Speaker 1: Welcome to stuft to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: today we're going to be talking about autogenics, autogenic training, uh,
Speaker 1: the the origins of this uh approach at self hypnosis.
Speaker 1: And I have to admit that I had actually never
Speaker 1: even heard of autogenics until I heard a very interesting
Speaker 1: track and I think in some DJ mixes from about
Speaker 1: a decade ago. But the track is called Group Autogenics
Speaker 1: one by the American Dutch musical duo The Books. I've
Speaker 1: never heard of autogenics either. When you first proposed the subject,
Speaker 1: I was like, what is this? Is this where you
Speaker 1: create your own geno? That doesn't sound right? Uh? So yeah,
Speaker 1: I was totally unfamiliar with this, uh kind of obscure.
Speaker 1: I guess relaxation technique developed in the twentieth century. And
Speaker 1: and I will say I had never heard this song
Speaker 1: that you were linking to, but but I looked it
Speaker 1: up and it's a great song. Robert. Yeah, it's kind
Speaker 1: of it's hard to describe. It's kind of a cut
Speaker 1: up of clips from various self help and self hypnosis
Speaker 1: tapes set to some very pleasing music. It's a wonderful track,
Speaker 1: and it's one that I find myself coming back to
Speaker 1: again and again just because it has a very you know,
Speaker 1: pleasing atmosphere to it, and some of the little clips
Speaker 1: in it I actually do kind of help me engage
Speaker 1: in a certain amount of self relaxation. But it's really
Speaker 1: hard to compare the books to other musical acts, or
Speaker 1: at least for me anyway, I feel like there's not
Speaker 1: a lot else out there that reminds me of the books.
Speaker 1: So this raised a big question though for me. When
Speaker 1: I started listening to the song over and over again,
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, it's it's clearly referring to something
Speaker 1: what is autogenics UM? And I'm not sure how much
Speaker 1: of the sampled material is actually rum autogenics rather than
Speaker 1: other self help and self hypnosis tapes, but the book's
Speaker 1: member Nick Zamuda implied that it was, you know, essential
Speaker 1: to the intention of the track. In a two thousand
Speaker 1: and ten WordPress post that he made about about the release,
Speaker 1: he wrote, quote, Wikipedia does a pretty good job of
Speaker 1: defining autogenics. Autogenic training restores the balance between the activity
Speaker 1: of the sympathetic fight or flight and the parasympathetic rest
Speaker 1: and digest branches of the autonomic nervous system. This is
Speaker 1: a pretty good description of what music does as well,
Speaker 1: so it seemed like a good pairing. And then he continues, Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: a lot of the music that a company's guided meditation
Speaker 1: productions is schlocky New Age. Don't get me wrong, I'm
Speaker 1: not opposed to schlock It certainly has its place. But
Speaker 1: my goal became to reframe this bizarre narrative with music
Speaker 1: that could propel the track gently and still go on
Speaker 1: unexpected tangents where necessary. You know, I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: these recordings of of these guys meditations or or or
Speaker 1: exercises are autogenics, because, at least in some of what
Speaker 1: we were reading, the classic works on autogenics did not
Speaker 1: come with recorded audio because you were not supposed to
Speaker 1: listen to somebody else telling you what to do. You're
Speaker 1: supposed to direct your own behavior, which is what provides
Speaker 1: the auto part of the autogenics. Right, yeah, there there
Speaker 1: is at least a pardon where here a woman saying
Speaker 1: I'm calm, and that is that It is at least
Speaker 1: a mantra that you here recited in autogenic training, which one.
Speaker 1: We'll come back to that later on. But okay, so,
Speaker 1: so what is this technique called autogenic training. Well, it
Speaker 1: is an actual desensitization relaxation technique that has existed since
Speaker 1: the early nineteen thirties. Autogenic. The word comes from the
Speaker 1: Greek word autogenitos, meaning generated inside the body or self regulated. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've seen it translated as autogenic meaning sort of self
Speaker 1: starting or uh self triggering. Right, yeah, And so basically
Speaker 1: the idea here is that German psychologist Johannes Heinrich Schultz,
Speaker 1: who lived eighteen eighty four through nine seventy he developed
Speaker 1: autogenic training with the goal of removing the therapist and
Speaker 1: or the hypnotist from the equation, focusing on what seemed
Speaker 1: to be an inner switch that facilitated these states. So
Speaker 1: the idea is, like the rough argument I guess you
Speaker 1: would say, is, Okay, you're going to see a therapist,
Speaker 1: you're going to see a hypnotist, and they're helping you
Speaker 1: reach the state, but you were the one who like
Speaker 1: allowed it to happen. Like that switch is not external,
Speaker 1: it is in you, and therefore this relaxation. Uh, the
Speaker 1: state that you're reaching is auto generated. It is its
Speaker 1: origins are within you. Now, later in the episode, we'll
Speaker 1: get more into the specifics of autogenics and what what
Speaker 1: what what research has to say about its effectiveness. But
Speaker 1: we have to say that this is definitely a topic
Speaker 1: where the research led us into some unex efectively weird
Speaker 1: and decidedly dark material. Uh, namely, first of all, eugenics,
Speaker 1: which will will discuss the the distinction between autogenics and
Speaker 1: eugenics here and a bit they're not directly related concepts.
Speaker 1: And then also the persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany.
Speaker 1: So fair warning that we're going to be discussing some
Speaker 1: heart mentioned content and some examples of humanity at its worst,
Speaker 1: even as we explore the origins of an otherwise inocuous
Speaker 1: sounding practice. So before we turned to Schultz and autogenic training,
Speaker 1: we have to lay the groundwork a little bit regarding
Speaker 1: hypnosis and psychology going into the twentieth century. So let's
Speaker 1: start with modern hypnotism or Mesmerism, which became popular due
Speaker 1: to the work of German physician Franz Mesmer, who lived
Speaker 1: seventeen thirty four through eighteen fifteen. We've discussed hypnotism on
Speaker 1: the show before. Mesmer's work was was a point of
Speaker 1: inter risk for a number of individuals, including the inventor
Speaker 1: of the guillotine. Uh what Zosi, India's guillotin? Did I
Speaker 1: say that correctly? I mean close enough? Okay? And then
Speaker 1: Ben Franklin, of course was was was a fan as well.
Speaker 1: I believe it's Franklin Franklin Okay, Franklin m Franklin effect. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the funny things about hypnotism is that whatever
Speaker 1: clinical relevance it actually has, the ways that we most
Speaker 1: often encounter it are are in the more kind of
Speaker 1: mesmerism tradition as a kind of like public performance, and
Speaker 1: I think this in some ways undercuts it's credibility as
Speaker 1: a as a scientific phenomenon. Yeah, Like we generally encounter
Speaker 1: it in TV shows, Right, there's some sort of a
Speaker 1: hypnotism episode. Somebody's hypnotized, and either it's played just for
Speaker 1: sheer laughs, someone clucks like a chicken, or it has
Speaker 1: a more fantastic treatment, uh, you know, in some sort
Speaker 1: of a fantasy Buffy the Vampire Slayers sort of ship,
Speaker 1: or you're putting down the red Queen and the Manchurian
Speaker 1: candidate and all that kind of uh, mind control stuff,
Speaker 1: all of which it can be kind of distracting when
Speaker 1: you're trying to understand what hypnotism actually is. We, like
Speaker 1: you said, we've covered it on the show before. I'll
Speaker 1: try to give the very short version of our conclusions
Speaker 1: from previous investigations. First of all, yes, it's basically a
Speaker 1: real thing, it's not just like made up. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, no, it is not magic. There's nothing especially
Speaker 1: spooky going on with it. Hypnosis refers to a particular
Speaker 1: type of mildly altered state of consciousness, a state of
Speaker 1: heightened relaxation and very importantly focused attention, reduced peripheral awareness,
Speaker 1: and increased suggestibility. The research makes it very clear that
Speaker 1: not everybody is equally susceptible to hypnosis. Some people appear
Speaker 1: to not respond to it at all. Other people seem
Speaker 1: very suggestible. The stuff you see in movies where people
Speaker 1: get hypnotized and turned into a sleeper agent assassin, that
Speaker 1: that's not very realistic. I don't think it makes sense
Speaker 1: to think of hypnotism as a form of mind control.
Speaker 1: I think hypnotism could better be compared to other mildly
Speaker 1: altered states of consciousness, like the things people achieve in meditation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree. I think if you if you think of
Speaker 1: it more in terms of a meditative state, uh, certainly
Speaker 1: as opposed to TV mind control, you're you're far closer
Speaker 1: to the mark. Yeah. However, it appears very possible and
Speaker 1: even consistent with a lot of research that hypnosis could
Speaker 1: in some cases be useful in treating medical complaints, especially
Speaker 1: medical complaints with a subjective or psychosmatic component, maybe in
Speaker 1: pain management or in treating stress. So while hypnosis itself,
Speaker 1: I think is a real phenomenon, it's invoked in the
Speaker 1: service of a lot of hoaxes and fakeery and pseudoscience.
Speaker 1: So when you go into the world of hypnotism and
Speaker 1: people start making claims about what can be done with it,
Speaker 1: you should you should have your guard up at solutely,
Speaker 1: and and that can be said up for a number
Speaker 1: of different meditative practices out there. You know, whenever the
Speaker 1: claims begin to venture more into the the supernatural, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, be cautious. I mean, not even just the supernatural,
Speaker 1: even when they venture into the physically plausible but grandiose.
Speaker 1: You know, the people who say like you know, through
Speaker 1: my meditation technique or my self hypnosis tapes, you'll learn
Speaker 1: to master you know, it's your it's your guide to
Speaker 1: weight loss and confidence in the boardroom and all this stuff.
Speaker 1: People say there might be some real clinical effects of
Speaker 1: things like hypnosis, but just be cautious when the promises
Speaker 1: get big, right, I mean it could kind of like
Speaker 1: the the interview episode on the science of yoga that
Speaker 1: put out several months ago. It's like, there are things
Speaker 1: that there are things that yoga can do, and things
Speaker 1: that the research shows that it it can or may
Speaker 1: be able to do. And there are then there are
Speaker 1: things for which there's no like plausible reason that it
Speaker 1: would have that effect on you. Uh. And again you
Speaker 1: can extrapolate that to a number of these diff and
Speaker 1: mindfulness exercises potentially so Mesmeter's work. Again, it interested a
Speaker 1: number of people have made quite a splash. One of
Speaker 1: the individuals that it interest was a man by the
Speaker 1: name of Oscar Vault who lived eighteen seventy through nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty five, and his wife, Cecile Vat, a magnier who
Speaker 1: lived eighteen seventy five through nineteen sixty two. They were
Speaker 1: neurologists and neuro anatomous and they were really these two
Speaker 1: were really quite a team. I was not I don't
Speaker 1: think I was specifically aware of them, but they were
Speaker 1: early pioneers in functional neuro anatomy and genetics, and then
Speaker 1: made a number of important contributions to the study of
Speaker 1: the brain during the twentieth century. Uh And and not
Speaker 1: only that, their their daughter Martha Vaut, who lived nineteen
Speaker 1: o three through two thousand and three a good solid
Speaker 1: century there she was one of the twentieth centuries leading
Speaker 1: neuroscientists as well. And then her younger sister, Marguerite Vaught,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen thirteen through two thousand and seven, was
Speaker 1: a cancer biologist and bologist. So Oscar and Cecil they
Speaker 1: clashed with the Nazi regime during this time and were
Speaker 1: forced out of government service in ninety seven, and they
Speaker 1: continued there were in a privately funded institute in New
Speaker 1: stat One of the sticking points, apparently with the Third Reich,
Speaker 1: was there was there collection of Russian contacts, and in
Speaker 1: fact Oscar was charged with inspecting the brain of Vladimir
Speaker 1: Lenin following his death from a following a series of strokes.
Speaker 1: Uh So So these were brain experts. They studied the
Speaker 1: physical structure of the brain and how that contributed to
Speaker 1: the functioning of the brain. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that Oscar was apparently interested in was what you could
Speaker 1: see with how the structures of the brain responded to
Speaker 1: hypnosis exercises. Yeah, so he apparently used it with his
Speaker 1: patients for a number of years, and along along the
Speaker 1: way he did, he managed to cross paths with a
Speaker 1: with this German psychiatrist, this man by the name of
Speaker 1: Johannes Heinrich Schultz, and reported him that, you know, his
Speaker 1: patients could use their own volition to produce sensations of
Speaker 1: heaviness and warmth in their bodies and transfer into a
Speaker 1: self hypnotic state. So Schultz uh took this idea, combined
Speaker 1: it with his own experiences using hypnosis with patients, and
Speaker 1: this brought about the birth of autogenic training. So basically
Speaker 1: he just he just really you know, dove into this
Speaker 1: this particular topic like what can be done in the
Speaker 1: realm of of you know, self regulated self hypnosis. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: I think it's important to understand that in the first
Speaker 1: half of the twentieth century especially, there is a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff happening in the world of psychology and psychiatry
Speaker 1: that is very interesting, but is not what we would
Speaker 1: probably consider science today. There's a lot of stuff going
Speaker 1: on in this world that I think is better to
Speaker 1: think of as philosophy. It's kind of more broad observational
Speaker 1: science than it is science based on controlled experiments and rigor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're we're talking about again the late nineteenth century, the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century, the heyday of individuals like Sigmund Freud
Speaker 1: and Carl Jung. The discipline of psychiatry itself was only
Speaker 1: entering its second century of existence, and the first half
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century was dominated by this idea of psychoanalysis,
Speaker 1: before chemical advances would bring about a new age of
Speaker 1: pharmacology in the second half of the twentieth century. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously it's it's not just drugs that change psychometry. I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it was empirical methods of all sorts,
Speaker 1: I think, because you can also run empirical tests on
Speaker 1: the efficacy of therapeutic techniques that don't involve drugs and
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. But the world of Freud and
Speaker 1: and Carl Young, while you know, I enjoy their writings
Speaker 1: that I think they're very interesting, but it's not really science.
Speaker 1: It's especially if you could drill into an idea like
Speaker 1: the collective unconscious, you know, it's very it's fascinating stuff.
Speaker 1: It can it can certainly benefit you from a philosophical standpoint,
Speaker 1: of creative standpoint, you know, fascinating concepts. But is it
Speaker 1: something that is you know, has any scientific validity to it? Uh,
Speaker 1: probably not. Might it might be were it might be
Speaker 1: able to generate ideas that could be put to rigorous
Speaker 1: testing by experimental psychologists and psychiatrists who would come later.
Speaker 1: So it was I guess you could say that it was,
Speaker 1: you know, an age of optimism in many respects. You
Speaker 1: had all these new tools that were coming online to
Speaker 1: enable the treatment of nervous conditions, nervous conditions that had
Speaker 1: plagued humanity for for for quite some time. The secrets
Speaker 1: of the mind were being explored, and yet this was
Speaker 1: also a time of incredible darkness and tailing some truly
Speaker 1: horrendous studies and of course the horrors of eugenics. That's right,
Speaker 1: I mean generally, Uh, science and medical practice under the
Speaker 1: Third Reich is just a litany of horror stories. Of
Speaker 1: various kinds, and of course psychiatry under the Third Reich
Speaker 1: is is really no different, right, and we're not gonna
Speaker 1: attempt to do any kind of a deep dive into that,
Speaker 1: but we will touch on, I think on some examples
Speaker 1: that exemplify the sort of the sort of pressure that
Speaker 1: was applied by the Third Reich on the sciences and
Speaker 1: the sort of you know, corrupted results that you that
Speaker 1: you get when that sort of relationship is in place.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna take a quick break, but when we
Speaker 1: come back, we will continue with our story and we'll
Speaker 1: will bring in the character of Johannes Heinrich Schultz. Thank
Speaker 1: all right, we're back. So we've been talking about this
Speaker 1: idea of autogenics, which is some kind of form of
Speaker 1: purported self hypnosis that was created by a German psychiatrist
Speaker 1: named Johannes Heinrich Schultz in the nineteen twenties and thirties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he is. He has a troubling figure I think
Speaker 1: to figure out again. Early twentieth century. This was the
Speaker 1: heyday of psychoanalysis, and Schultz certainly believed in the power
Speaker 1: of psychoanalysis, though he also thought that it was an
Speaker 1: idea was not ideal for the treatment of psychosomatic disorders,
Speaker 1: and in these cases he became convinced that the key
Speaker 1: lay in self hypnosis, and of course in his in
Speaker 1: his concept of autogenic training. Right, So hetero hypnosis would
Speaker 1: be the opposite of what hetero hypnosis would be where
Speaker 1: there is uh, it was the so called authoritarian method. Right,
Speaker 1: there's a hypnotist guiding you, whereas auto hypnosis you take
Speaker 1: into your own hands. Okay, So what's the distinction here
Speaker 1: with psychosomatic disorders. Psychosomatic refers to problems in the body
Speaker 1: that are caused or aggravated by psychological factors. So you
Speaker 1: can have psychosomatic pain, Uh, you can, you know, you
Speaker 1: can have hypochondriasis. Uh. Schultz was cited by a biographer
Speaker 1: to have said, quote, it is complete nonsense to shoot
Speaker 1: with psychoanalytic guns after symptoms sparrows. So I think what
Speaker 1: he's saying there is, to whatever extent you can use psychoanalysis.
Speaker 1: That's more for problems that are fully within the mind,
Speaker 1: you know, the psychology realm Uh. Psycho Somatic disorders where
Speaker 1: the problems are somewhere in the body and may have
Speaker 1: roots in psychological issues, are not best addressed with psychoanalysis.
Speaker 1: He thought they would be better addressed with hypnosis or
Speaker 1: even auto hypnosis. So Schultz noted that, you know, there
Speaker 1: were two very common reports of unique body experiences during
Speaker 1: the process of hypnosis, and those two common reports were
Speaker 1: heaviness in the limbs and this weird sensation of warmth.
Speaker 1: How common these sensations were drove Schultz to see hypnosis
Speaker 1: as a treatment for relaxation in the body, not just
Speaker 1: something that affects the mind, but something to affect, for example,
Speaker 1: the autonomic nervous system. And also based on the reports
Speaker 1: about what Vote had been able to achieve with his
Speaker 1: own patients, Schultz came to believe that the authoritarian figure
Speaker 1: triggering the hypnotic state, within the authoritarian process, within the
Speaker 1: hetero hypnosis, that that was not actually necessary. Yeah. Again,
Speaker 1: the basic idea here is that when we undergo hypnosis,
Speaker 1: the changes are occurring within us, and with training, we
Speaker 1: would be able to trigger them without the aid of
Speaker 1: another person. The patient permits it to happen, rather than
Speaker 1: it being something that the hypnotist does to the patient. That,
Speaker 1: Schultz is the whole argument. So inspired by Vote in
Speaker 1: his own experiences with hypnosis. Schultz began employing these ideas
Speaker 1: in private practice, and this would have been when he
Speaker 1: opened his private clinic in neurology and psychiatry in Berlin
Speaker 1: in ninety four, So by the twenties he's already trying
Speaker 1: this out right. And then in nineteen thirty two he
Speaker 1: published his first book on autogenic Training DOS autogene Training
Speaker 1: and and again we'll get to the specifics of autogenic
Speaker 1: training and a bid here, But in discussing nineteen thirty two,
Speaker 1: we're of course just a year away from the establishment
Speaker 1: of the Third Reich, and this is where Schultz becomes
Speaker 1: a problematic figure. So first, let's be very clear about
Speaker 1: the Nazi regime. It was a dictatorship and a totalitarian
Speaker 1: date based on an ideology that celebrated nationalism, UH, the
Speaker 1: pseudoscience of racial hierarchy, anti semitism, scientific racism, and eugenics.
Speaker 1: Germany contained a great many brilliant minds in nineteen thirty three,
Speaker 1: but the Third Reich was only interested in how these
Speaker 1: minds and ideas could be used to serve the Nazi
Speaker 1: ideology and the war efforts. And UH rocketry, I think
Speaker 1: is a good example to look at here. Just in
Speaker 1: brief um you know that this was you had. You
Speaker 1: had German rocket scientists who were inspired by things like
Speaker 1: science fiction and dreams of exploration. But Bernard von Braun
Speaker 1: von Bron is a great example of this. But of course,
Speaker 1: what did the what did the Third Reich want out
Speaker 1: of these minds? They wanted weapons, They wanted ways to
Speaker 1: deliver um V two one, etcetera, to rain hell down
Speaker 1: upon England and punish their enemies. So there was no
Speaker 1: interest in something like space exploration or moon bases or
Speaker 1: whatever kind of like you know, fanciful extrapolation you find
Speaker 1: in conspiracy thinking. I think the Third Reich is one
Speaker 1: of the greatest examples in history of just an utter
Speaker 1: waste of intellectual potential. You know that there was a
Speaker 1: lot of great scientific infrastructure in Germany in the Weimar
Speaker 1: period and going into the Third Reich, and the way
Speaker 1: all of that great intellectual potential was just bulldozed by
Speaker 1: Nazism is is a great tragedy. So all the sciences
Speaker 1: become the domain of the state in Nazi Germany, and
Speaker 1: of course that also means psychology and psychiatry as well.
Speaker 1: Uh and and and really they were these were fields
Speaker 1: that were I think especially vulnerable because, especially at the time,
Speaker 1: given all the changes that were taking place in these fields,
Speaker 1: they were highly susceptible to manipulation by a totalitarian regime.
Speaker 1: I mean, even the hardest of the hard sciences were
Speaker 1: under attacked by the Nazi ideology, you know, like they
Speaker 1: wanted to rid themselves of what they believed to be
Speaker 1: Jewish physics, not understanding that physics is physics, like it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter what the ethnicity of the scientists who discovered
Speaker 1: it was. Oh yeah, I mean that's the whole other
Speaker 1: side to it too. I mean it's one Not only
Speaker 1: were of course the German scientist pressured to be a
Speaker 1: part of this machine, but then people who were who
Speaker 1: were suspected of having ties to say the Russians, like
Speaker 1: the votes that we discussed earlier, they were at least
Speaker 1: partially pushed out, and then Jewish scientists were completely pushed out.
Speaker 1: But I mean, if there are that many problems in
Speaker 1: a supposedly hard science like physics, you'd imagine that things
Speaker 1: get even weirder when you get into burgeoning fields like
Speaker 1: psychology and psychiatry. Yeah, so the Nazi regime apparently didn't
Speaker 1: have any real strong opinions on self hypnosis or autogenic training,
Speaker 1: but there were other ideas in the field that were
Speaker 1: far more central to their ideology and uh, and so
Speaker 1: all this is going on, Schultz ends up publishing another
Speaker 1: book on autogenics, but his star continues to rise within
Speaker 1: German psychiatry, and is his star rises others all from
Speaker 1: grace in this now state controlled realm of the German
Speaker 1: science is again namely Jewish scientists. In psychology it was
Speaker 1: no different, But what were they to do about psychoanalysis?
Speaker 1: It was again highly favored by Schultz and others, but
Speaker 1: it was the product of Sigmund Freud, who was of
Speaker 1: course Jewish himself. His books were among those burned and
Speaker 1: he eventually had to flee the country as well. So
Speaker 1: part of German psychiatry at the time part of the
Speaker 1: mission statement of of the Goring Institute. This was named
Speaker 1: for Matthias Heinrich Goring, cousin to the more famous and
Speaker 1: at the time were powerful Herman Goring. Uh. Part of
Speaker 1: its whole aim was to rid psychiatry of quote Jewish
Speaker 1: influence and established quote a new German psychotherapy, which of
Speaker 1: course is ludicrous. It's like if someone were to say, well,
Speaker 1: let's just focus on on an American science. You know,
Speaker 1: how do you what what would that even mean? What
Speaker 1: that means you'd have to press out all like non
Speaker 1: American ideas of what of how the world works and
Speaker 1: what the cosmos consists of. I mean, it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: the only time in history that there's been a kind
Speaker 1: of like stupid nationalist lens applied to science is like
Speaker 1: non understanding that the sciences are about figuring out what's
Speaker 1: true about the world, and that those things are true
Speaker 1: no matter what your ethnicity is or what your nationality is.
Speaker 1: I guess the closest thing to validity you could find
Speaker 1: there would be that like, well, you might say, as
Speaker 1: a nation, we have these priorities about what we want
Speaker 1: to find out. But yeah, again this is just a
Speaker 1: tragedy of stupidity. So Schultz, again he keeps focusing on autogenics,
Speaker 1: but he also ends up getting involved in these ideas
Speaker 1: that are far more valuable to the Third Reich. So
Speaker 1: he publishes work supporting eugenics. Um eugenics of course, and
Speaker 1: involves the idea that you should, uh, you want to
Speaker 1: encourage you know, the good genes within a population by
Speaker 1: eliminating um uh, so called destructive genes uh. And this
Speaker 1: generally takes the form of pretty horrific efforts like forced
Speaker 1: sterilization for men with mental retardation, psychiatric or neurological disorders.
Speaker 1: Those were exactly the forms it took under the Third Reich. Now,
Speaker 1: while eugenics was sort of one of the founding principles
Speaker 1: of the Third Reich ideology, I think it's worth acknowledging
Speaker 1: that in the first half of the twentieth century, I mean,
Speaker 1: eugenics was all over the place. It was fashionable among
Speaker 1: intellectual elites all around the world, even in the United
Speaker 1: States and in other Western nations that ended up fighting
Speaker 1: the Nazis. Yeah, absolutely it was. But yeah, by no
Speaker 1: means was it a German idea. Uh, you know, you
Speaker 1: saw it. Plenty of examples of it in the United States.
Speaker 1: We talked a lot about eugenics. Actually in our interview
Speaker 1: with Karl zimmerwent excellent book about heredity. So if you
Speaker 1: want to go back and listen to that episode you can.
Speaker 1: But yeah, he explores a lot of the roots of
Speaker 1: eugenics within the United States at the time. But in
Speaker 1: this case, the s the eugenics movement would eventually sterilize
Speaker 1: some four hundred thousand individuals by the end of the war,
Speaker 1: and Schultz also focused on sexual education and the subject
Speaker 1: of homosexuality and the idea that it could be cured.
Speaker 1: So at the time, homosexuality was in general poorly understood
Speaker 1: from any sort of scientific standpoint and was highly susceptible
Speaker 1: to pre existing prejudices. We know today, of course, that
Speaker 1: the notion of curing homosexuality is pseudoscience at best, and
Speaker 1: generally it's it's worse than that. Two thousand nineteen study
Speaker 1: published in the journal Science, the largest study to ever
Speaker 1: analyze the genetics of same sex sexual behavior, points out
Speaker 1: that there's no one, you know, gay gene or anything
Speaker 1: of the sort. Rather, to quote Pam Bellock in the
Speaker 1: New York Times quote, the influence comes not from one gene,
Speaker 1: but many, each with a tiny effect, And the rest
Speaker 1: of the explanation includes social or environmental factors, making it
Speaker 1: impossible to use genes to predict someone's sexuality. Right, So,
Speaker 1: sexual orientation, like almost everything else out us, is in
Speaker 1: fact controlled by a number of different genes acting in
Speaker 1: concert with our environment. As were brought up, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's this complex interplay of nature and nurture individual in
Speaker 1: the environment. And more to the point of course, it's
Speaker 1: not something to be corrected at all. It's not as
Speaker 1: it was often thought at the time. And some of
Speaker 1: these regimes, including you know, the Third Reich, it was
Speaker 1: it's not a societal problem, though it again is often
Speaker 1: framed like that, and and was and was outlawed as
Speaker 1: such in various nations. And uh, homosexuality was certainly at
Speaker 1: odds with the Nazi ideology, which celebrated, among other things,
Speaker 1: this exaggerated and toxic vision of masculinity. Historians, however, have
Speaker 1: also pointed out that this that this this Nazi hyper
Speaker 1: masculine ethos paradoxically may have encouraged male bonding and homosexual
Speaker 1: relationships as well. But you know, I guess it's one
Speaker 1: of these situations where that the kind of proximity of
Speaker 1: ideal and antithesis are often a common feature of homophobia. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: under in the sciences of the Third Reich, you had
Speaker 1: scientists that were who were, you know, taking a eugenics
Speaker 1: approach to the issue of homosexuality, believing that homosexuality was
Speaker 1: centered in a person's genes and could therefore be addressed
Speaker 1: via the violence of eugenics. Schultz, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: thought psychotherapy was the answer that homosexuality was based in
Speaker 1: quote perversion, a profound disorder of the entire personality. And uh.
Speaker 1: That quote was pointed out in a paper that I'm
Speaker 1: gonna refer to again here, uh, titled Johannes Heinrich Schultz
Speaker 1: and National Socialism by Jurgen Brunner, m d. Matthias Shrimp,
Speaker 1: and Florian Stagger, m d, pH d. This was published
Speaker 1: in the Israeli Journal of Psychiatry in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: So here we get around to a different version of
Speaker 1: anti gay reaction, right, which instead of thinking, okay, there's
Speaker 1: just a there's a gene we can eliminate somewhere, this
Speaker 1: instead says, no, it's something that's wrong with with you,
Speaker 1: know how your brain is working, and we can sort
Speaker 1: of train it out of you. And unfortunately, this point
Speaker 1: of view is not entirely gone from the world today. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's that's the thing. You could take
Speaker 1: Schultz out of this this particular place and time, and
Speaker 1: you could easily place him, say in the United States today,
Speaker 1: and there would be some place for him with this
Speaker 1: kind of rhetoric. Yeah, the most common being things that
Speaker 1: are known as like gay conversion therapies, which are utterly
Speaker 1: condemned by every psychological organization. From the American Psychological Association
Speaker 1: is issued statement after statements saying these treatments do not
Speaker 1: work and they don't do anything good for the person,
Speaker 1: that they should be discouraged at all costs. So, without
Speaker 1: a doubt, Schultz definitely echoed and amplified Nazi homophobia and
Speaker 1: uh and and and gay persecution within German psychiatry, and
Speaker 1: that alone is reprehensible. But on top of that, he
Speaker 1: also engaged in experimentation. So under under Nazi rule, homosexuality
Speaker 1: was illegal in Germany, and it was it was apparently
Speaker 1: previously technically illegal as well, though not prosecuted during the
Speaker 1: Weimar Republic, and convicted homosexuals under the Third Reich were
Speaker 1: sent to concentration camps. According to the US Holocaust Memorial
Speaker 1: Museum quote, between nineteen thirty three and nineteen forty five,
Speaker 1: and estimated one hundred thousand men were arrested for violating
Speaker 1: Nazi Germany's law against homosexuality, and of these, approximately fifty
Speaker 1: thousand were sentenced to prison and estimated five thousand to
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand men were sent to concentration camps while on
Speaker 1: similar charges, where an unknown number of them perished. And
Speaker 1: I also read that the death rate in the camps
Speaker 1: for homosexuals has been estimated to something like sixty Now
Speaker 1: interestently enough, um, you know, we briefly touched on the
Speaker 1: during the Weimar public heal. It was was not prosecuted,
Speaker 1: and there was more of a uh, you know, a
Speaker 1: feeling really I've read of you know, liberation. They were
Speaker 1: actually you know, gay, there's a gay rights movement at
Speaker 1: the time. Um So, when you look at the early
Speaker 1: days of the Nazi regime, apparently it stands on homosexuality
Speaker 1: was a little more ambiguous and uneven, with some individuals
Speaker 1: not having really much of a stated opinion, while you
Speaker 1: had other people like uh s, you know, s s
Speaker 1: Commander in chief Holocaust architect Heinrich Kimmler being one of
Speaker 1: the the the early you know, strong voices in favor
Speaker 1: of violent persecution of homosexuals, and his view increasingly one out.
Speaker 1: So Schultz began to experiment with treating homosexuals through psychoanalysis,
Speaker 1: including many inmates that were brought in from concentration camps,
Speaker 1: and part of this was apparently that he needed to
Speaker 1: demonstrate concrete psychotherapeutic success to maintain his position within the
Speaker 1: Goring Institute. And according to Bruner at All, between nineteen
Speaker 1: three and nineteen thirty eight, five hundred and ten homosexuals
Speaker 1: were quote treated at the Goring Institute, three hundred and
Speaker 1: forty one of them were said to be cured, and
Speaker 1: the cure was tested by forcing the individual to have
Speaker 1: sex with female prostitutes. So these all all would have
Speaker 1: been gay men. Yes, so that I think that that
Speaker 1: just paints the horrific picture. Obviously. Now Schultz wasn't the
Speaker 1: only one involved here. According to the U. S. National
Speaker 1: Holocaust Museum, there was an expanded program of medical experimentation
Speaker 1: on homosexual inmates that ultimately caused illness, mutilation, and even
Speaker 1: death with absolutely no scientific benefits whatsoever. So again we said,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about a dark period of history,
Speaker 1: and and so here we are. So the war ends.
Speaker 1: Of course, Schultz dies in nineteen seventy and never faced
Speaker 1: any repercussions for his ideas or his experiments, and in fact,
Speaker 1: he continued to discuss his findings published his findings even
Speaker 1: and support or did the outlaw of homosexuality for the
Speaker 1: rest of his life. And this is apparently not out
Speaker 1: of the ordinary. Sadly, as much of the Third Reich's
Speaker 1: crimes against homosexuals went unrecognized at a governmental level until
Speaker 1: the like the well into the nineteen eighties that the
Speaker 1: German government formally apologized in two thousand and two. I mean,
Speaker 1: part of this, I think would just have to do
Speaker 1: with attitudes around the rest of the world as well.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think about what happened to Alan Turing
Speaker 1: even in England, England which wanted to purport itself to be,
Speaker 1: you know, the free alternative to the to the authoritarian Germany.
Speaker 1: You know, like gay people did not have equal rights
Speaker 1: there at all. Yeah, and and Alan Turing was was
Speaker 1: subjected to the hors of eugenics. He was uh, chemically sterilized.
Speaker 1: One of the topics that Brunner and his co authors
Speaker 1: discussed concerned Schultz's legacy and to what extent he actually
Speaker 1: bought into Nazi ideology, because you'll certainly encounter the argument that, okay,
Speaker 1: he didn't fully buy into Nazi idea oology, and and
Speaker 1: you know, there you also see it written. Then, Okay,
Speaker 1: through his experiments, he actually retrieved inmates from concentration camps.
Speaker 1: Though of these some were ultimately returned to the concentration camps,
Speaker 1: and even the cured in the case of of cured,
Speaker 1: the so called cured, uh, ultimately they were sent back
Speaker 1: to the front. So both of these would have been
Speaker 1: high mortality fates. Uh. You know, certainly one is as
Speaker 1: an inmate and one as a soldier. They're not directly comparable. Um,
Speaker 1: But it does sound like this, this argument that he
Speaker 1: was saving lives in any sense is is kind of ridiculous.
Speaker 1: The conclusion of Brunner and the co authors is that, well,
Speaker 1: first of all, they say that, you know, they're limited, uh,
Speaker 1: in that they had to depend on writings rather than interviews,
Speaker 1: and certainly they couldn't actually interview Schultz himself. But their
Speaker 1: conclusion was that Schultz perhaps was more of an opportunist
Speaker 1: and a political survivor. But still he certainly expressed these
Speaker 1: amophobic beliefs throughout his life, and that quote. The use
Speaker 1: of typical Nazi vocabulary, as well as the dissemination of
Speaker 1: the Nazi body of thought as late as nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 1: give reason to believe that the statements from nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: five and nineteen forty were not only about opportunistic lip service,
Speaker 1: but instead we're an expression of his fundamental conviction. So
Speaker 1: we're left with this, this image of a discipline and
Speaker 1: a practitioner certainly caught up in the storm of Nazi
Speaker 1: ideology and also embracing much of its vileness. He and
Speaker 1: he helped enable homosexual persecution and engage an abusive, unethical experimentation.
Speaker 1: And yet he also created this practice of intercalming that
Speaker 1: is still practiced to this day. We mentioned how autogenic
Speaker 1: training is maybe, you know, not that widely known here
Speaker 1: in the United States, but it's it's apparently more widely
Speaker 1: practice or has been more widely practiced in Canada, England,
Speaker 1: Germany and Russia and Russia. Yeah, so we're gonna take
Speaker 1: another break, but when we come back, will discuss autogenic
Speaker 1: training a little bit on its own. Alright, we're back,
Speaker 1: all right, So we've been talking about johanness Heinrich Schultz,
Speaker 1: the creator of this self hypnosis process that is called autogenics.
Speaker 1: The idea is that you could, uh, you don't need
Speaker 1: the authoritarian figure telling you you know you are you
Speaker 1: are feeling relaxed, you feel your limbs being heavy, and
Speaker 1: all that stuff that you can train yourself to undergo
Speaker 1: this process on your own. I thought it was interesting
Speaker 1: that even though I've read about hypnosis before, I had
Speaker 1: never really encountered anything about autogenics before you you brought
Speaker 1: up this topic as a possibility to talk about on
Speaker 1: the show, and I was wondering why it is that
Speaker 1: I've never heard of this at all before. Well, something
Speaker 1: that I had heard of and you may have heard
Speaker 1: of this previously as well, is the practice of progressive
Speaker 1: muscle relaxation, which is sometimes integrated into yoga practices. I've
Speaker 1: been to the yoga classes where they engage in like
Speaker 1: a little of this anyway, And this was developed independently
Speaker 1: by the American physician Edmund Jacobson in nineteen o eight,
Speaker 1: So pretty much emerging from the same, the same, you know,
Speaker 1: realm of of psychiatry and contemplation of the human mind.
Speaker 1: As we're going to discuss, autogenic training, I think suffers
Speaker 1: from a dearth of research into its you know, high
Speaker 1: quality research, recent research into its efficacy. But what is
Speaker 1: out there, A lot of it focuses on different types
Speaker 1: of relaxation techniques all sort of put together. So it
Speaker 1: looks at progressive muscle relaxation, autogenic training, and then maybe
Speaker 1: also something like mindfulness meditation or biofeedback feedback. Yes, so
Speaker 1: it seems to be considered part of a class of
Speaker 1: stress relief for relaxation and exercises. A standard autogenic training
Speaker 1: exercise tends to consist of several phases. There's a heaviness
Speaker 1: exercise of limb and body relaxation, a warming exercise, a
Speaker 1: heart regulation exercise, a breathing exercise, and then organs and
Speaker 1: then head And it involves spoken mantras and focusing on
Speaker 1: specific parts of the body. So for instance, you might say,
Speaker 1: you know, might you might say that your arms are heavy,
Speaker 1: and you'll repeat that like six times, and then you'll say,
Speaker 1: I am very quiet, and then you'll do another six
Speaker 1: on the the arm, on the other arm, and uh,
Speaker 1: and then you will again return to this mantra of
Speaker 1: of of quietness. Yeah, we were looking for a good recent,
Speaker 1: uh you know, skeptical scientific source on autogenic training, and
Speaker 1: I think one of the best things we came across
Speaker 1: was a chapter in a book. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: psychiatry textbook called The Principles and Practice of Stress Management,
Speaker 1: and this chapter was by a professor emeritus in the
Speaker 1: Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia named
Speaker 1: Wolfgang Linden, and Lindon points out one thing that's kind
Speaker 1: of unique to autogenic training, which proponents of autogenic training
Speaker 1: call passive concentration. So I'm gonna read from Lyndon here
Speaker 1: it's blaming what this is. Passive concentration may sound paradoxical
Speaker 1: in the concentration usually suggests effort. What it means in
Speaker 1: a T is that the trainee is instructed to concentrate
Speaker 1: on inner sensations rather than environmental stimuli, and this is
Speaker 1: indeed somewhat effortful, especially for the novice. If this concentration
Speaker 1: does not come easily, the trainee is told to let
Speaker 1: thoughts wander for a while or to rearrange the body
Speaker 1: position for more comfort, rather than to force inner concentration.
Speaker 1: Not forcing, allowing sensations to happen, and being an observer
Speaker 1: rather than a manipulator are what the passive refers to.
Speaker 1: The a T trainee is warned that trying too hard
Speaker 1: is counterproductive. It main lead to negative reactions such as
Speaker 1: muscle spasms, and it stands in the way of acquiring
Speaker 1: the necessary passive attitude. Interestingly, I I see a couple
Speaker 1: of pail I'm sure they're unintended, but parallels here with
Speaker 1: some mindfulness meditation practices. Yeah. Yeah, again, I feel like
Speaker 1: we come back to the idea that that these are
Speaker 1: all kind of discussing the same phenomena. There are just
Speaker 1: different ways of getting there. They're sort of you know,
Speaker 1: getting to that. You need different sort of trails of
Speaker 1: language and trails of culture to approach it. Some people
Speaker 1: are gonna be able to best approach it through something
Speaker 1: through a trail that is more spiritual, you know, in
Speaker 1: its trappings. Others needs something more based in psychiatry, or
Speaker 1: you know, something that is either attached to the latest
Speaker 1: thinking or has perhaps an air of history to it.
Speaker 1: I would say, ultimately, what all these things have in common?
Speaker 1: To me? It might be not what the proponents of
Speaker 1: something like autogenic training would say, which is that, well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's about the relaxation of the body, and
Speaker 1: the self control aspect is very important and all that
Speaker 1: to me, what seems most important unifying all these different
Speaker 1: relaxation techniques is the control of attention. Yeah, yeah, to
Speaker 1: be able to to take the wandering mind u uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's in the default mode network and it's
Speaker 1: it's uh, you know, the voice of narrative, and all
Speaker 1: these things that are occurring are are ponderings and our
Speaker 1: our our anxiety over past and future, and to be
Speaker 1: able to sort of refocus that onto something very specific
Speaker 1: like what is your arm doing right now? Or or
Speaker 1: you're breathing being the prime example across numerous different practices
Speaker 1: focusing on the breath. Yeah, I think that's right. Uh So,
Speaker 1: Lyndon says that the passive concentration principle here, the thing
Speaker 1: we were just talking about, is the one thing that
Speaker 1: supposedly separates autogenic training from other methods of relaxation techniques
Speaker 1: like like progressive muscle relaxation or biofeedback. It's you know,
Speaker 1: if you talk to an autogenics training person, they would
Speaker 1: probably heavily emphasize this passive concentration part as important. Beyond that,
Speaker 1: when you go through the different stages, Robert, what you
Speaker 1: were talking about earlier, you know, where you go through
Speaker 1: the the limb and body relaxation and then the heart regulation,
Speaker 1: and then the breathing, and then your guts and then
Speaker 1: your head. Uh that when you go through these you
Speaker 1: will have sort of like formulaic schemes of repeated things
Speaker 1: that you go through in order to to do those
Speaker 1: different parts of the body each time, and that what
Speaker 1: you want to do, Lyndon says is have vivid, personally
Speaker 1: meaningful imagery to accompany each of these formulate body relaxation schemes.
Speaker 1: So I was trying to know exactly what that is.
Speaker 1: But apparently, like for the head, you're supposed to picture
Speaker 1: something about a cooling forehead, maybe something about water, and
Speaker 1: then for your guts it's something about rays of light.
Speaker 1: But I just kept thinking, picture your head as a toilet,
Speaker 1: all the stresses flushing away. Well, it makes me think
Speaker 1: back to the books Track autogen Group Autogenics Part one,
Speaker 1: where one of the clips they use as someone saying
Speaker 1: your body is a warm orange colored liquid. That seems
Speaker 1: to be potentially a specific exam ample of this, you know,
Speaker 1: to a very very specific bit of mental imagery, and
Speaker 1: probably one of the details that that I really dug
Speaker 1: about that song. It's like your bodies of warm orange
Speaker 1: colored liquid. There's something very relaxing about that concept. I mean,
Speaker 1: whether or not these techniques actually reduce stress. That image
Speaker 1: reduces stress for me. I like that, like it's it's
Speaker 1: it's weird and it takes you. Yeah, maybe that was
Speaker 1: the warm fago, some hot fago to get you through
Speaker 1: the winter. Um. So Linden rights that in a clinical setting,
Speaker 1: uh autogenic training is used primarily to reduce unnecessary autonomic arousal,
Speaker 1: in other words, to reduce stress. This shouldn't be surprising
Speaker 1: given what we've already talked about. Though in theory, he
Speaker 1: points out, it's it is designed and believed by its
Speaker 1: advocates to work in any direction. So in theory it
Speaker 1: could be used not just to reduce stress, but to
Speaker 1: raise problematically low levels of autonomic arousal. Though how often
Speaker 1: do you need to do that? No? I mean he
Speaker 1: mentions like a like a low heart rate or something.
Speaker 1: As for the question of whether Schultz himself was rigorous
Speaker 1: in in how he presented the benefits of this technique, uh,
Speaker 1: Linden's writing about a book published by Schultz and a
Speaker 1: student of his named Wolfgang Lutha. I believe this was
Speaker 1: published in nineteen sixty nine or nineteen seventy. I think
Speaker 1: Schultz died in nineteen seventies, so it would have been
Speaker 1: right around the time of his death. But Lyndon writes
Speaker 1: quote for a reader with a strong empiricist bent, reading
Speaker 1: the original works will likely be a frustrating task because
Speaker 1: in the ultimate evaluation of eighties effectiveness, no distinction is
Speaker 1: made by Schultz and Lutha among opinions single case reports
Speaker 1: and controlled studies, of which there were precious few. So
Speaker 1: by nineteen seventy they're still advocating, you know, our technique
Speaker 1: is great, but there is not a strong experimental record
Speaker 1: to back that up. Now, Wolfgang luth he would have
Speaker 1: he would have been a Canadian at the time, but
Speaker 1: he had moved there. He was a German by birth
Speaker 1: and moved there in the late nineteen forties. And I
Speaker 1: found that in in like the Wikipedia entry about him,
Speaker 1: for instance, it kind of it doesn't really mention what
Speaker 1: he did during uh the Second World War. I did
Speaker 1: find another source that said that he served as a
Speaker 1: junior medical officer on the Eastern Front. And also he's
Speaker 1: not to be confused with the U boat captain Wolfgang
Speaker 1: luth Um, who was a different figure altogether. But Luther
Speaker 1: would have would have practiced autogenic training in Canada during
Speaker 1: this post war period. Do you know if he was
Speaker 1: primarily responsible for bringing it to Canada. I'm not certain
Speaker 1: on that, but I would Yeah. I kind of suspect
Speaker 1: that he was given his affiliation. Um, you know, especially
Speaker 1: throughout the post war period with Schultz. Now, there were
Speaker 1: others you know that definitely tried to bring I mean it,
Speaker 1: certainly it came to the United States and was practiced
Speaker 1: and is practice in the United States by by some.
Speaker 1: But one in resting story I came across where someone
Speaker 1: was strongly advocating for it was a nineteen seventy seven
Speaker 1: New York's New York Times report that pointed to a
Speaker 1: psychologist and hypnotism advocate, Dr william S. Kroger, who warned
Speaker 1: in ninety seven that the Russians were training their Olympic
Speaker 1: athletes with hypnosis and autogenic training to improve performance, and
Speaker 1: that the United States would need to get with the
Speaker 1: program if they if they were hoping to keep up.
Speaker 1: This is also when they were training psychic assassins. So
Speaker 1: it all works out, yeah, I mean, it does kind
Speaker 1: of tie into the whole Cold War fear of like, Okay,
Speaker 1: the Russians are doing something, or the reverse, the Americans
Speaker 1: are doing something, what if it works? And then adding
Speaker 1: in perhaps some misinformation and disinformation about it actually working. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it does appear to have been popular with
Speaker 1: some therapists in Russia. A lot of the studies on
Speaker 1: the effectiveness of autogenic training are older. I would hesitate
Speaker 1: to rely on them too much. I mean, I would
Speaker 1: say overall, auto genic training's efficacy at treating specific diseases
Speaker 1: such as hypertension, I think remains sort of an open question.
Speaker 1: But Lyndon does draw attention to a few studies in
Speaker 1: his assessment of the effectiveness of a T. For example,
Speaker 1: he writes, quote, A particularly striking demonstration of treatment affect
Speaker 1: variability is provided by I got I got some names here.
Speaker 1: I have a zion Zetsev and urinev in n who
Speaker 1: randomly assigned hypertensive patients to either a T or a
Speaker 1: no treatment control condition. When mean changes were broken down
Speaker 1: into percentage improved ratings, the following figures emerged In the
Speaker 1: autogenic training treated group, thirty two percent improved, fifty nine
Speaker 1: percent remained unchanged, and nine percent deteriorated. In the control
Speaker 1: group also remained unchanged, thus the same as the last group,
Speaker 1: eleven percent improved and thirty percent deteriorated. Clearly, therapy did
Speaker 1: little for the majority of patients, whereas the between group
Speaker 1: difference is effectively attributable to treatment effects, consisting of both
Speaker 1: direct improvement and the prevention of worsening. Thus, valuable healthcare
Speaker 1: funds may be better invested if patients who are not
Speaker 1: going to benefit from treatment can be identified a priori
Speaker 1: and left out of the treatment comparison. And there are
Speaker 1: a few other studies that Lyndon talks about the show.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe there is some effectiveness of techniques like
Speaker 1: a t AT reducing stress or physiological arousal, maybe reducing
Speaker 1: some downstream effects of stress, like hypertension. I wasn't seeing
Speaker 1: anything that makes it look like autogenic training is any
Speaker 1: kind of you know, like magic bullet, that's that's gonna
Speaker 1: that's gonna solve all the world's problems, though it may
Speaker 1: have some benefits similar to some other relaxation techniques. Now,
Speaker 1: another idea that comes up in autogenic training is the
Speaker 1: idea that that in these practices you'll have like this
Speaker 1: urge of say negative emotion. Oh, Yeah, that that is
Speaker 1: the ultimately is like a purging of negative feelings from
Speaker 1: the body. Yeah, this was Schultz's idea of autogenic discharge.
Speaker 1: This is where I mean. So there are some elements
Speaker 1: of the autogenic training that you can see. Okay, it
Speaker 1: just seems like this is a technique that could plausibly
Speaker 1: have psychosomatic benefits and you know, could reduce stress and
Speaker 1: all that. There are other things that seem a little
Speaker 1: more kind of freudy, just kind of like you know,
Speaker 1: like talking about the discharging of all these pent up
Speaker 1: things that come out during the process. I think there
Speaker 1: was this belief in like discharging of sexual tensions and
Speaker 1: things like that, which I don't know, I don't see
Speaker 1: any good reason to believe stuff like that is happening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, on one hand, I you know, I I think,
Speaker 1: like a lot of us, you know, you can I
Speaker 1: can certainly think two examples in my own life where
Speaker 1: I'm engaged in some sort of uh you know, yogic
Speaker 1: or relaxation meditative experience and there is some feeling of purging,
Speaker 1: you know, of some emotional negativity you know, coming out
Speaker 1: and then you're being free of it. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: One of the frequent things that occurs when you try
Speaker 1: and meditate or you know, or or or enter into
Speaker 1: kind of relaxed state is that you'll you'll stumble and
Speaker 1: sometimes you'll fail. Right, And the more you try and
Speaker 1: focus on nothing, sometimes your brain will just really want
Speaker 1: to stab you with a with a big piece of
Speaker 1: negative shrapnel. Uh. And that's just how our brain often works.
Speaker 1: And it's it seems like this might be an interest
Speaker 1: interesting way of working that into a meditative practice so
Speaker 1: that when those thoughts emerge. Uh, that's just that's just
Speaker 1: the purging in process. Uh. And I don't know to
Speaker 1: to some extent, I can see that being a helpful
Speaker 1: technique if it keeps you on the horse as it
Speaker 1: as it were, you know, if it keeps you on
Speaker 1: the bicycle of meditation, and it keeps you from just
Speaker 1: giving up and stopping. So I think that you know,
Speaker 1: this is this all makes for an interesting case to
Speaker 1: cat and considering you know, first of all, how how
Speaker 1: state promoted ideology can impact professions and professionals, and it
Speaker 1: also presents a problem of how we relate to a
Speaker 1: possibly beneficial idea that springs from the life and the
Speaker 1: mind of someone who's engaged in unethical or morally reprehensible
Speaker 1: UM movements. So, first of all, I will say, if
Speaker 1: you're listening to this and you have some experience with
Speaker 1: autogenic training, you've you've practiced it yourself, you've looked into
Speaker 1: it yourself, etcetera. We would obviously love to hear from
Speaker 1: you about this your first hand, uh, you know, take
Speaker 1: on the practice itself and maybe even on its history
Speaker 1: as well, because you know, I think this is ultimately
Speaker 1: an interesting case to look at and considering how state
Speaker 1: promoted ideology can impact professions and professionals, and it also
Speaker 1: presents a problem of how we relate to possibly beneficial
Speaker 1: ideas that spring from the lives and minds of people
Speaker 1: engaged sometimes an unethical or morally reprehensible movements. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: his autogenic is the only concept or idea to have
Speaker 1: its origins and a problematic individual certainly not, though it
Speaker 1: perhaps is a pretty jarring example to turn to given
Speaker 1: his role again in gay conversion therapy under the third
Speaker 1: reich Um. But you know, this is a question we again,
Speaker 1: we have to we have to contemplate regarding a number
Speaker 1: of different UM concepts and ideas that have any kind
Speaker 1: of historic origin or even not so historic origins, because ultimately,
Speaker 1: no matter how you know, elevated a concept may seem
Speaker 1: to us, uh, no matter how you know great a
Speaker 1: particular teaching, they are inevitably, you know, have their origins
Speaker 1: in the minds of human beings, uh, who at the
Speaker 1: very best are flawed and at worst can be engaged
Speaker 1: in in monstrous practices. Well, you know, there have been
Speaker 1: other cases I can think of where there are attempts
Speaker 1: to I don't know distance a practice that in some
Speaker 1: way people believe to have found helpful from a problematic
Speaker 1: individual who it came from. I mean, I think about
Speaker 1: for example, there there were some efforts I know, to
Speaker 1: try to come up with a kind of secular version
Speaker 1: of of mantra based meditation to kind of get away
Speaker 1: from the transcendental meditation movement origins. Oh yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And there's certainly used examples of this throughout um, you know,
Speaker 1: yoga practices as well, where that we say, a particular
Speaker 1: school of yoga that emerges and then the individual that
Speaker 1: is associated with there will be you know, some some
Speaker 1: you know, scandal or whatnot that occurs, but people will
Speaker 1: want to hold onto the teaching. So you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: it's more of a rebranding attempt or you know, order
Speaker 1: to take you know, what works about something, distance it
Speaker 1: from the individual, and and and um and and celebrated
Speaker 1: their practice it there. I mean Ultimately, a corrupt yogi
Speaker 1: or even a gay conversion therapy nazi does not own
Speaker 1: the way you find peace, whatever your techniques are. So obviously, again,
Speaker 1: this is a topic that we'd love to hear from
Speaker 1: folks about if you have any experience with autogenetic training, certainly,
Speaker 1: but also just this broader question we're asking here as well. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're curious to hear what everyone has to say. Uh.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to check out other
Speaker 1: episodes of our show, you can find it wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcast. Stuff to Blow your mind is everywhere
Speaker 1: wherever you get it. Just make sure that you rate, review,
Speaker 1: and subscribe. This really helps us out in the long run.
Speaker 1: And oh, for our listeners out there, any listeners who
Speaker 1: are in the Atlanta area, UM, I want to let
Speaker 1: you know that there is an event coming up part
Speaker 1: of the Atlanta Science Festival. It's called How Snakes Work.
Speaker 1: It is going to be on Saturday, March seven, from
Speaker 1: two pm to four pm. You can find out about
Speaker 1: it at Atlanta Science Festival dot org. But it's pretty
Speaker 1: cool because it is a It is a team up
Speaker 1: effort from how Stuff Works, the website from which we spawned,
Speaker 1: and the Amphibian Foundation uh Mark Bendinka's organization. Matt Mark Mendick,
Speaker 1: of course, is a friend of the show and has
Speaker 1: been on to discuss amphibians, uh snakes, lizards and more.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hi,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.