Freud’s epoch-making discoveries in the field of depth psychology attracted a small group of brilliant researchers and thinkers who became members of his Viennese inner circle. Because of the complexity and novelty of the subject, as well as the intellectual independence of some of Freud’s best disciples, the psychoanalytic movement was from the very beginning fraught with controversy and dissent. Over the years, several of Freud’s prominent followers chose to leave the movement, or were forced to leave it, and founded their own schools. It is interesting that many elements of the conceptual framework presented here were contained in the revisions of these famous renegades. However, they were presented as mutually exclusive alternatives and have not been integrated into mainstream psychoanalysis or academic psychology. Instead of following the actual historical sequence of events, I will discuss these theoretical and practical departures from classical psychoanalysis with respect to the level of consciousness that was their main focus.
Alfred Adler’s individual psychology (1932) remained limited to the biographical level, as Freudian psychoanalysis, but its focus differed. In contrast with Freud’s deterministic emphasis, Adler’s approach was clearly teleological and finalistic. Freud explored historical and causal aspects of the pathogenesis of neurosis and other mental phenomena, whereas Adler was interested in their purpose and final goal. According to him, the guiding principle of every neurosis is the imaginary aim to be a “complete man.” The sexual drives and the tendencies toward sexual perversions of various kinds, emphasized by Freud, are only secondary expressions of this guiding principle. The preponderance of sexual material in the fantasy life of the neurotic is simply jargon, a modus dicendi, expressing strivings toward the masculine goal. This drive for superiority, totality, and perfection reflects a deep need to compensate for all-pervasive feelings of inferiority and inadequacy.
Adler’s individual psychology puts great stress, in the dynamics of neurosis, on the “constitutional inferiority” of some organs or systems of organs, which can be morphological or functional. The striving for superiority and success follows a strictly subjective pattern. It is based on one’s self-perception and self-esteem and the methods it uses for its achievement reflect the circumstances of one’s life, particularly one’s biological endowment and early childhood environment. Adler’s concept of inferiority is broader than it appears at first sight; it includes, among other elements, insecurity and anxiety. Similarly, the striving for superiority is in the last analysis striving for perfection and completion and implies also a search for meaning in life. A deeper, hidden dimension behind the inferiority complex is the memory of the infantile helplessness, and at its bottom is impotence in view of the dictate of death. The inferiority complex can lead through the mechanism of overcompensation to superior performance and in the extremes create a genius. Adler’s favorite example was a stammering boy with a tick, Demosthenes, who became the most powerful orator of all time. In less fortunate cases, this mechanism can create a neurosis.
In contrast to Freud’s image of the human being as fragmented and driven by his past, Adler’s concept depicts an organic, purposeful system with the goal of self-realization and social survival. The individual and his survival must be understood in terms of dynamically interwoven, somatic, psychological and social processes. The individual’s need for integration into the social milieu, and for differentiation from it, results in a pattern of active adaptation. The growing child selects from its complex history a consistent and coherent life style. According to Adler, conscious and unconscious processes are not in conflict; they represent two aspects of a unified system serving the same purpose. Events that do not fit into it are considered unimportant and are forgotten. We are unaware of thoughts and feelings that painfully contradict our self-concept. The problem is not that human beings are pawns of historically codetermined forces of their unconscious, but that they are unaware of the goals and values that they themselves have created or accepted.
Adler puts great emphasis on social feelings as an important criterion for mental health; a healthy lifestyle is oriented toward achieving competence and social success by working toward the goal of social usefulness. The concept of normal development includes a unique, self-consistent, active, and creative life style, striving for a subjectively conceived goal, innate social interests, and a capacity for social living.
A neurotic disposition is created by a childhood history of overprotection or neglect, or both. This is conducive to a negative self-concept, a sense of helplessness, and an image of the social environment as basically unfriendly, hostile, punishing, depriving, demanding, or frustrating. As a result, the insecure individual develops a manipulative, self-centered and uncooperative private life style, rather than one that reflects common sense and is integrated with societal interests. Adler has discussed extensively the different forms and manifestations of “private logic”—that of neurotics, psychotics, addicts, and criminals. In general, he was always more interested in the observation and description of the unique individual than in diagnostic categories and clinical classifications. According to him, a neurotic cannot cope with problems and enjoy social life, because he has developed as a result of childhood experiences a complex private map that has a primarily protective function. It has an inner cohesion and is resistant to change, because it represents the only adaptive pattern the person has been able to construct. The individual is afraid of facing new corrective experiences and continues to view a variety of highly idiosyncratic and faulty assumptions about people and the world as accurate and generally valid. While a neurotic suffers a sense of real or imaginary failure, the psychotic does not accept social reality as the ultimate criterion, but instead resorts to a private world of fantasies that compensate for his sense of hopelessness and despair for not having achieved significance in the real world.
In his therapeutic practice, Adler greatly emphasized the active role of the therapist. He interpreted the society to the patient, analyzed his life style and goals, suggested specific modifications, gave encouragement, instilled hope, restored the patient’s faith in himself, and helped him to realize his strength and ability. He considered the therapist’s understanding of the patient to be essential for successful reconstruction of the patient: the patient’s insight into his motivations, intentions, and goals was not a prerequisite for therapeutic change. Adler saw the Freudian concept of transference as erroneous and misleading, as an unnecessary obstacle to therapeutic progress. He emphasized that the therapist should be warm, trustworthy, reliable, and interested in the patient’s well-being in the here and now.
The observations from LSD work and other experiential approaches bring an interesting new perspective and insight into the theoretical conflict between Adler and Freud. In general, this controversy is based on the erroneous belief that the complexity of the psyche can be reduced to some simple fundamental principles. This cornerstone of mechanistic science is now being abandoned even in physics, in relation to material reality, as exemplified by Geoffrey Chew’s “bootstrap” philosophy of nature (1968). The human mind is so complex that many different theories can be constructed, all of which appear to be logical, coherent, and reflective of certain major observations, yet at the same time are mutually incompatible or actually contradict each other. More specifically, the disagreements between psychoanalysis and individual psychology reflect a lack of awareness of the spectrum of consciousness with its different levels. In this sense, both systems are incomplete and superficial, since they operate exclusively on the biographical level and do not acknowledge the perinatal and transpersonal realms. Projections of various elements from these neglected areas of the psyche, then, appear in both systems in a distorted and diluted form.
The conflict between the emphasis on the sexual drive and on the will to power and masculine protest appears to be important and irreconcilable only as long as one’s knowledge of the psyche is limited to the biographical level, excluding the dynamics of the perinatal matrices. As has already been described, intense sexual arousal (including oral, anal, urethral, and genital components) and feelings of helplessness alternating with attempts at aggressive self-assertion represent integral and inseparable aspects of the dynamics of BPM III. Although in respect to the death-rebirth process, there may, temporarily, be more emphasis on the sexual aspect or the power aspect of the perinatal unfolding, the two are inextricably interwoven. The study of the sexual profile of men in power (Janus, Bess, and Saltus 1977), discussed elsewhere (pp. 218-19) can be mentioned here as an important example.
The deep roots of sexual pathology can be found in the third perinatal matrix, where strong libidinal arousal is associated with vital anxiety, pain, aggression, and the encounter with biological material. Feelings of inadequacy, inferiority, and low self-esteem can be traced beyond the biographical conditioning in early childhood to the helplessness of the child in the life-threatening and overpowering situation of birth. Thus, both Freud and Adler, because of an insufficient depth of their approach, focused selectively on two categories of psychological forces that on a deeper level represent two facets of the same process.
The awareness of death, the crucial theme of the perinatal process, had a powerful impact on both researchers. Freud postulated in his final theoretical formulations the existence of the death instinct as a decisive force in the psyche. His biological emphasis prevented him from seeing the possibility of psychological transcendence of death, and he created a gloomy and pessimistic image of human existence. The theme of death played also an important role in his personal life, since he suffered from a severe thanatophobia. Adler’s life and work were also very strongly influenced by the problem of death. He saw the inability to prevent and control death as the deepest core of the feelings of inadequacy. It is interesting in this connection that Adler was aware that his decision to become a physician—a member of the profession trying to control and conquer death—was deeply influenced by his near-death experience at the age of five. It is likely that the same factor also functioned as a prism that shaped the form of his theoretical speculations.
From the viewpoint of observations from deep experiential therapy, determined striving for external goals and the pursuit of success in the world are of little value in overcoming the feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem, no matter what the actual outcome of these endeavors turns out to be. The feelings of inferiority cannot be resolved by mobilizing one’s forces to over-compensate for them, but by confronting them experientially and surrendering to them. They are then consumed in the process of ego death and rebirth, and a new self-image emerges from the awareness of one’s cosmic identity. True courage lies in the willingness to undergo this awesome process of self-confrontation, not in a heroic pursuit of external goals. Unless the individual succeeds in finding his or her true identity within, any attempts to give meaning to life by manipulating the outside world and external achievement will be a futile and ultimately self-defeating, quixotic crusade.
Another important psychoanalytic renegade was the Austrian psychiatrist and political activist, Wilhelm Reich. Maintaining Freud’s main thesis concerning the paramount importance of sexual factors in the etiology of neuroses, he modified his concepts substantially by emphasizing “sex economy”—the balance between energy charge and discharge, or sexual excitement and release. According to Reich, the suppression of sexual feelings together with the characterological attitude that accompanies it constitutes the true neurosis; the clinical symptoms are only its overt manifestations. The original traumas and sexual feelings are held in repression by complex patterns of chronic muscular tensions—the “character armor.” The term “armoring” refers to the function of protecting the individual against painful and threatening experiences from without and within. For Reich, the critical factor that contributed to incomplete sexual orgasm and congestion of bioenergy was the repressive influence of society. A neurotic individual maintains balance by binding his excess energy in muscular tensions, in this way limiting sexual excitement. A healthy individual does not have such a limitation; his or her energy is not bound in muscular armoring and can flow freely.
Reich’s contribution to therapy (1949) is of great significance and lasting value. His dissatisfaction with the methods of psychoanalysis led him to the development of a system called “character analysis” and, later, “character analytic vegetotherapy.” It was a radical departure from classical Freudian techniques, since it concentrated on the treatment of neuroses from a biophysical point of view and involved physiological elements. Reich used hyperventilation, a variety of body manipulations, and direct physical contact to mobilize the jammed energies and remove the blocks. According to him, the goal of therapy was the patient’s capacity to surrender fully to the spontaneous and involuntary movements of the body that are normally associated with the respiratory process. If this was accomplished, the respiratory waves produced an undulating movement of the body that Reich called the “orgasm reflex.” He believed that those patients who achieve it in therapy are then capable of surrendering fully in the sexual situation, reaching a state of total satisfaction. The full orgasm discharges all the excess energy of the organism, and the patient remains free of symptoms.
As he was developing his theories and trying to implement his ideas, Reich became increasingly controversial. Seeing the repressive role of society as one of the main factors in emotional disorders, he combined his innovative work in psychotherapy with radical political activity as a member of the Communist Party. This resulted eventually in his break with both the psychoanalytic circles and the Communist movement. After Reich’s conflict with Freud, his name was dropped from the roster of the International Psychoanalytic Association. The publication of his fierce criticism of the mass psychology of fascism led to his excommunication from the Communist Party. In later years, Reich became increasingly convinced about the existence of a primordial cosmic energy that is the source of three large realms of existence, which arise from it through a complicated process of differentiation—mechanical energy, inorganic mass, and living matter (1973). This energy that Reich called orgone can be demonstrated visually, thermically, electroscopically, and by means of Geiger-Mueller counters. It is different from electromagnetic energy, and one of its main properties is pulsation. According to Reich, the dynamics of orgone and the relationship between “mass-free orgone energy” and “orgone energy that has become matter” is essential for any true functional understanding of the universe, nature, and the human psyche. The streaming of orgone and its dynamic superimpositions can explain as diverse phenomena as the creation of subatomic particles, the origin of life forms, growth, locomotion, sexual activity and the reproductive processes, psychological phenomena, tornadoes, the aurora borealis, and the formation of galaxies.
Reich designed special orgone accumulators, boxes that he claimed collected and concentrated orgone for use for therapeutic purposes. Orgone therapy is based on the assumption that the soma and psyche are both rooted bioenergetically in the pulsating pleasure system (blood and vegetative apparatus); it addresses itself to this common source of psychological and somatic functions. Orgone therapy is, therefore, neither a psychological nor a physiological-chemical therapy, but rather a biological therapy dealing with disturbances of pulsation in the autonomic system. Wilhelm Reich’s work, which began originally as highly innovative therapeutic experimentation, moved gradually into increasingly remote areas— physics, biology, cellular biopathy, abiogenesis, meteorology, astronomy, and philosophical speculations. The end of his stormy scientific career was tragic. Because he used, and advocated the use of, orgone generators, which were denounced by the Food and Drug Administration, he got into serious conflicts with the U.S. Government. After a series of harrassments, he was twice imprisoned, and finally died in jail from a heart attack.
From the point of view of the concepts presented in this book, Reich’s major contribution seems to be in the areas of bioenergetic processes and the psychosomatic correlations in the genesis of emotional disorders, and in their therapy. He was fully aware of the enormous energies underlying neurotic symptoms and of the futility of purely verbal approaches to them. Also, his understanding of armoring and the role of musculature in neuroses is a contribution of lasting value. The observations from LSD work confirm the basic Reichian concepts of energetic stasis and involvement of the muscular and the vegetative systems in neurosis. A patient’s experiential confrontation of his or her psychological problems is typically accompanied by violent tremors, shaking, jerks, contortions, prolonged maintaining of extreme postures, grimacing, uttering sounds, and even occasional vomiting. It is quite clear that psychological aspects of the process, such as perceptual, emotional, and ideational elements, and dramatic physiological manifestations are intimately interconnected, representing two sides of the same process. The basic difference between my own point of view and the Reichian theory lies in the interpretation of this process.
Wilhelm Reich put great emphasis on the gradual accumulation and congestion of sexual energy in the organism due to interference of societal influences with full sexual orgasm (1961). As a result of repeated incomplete discharge, the libido jams in the organism and finally finds deviant expressions in a variety of psychopathological phenomena, from psychoneuroses to sadomasochism. Effective therapy, then, requires release of pent-up libidinal energies, dissolution of the “body armor,” and achievement of total orgasm. LSD observations indicate clearly that this energetic reservoir is not a result of chronic sexual stasis resulting from incomplete orgasms. Much of this energy seems, rather, to represent powerful forces from the perinatal level of the unconscious. The energies released during therapy can best be understood in terms of a belated discharge of the excessive neuronal excitation generated by the stress, pain, fear, and suffocation in the course of the biological birth process. The deepest basis of much of the character armor seems to be in the introjected dynamic conflict between the flood of neuronal overstimulation associated with the birth process and the unrelenting straitjacket of the birth canal, preventing adequate response and peripheral discharge. The dissolution of the armor coincides to a great extent with the completion of the death-rebirth process; however, some of its elements have even deeper roots in the transpersonal realms.
Perinatal energy can be mistaken for jammed libido because BPM III has a substantial sexual component and because of the similarity between the pattern of birth and sexual orgasm. Activated perinatal energy seeks peripheral discharge, and the genitals represent one of the most logical and important channels. This seems to form the basis for a vicious circle: aggression, fear, and guilt associated with the third perinatal matrix interfere with full orgastic ability; conversely, the absence or incompleteness of sexual orgasm blocks an important safety valve for the birth energies. The situation thus seems to be the opposite of what Reich postulated. It is not that societal and psychological factors interfering with full orgasm lead to accumulation and stasis of sexual energy, but that deep-seated perinatal energies interfere with adequate orgasm and create psychological and interpersonal problems. To rectify this situation, these powerful energies must be discharged in a nonsexual, therapeutic context and reduced to a level that the patient and the partner can comfortably handle in a sexual context. Many phenomena discussed by Reich, from sadomasochism to the mass psychology of fascism, can be explained more adequately from perinatal dynamics than from incomplete orgasm and the jamming of sexual energy.
Reich’s speculations, although unconventional and at times undisciplined, are in their essence frequently compatible with modern developments in science. In his understanding of nature, he came close to the world view suggested by quantum-relativistic physics, emphasizing the underlying unity, focusing on process and movement rather than substance and solid structure, and acknowledging the active role of the observer (1972). Reich’s ideas about the joint origin of inorganic matter, life, consciousness, and knowledge are occasionally reminiscent of the philosophical speculations of David Bohm (1980). His arguments against the universal validity of the principle of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics essentially resemble the conclusions of the careful and systematic work of Prigogine (1980) and his colleagues.
In the field of psychology, Reich came close, both theoretically and practically, to the discovery of the perinatal realm of the unconscious. His work on muscular armoring, his discussion of the dangers of sudden removal of the armor, and his concept of total orgasm clearly involve important elements of perinatal dynamics. However, he showed determined resistance to its most critical elements—the psychological significance of the experiences of birth and death. This is evident from his passionate defense of the primary role of genitality and his rejection of Rank’s concept of the birth trauma, Freud’s speculations about death, and Abraham’s assumptions of a psychological need for punishment.
In many ways, Reich teetered on the edge of transpersonal understanding. He was obviously close to cosmic awareness, which found its expression in his speculations about the orgone. True religion for him was unarmored oceanic merging with the dynamics of the universal orgone energy. In sharp contrast with perennial philosophy, Reich’s understanding of this cosmic energy was quite concrete; orgone was measurable and had specific physical characteristics. Reich never reached a true understanding and appreciation of the great spiritual philosophies of the world. In his passionate critical excursions against spirituality, he tended to confuse mysticism with certain superficial and distorted versions of mainstream religious doctrines. In his polemics (1972), he thus argued against literal belief in devils with tails and pitchforks, winged angels, formless blue-gray ghosts, dangerous monsters, heavens, and hells. He then discounted these as projections of unnatural, distorted organ sensations and, in the last analysis, as misperceptions of the universal flow of the orgone energy. Similarly, Reich was also strongly opposed to Jung’s interest in mysticism and his tendency to spiritualize psychology.
For Reich, mystical inclinations reflected armoring and serious distortion of orgone economy. Mystical search, then, could be reduced to misunderstood biological urges. Thus: “Fear of death and dying is identical with unconscious orgasm, anxiety and the alleged death instinct. The longing for dissolution, for nothingness, is unconscious longing for orgastic release” (Reich 1961). “God is the representation of the natural life forces, of the bioenergy in man, and is nowhere so clearly expressed as in the sexual orgasm. Devil then is the representation for the armoring that leads to perversion and distortion of these life forces” (Reich 1972). In direct contrast with psychedelic observations, Reich claimed that the mystical experiences disappear if therapy succeeds in dissolving the armor. In his opinion, “Orgastic potency is not found among mystics any more than mysticism is found among the orgastically potent” (Reich 1961).
The system of psychology and psychotherapy developed by Otto Rank represents a considerable departure from mainstream Freudian psychoanalysis. In general, Rank’s concepts are humanistic and voluntaristic, while Freud’s approach is reductionistic, mechanistic, and deterministic. More specifically, the major areas of disagreement were Rank’s emphasis on the paramount significance of the birth trauma as compared to sexual dynamics, negation of the crucial role of the Oedipus complex, and a concept of ego as an autonomous representative of the will rather than a slave of the id. Rank also offered modifications of the psychoanalytic technique that were as radical and drastic as his theoretical contributions. He suggested that a verbal approach to psychotherapy is of limited value and the emphasis should be experiential. According to him, it was essential that the patient relive in therapy the trauma of birth; without it, treatment should not be considered complete.6
As far as the role of the birth trauma in psychology is concerned, Freud was actually the first to draw attention to the possibility that it might be the prototype and source of all future anxieties. He discussed this issue in several of his writings, but refused to accept Rank’s extreme formulations. There was also a major difference in the concepts of the birth trauma as seen by Freud and Rank. While Freud emphasized the extreme physiological difficulties involved in the birth process as being the source of anxiety, Rank related anxiety to the separation from the maternal womb as a paradisean situation of unconditional and effortless gratification.
Rank saw the trauma of birth as the ultimate cause responsible for the fact that separation is the most painful and frightening human experience. According to him, all later frustrations of partial drives can be seen as derivatives of this primal trauma. Most of the events experienced by the individual as traumatic derive their pathogenic power from their similarity to biological birth. The entire period of childhood can be seen as a series of attempts at abreacting and mastering psychologically this fundamental trauma. Infantile sexuality can be reinterpreted as the child’s desire to return to the womb, the anxiety associted with it, and curiosity about where he or she came from.
But Rank did not stop here; he believed that all human mental life has its origin in the primal anxiety and primal repression precipitated by the birth trauma. The central human conflict consists of the desire to return to the womb and in the fear of this wish. As a result of it, any change from a pleasurable. situation to an unpleasant one will give rise to feelings of anxiety. Rank also offered an alternative to the Freudian interpretation of dreams. Sleep is a condition that resembles the intrauterine life, and dreams can be understood as attempts to relive the birth trauma and return to the prenatal state. Even more than the act of sleep itself, they represent a psychological return to the womb. The analysis of dreams provides the strongest support for the psychological significance of the birth trauma. Similarly, the cornerstone of Freudian theory, the Oedipus complex, is reinterpreted with the emphasis on the trauma of birth and the desire to return to the womb. At the core of the Oedipus myth is the mystery of the origin of man that Oedipus tries to solve by returning to the mother’s womb. This happens not only literally, in the act of marriage and sexual union with his mother, but symbolically through his blindness and disappearance into the cleft rock leading into the Underworld.
In Rankian psychology, the birth trauma also plays a crucial role in sexuality; its importance is based on the deep desire to return to the intrauterine existence that governs the human psyche. Much of the difference between the sexes can be explained by women’s ability to replay through their bodies the reproductive process and find their immortality in procreation, whereas for men sex represents mortality and their strength lies in nonsexual creativity.
Analyzing human culture, Rank found the birth trauma to be a powerful psychological force behind religion, art, and history. Every form of religion tends ultimately toward the reinstitution of the original succoring and protecting primal situation of the symbiotic union in the womb. The deepest root of art is the “autoplastic imitation” of one’s own growing and origin from the maternal vessel. Art, being a representation of reality and at the same time a denial of it, is a particularly powerful means of coping with the primal trauma. The history of human dwellings, from the search for primitive shelters to elaborate architectural structures, reflects instinctive memories of the warm, protective womb. The use of implements and weapons is, in the last analysis, based on an “insatiable tendency to force one’s way completely into the mother.”
LSD psychotherapy and other forms of deep experiential work have brought strong support for Rank’s general thesis about the paramount psychological significance of the birth trauma. However, substantial modifications of the Rankian approach are necessary to increase its compatibility with actual clinical observations. Rank’s theory focuses on the element of separation from the mother and loss of the womb as the essential traumatic aspects of birth. For him the trauma consists in the fact that the postnatal situation is far less favorable than the prenatal one. Outside the womb, the child has to face irregularity of food supply, absence of the mother, oscillations of temperature, and loud noises. He or she has to breathe, swallow food, and dispose of the waste products.
In the LSD work the situation appears much more complicated. Birth is not traumatic just because the child is transferred from the paradisean situation of the womb into the adverse conditions of the external world; the passage through the birth canal itself entails enormous emotional and physical stress and pain. This fact was emphasized in Freud’s original speculations about birth, but almost entirely neglected by Rank. In a sense, Rank’s concept of the birth trauma applied to the situation of a person born by elective Cesarean section rather than physiological childbirth.
However, most of the psychopathological conditions are rooted in the dynamics of BPM II and BPM III, which reflect experiences undergone during the hours inserted between the undisturbed intrauterine state and the postnatal existence in the external world. In the process of reliving and integrating the birth trauma, the individual can be craving a return to the womb or, conversely, completion of birth and emergence from the birth canal, depending on the stage of perinatal unfolding. The tendency to externalize and discharge the pent-up feelings and energies generated during the birth struggle represents a deep motivational force for a broad spectrum of human behaviors. This is especially true for aggression and sadomasochism, two conditions for which the Rankian interpretation was particularly unconvincing. In addition—as with Freud, Adler, and Reich—Rank misses a genuine understanding of the transpersonal realms. In spite of all these shortcomings, Rank’s discovery of the psychological relevance of the birth trauma and its many ramifications was a truly remarkable achievement that preceded the LSD findings by several decades.
It is interesting to note that several other psychoanalytic researchers recognized the significance of various aspects of the birth trauma. Nandor Fodor, in his pioneering book The Search For The Beloved (1949), described in considerable detail the relations between various facets of the birth process and many important psycho-pathological symptoms in a way that has far-reaching congruence with the LSD observations. Lietaert Peerbolte produced a comprehensive book, Prenatal Dynamics (1975), in which he discussed in great detail his unique insights into the psychological relevance of prenatal existence and the birth experience. This topic also received a great deal of attention in a series of original and imaginative, although more speculative and less clinically grounded, books by Francis Mott (1948; 1959).
The list of famous psychoanalytic renegades would be incomplete without Carl Gustav Jung, who was one of Freud’s favorite disciples and the designated “crown prince” of psychoanalysis. Jung’s revisions were by far the most radical, and his contributions were truly revolutionary. It is not an exaggeration to say that his work moved psychiatry as far beyond Freud as Freud’s discoveries were ahead of his own time.
Jung’s analytical psychology is not just a variety or modification of psychoanalysis; it represents an entirely new concept of depth psychology and psychotherapy. Jung was well aware that his findings could not be reconciled with Cartesian-Newtonian thinking, and that they required a drastic revision of the most fundamental philosophical assumptions of Western science. He was deeply interested in the revolutionary developments of quantum-relativistic physics and had fruitful exchanges with some of its founders.
Unlike the rest of the theoreticians of psychoanalysis, Jung also had a genuine understanding of the mystical traditions and great respect for the spiritual dimensions of the psyche and of human existence. His ideas are much closer to the conceptual system I am presenting here than those of any other school of Western psychotherapy. Jung was the first transpersonal psychologist, without calling himself one, and his contributions will be taken up in the section on the transpersonal approaches to psychotherapy.
It seems logical to conclude this exposition of the world of psychotherapy by mentioning another prominent pioneer and member of the inner circle of Freud’s Viennese group, Sandor Ferenczi. Although he is not usually listed among the renegades of psychoanalysis, his speculations took him far beyond traditional analysis. Also, his support of Otto Rank clearly indicated that he was far from a conforming and docile follower of Freud. In his theoretical framework, he considered seriously not only perinatal and prenatal events, but also elements of phylogenetic development. Being one of the few disciples of Freud who immediately accepted his concept of thanatos, Ferenczi also integrated into his conceptual system a metaphysical analysis of death.
In his remarkable essay, “Thalassa” (1938), Ferenczi described the entire sexual evolution as an attempt to return to the maternal womb. According to him, in sexual intercourse the interacting organisms share in the gratification of the germ cells. Men have the privilege of penetrating the maternal organism directly and in a real sense, while women entertain fantasy substitutes or identify with their children when they are pregnant. This is the essence of the “Thalassa regressive trend,” the striving to return to the original aquatic mode of existence that had been abandoned in primeval times. In the last analysis, the amniotic fluid represents the water of the ocean introjected into the maternal womb. According to this view, terrestrial mammals have a deep organismic craving to reverse the decision they once made when they left their oceanic existence and opted for a new form of existence. This would be the solution actually carried out millions of years ago by the ancestors of today’s whales and dolphins.
However, the ultimate goal of all life might be to arrive at a state characterized by the absence of irritability and, finally, to the inertness of the inorganic world. It is possible that death and dying are not absolute and that germs of life and regressive tendencies lie hidden even within inorganic matter. One could then conceive of the entire organic and inorganic world as a system of perpetual oscillations between the will to live and the will to die, in which an absolute hegemony on the part of either life or death is never attained. Ferenczi thus clearly came close to the concepts of perennial philosophy and mysticism, although his formulations were expressed in the language of the natural sciences.
A historical review of the conceptual disagreements in the early psychoanalytic movement is of great interest from the point of view of the ideas presented in this volume. It demonstrates clearly that many of the concepts that may at first sight appear surprisingly new and without precedent in Western psychology were in one form or another seriously considered and passionately discussed by the early pioneers of psychoanalysis. The major contribution of this book is thus a re-evaluation of the various approaches in light of the findings of modern consciousness research and their integration and synthesis in the spirit of spectrum psychology, rather than an entirely original system of thought.