In psychedelic work, the potential is greater for stronger, more subtle,
and more complicated transference and countertransference to occur.
Steps need to be taken to ensure that if psychedelic research is someday
adopted by mainstream science, the job qualifications for sitter will
include that he or she has done effective, deep personal work in
nonordinary states.
Psychedelic work is one powerful way to trigger transpersonal experiences.
Transpersonal experiences are those profound and often surprising moments
in which we have access to a perspective larger than the one from which we
usually operate. Methods and a ctivities which have been found to elicit
transpersonal experiences in some case are: Holotropic Breathwork and
other methods of controlled breathing, fasting, meditation, body- and
energy-work, EMDR, vision quests (combination of isolation, fasting, slee
plessness, nature's power), sensory deprivation, drumming (entrains the
pulses of the body) and chanting (controls and paces the breath and
elicits vibrational responses in the body with the tones). Even joggers
have nonordinary states sometimes from the breathing and pushing past
their limits.
Transpersonal experiences allow us to visit the past and the future, other
points in space and other levels of experience; communicate with or
inhabit other life forms; and feel the connections and oneness of
creation. These experiences also have the pote ntial to connect us to lost
parts of ourselves: our bodies, feelings, intuitive abilities, or to some
indefinable Higher Power or Spirit. The Institute for Transpersonal
Psychology in Palo Alto, California, puts it this way, "transpersonal
experience s generally have a profoundly transforming effect on the lives
of those who experience them, bringing a new understanding of great love,
compassion and non-ordinary kinds of knowing. They are then more fully
aware of the distorting and pathological limita tions of their ordinary
selves that must be worked with and transformed for full psychological and
spiritual maturity."
Ethical issues pertain to longings, feelings and motivations which
resonate at our very core. Powerful, shared experiences in the context of
the psychedelic session and of transpersonal experience can bring to the
surface compelling fears, needs, and long ings in both the experiencer and
the sitter. Our deepest yearnings, our fears and desires, and our
assumptions are both catalyzed and framed by the psychedelic setting.
When we work under the magnifying glass of psychedelics as a sitter, we
often get to view our unacknowledged material. Our unresolved issues tend
to emerge in the form of countertransference. Ethical issues usually arise
wherever there is a vulnerable exp eriencer and a sitter who is
unconscious of how his or her longings, desires or fears are affecting the
caregiving relationship. In a psychedelic session, there is usually a
greater degree of vulnerability and transference on the part of the
experiencer a nd a greater potential for unconscious countertransference
on the part of the sitter.
Quantitative and qualitative differences in ethical psychedelic work
There are differences between ethical issues that arise in professional
psychedelic work and those that typically arise in ordinary therapy. Some
of these differences are quantitative. Since an experiencer is usually
more vulnerable or more regressed, the re is usually more need for careful
attention to safety and boundary issues. Other differences are
qualitative. For example, working with a experiencer who has an expanded
consciousness during a multi-hour session is quite different in kind from
working w ith a experiencer in an ordinary state of consciousness for a
50-minute office hour. Both the quantitative and the qualitative
differences require a deeper willingness on the part of the sitter to
engage in self-observation, self-reflection, and peer supe rvision. They
also oblige the sitter to have certain special qualifications and
competencies. We can outline three needs in working with people in
psychedelic states that can, if not given a lot of conscious attention,
produce a potential for betraying th e trust of the experiencer.
- The greater need for a safe setting for experiencers of nonordinary
reality;
- The need for an expanded paradigm which can contain the kinds of
experiences people have in nonordinary states; and
- The potential for stronger, more subtle, and more complicated
transference and countertransference in psychedelic sessions.
The greater need for a safe setting for persons experiencing nonordinary
reality
Experiencers of psychedelic states are more suggestible and vulnerable.
They are more likely than those in ordinary psychotherapeutic work to
experience age regression, to need therapeutic touch, and to feel strong
personal desires, fears and spiritual lo ngings. They may have great
difficulty making the transition between ordinary and nonordinary reality
when they are moving in either direction. Because of the expansive effect
of psychedelics, experiencers are likely to have greater cognitive
dissonance b etween this universal or comprehensive perspective and their
usual world view. They may have more need for an understanding, supportive
network and adjunctive resources than clients in ordinary therapy.
Experiencers and sitters may need stronger and clear er ground rules for
an adventure into nonordinary reality. Sitters also need personal
familiarity with the substance they will be using with others. It will
certainly be useful if they have had training and practice in when and how
to (as well as when and how not to) intervene verbally, non-verbally, or
physically in the nonordinary state experiences of others.
The need for an expanded paradigm
There is a need for an expanded paradigm which can contain the kinds of
experiences people have in nonordinary states of consciousness. Sitters
need experience with a broad spectrum of the kinds of situations that may
arise. Stanislav Grof has mapped an e xpanded territory of the psyche
beyond the modern Western's world's biographical and biological
psychology.1 Shamanic traditions and ancient religions offer other maps.
Grof and others have been clear that nonordinary states and perinatal and
transpersona l experiences are not pathological, but actually are a
natural way in which humans seek healing and wisdom.
It will usually benefit the experiencers if their sitter has studied how
psychedelic work fits into a conceptual framework of therapy. The openness
of the sitter to extraordinary experiences is a key factor in how the
experiencer accepts his or her own emerging material while having a
psychedelic session. The degree to which the sitter accepts such
experiences may play a large part in whether the experiencer can let these
experiences develop, amplify, integrate. Some of the experiences that
would be dif ficult for a sitter to affirm without an expanded paradigm
include: past lives, ritual abuse, "demonic possession,"
ecstatic states, spiritual concepts, emotionally charged images or themes
from other religions, reliving birth, UFO abductions, o r existential
suicidality. Adequate training to provide information for informed consent
and to sit with psychedelic experiencers requires many personal
therapeutic sessions as the experiencer in nonordinary states of
consciousness.
At this point in time most active researchers seem to meet the unspoken
prerequisite for involvement in professional sitting - they have integrated
an expanded paradigm and have done prolonged, personal psychedelic work.
But there is considerable precedent in the world for allowing theoretical
learning to suffice on resumes for academic and medical professional
employment. Steps need to be taken to ensure that if psychedelic research
is someday adopted by mainstream science, the job qualifications for
sitter will include that he or she has done effective, deep personal work
in nonordinary states.
Personal issues of counter-transference: Money, Sex, and Power
Sitters in psychedelic work are called upon to examine their own personal
and spiritual fears and desires and to take responsibility for doing what
is necessary to keep these attachments to outcome from adversely affecting
the experiencer. Experiential et hics training could prevent some ethical
missteps. With systematic training about common ethical pitfalls and
self-reflection on their own vulnerabilities to unethical behavior,
sitters would increase their awareness and probably decrease the
possibility of serious ethical problems. A thorough training would also
include how to give and receive peer supervision in the area of ethics.
There has been much written about the ethical pitfalls into which
therapists have stepped because of personal desires and fears that arose
in the course of ordinary therapy. These personal issues usually have
headings such as Money, Sex, and Power. Ethica l missteps occur when we
want something for ourselves even at the expense of the person for whom we
are sitting. The Money area relates to feelings of insufficiency which
move us in directions not best for our clients. We want a favor; we want
money, we w ant self-esteem and in some way we feel insufficient to get
these things without the client. In the Sex area, we want touch, or we
want sex. In the Power area, we want to be seen as a healer; we want
renown for the research results, we want the person to do it our way. We
also want acknowledgment for knowing how the process should or will go, or
knowing what's happening before it happens, as it's happening, or after
it's over.
Our fears, as well as our desires might cause us to take an ethical wrong
turn. In the Money area (insufficiency) we fear we are not good enough. We
may try in subtle ways to prove that to ourselves, to the experiencer or
to the public (e.g., through publ ishing). In the Sex area, we may be
scared of touching the person - afraid, perhaps, of our own inability to
uphold appropriate professional boundaries. We might in such a case
withhold touch even when the experiencer is regressed and needs a
corrective nurturing experience.
In the Power area, we may be afraid of misusing power. We hold back
actions that would be appropriate and helpful to the experiencer's
process. These can be subtle examples. We may doubt, for example, that an
intervention is really what the experiencer ne eds. We may fear that it is
really something we need. Oddly enough, it may be both. We may feel
powerfully drawn to hold someone and it may be very appropriate in the
context of the experiencer's process. If through need and fear of that
need, the sitter withholds the nurturing, she is zealously oversteps the
mark even while trying to be ethical. Either because of our personal fears
or our personal desires, we can easily stray from the path of right
relationship and miss doing what is in the best interest s of the
experiencer.
Let me here define what I mean by right relationship. The Buddhist concept
of right relationship is akin to Jesus' injunction, Do unto others as you
would have them do unto you. It implies that we take into account the
bigger picture of how our intention and actions in relationship affect the
other, and how that in turn affects still others in a rippling outward
motion. It implies that we see also the effects on ourselves when we take
certain actions toward others. In this definition the concept of others
applies to persons and animals, but also to plants, ecosystems, planets,
and numinous archetypes.
A seven center model2 from yoga describes the areas of life experience. I
combined it with the Buddhist idea that attachments (fears and desires)
skew our sense of right relationship to each other and to Spirit to show
how these attachments act in particu lar areas of caregiving experience.
The model is designed to assist caregivers to identify with
self-compassion their vulnerabilities in order to prevent harm to
themselves and clients.
Transpersonal issues of countertransference: Love, Truth, Insight, and
Oneness I have identified four additional areas of ethical issues that
pertain to transpersonal or psychedelic work.[2] They are Love, Truth,
Insight, and Oneness. Just as with the personal categories, these
"spiritual" or transpersonal areas have desir es and fears
associated with them which might pull us off course in our caring
relationship.
In the area of Love, a transpersonal love is often confused with a
personal love. Angeles Arrien has written about professional love,[3]
which is an open-handed, well-wishing, positive regard. As sitters, we
could deviate from professional love because of desire to be personally
cherished, or to be cherished as a spiritual guide. We could equally miss
the mark because of fear of intimacy. We might also experience spiritual
envy of our client or a competitive feeling about their nonordinary
experiences.
In the area of Truth, we may long to be as unaffected by social convention
as the psychedelic journeyer. Or, we may fear to hear what the experiencer
has to say from his intuitive state, especially if his revelations are
about our personal selves.
In the area of Insight, we may want to acquire in some way the psychic
powers of the experiencer. We may long to understand, or just as easily,
we may fear to really comprehend what the experiencer's journey invites us
to understand.
While longing for transcendence and union ourselves, we can also fear
losing our self-identity or our belief in the dual nature of reality. If
the experiencer comes to a place of non-duality or cosmic consciousness,
our own beliefs may be threatened. We may prefer to leave a separation
between us and the Godhead. We may fear difficulty in extricating
ourselves after the session is over from a feeling of cosmic oneness with
the experiencer.
These "spiritual" fears and desires (Love, Truth, Insight and
Oneness) often mix non-linearly with personal fears and desires (Money,
Sex, and Power). For example, "spiritual" sex with a vulnerable
client can be rationalized as special , destined, or healing. An
experiencer whose body is moving ecstatically and spontaneously in a
kundalini-type process can be attractive physically but can trigger our
longings for spiritual grace and thereby be spiritually irresistible. A
shared past-lif e connection with an experiencer in nonordinary states may
"justify" certain otherwise unjustifiable actions in ordinary
life. In yet another scenario, a sitter may misinterpret the devotion of
an experiencer (transpersonal Love) as personal lov e. The sitter may
therefore assume that a personal sexual (Sex) relationship is appropriate
and wanted by the experiencer. In another example, an experiencer's and
sitter's shared vision (Insight) for transpersonal work may influence the
researcher to use his influence (Power) to seek money from a client or
enter a business partnership even when there is an unequal power
relationship between the two. Sitters often feel that they will have no
difficulty maintaining ethical conduct. Yet the profound or intense
sitter-experiencer relationship that develops in psychedelic work can
change easily avoidable pitfalls into invisible, deep quagmires. The best
i nsurance that we will not betray our client's trust is to be willing to
learn more about ourselves to seek consultation from peers. Although in
this article I have focused on preventing the consequences of the fall
into an "unethical pit," the g reater reward for increased
awareness of ethics in transpersonal work is enjoying the quality of right
relationship itself with the love and respect that are implied therein for
self, other, and one's spiritual path.
References
- Grof, S. (1985). Beyond the Brain. Albany, NY: State University
of New York Press.
- Taylor, K. (1995). The Ethics of Caring. Santa Cruz, CA: Hanford Mead
Publishers.
- Arrien, A. (1993). The four-fold way. San Francisco: HarperCollins.
Copyright © 1997 by Kylea Taylor
Kylea Taylor
PO Box 8051
Santa Cruz, CA 95061-8051
phone: (408) 429-1732
E-mail: Kyleat@aol.com
About the Author
Kylea Taylor, M.S. is the author of The Ethics of Caring: Honoring the Web
of Life in Our Professional Healing Relationships (Hanford Mead 1995) and
The Breathwork Experience: Exploration and Healing in Nonordinary States
of Consciousness (Hanford Mead 1994). Kylea is on the faculty of the Grof
Transpersonal Training. She has a private practice of consulting and
training based in Santa Cruz, CA.
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