1 0 S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 2 - 2 Fa l l 2 0 1 6 A fixation at the fusion/indissociation subphase might thus predispose a person to “somatic mystical” fusion with the world; a disruption at the differentiation subphase might create a predisposition to the “hellish no exit” vital shock, intense sadomasochistic activity, and involutional depression; and fixation at the integration stage might lead to delusional messianic complexes. Similarly, the formations and malformations at this F–0 would “incline (but not cause)” subsequent development to tilt in the same direction. Thus a profound “no exit” malformation of the differentiation subphase might, for example, create a strong disposition to depression, withdrawal, and inhibitions. Ken offers here a comparison with the formation of a pearl, where a grain of sand influences the shape of subsequent layers. However, even with this modification, Ken does not begin to account in his theory for actual clinical observations. In experiential psychotherapies using NOSC, people working on various forms of depression, psychoneuroses, and psychosomatic disorders typically discover that these disorders have a multilevel dynamic structure. In addition to their connections with traumatic events in infancy and childhood, as expected by traditional academic thinking, these disorders have important roots in the perinatal domain and also beyond that in the transpersonal realm (Grof 1985). Therapeutic work on psychoneuroses and psychosomatic disorders, guided not by the therapist but by the spontaneous healing mechanisms activated by NOSC, will thus typically take the clients beyond postnatal biography to the perinatal and transpersonal domains. Under these circumstances, the therapeutic process does not follow a linear trajectory. If it is not restricted by the strait-jacket of the therapist’s professional convictions, it will freely move between the biographical, perinatal, and transpersonal levels, often even within the same session. For this reason, effective work with emotional and psychosomatic disorders requires a therapist who uses a framework that is open to all the bands of the spectrum. The idea of breaking the therapeutic process into stages during which he or she is seen by different therapists, each of whom is a specialist in fulcrum-specific treatment modality, is thus highly unrealistic. In addition, since both the perinatal and transpersonal experiences have the quality that C. G. Jung called “numinosity”, it is impossible to draw a clear line between therapy and spiritual evolution. With an open approach, the process that initially began as “therapy” will often automatically change into a spiritual and philosophical quest. The integral link between psychopathology and the perinatal, as well as transpersonal, domains is even more obvious in psychotic conditions. While in psychoneuroses and psychosomatic disorders the perinatal and transpersonal roots are not immediately obvious and have to be discovered in experiential therapy, in psychoses they often represent a manifest aspect of their phenomenology. Without this recognition, the phenomenology of psychotic experiences and their relationship to mystical states will continue to present a serious challenge for Ken’s conceptual system. In discussing the relationship between schizophrenia and mysticism in his book The Atman Project (Wilber 1980, 152), he describes his position as being “somewhere between” the approach of traditional psychiatry for which both schizophrenia and mysticism as purely pathological and the attitude taken by researchers like R. D. Laing and Norman O. Brown, who see both as examples of ultra-health. Ken accepts the position of Anton Boisen, R. D. Laing, Julian Silverman, and others who observed that, under favorable circumstances, the psychotic episode can actually result in healing and become a growth experience: by regression in the service of the ego, the psychotic patient returns to “a deep structure (bodyself or otherwise) that was ‘traumatized’ during its construction in infancy or childhood... and then, as it were, re-builds the personality, ground up, from that point... After re-contacting or ‘re-living’ that deep complex or deep structure disturbance, then the upper layers of consciousness spontaneously reshuffle or rebuild themselves around the newly refurbished deep structure” (Wilber 1980, 157). According to Ken, this process of regressive healing and transformation remains restricted to the fulcra of postnatal biography. However, the psychotic process is not limited to material from infancy and childhood. It also frequently includes the theme of death and rebirth and the specific symbolism characteristic of perinatal matrices. Should we believe that for some mysterious reasons the process of this reparative regression has to stop short of the split caused by the trauma of biological birth, Ken’s new fulcrum 0? It certainly does not stop there in deep experiential work using NOSC. There this regression proceeds to the perinatal level where the process often connects to the transpersonal domain. John Perry’s observations from many years of clinical work with psychotic patients clearly demonstrate that similar mechanisms operate also in the psychotic process. They show that the reparative regression and restructuring of personality typically includes the motif of death and rebirth as an essential element and reaches deep into the archetypal level to the Self or the “central archetype” (Perry 1953, 1974). John Perry’s pioneering work that C. G. Jung welcomed as “a messenger of a time when the psyche of the mental patient will receive the
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