, and more profound, and you begin to see the character of those aspects reflected in each other as well. Mr. Ali calls these "diamond essences"; ie "diamond strength" "diamond will" and so on, however I find this to be a bit gimmicky and confusing. The second phase is also usually when the aspect of brilliance is revealed.

Towards the end of the second phase, you begin to see that parts are actually manifestations of the self as well. It is as though the self was an infinite ocean, and parts are like individual waves. This is something which can't be experienced when parts make up the majority of conscious attention. At the end of the second phase, once all the aspects have been 'upgraded' to their unconditional forms, this culminates in the 'supreme self'. The "supreme self" is the highest experience which has the attribute of being 'personal' or individuated. All higher aspects are 'universal' and impersonal by comparison.

The Third Phase

The third phase is quite different from the other two. There is no longer anything to do with the primary aspects of the self, and instead the focus is on the very act of conceptualizing. The experience of you knee, for instance, without the concept of 'knee' and 'location', becomes formless and dimensionless. The same could be said for holding a spoon, feeling the 'coldness' and so on, or in regards to people who you feel 'familiar' with and have a stable of idea of who you think they are and how they should act. When these things are experienced as an experience in and of itself, they lose their stable familiarity and become new and wondrous, and you become explicitly aware of their nature as thought.

He offers an interesting meta-exercise related to this. In the exercise, you pay attention to your experience, and notice what you think of as 'self'. If you can point to it or name it, you know it isn't the self (including the body), since then what is it that's doing the pointing or naming? The self includes those things, but because it includes them it must also be greater. As you strip away and include all the things that aren't self, you find yourself in more inclusive, more expansive states until you include everything and everything is seen as thought; timeless, dimensionless and formless.

It is in the third phase that you experience a direct connection to the universe, including it and manifesting from the same contiguous 'stuff'. You no longer feel bounded by the limits of your body; that is not where you end or all that you include. The states of the third phase tend to transcend concepts, and include universal consciousness, pure being, absence, non-conceptual awareness and the supreme ultimate (known as "taiji" in taoism). The "supreme ultimate" in particular is a non-conceptual experience of reality in which you experience your (selfless) self as an observer of this reality. Attempting to introspect at this point results in looking back outwards, as if there is nowhere further 'back' that you can go, and inside and out are one.

The Source

 At the end of the journey, upon casting away everything that is left of you, you find The Source, although it sometimes manifests earlier than this. The Source is described as being the ultimate unmanifest, like pure unknowable mystery and wonder. Once The Source has been experienced and recognized, you start to see it in everything. It's as though everything you see manifesting is the 'front' of the universe, and The Source is the back. Everything seems less real, less substantial and transparent, with 'the light of the void' shining through. It's kind of like the universe is a movie; lights dancing on a non-existant screen. The light has no real substance, and when you try to see the 'back' of the pictures it makes there is nothing.

Mr. Ali notes that people who reach the 'ultimate' level of attainment generally shift between the supreme self, the supreme ultimate, and the void. This is automatic, and whatever aspect of the supreme self or whatever level of awareness is most appropriate for the situation is what manifests at that time.

Shortcomings

 While the Diamond Approach is quite advanced in some ways, it has several features which are less than attractive. Mr. Ali has some serious guru-itis, and through his books he beats you over the head with 'my way is the only way', 'you have to stick with the spiritual practice forever' and 'you need to fully dedicate yourself to finding (my) truth'.

While some of the methods he uses (like feldenkrais) are interesting and effective, many of them are not. I already mentioned the problems with 'inquiry' relative to IFS, although the generally non-verbal approach in inquiry is very interesting.

The Diamond approach also includes a lot of small group and large group meetings. While I can appreciate the possible value of a small group session, I don't see the value in anything they do in the large group meetings, especially given what they usually do there. In this video you can see Mr. Ali spout some random irrelevant gibberish about love, followed by 5 minutes or so of clicking his prayer beads, as though he's said something so awesomely profound that it deserves 5 whole minutes of meditation to understand it. Compared to that idea of 'meditation', Ericksonian hypnosis is orders of magnitude more effective and engaging.

Speaking of effectiveness, the Diamond Approach seems to have very little overall, at least in terms of consistency. He expects a 7 year commitment in his organization (the Ridwan School, sounds like jedi to me) before most people reach a high level of attainment. On the plus side, that's the requirement for becoming an instructor in the school, which ensures thorough training and development amongst their teachers. Overall, the organization is rather cult-like, and they arrogantly tout their methods as best without experimenting with other possible approaches. He readily admits that most people who enter the school drop out before reaching a high level of attainment, and considers that to be the students' problem rather than something for the organization itself to improve upon.

Closing Thoughts

Mr. Ali had a fascinating parable which he relates to the attitude people tend to take towards 'therapy'. It goes something like this:
One day an elephant came to see the great shah, looking very troubled indeed. He said to the shah, "Oh great shah, I can't understand it at all. I can't seem to eat the right mosquito foods, they make me feel sick. I can't find a suitable mosquito mate. I can't do the right mosquito things. I'm just not a good enough mosquito, can you help me?" and the shah said "I would be happy to help you, but you're not a mosquito at all". The elephant, however, was quite skeptical. He pointed his trunk and said "Look at my long, pointy nose! What besides a mosquito has such a nose?" then he flapped his ears and said "See? What else besides a mosquito has such flappy wings?". The shah replied, "Well, perhaps you're a bird. If the food of a mosquito makes you ill, perhaps you should try the food of a bird to see if it fits." The elephant sat thoughtfully, and then said "Alright, I'll do as you suggest, and try some bird food to see if that doesn't fit better."
 So too with clients. They come in wanting all their mosquito problems solved, ie they want an even better, grander self-image, when all along they are truly elephants, the true self, which is something completely different.

I hope these articles have been both revealing and inspiring to at least some of the people who read them. I still have a bit more that I want to write on this subject before I put it down, but for now what that will be about is a secret :).

Update

I just found out that Jay Early (who's interpretation of IFS I heavily critiqued) originally practiced the diamond approach (and still does). Life is full of surprises. I had previously thought there had been no contact between the two, but it seems I was mistaken.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Tao of Psychology Part 4: Internal Family Systems Therapy

In part 3, I left off by saying that I had found Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy to be the answer, or at least half of the answer to the question of unifying NLP and making sense of Erickson's work and near-death experiences. Superficially, IFS is similar to the work of Virginia Satir, one of the founders of Family Therapy. Satir had what was later known as "Satir Categories", a characterization of different "parts" or personality types which people typically presented in therapy and daily life. Her work focused on recognizing and comforting these inner 'parts' to alleviate the rigid behavior they produced. She was known for having "parts parties" often involving the whole family to that end.

IFS: The Beginnings

Back in the 1980s, Dr. Richard Schwartz began working on his first major psychological study, involving bulemia. At the time he was well aware of NLP and Erickson's work, however he didn't practice either. He was also aware of Virginia Satir's work, although he considered it too "lovey dovey".

As he worked with clients in the study, he found that many of them described having inner "parts" which were like autonomous personalities. By working with these parts he found that when they released control, the client usually knew what to do in order to heal the parts with little or no help from him. Over time he noticed that not only did inner parts tend to take on similar roles between different people, but ultimately they all turned out to be 'inner children'.

Protectors and Exiles

Dr. Schwartz noted that parts typically took on common roles, which tend to interact in clusters. At the center of each cluster is what he calls an 'exile', a part which carries a burden of rejection, abandonment or loss which the person cannot (or could not as a child) handle. Exiles often want recognition, but other parts do their best to prevent the exiles from emerging due to their tendency to cause problems and overwhelm.

The protectors spend most of their effort either trying to prevent exiles from emerging (managers) or trying to quiet them down and get them to go away after they emerge (firefighters). Managers can be angry, or cause the person to work obsessively, or be judgmental or pessimistic. Firefighters tend to manifest more in terms of self-destructive behaviors like binge eating or drug abuse, by which they attempt to fill the 'hole' of the exiles' trauma to suppress them before they do any serious damage.

All of the parts ultimately have good intentions; the exiles usually just want to be understood, while the protectors try to protect the person against the harmful tendencies and overwhelm of the exiles. They may occasionally superficially show a desire to hurt the person in extreme cases, but even then it's always for a protective reason (ie: "I want her to die".. "because the pain is unbearable").

The Self

When parts are active, they tend to 'take over' the person's consciousness; the person believes they are the part, often even building an identity around the part which they consider important to who they are. However, in working with parts, Dr. Schwartz found he could get them to 'step back' and give up control, naturally by asking politely. When this happens, assuming there are no other parts in the way, he noticed that people's attitudes changed dramatically. They became calm, confident, and compassionate towards parts which they might have hated just moments before. His clients described it as 'not like a part', and 'just being myself', connected with the experience of clarity, confidence and lightness.

Dr. Schwartz began calling this the 'true self', or just 'the self', to differentiate it from the parts. He found that in therapy, it was the client's self which ultimately did the therapy and healed the parts. He also found that for therapy to be successful, the therapist also had to be able to stay in their self, as only through the self can the therapist provide support, compassion, and clarity to help the client work through their traumas.

As he worked more with IFS, and so too with his clients, he found that the parts would block, or be opaque to, the self. The self is vulnerable, and if a person experiences a trauma before their self is fully developed that remains unresolved, then the self is unable to cope and splits into 'parts' in order to try to protect the self from further trauma. When the self is fully developed, as in a psychologically 'adult' person, then the vulnerability is not an issue since it is supported by the strength and other aspects of the self. As parts are healed, they become more transparent to the self, which then becomes more dominant in the personality.

The self is described as a sense of boundlessness, deep connection with the universe and a loss of identity as a separate being. People who are 'self-led' show a distinct passion for life and contributing to the world, they need no moral or legal codes to do the 'right thing'. Dr. Schwartz seems to recognize this as being a spiritual state, although I think there was some resistance to accepting that, and still is amongst certain practitioners.

Healing Parts

The general process for healing parts is fairly straightforward, although there are minor variations and the various forms the process may take are multitude.

Getting parts to 'step back'

The first and most vital step in dealing with parts is to identify them and get them to unmerge from the self. This generally requires recognizing their protective intentions, and reassuring them that they are in a safe environment. Once the self has been uncovered, it's often helpful to let them 'take a break' and 'get some space' from the parts for a minute.

Unburdening

Once the self has been uncovered and given a chance to settle, work turns to the exile at hand. First time is spent simply paying attention to the parts and noticing how the person feels toward them. Usually the self knows what to do already, and will manifest curiosity, compassion, love, courage or whatever else is required. During this interaction, the part usually reveals what experiences, emotions etc it has been holding, which relieves the part from the burdens which made it extreme. It is through this process that the part becomes understood.

Retrieving the part from the past

Dr. Schwartz noticed that even after parts had been unburdened, they often retained their extreme behaviors and persisted. Many of the parts seemed to be 'stuck in the past'; ie within some old memory from which they originated. He theorized that if he had them bring the parts out of the 'past' and into the present, then the parts would be able to 'grow up' (since they're inner children). Often the exiles are placed in the care of other parts after retrieval.

Reassigning Protectors

After an exile has been healed, the protectors which previously protected it are either allowed to go on 'vacation', or else they are asked if there's more useful work that they would like to do.

Polarized Parts

Often times protector parts will have opposing goals or openly dislike each other. This creates inner conflicts which create emotional turmoil above and beyond the original traumas. In instances where this occurs, the inner conflict must be mediated before the exiles those protectors are protecting can be dealt with.


Shortcomings

While IFS is definitely a powerful framework, there are some shortcomings to the theory and practice, some major and some minor. I think it's worthwhile to mention that IFS is extremely flexible, and IFS practitioners are encouraged to allow their clients to determine how therapy is done. There are many different opinions by different people on the theory, and likewise there will be differences between the styles used by different practitioners, even between different clients. Here I'll be mainly focusing on Jay Earley's interpretation, since his books are probably the most well known which deal directly with the practice itself. Not everything I mention is exclusive to Jay's work, though, and is more general to IFS as a field.

Poorly defined Self

The self, its nature, and its characteristics are one of the most poorly studied areas of IFS. Some practitioners consider it to be just another part, others see it as being distinct and having spiritual significance. I think the spiritual view has become more dominant overall in recent times, however. Either way, the self is viewed as having a central and important role in therapy and health, but their understanding of the self is not proportionate to its importance.

Imagining parts adds extraneous content

In Dr. Earley's account, which I think is typical, clients are encouraged to visualize their parts. In further interactions, the clients then interact imaginatively with them, hugging, coddling, holding hands with and similar with the parts. There are a few problems I've found with this, first and foremost that parts often are not clearly separable. Adding representations to something tends to solidify it that way, whether it was an accurate representation or not. It also distracts the client from paying attention to their emotions and how they actually feel in any given moment (what buddhists would call 'developing awareness'). Lastly, it encourages the client to become attached to the part as they know it, which discourages them from questioning further and discovering the true nature of their parts. This inevitably leads to becoming an 'internal babysitter'.


Retrieving parts doesn't work

In one of Dr. Earley's books, he relates a story about a client who had worked with a certain part, unburdened it, brought it into the present, and then he later talks about how the part came back and manifested its usual behaviors even after that complete process. That case stuck out like a sore thumb to me. I think the rest of the process before that point is basically spot on, and IFS definitely achieves some solid improvements, but bringing parts out of the past was a blind guess from the beginning. I see a distinct danger in that without completely resolving the parts, instead of 'growing up', the Self ends up becoming something like a babysitter for them (that thought scares me anyway). This was also what led me to look for answers as to what does work in order to complete the process.

I found out through studying modern hypnosis that negative emotions are not only connected to one event, but often to others as well. The Initial Sensitizing Event (ISE) is the first instance where a negative emotion/negative beliefs occur, with additional Subsequent Sensitizing Events reinforcing them afterwards. To get a part to 'grow up' and become integrated, not only do you need to release the negative emotions from all of those memories, but you also need to replace them with deep personal truths. Without using hypnosis, IFS is very limited in this capacity.


Asking the person what parts they would like to work with is counterproductive

Dr. Earley suggests in one of his books that the client should pay attention to whatever parts turn up during the week, try to identify them, and then work on them when they go in to therapy. I see this as an unintended hypnotic suggestion that go something like this:
Hey part, what other parts have been pissing you off this week?
 Which already sends the session into a parts-led fiasco from the start. It's also impossible to work on a part that isn't immediately manifesting during the therapy session. Sometimes it's possible to elicit a part through recall, but often it isn't. My opinion is that most people are manifesting parts most of the time anyway, and if the therapist is manifesting Self, then even if the client isn't manifesting parts when they walk in, interacting with the therapist will more than likely elicit some parts with no trouble. It is much better to start by asking where you are right now rather than where you were or where you may want to be.

Alternatively, you can ask the unconscious to produce a relevant feeling or part in trance, which is very reliable.


Reassignment of parts is unnecessary

Milton Erickson achieved legendary results and only used reassignment in a minority of cases, and even then his usage was distinctly different (in his case reassignment would be the main intervention). In NLP they use reassignment in the "Six Step Reframing Process", but it isn't very effective. In the next article, you can see that the Diamond Approach does not employ reassignment. My thinking is that if the original exile is really completely healed, then no reassignment should be necessary since the other parts will literally have nothing to do if the exile is 'gone'.

Closing Thoughts

Overall I thought IFS brought some important techniques and distinctions to the table in a way that is clearer and more straightforward than most other approaches. I should like to point out that IFS bears a structural resemblance to object relations therapy, Virginia Satir's method, Eckhart Tolle's description of "pain bodies", the Diamond Approach (which draws heavily on object relations), self therapy, ego states therapy, voice dialogue, inner child work and probably numerous other "parts therapies".  I don't believe it is any coincidence that so many different unrelated people from different and sometimes unrelated backgrounds (Eckhart Tolle has no background in psychology at all) have come to such similar conclusions.

After reading through the IFS books, I was left with more questions than answers, and I wasn't certain that I would be able to find answers to those questions at all. None of the other schools of psychology that I knew of was even as advanced as what they were doing with IFS, but some of the things I had read in "Conversations with God" hinted that perhaps somewhere in the myriad of books on spirituality I might find the missing pieces I was looking for. Someone had suggested a book about some guy claiming to be enlightened (and his dog), but the reviews on amazon had been less than spectacular and I passed it over figuring it would just be more woo-woo positive thinking nonsense. I decided from that to dig by reviews and see if anything stood out. I checked out Deepak Chopra, who I'd vaguely heard of before, but the reviews didn't inspire me to investigate him any further (I've since been informed that my decision was correct).

I stumbled across one review, however, that made mention that someone by the name "AH Almaas" had a much clearer theory of spirituality, so I decided to check that out and see if it was really worth looking into. I saw by skimming that he talked a lot about 'synthesizing psychology and spirituality' which sounded exactly like what I was looking for, and the reviews were solid on top of that so I decided to shell out and see for myself what he was on about. What I did not expect is that he would answer all the questions I had about IFS...

Links:
The Center for Self Leadership (IFS headquarters website, lots of free articles and stuff, also therapist and trainer directories)

Monday, November 19, 2012

Tao of Psychology Part 3: Near Death Experiences

First, some housekeeping stuff. I mostly rewrote "The Sins of Society" and changed "Society" to "Civilization". After I started writing some real articles, it occurred to me that my original list was lacking in many ways, so I completely reorganized it. I've also added a quote to the article on Milton Erickson, as well as some relevant links (and some pdfs) for several articles. I'll probably end up re-writing a lot of things later, or at least do some editing.

Previously I mentioned that I had decided to do some further study into near-death experiences (or NDE for short) in search of the 'holy grail of NLP' that so many have failed to find, or at least some clues that might point the way. NDEs turned out to be a fascinating subject. Although not everyone who has a "close call" with death necessarily has an NDE, those who do report similar experiences regardless of religious orientation or ethnic background. Themes of NDEs also appear in religious texts from around the world, including the Bible and the Tibetan Book of the Dead. This strongly suggested a common psychological grounding in the experience and the results of those experiences.

What is an NDE?

While there is no precise definition for what an NDE is (in fact some people have them without having a 'close call' experience at all), there are several common features of the experience which distinguish NDEs from other more common psychological states. NDEers (people who have had an NDE) often report having communicated with a 'higher being' of some sort, who acts as a supportive guide during the experience. They also frequently report having a "life review" (ie "your life flashed before your eyes") guided by the 'higher being(s)'. Finally, most NDEers show clear evidence of profound psychological change. After the experience, they find themselves more optimistic, more connected to the universe, and that their interests change in particular ways. Not only do they change, but in studying NDEers it was found that their positive attitude towards life was contagious; people who spent lots of time around NDEers became like them.

Spirit Guides

One common theme in NDEs is the appearance of 'spirit guides', often described as 'higher beings' with which the NDEer is able to communicate telepathically. Spirit guides appear in a multitude of different forms largely depending on what a given person expects or would find acceptable. Sometimes they appear as an animal, sometimes as a bearded old man, sometimes as a familiar person. Often there is only one spirit guide, but sometimes there are many. Almost always, the spirit guide is described as displaying 'supernatural colors' either in their eyes, or their clothes, or perhaps in the environment in which they appear. Sometimes the spirit guide is never seen at all, just heard. In every case, though, the spirit guide(s) acts as support and helps the person to understand what they are experiencing.

The Life Review

Probably the most well known feature of an NDE is the life review, described as "your life flashing before your eyes". There is much more to it than that, however. Sometimes it's more like a movie showing one thing at a time. Sometimes the events of the person's life are scattered in front of them like an ethereal picture gallery. Sometimes they see their life as a timeline from left to right. Sometimes their entire lifetime presents as a single moment.

In all cases though, they experience their whole life, in the first person and from the first person perspectives of everyone they've ever had contact with, as well as from a third, 'omniscient' perspective. They relive every pain, every joy, every confusion, as well as those of everyone else they've ever met. They see, nay, experience directly, the consequences of everything they have ever done. A spirit guide (or guides) usually acts as support during this process to help the person tolerate the experience and to understand it better. Everyone who has experienced the life review reports that what they saw as most important in the life review were what they would normally have considered unimportant, or hardly even remembered. The smallest look or gesture, the smallest act of kindness or the smallest dismissal. These are shown to be what is truly meaningful.

Although the Bible accounts that you are judged at the time of death, it is not the spirit guide nor any god which 'judges' you. The sort of blaming 'judgment' preached by religion and which you find in courts of law does not occur at all. Instead, you are the judge of your own life, not to judge as 'good' or 'bad', but rather to see how your life as lived versus what was actually possible. You are made to understand fully, and to decide if the life you lived was true to yourself.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead mentions this as being a glimpse of enlightenment, in which the person is finally able to see the truth, for the first time for anyone who does not achieve enlightenment in life. Often at the end of the experience, the NDEer experiences their connection with the universe, which they describe as 'everything being made of love' or that everything is love in its very substance. The life review is probably the most profound experience associated with NDEs in addition to being the most well known. Those who live to speak of the experience report a much greater appreciation for life in general.

Changes in NDEers

Besides becoming more optimistic and gaining greater appreciation for life, NDEers also report changes in their interests in general. They tend to focus more on work they consider meaningful and to lose interest in money, getting laid, or other materialistic or self-serving ends. They lose interest in fiction (except perhaps for masterworks) and gain more interest in non-fiction, especially when it contributes to their work. They also virtually always become interested in helping others in some way, or benefiting humanity and living things in general.

NDE-equivalent Experiences

As I mentioned before, not all people who have an NDE are near death. Generally, however, they only occur during either serious physical or emotional distress. Eckhart Tolle, for example, had an NDE-equivalent experience during an episode of extreme depression, following which he spent a year on a park bench admiring the wonder of life before becoming a spiritual teacher. He reports a deep connection to "The Void", and his theory of psychology also mirrors some others that I'll be discussing in the next two articles.

The author of "The Shack" was suffering from guilt and loss of his daughter who had been kidnapped and murdered. He went back to the shack in the woods where she had been killed years afterwards, had an NDE-equiv in which he saw "god" as a black woman (who was referred to as "Papa"), the 'holy ghost' as an ephemeral woman with a supernatural-colored shifting garment, and Jesus, who was more 'normal' and relatable. They ultimately led him to closure and a greater appreciation for life.

Neale Donald Walsch, author of the "Conversations with God" series, had a more mundane existential crisis, during which he found himself involuntarily writing responses to his questions. The mystery source of his writing identified itself as "God" and of course led to writing all those books. His revelations in that process were obviously a part of his own psyche, but they resonate strongly with other NDE experiences and represent probably the most extensive record of an NDE yet recorded.

Milton Erickson and NDEs

Milton Erickson himself had an NDE, due to a case of poliomyelitis which he contracted when he was 18. Incidentally it was also his first profound experience with trance, and probably influenced his methods of therapy and his view of life. A few of Erickson's cases also displayed NDE-like experiences during trance.

One that I can remember vividly was a woman who met a 'spirit guide' animal (in the form of a peacock) which she described as being of 'supernatural colors', and then later she 'went diving' into an ocean where she dug up 'treasures' and brought them back to shore. Apparently her whole body "shimmered" during the entire experience, although she was rather unusual in general. Erickson also reported that many of his students who worked with him for a long time described going to "The Void" at one point or another and having an experience of profound peace which carried over afterwards.

Many NDEs, and especially the NDE-equivalent experiences, are also clearly hypnotic in character. Neale Donald Walsch, for example, communicated with god via automatic writing, a variant of ideomotor activity which Erickson used frequently for a similar purpose. In "The Shack" (the real author is anonymous) his description of his experience suggests that he hallucinated it, probably with time distortion which could make a few minutes seem like a whole week of experience. Many people who experience a life review in extreme situations (like drowning) also report the experience seeming like hours but occurring in only moments. Time distortion, ideomotor activity and hallucination are all hypnotic phenomena.

Closing Thoughts

While I did find some striking similarities and connections between NDEs and Erickson's work, I was not able to find anything consistent or applicable that could explain what was actually going on or how to repeat it. I was certain that NDEs somehow held the key to psychological health and spiritual integration and thus to understanding NLP from a broad perspective, but extracting that truth would require finer distinctions of the process than what was available.

At the time, I had been procrastinating reading up on Internal Family Systems Therapy, a method of psychology which I had become fairly familiar with from the rantings of Stefan Molyneux. Stefan's theory of morality, which is more logical fallacy and rhetoric than anything else, along with his obnoxious personality in general, had previously put me off of investigating IFS further. After I ran into a dead end with NDEs, however, I decided I had nothing to lose by picking up Dr. Schwartz's book. I was pleasantly surprised to find that not only did Dr. Schwartz recognize Erickson, Bandler, Grinder, and Virginia Satir, but he also had a brilliant structural theory of psychology which he built solely from listening to what his patients told him about their experience. It turns out, at least in my opinion, that IFS therapy forms half of the key, both to understanding NDEs and to unifying NLP and Erickson's work, which will be the topic of the next two (or more) articles.