docteur ès-Sciences (Ph. D.), psychotherapist, specialist in abnormal psychology.
present address: 1 rue de Verdun, F-44000-NANTES, FRANCE,
phone 33-2-40 47 01 11, fax 33-2-40 47 06 43.
With addictive or abused patients, we usually face difficulties in dealing with the body, especially with emotions which tend to be pre-emotional reactions rather than fully embodied emotions, and with psychotic-like behavior, even if these unfortunate people can not be frankly categorized as psychotic as in the psychiatric nosography. Re-connecting the body to the higher levels functions of language and imagination produces healing. I have found that ecstatic trance is a good technique to help therapy and recovery in these types of disorders.
The conventional DSM-III-R and DSM-IV classification of disturbances are done using the categorical approach based on symptoms. A more fruitful and insightful approach is the dimensional or multifactorial strategy. It is based on a more global behavior traits observation or on a deeper evaluation of the personality. It gives clearer ideas about the inner structure of our psychic system and favorises correct and successful therapeutic schemes. The finer the discrimination of symptoms, the more categories we get and the less useful they are. The broader and more meaningful dimensions we chose to characterize the individual, the closer we get to their deep inner structure.
I have told elsewhere how we can empirically and heuristically use our clinical knowledge to classify the major disturbances [1] and understand the mechanisms of addictive disorders. In the present work, I have chosen to use a three-dimensions approach as a reference to the assessment of the major psychological diseases. It is mainly based on the interpretation of the psychotic behavior which seems to involve the rupture of the links between major functions of the psyche, or the faulty functioning of one of them. The three basic functions I have chosen are the Body-function (which effects reactions, pre-emotions and basic drives and also represents the reality for our psyche [2]), the Rational-function (which pertains to logical order and time-space causal analyses) and the Global-function (which produces analogies, associations, evocations and syntheses, and interpret reactions into emotions and feelings). They roughly correspond in the CNS respectively to the brain stem, the left and the right cortex hemispheres. The rupture of one link between these major functions or the faulty functioning of one, produces addictive disorders or psychoses.
For the moment, I have chosen to name three canonical psychoses: essential Autism, essential Hysteria [3], and essential Schizophrenia. The combination to various degrees of these three components produces the whole spectrum of the psychoses.
With a lesser damage of the psychic system, the ability to meet the world requirements increases and these persons have lesser although severe difficulties which are variously named addictions, abused-children neuroses or psychoses, manic-depressive or borderline disorders. We can imagine in this case that the damage to the major links has been less crippling than in the former case and/or that the basic functions have been more developped so that a certain amount of social adjustment has been possible. Using a similar three-dimensions reference evolved from the essential psychoses chart, we now get: Anorexia, Psychopathy, and Schizoid-Paranoid as basic ailments on that level of severity. Then, various forms of bulimia and anorexia, gambling and excessive obesity, alcoholism, sexomania and other drug addictions (the latter being more or less related to the release of endogenic morphine-like compounds in the brain or their direct ingestion) can be then located on the chart as a combination of these major psychopathologies, as given in ref. [1].
So we see that in essence, the major psychopathologies reflect fundamental defects of our psychic system, not as an inadaquate content or learning as in the lesser disorders, the neuroses and affective disorders, but here as essentially a damage of the quality or the strength of the links between major structural functions. So, our therapeutic approach has to look for a restoration or a substitution of these damaged links. We shall see in the following how the trance work can help reconnect major functions and improve their overall functioning.
It is well known that a possible "repair" of these damaged links can be obtained through a clinical approach involving 1-the re-building of body-sensations, especially proprioceptive, and the reclaiming of body-reactions (reichian work), 2-the repeated mirroring and naming of body experiences (analytic work), 3-experiencing in the body the implications of the words (gestalt work), 4-using a psychotherapist- or/and group-support as a structuring device (transference work, group dynamics work). The combined approach of all four [4] gives a maximized chance of recovery. We see here that all four strategies favor the creation and the implementation of one or more of the missing links between the major functions.
In the transference work, the crippled psyche uses another psyche to activate the links. It functions better with an outside "linker" or "editor" for a while, which is needed for social stability, during which the inner linker can regenerate itself and eventually lead progressively to autonomous functioning. In this view of the clinical work, it is essential to be reminded that we work on the basic structure of the psyche, i.e. on the quality and capacity of the inner linkage and consequently on the aptitude of the major functions, and not so much on its content. The content of the psyche is of course the material produced in the therapeutical work itself, but to most of the extent, it is irrelevant as such and only a mean of access to the deeper structure. Now I shall show that the ex-static trance phenomena are a great road to the discovery of the structure of the psyche and its defects, a mean to bypass the innumerable obstacles to the deeper unconscious (here the deep unconscious is basically a reflection of our structural aspects), and a case of magnified transference phenomena which can be used to great profit.
In this article, I shall use the concept of trance as it is used in ecstatic trance or possession trance. Those are the deeper trance states one can experience. It is different in kind from the hypnotic trance, the journeying trance, the meditation trance or the lucid dreaming trance. It is also much deeper. It is characterized by a temporary evacuation of the "ego", the personal conscious and unconscious thoughts, feelings, memories and associated emotions and drives. The body is thus left with a somewhat blank psychic system able to sustain raw energetic patterns or other, borrowed or related, psychic systems. The impression from inside is a remnant of self-observation (a kind of consciousness) and an inability to control what is manifested in the body, the motion, sometimes the sound or the speech, and what is perceived as received from external sources.
The term ecstatic or ex-static seems appropriate in this description since ex stasis means literally gone out, having left our body, refering to the personal mind-emotion set.
I use most of the time the group effects to produce and sustain trance states. As trance is highly contagious, the use of two or three patients in trance in specific locations helps. The unconscious affective bond between patients produces a sort of network of the trance effect, of which I am aware, and helps others to take time to soften and acquaint themselves with the peculiar feelings of a loose and autonomous body, and helps them to come closer to that state of being.
At the beginning of a session, I would use free dancing and specific let-go exercices to help being more in the body, paying less attention to thoughts and external stimuli and feeling more in a so-called group "energy", that is participating to the egregor effect. Drumming would also synchronize bodies and tune the people together, as well as already inducing a change in the sympathic-parasympathic balance characteristic of trance states [5].
At first, most of the induction would come from the beat and rythm. Then it will come from the body motion. The strong rythmic body motion is one of the best inductor of trance states, since it is both active (from motor activation) and passive or retroactive (from proprioceptive sensory stimulation) and thus concerns most of our CNS functioning and takes us into the so-called trophotropic balance. Normally, I would also use specific rythmic movements such as those used in the zikhr ceremonies of the sufis or the katzugen-kai settings of the shintoists for instance. These movements work on mainly three important points for trance induction: the sacrum, the diaphragm, the medulla-pons locus. Rythmic and fast breathing would normally follow. It has to be increased and diaphragm-based to the extent of what is normally obtained in deep reichian work and is essentially non-regressive and non-imagination stimulating, this point is important. When the trance state starts to happen, panting breathing associated with a burst of sweat or sometimes a sudden coldness is usual. This phenomenon together with the disappearance of thoughts and the onset of strong vibrations or unvoluntary shaking of the body marks the beginning of the transformation of the physiological state.
The group is trained to dance and breathe throughout the session. I would as a rule go myself into the trance state first. As deeply as possible using the various exercices and the group motion. Then I would be able to perceive the connections within the group and the states people are in. I would probably then pick the most ready to cross over of the dancing group members and lead them into the trance state proper one by one, or one after the other. This will be done in two steps. First, being in a trance state myself would induce a trance state in them by simple nearing, projection of my interest, or touch of the body. Second, I would move their body in such a way as to induce a strong let-go and a vanishing of the last control signs. Very specific touching and mobilisation would do the rest. Then they are in deep trance and their body moves freely.
In some settings, I would use whirling, as in the dervish method, the umbanda, the tibetan, or the TTT method [6]. But to me, it is not merely the whirling technique that works, but the fact that I am in the other plane and take them there by contact [7]. Also, in that state, time and touch are changed and I am able to see them and feel them in a very different way: I touch right where it would work, rock them in a gentle manner as in an etheric dance, and ask them internally to come with me and have no fear. This is due to a profound distorsion of time, space and touch. Therefore, externally, in ordinary space-time where what really happens cannot be decoded, this delicate merging of two often appears as a fierce struggle!
As he goes into a deeper trance, he also deepens my own state by induction and we are then in a dual, out of control, psychically merged, relationship. I would pick up whatever his problems or state or suffering appear, either as feelings in my own body or as spontaneous reactions. In that state, everything is as it comes, as if interaction has its own course. It cannot be interpreted at that time. Flashes of meaning seep through from time to time: in faint thoughts, in shouts or moans, or attitudes or postures, sometimes in words. The energetic body would be apparent and palpable and responding, as an enlarged body, and the body motions would seem amplified and slowed down and more wavy-like as in a slow-motion picture. The defective organs, the residual inhibiting tensions, the places of energetic or affective suffering are displayed and can be worked on, for awareness, acceptance, release and soothing.
It has to be understood that the connection between me and the patient is very strong and very close in this state. I would act out a number of responses he cannot himself manifest and in reflection, he will respond to my attitudes and inductions without even word or touch on my part. It is in this way that healing takes place. In this primitive direct body-to-body interaction and merging of the two unconscious, an exchange of a large amount of information which could have taken many months of therapy would happen.
Going into deep trance states takes some preparation. First, the ability to loosen the body has to be worked through. One shoud be able to be entirely focused, invested uniquely in the body for long periods of time. Also, for ease and safety, the emotional issues should have been worked over and over. If not, they probably will show up when the fluidization of the body happens at the beginning of the induction and emotional discharge will happen instead of going into trance. It is not uncommon that in benevolent but misinformed trance settings, the expected trance does not appear and transforms into a collective hysterical crisis, especially if the leader is not aware of the discrimination between the emotional plane manifestations and the trance manifestations. One can easily mistake one for the other. Ex-stasis can only been assessed when in the trance state. So being in an ecstatic trance state as a leader is a necessary condition.
The major benefit of trance work is to bypass, or go directly under the emotional level and its fears and pains, so great care must be taken to take the trance branch to avoid difficulties. If menacing emotions are repressed, from anxiety, this will then block the access to the trance state. If on the contrary emotions are sought as a way of discharge, a hysterical crisis will follow and the trance effect is lost.
There are certain precautions to take to go in and out of trance. In the highly fluidized body condition that happens then, little or no repression is possible. When the personal psyche is away, that is no problem. But when some personal, mental and emotional material is present, without the repression mechanism of the body, decompensation may happen with borderline individuals. A special manoeuver can avoid the crisis, as described below, but nonetheless, care must be taken to have people work on their emotional issues while they use this technique or it is better to avoid it. So I advise that deep emotional and analytical work or character analysis be undertaken as a preparation for the trance work.
Second, a positive relationship with the leader-therapist is needed. In trance, the highly suceptible reactions and merging of the unconscious patterns will make an obstacle if any unseen resentments or rejections of the therapist are present. In that state, he is firstly a guide to a certain plane and an actor/receptor at very subtle levels in the psyche, and it is best that an alliance is formed before this type of work is undertaken.
No magic will heal anyone with this type of technique. Even if it can be a shortcut and if new material can be obtained and directly worked on during the setting, trance work results have to be fully analysed and given meaning. So, a talking session is a minimum requirement to close the period. Later, patients or members would have to replace that experience in their personal history, using conventional therapy or any personal help they need.
What is especially remarkable in the ecstatic trance work is the progressive and temporary disposal of the personal conscious-unconscious set. What remains to activate the body and its relationship to the patient and to the leader-therapist is somewhat mysterious. At first glance, it would appear as deep unconscious patterns, the primitive or archaic patterns of the psychic organisation. Very high energetic discharge of the body are likely in the beginning, most of it like epileptic seizures or convulsions. Some fetal-, birth-, neonate- or baby-material appears sometimes, but not very often, showing a remnant of personal activation during the work. Some raw, animal-like, instinctual reactions show up currently, seeming to manifest the most elementary patterns which can activate our bodies. In any case, it does not coincide with the freudian Id of pure sexual and irrepressive impulses. Such things and associated behavior have never showed up in my settings [8] and the deep unconscious devoid of the Ego and Superego, to take a freudian concept, seems rather sensible and wise, albeit primitive. Most of the time though, what comes out is a surprise and while many primary patterns and primitive organizations show up, it has always an intense and purposeful aspect, even when it is fierce or violent, as if an unknown meaningful set is activating it from behind.
My personal guess is that having rid of the personal stuff, we are left with the bare deep structure of our psychic organization, not a totally unable or monstruous system, but a substrate system organized in specific ways corresponding to our personal history and our own idiosyncratic needs and purpose. This system shows up in trance with its various attributes and defects and produces thus characteristics patterns of motion in the body and interaction with the leader-therapist and group members. Whithout the cover of emotional and mental process, the deep support of our psyche is acting naked and can be worked upon and presumably healed to some extent.
Of course, one would readily think of the Jung's Shadow archetype, or the Anima archetype, and so on [9]. As a matter of fact, some of the material produced int the state of trance can be readily interpreted along those lines. In actuality, in a number of settings, the personal history is not totally vacuated and a beautiful display of the Shadow archetype can be found. Looking at these patterns in a more naive and unprejudiced way, one would be able to see The Lion, the Snake, or the Spider; in another line, the Cripple Old Woman, the Magnificent, or the Trickster would be sometimes identifiable. Or the King, or the Witch, or the Perfect Beauty. I have also witnessed or experienced the Adventurer, the Worm, the Horrid Beast, the Brute and the Slave, Joy and Desire, You'll Never Get Away With This, and Nero. I have been Eyes and a patient has been The Mother of All Beings and another The Wole Strength of the Jewish People.
An evidence from this work is the question of degree. We can play with Would Be Kings or with Emperors. Or with Sneaking Tom or Master of Perversions. But, together with recognizable forms of the structural psyche, there seemed to be displayed a degree of maturity of the patterns that I have met. As if the "archetypal" structure, the substrate, the support of our personal psyche as I called it were susceptible of growth, of improvement, of learning and of completion. And also, of combination so that the displayed is never or rarely pure. It gives thus a strong support for Jung's views. A jungian analyst would probably be able to reduce to no more than ten to twenty basic types combinaitons the hundreds of characters we have met.
Meeting the deep unconscious levels needs time and strategy. The Shadow does not show itself like that. Some level of acceptance of the most rejected aspects of ourselves must be built up before our unconscious comes to light. In trance work, the same happens: acceptance builds up slowly and the patterns appear in due time, when the work of meeting oneself and the associated fears has proceeded some way.
It has to be reminded that illnesses and ailments, psychopathological disorders are produced by strong adverse forces, forces which try to erase life from our bodies or kill the happiness, the joy of living and the lust of existence. These forces may be collective but for us they are pervading into our psyche directly from our parents and educators. In the deeep trance state, I have met those forces and this encounter is not to be minimized, either for the therapeutic path of my patients, or for my own preparation as a therapist.
One major feature I have discovered in trance work is that the healing forces needed to help a disordered individual, that is the life forces that I have to sustain and put to work must be of like nature and comparable strength to the adverse forces producing the illness.
I remember once I had to treat in trance a patient whose life was a havoc, he was the trickiest person I have ever seen and a master of all perversions. In the trance work, he kept for a long time pretending and producing nothing although the trance state in the group was quite deep. My state then deepened and deepened until I reached a tremendous might and a certainty I shall get at him. Then my body started to whirl him about, to move him very strongly, all the more that he was incredibly resisting and escaping in his pretense. Then he fell on the ground. I had another surge of energy and epileptic like fits and felt a really freaky compulsion runs through me. The words "that one is a deadly beast" came to me. As my body went into a frantic fight against his holding on, a new level of strength came in me and I hurled him about and rolled him and twisted him as I would have done to a puppet. He was 6 ' and 180 lbs! Then I receded and stood up all of a sudden, he wriggled and twisted on the floor like a hyena wounded to death and let out an incredible guttural moan like if he was an animal shot in bush. He had finally let go. The wounded beast had showed up. After the session, he said reluctantly that he had never produced such a sound in his life, he had been authentical for the first time.
To drive out, to exorcise a deadly device of the universe that we have born for a long time and which has produced so much harm already, it appears that we need to oppose to this device a match to it. Another life force, a healing force of a like kind and of equivalent strength, acting on the same plane. To heal a patient possessed by a wounded beast, we need another beast, wounded but healed who has the force to overcome the malevolent one.
One may meet also higher levels of evolution in trance. We may incarnate what appears as highly evolved beings, which can be interpreted as the most evolved parts of ourselves, not to speak of spirits which is a different thing. This production is in itself very beneficial, since it makes us experience that we are not all bad. After a time, we may even have a sort of experiential map of who we are in terms of the type and degree of maturation of our archetypal functions.
As all the interpretation work has to be postponed, and observed later from our ordinary state, it is difficult to evaluate and conceptualize what has actually been lived during the trance session. From an inner viewpoint, the motions, attitudes, crisis and interactions, are numerous messages of the ordinarily unconscious patterns, structures, forms, that activate and motivate our ordinary life. They can manifest in our bodies as anything from pure energetic patterns to very evolved beings. So what are they? In any case, I pretend that whatever or should we say whoever manifests itself has a direct relationship to the person to which it happens. The meaning of this relationship may not appear at first glance but it will in the course of therapy or on a later occasion. Be they felt as pure external activators having taken the drive of the body, they are in my experience never without a bind to that person. They can be seen as old history manifestations, as entities acting from behind the stage, as a shadow, as a spiritual drive or as an unconscious twin. They can be seen as whole psychic organizations called to help for the purpose of this lifepath. They can be seen as manifestations of an unseen world, or as I call it, an adjoint world or space, that we can refer to or even act out through our bodies in certain conditions. But they are always related to who we really are.
Now there are questions of degree. I think from what I have seen and what I have experienced that we are able under these deep trance conditions to incarnate or incorporate a great many of all patterns from those of our neighbors to those available in the adjoint space. Were they our basic patterns of primary drives, even our species specific programmes, or our collective social patterns, trance work proves that we are able to change them for a moment, to incorporate other patterns, even patterns of other species and that those are available as interchangeable programmes inputs for our psychic substrate. However, the patterns, the "programs" that fit best our substrate structure have more chance to happen and are easier to incorporate than other non-related ones.
Here we come of course to the work with spirits. Incorporating patterns entirely external to us and producing them through our bodies is in trance work an experience that tends to become easier with time. Now for the purpose of healing oneself, what is important is the personal history related patterns. The manifestation of guiding spirits or beneficial old souls is possible along those lines, but it is a different type of approach to healing disordered patients. It is spiritual healing. I shall not deal here with these spiritual aspects of trance work which is another strategy for healing and guidance, although those aspects are prominent in many traditions. I have to stress that personal history healing has to take place if one feels unable to meet the world requirements and that no spiritual healing can be substituted to it.
Many factors help the healing process in this technique. Using the strong induction and change in the physiology of the body, and particularly the reduction or vanishing of the tensions for a while is in itself very beneficial. It leaves a model of good health, without the restraint or suppression of active drives, and a model of spontaneous reaction that produces a lot of hope for a possible better condition. It brings an exceptional ease of motion of the body, an increase of the feeling of self-dimension, a great increase of sensivity and perception associated with the safety of expression, and in the end, a great sensation of joy into the body itself which leaves the person with feelings of elation, bliss or ecstasy and inner peace. Of course, as the thoughts slowly come back after the session, tensions come back also and refrain from spontaneity as well. But the temporary effect has had its imprint and sets a goal for improvement. Also, the effect of fluidization lasts more than a few hours, up to a few days, and I have observed very different expressions and a lot of release of new material during the therapeutic hour following the trance session. Thus, trance work also strongly affects the analytical work done during the following week.
One would certainly know that to let go is not an obvious thing "to do". Reichian work is to some extent a fight between the good feeling of being more spontaneous and the fears of being antisocial. In trance work, the repressing thoughts and the good self-image are not there to act through the muscles to refrain the natural reactions or to produce self-deceptive behavior. So let-go is now merely a matter of accepting the body limits and working through them with the aid of a guide who is himself in trance and favorizes the process.
This learning of letting-go has numerous consequences in life. I have found as a constant a truer and better relationship with others, an increase of self-confidence, self-affirmation and enterprise. I have also noted an increase of body pleasure in all activities and more reliance on the sensations for evaluating what is happening. Of course, as one would expect, there may be a great improvement of the pleasure of sexual activities, an easier reached orgasm for women and often a discovery that orgasm is not merely ejaculation for a number of men. The access to extended orgasmic states [10] is much easier attained through trance work than through any other type of work I know of.
There are many steps to negotiate to go into ecstatic trance states. Fears after fears, it is a path of losing the identification with the (freudian) ego, and the will to obtain and to control usually associated with consciousness as we know it. We have to cross the fear of "nothing is going to happen", the fear of exposure, the fear of not performing, the fear of dizziness and the fear of puking, the fear of falling and of hurting oneself, the fear of hurting others, the fear of getting crazy, the fear that the group will not be able to provide safety, the fear that the therapist is not able to contain our violence, the fear of losing consciousness, the fear of the pitch dark space to cross, the fear of acting free, and the fear of leaving our body. And also the fear of having only a body. In all, we really meet constantly with the fear of dying.
When all of these fears have been crossed and accepted, we meet with the fear of our own unconscious, of our hidden patterns, of our freak sides, and of not being sound or good or acceptable. We meet the hidden dark forces of life, the so-called evil forces, both in ourselves, as actors and producers of evil, and in the external world as challenges to meet and to fight for survival and good health.
Then, we may meet the fear of letting some foreign pattern or entity or spirit as one wishes to call them to use our body for its own sake and purpose. Which after all is the case for all of us as we have in the past internalized our parents without even our awareness or consent, but here, it is going to happen by choice and with the consciousness of what happens!
One interesting aspects of trance is the absence of emotions. As such, trance work is a demonstration that emotions stem from a learning process and are connected with our memories: when thoughts go they go. Thoughts and personal history patterns produce muscle tension, preventing spontaneity: when thoughts go tensions go. This tend to support some of the freudian views to a limited extent, and supports completely the reichian body theory. It is also an indirect confirmation of the James-Lange theory of emotions: emotions are body reactions interpreted by the superior CNS cortical functions. Depending on the degree or the depth of trance, we can work on the emotional plane or on the deeper structure of the psyche and the pre-emotional levels. I would suggest that the hypnotic-type of states where only the Rational-function (L-brain) is blocked [11] are of good use to tackle emotional and affective difficulties and that ex-static trance states, as I call them to remind that the "ego" is not there, are of good use to meet the structural psyche, the support or substrate of the personal history contents. From my work, it is apparent that the psychoses and borderline-psychoses and addictions, the prepsychoses, are ailments of the structure and have to be treated on that level. To my knowledge, only the strategies of the transference mechanism, psychodrama and masks-techniques, ultra-regressive work, and the ex-static trance work can really go directly to that level.
As I have already said, beyond affective sets, emotional diseases and personal history difficulties, we meet or rather display our innermost structure, raw and uncovered. This is the state where the defects which normally entrain psychotic reactions are readily observed. A cut- out body, a defect in sensory ability, a major distorsion of perception, the lack of linkage between action or speech and needs or desires, the lack of meaning of attitudes, all of this shows itself rather in a unobstrused display in trance. I shall not give here ideas of how to see those defects and how to remedy them, but the experienced therapist will know of what value a direct access to these structural idiosyncrasies is. A metaphor of what happens in trance work is as if a patient was acting purely psychotic, without extra-paraphernalia on top, in his real suffering, cut-off, unable, crippled, blocked in archaic forms of behavior, in mechanical or stereotyped activities, in pervert or freak attitudes, or vanished into dream space. Then dealing directly with this psychotic kernel of the psyche is a tremendously interesting process for efficient clinical work to happen.
Now as I have said, in the deep trance state, the two psychic structures may merge easily and act as one structure with two bodies. Elements of the patient will appear into the therapist's consciousness and, in this state, are likely to be acted out since talking is not an obvious thing in such a state. In this case, the therapist will also manifest what cannot be produced in the patient's body, as if he was the patient himself.
Conversely, even slight motions or inductions from the therapist on a very subliminal level will act on the patient in trance and help the release or the manifestation of aspects of the deeper structure. In an overt form, it may take the form of a body exchange, ranging from loving touch and dancing together to genuine struggling, or of a healing with hands.
It can also be a provocation to externalize deeply imprinted patterns from the patient. This is the mechanism of exorcism where previously incorporated patterns, presumably during childhood through the parents, either resident in the psyche as an intrusive/obtrusive content, or even "moulded" into structural form will then become apparent, active and alive in the patient's body. Then the work of meeting those patterns, accepting them, re-owning them and releasing them can proceed. It can take many sessions and many hours of trance work, but those manifestations work in the direction of healing, whatever.
There may be some difficulties with schizophrenic or schizoid patients, individuals who have cut-off too much of the link with their body and its expression in particular. They may be living in imaginary space [12], or they may be lost in a word space [13] where words are acted upon as a child would do with cubes: as pure formal items without meaning. Those patients would not readily go in trance until they have regained some body awareness and some connection between body and higher functions, since the body experience is what constitutes for our psyche the base of our inner reality [14]. The ecstatic trance state is another state of being closely related to the adjoint space. Schizophrenics are not really connected to the adjoint space, but in a state so close to it that so they can draw some information from it. However, they cannot put it into a language form intelligible to us nor can they talk of their inner structure [15] since their language function is disconnected from their bodies and thus the reality we live in and share. So they have to come back first to more actuality to be "able" to go into trance. Once they have achieved a suficient degree of body-ing, they become incomparable trancers since they already know the way to those states and have little repression to work through and also little fears of becoming crazy.
Of course, being merged with the patient, acting out or mirroring his patterns, actualizing directly new links and new ways of behavior, going into deep psychic touch and receding to become a more real self to interact with, confronting two psyches in a direct way, using one psyche to help the other either to read itself or to act its patterns out, or to reinforce its structure for a while, all of this is what tranference is about. So in trance work, the transference and counter-transference effects are at their summit, somehow devoid of too embarassing and difficult of assessment affective motions, but nonetheless effective on the deepest level. Then we can play or let play the truest or most elementary underlying patterns of the relationship between patient and therapist, and work through its aspects and meaning. In this fashion, we can really design a clinical strategy and get valuable clinical material to help difficult patients on their way to improvement.
Note that in the trance work, a tentative bond between patient and therapist is sollicited: it will be created, deepened or exposed according to the state of advancement of the therapy itself. The crippling du to a weak linkage of functions in the patient's psyche is temporarily reduced while it uses the therapist's psyche to connect his own and become more functional. This is readily seen as the patient reveals patterns he could not do in the normal state, and even moves or act as a more complete individual, a thing he cannot do in his usual state. Hopefully, this beginning of a better functioning will increase with time until autonomy from the therapist and from the setting is obtained.
I hope I have shown how trance work can help the therapist to get information and to act upon the deepest patterns of a disordered individual. To my understanding, the deepest levels are related in some way to the arrangement of the psychic system, or its actual structure, as a support of the numerous content patterns learned through experience. However, work on that level can not be of any use if two conditions are not met. First, the trance experience has to be put in words and told to significant persons, the group members and the therapist. Second, the relationship between the patient and the therapist has to be worked through and be given meaning. Not necessarily at once, but in the course of time, the experiences have to make sense in the therapeutic relationship. This will ensure a progressive integration of the new experience with the rest of the personality. Otherwise, the events lived in the trance sessions will not be related in the patient's mind to his personal archaic history: it will remain a new event in life and the trend to personal consistency will be lost. So I advise that this type of work should not take place as a one off event, but rather in a correct therapeutical or analytical course. Also, the emergence of deep unconscious material can be disastrous to one's sanity if proper therapeutic care is not provided to meet and integrate the revealed patterns.
As I have said, I do not talk here of spiritual healing, where the therapist acts as a medium for some spirit guide who knows better and makes moves that the ordinary healer cannot make. This is another subject of interest. What I advocate is that one makes clear that spirit healing or magic is not going to happen in this type of trance work, but only a strong technique to reinforce or accelerates the process of ordinary therapy. Healing on another level does not deal with the same psychological difficulties we intend to work with here.
Another necessity of this type of work is that the therapist should lead the session from his own trance state. This of course presents a number of technical difficulties, but it is a guarantee that it will work as it should. One reason is that the patients or group members will not go into these deep trance states unless the therapist is safely anchored there himself. In the very sensitive state reached in the induction, confidence and bond will be felt only if the therapist is already there. His actions will be felt as just, consistent and in tune with what is experienced. If the therapist is not in trance, the patient will feel lonely, frightened and not guided, and the actions of the therapist will be felt as clumsy, out of scope, un-congruent, and even threatening. I have had this experience and it was a difficult and lonely one although I had some previous trance experience.
Another reason is that the members will have little chance of going into trance and more chance of showing emotional patterns, hysterical fits, violence crisis, seduction games or the like if trance induction movements and beat are used by a not-in-trance therapist. As they stay more or less in normal space, all the usual therapist-patient or group-patient transference games will show up and will not be decoded until one is ready to accept that it was not a trance phenomenon.
All precautions as for a therapeutic setting or a ritual setting should be observed, but the most important of all for me is with regard to the intentions of the group and the intentions of the therapist. No matter what good reasons are in the therapist's mind, his unconscious repressed motives will be magnified in trance and acted out without even his will or notice. The same applies to the participants, but of course, their position is different since they come to work precisely on those patterns and use the therapist's support to that effect. It should however be clear to them that it is a working place and a sensitive one so that any other intention but producing and meeting oneself will compromise the work and should be discouraged.
The strong induction of trance work, the drumming, the dance, the let-go exercices, has the effect of reducing the tensions in the body. The pressure of repressed emotions or the flooding by such emotions may happen, and in extreme cases, actual decompensation may occur. Rigorous technique should then be used to avoid this: regressive techniques and regressive breathing patterns should be avoided; going in trance and out of trance should follow certain lines.
When going into trance, I look for the most susceptible persons and be careful not to let them go into a crisis before we actually go into a trance. Also, I would care to go directly into the trance state, and not to encourage emotional discharge, especially in hysterical characters.
Going out of trance is important. One can chose to leave the trance state abruptly, as a shock, or to let it fade out gradually. In the former case, as one transit between states rapidly, it is a process of learning. In the latter case, the persons benefit from that state much longer and it has its benefits. When some one is bordering decompensation, I always take him out of trance abruptly, so that no personal pre-emotional material is going to work through the then liquidized body. The "defences" come back at once together with the memories.
Now, treating addictive patients is by no means a simple operation: trance as many other things is highly addictive. It can replace in practically no time drug habits, alcohol habitual drinking or bulimia. I surmise that in the trance state we produce a lot of endorphines and other anxiety and pain reducing substances. To give only one proof of that I shall only mention the drastic change of the physiology of the body in the state of deep trance: no pain response to blows, cuts or scalds, very little bleeding in case of even a deep cut, no blisters in case of scalds. In a great number of addictions, what is looked for is precisely the modification or the secretion of endorphines, either through sex, activity or through direct or indirect [16] ingestion of a product containing morphine-like chemicals. Addictive personalities can then displace their addiction and become dependant on trance for the reduction of their anxiety or psychological suffering. Of course, it may not be bad in itself, but it has to be worked through exactly as another type of addiction.
1 Jean-Michel Fitremann, Alcoolisme et Psychose, memo. Université de Paris VII, 1994.
2 Reality in this context is defined as the residues of the body experience.
3 This is not to be confused with the more common repression or conversion hysteria. Here I use Hysteria in the sense of the hysterical side of psychosis, following some authors such as Jacques Lacan and Ginette Michaud. See Ginette Michaud, Corps et Psychose, Université de Paris VII, 1992.
4 which I call structured therapy.
5 See for instance Barbara W. Lex, The Neurobiology of Ritual Trance, in The Spectrum of Ritual, ed. E. G. D'Aquili, Columbia U. P., 1979.
6 Doug Morgan, TTT An Introduction to Trance Dancing, Ship Cottage Press, Canada.
7 Alberto Villoldo, interview of Edson Queiros in Healing States, video recording, Brazil, 1991.
8 This of course is a sign a theoretical problem: the monstruous Id and its avid and pervert greed does not show up in ecstatic trance when the Ego is not there, so if it appears in "normal" neurotic individuals, it must be acquired.
9 See for instance, A guided tour of the Collected Works of Jung, by Robert H. Hopcke, A. C. G. Jung Foundation Books, 1992.
10 Alan and Donna Brauer, Extended Sexual Orgasm, Warner Books, 1983.
11 Paul Watzlawick, The Language of Change, Basic Books, 1978.
12 The Imaginary can be seen as a major function, akin to or included in what we have called the Global-function.
13 As a function, the Symbolic-function which contains language is a part of the Rational-function.
14 See note 2.
15 except in crypted form.
16 In the abuse of alcohol, the secretion of endorphines and enkephalines is produced secondary to the reaction of ethanol in the brain.
PROFESSIONAL ORIENTATION