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Speaker 1: Welcome to stuft to Blow Your Mind production of My

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And

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Speaker 1: today we're going to be talking about autogenics, autogenic training, uh,

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Speaker 1: the the origins of this uh approach at self hypnosis.

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Speaker 1: And I have to admit that I had actually never

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Speaker 1: even heard of autogenics until I heard a very interesting

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Speaker 1: track and I think in some DJ mixes from about

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Speaker 1: a decade ago. But the track is called Group Autogenics

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Speaker 1: one by the American Dutch musical duo The Books. I've

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Speaker 1: never heard of autogenics either. When you first proposed the subject,

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Speaker 1: I was like, what is this? Is this where you

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Speaker 1: create your own geno? That doesn't sound right? Uh? So yeah,

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Speaker 1: I was totally unfamiliar with this, uh kind of obscure.

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Speaker 1: I guess relaxation technique developed in the twentieth century. And

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Speaker 1: and I will say I had never heard this song

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Speaker 1: that you were linking to, but but I looked it

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Speaker 1: up and it's a great song. Robert. Yeah, it's kind

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Speaker 1: of it's hard to describe. It's kind of a cut

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Speaker 1: up of clips from various self help and self hypnosis

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Speaker 1: tapes set to some very pleasing music. It's a wonderful track,

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Speaker 1: and it's one that I find myself coming back to

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Speaker 1: again and again just because it has a very you know,

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Speaker 1: pleasing atmosphere to it, and some of the little clips

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Speaker 1: in it I actually do kind of help me engage

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Speaker 1: in a certain amount of self relaxation. But it's really

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Speaker 1: hard to compare the books to other musical acts, or

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Speaker 1: at least for me anyway, I feel like there's not

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Speaker 1: a lot else out there that reminds me of the books.

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Speaker 1: So this raised a big question though for me. When

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Speaker 1: I started listening to the song over and over again,

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Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, it's it's clearly referring to something

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Speaker 1: what is autogenics UM? And I'm not sure how much

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Speaker 1: of the sampled material is actually rum autogenics rather than

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Speaker 1: other self help and self hypnosis tapes, but the book's

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Speaker 1: member Nick Zamuda implied that it was, you know, essential

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Speaker 1: to the intention of the track. In a two thousand

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Speaker 1: and ten WordPress post that he made about about the release,

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Speaker 1: he wrote, quote, Wikipedia does a pretty good job of

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Speaker 1: defining autogenics. Autogenic training restores the balance between the activity

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Speaker 1: of the sympathetic fight or flight and the parasympathetic rest

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Speaker 1: and digest branches of the autonomic nervous system. This is

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Speaker 1: a pretty good description of what music does as well,

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Speaker 1: so it seemed like a good pairing. And then he continues, Unfortunately,

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Speaker 1: a lot of the music that a company's guided meditation

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Speaker 1: productions is schlocky New Age. Don't get me wrong, I'm

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Speaker 1: not opposed to schlock It certainly has its place. But

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Speaker 1: my goal became to reframe this bizarre narrative with music

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Speaker 1: that could propel the track gently and still go on

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Speaker 1: unexpected tangents where necessary. You know, I'm not sure if

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Speaker 1: these recordings of of these guys meditations or or or

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Speaker 1: exercises are autogenics, because, at least in some of what

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Speaker 1: we were reading, the classic works on autogenics did not

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Speaker 1: come with recorded audio because you were not supposed to

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Speaker 1: listen to somebody else telling you what to do. You're

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Speaker 1: supposed to direct your own behavior, which is what provides

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Speaker 1: the auto part of the autogenics. Right, yeah, there there

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Speaker 1: is at least a pardon where here a woman saying

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Speaker 1: I'm calm, and that is that It is at least

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Speaker 1: a mantra that you here recited in autogenic training, which one.

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Speaker 1: We'll come back to that later on. But okay, so,

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Speaker 1: so what is this technique called autogenic training. Well, it

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Speaker 1: is an actual desensitization relaxation technique that has existed since

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Speaker 1: the early nineteen thirties. Autogenic. The word comes from the

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Speaker 1: Greek word autogenitos, meaning generated inside the body or self regulated. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I've seen it translated as autogenic meaning sort of self

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Speaker 1: starting or uh self triggering. Right, yeah, And so basically

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Speaker 1: the idea here is that German psychologist Johannes Heinrich Schultz,

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Speaker 1: who lived eighteen eighty four through nine seventy he developed

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Speaker 1: autogenic training with the goal of removing the therapist and

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Speaker 1: or the hypnotist from the equation, focusing on what seemed

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Speaker 1: to be an inner switch that facilitated these states. So

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Speaker 1: the idea is, like the rough argument I guess you

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Speaker 1: would say, is, Okay, you're going to see a therapist,

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Speaker 1: you're going to see a hypnotist, and they're helping you

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Speaker 1: reach the state, but you were the one who like

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Speaker 1: allowed it to happen. Like that switch is not external,

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Speaker 1: it is in you, and therefore this relaxation. Uh, the

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Speaker 1: state that you're reaching is auto generated. It is its

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Speaker 1: origins are within you. Now, later in the episode, we'll

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Speaker 1: get more into the specifics of autogenics and what what

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Speaker 1: what what research has to say about its effectiveness. But

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Speaker 1: we have to say that this is definitely a topic

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Speaker 1: where the research led us into some unex efectively weird

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Speaker 1: and decidedly dark material. Uh, namely, first of all, eugenics,

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Speaker 1: which will will discuss the the distinction between autogenics and

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Speaker 1: eugenics here and a bit they're not directly related concepts.

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Speaker 1: And then also the persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany.

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Speaker 1: So fair warning that we're going to be discussing some

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Speaker 1: heart mentioned content and some examples of humanity at its worst,

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Speaker 1: even as we explore the origins of an otherwise inocuous

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Speaker 1: sounding practice. So before we turned to Schultz and autogenic training,

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Speaker 1: we have to lay the groundwork a little bit regarding

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Speaker 1: hypnosis and psychology going into the twentieth century. So let's

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Speaker 1: start with modern hypnotism or Mesmerism, which became popular due

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Speaker 1: to the work of German physician Franz Mesmer, who lived

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Speaker 1: seventeen thirty four through eighteen fifteen. We've discussed hypnotism on

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Speaker 1: the show before. Mesmer's work was was a point of

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Speaker 1: inter risk for a number of individuals, including the inventor

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Speaker 1: of the guillotine. Uh what Zosi, India's guillotin? Did I

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Speaker 1: say that correctly? I mean close enough? Okay? And then

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Speaker 1: Ben Franklin, of course was was was a fan as well.

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Speaker 1: I believe it's Franklin Franklin Okay, Franklin m Franklin effect. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: One of the funny things about hypnotism is that whatever

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Speaker 1: clinical relevance it actually has, the ways that we most

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Speaker 1: often encounter it are are in the more kind of

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Speaker 1: mesmerism tradition as a kind of like public performance, and

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Speaker 1: I think this in some ways undercuts it's credibility as

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Speaker 1: a as a scientific phenomenon. Yeah, Like we generally encounter

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Speaker 1: it in TV shows, Right, there's some sort of a

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Speaker 1: hypnotism episode. Somebody's hypnotized, and either it's played just for

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Speaker 1: sheer laughs, someone clucks like a chicken, or it has

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Speaker 1: a more fantastic treatment, uh, you know, in some sort

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Speaker 1: of a fantasy Buffy the Vampire Slayers sort of ship,

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Speaker 1: or you're putting down the red Queen and the Manchurian

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Speaker 1: candidate and all that kind of uh, mind control stuff,

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Speaker 1: all of which it can be kind of distracting when

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Speaker 1: you're trying to understand what hypnotism actually is. We, like

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Speaker 1: you said, we've covered it on the show before. I'll

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Speaker 1: try to give the very short version of our conclusions

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Speaker 1: from previous investigations. First of all, yes, it's basically a

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Speaker 1: real thing, it's not just like made up. On the

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Speaker 1: other hand, no, it is not magic. There's nothing especially

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Speaker 1: spooky going on with it. Hypnosis refers to a particular

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Speaker 1: type of mildly altered state of consciousness, a state of

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Speaker 1: heightened relaxation and very importantly focused attention, reduced peripheral awareness,

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Speaker 1: and increased suggestibility. The research makes it very clear that

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Speaker 1: not everybody is equally susceptible to hypnosis. Some people appear

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Speaker 1: to not respond to it at all. Other people seem

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Speaker 1: very suggestible. The stuff you see in movies where people

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Speaker 1: get hypnotized and turned into a sleeper agent assassin, that

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Speaker 1: that's not very realistic. I don't think it makes sense

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Speaker 1: to think of hypnotism as a form of mind control.

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Speaker 1: I think hypnotism could better be compared to other mildly

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Speaker 1: altered states of consciousness, like the things people achieve in meditation. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I agree. I think if you if you think of

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Speaker 1: it more in terms of a meditative state, uh, certainly

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Speaker 1: as opposed to TV mind control, you're you're far closer

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Speaker 1: to the mark. Yeah. However, it appears very possible and

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Speaker 1: even consistent with a lot of research that hypnosis could

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Speaker 1: in some cases be useful in treating medical complaints, especially

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Speaker 1: medical complaints with a subjective or psychosmatic component, maybe in

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Speaker 1: pain management or in treating stress. So while hypnosis itself,

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Speaker 1: I think is a real phenomenon, it's invoked in the

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Speaker 1: service of a lot of hoaxes and fakeery and pseudoscience.

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Speaker 1: So when you go into the world of hypnotism and

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Speaker 1: people start making claims about what can be done with it,

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Speaker 1: you should you should have your guard up at solutely,

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Speaker 1: and and that can be said up for a number

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Speaker 1: of different meditative practices out there. You know, whenever the

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Speaker 1: claims begin to venture more into the the supernatural, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, be cautious. I mean, not even just the supernatural,

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Speaker 1: even when they venture into the physically plausible but grandiose.

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Speaker 1: You know, the people who say like you know, through

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Speaker 1: my meditation technique or my self hypnosis tapes, you'll learn

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Speaker 1: to master you know, it's your it's your guide to

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Speaker 1: weight loss and confidence in the boardroom and all this stuff.

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Speaker 1: People say there might be some real clinical effects of

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Speaker 1: things like hypnosis, but just be cautious when the promises

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Speaker 1: get big, right, I mean it could kind of like

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Speaker 1: the the interview episode on the science of yoga that

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Speaker 1: put out several months ago. It's like, there are things

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Speaker 1: that there are things that yoga can do, and things

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Speaker 1: that the research shows that it it can or may

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Speaker 1: be able to do. And there are then there are

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Speaker 1: things for which there's no like plausible reason that it

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Speaker 1: would have that effect on you. Uh. And again you

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Speaker 1: can extrapolate that to a number of these diff and

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Speaker 1: mindfulness exercises potentially so Mesmeter's work. Again, it interested a

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Speaker 1: number of people have made quite a splash. One of

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Speaker 1: the individuals that it interest was a man by the

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Speaker 1: name of Oscar Vault who lived eighteen seventy through nineteen

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Speaker 1: fifty five, and his wife, Cecile Vat, a magnier who

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Speaker 1: lived eighteen seventy five through nineteen sixty two. They were

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Speaker 1: neurologists and neuro anatomous and they were really these two

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Speaker 1: were really quite a team. I was not I don't

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Speaker 1: think I was specifically aware of them, but they were

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Speaker 1: early pioneers in functional neuro anatomy and genetics, and then

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Speaker 1: made a number of important contributions to the study of

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Speaker 1: the brain during the twentieth century. Uh And and not

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Speaker 1: only that, their their daughter Martha Vaut, who lived nineteen

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Speaker 1: o three through two thousand and three a good solid

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Speaker 1: century there she was one of the twentieth centuries leading

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Speaker 1: neuroscientists as well. And then her younger sister, Marguerite Vaught,

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Speaker 1: who lived nineteen thirteen through two thousand and seven, was

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Speaker 1: a cancer biologist and bologist. So Oscar and Cecil they

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Speaker 1: clashed with the Nazi regime during this time and were

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Speaker 1: forced out of government service in ninety seven, and they

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Speaker 1: continued there were in a privately funded institute in New

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Speaker 1: stat One of the sticking points, apparently with the Third Reich,

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Speaker 1: was there was there collection of Russian contacts, and in

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Speaker 1: fact Oscar was charged with inspecting the brain of Vladimir

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Speaker 1: Lenin following his death from a following a series of strokes.

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Speaker 1: Uh So So these were brain experts. They studied the

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Speaker 1: physical structure of the brain and how that contributed to

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Speaker 1: the functioning of the brain. And one of the things

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Speaker 1: that Oscar was apparently interested in was what you could

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Speaker 1: see with how the structures of the brain responded to

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Speaker 1: hypnosis exercises. Yeah, so he apparently used it with his

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Speaker 1: patients for a number of years, and along along the

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Speaker 1: way he did, he managed to cross paths with a

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Speaker 1: with this German psychiatrist, this man by the name of

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Speaker 1: Johannes Heinrich Schultz, and reported him that, you know, his

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Speaker 1: patients could use their own volition to produce sensations of

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Speaker 1: heaviness and warmth in their bodies and transfer into a

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Speaker 1: self hypnotic state. So Schultz uh took this idea, combined

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Speaker 1: it with his own experiences using hypnosis with patients, and

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Speaker 1: this brought about the birth of autogenic training. So basically

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Speaker 1: he just he just really you know, dove into this

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Speaker 1: this particular topic like what can be done in the

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Speaker 1: realm of of you know, self regulated self hypnosis. Yeah. Now,

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Speaker 1: I think it's important to understand that in the first

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Speaker 1: half of the twentieth century especially, there is a lot

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Speaker 1: of stuff happening in the world of psychology and psychiatry

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Speaker 1: that is very interesting, but is not what we would

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Speaker 1: probably consider science today. There's a lot of stuff going

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Speaker 1: on in this world that I think is better to

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Speaker 1: think of as philosophy. It's kind of more broad observational

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Speaker 1: science than it is science based on controlled experiments and rigor. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we're we're talking about again the late nineteenth century, the

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Speaker 1: early twentieth century, the heyday of individuals like Sigmund Freud

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Speaker 1: and Carl Jung. The discipline of psychiatry itself was only

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Speaker 1: entering its second century of existence, and the first half

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Speaker 1: of the twentieth century was dominated by this idea of psychoanalysis,

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Speaker 1: before chemical advances would bring about a new age of

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Speaker 1: pharmacology in the second half of the twentieth century. Yeah. Now,

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Speaker 1: obviously it's it's not just drugs that change psychometry. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's it was empirical methods of all sorts,

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Speaker 1: I think, because you can also run empirical tests on

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Speaker 1: the efficacy of therapeutic techniques that don't involve drugs and

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Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. But the world of Freud and

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Speaker 1: and Carl Young, while you know, I enjoy their writings

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Speaker 1: that I think they're very interesting, but it's not really science.

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Speaker 1: It's especially if you could drill into an idea like

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Speaker 1: the collective unconscious, you know, it's very it's fascinating stuff.

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Speaker 1: It can it can certainly benefit you from a philosophical standpoint,

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Speaker 1: of creative standpoint, you know, fascinating concepts. But is it

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Speaker 1: something that is you know, has any scientific validity to it? Uh,

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Speaker 1: probably not. Might it might be were it might be

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Speaker 1: able to generate ideas that could be put to rigorous

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Speaker 1: testing by experimental psychologists and psychiatrists who would come later.

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Speaker 1: So it was I guess you could say that it was,

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Speaker 1: you know, an age of optimism in many respects. You

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Speaker 1: had all these new tools that were coming online to

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Speaker 1: enable the treatment of nervous conditions, nervous conditions that had

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Speaker 1: plagued humanity for for for quite some time. The secrets

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Speaker 1: of the mind were being explored, and yet this was

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Speaker 1: also a time of incredible darkness and tailing some truly

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Speaker 1: horrendous studies and of course the horrors of eugenics. That's right,

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Speaker 1: I mean generally, Uh, science and medical practice under the

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Speaker 1: Third Reich is just a litany of horror stories. Of

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Speaker 1: various kinds, and of course psychiatry under the Third Reich

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Speaker 1: is is really no different, right, and we're not gonna

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Speaker 1: attempt to do any kind of a deep dive into that,

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Speaker 1: but we will touch on, I think on some examples

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Speaker 1: that exemplify the sort of the sort of pressure that

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Speaker 1: was applied by the Third Reich on the sciences and

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Speaker 1: the sort of you know, corrupted results that you that

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Speaker 1: you get when that sort of relationship is in place.

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Speaker 1: So we're gonna take a quick break, but when we

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Speaker 1: come back, we will continue with our story and we'll

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Speaker 1: will bring in the character of Johannes Heinrich Schultz. Thank

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Speaker 1: all right, we're back. So we've been talking about this

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Speaker 1: idea of autogenics, which is some kind of form of

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Speaker 1: purported self hypnosis that was created by a German psychiatrist

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Speaker 1: named Johannes Heinrich Schultz in the nineteen twenties and thirties. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and he is. He has a troubling figure I think

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Speaker 1: to figure out again. Early twentieth century. This was the

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Speaker 1: heyday of psychoanalysis, and Schultz certainly believed in the power

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Speaker 1: of psychoanalysis, though he also thought that it was an

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Speaker 1: idea was not ideal for the treatment of psychosomatic disorders,

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Speaker 1: and in these cases he became convinced that the key

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Speaker 1: lay in self hypnosis, and of course in his in

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Speaker 1: his concept of autogenic training. Right, So hetero hypnosis would

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Speaker 1: be the opposite of what hetero hypnosis would be where

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Speaker 1: there is uh, it was the so called authoritarian method. Right,

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Speaker 1: there's a hypnotist guiding you, whereas auto hypnosis you take

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Speaker 1: into your own hands. Okay, So what's the distinction here

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Speaker 1: with psychosomatic disorders. Psychosomatic refers to problems in the body

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Speaker 1: that are caused or aggravated by psychological factors. So you

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Speaker 1: can have psychosomatic pain, Uh, you can, you know, you

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Speaker 1: can have hypochondriasis. Uh. Schultz was cited by a biographer

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Speaker 1: to have said, quote, it is complete nonsense to shoot

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Speaker 1: with psychoanalytic guns after symptoms sparrows. So I think what

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Speaker 1: he's saying there is, to whatever extent you can use psychoanalysis.

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Speaker 1: That's more for problems that are fully within the mind,

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Speaker 1: you know, the psychology realm Uh. Psycho Somatic disorders where

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Speaker 1: the problems are somewhere in the body and may have

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Speaker 1: roots in psychological issues, are not best addressed with psychoanalysis.

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Speaker 1: He thought they would be better addressed with hypnosis or

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Speaker 1: even auto hypnosis. So Schultz noted that, you know, there

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Speaker 1: were two very common reports of unique body experiences during

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Speaker 1: the process of hypnosis, and those two common reports were

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Speaker 1: heaviness in the limbs and this weird sensation of warmth.

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Speaker 1: How common these sensations were drove Schultz to see hypnosis

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Speaker 1: as a treatment for relaxation in the body, not just

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Speaker 1: something that affects the mind, but something to affect, for example,

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Speaker 1: the autonomic nervous system. And also based on the reports

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Speaker 1: about what Vote had been able to achieve with his

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Speaker 1: own patients, Schultz came to believe that the authoritarian figure

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Speaker 1: triggering the hypnotic state, within the authoritarian process, within the

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Speaker 1: hetero hypnosis, that that was not actually necessary. Yeah. Again,

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Speaker 1: the basic idea here is that when we undergo hypnosis,

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Speaker 1: the changes are occurring within us, and with training, we

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Speaker 1: would be able to trigger them without the aid of

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Speaker 1: another person. The patient permits it to happen, rather than

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Speaker 1: it being something that the hypnotist does to the patient. That,

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Speaker 1: Schultz is the whole argument. So inspired by Vote in

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Speaker 1: his own experiences with hypnosis. Schultz began employing these ideas

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Speaker 1: in private practice, and this would have been when he

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Speaker 1: opened his private clinic in neurology and psychiatry in Berlin

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Speaker 1: in ninety four, So by the twenties he's already trying

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Speaker 1: this out right. And then in nineteen thirty two he

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Speaker 1: published his first book on autogenic Training DOS autogene Training

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Speaker 1: and and again we'll get to the specifics of autogenic

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Speaker 1: training and a bid here, But in discussing nineteen thirty two,

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Speaker 1: we're of course just a year away from the establishment

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Speaker 1: of the Third Reich, and this is where Schultz becomes

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Speaker 1: a problematic figure. So first, let's be very clear about

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Speaker 1: the Nazi regime. It was a dictatorship and a totalitarian

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Speaker 1: date based on an ideology that celebrated nationalism, UH, the

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Speaker 1: pseudoscience of racial hierarchy, anti semitism, scientific racism, and eugenics.

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Speaker 1: Germany contained a great many brilliant minds in nineteen thirty three,

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Speaker 1: but the Third Reich was only interested in how these

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Speaker 1: minds and ideas could be used to serve the Nazi

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Speaker 1: ideology and the war efforts. And UH rocketry, I think

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Speaker 1: is a good example to look at here. Just in

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Speaker 1: brief um you know that this was you had. You

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Speaker 1: had German rocket scientists who were inspired by things like

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Speaker 1: science fiction and dreams of exploration. But Bernard von Braun

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Speaker 1: von Bron is a great example of this. But of course,

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Speaker 1: what did the what did the Third Reich want out

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Speaker 1: of these minds? They wanted weapons, They wanted ways to

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Speaker 1: deliver um V two one, etcetera, to rain hell down

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Speaker 1: upon England and punish their enemies. So there was no

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Speaker 1: interest in something like space exploration or moon bases or

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Speaker 1: whatever kind of like you know, fanciful extrapolation you find

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Speaker 1: in conspiracy thinking. I think the Third Reich is one

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Speaker 1: of the greatest examples in history of just an utter

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Speaker 1: waste of intellectual potential. You know that there was a

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Speaker 1: lot of great scientific infrastructure in Germany in the Weimar

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Speaker 1: period and going into the Third Reich, and the way

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Speaker 1: all of that great intellectual potential was just bulldozed by

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Speaker 1: Nazism is is a great tragedy. So all the sciences

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Speaker 1: become the domain of the state in Nazi Germany, and

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Speaker 1: of course that also means psychology and psychiatry as well.

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Speaker 1: Uh and and and really they were these were fields

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Speaker 1: that were I think especially vulnerable because, especially at the time,

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Speaker 1: given all the changes that were taking place in these fields,

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Speaker 1: they were highly susceptible to manipulation by a totalitarian regime.

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Speaker 1: I mean, even the hardest of the hard sciences were

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Speaker 1: under attacked by the Nazi ideology, you know, like they

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Speaker 1: wanted to rid themselves of what they believed to be

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Speaker 1: Jewish physics, not understanding that physics is physics, like it

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Speaker 1: doesn't matter what the ethnicity of the scientists who discovered

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Speaker 1: it was. Oh yeah, I mean that's the whole other

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Speaker 1: side to it too. I mean it's one Not only

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Speaker 1: were of course the German scientist pressured to be a

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Speaker 1: part of this machine, but then people who were who

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Speaker 1: were suspected of having ties to say the Russians, like

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Speaker 1: the votes that we discussed earlier, they were at least

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Speaker 1: partially pushed out, and then Jewish scientists were completely pushed out.

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Speaker 1: But I mean, if there are that many problems in

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Speaker 1: a supposedly hard science like physics, you'd imagine that things

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Speaker 1: get even weirder when you get into burgeoning fields like

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Speaker 1: psychology and psychiatry. Yeah, so the Nazi regime apparently didn't

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Speaker 1: have any real strong opinions on self hypnosis or autogenic training,

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Speaker 1: but there were other ideas in the field that were

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Speaker 1: far more central to their ideology and uh, and so

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Speaker 1: all this is going on, Schultz ends up publishing another

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Speaker 1: book on autogenics, but his star continues to rise within

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Speaker 1: German psychiatry, and is his star rises others all from

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Speaker 1: grace in this now state controlled realm of the German

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Speaker 1: science is again namely Jewish scientists. In psychology it was

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Speaker 1: no different, But what were they to do about psychoanalysis?

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Speaker 1: It was again highly favored by Schultz and others, but

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Speaker 1: it was the product of Sigmund Freud, who was of

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Speaker 1: course Jewish himself. His books were among those burned and

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Speaker 1: he eventually had to flee the country as well. So

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Speaker 1: part of German psychiatry at the time part of the

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Speaker 1: mission statement of of the Goring Institute. This was named

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Speaker 1: for Matthias Heinrich Goring, cousin to the more famous and

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Speaker 1: at the time were powerful Herman Goring. Uh. Part of

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Speaker 1: its whole aim was to rid psychiatry of quote Jewish

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Speaker 1: influence and established quote a new German psychotherapy, which of

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Speaker 1: course is ludicrous. It's like if someone were to say, well,

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Speaker 1: let's just focus on on an American science. You know,

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Speaker 1: how do you what what would that even mean? What

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Speaker 1: that means you'd have to press out all like non

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Speaker 1: American ideas of what of how the world works and

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Speaker 1: what the cosmos consists of. I mean, it wouldn't be

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Speaker 1: the only time in history that there's been a kind

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Speaker 1: of like stupid nationalist lens applied to science is like

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Speaker 1: non understanding that the sciences are about figuring out what's

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Speaker 1: true about the world, and that those things are true

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Speaker 1: no matter what your ethnicity is or what your nationality is.

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Speaker 1: I guess the closest thing to validity you could find

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Speaker 1: there would be that like, well, you might say, as

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Speaker 1: a nation, we have these priorities about what we want

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Speaker 1: to find out. But yeah, again this is just a

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Speaker 1: tragedy of stupidity. So Schultz, again he keeps focusing on autogenics,

402
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Speaker 1: but he also ends up getting involved in these ideas

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Speaker 1: that are far more valuable to the Third Reich. So

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Speaker 1: he publishes work supporting eugenics. Um eugenics of course, and

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Speaker 1: involves the idea that you should, uh, you want to

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Speaker 1: encourage you know, the good genes within a population by

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Speaker 1: eliminating um uh, so called destructive genes uh. And this

408
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Speaker 1: generally takes the form of pretty horrific efforts like forced

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Speaker 1: sterilization for men with mental retardation, psychiatric or neurological disorders.

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Speaker 1: Those were exactly the forms it took under the Third Reich. Now,

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Speaker 1: while eugenics was sort of one of the founding principles

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Speaker 1: of the Third Reich ideology, I think it's worth acknowledging

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Speaker 1: that in the first half of the twentieth century, I mean,

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Speaker 1: eugenics was all over the place. It was fashionable among

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Speaker 1: intellectual elites all around the world, even in the United

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Speaker 1: States and in other Western nations that ended up fighting

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Speaker 1: the Nazis. Yeah, absolutely it was. But yeah, by no

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Speaker 1: means was it a German idea. Uh, you know, you

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Speaker 1: saw it. Plenty of examples of it in the United States.

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Speaker 1: We talked a lot about eugenics. Actually in our interview

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Speaker 1: with Karl zimmerwent excellent book about heredity. So if you

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Speaker 1: want to go back and listen to that episode you can.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, he explores a lot of the roots of

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Speaker 1: eugenics within the United States at the time. But in

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Speaker 1: this case, the s the eugenics movement would eventually sterilize

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Speaker 1: some four hundred thousand individuals by the end of the war,

427
00:24:58,040 --> 00:25:02,480
Speaker 1: and Schultz also focused on sexual education and the subject

428
00:25:02,520 --> 00:25:05,800
Speaker 1: of homosexuality and the idea that it could be cured.

429
00:25:06,920 --> 00:25:12,040
Speaker 1: So at the time, homosexuality was in general poorly understood

430
00:25:12,119 --> 00:25:16,080
Speaker 1: from any sort of scientific standpoint and was highly susceptible

431
00:25:16,119 --> 00:25:19,760
Speaker 1: to pre existing prejudices. We know today, of course, that

432
00:25:19,800 --> 00:25:24,920
Speaker 1: the notion of curing homosexuality is pseudoscience at best, and

433
00:25:24,960 --> 00:25:29,240
Speaker 1: generally it's it's worse than that. Two thousand nineteen study

434
00:25:29,240 --> 00:25:32,040
Speaker 1: published in the journal Science, the largest study to ever

435
00:25:32,119 --> 00:25:36,840
Speaker 1: analyze the genetics of same sex sexual behavior, points out

436
00:25:36,880 --> 00:25:39,639
Speaker 1: that there's no one, you know, gay gene or anything

437
00:25:39,640 --> 00:25:42,680
Speaker 1: of the sort. Rather, to quote Pam Bellock in the

438
00:25:42,760 --> 00:25:46,280
Speaker 1: New York Times quote, the influence comes not from one gene,

439
00:25:46,359 --> 00:25:49,760
Speaker 1: but many, each with a tiny effect, And the rest

440
00:25:49,760 --> 00:25:53,359
Speaker 1: of the explanation includes social or environmental factors, making it

441
00:25:53,400 --> 00:25:57,080
Speaker 1: impossible to use genes to predict someone's sexuality. Right, So,

442
00:25:57,280 --> 00:26:00,840
Speaker 1: sexual orientation, like almost everything else out us, is in

443
00:26:00,960 --> 00:26:03,840
Speaker 1: fact controlled by a number of different genes acting in

444
00:26:03,920 --> 00:26:07,160
Speaker 1: concert with our environment. As were brought up, Yeah, yeah,

445
00:26:07,200 --> 00:26:10,399
Speaker 1: it's this complex interplay of nature and nurture individual in

446
00:26:10,400 --> 00:26:13,160
Speaker 1: the environment. And more to the point of course, it's

447
00:26:13,240 --> 00:26:15,840
Speaker 1: not something to be corrected at all. It's not as

448
00:26:15,880 --> 00:26:18,159
Speaker 1: it was often thought at the time. And some of

449
00:26:18,160 --> 00:26:22,000
Speaker 1: these regimes, including you know, the Third Reich, it was

450
00:26:22,160 --> 00:26:25,080
Speaker 1: it's not a societal problem, though it again is often

451
00:26:25,080 --> 00:26:27,920
Speaker 1: framed like that, and and was and was outlawed as

452
00:26:27,960 --> 00:26:32,880
Speaker 1: such in various nations. And uh, homosexuality was certainly at

453
00:26:32,880 --> 00:26:37,080
Speaker 1: odds with the Nazi ideology, which celebrated, among other things,

454
00:26:37,119 --> 00:26:42,159
Speaker 1: this exaggerated and toxic vision of masculinity. Historians, however, have

455
00:26:42,240 --> 00:26:46,320
Speaker 1: also pointed out that this that this this Nazi hyper

456
00:26:46,560 --> 00:26:51,919
Speaker 1: masculine ethos paradoxically may have encouraged male bonding and homosexual

457
00:26:51,960 --> 00:26:54,840
Speaker 1: relationships as well. But you know, I guess it's one

458
00:26:54,840 --> 00:26:57,960
Speaker 1: of these situations where that the kind of proximity of

459
00:26:58,119 --> 00:27:03,200
Speaker 1: ideal and antithesis are often a common feature of homophobia. Meanwhile,

460
00:27:03,440 --> 00:27:06,320
Speaker 1: under in the sciences of the Third Reich, you had

461
00:27:06,359 --> 00:27:09,359
Speaker 1: scientists that were who were, you know, taking a eugenics

462
00:27:09,359 --> 00:27:12,840
Speaker 1: approach to the issue of homosexuality, believing that homosexuality was

463
00:27:13,160 --> 00:27:16,480
Speaker 1: centered in a person's genes and could therefore be addressed

464
00:27:16,600 --> 00:27:20,920
Speaker 1: via the violence of eugenics. Schultz, on the other hand,

465
00:27:21,240 --> 00:27:24,959
Speaker 1: thought psychotherapy was the answer that homosexuality was based in

466
00:27:25,080 --> 00:27:30,880
Speaker 1: quote perversion, a profound disorder of the entire personality. And uh.

467
00:27:31,080 --> 00:27:33,639
Speaker 1: That quote was pointed out in a paper that I'm

468
00:27:33,640 --> 00:27:38,120
Speaker 1: gonna refer to again here, uh, titled Johannes Heinrich Schultz

469
00:27:38,200 --> 00:27:43,199
Speaker 1: and National Socialism by Jurgen Brunner, m d. Matthias Shrimp,

470
00:27:43,600 --> 00:27:47,160
Speaker 1: and Florian Stagger, m d, pH d. This was published

471
00:27:47,200 --> 00:27:50,040
Speaker 1: in the Israeli Journal of Psychiatry in two thousand and eight.

472
00:27:50,320 --> 00:27:52,840
Speaker 1: So here we get around to a different version of

473
00:27:53,640 --> 00:27:58,440
Speaker 1: anti gay reaction, right, which instead of thinking, okay, there's

474
00:27:58,520 --> 00:28:01,640
Speaker 1: just a there's a gene we can eliminate somewhere, this

475
00:28:01,720 --> 00:28:05,560
Speaker 1: instead says, no, it's something that's wrong with with you,

476
00:28:05,600 --> 00:28:08,080
Speaker 1: know how your brain is working, and we can sort

477
00:28:08,119 --> 00:28:11,520
Speaker 1: of train it out of you. And unfortunately, this point

478
00:28:11,520 --> 00:28:14,320
Speaker 1: of view is not entirely gone from the world today. No,

479
00:28:14,480 --> 00:28:16,640
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's that's the thing. You could take

480
00:28:16,680 --> 00:28:21,600
Speaker 1: Schultz out of this this particular place and time, and

481
00:28:21,640 --> 00:28:26,000
Speaker 1: you could easily place him, say in the United States today,

482
00:28:26,119 --> 00:28:28,439
Speaker 1: and there would be some place for him with this

483
00:28:28,520 --> 00:28:30,760
Speaker 1: kind of rhetoric. Yeah, the most common being things that

484
00:28:30,800 --> 00:28:34,360
Speaker 1: are known as like gay conversion therapies, which are utterly

485
00:28:34,400 --> 00:28:38,920
Speaker 1: condemned by every psychological organization. From the American Psychological Association

486
00:28:39,040 --> 00:28:42,520
Speaker 1: is issued statement after statements saying these treatments do not

487
00:28:42,720 --> 00:28:45,360
Speaker 1: work and they don't do anything good for the person,

488
00:28:45,480 --> 00:28:49,240
Speaker 1: that they should be discouraged at all costs. So, without

489
00:28:49,240 --> 00:28:54,480
Speaker 1: a doubt, Schultz definitely echoed and amplified Nazi homophobia and

490
00:28:54,600 --> 00:28:58,719
Speaker 1: uh and and and gay persecution within German psychiatry, and

491
00:28:58,760 --> 00:29:02,520
Speaker 1: that alone is reprehensible. But on top of that, he

492
00:29:02,600 --> 00:29:08,000
Speaker 1: also engaged in experimentation. So under under Nazi rule, homosexuality

493
00:29:08,160 --> 00:29:11,320
Speaker 1: was illegal in Germany, and it was it was apparently

494
00:29:11,520 --> 00:29:15,880
Speaker 1: previously technically illegal as well, though not prosecuted during the

495
00:29:15,920 --> 00:29:20,160
Speaker 1: Weimar Republic, and convicted homosexuals under the Third Reich were

496
00:29:20,200 --> 00:29:24,400
Speaker 1: sent to concentration camps. According to the US Holocaust Memorial

497
00:29:24,520 --> 00:29:27,920
Speaker 1: Museum quote, between nineteen thirty three and nineteen forty five,

498
00:29:28,320 --> 00:29:31,640
Speaker 1: and estimated one hundred thousand men were arrested for violating

499
00:29:31,720 --> 00:29:35,920
Speaker 1: Nazi Germany's law against homosexuality, and of these, approximately fifty

500
00:29:36,000 --> 00:29:39,680
Speaker 1: thousand were sentenced to prison and estimated five thousand to

501
00:29:39,880 --> 00:29:43,760
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand men were sent to concentration camps while on

502
00:29:43,840 --> 00:29:47,640
Speaker 1: similar charges, where an unknown number of them perished. And

503
00:29:47,680 --> 00:29:50,840
Speaker 1: I also read that the death rate in the camps

504
00:29:51,320 --> 00:29:55,640
Speaker 1: for homosexuals has been estimated to something like sixty Now

505
00:29:55,680 --> 00:29:59,160
Speaker 1: interestently enough, um, you know, we briefly touched on the

506
00:29:59,240 --> 00:30:02,120
Speaker 1: during the Weimar public heal. It was was not prosecuted,

507
00:30:02,160 --> 00:30:04,800
Speaker 1: and there was more of a uh, you know, a

508
00:30:04,840 --> 00:30:07,480
Speaker 1: feeling really I've read of you know, liberation. They were

509
00:30:07,480 --> 00:30:10,479
Speaker 1: actually you know, gay, there's a gay rights movement at

510
00:30:10,520 --> 00:30:14,000
Speaker 1: the time. Um So, when you look at the early

511
00:30:14,120 --> 00:30:19,120
Speaker 1: days of the Nazi regime, apparently it stands on homosexuality

512
00:30:19,160 --> 00:30:23,640
Speaker 1: was a little more ambiguous and uneven, with some individuals

513
00:30:23,720 --> 00:30:27,080
Speaker 1: not having really much of a stated opinion, while you

514
00:30:27,120 --> 00:30:29,800
Speaker 1: had other people like uh s, you know, s s

515
00:30:29,880 --> 00:30:33,400
Speaker 1: Commander in chief Holocaust architect Heinrich Kimmler being one of

516
00:30:33,400 --> 00:30:36,760
Speaker 1: the the the early you know, strong voices in favor

517
00:30:36,800 --> 00:30:40,960
Speaker 1: of violent persecution of homosexuals, and his view increasingly one out.

518
00:30:41,760 --> 00:30:46,840
Speaker 1: So Schultz began to experiment with treating homosexuals through psychoanalysis,

519
00:30:47,240 --> 00:30:50,360
Speaker 1: including many inmates that were brought in from concentration camps,

520
00:30:50,800 --> 00:30:53,360
Speaker 1: and part of this was apparently that he needed to

521
00:30:53,400 --> 00:30:58,040
Speaker 1: demonstrate concrete psychotherapeutic success to maintain his position within the

522
00:30:58,080 --> 00:31:02,560
Speaker 1: Goring Institute. And according to Bruner at All, between nineteen

523
00:31:02,960 --> 00:31:06,600
Speaker 1: three and nineteen thirty eight, five hundred and ten homosexuals

524
00:31:06,600 --> 00:31:09,800
Speaker 1: were quote treated at the Goring Institute, three hundred and

525
00:31:09,840 --> 00:31:12,320
Speaker 1: forty one of them were said to be cured, and

526
00:31:12,360 --> 00:31:15,640
Speaker 1: the cure was tested by forcing the individual to have

527
00:31:15,720 --> 00:31:18,720
Speaker 1: sex with female prostitutes. So these all all would have

528
00:31:18,720 --> 00:31:20,920
Speaker 1: been gay men. Yes, so that I think that that

529
00:31:21,000 --> 00:31:24,440
Speaker 1: just paints the horrific picture. Obviously. Now Schultz wasn't the

530
00:31:24,480 --> 00:31:27,000
Speaker 1: only one involved here. According to the U. S. National

531
00:31:27,040 --> 00:31:31,200
Speaker 1: Holocaust Museum, there was an expanded program of medical experimentation

532
00:31:31,240 --> 00:31:35,080
Speaker 1: on homosexual inmates that ultimately caused illness, mutilation, and even

533
00:31:35,200 --> 00:31:39,600
Speaker 1: death with absolutely no scientific benefits whatsoever. So again we said,

534
00:31:39,600 --> 00:31:42,120
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about a dark period of history,

535
00:31:42,200 --> 00:31:45,680
Speaker 1: and and so here we are. So the war ends.

536
00:31:45,720 --> 00:31:51,240
Speaker 1: Of course, Schultz dies in nineteen seventy and never faced

537
00:31:51,280 --> 00:31:55,800
Speaker 1: any repercussions for his ideas or his experiments, and in fact,

538
00:31:56,000 --> 00:31:59,320
Speaker 1: he continued to discuss his findings published his findings even

539
00:31:59,480 --> 00:32:02,000
Speaker 1: and support or did the outlaw of homosexuality for the

540
00:32:02,120 --> 00:32:05,120
Speaker 1: rest of his life. And this is apparently not out

541
00:32:05,120 --> 00:32:07,640
Speaker 1: of the ordinary. Sadly, as much of the Third Reich's

542
00:32:07,680 --> 00:32:12,480
Speaker 1: crimes against homosexuals went unrecognized at a governmental level until

543
00:32:12,680 --> 00:32:15,160
Speaker 1: the like the well into the nineteen eighties that the

544
00:32:15,160 --> 00:32:19,840
Speaker 1: German government formally apologized in two thousand and two. I mean,

545
00:32:20,200 --> 00:32:21,920
Speaker 1: part of this, I think would just have to do

546
00:32:22,040 --> 00:32:24,720
Speaker 1: with attitudes around the rest of the world as well.

547
00:32:24,760 --> 00:32:27,240
Speaker 1: I mean, I think about what happened to Alan Turing

548
00:32:27,280 --> 00:32:30,760
Speaker 1: even in England, England which wanted to purport itself to be,

549
00:32:30,840 --> 00:32:34,280
Speaker 1: you know, the free alternative to the to the authoritarian Germany.

550
00:32:34,360 --> 00:32:36,960
Speaker 1: You know, like gay people did not have equal rights

551
00:32:37,000 --> 00:32:40,360
Speaker 1: there at all. Yeah, and and Alan Turing was was

552
00:32:40,680 --> 00:32:45,480
Speaker 1: subjected to the hors of eugenics. He was uh, chemically sterilized.

553
00:32:45,880 --> 00:32:48,800
Speaker 1: One of the topics that Brunner and his co authors

554
00:32:49,040 --> 00:32:53,360
Speaker 1: discussed concerned Schultz's legacy and to what extent he actually

555
00:32:53,440 --> 00:32:58,080
Speaker 1: bought into Nazi ideology, because you'll certainly encounter the argument that, okay,

556
00:32:58,120 --> 00:33:01,920
Speaker 1: he didn't fully buy into Nazi idea oology, and and

557
00:33:01,960 --> 00:33:04,000
Speaker 1: you know, there you also see it written. Then, Okay,

558
00:33:04,040 --> 00:33:08,200
Speaker 1: through his experiments, he actually retrieved inmates from concentration camps.

559
00:33:08,840 --> 00:33:12,560
Speaker 1: Though of these some were ultimately returned to the concentration camps,

560
00:33:12,640 --> 00:33:16,960
Speaker 1: and even the cured in the case of of cured,

561
00:33:17,200 --> 00:33:20,240
Speaker 1: the so called cured, uh, ultimately they were sent back

562
00:33:20,280 --> 00:33:22,560
Speaker 1: to the front. So both of these would have been

563
00:33:22,640 --> 00:33:25,479
Speaker 1: high mortality fates. Uh. You know, certainly one is as

564
00:33:25,520 --> 00:33:29,400
Speaker 1: an inmate and one as a soldier. They're not directly comparable. Um,

565
00:33:29,480 --> 00:33:32,719
Speaker 1: But it does sound like this, this argument that he

566
00:33:32,800 --> 00:33:37,760
Speaker 1: was saving lives in any sense is is kind of ridiculous.

567
00:33:38,280 --> 00:33:42,680
Speaker 1: The conclusion of Brunner and the co authors is that, well,

568
00:33:42,720 --> 00:33:45,120
Speaker 1: first of all, they say that, you know, they're limited, uh,

569
00:33:45,160 --> 00:33:48,000
Speaker 1: in that they had to depend on writings rather than interviews,

570
00:33:48,120 --> 00:33:52,040
Speaker 1: and certainly they couldn't actually interview Schultz himself. But their

571
00:33:52,080 --> 00:33:55,200
Speaker 1: conclusion was that Schultz perhaps was more of an opportunist

572
00:33:55,320 --> 00:33:59,760
Speaker 1: and a political survivor. But still he certainly expressed these

573
00:34:00,000 --> 00:34:03,560
Speaker 1: amophobic beliefs throughout his life, and that quote. The use

574
00:34:03,600 --> 00:34:06,720
Speaker 1: of typical Nazi vocabulary, as well as the dissemination of

575
00:34:06,760 --> 00:34:09,640
Speaker 1: the Nazi body of thought as late as nineteen fifty two,

576
00:34:09,680 --> 00:34:12,840
Speaker 1: give reason to believe that the statements from nineteen thirty

577
00:34:12,840 --> 00:34:16,960
Speaker 1: five and nineteen forty were not only about opportunistic lip service,

578
00:34:17,360 --> 00:34:20,799
Speaker 1: but instead we're an expression of his fundamental conviction. So

579
00:34:20,840 --> 00:34:23,400
Speaker 1: we're left with this, this image of a discipline and

580
00:34:23,440 --> 00:34:26,040
Speaker 1: a practitioner certainly caught up in the storm of Nazi

581
00:34:26,080 --> 00:34:29,359
Speaker 1: ideology and also embracing much of its vileness. He and

582
00:34:29,440 --> 00:34:35,280
Speaker 1: he helped enable homosexual persecution and engage an abusive, unethical experimentation.

583
00:34:35,600 --> 00:34:38,719
Speaker 1: And yet he also created this practice of intercalming that

584
00:34:38,840 --> 00:34:41,880
Speaker 1: is still practiced to this day. We mentioned how autogenic

585
00:34:41,920 --> 00:34:44,919
Speaker 1: training is maybe, you know, not that widely known here

586
00:34:44,920 --> 00:34:47,320
Speaker 1: in the United States, but it's it's apparently more widely

587
00:34:47,360 --> 00:34:50,560
Speaker 1: practice or has been more widely practiced in Canada, England,

588
00:34:50,719 --> 00:34:53,480
Speaker 1: Germany and Russia and Russia. Yeah, so we're gonna take

589
00:34:53,520 --> 00:34:56,759
Speaker 1: another break, but when we come back, will discuss autogenic

590
00:34:56,800 --> 00:35:02,759
Speaker 1: training a little bit on its own. Alright, we're back,

591
00:35:02,880 --> 00:35:05,560
Speaker 1: all right, So we've been talking about johanness Heinrich Schultz,

592
00:35:05,640 --> 00:35:11,040
Speaker 1: the creator of this self hypnosis process that is called autogenics.

593
00:35:11,160 --> 00:35:13,799
Speaker 1: The idea is that you could, uh, you don't need

594
00:35:13,880 --> 00:35:17,000
Speaker 1: the authoritarian figure telling you you know you are you

595
00:35:17,000 --> 00:35:19,960
Speaker 1: are feeling relaxed, you feel your limbs being heavy, and

596
00:35:19,960 --> 00:35:23,360
Speaker 1: all that stuff that you can train yourself to undergo

597
00:35:23,560 --> 00:35:27,040
Speaker 1: this process on your own. I thought it was interesting

598
00:35:27,080 --> 00:35:30,960
Speaker 1: that even though I've read about hypnosis before, I had

599
00:35:31,160 --> 00:35:34,959
Speaker 1: never really encountered anything about autogenics before you you brought

600
00:35:35,000 --> 00:35:37,319
Speaker 1: up this topic as a possibility to talk about on

601
00:35:37,320 --> 00:35:39,560
Speaker 1: the show, and I was wondering why it is that

602
00:35:39,640 --> 00:35:43,480
Speaker 1: I've never heard of this at all before. Well, something

603
00:35:43,480 --> 00:35:45,600
Speaker 1: that I had heard of and you may have heard

604
00:35:45,640 --> 00:35:48,839
Speaker 1: of this previously as well, is the practice of progressive

605
00:35:49,000 --> 00:35:54,399
Speaker 1: muscle relaxation, which is sometimes integrated into yoga practices. I've

606
00:35:54,400 --> 00:35:56,480
Speaker 1: been to the yoga classes where they engage in like

607
00:35:56,520 --> 00:35:59,640
Speaker 1: a little of this anyway, And this was developed independently

608
00:35:59,719 --> 00:36:03,239
Speaker 1: by the American physician Edmund Jacobson in nineteen o eight,

609
00:36:03,320 --> 00:36:06,279
Speaker 1: So pretty much emerging from the same, the same, you know,

610
00:36:06,360 --> 00:36:10,959
Speaker 1: realm of of psychiatry and contemplation of the human mind.

611
00:36:11,080 --> 00:36:15,040
Speaker 1: As we're going to discuss, autogenic training, I think suffers

612
00:36:15,160 --> 00:36:18,480
Speaker 1: from a dearth of research into its you know, high

613
00:36:18,560 --> 00:36:23,319
Speaker 1: quality research, recent research into its efficacy. But what is

614
00:36:23,400 --> 00:36:27,520
Speaker 1: out there, A lot of it focuses on different types

615
00:36:27,560 --> 00:36:30,560
Speaker 1: of relaxation techniques all sort of put together. So it

616
00:36:30,600 --> 00:36:34,640
Speaker 1: looks at progressive muscle relaxation, autogenic training, and then maybe

617
00:36:34,680 --> 00:36:40,120
Speaker 1: also something like mindfulness meditation or biofeedback feedback. Yes, so

618
00:36:40,200 --> 00:36:42,879
Speaker 1: it seems to be considered part of a class of

619
00:36:43,480 --> 00:36:49,640
Speaker 1: stress relief for relaxation and exercises. A standard autogenic training

620
00:36:49,640 --> 00:36:53,640
Speaker 1: exercise tends to consist of several phases. There's a heaviness

621
00:36:53,680 --> 00:36:57,680
Speaker 1: exercise of limb and body relaxation, a warming exercise, a

622
00:36:57,800 --> 00:37:02,160
Speaker 1: heart regulation exercise, a breathing exercise, and then organs and

623
00:37:02,200 --> 00:37:05,880
Speaker 1: then head And it involves spoken mantras and focusing on

624
00:37:05,920 --> 00:37:09,080
Speaker 1: specific parts of the body. So for instance, you might say,

625
00:37:09,440 --> 00:37:11,479
Speaker 1: you know, might you might say that your arms are heavy,

626
00:37:11,520 --> 00:37:13,759
Speaker 1: and you'll repeat that like six times, and then you'll say,

627
00:37:13,800 --> 00:37:18,040
Speaker 1: I am very quiet, and then you'll do another six

628
00:37:18,120 --> 00:37:21,000
Speaker 1: on the the arm, on the other arm, and uh,

629
00:37:21,040 --> 00:37:23,680
Speaker 1: and then you will again return to this mantra of

630
00:37:23,680 --> 00:37:27,640
Speaker 1: of of quietness. Yeah, we were looking for a good recent,

631
00:37:27,960 --> 00:37:31,319
Speaker 1: uh you know, skeptical scientific source on autogenic training, and

632
00:37:31,400 --> 00:37:33,080
Speaker 1: I think one of the best things we came across

633
00:37:33,160 --> 00:37:35,799
Speaker 1: was a chapter in a book. It's a it's a

634
00:37:35,960 --> 00:37:39,799
Speaker 1: psychiatry textbook called The Principles and Practice of Stress Management,

635
00:37:40,239 --> 00:37:43,880
Speaker 1: and this chapter was by a professor emeritus in the

636
00:37:43,880 --> 00:37:47,400
Speaker 1: Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia named

637
00:37:47,440 --> 00:37:51,719
Speaker 1: Wolfgang Linden, and Lindon points out one thing that's kind

638
00:37:51,760 --> 00:37:55,760
Speaker 1: of unique to autogenic training, which proponents of autogenic training

639
00:37:55,800 --> 00:37:59,799
Speaker 1: call passive concentration. So I'm gonna read from Lyndon here

640
00:37:59,800 --> 00:38:04,920
Speaker 1: it's blaming what this is. Passive concentration may sound paradoxical

641
00:38:05,200 --> 00:38:08,920
Speaker 1: in the concentration usually suggests effort. What it means in

642
00:38:09,040 --> 00:38:12,200
Speaker 1: a T is that the trainee is instructed to concentrate

643
00:38:12,239 --> 00:38:16,920
Speaker 1: on inner sensations rather than environmental stimuli, and this is

644
00:38:16,960 --> 00:38:21,360
Speaker 1: indeed somewhat effortful, especially for the novice. If this concentration

645
00:38:21,400 --> 00:38:24,439
Speaker 1: does not come easily, the trainee is told to let

646
00:38:24,600 --> 00:38:27,960
Speaker 1: thoughts wander for a while or to rearrange the body

647
00:38:28,000 --> 00:38:31,800
Speaker 1: position for more comfort, rather than to force inner concentration.

648
00:38:32,360 --> 00:38:36,520
Speaker 1: Not forcing, allowing sensations to happen, and being an observer

649
00:38:36,800 --> 00:38:40,319
Speaker 1: rather than a manipulator are what the passive refers to.

650
00:38:41,000 --> 00:38:43,920
Speaker 1: The a T trainee is warned that trying too hard

651
00:38:44,080 --> 00:38:47,520
Speaker 1: is counterproductive. It main lead to negative reactions such as

652
00:38:47,600 --> 00:38:50,520
Speaker 1: muscle spasms, and it stands in the way of acquiring

653
00:38:50,560 --> 00:38:55,200
Speaker 1: the necessary passive attitude. Interestingly, I I see a couple

654
00:38:55,239 --> 00:38:58,560
Speaker 1: of pail I'm sure they're unintended, but parallels here with

655
00:38:58,640 --> 00:39:03,200
Speaker 1: some mindfulness meditation practices. Yeah. Yeah, again, I feel like

656
00:39:03,239 --> 00:39:05,279
Speaker 1: we come back to the idea that that these are

657
00:39:05,320 --> 00:39:09,680
Speaker 1: all kind of discussing the same phenomena. There are just

658
00:39:09,840 --> 00:39:12,360
Speaker 1: different ways of getting there. They're sort of you know,

659
00:39:12,400 --> 00:39:15,279
Speaker 1: getting to that. You need different sort of trails of

660
00:39:15,400 --> 00:39:18,479
Speaker 1: language and trails of culture to approach it. Some people

661
00:39:18,520 --> 00:39:20,319
Speaker 1: are gonna be able to best approach it through something

662
00:39:20,320 --> 00:39:22,640
Speaker 1: through a trail that is more spiritual, you know, in

663
00:39:22,680 --> 00:39:28,080
Speaker 1: its trappings. Others needs something more based in psychiatry, or

664
00:39:28,120 --> 00:39:30,840
Speaker 1: you know, something that is either attached to the latest

665
00:39:30,880 --> 00:39:33,360
Speaker 1: thinking or has perhaps an air of history to it.

666
00:39:34,200 --> 00:39:37,080
Speaker 1: I would say, ultimately, what all these things have in common?

667
00:39:37,120 --> 00:39:40,279
Speaker 1: To me? It might be not what the proponents of

668
00:39:40,320 --> 00:39:42,879
Speaker 1: something like autogenic training would say, which is that, well,

669
00:39:42,960 --> 00:39:45,759
Speaker 1: you know, it's about the relaxation of the body, and

670
00:39:45,800 --> 00:39:48,799
Speaker 1: the self control aspect is very important and all that

671
00:39:49,440 --> 00:39:52,720
Speaker 1: to me, what seems most important unifying all these different

672
00:39:52,719 --> 00:39:56,960
Speaker 1: relaxation techniques is the control of attention. Yeah, yeah, to

673
00:39:57,000 --> 00:40:00,440
Speaker 1: be able to to take the wandering mind u uh,

674
00:40:00,480 --> 00:40:02,960
Speaker 1: you know, it's in the default mode network and it's

675
00:40:03,040 --> 00:40:05,640
Speaker 1: it's uh, you know, the voice of narrative, and all

676
00:40:05,680 --> 00:40:09,200
Speaker 1: these things that are occurring are are ponderings and our

677
00:40:09,239 --> 00:40:12,200
Speaker 1: our our anxiety over past and future, and to be

678
00:40:12,280 --> 00:40:16,000
Speaker 1: able to sort of refocus that onto something very specific

679
00:40:16,440 --> 00:40:19,640
Speaker 1: like what is your arm doing right now? Or or

680
00:40:19,680 --> 00:40:24,120
Speaker 1: you're breathing being the prime example across numerous different practices

681
00:40:24,400 --> 00:40:28,120
Speaker 1: focusing on the breath. Yeah, I think that's right. Uh So,

682
00:40:28,200 --> 00:40:32,680
Speaker 1: Lyndon says that the passive concentration principle here, the thing

683
00:40:32,719 --> 00:40:34,960
Speaker 1: we were just talking about, is the one thing that

684
00:40:35,040 --> 00:40:39,960
Speaker 1: supposedly separates autogenic training from other methods of relaxation techniques

685
00:40:40,000 --> 00:40:45,000
Speaker 1: like like progressive muscle relaxation or biofeedback. It's you know,

686
00:40:45,040 --> 00:40:48,640
Speaker 1: if you talk to an autogenics training person, they would

687
00:40:48,680 --> 00:40:53,600
Speaker 1: probably heavily emphasize this passive concentration part as important. Beyond that,

688
00:40:53,680 --> 00:40:56,279
Speaker 1: when you go through the different stages, Robert, what you

689
00:40:56,320 --> 00:40:58,560
Speaker 1: were talking about earlier, you know, where you go through

690
00:40:58,600 --> 00:41:02,359
Speaker 1: the the limb and body relaxation and then the heart regulation,

691
00:41:02,480 --> 00:41:04,960
Speaker 1: and then the breathing, and then your guts and then

692
00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:08,120
Speaker 1: your head. Uh that when you go through these you

693
00:41:08,200 --> 00:41:12,520
Speaker 1: will have sort of like formulaic schemes of repeated things

694
00:41:12,600 --> 00:41:15,399
Speaker 1: that you go through in order to to do those

695
00:41:15,480 --> 00:41:18,359
Speaker 1: different parts of the body each time, and that what

696
00:41:18,440 --> 00:41:21,759
Speaker 1: you want to do, Lyndon says is have vivid, personally

697
00:41:21,920 --> 00:41:27,400
Speaker 1: meaningful imagery to accompany each of these formulate body relaxation schemes.

698
00:41:27,960 --> 00:41:30,000
Speaker 1: So I was trying to know exactly what that is.

699
00:41:30,000 --> 00:41:33,160
Speaker 1: But apparently, like for the head, you're supposed to picture

700
00:41:33,719 --> 00:41:36,880
Speaker 1: something about a cooling forehead, maybe something about water, and

701
00:41:36,920 --> 00:41:39,680
Speaker 1: then for your guts it's something about rays of light.

702
00:41:40,880 --> 00:41:43,800
Speaker 1: But I just kept thinking, picture your head as a toilet,

703
00:41:43,880 --> 00:41:47,600
Speaker 1: all the stresses flushing away. Well, it makes me think

704
00:41:47,640 --> 00:41:51,759
Speaker 1: back to the books Track autogen Group Autogenics Part one,

705
00:41:52,400 --> 00:41:54,680
Speaker 1: where one of the clips they use as someone saying

706
00:41:54,680 --> 00:41:58,480
Speaker 1: your body is a warm orange colored liquid. That seems

707
00:41:58,520 --> 00:42:00,960
Speaker 1: to be potentially a specific exam ample of this, you know,

708
00:42:01,040 --> 00:42:05,279
Speaker 1: to a very very specific bit of mental imagery, and

709
00:42:05,320 --> 00:42:08,120
Speaker 1: probably one of the details that that I really dug

710
00:42:08,120 --> 00:42:11,000
Speaker 1: about that song. It's like your bodies of warm orange

711
00:42:11,040 --> 00:42:14,200
Speaker 1: colored liquid. There's something very relaxing about that concept. I mean,

712
00:42:14,200 --> 00:42:17,360
Speaker 1: whether or not these techniques actually reduce stress. That image

713
00:42:17,360 --> 00:42:20,120
Speaker 1: reduces stress for me. I like that, like it's it's

714
00:42:20,200 --> 00:42:24,000
Speaker 1: it's weird and it takes you. Yeah, maybe that was

715
00:42:24,080 --> 00:42:27,520
Speaker 1: the warm fago, some hot fago to get you through

716
00:42:27,520 --> 00:42:32,280
Speaker 1: the winter. Um. So Linden rights that in a clinical setting,

717
00:42:32,760 --> 00:42:38,960
Speaker 1: uh autogenic training is used primarily to reduce unnecessary autonomic arousal,

718
00:42:39,200 --> 00:42:41,720
Speaker 1: in other words, to reduce stress. This shouldn't be surprising

719
00:42:41,719 --> 00:42:44,319
Speaker 1: given what we've already talked about. Though in theory, he

720
00:42:44,360 --> 00:42:47,399
Speaker 1: points out, it's it is designed and believed by its

721
00:42:47,440 --> 00:42:51,040
Speaker 1: advocates to work in any direction. So in theory it

722
00:42:51,080 --> 00:42:53,279
Speaker 1: could be used not just to reduce stress, but to

723
00:42:53,680 --> 00:42:58,439
Speaker 1: raise problematically low levels of autonomic arousal. Though how often

724
00:42:58,440 --> 00:43:00,440
Speaker 1: do you need to do that? No? I mean he

725
00:43:00,440 --> 00:43:03,320
Speaker 1: mentions like a like a low heart rate or something.

726
00:43:04,000 --> 00:43:08,200
Speaker 1: As for the question of whether Schultz himself was rigorous

727
00:43:08,239 --> 00:43:12,319
Speaker 1: in in how he presented the benefits of this technique, uh,

728
00:43:12,400 --> 00:43:15,040
Speaker 1: Linden's writing about a book published by Schultz and a

729
00:43:15,120 --> 00:43:19,239
Speaker 1: student of his named Wolfgang Lutha. I believe this was

730
00:43:19,280 --> 00:43:22,239
Speaker 1: published in nineteen sixty nine or nineteen seventy. I think

731
00:43:22,280 --> 00:43:24,359
Speaker 1: Schultz died in nineteen seventies, so it would have been

732
00:43:24,400 --> 00:43:27,280
Speaker 1: right around the time of his death. But Lyndon writes

733
00:43:27,400 --> 00:43:31,080
Speaker 1: quote for a reader with a strong empiricist bent, reading

734
00:43:31,080 --> 00:43:34,480
Speaker 1: the original works will likely be a frustrating task because

735
00:43:34,480 --> 00:43:38,759
Speaker 1: in the ultimate evaluation of eighties effectiveness, no distinction is

736
00:43:38,800 --> 00:43:42,960
Speaker 1: made by Schultz and Lutha among opinions single case reports

737
00:43:43,000 --> 00:43:46,520
Speaker 1: and controlled studies, of which there were precious few. So

738
00:43:46,600 --> 00:43:50,400
Speaker 1: by nineteen seventy they're still advocating, you know, our technique

739
00:43:50,440 --> 00:43:54,320
Speaker 1: is great, but there is not a strong experimental record

740
00:43:54,360 --> 00:43:58,880
Speaker 1: to back that up. Now, Wolfgang luth he would have

741
00:43:59,200 --> 00:44:02,120
Speaker 1: he would have been a Canadian at the time, but

742
00:44:02,360 --> 00:44:04,919
Speaker 1: he had moved there. He was a German by birth

743
00:44:04,960 --> 00:44:07,680
Speaker 1: and moved there in the late nineteen forties. And I

744
00:44:07,719 --> 00:44:10,600
Speaker 1: found that in in like the Wikipedia entry about him,

745
00:44:10,640 --> 00:44:12,839
Speaker 1: for instance, it kind of it doesn't really mention what

746
00:44:12,880 --> 00:44:16,560
Speaker 1: he did during uh the Second World War. I did

747
00:44:16,560 --> 00:44:19,719
Speaker 1: find another source that said that he served as a

748
00:44:19,800 --> 00:44:23,399
Speaker 1: junior medical officer on the Eastern Front. And also he's

749
00:44:23,440 --> 00:44:25,960
Speaker 1: not to be confused with the U boat captain Wolfgang

750
00:44:26,080 --> 00:44:29,759
Speaker 1: luth Um, who was a different figure altogether. But Luther

751
00:44:29,920 --> 00:44:34,640
Speaker 1: would have would have practiced autogenic training in Canada during

752
00:44:34,640 --> 00:44:36,799
Speaker 1: this post war period. Do you know if he was

753
00:44:36,800 --> 00:44:41,040
Speaker 1: primarily responsible for bringing it to Canada. I'm not certain

754
00:44:41,080 --> 00:44:44,280
Speaker 1: on that, but I would Yeah. I kind of suspect

755
00:44:44,280 --> 00:44:48,400
Speaker 1: that he was given his affiliation. Um, you know, especially

756
00:44:48,440 --> 00:44:51,880
Speaker 1: throughout the post war period with Schultz. Now, there were

757
00:44:51,880 --> 00:44:54,239
Speaker 1: others you know that definitely tried to bring I mean it,

758
00:44:54,280 --> 00:44:56,320
Speaker 1: certainly it came to the United States and was practiced

759
00:44:56,360 --> 00:44:58,399
Speaker 1: and is practice in the United States by by some.

760
00:44:59,120 --> 00:45:01,719
Speaker 1: But one in resting story I came across where someone

761
00:45:01,719 --> 00:45:05,280
Speaker 1: was strongly advocating for it was a nineteen seventy seven

762
00:45:05,280 --> 00:45:09,040
Speaker 1: New York's New York Times report that pointed to a

763
00:45:09,920 --> 00:45:15,040
Speaker 1: psychologist and hypnotism advocate, Dr william S. Kroger, who warned

764
00:45:15,080 --> 00:45:18,120
Speaker 1: in ninety seven that the Russians were training their Olympic

765
00:45:18,160 --> 00:45:22,719
Speaker 1: athletes with hypnosis and autogenic training to improve performance, and

766
00:45:22,800 --> 00:45:25,080
Speaker 1: that the United States would need to get with the

767
00:45:25,120 --> 00:45:27,319
Speaker 1: program if they if they were hoping to keep up.

768
00:45:27,719 --> 00:45:30,160
Speaker 1: This is also when they were training psychic assassins. So

769
00:45:30,239 --> 00:45:32,440
Speaker 1: it all works out, yeah, I mean, it does kind

770
00:45:32,440 --> 00:45:34,840
Speaker 1: of tie into the whole Cold War fear of like, Okay,

771
00:45:35,480 --> 00:45:39,000
Speaker 1: the Russians are doing something, or the reverse, the Americans

772
00:45:39,000 --> 00:45:42,000
Speaker 1: are doing something, what if it works? And then adding

773
00:45:42,000 --> 00:45:47,160
Speaker 1: in perhaps some misinformation and disinformation about it actually working. Yeah,

774
00:45:47,200 --> 00:45:49,279
Speaker 1: I mean, it does appear to have been popular with

775
00:45:49,360 --> 00:45:52,680
Speaker 1: some therapists in Russia. A lot of the studies on

776
00:45:52,719 --> 00:45:56,240
Speaker 1: the effectiveness of autogenic training are older. I would hesitate

777
00:45:56,280 --> 00:45:58,160
Speaker 1: to rely on them too much. I mean, I would

778
00:45:58,160 --> 00:46:02,840
Speaker 1: say overall, auto genic training's efficacy at treating specific diseases

779
00:46:02,880 --> 00:46:06,400
Speaker 1: such as hypertension, I think remains sort of an open question.

780
00:46:06,480 --> 00:46:10,000
Speaker 1: But Lyndon does draw attention to a few studies in

781
00:46:10,160 --> 00:46:14,840
Speaker 1: his assessment of the effectiveness of a T. For example,

782
00:46:14,920 --> 00:46:18,920
Speaker 1: he writes, quote, A particularly striking demonstration of treatment affect

783
00:46:19,000 --> 00:46:22,879
Speaker 1: variability is provided by I got I got some names here.

784
00:46:23,239 --> 00:46:29,759
Speaker 1: I have a zion Zetsev and urinev in n who

785
00:46:29,840 --> 00:46:33,600
Speaker 1: randomly assigned hypertensive patients to either a T or a

786
00:46:33,680 --> 00:46:37,919
Speaker 1: no treatment control condition. When mean changes were broken down

787
00:46:37,960 --> 00:46:42,160
Speaker 1: into percentage improved ratings, the following figures emerged In the

788
00:46:42,160 --> 00:46:46,120
Speaker 1: autogenic training treated group, thirty two percent improved, fifty nine

789
00:46:46,200 --> 00:46:50,600
Speaker 1: percent remained unchanged, and nine percent deteriorated. In the control

790
00:46:50,680 --> 00:46:55,720
Speaker 1: group also remained unchanged, thus the same as the last group,

791
00:46:56,040 --> 00:47:00,960
Speaker 1: eleven percent improved and thirty percent deteriorated. Clearly, therapy did

792
00:47:01,040 --> 00:47:04,480
Speaker 1: little for the majority of patients, whereas the between group

793
00:47:04,560 --> 00:47:08,439
Speaker 1: difference is effectively attributable to treatment effects, consisting of both

794
00:47:08,480 --> 00:47:12,880
Speaker 1: direct improvement and the prevention of worsening. Thus, valuable healthcare

795
00:47:12,960 --> 00:47:15,680
Speaker 1: funds may be better invested if patients who are not

796
00:47:15,719 --> 00:47:19,279
Speaker 1: going to benefit from treatment can be identified a priori

797
00:47:19,320 --> 00:47:22,600
Speaker 1: and left out of the treatment comparison. And there are

798
00:47:22,640 --> 00:47:25,560
Speaker 1: a few other studies that Lyndon talks about the show.

799
00:47:25,640 --> 00:47:29,680
Speaker 1: You know, maybe there is some effectiveness of techniques like

800
00:47:29,800 --> 00:47:35,200
Speaker 1: a t AT reducing stress or physiological arousal, maybe reducing

801
00:47:35,400 --> 00:47:40,560
Speaker 1: some downstream effects of stress, like hypertension. I wasn't seeing

802
00:47:40,600 --> 00:47:43,600
Speaker 1: anything that makes it look like autogenic training is any

803
00:47:43,680 --> 00:47:46,520
Speaker 1: kind of you know, like magic bullet, that's that's gonna

804
00:47:47,320 --> 00:47:50,200
Speaker 1: that's gonna solve all the world's problems, though it may

805
00:47:50,280 --> 00:47:54,640
Speaker 1: have some benefits similar to some other relaxation techniques. Now,

806
00:47:54,680 --> 00:47:57,120
Speaker 1: another idea that comes up in autogenic training is the

807
00:47:57,160 --> 00:47:59,719
Speaker 1: idea that that in these practices you'll have like this

808
00:48:00,120 --> 00:48:04,400
Speaker 1: urge of say negative emotion. Oh, Yeah, that that is

809
00:48:04,440 --> 00:48:08,560
Speaker 1: the ultimately is like a purging of negative feelings from

810
00:48:08,600 --> 00:48:12,440
Speaker 1: the body. Yeah, this was Schultz's idea of autogenic discharge.

811
00:48:12,600 --> 00:48:14,480
Speaker 1: This is where I mean. So there are some elements

812
00:48:14,840 --> 00:48:17,320
Speaker 1: of the autogenic training that you can see. Okay, it

813
00:48:17,480 --> 00:48:20,600
Speaker 1: just seems like this is a technique that could plausibly

814
00:48:20,680 --> 00:48:24,360
Speaker 1: have psychosomatic benefits and you know, could reduce stress and

815
00:48:24,400 --> 00:48:26,239
Speaker 1: all that. There are other things that seem a little

816
00:48:26,320 --> 00:48:29,040
Speaker 1: more kind of freudy, just kind of like you know,

817
00:48:29,120 --> 00:48:32,080
Speaker 1: like talking about the discharging of all these pent up

818
00:48:32,400 --> 00:48:35,600
Speaker 1: things that come out during the process. I think there

819
00:48:35,680 --> 00:48:39,319
Speaker 1: was this belief in like discharging of sexual tensions and

820
00:48:39,320 --> 00:48:42,200
Speaker 1: things like that, which I don't know, I don't see

821
00:48:42,239 --> 00:48:44,879
Speaker 1: any good reason to believe stuff like that is happening. Yeah,

822
00:48:44,920 --> 00:48:48,160
Speaker 1: I mean, on one hand, I you know, I I think,

823
00:48:48,360 --> 00:48:49,480
Speaker 1: like a lot of us, you know, you can I

824
00:48:49,520 --> 00:48:51,480
Speaker 1: can certainly think two examples in my own life where

825
00:48:51,520 --> 00:48:54,360
Speaker 1: I'm engaged in some sort of uh you know, yogic

826
00:48:54,560 --> 00:48:59,880
Speaker 1: or relaxation meditative experience and there is some feeling of purging,

827
00:49:00,040 --> 00:49:03,919
Speaker 1: you know, of some emotional negativity you know, coming out

828
00:49:03,960 --> 00:49:06,760
Speaker 1: and then you're being free of it. On the other hand,

829
00:49:08,239 --> 00:49:10,120
Speaker 1: One of the frequent things that occurs when you try

830
00:49:10,320 --> 00:49:13,560
Speaker 1: and meditate or you know, or or or enter into

831
00:49:13,600 --> 00:49:17,440
Speaker 1: kind of relaxed state is that you'll you'll stumble and

832
00:49:17,480 --> 00:49:20,360
Speaker 1: sometimes you'll fail. Right, And the more you try and

833
00:49:20,400 --> 00:49:22,960
Speaker 1: focus on nothing, sometimes your brain will just really want

834
00:49:22,960 --> 00:49:25,640
Speaker 1: to stab you with a with a big piece of

835
00:49:26,280 --> 00:49:30,000
Speaker 1: negative shrapnel. Uh. And that's just how our brain often works.

836
00:49:30,320 --> 00:49:32,600
Speaker 1: And it's it seems like this might be an interest

837
00:49:33,200 --> 00:49:37,359
Speaker 1: interesting way of working that into a meditative practice so

838
00:49:37,400 --> 00:49:41,440
Speaker 1: that when those thoughts emerge. Uh, that's just that's just

839
00:49:41,520 --> 00:49:45,040
Speaker 1: the purging in process. Uh. And I don't know to

840
00:49:45,040 --> 00:49:47,520
Speaker 1: to some extent, I can see that being a helpful

841
00:49:47,719 --> 00:49:50,319
Speaker 1: technique if it keeps you on the horse as it

842
00:49:50,440 --> 00:49:51,880
Speaker 1: as it were, you know, if it keeps you on

843
00:49:51,960 --> 00:49:54,319
Speaker 1: the bicycle of meditation, and it keeps you from just

844
00:49:54,360 --> 00:49:57,719
Speaker 1: giving up and stopping. So I think that you know,

845
00:49:57,760 --> 00:49:59,719
Speaker 1: this is this all makes for an interesting case to

846
00:50:00,080 --> 00:50:02,439
Speaker 1: cat and considering you know, first of all, how how

847
00:50:02,480 --> 00:50:07,799
Speaker 1: state promoted ideology can impact professions and professionals, and it

848
00:50:07,840 --> 00:50:10,160
Speaker 1: also presents a problem of how we relate to a

849
00:50:10,200 --> 00:50:13,880
Speaker 1: possibly beneficial idea that springs from the life and the

850
00:50:13,920 --> 00:50:18,000
Speaker 1: mind of someone who's engaged in unethical or morally reprehensible

851
00:50:18,120 --> 00:50:22,560
Speaker 1: UM movements. So, first of all, I will say, if

852
00:50:22,560 --> 00:50:25,200
Speaker 1: you're listening to this and you have some experience with

853
00:50:25,239 --> 00:50:29,080
Speaker 1: autogenic training, you've you've practiced it yourself, you've looked into

854
00:50:29,120 --> 00:50:31,719
Speaker 1: it yourself, etcetera. We would obviously love to hear from

855
00:50:31,760 --> 00:50:34,919
Speaker 1: you about this your first hand, uh, you know, take

856
00:50:35,239 --> 00:50:38,200
Speaker 1: on the practice itself and maybe even on its history

857
00:50:38,200 --> 00:50:40,520
Speaker 1: as well, because you know, I think this is ultimately

858
00:50:40,680 --> 00:50:44,280
Speaker 1: an interesting case to look at and considering how state

859
00:50:44,320 --> 00:50:48,879
Speaker 1: promoted ideology can impact professions and professionals, and it also

860
00:50:49,320 --> 00:50:52,360
Speaker 1: presents a problem of how we relate to possibly beneficial

861
00:50:52,400 --> 00:50:55,560
Speaker 1: ideas that spring from the lives and minds of people

862
00:50:55,680 --> 00:51:00,560
Speaker 1: engaged sometimes an unethical or morally reprehensible movements. Now, of course,

863
00:51:00,600 --> 00:51:02,960
Speaker 1: his autogenic is the only concept or idea to have

864
00:51:03,040 --> 00:51:07,200
Speaker 1: its origins and a problematic individual certainly not, though it

865
00:51:07,280 --> 00:51:10,760
Speaker 1: perhaps is a pretty jarring example to turn to given

866
00:51:10,840 --> 00:51:13,959
Speaker 1: his role again in gay conversion therapy under the third

867
00:51:14,000 --> 00:51:17,600
Speaker 1: reich Um. But you know, this is a question we again,

868
00:51:17,640 --> 00:51:20,560
Speaker 1: we have to we have to contemplate regarding a number

869
00:51:20,600 --> 00:51:24,279
Speaker 1: of different UM concepts and ideas that have any kind

870
00:51:24,320 --> 00:51:28,520
Speaker 1: of historic origin or even not so historic origins, because ultimately,

871
00:51:28,760 --> 00:51:32,040
Speaker 1: no matter how you know, elevated a concept may seem

872
00:51:32,080 --> 00:51:34,680
Speaker 1: to us, uh, no matter how you know great a

873
00:51:34,719 --> 00:51:38,480
Speaker 1: particular teaching, they are inevitably, you know, have their origins

874
00:51:38,520 --> 00:51:42,480
Speaker 1: in the minds of human beings, uh, who at the

875
00:51:42,600 --> 00:51:46,360
Speaker 1: very best are flawed and at worst can be engaged

876
00:51:46,400 --> 00:51:49,480
Speaker 1: in in monstrous practices. Well, you know, there have been

877
00:51:49,520 --> 00:51:52,000
Speaker 1: other cases I can think of where there are attempts

878
00:51:52,040 --> 00:51:56,440
Speaker 1: to I don't know distance a practice that in some

879
00:51:56,480 --> 00:52:00,520
Speaker 1: way people believe to have found helpful from a problematic

880
00:52:00,600 --> 00:52:03,160
Speaker 1: individual who it came from. I mean, I think about

881
00:52:04,160 --> 00:52:06,440
Speaker 1: for example, there there were some efforts I know, to

882
00:52:06,600 --> 00:52:10,080
Speaker 1: try to come up with a kind of secular version

883
00:52:10,520 --> 00:52:15,320
Speaker 1: of of mantra based meditation to kind of get away

884
00:52:15,400 --> 00:52:19,319
Speaker 1: from the transcendental meditation movement origins. Oh yes, yeah, yeah,

885
00:52:19,320 --> 00:52:23,120
Speaker 1: And there's certainly used examples of this throughout um, you know,

886
00:52:23,200 --> 00:52:25,440
Speaker 1: yoga practices as well, where that we say, a particular

887
00:52:25,440 --> 00:52:28,360
Speaker 1: school of yoga that emerges and then the individual that

888
00:52:28,480 --> 00:52:31,520
Speaker 1: is associated with there will be you know, some some

889
00:52:31,920 --> 00:52:36,000
Speaker 1: you know, scandal or whatnot that occurs, but people will

890
00:52:36,120 --> 00:52:38,240
Speaker 1: want to hold onto the teaching. So you know, sometimes

891
00:52:38,239 --> 00:52:40,960
Speaker 1: it's more of a rebranding attempt or you know, order

892
00:52:41,000 --> 00:52:43,360
Speaker 1: to take you know, what works about something, distance it

893
00:52:43,440 --> 00:52:47,400
Speaker 1: from the individual, and and and um and and celebrated

894
00:52:47,480 --> 00:52:51,240
Speaker 1: their practice it there. I mean Ultimately, a corrupt yogi

895
00:52:51,400 --> 00:52:54,120
Speaker 1: or even a gay conversion therapy nazi does not own

896
00:52:54,200 --> 00:52:58,959
Speaker 1: the way you find peace, whatever your techniques are. So obviously, again,

897
00:52:58,960 --> 00:53:00,359
Speaker 1: this is a topic that we'd love to hear from

898
00:53:00,360 --> 00:53:03,720
Speaker 1: folks about if you have any experience with autogenetic training, certainly,

899
00:53:03,760 --> 00:53:07,399
Speaker 1: but also just this broader question we're asking here as well. Uh,

900
00:53:07,440 --> 00:53:10,600
Speaker 1: we're curious to hear what everyone has to say. Uh.

901
00:53:10,600 --> 00:53:12,000
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to check out other

902
00:53:12,040 --> 00:53:14,440
Speaker 1: episodes of our show, you can find it wherever you

903
00:53:14,480 --> 00:53:17,200
Speaker 1: get your podcast. Stuff to Blow your mind is everywhere

904
00:53:17,239 --> 00:53:20,000
Speaker 1: wherever you get it. Just make sure that you rate, review,

905
00:53:20,040 --> 00:53:23,080
Speaker 1: and subscribe. This really helps us out in the long run.

906
00:53:23,120 --> 00:53:25,680
Speaker 1: And oh, for our listeners out there, any listeners who

907
00:53:25,719 --> 00:53:28,600
Speaker 1: are in the Atlanta area, UM, I want to let

908
00:53:28,600 --> 00:53:31,520
Speaker 1: you know that there is an event coming up part

909
00:53:31,520 --> 00:53:35,080
Speaker 1: of the Atlanta Science Festival. It's called How Snakes Work.

910
00:53:35,680 --> 00:53:39,040
Speaker 1: It is going to be on Saturday, March seven, from

911
00:53:39,040 --> 00:53:41,240
Speaker 1: two pm to four pm. You can find out about

912
00:53:41,239 --> 00:53:44,600
Speaker 1: it at Atlanta Science Festival dot org. But it's pretty

913
00:53:44,640 --> 00:53:46,920
Speaker 1: cool because it is a It is a team up

914
00:53:46,960 --> 00:53:51,120
Speaker 1: effort from how Stuff Works, the website from which we spawned,

915
00:53:51,520 --> 00:53:55,840
Speaker 1: and the Amphibian Foundation uh Mark Bendinka's organization. Matt Mark Mendick,

916
00:53:55,920 --> 00:53:57,520
Speaker 1: of course, is a friend of the show and has

917
00:53:57,520 --> 00:54:01,719
Speaker 1: been on to discuss amphibians, uh snakes, lizards and more.

918
00:54:02,040 --> 00:54:05,080
Speaker 1: Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer Seth

919
00:54:05,160 --> 00:54:07,399
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch

920
00:54:07,440 --> 00:54:09,600
Speaker 1: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,

921
00:54:09,640 --> 00:54:12,040
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hi,

922
00:54:12,200 --> 00:54:15,759
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

923
00:54:15,800 --> 00:54:25,600
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

924
00:54:25,640 --> 00:54:28,320
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my

925
00:54:28,360 --> 00:54:31,320
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

926
00:54:31,400 --> 00:54:42,320
Speaker 1: or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.