Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give
Speaker 1: you insights into the mind of brain, behavior, and creativity.
Speaker 1: Each episode will feature a guest who will stimulate your
Speaker 1: mind and give you a greater understanding of yourself, others,
Speaker 1: and the world we live in. Hopefully we'll also provide
Speaker 1: a glimpse into human possibility. If you like what you
Speaker 1: hear today, please add a rating and review on iTunes.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast today. I'm really
Speaker 1: excited to have doctor James Fatiman on the podcast. James
Speaker 1: is an American psychologist and writer known for his extensive
Speaker 1: work in the field of psychedelic research. He co founded,
Speaker 1: along with Robert Frager, the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, which
Speaker 1: later became Sophia University, where he was a lecturer in
Speaker 1: psychedelic studies. Fatimin is author of the book The psychoedel
Speaker 1: Explorer's Guide, A Safe, Therapeutic and Sacred Journeys. Dude, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for chelling with me today. I'm very
Speaker 1: happy to be with you. I've never referred to one
Speaker 1: of my guests that do before, but it somehow felt appropriate.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, you are such a legend in the field,
Speaker 1: one of the founders of trans personal psychology right there,
Speaker 1: you know, late sixties. So there was a time when
Speaker 1: psychedelic research was respected. Is that right? There was a
Speaker 1: time when LSD was the most researched psychiatric drug in
Speaker 1: the world. And what happened. And when I first entered
Speaker 1: the field in the late sixties, I wrote Sandos and said,
Speaker 1: is there any research? I got two volumes only of abstracts,
Speaker 1: so yes, it was quite respectable. Well, why don't we
Speaker 1: trace your history a little bit? Why did you decide
Speaker 1: to get into that topic? And you know, like where
Speaker 1: did you go to college? You know, what were some
Speaker 1: of these gettings in your life where you got Really
Speaker 1: you're like, this is what I want to study. Sure.
Speaker 1: I was a Harvard undergraduate and I had a charming
Speaker 1: and somewhat neurotic professor named Richard Alfert, and my junior
Speaker 1: summer I worked with him at Stanford on research about
Speaker 1: children and various other things. And he had one undergraduate
Speaker 1: me and one graduate student, Ralph Metzner, and nothing about
Speaker 1: psychedelics for any of us. And I graduated and was
Speaker 1: living and working in Paris, and Richard came over and
Speaker 1: said the greatest thing in the world has happened to me,
Speaker 1: and I want to share it with you. Well, and
Speaker 1: that's how I became interested in psychedelics. I thought you
Speaker 1: were going to say that your teacher professor was Tim Leary,
Speaker 1: and now never really connected with Tim. Worked with Richard,
Speaker 1: and then went to Stanford for graduate school and worked
Speaker 1: off campus with a group called the International Foundation for
Speaker 1: Advanced Study, which was doing clinical research using higher dose psychedelics,
Speaker 1: and did some publications which Stanford was nervous about, and
Speaker 1: did probably the only PhD on the effectiveness of psychedelics
Speaker 1: therapy that's been done. That was done for decades because
Speaker 1: the US government then said, we don't want to know
Speaker 1: any more about this. We are shutting down in the
Speaker 1: same day, over sixty research projects. Do you know what
Speaker 1: the what the catalyst there was? Why did they feel
Speaker 1: that way all of a sudden. Well, by that time,
Speaker 1: psychedelics had escaped the laboratory and were part of the
Speaker 1: kind of hippie cultural subculture, and that subculture did not
Speaker 1: appreciate much of what the United States was doing, particularly
Speaker 1: the Vietnam War. So here were people who were against
Speaker 1: the establishment, who didn't like much of capitalism and racism
Speaker 1: and a few other things, and the government had no
Speaker 1: idea what to do. And it is my theory and
Speaker 1: this is my fantasy that they were sitting around saying,
Speaker 1: how can we stop the spread of these psychedelics that
Speaker 1: make children not respect their parents and not want to
Speaker 1: go and kill strangers in a country they've never heard of, right,
Speaker 1: And someone said, well, we could stop research. That's something,
Speaker 1: And someone else in the room said that's an intelligent idea,
Speaker 1: and they stopped all research. When you read the CIA
Speaker 1: experiments in this area, which were, by the way, really
Speaker 1: bad research, it makes sense. The answer is no, there's
Speaker 1: no good reason. And their politics, as we all know,
Speaker 1: transcends science and transcends evidence when it wishes to well.
Speaker 1: The whole notion that psychology would study healthy personality, yeah,
Speaker 1: for reasons that seem absurd in retrospect. So a surprise
Speaker 1: was something that needed to be argued about. It's as
Speaker 1: if you were saying, well, I want to study humanity,
Speaker 1: but I only want to study a couple of percent
Speaker 1: of them and then generalize, right, rather than why don't
Speaker 1: I study everybody and probably learn more? Yeah, So it
Speaker 1: was like that was a revolutionary idea at the time,
Speaker 1: and you knew him, and so I want to hear
Speaker 1: more about this moment where he's like dude. I'm sure
Speaker 1: he didn't say dude. He's like, right, did people call
Speaker 1: you Jim? Yes? Should I call you Jim? Okay, Jim,
Speaker 1: I'm outport right now, Jim. Oh my gosh, I have
Speaker 1: to tell you about this experience that happened to me.
Speaker 1: Oh my omg. Now what is it about the psychedelic
Speaker 1: experience that is so transformative for people? Like? What is
Speaker 1: it about? Man? Can you tell me? Well, though I
Speaker 1: prefer that everyone should read the volume by all this
Speaker 1: Suxley on his first masculine experience, which is being consistent
Speaker 1: selling ever since. I'll take it in a couple of sentences.
Speaker 1: It expands your worldview, and it makes self evident that
Speaker 1: we are interdependent, not only on one another, but on
Speaker 1: the rest of the natural world. Again, this is now
Speaker 1: common sense that ecology says we actually live in a habitat,
Speaker 1: not in a city, and that it turns out that
Speaker 1: people have more inherent goodness in common than any other trait.
Speaker 1: So it changes the way you look at relationships, It
Speaker 1: changes the way you look at your own relationship to nature.
Speaker 1: It changes the way you look at self imposed scientific
Speaker 1: limitations on certain kinds of research. So it's a career
Speaker 1: change here for those of us who are being professional psychologists,
Speaker 1: but for most people it makes them more optimistic about
Speaker 1: the overall wonder and beauty of the world and more
Speaker 1: aware of it. That's probably pretty enticing if you think
Speaker 1: about it. It's incredibly enticing, and you hear similar descriptions
Speaker 1: among people who are expert meditators as well. The fact
Speaker 1: is that this particular part of consciousness. Think of it
Speaker 1: as another band on the FM radio, but wayn here
Speaker 1: at the top, repeated by mystics in every tradition I've
Speaker 1: ever been able to discover, by serious meditators, by people
Speaker 1: who are involved in trance behavior, Lots of ways people
Speaker 1: have approached this same area and their reports are all similar.
Speaker 1: So the question becomes, then, what is the best way
Speaker 1: for someone born in the West in the twentieth century
Speaker 1: to have access to these spiritual kind of truths in
Speaker 1: a way that makes sense for them. Yeah, because these
Speaker 1: kind of experiences can certainly be divorced from beliefs or religion. Remember,
Speaker 1: beliefs are things that you are that you don't know, right.
Speaker 1: Nobody says I have a belief in gravity, Yeah, good point,
Speaker 1: or in sunset or in cheesecake. People say I have
Speaker 1: experienced in the spiritual kind of vocabulary at least of
Speaker 1: one system. Belief is a lower version than knowledge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know a lot of religious individuals would counter
Speaker 1: that and say, well, they're just accessing a different truth
Speaker 1: as other there are multiple truths. Well, there are multiple
Speaker 1: truths because truths come through a filter called us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that you know, it's a commonplace in the first
Speaker 1: year psychology to say you don't see the same grid
Speaker 1: that I see when we say the word red, and well,
Speaker 1: that's true. We both see something close enough so that
Speaker 1: we can converse really pretty intimately about it. The psychedelic
Speaker 1: people and trans personal psychic ten personal psychology did is say,
Speaker 1: these different religious traditions, when you get back to the
Speaker 1: initial experiences, simply look like variations on a theme. They
Speaker 1: don't look like genuine opposition differences. Yeah, you know this,
Speaker 1: it's interesting because we're going to so go into Abraham
Speaker 1: Masa right now talking about Maso's ideas, because he really
Speaker 1: believed self actualized individual people who reach self actualization see
Speaker 1: reality more clearly than everyone else. That kind of he
Speaker 1: describes as how they take off their like a clouded
Speaker 1: lens and kind of put on a Yeah, they take
Speaker 1: off some of their individual preconceptions, right, you know, like
Speaker 1: I'm short. Short people are really good. I'm not short.
Speaker 1: These short people are not really good, you know, And
Speaker 1: I'm making it obvious and dumb, right, But it's just
Speaker 1: as true when someone says, well, you're from a religious
Speaker 1: tradition that, since I know nothing about, probably is not
Speaker 1: as good as mine. Right, But there's multiple ways of
Speaker 1: getting to that same thing that psychedelics maybe like induces it,
Speaker 1: But there are other spiritual practices that can get us
Speaker 1: in that mental state. Is that right? Oh well there
Speaker 1: are other practices. Yeah. I would hardly say taking a
Speaker 1: psychedelic and going to a U two concert is a
Speaker 1: spiritual practice, right. But there's an English mystic Elwen Underhill,
Speaker 1: who said, if God is infinite, he can be approached
Speaker 1: in an infinite number of ways. And it's the the
Speaker 1: image of if your goal is to get to the mountaintop, really,
Speaker 1: any place you start, as long as you're going towards up,
Speaker 1: is probably a possible method. So interesting you said the
Speaker 1: word infinite. That's a common theme in a lot of
Speaker 1: these kinds of discussions. Can I read it quote? I'm
Speaker 1: not going to tell you said this quote, and you're
Speaker 1: gonna have the guests who said it. One problem, one
Speaker 1: problem with science, and one reason that people who look
Speaker 1: beyond science are suspicious of it, is that it is
Speaker 1: not very well taken account of the infinite. Therefore, it's
Speaker 1: inherently less of a system than some of these other systems.
Speaker 1: Who said that, Oh, I could think of a thousands,
Speaker 1: but I hope it was Maslow. Guess what it was you?
Speaker 1: It was you now sitting right next to Maslow. April thirteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy age age that's what age twenty nine, Jim Fataman,
Speaker 1: I wanted to surprise you with some quotes from them.
Speaker 1: I agree that is wonderfully surprising, and as you notice,
Speaker 1: it's a very gentle reproof that science basically, and I
Speaker 1: would now say it from an older perspective, science does
Speaker 1: exactly what science does, and it says we're not going
Speaker 1: to look into certain areas because our basic assumption say
Speaker 1: they don't exist. And that seems perfectly respectable to me.
Speaker 1: You know, just as astronomy says, I don't really look
Speaker 1: into biological organisms because that's not what astronomy is for.
Speaker 1: So my feeling now is that, you know, I won't
Speaker 1: say some of my best friends are scientists, or we
Speaker 1: have one lawyer who's a scientist, but that different ways
Speaker 1: of knowing demand different tools. Just as if one is
Speaker 1: being a therapist and working on dream analysis, one does
Speaker 1: not apply a double blind laboratory methods because it's just
Speaker 1: totally inappropriate. So it's a matter often and I think
Speaker 1: Maslow said this very nicely when he said, if your
Speaker 1: only tool is a hammer, then every problem becomes a nail.
Speaker 1: Everything looks like you. Now, that's right. So the tools
Speaker 1: of science are good for what science is good for.
Speaker 1: It's funny because do you know what Maslow how he
Speaker 1: responded to you. He said, but science is beginning to
Speaker 1: do that. So he defended science. Oh, he loves science.
Speaker 1: He loved science. But you did done this whole thing
Speaker 1: about astrology. Yeah, but of course those of us who'd
Speaker 1: had psychedelic experience were saying science is fine. And the
Speaker 1: reason science doesn't touch religion except to say bad words
Speaker 1: about it, is because it really doesn't have the tools
Speaker 1: it doesn't know how to approach those kinds of experiences,
Speaker 1: And now we have neuroscience that says I know how
Speaker 1: to approach those experiences. You tell me, you know, you
Speaker 1: get into a blissful state in which your whole being
Speaker 1: is filled with light and love, and I will show
Speaker 1: you what parts of your brains light up. How do
Speaker 1: you feel about that? And my feeling is how charming?
Speaker 1: Kind of like having a little Christmas card and when
Speaker 1: you open it, some little light twinkle on a tree
Speaker 1: and you think that's charming, but you don't think it's
Speaker 1: explained Christmas. Yeah, it doesn't really show us what the
Speaker 1: experience is like. Yeah, right, shows us what part of
Speaker 1: the brain lights up when there are various things. And
Speaker 1: that's lovely and may even have practical application, but it
Speaker 1: is not very helpful when you're trying to look at
Speaker 1: the nature of consciousness. Sure, it doesn't mean that these
Speaker 1: scientific methods can't be developed, though, my colleague David Yayden
Speaker 1: is doing some great work to try to have people
Speaker 1: reports in as much detail as they can on like
Speaker 1: all experiences and self transcendent experiences. And yeah, yeah, well
Speaker 1: scientific method see titming method says how can I find
Speaker 1: out more about this? And then you go back to
Speaker 1: your toolbox, and it's like those wonderful boxes you get
Speaker 1: at a hardware store that have sixty four different kinds
Speaker 1: of screwdrivers, three of which you will use a lot,
Speaker 1: and the others maybe you'll use once or twice in
Speaker 1: your life. But that's really cool that you have them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so scientific method is saying I don't know something, How
Speaker 1: can I move towards knowing more about it? Science, Western
Speaker 1: materialistic science says that, except it says, however, I don't
Speaker 1: want to look at certain things because since I know
Speaker 1: they don't exist, I don't want to look. And that
Speaker 1: really goes back to Galileo with the Theologians, where he says,
Speaker 1: look look at Saturn. It's got these things rolling around it,
Speaker 1: and they say, I don't want to look because it can't.
Speaker 1: So things have actually not changed, except now the scientists
Speaker 1: are more sounding more like the theologians. The theologians aren't
Speaker 1: sounding morely scientists, though some of them are. The Dalai
Speaker 1: lama is. Actually that's a really good point. Actually there
Speaker 1: are there are There are a couple exceptions. And when
Speaker 1: he what he says, and it's really remarkable. He says,
Speaker 1: if science can disprove some of the basic tenets of Buddhism,
Speaker 1: then we will drop those tenants. I think that's a
Speaker 1: remarkable statement coming which is absolutely pure science. Yeah, it is,
Speaker 1: and it's a really remarkable statement. So do you still
Speaker 1: believe in astrology? Because that I ever in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: there's this whole fastening exchange. I'm I'm just obsessed with this,
Speaker 1: this meeting. I want you to take me back here,
Speaker 1: take me back to April thirteenth, nineteen seventy and the
Speaker 1: second Interdisciplinary Conference on the Voluntary Control of Internal States
Speaker 1: held in Council Grove, Kansas. Do you have any memory
Speaker 1: of this? Do you have a member where we are? Yeah? Yes,
Speaker 1: Stanley Kriptner was there, Tart was there, Mark Maslow was there.
Speaker 1: Robert do you know? Do you know also was there?
Speaker 1: While the doctor why oh Andy? Yeah, Andy Wild and
Speaker 1: were probably similar agents at the time. Yeah. Like, pay
Speaker 1: me a picture. I'm so glad. It looks like, yeah,
Speaker 1: well you have to get that all of us west
Speaker 1: coast and east coast people are now in the middle
Speaker 1: of Kansas, Okay. And among the things I recall was
Speaker 1: the meals were white bread, white potatoes, white dessert, and
Speaker 1: two others starts. So we were all a little culture
Speaker 1: shocked by eating strange foreign food. And we were also
Speaker 1: all living together in little dormitories. So there was great
Speaker 1: deal of discussion off the record in the evening between us,
Speaker 1: and we were all young, and many of us remained
Speaker 1: very good friends forever. And Maslow was again one of
Speaker 1: our heroes because he had really already taken the first steps,
Speaker 1: and he came up to a point, and there was
Speaker 1: a point in which we were trying to get him
Speaker 1: to acknowledge the reality of what would be called trans
Speaker 1: personal states, and he was trying very hard, but it
Speaker 1: was hard for him. And what I say to people
Speaker 1: is if you look at the distance Maslow came in
Speaker 1: his career where he started with wire monkeys and clots
Speaker 1: monkeys with Harlow, and how far he came, the fact
Speaker 1: that he did not come that last few inches and
Speaker 1: we did does not make us larger. It just makes
Speaker 1: us more in debt to what how far he took it. Well,
Speaker 1: you said he didn't go there, but he does, you know,
Speaker 1: right around that time, I mean that was only a
Speaker 1: couple months before he passed away suddenly that meeting. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's what a remarkable time in history to for all
Speaker 1: these stars to align in one place. I would have
Speaker 1: given a lot of money to be a fly on
Speaker 1: that wall in that meeting. But he does. He does
Speaker 1: have published things saying the last year or two his life,
Speaker 1: saying that there now seems to be a fourth force.
Speaker 1: He seemed to be promoting a fourth force. He seemed
Speaker 1: to be a promoting No, he promoted the force force
Speaker 1: which Tony Sudacheg has said, we're going in this direction right,
Speaker 1: and we're fought. We have in your writings enough to
Speaker 1: go on. Yeah, But he was always concerned. On that flight,
Speaker 1: the flight to Kansas, I was actually sitting with him.
Speaker 1: No way, and there were tents, no wait, wait, hold on,
Speaker 1: let me just do it like process that you were
Speaker 1: on the airplane with Maslow on the way to that. Well,
Speaker 1: somebody had He's just a human deed. It wasn't my fault. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna get over that now. Okay, go on.
Speaker 1: Two okay, two things, and two things happened. One is,
Speaker 1: as you know, he wrote about peak experience. But he
Speaker 1: also said in his older life that he had what
Speaker 1: he called a plateau experience, and plateau as you get
Speaker 1: up to a certain hYP but then it's flat for
Speaker 1: a long period of time, so it's a longer experience.
Speaker 1: And I watched him have one, and we talked about
Speaker 1: it later because we had an attractive stewardess and Maslow
Speaker 1: looked at her, appreciated her as a nice, attractive young woman,
Speaker 1: and then began to to inside himself abstract that from
Speaker 1: this nice young woman to nice young women, to beautiful women,
Speaker 1: to women to the feminine. And I watched him and
Speaker 1: he just kind of went back inside himself and was
Speaker 1: there was an up smile, and then after a while
Speaker 1: he came out and we talked about it, that he
Speaker 1: had a peach experience, that he'd gone from the very
Speaker 1: individual to probably what the Unions would have called the archetype.
Speaker 1: So that was one incident on that flight. The other
Speaker 1: incident is I don't recall the book, but there was
Speaker 1: a footnote that said, basically, astrology, the eaching and related
Speaker 1: things are claptrap. I suggested to him that he take
Speaker 1: that out because one is, he didn't really know what
Speaker 1: he was talking about, and he was being biased, and two,
Speaker 1: a lot of his friends would be disappointed in him
Speaker 1: because they were doing research in those areas and he
Speaker 1: took it out. So he had a hesitation about what
Speaker 1: later became probably New age psychology. And correctly he had
Speaker 1: some reservations. But he also didn't have much experience and
Speaker 1: was honest enough to acknowledge that that's beautiful. He always
Speaker 1: seemed conflicted, like if you look at his college. He
Speaker 1: wrote a college essay on Emerson when he was twenty
Speaker 1: years old, where he I don't know if you ever
Speaker 1: saw that. Did you ever see that college essay he wrote, No,
Speaker 1: I'll send it to you. It's fascinating because he talks
Speaker 1: about he's conflict. On the one hand, he believes that,
Speaker 1: you know, God like these peak experiences, we don't need
Speaker 1: to claim, we don't need to give God credit. He said,
Speaker 1: why don't we give humans credit? Right? And he seemed
Speaker 1: to have had one of these experiences when he was
Speaker 1: very young, and he admits it was very transformative for him.
Speaker 1: He said that in this twenty year old essay, and
Speaker 1: I don't see him saying that ever, talking about that
Speaker 1: experience ever again. But he does talk about the important
Speaker 1: peak experience so there was this very mystical side to him,
Speaker 1: There really was, but there was also this very skeptical
Speaker 1: side him, and I think he was kind of they
Speaker 1: were kind of fighting with each other within himself. Did
Speaker 1: you get that sense? It parallels the fight in psychology,
Speaker 1: because remember psychology comes out of William James, who was
Speaker 1: totally comfortable and as still the great Essay on Religious
Speaker 1: and Mystical Experience. But psychology looked around the university and
Speaker 1: saw where all the prestige was going and all the
Speaker 1: money was going, And it wasn't into philosophy, it wasn't
Speaker 1: into religious studies. It was into quote science, chemistry, physics, biology, etc.
Speaker 1: And psychology to this day is trying to look like
Speaker 1: those sciences, and those sciences do not actually believe that
Speaker 1: psychology has made it yet. So the psychological love of
Speaker 1: heart measurements and double bline studies and brain imagery is
Speaker 1: still trying to take very much invisible abstractions and treat
Speaker 1: them the way physics treats rare elements. So if you
Speaker 1: go to a physicist and he says, oh, you study depression,
Speaker 1: what is depression? And then you talked for a while
Speaker 1: and he says, I didn't hear anything yet about what
Speaker 1: is depression. I heard opinions and speculations and notions. Can
Speaker 1: you say, where is depression? No? Can you say, does
Speaker 1: depression have any substantive reality outside of your definition? You
Speaker 1: say no. And then he said, is it true that
Speaker 1: you psychologists actually every five to ten years change the
Speaker 1: definition of certain mental illnesses? And you say, yes, we do.
Speaker 1: And he says, well, we actually don't change the names
Speaker 1: or the properties of any elements. And that's why you're
Speaker 1: not a science. And if I can just be kind
Speaker 1: of academically wonky for a moment, the argument began between
Speaker 1: Aristotle and Plato, where Aristotle said, you make up the
Speaker 1: world from what you see around you, and he did
Speaker 1: these encyclopedic works of birds and minerals and trees, and
Speaker 1: Plato said, there's beyond those are forms, invisible forms that
Speaker 1: have no substance in the world, but manifest as all
Speaker 1: these differences. So you see chairs, I see the form
Speaker 1: called chair from which all chairs descend. And that argument
Speaker 1: between the reality is only what you can see, sense, measure,
Speaker 1: et cetera, and reality is that which creates all of
Speaker 1: that you see sense and measure goes on today interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, returning back to the psychedelic experience
Speaker 1: for a second, it kind of evaporates those boundaries, right,
Speaker 1: It vaporates these kind of preconcessis exactly. It evaporates boundaries,
Speaker 1: just as the ecologists do. Remember we used to say
Speaker 1: we're going to save a species, and then we realize
Speaker 1: you can't save a species. You have to say the
Speaker 1: habitat which might hold another thousand species, all of which
Speaker 1: are necessary for all of those thousand and one species
Speaker 1: to survive. That's a very interconnected way of looking at
Speaker 1: a situation. Psychology has a tendency to say, let's look
Speaker 1: at this individual, of this individual, of this individual. And
Speaker 1: most psychotherapy, if you think about, is someone comes into
Speaker 1: an office and shuts the door and the psychotherapist is
Speaker 1: the only reality the psychotherapist knows about the patient is
Speaker 1: what the patient says. Yeah. So if the patient says
Speaker 1: I'm married, and it turns out the patient is not married,
Speaker 1: it's just for living with someone that will not perhaps
Speaker 1: ever come out. So the interconnectedness of people in their
Speaker 1: environment is something that clinical psychology has really not yet
Speaker 1: quite caught up with biology and ecology. This is why
Speaker 1: you call it psychothelic therapy. I mean, you're trying to
Speaker 1: actually develop a new form of therapy, right. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: in my careers, I was a psychotherapist, and what I
Speaker 1: realized is that I really had very little knowledge of
Speaker 1: whoever I was working with, and it was their worldview
Speaker 1: that I was working on, not really their world And
Speaker 1: that's a huge difference. Yeah. Can you labor a little
Speaker 1: bit more on that difference, Yeah, Yeah, which is that
Speaker 1: Let's say I'm as I was. I had undergraduates at
Speaker 1: Stanford who were all charming and bright and intense and interesting,
Speaker 1: and most of them were from pretty healthy backgrounds. But
Speaker 1: why was I seeing them? Well, I was seeing them
Speaker 1: often because there were stresses that they couldn't really work
Speaker 1: with because they didn't have the power. For example, someone says,
Speaker 1: you know, since I've come to Stanford, I am absolutely
Speaker 1: in love with medieval French literature. And I say, isn't
Speaker 1: that wonderful? You get to study what you love? And
Speaker 1: they say, my parents want me to go to medical school.
Speaker 1: And until I came to Stanford, that's all I thought
Speaker 1: I ever wanted. And now I see it was because
Speaker 1: it's only what they wanted. Yeah, And I say, do
Speaker 1: your parents want you to be happy? Or do they
Speaker 1: want you to go to medical school? And then I
Speaker 1: would look at the length of the pause, and I
Speaker 1: would know a great deal about the family dynamics that
Speaker 1: the student himself may be get unaware of. But as
Speaker 1: a psychotherapist, I wasn't able to deal with the parents
Speaker 1: who were the defining characteristic of what was making this
Speaker 1: person mentally not as healthy as he should have been. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a really neat way of looking. So family therapy,
Speaker 1: for instance, you know, talks about the identified patient, meaning
Speaker 1: the people of the family have settled on to blame
Speaker 1: everything on. But family therapy says no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: everyone is part of it. Well, and then the sociologist says,
Speaker 1: wait a moment, Let's look at their economic situation, let's
Speaker 1: look at their neighborhood, let's look at their ethnic background,
Speaker 1: and to what extent that's a pressure on them. And
Speaker 1: then the ecologist comes in and says, and they also
Speaker 1: live in a natural setting. I suspect if we replace
Speaker 1: their diet of bad food, that this entire family mentally
Speaker 1: unhappy people would be a lot happier. So you have
Speaker 1: to keep extending the boundary past the professional categorization of
Speaker 1: who is the helper. Yeah, I really like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because we do create a lot of these artificial divisions
Speaker 1: that do get in the way of our growth. That's true. Sure.
Speaker 1: And if you say, if you look at Native American healing,
Speaker 1: there are certain healings where the person genuinely needs healing,
Speaker 1: but who comes to the healing is the entire plan,
Speaker 1: the entire family, the entire tribe, So everyone is there
Speaker 1: to be of support, and it's a very different feeling.
Speaker 1: So they're just different models, and there's nothing wrong with
Speaker 1: each model as long as it understands its limitations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's all about integration and that includes and that definitely
Speaker 1: includes psychedelics that also have this where you know, we
Speaker 1: are the truth and we are going to make the
Speaker 1: world entirely better, just as psychotherapy did and just as
Speaker 1: it did and so forth, and so we all have
Speaker 1: our living. So I really appreciate you saying that. And
Speaker 1: and I think, if I may like resurrect what Maso
Speaker 1: was saying and that meeting, I think that I think
Speaker 1: what he's because I think I get him. I think
Speaker 1: I get what he was his his criticism. He had
Speaker 1: a phrase he called unearned peaks. He was really railing
Speaker 1: against unearned peaks, and especially what he was saying at
Speaker 1: Esslein and the kind of emphasis on the selfishness kind
Speaker 1: of using these things and these experiences are using LST
Speaker 1: too for personal development kind of the expense of others.
Speaker 1: In that meeting itself, he said, I think this is
Speaker 1: a funny phrase in the preface to the new addition,
Speaker 1: I speak of the dangers of overemphasizing the mystical aspects
Speaker 1: of religion. Some people run the danger of turning away
Speaker 1: from the world and from other people to search for
Speaker 1: anything that will trigger peak experiences. This type of person
Speaker 1: represents the mystic gone wild. And I love that expression,
Speaker 1: the mystic gone wild. I love it. He said. That's
Speaker 1: he said that right there in the meeting. You were
Speaker 1: probably sitting right next to him. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you remember where you're sitting. Yeah, that's that's I love it.
Speaker 1: It's kind of the mystic as hedonists. Yes, you know,
Speaker 1: there you are. That's what he wrote about prayer. How
Speaker 1: dare you when there is an injustice interia? Correct? And
Speaker 1: that's what he didn't get. And I think he was
Speaker 1: trying to integrate, you know, the benefits, potential benefits of
Speaker 1: this kind of way of thinking, but integrating it with
Speaker 1: a sort of body shiva path, you know, a Buddhist
Speaker 1: sort of I'm probably not pronouncing that word right, but yeah,
Speaker 1: the police path of enlightenment, where remember the Bodhisatsa says,
Speaker 1: I cannot go on to basically to pure enlightenment and
Speaker 1: no identity until everyone goes correct, and it's either a
Speaker 1: path of extreme service. And the phrase in Buddhism is
Speaker 1: all sentient beings, so probably rocks don't have to be enlightened, right, right,
Speaker 1: But there's another way of looking at it, which is
Speaker 1: the Bodhisata says, I'm actually part of everyone else, think
Speaker 1: young collective, unconscious in the West, mystical reality in most systems.
Speaker 1: If I'm part of everyone else, then by definition I
Speaker 1: can't go on until everyone else goes on. So it's
Speaker 1: not that I am such a good being. I'm just
Speaker 1: an honest and aware being. You know. It says if
Speaker 1: your arm says I think I'm going to get enlightened
Speaker 1: and leave, and the rest of your body says, honestly,
Speaker 1: we support your interest, but you're going to have to
Speaker 1: take the rest of us with you. Do you agree
Speaker 1: with Mathow then on that old Well, I don't think Maslow.
Speaker 1: I'm thrilled he had a young mystical experience, yes, but
Speaker 1: I don't think he fully understood the notion that improving
Speaker 1: oneself improves the world. And let me give you an example.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting in my house in California, and imagine that
Speaker 1: I have a cold burning stove, and although it doesn't
Speaker 1: get very cold here, it's cold enough, so I use
Speaker 1: my stove and coal. Now I stop burning coal, the
Speaker 1: air all over the planet just improved. Yeah, I can't
Speaker 1: divorce myself from the rest of the planet. So the notion,
Speaker 1: and it's in lots of spiritual systems, is if you
Speaker 1: and round Us actually said it last week, which is,
Speaker 1: if you work on yourself, that will help others. If
Speaker 1: you work on others, that may or may not help others. No,
Speaker 1: I think the humanist psycholgue really really did believe in that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Remember America has a very curate and background. It says
Speaker 1: you can't have anything good unless you work hard for it. Now,
Speaker 1: that's just a theory, and it's a theory that we
Speaker 1: know by all the evil rich people that we don't
Speaker 1: like that it's not true that lots of people get
Speaker 1: enormous benefits without doing anything to deserve it. But we
Speaker 1: have a feeling that that's somehow against the natural order.
Speaker 1: And it turns out the natural order honestly doesn't care
Speaker 1: who's richer than someone else, since the natural order says,
Speaker 1: and you know, in fifty to eighty years, you're all
Speaker 1: going to be dust and your property really isn't going
Speaker 1: to help you. I hear what you're saying. I think
Speaker 1: that there's a good criticism there in the sense I
Speaker 1: think that the humanist psychologists very much, including Carl Rogers,
Speaker 1: really did believe that if we could help people become
Speaker 1: more integrated, that it would just naturally be better for
Speaker 1: the world. So I think they did believe that very much.
Speaker 1: I think I still like pinpointing what he really was
Speaker 1: around against that was what he was seeing at Escellent.
Speaker 1: You know, there's still like a and you see it today.
Speaker 1: I would criticize today some people over you know, they'll
Speaker 1: go to a yoga session or like a meditation session
Speaker 1: and think that they're enlightened because you know, they're feeling better,
Speaker 1: and they may ignore the real suffering around them. And
Speaker 1: I think that is a potential potential danger. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: the you know, the idea that one can have enlightenment
Speaker 1: without compassion is what Matislow was was leaning toward her.
Speaker 1: And if you kind of get into the spiritual systems,
Speaker 1: they all agree with him that there's a false enlightenment
Speaker 1: where you say I'm God, that's right, and then you
Speaker 1: say and you say them, am I God? And they
Speaker 1: say no, you're not, and you say you missed it.
Speaker 1: And there's a confrontation between Richard Alpert, who's now robbed
Speaker 1: us back from India. He's wearing, you know, a big
Speaker 1: brown dress and carrying Amala and he visits his brother,
Speaker 1: who is wearing a Brooks Brother's suit and a you know,
Speaker 1: one hundred dollars tie, but happens to be in an
Speaker 1: insane as abum. I know, we don't call them that,
Speaker 1: but that's what they are. And the problem for the
Speaker 1: brother is that the brother thinks he that he's a
Speaker 1: brother is Christ And they're kind of talking together and
Speaker 1: the brother says, why is it that you're running around
Speaker 1: in sandals and a brown dress out and you're considered
Speaker 1: sane and I am not considered saying even though I'm
Speaker 1: a practical businessman with a and Ramda says he gently
Speaker 1: gets him to admit that, although he never says it
Speaker 1: anymore in the institution, they chill kind of believes he's Christ.
Speaker 1: And Ramda says, you think you're Christ? And he says, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of. And Ramda says, am I Christ? And his
Speaker 1: brother says, of course not. And Ramdas says, that's why
Speaker 1: you're in the asylum, which is the ceiling of being enlightened.
Speaker 1: If it excludes of feelings, is simply a step on
Speaker 1: the way. I just got to chill because it's a
Speaker 1: really profound and again, and the traditions know this Zen
Speaker 1: is full of this. It's called you have an enlightenment experience,
Speaker 1: which means now you can settle down and do real work.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean you're done and you can, you know,
Speaker 1: retire to a cloud. Yeah. You do see a lot
Speaker 1: of computing gurus and quotes who are really seem to
Speaker 1: be like, I'm done, I reached it and now everything
Speaker 1: I say is gospel, and I think that's right, and
Speaker 1: I'm charging you for that, right, yes, yeah, or please
Speaker 1: donate money to my cause. Yeah, oh yeah, I've just
Speaker 1: finished a manuscript on the healthy multiplicity. We have a convention,
Speaker 1: which is the notion where a single self kind of
Speaker 1: an assumption with very little evidence, and we have massive
Speaker 1: evidence that we shift into different cells, and these different
Speaker 1: cells are often quite different, have different agendas, have different opinions,
Speaker 1: and we've just written a book which makes it incredibly
Speaker 1: easy for people to see and understand that. And what
Speaker 1: we've found is that when people acknowledge their own selves,
Speaker 1: they no longer demand consistency in other people. See. That's
Speaker 1: what drives a lot of psychology crazy, which is how
Speaker 1: do you explain serious inconsistency if one is a single,
Speaker 1: unified self And the answer is you can't. But if
Speaker 1: your inconsistency is you go into other cells, some healthy,
Speaker 1: some not as healthy, then it all makes sense. As
Speaker 1: we know, very famous psychologist whose name I won't pronounce,
Speaker 1: but he developed the notion of being in flow for creativity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we who are in the creative businesses like writing
Speaker 1: books and so forth, understand entirely that feeling of being
Speaker 1: in flow, And what it is is it's a self
Speaker 1: shift into the cell that is totally devoted to the
Speaker 1: work at hand and may miss meals, may have no
Speaker 1: sense of time is quite different from our other self,
Speaker 1: which doesn't behave that way and really can't. And there's
Speaker 1: endless books of how to get into flow. There's also
Speaker 1: endless books about what do you do when you're quote triggered,
Speaker 1: which is get into a very negative self. So there's
Speaker 1: a thousand examples, and we're simply my co write and
Speaker 1: I Jordan Gruber, have just completed a manuscript which lays
Speaker 1: out the thousands of ways one can see it in
Speaker 1: the culture, because if it's true, it should be very evident.
Speaker 1: And that's everything from David Bowie who had lots of selves,
Speaker 1: to arguments within classical psychology, which includes Freud, who is
Speaker 1: a great proponent of selves and then changed his mind,
Speaker 1: so he's both the hero and the villain of one
Speaker 1: part of our book. I would love to read this book.
Speaker 1: You know, evolutionary psychologists have argued we have multiple selves
Speaker 1: sub selves that each have their own evolutionary goals. You'll
Speaker 1: come up with examples pretty easily. But if you think
Speaker 1: of it in psychotherapy, if your goal is to have
Speaker 1: people's selves harmonized and the ones that are troublesome helped,
Speaker 1: often they are ones who feel unheard and malnourished. It
Speaker 1: shifts the nature of the psychotherapeutic endeavor towards really easier success. Yes,
Speaker 1: then let me give you just one example of where
Speaker 1: psychotherapy is particularly poor. The research says that if you're
Speaker 1: an alcoholic, there's about a two percent success rate for psychotherapy,
Speaker 1: AA is about a one third success rate, and so forth.
Speaker 1: But two percent is really pretty pathetic. And the answer
Speaker 1: is very simple, which is, anyone who's listens has ever
Speaker 1: been drunk, knows that in the morning you feel terrible.
Speaker 1: And also people often feel guilty because of how they've
Speaker 1: behaved or they don't even remember, meaning their self is
Speaker 1: cut off from the other self. So who goes to psychotherapy, Well,
Speaker 1: the one who wakes up, the one who feels bad,
Speaker 1: who feels guilty, who has hangovers, and the self that
Speaker 1: is the alcoholic that truly enjoys drinking and flirting and
Speaker 1: dancing on the table and throwing up in the street,
Speaker 1: that one doesn't come to therapy. So it's not surprising
Speaker 1: that therapy doesn't work such a good plan because if
Speaker 1: you said, well, I feel neurotic, you say to your spouse,
Speaker 1: why don't you go to therapy? It's not going to work.
Speaker 1: So it's a rather radical reformulation of how we consider ourselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love it. But you know, the humans do have
Speaker 1: this great capacity for integration, though we can you know,
Speaker 1: like Ing's that the individuation process for young was all
Speaker 1: about accepting all sides of all the different selves that
Speaker 1: we exactly, yeah, exactly, and also knowing which self to
Speaker 1: be in what will we call being in the right
Speaker 1: mind at the right time, being in the right mind.
Speaker 1: I like that, And you know, yeah, and if you
Speaker 1: think about it, if you have parents who are living,
Speaker 1: when you go to be with them, you will shift
Speaker 1: into another self. Oh yeah, and they it turns out,
Speaker 1: will actually shift. At one point, I was visiting my mother,
Speaker 1: was about fifty and my mother says to me, you know,
Speaker 1: you really need to put on a sweater. And I
Speaker 1: think I'm a professor, I've gotten written books, I'm famous
Speaker 1: in a small way. I have a wife and children.
Speaker 1: I actually know when I need to put on a sweater.
Speaker 1: And I said to my stepfather, I said, how did
Speaker 1: you live with my mother? And he said, she's only
Speaker 1: like this when you're around. And there was this wonderful
Speaker 1: moment of appreciating and I didn't have the term. Then
Speaker 1: the self shift that she would get into when I
Speaker 1: would visit, and then being slightly more honest, the self
Speaker 1: shift that I would probably get into when I was
Speaker 1: with her, And it suddenly made a lot of my
Speaker 1: relationships make more sense. Yeah, it does. It makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense, And so it's important to acknowledge and
Speaker 1: understand that and kind of being more understanding and forgiving
Speaker 1: of ourselves, which then you're saying makes us more forgiving
Speaker 1: of others. And I really liked you actually end up
Speaker 1: because let's say you have a friend and suddenly your
Speaker 1: friend does something like cheats you, and you say, I
Speaker 1: never realized he's a dishonest for ever going to talk
Speaker 1: to him again, rather than wow, there's a part of
Speaker 1: him that's really dishonest. Have to be careful. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: as you can imagine, if you're in management, if you're
Speaker 1: in a relationship, suddenly the world, the world becomes a
Speaker 1: lot clearer when you take away and this is where
Speaker 1: we started. If you take away the filter that distorts
Speaker 1: your vision, and one of the filters that distorts your
Speaker 1: vision is the totally wrong assumption that people are consistent,
Speaker 1: for which you have never any evidence. You know, you
Speaker 1: kind of remind me of the whole personality debate in
Speaker 1: the sixties seventies about is personality is it consistent over
Speaker 1: time or how much is it influenced by the environment,
Speaker 1: And that's kind of been reconciled in the sense that
Speaker 1: there are some stable patterns. But we're just talking about patterns,
Speaker 1: and throughout the course of our day we go in
Speaker 1: and out of you know, no such thing as perfect consistency,
Speaker 1: but there's relative consistency, like one person can be more relative,
Speaker 1: there's consistency. There's consistency in situations. I mean, just looks
Speaker 1: a very very normal. It's hysteria. But someone who works
Speaker 1: hard all day and interacts with people and makes decisions
Speaker 1: and is productive and then comes home and sits in
Speaker 1: front of a television with cans of beer. Now, if
Speaker 1: you're an alien from another civilization, you know that this
Speaker 1: person has morphed into another being. But it looks to
Speaker 1: us very usual, because what happens is people will self
Speaker 1: shift when they get home. Yeah, and just as in
Speaker 1: almost any relationship with famous people. One of our colleagues,
Speaker 1: Arthur Dykman, did a wonderful article on that there are
Speaker 1: no enlightened beings, because if you talk to their wives,
Speaker 1: they'll say, nay, he's not enlightened. You should see him
Speaker 1: at home either. And what they're saying is that our
Speaker 1: public self, which is very real, is different than our
Speaker 1: private self, which is equally real. Neither is phony, neither
Speaker 1: is a role. It simply makes life easier. One of
Speaker 1: the reasons I wrote the book is because my wife
Speaker 1: and kids have asked me for twenty years when I
Speaker 1: please do that, because they all know it's made their
Speaker 1: lives more sane. One thing that humanistic and trans personal
Speaker 1: and cognitive and psychoanalytic all agree is it would be
Speaker 1: wonderful if, using whatever tools we have, people could see
Speaker 1: the world more realistically and sanely, because then they would
Speaker 1: make better decisions. Well, thank you for the pioneering work
Speaker 1: that you've done to help people reach that state, and
Speaker 1: thanks for shoying with me today. Well, I'm delighted that
Speaker 1: you call, that you ask that you're doing what you're doing,
Speaker 1: and I also found the book Ungifted really a delight,
Speaker 1: and that you're doing you know that you're carrying the
Speaker 1: notion of brilliant minds, the inherent capacity of everyone to
Speaker 1: be more who they want to be. Yeah, and to
Speaker 1: use their parts or in my world, their cells just
Speaker 1: more congruently and more with more health. It's just as
Speaker 1: we're very much in the same camp. And I love
Speaker 1: to talking to you, Jim. I love it. I'm deeply
Speaker 1: honored by what you just said, by the way, and
Speaker 1: you know, just so touched because I feel like there's
Speaker 1: a wavelength here of a similar spirit of you know,
Speaker 1: how can we help people? Yes, yes, we have different selves,
Speaker 1: but there is a most valued self, you know. I
Speaker 1: think all of us at the end of the day
Speaker 1: could kind of sit down and say, you know what,
Speaker 1: like I think that this these are some boundaries here
Speaker 1: of what I feel happiest and most moral or most
Speaker 1: operating in all cylinders. This is the self, you know,
Speaker 1: and I think you know we both want to help
Speaker 1: people kind of reach that state more consistently in a way. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to give anyone who's listening the easiest conceivable
Speaker 1: way to make their life work, because they all know
Speaker 1: it already. It's called when you're really upset, count to ten.
Speaker 1: You think, what on earth is that for? Okay, when
Speaker 1: you count to ten, you literally self shift down. You're
Speaker 1: not kind of down shift into a calmer self that
Speaker 1: is better able to handle the situation. We all know it.
Speaker 1: Simply calling itself makes it more easier to see why
Speaker 1: it works so well. And I think we all like
Speaker 1: that person better. I think we can probably all agree.
Speaker 1: You know. It's funny a lot. There's some really fascinating
Speaker 1: research coming out showing by Nina Stromans or others showing
Speaker 1: that what we all mean by our real self is
Speaker 1: really our moral self, you know, like yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: The idea that there's a false self, right is kind
Speaker 1: of nonsense, nonsense. You know. It's like people say, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not myself today, and I say, well, who are you?
Speaker 1: And it turns out it's somebody who is in the
Speaker 1: same body and has the same name in the same
Speaker 1: driver's license. But it's a it is a different self,
Speaker 1: they're right, Yeah, you know, I can't imagine what got
Speaker 1: into me. Of course you can't, because that's a different self,
Speaker 1: of course. But you know, that's enough of that, enough
Speaker 1: of that. But there is something we can still save,
Speaker 1: the real self notion and put it in modern day parlance,
Speaker 1: you know, And it's just it's our value it self,
Speaker 1: it's our moral self. It's yeah, it's the self. We
Speaker 1: like the bathroom of ourselves. That's right, that's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love it. But also that shifts because the one
Speaker 1: who's a whiz at the office or as a gifted professor,
Speaker 1: you don't want that one to be who's playing with
Speaker 1: your three year old. M Why is that? Because the
Speaker 1: one who's playing with your three year old really behaves
Speaker 1: differently more. Okay, Okay, you got it. I got it.
Speaker 1: I took I think I took what you said to
Speaker 1: literally like, you want a different person. Yes, you say
Speaker 1: you want a different self. Herschel Walker who, Yeah, Herschel
Speaker 1: Walker who is fantastic football player. He's also a dance
Speaker 1: ballet He's got a huge company. And what he says
Speaker 1: is you don't want Herschel football sold, a football player
Speaker 1: to come and be your babysitter. Right. I love it.
Speaker 1: So you know, maybe you know we're so maybe we
Speaker 1: can both. You know, we're working towards making a world
Speaker 1: where people are more flexible and free to be the
Speaker 1: right in the right as you said, be in the
Speaker 1: right mind at the right time. I love it. Thanks
Speaker 1: again for chatting with me today. Okay, well you can
Speaker 1: have it. No I like giving credit. I really appreciated that.
Speaker 1: We'll have a great day and thank me, thank you,
Speaker 1: And I love finding out what mattis flow and I
Speaker 1: said right back then and how close we were to
Speaker 1: where we still are. Yeah. I will continue giving you
Speaker 1: uh stuff, little nuggets that I find about that. So
Speaker 1: thank you. I'm delighted. Okay, okay, have a good day,
Speaker 1: you two. Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast. I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed this episode. If you like to react
Speaker 1: in some way to something you heard, I encourage you
Speaker 1: to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Also, please add a
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Speaker 1: tune in next time for more on the mind of brain,
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