Primal Integration (Bill Swartley, John Rowan)
Overview: The Basic Principles. The Aims of the Therapy
Healing the Male Psyche: Therapy as Initiation by John Rowan
Much of what was once taken for granted about gender roles has shifted, leaving a lack of desirable or achievable roles for men. This text argues that the male psyche has been wounded by the new pressures of social uncertainty and needs to be healed. It explores the concept of masculinity using the work of Ken Wilber as a central guide and Jungian Alchemy as a framework within which to discuss the process of change. The way this change happens is personal to each man and involves aspects of the body, emotions, rational understanding and soul. However, because the change required is so major, what is needed is a continuous process that sees the man through the ups and downs, contradictions and paradoxes along the way. The therapeutic relationship is ideally suited to this task. The efficacy of therapy cannot be taken for granted and the author explores how different sorts of therapeutic intervention can hinder as well as help the processes of change.
In ‘The Politics of Experience’ and the visionary ‘Bird of Paradise’, R.D. Laing shows how the straitjacket of conformity imposed on us all leads to intense feelings of alienation and a tragic waste of human potential. He throws into question the notion of normality, examines schizophrenia and psychotherapy, transcendence and ‘us and them’ thinking, and illustrates his ideas with a remarkable case history of a ten-day psychosis. ‘We are bemused and crazed creatures,’ Laing suggests. This outline of ‘a thoroughly self-conscious and self-critical human account of man’ represents a major attempt to understand our deepest dilemmas and sketch in solutions.
A summation of the psychological models by Ken Wilber
Dear colleagues,
This assignment consists of 2 parts.
PART 1
Watch the extract of John Rowan’s presentation on the co-centric levels of consciousness in Psychotherapy. Then:
1. Provide a summary of the main points presented.
2. Spot 1 point of interest for you (among the information shared by John Rowan) and comment on that. You can agree, disagree, adapt or whatever else you feel appropriate to share and which is relevant to the specific point chosen.
PART 2:
Read any chapter from the suggested google books, then write a summary on this chapter and comment on how this could be of any value to you as a person or as a psychotherapist.
Put the answer to both parts in your study diary which you will submit to your tutor/ mentor at the end of this lesson/ unit. Thank you.
“What we call ‘normal’ is a product of repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection and other forms of destructive action on experience. It is radically estranged from the structure of being. The more one sees this, the more senseless it is to continue with generalized descriptions of supposedly specifically schizoid, schizophrenic, hysterical ‘mechanisms.’ There are forms of alienation that are relatively strange to statistically ‘normal’ forms of alienation. The ‘normally’ alienated person, by reason of the fact that he acts more or less like everyone else, is taken to be sane. Other forms of alienation that are out of step with the prevailing state of alienation are those that are labeled by the ‘formal’ majority as bad or mad.”
The Politics of Experience/The Bird of Paradise