Voices Beyond the Threshold

1
Voices Beyond the Threshold

• Isabel Clarke
• Consultant Clinical Psychologist

2
The Talk

• What threshold A psychological framework for
  understanding non ordinary experience
• Managing the threshold - Therapeutic approaches
• Understanding the transpersonal aspect
• The transformative dimension.

3
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?

4
(No Transcript)
5

• O the mind, mind has mountains cliffs of fall
• Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them
  cheap
• May who neer hung there.
• Gerald Manley Hopkins (from No worst, there is
  none, pitched past pitch of grief)

6
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 Ariadnes thread!

7
Characteristics of the other way of experiencing

• Metaphor come to life
• Dissolution of boundaries

8
(No Transcript)
9

• Cosmic significance terrible or wonderful
• Confusion about the self

10
(No Transcript)
11

• Coincidence rules OK
• Threat (cosmic)
• Link with trauma

12
(No Transcript)
13
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.

14
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.

15
Interacting Cognitive Subsystems.
Body State subsystem

Relational subsystem
Auditory ss.
Implicational Memory
Visual ss.
Verbal ss.
Propositional subsystem
Propositional Memory
16
Linehans STATES OF MIND (from Dialectical
Behaviour Therapy) Maps onto Interacting
Cognitive Subsystems

• EMOTION
• MIND
• (Implicational
• subsystem)

REASONABLE MIND (Propositional Subsystem)
WISE MIND
IN THE PRESENT IN CONTROL
17
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

18
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!

19
Evidence for a new normalisation

• Schizotypy a dimension of experience Gordon
  Claridge.
• Mike Jacksons research on the overlap between
  psychotic and spiritual experience.
• Emmanuelle Peters research on New Religious
  Movements.
• Caroline Bretts 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.

20
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

21
Linehans STATES OF MIND (from Dialectical
Behaviour Therapy) Maps onto Interacting
Cognitive Subsystems

• EMOTION
• MIND
• (Implicational
• subsystem)

REASONABLE MIND (Propositional Subsystem)
WISE MIND
IN THE PRESENT IN CONTROL
22
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.

23
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.

24
Thats 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.

25
Web of Relationships
In Rel. with earth non humans etc.
In Rel. with wider group etc.
primary care-giver
Self as experienced in relationship with
primary caregiver
Sense of value comes from rel. with the spiritual
26
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

27
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 Jacksons 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.

28
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 individuals 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.

29

• 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

30
Session 2. The role of Arousal shaded area
anomalous experience/symptoms are more accessible.
Level of Arousal
Ordinary, alert, concentrated, state of arousal.
Low arousal hypnagogic attention drifting etc.
High Arousal - stress
31
Linehans STATES OF MIND applied to PSYCHOSIS

Ways of coping suggested by this approach
management of arousal and constructive activity.
32
Final SessionMaking 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 Jacksons research.

33
Contact details, References and Web addresses

• Isabel.Clarke_at_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