Abreaction -

Drugs, . Dancing . and . Conversion

The links in the table on the left take you to sub-headings in this article.

William Sargant wrote of his experiences as a psychiatrist in World War II. What fascinated him was the reversal of attitudes and beliefs of those people undergoing drug abreaction. War trauma induced a new pattern of behaviour in a person – the person might be weeping, speechless, paralysed, or have feelings of unreality and horrible dreams. Drugs were used to generate intense excitement (sometimes leading to physical collapse) in order to relive the horror and thereby discharge the blocked emotions. The person then reverted back to his pre-trauma condition. Sargant did not appear to conduct follow-up tests to see whether the result of such abreaction was permanent and what the final state of mind of the person was. [²]

Initially Sargant used barbiturates on his patients, either to act as a sedative or to produce a semi-drunken state that facilitated the release of inhibited emotion. Subsequently he began to use ether, since it released a much greater degree of explosive excitement compared to barbiturates. The effectiveness of the treatments depended on the intensity of the excitement that was generated in the patient.

Two Forms of Experience

There were two forms of experience that a patient could go through : he either calmed down after the excitement, or went into the stage of physical collapse.

In one form of the experience,
when there was no subsequent physical collapse, the excitement (in my view) only induced the abreactive process (as I formulate it). The excitement always starts from a catharsis. Ether was very effective because it can induce happiness. To produce a catharsis requires an initial mood of narcissism ; hence happiness-inducing drugs are needed in order to switch the person’s mood to narcissism. This form of drug abreaction parallels the use of stimulants like cannabis and so represents the abreaction of guilt, which induces reversal of values. [³]

Therefore the subsiding of the cathartic excitement will lead eventually to the backlash emotions of guilt and resentment, and usually bitterness too. Trauma is a severe experience, so the backlash will be correspondingly intense. These emotions of guilt and resentment and bitterness need to be faced and resolved in order to complete the therapy and avoid warping the personality. Sargant (and all the previous medical experimenters of drug abreaction that he mentions) appeared to be insensitive to the possibility of such a backlash. The failure to conduct follow-up tests of emotional stability was a serious defect of his methodology. [4]

There was a second form of experience
undergone by some patients during the drug treatment. When the fear of the recent trauma became overwhelming (this state was often deliberately sought by the therapist) the person collapsed into emotional exhaustion and lay motionless for a short time. When he returned to consciousness the disturbing symptoms (that had arisen from the trauma) had disappeared, and he was free from the terror that his memory had formerly generated. So the treatment was deemed to be a success.

Sargant did not understand this state or why it happened, and relied on the findings of Ivan Pavlov, the Russian neuro-physiologist, in order to interpret it. Pavlov’s work featured the psychological conditioning of dogs, and was explained purely in terms of neurology.

My explanation is in terms of dynamic or depth psychology. I assume that the reliving of the fear of the original traumatic situation, intensely induced within the therapy relationship, destroyed the person’s present sense of his social identity, along with the negative beliefs about that social identity that the trauma had created. [5]. The induced fear had become sufficiently intense that it caused a mental and physical collapse. So the person went rapidly into a state of complete catatonia. Catatonia results from the destruction of the person’s social identity. When the person revived, the disturbing beliefs were no longer of any importance since the associated fear had been released, and so his previous social identity returned and he became functional again. [6]

Guilt or Fear

Why did some patients collapse during treatment, whilst some others did not ? . My answer is a speculative one. When the patient remained conscious and only experienced abreaction, then perhaps the beliefs that were generated in the traumatic situation were just neurotic ones. The overpowering emotion was likely to be that of guilt. Guilt never has the effect of causing a physical and mental collapse.

Whereas when the patient collapsed through fear, the traumatic beliefs were psychotic ones. Fear, when it is intense, can be an explosive emotion. When fear explodes, the person goes into shock and collapses, or just curls up into a ball on the floor and wishes that he could disappear into a hole in the ground.

A better way of using drug abreaction is to sandwich it between the use of standard psychotherapies. The purpose of the psychotherapy is to facilitate insight into the cause of the problem by exploring the subconscious mind. The cause may be self-evident when the trauma is recent, but becomes more difficult to establish the longer the abnormal patterns of behaviour have persisted.

Re-living the trauma is not enough by itself (except perhaps when the trauma is quite recent and the person is still living through the shock of it). Without any insight, abreaction is only in the feeling mode and so achieves little of lasting value – symptoms may change or even disappear, but the cause will remain as a latent trigger spot that can generate flashbacks. [7]

Withdrawal Symptoms

Psycho-tropic or mood-changing drugs can possess an aura of fascination for adventurous minds. Why is this ? . The desire for the reversal of one’s values and attitudes, or more usually the release of inhibitions, is rife throughout Western society. This is the reason for the widespread use of such drugs as alcohol and cannabis. Whereas abreaction of guilt ends in resentment, alcohol ends in a hangover and cannabis in lassitude. Both the hangover and the lassitude are physiological forms of rejection and resentment.

Now many, perhaps all, psycho-tropic drugs produce withdrawal symptoms. What is the psychological meaning of such symptoms ? .

Withdrawal symptoms are physiological forms of resentment.

With such drugs, psychological desire begins the abreaction and physiology ends it. However, not all symptoms indicate this abreactive message. When catharsis is not involved, symptoms can carry other meanings. For example, the effect of caffeine can produce angina symptoms when pride (mode of hate) is very intense, and hypoglycaemia when fear is dominant. [8]

Conversion Experiences

What fascinated Sargant about drug abreaction was the reversal of values that it produced. This interest led him to investigate some forms of religious phenomena that induced a ‘conversion’ experience.

One way to stabilise and make permanent (or at least fairly long-lasting) the reversal of values is through conversion. In my understanding of conversion, there are two types, which I call personal and impersonal. In personal conversion, the person bonds to a teacher, whilst in impersonal conversion he bonds to an abstract ideal. [9]

Conversion is primarily a change in the person's belief systems, and is initiated by the person's soul. The change is accomplished by the abreactions of jealousy and of narcissism. Sargant was primarily interested in personal conversion, which centres on jealousy (and so is best achieved in a social setting). Personal conversion can apply to secular phenomena as well as to religious ones.

Sargant examines the methods used to produce a reversal of values. A popular way throughout the ages of inducing conversion is through rituals centred on non-stop dancing, as practised, for example, by American Indians and Moslem Sufis. This process uses the abreaction of jealousy and is controlled by a medicine man or a shaman. Music is employed that is heavily repetitive and rhythmic ; the dancer continues his dancing till physical collapse ensues and he loses consciousness.

When performed in suitable circumstances, and with acceptable ethical or religious expectations, then the dancer, when awakening from his total exhaustion, will find that his old beliefs have changed. His new beliefs correspond to the teachings of the shaman or medicine man who guided him. I assume that the state of exhaustion induces a trance state that mirrors the effect of catatonic collapse.

A variation of this process has been observed in Australian aborigines when giving initiation ceremonies to adolescents. Instead of dancing, the adolescents are made to run non-stop up and down a long stretch of ground until they collapse in total exhaustion. This procedure precipitates the desired state of exhaustion faster than dancing does. Otherwise I presume that the effects are the same.

This change in beliefs is an apparently opposite effect to that produced by using catatonia to abreact war trauma, in that the war victim was enabled to abandon his new, and distressful, beliefs. The results of dancing and of therapy can be reconciled by assuming that the effects of prolonged dancing or catatonic excitement depend upon which beliefs the person wants to abandon and which ones he wants to acquire.

Thus in the traumatic situation the person abandons his past belief in social harmony and induces a fear-ridden acceptance of social disharmony.
Whereas, in either the therapy or the conversion experience, the person abandons his past belief in social disharmony and induces an acceptance of social harmony.

In a similar vein I understand the importance of the mammoth acid-rock music festivals of the hippie period in the 1960s and 1970s. For example, the 1969 Woodstock festival was a highlight of the peace movement. After going through drug abreaction (using LSD) and non-stop dancing till exhaustion set in, the message preached of love, peace and flower power became the new values that the dancers adhered to.

So for many people, such festivals were only the modern secular style of the conversion experience.

The number in brackets at the end of each reference takes you back to the paragraph that featured it.

[¹]. My analysis of the process of abreaction is given in the five articles on Abreaction. See Basic Ideas page. [1]

[²]. Sargant, William. The Battle for the Mind. Heinemann, 1957. [2]

[³]. Catharsis is one of the stages of abreaction, and it induces a reversal of values. See the third article on Abreaction, Catharsis and Suggestion. [3]

[4]. Resentment and bitterness are the subject of the fourth article on Abreaction. [4]

[5]. The idea of having two identities – a social identity and an individual identity – is introduced in the article, Confusion and Identity. A more detailed analysis is given in the article Two Identities, on my website The Subconscious Mind. See Links page. [5]

[6]. The rapid onset of catatonia is described in the article Guilt and Meaning - part 1.
For a different setting of the same catatonic phenomena, see the article Romanticism and Evangelism and Abreaction. [6]

[7]. Abreaction occurs in two modes : feeling mode and insight mode. The first does not bring insight in to the cause of the problem, whereas the second mode does. Only insight removes causes. See article Catharsis and Suggestion, section Suggestion. [7]

[8]. A summary of the factors of some important emotions is :
Guilt = self-pity + self-hate.
Pride = vanity + hatred of other people.
Narcissism = love + vanity.
Jealousy = love + self-pity.
Anxiety = fear + vanity.

My definitions, descriptions, and analysis of emotions are given in the three articles on Emotion. See Basic Ideas page.
The effects of caffeine are mentioned in the third article on Emotion : Identifying Emotions, section Empiricism. [8]

[9]. There is an article about conversion, called The Conversion Experience, on my websites Patterns of Spirituality and The Strange World of Emotion. The same article also describes the abreactions of narcissism and jealousy. See Links page. [9]

The articles in this section are :

Abreaction 1 - Effects on identity

Abreaction 2 - Examples

Abreaction 3 - Creative illness

 

Drugs & Dancing & Conversion

Romanticism and Evangelism and Abreaction

Rites of Passage

Copyright © 2003 Ian Heath
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Ian Heath
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