a near-drowning accident in childhood and an episode of diphtheria in infancy. On a deeper level, the same problem is also connected with choking in the birth canal and its deepest root can be a past life experience of being strangled or hanged. To resolve this symptom, it is necessary to work through all the layers of unconscious problems with which it is associated. New insights concerning this multilevel dynamic structure of the major forms of emotional and psychosomatic disorders were described in detail elsewhere (Grof 1985, 2000). 7 Therapeutic mechanisms and the process of healing The work with holotropic states has thus shown that emotional and psychosomatic problems are much more complex than is usually assumed and that their roots reach incomparably deeper into the psyche. However, it also revealed the existence of deeper and more effective therapeutic mechanisms. Traditional schools of psychotherapy recognize only therapeutic mechanisms related to postnatal biographical material and the individual unconscious, for example, lifting of psychological repression and remembering events from infancy and childhood or reconstructing them from free associations to dreams and neurotic symptoms, emotional and intellectual insights into one’s life history, and analysis of transference. The new observations show that these approaches fail to recognize and appreciate the extraordinary healing potential of the deeper dynamics of the psyche. Thus, for example, the reliving of birth and the experience of ego death and psychospiritual rebirthcan have far-reaching therapeutic impact on a broad spectrum of emotional disorders. Effective therapeutic mechanisms are also associated with various forms of transpersonal phenomena, such as past life experiences, encounter with archetypal figures and motifs, and identification with various animals. Of particular importance in this respect are ecstatic feelings of oneness with other people, nature, the universe, and God. If they are allowed to run their full course and are properly integrated, they represent a healing mechanism of extraordinary power. These observations show that the conceptual framework of psychotherapy has to be extended as vastly as the cartography of the unconscious. Freud once used a metaphor of the iceberg to describe the human psyche. What was generally thought to be the totality of the psyche was just like the tip of the iceberg showing above the water surface. The bulk of this iceberg hidden under water corresponded to the unconscious realms revealed by psychoanalysis. In view of the discoveries of modern consciousness research, we can paraphrase this simile and say that all that Freudian psychoanalysis has discovered about the human psyche represents at best the exposed part of the iceberg, while vast domains of the unconscious resisted Freud’s efforts and remained hidden even for him. Mythologist Joseph Campbell, using his incisive Irish humor, put it very succinctly: “Freud was fishing, while sitting on a whale.” 30 Stanislav Grof
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