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Title: LSD Psychotherapy by Stanislav Grof ISBN: 0-9660019-4-X Publisher: The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies Pub. Date: 10 April, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (4 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Remarkable, practical wisdom
Comment: This material is clearly intended for a technical audience, and encompasses both the history of psychedelic therapeutic models, as well as practical guidance for conducting therapeutic sessions gathered from a lifetime of research into the subject.
This subject requires a little context. The history of entheogenic compounds such as LSD has proceeded along two tracks. Originally offered by Sandoz for psychiatric professionals, Grof began his own research into its efficacy in the mid-50's, along with the CIA, Gregory Bateson, Humphrey Osmond, and others. But the word got out--primarily through Cap'n Al Hubbard. The subjects of the therapeutic research programs then carried the story to the great unwashed masses via word of mouth, and the history of free-wheeling private experimentation on the part of the non-professional public began, in earnest, and I might say, with a vengeance. This pandemic, of course, ultimately led to a socio-political crisis of such scope and magnitude in the USA that it became virtually impossible for legitimate investigators to obtain permission to continue to conduct research.
That is such a shame. Thank you, Dr. Timothy Leary, Allen Ginzburg, and Ken Kesey. Thank you so very much. How many decades, centuries, did you set back Homo Sapiens? Well, maybe they were unable to imagine how it would all turn out.
Aldous Huxley, of course, along with co-conspirators Osmond and Hubbard, wanted to present LSD to the brightest and the best, hoping to effect a kind of intellectual revolution among the intelligentsia--and Ginzburg and Leary were initially travelling down this path. But Kesey and others wanted to put the stuff in a big barrel, mix in some Kool-Aid, fire up a rock band, and invite the whole neighborhood to something like an electric barbecue. I am sorry, guys--but, was this really the socially responsible thing to do?
Let's face it: by now millions of people have been exposed to LSD, many, hundreds of times. And few of them were able to put together a coherent model for organizing the complex, confusing, and multi-levelled phenomena that often emerge from such encounters. Only a dedicated, dogged, relentless, and tireless scientist like Grof has been able to accomplish this. The resulting model is the most complete, multi-dimensional view of the Psyche(and its relation to the Cosmos) that has been offered, to date. On top of that, this book is filled with practical methods and advice.
I am someone who lived with the Indians of southern Mexico and participated in their nightly vigils with teonanacatl. So I am familiar with the traditional, non-Western, shamanic context for imbibing entheogens. Frankly, Grofs approach is not a lot different. The mistakes that most of the naive public has made over the years derive from avoiding the following best practices:
Know exactly what you are taking.
Know exactly how much you are taking.
Carefully prepare yourself in mind, body and spirit.
Do not eat food for several hours before your session.
Be well rested.
Spend a bit of time in quiet contemplation.
Consider what you hope to gain from the session.
Have a competant sitter that is reliable in a spiritual crisis.
Have the encounter in a safe, quiet place.
Have quiet, peaceful music playing.
Lie down, with your eyes closed, and pay attention to your breathing.
Focus within.
Stay down, with your eyes closed, and internalise the experience, in so far as you are able to do so.
Try to avoid talking if you can.
Do not go out.
Make sure the phone is unplugged.
Make sure their are no unexpected interruptions.
Read this book.
When these types of practices are involved--even the most painful and dramatic traumatic material can emerge and be resolved in a protective environment--the chances for lasting side effects or spiritual emergencies are minimized.
However--psychedelic therapy is unnecessary to catalyze the "holotropic" therapeutic process. Grof's technique of holotropic breathwork is sufficient to produce the same therapeutic effects, and is a far better choice for neophytes. It isn't as dramatic, but it can be just as effective, and most who have tried both prefer the breathwork. (I personally prefer Sandoz black vacuum ampules, but since they stopped manufacture in 1963, that isn't very likely ever again). Ah well, the Djinn is out of the lamp by now.
As Dr Hunter S Thompson has said: "Drugs are not for amateurs."
Over the centuries, there are individuals too numerous to count who have undergone profound and dramatic spiritual transformations--on their own--without the assistance of priests, shamans, gurus, holy men, psycho-analysts, or psychiatrists. A brief survey of the lives of the Saints will attest to this fact. But there is something of value to the proposition that Science may offer useful knowledge in this regard. Some cannot complete the process without professional intervention. But SOME, can. If you are able to do so, take responsibility for yourself and your own transformation. If not, obtain professional help. But watch out! All that glitters is not gold.
Rating: 3
Summary: HEALING AND GROWTH THROUGH SUPERVISED PSYCHEDELIC THERAPY
Comment: LSD PSYCHOTHERAPY: THE HEALING POTENTIAL OF PSYCHEDELIC MEDICINE, by Stanislav Grof, M.D., is a comprehensive guidebook for psychedelic therapists, based on the author's seventeen years as an LSD psychotherapist.
The author has found that internalization of psychedelic therapy sessions--by lying down, wearing eyeshades, and listening to music throughout the session--is essential in order to gain the therapeutic benefit that comes from fully experiencing whatever emotions, fantasies, and psychosomatic symptoms the unconscious mind presents.
If low doses are used, the first few therapy sessions are usually a reliving of childhood traumas. Later sessons are a dramatic reliving of one's birth, and a shattering confrontation with death. After many such death-rebirth sessions, one typically experiences the final ego death, a profound psychospiritual annihilation, followed by visions of blinding white supernatural light with feelings of ecstasy and rebirth. All subsequent sessions are transpersonal, such as reliving fetal traumas, episodes of contact with deceased loved ones, and mystical/peak experiences of the divine.
Although the bulk of the book deals with emotionally troubled persons, there is still a significant amount of information on using LSD therapy with normal, healthy people for personal growth, as well as a section about helping the terminally ill with ppsychedelic therapy.
The several dozen color illustrations, including some new to this edition, are mostly of scenes from people's LSD therapy sessions, and help bring the book to life.
(Incidentally, it seems fitting that the new publisher of LSD PSYCHOTHERAPY is MAPS, since it is from their bulletin that I learned of a meditation-enhancing herb (legal, relatively safe) which may be also useful for psychotherapy, following Grof's guidelines.)
Please note that the small size of the type and the sometimes long convoluted sentence structure may require strong motivation for a reader to plow through the entire book.
Other books I recommend: BEYOND THE BRAIN: BIRTH, DEATH, AND TRANSCENDENCE IN PSYCHOTHERAPY, Grof's masterpiece distilling what he has learned about the human psyche from his years as an LSD psychotherapist; REALMS OF THE HUMAN UNCONSCIOUS: OBSERVATIONS FROM LSD RESEARCH, telling of his early low-dose LSD method, may be of interest to psychoanalytically-inclined readers of the Freudian persuasion; THE ADVENTURE OF SELF-DISCOVERY describes the group hyperventilation therapy Grof developed with his wife Christina, which has therapeutic results similar to LSD therapy, and may be used by itself, or as a complement to psychedelic therapy; BEYOND DEATH, a visual feast of world artwork on the theme of biological death and the soul's afterlife, as well as psychospiritual death-rebirth such as occurs in psychedelic therapy; Meduna's CARBON-DIOXIDE THERAPY (revised edition) describes a method possibly of interest to the adventurous psychiatrist, which may have results comparable to LSD therapy; and Sandra Ingerman's SOULD RETRIEVAL: MENDING THE FRAGMENTED SELF, about welcoming home the "inner-child" self which many of us lost early in life due to trauma, and may now return as we each grow and heal towards wholeness.
Rating: 5
Summary: Astounding in its Implications
Comment: How many Amazon.com reviews state that one book or another is one of the most important ever written? Well, Stanislav Grof is possibly the greatest mind research pioneer in the Western tradition. In LSD Psychotherapy, Dr. Grof, a conventionally-trained MD, outlines a methodology for a process that serves as a paradigm for human transformation, as well as a basis for a radically revised understanding of reality.
This book is iconoclastic--all great breakthroughs in understanding are. Dr. Grof formulated his methods based on thousands of hours of first-hand clinical experience. He valiantly tries to dispel the sensationalism and misinformation about LSD, pointing out that the drug merely amplifies pre-existing mental processes, in much the same way that a microscope or telescope affords heightened glimpses of phenomena. Indeed LSD, he has said, responsibly administered in clinical settings, could be for the sciences of mind what the telescope is for astronomy, or the microscope for medicine and biology. The power and effectiveness of LSD-assisted therapy are unprecedented, yet the research is sadly truncated and unjustifiably ignored.
I wish this book were obsolete. Dr. Grof no doubt expected the process he pioneered to be developed further. Had responsible LSD research been allowed to continue through the present day, its methods and effectiveness might now be in advance of even those outlined herein. The occasional therapeutic failure, honestly referred to in the book, might be a success story today.
One would think that Dr. Grof's positing of experiential matrices, birth and pre-birth memories, and transpersonal aspects of reality would be a source of excitement to those with a genuine scientific spirit. LSD, however, is a topic that typically elicits hallmarks of non-critical thought from otherwise critical thinkers--distortion, hysteria, irrelevance, ridicule, and a reluctance to pursue inquiries that might overturn our most cherished assumptions. Our rational culture, it seems, is not so rational after all.
So LSD research gathers dust. Could this be partly because it might lead us back to a conception of the ultimate nature of reality that Western science for 400 years has been trying to eradicate?
The uphill battle for mainstream acceptance that Dr. Grof's research has faced is also partly due to our culture's stigmatizing of the therapeutic process itself. We value introspection lightly, and tend to characterize the need or desire for psychotherapy as evidence of weakness--something for people who are unable to work out their problems on their own.
However, what if our culture extolled the undertaking of the inner journey as highly as it does the quest for external and material achievement? People every day attempt to exorcise their demons--unsuccessfully--by building businesses or climbing mountains. If embarking on the process of inner healing and transformation that LSD-assisted therapy can facilitate were widely encouraged, our culture would be quite different--more joyous, more peaceful, perhaps even more scientific, and less abusive of the planet and each other.
If one wishes to learn to swim, at some point he has to stop reading books containing mathematical descriptions of human buoyancy and biomechanics in water. Ultimately he must take the plunge. Criticism of Dr. Grof's work rarely if ever comes from those who undertake the inner journey for themselves. No refutation of his "expanded cartography of the psyche" and speculations about the nature of reality is possible without incorporating the experiential aspect of the process. I cannot overemphasize the importance of this groundbreaking book.
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