Voices Beyond the Threshold
Isabel Clarke
Consultant Clinical Psychologist
The Talk
•
What threshold – A psychological framework for
understanding non ordinary experience
• Managing the threshold - Therapeutic approaches
• Understanding the transpersonal aspect
• The transformative dimension.
Different types of experience:
psychosis and spirituality revisited.
What is the connection between the journey of life: the
journey of therapy, and the spiritual journey?
• Why can some people manage to adust to difficult
transitions
• Whereas other people find themselves in a different
dimension?
• How is it that for some people this experience is creative
and transformative?
• Whereas for others it is the opposite?
• What can we learn about this other dimension – and
how can this help us to stand beside the journier?
O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs
of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed.
Hold them cheap
May who ne’er hung there.
Gerald Manley Hopkins (from ‘No worst, there is none,
pitched past pitch of grief’)
Travel into the strange places of the
mind
Not mind safely locked inside the skull;
No!: mind that envelopes us;
Mind that is sea we swim in
Travel across the threshold – the Transliminal –
but never to let go of Ariadne’s thread!
Characteristics of the other way of
experiencing
• Metaphor come to life
• Dissolution of boundaries
• Cosmic significance – terrible or wonderful
• Confusion about the self
• Coincidence rules OK
• Threat (cosmic)
• Link with trauma
Two Views of the person
• people are rational beings, with, needs, plans and aspirations,
who function more or less well, unless they turn out to have an
'illness'
– Static
• people are perpetually seeking definition through dreams and
symbols, and deeply dependent on important relationships;
easily knocked off course by loss of any of these props, and
perpetually trying to balance the inner state.
– Dynamic and in flux.
Getting a scientific grip on the
transliminal
The split between realities comes from the split
in us!
• Interacting Cognitive Subsystems provides a
way of making sense of this ‘crack’.(Teasdale & Barnard
1993).
– An information processing model of cognition
– Developed through extensive research into memory and
limitations on processing.
– A way into understanding the “Head/Heart split in people.
Interacting Cognitive Subsystems.
Body
State
subsystem
Relational
subsystem
Implicational
Memory
Auditory
ss.
Visual
ss.
Propositional subsystem
Propositional
Memory
Verbal
ss.
Linehan’s STATES OF MIND (from Dialectical Behaviour Therapy) – Maps onto
Interacting Cognitive Subsystems
EMOTION
REASONABLE
WISE
MIND
(Propositional
Subsystem)
MIND
MIND
(Implicational
subsystem)
IN THE PRESENT
IN CONTROL
Using ICS to understand the Transliminal
• Non-ordinary experience: when Emotion
Mind/Implicational does not mesh properly with
Reasonable Mind/Propositional
• This leads to a different quality of experience – fine in
the short term – a problem when stuck
• Normalising the difference as well as the continuity –
shared and unshared reality
• Sensitivity and openness to anomalous experience –
continuum with normality
• Understanding the role of emotion – the feeling is
real; the ‘story’ is improbable
Important Features of this model
• Our subjective experience is the result of two higher order
processing systems interacting – neither is in overall control.
• Each has a different character, corresponding to “hot” and “cool”
cognition.
• The Relational Subsystem manages emotion – and therefore
relationship.
• The verbal, logical, propositional ss. gives us our sense of individual
self.
This gives us the two ways of knowing:
• The Everyday or Shared Reality (when Relational and Propositional
are in synchrony)
• The Transliminal or Unshared Reality (when they are in
desynchrony).
Both of these are available to all human beings.
Both are incomplete
The transliminal has always both fascinated and spelt potential danger!
Evidence for a new normalisation
• Schizotypy – a dimension of experience: Gordon
Claridge.
• Mike Jackson’s research on the overlap between
psychotic and spiritual experience.
• Emmanuelle Peter’s research on New Religious
Movements.
• Caroline Brett’s research: having a context for
anomalous experiences makes the difference between
– whether they result in diagnosable mental health
difficulties
– whether the anomalies/symptoms are short lived or
persist.
• Wider sources of evidence – e.g.Cross cultural
perspectives; anthropology. Richard Warner: Recovery
from Schizophrenia.
Being Porous: therapeutic approach
• Some people are more open to this type of experience
than others – cf. Schizotypy
• Sensitivity and openness to anomolous experience – continuum
with normality
• Positive side as well as vulnerability
• Validating the experience
• Normalising the difference in quality of experience as well as the
continuity – understanding the transliminal so that it can be
recognized – give choice
• Motivation to engage with shared reality
• Manage the threshold – mindfulness is key
Linehan’s STATES OF MIND (from Dialectical Behaviour Therapy) – Maps onto
Interacting Cognitive Subsystems
EMOTION
REASONABLE
WISE
MIND
(Propositional
Subsystem)
MIND
MIND
(Implicational
subsystem)
IN THE PRESENT
IN CONTROL
Managing the threshold
• Awareness of vulnerability – of openness to transliminal
experience
• Grounding when the experience is overwhelming.
Grounding activity. Grounding food.
• Mindfulness to manage the threshold
• Challenge of facing unshared reality mindfully – both
pleasant and unpleasant
• Transliminal state of mind = most accessible at high and
low arousal
• Managing arousal – breathing control to reduce arousal;
mindful activity in the present to prevent it slipping.
Psychosis and the Transpersonal Dimension
• ICS offers a challenging model of the mind
• The human being is a balancing act as the two
organising systems pass control back and forth: there
is no boss.
• The mind is simultaneously individual, and reaches
beyond the individual, when the implicational ss. is
dominant.
• This constant switch between logic and emotion gives
us human fallibility
• The self sufficient, billiard ball, mind is an illusion
• In our implicational/relational mode we are a part of
the whole.
‘That’s How the Light gets in’ (and the
dark)
• The Relational part of our mind is embedded in
relationship; in the whole (the older part)
• The newer, self conscious, part holds our individuality
• Temporary control passing backwards and forwards
between the two organising ss is experienced as
normality
• When the ‘relational’ takes over for any length of time,
the character of experience changes
• The person is no longer grounded in their individuality
– boundaries dissolve – they are open to any
influences – positive and negative.
Web of Relationships
In Rel. with
earth:
non humans
etc.
primary
care-giver
In Rel. with
wider
group etc.
Self as
experienced
in relationship
with primary
caregiver
Sense of
value comes
from rel. with
the spiritual
What does this say about the possible
transpersonal dimension of psychosis?
• Taking experience seriously – experience of
possession
• Experience of cross generational healing
• On the other hand – the transliminal is governed by a
logic of both – and……
Psychosis – Potential for Transformation
• Traditions such as Psychosynthesis and Spiritual
Emergence/Emergency recognize the transformational potential
of the transliminal.
• They tend to distinguish between ‘psychosis’ and
transformational crises
• More and more this is seen as a false dichotomy – Spiritual
Crisis Network (.org.uk)
• Mike Jackson’s Problem Solving – Paradigm Shifting model.
• Click into another dimension for a wider perspective – with the
danger of a vicious circle getting set up – getting stuck
• Role of stigma in trapping people.
The What is Real and What is Not
Programme – designed to combat stigma
First : Form an Alliance.
• Validate their reality
• Introduce the idea that their reality is only one way of looking at it:
• shared and unshared reality (negotiate the language).
• The individual’s experience is taken seriously and valued – at the same
time as working on a better relationship to shared experience
• It is possible to get away from illness language – and arguments about
diagnosis
Normalising openness to unshared reality – idea of the schizotypy
spectrum
• Advantages and disadvantages of openness to unshared reality
•
– e.g. of people who have used unshared reality positively.
Characteristics of unshared reality.
• Idea of the line/ the threshold.
• Importance of being able to manage the line
• Motivational aspect – pros and cons.
Coping skills to manage the line
• When is unshared reality most powerful; in charge?
• Arousal as a means of being in control;
• Stress management
• Being alert and concentrated – watch out for drifting states
• Grounding in the present
• Wise mind and mindfulness
• Focusing/mindfulness v. distraction
Session 2. The role of Arousal
shaded area = anomalous experience/symptoms are more accessible.
Level of
Arousal
High Arousal - stress
Ordinary, alert, concentrated, state of arousal.
Low arousal: hypnagogic; attention drifting etc.
Linehan’s STATES OF MIND applied to PSYCHOSIS
Ways of coping suggested by this approach –
management of arousal and constructive activity.
Final Session:Making sense of the experience
Why do people click into/get lost in unshared reality/the
transliminal?
Discussion of Different meanings for the experience
• Meaning for the individual
• Place in their life – what was happening in their life
when it all started?
• Address and validate the emotion – that is reliable.
• 'Problem Solving' idea – Mike Jackson’s research.
Contact details, References and Web addresses
•
•
Isabel.Clarke@hantspt-sw.nhs.uk
AMH Woodhaven, Calmore, Totton SO40 2TA.
• Clarke, I. (Ed.) (2010 Forthcoming) Psychosis and Spirituality:
consolidating the new paradigm. Chichester: Wiley
• Clarke, I. ( 2008) Madness, Mystery and the Survival of God.
Winchester:'O'Books.
• Clarke, I. & Wilson, H.Eds. (2008) Cognitive Behaviour Therapy for
Acute Inpatient Mental Health Units; working with clients, staff and
the milieu. London: Routledge.
• www.SpiritualCrisisNetwork.org.uk
• www.isabelclarke.org