MAPS: Prescription: Euphoria

["Dan Merkur" <dan.merkur@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'd like to share an idea about psychotherapeutic technique.  In Mahayana
Buddhism, there is a pairing of two kinds of meditation:  a meditation that
leads to the experience of samadhi, which is euphoric; and then mindfulness
or insight meditation, which is analytic.  In the original Method of John
Wesley (hence the term, "Methodism" for the Protestant denomination he
founded), there was again a pairing of two kinds of meditation.  One, called
the practice of the presence of God, aimed at experiences of God's immediate
presence, which were euphoric; the second, called "watching," was a close
analysis of one's sins, and often enough disturbing.  People prior to Wesley
had used the same two meditations but in the reversed order:  first the
purgation of sins, then the encounter with God.  Wesley reversed the
traditional order because he believed that a sense of God's love provided
the strength needed to address the guilt involved in a history of sin.
Freud's remarks on the theory of technique suggest a similar pattern.  Freud
was emphatic that a "positive transference," equivalent to the "rapport" in
hypnosis, was the curative principle in psychoanalysis.  He wrote things
like:  Psychoanalysis cures through love, because it is only the patient's
love for the analyst that causes the patient to believe in the analyst's
interpretations (the latter, of course, are often difficult, disturbing,
even painful.)  So here once again is the idea that good technique:  (1)
begins by promoting euphoria, and then (2) spends that part or all of that
emotional capital by using it to sustain the personality during the rigours
of analysis.  It should also be remembered that Freud claimed, and most
psychoanalysts have always agreed, that psychoanalysis is a technique for
increasing the patient's self-understanding; and that such cure as takes
place takes place as a side-effect, simply because a patient who knows
him/herself better, is less conflicted, and able to choose both means and
goals that have greater self-advantage.
Analysts after Freud were apparently embarrassed by Freud's statements about
cure through love, and so it was the mid 1950s before the "therapeutic
alliance" or "working alliance" began to be mentioned in the analytic
literature, and it was explicitly said to be an alliance of the analyst with
the patient's rational, realistic thinking, not with the patient's love.  It
really wasn't till the 1980s that Freud's original ideas began to be revived
by a significant number of analysts.  This bit of psychoanalytic history is
parenthetical to my main point, except as it meant that the psychedelic
research in the 1950, 60s and 70s did not have the benefit of Freud's
original model (much less Mahayana Buddhism, or Wesley's Method [itself
obsolete among Methodists since 1880s or so]).  So work with LSD,
psilocybin, etc., that happened to conform with the euphoria-then-analysis
model did so mostly on an accidental basis.  Practitioners tended to go
either for analysis, or for euphoric spirituality, but seldom both; and even
among those who addressed both features usually concurred with Stan Grof,
who placed the analytic work first, and the spirituality later, rather than
the other way around.
I do not want to be misunderstood as faulting anyone for their valued and
valuable contributions.  Research and discovery are cumulative and
collaborative processes.  It is only recent reflection, the last 5 years or
so, on Huston Smith's 1960s remark that the goal is not religious
experiences, it is the religious life, that has led me by a series of stages
to come to think of religious experiences as stepping stones along the path
of personality change, rather than as the culmination of a path of
spirituality.  In this way I've been led (a metaphor I am not here using
idly) to the ideas I'm presenting in this email (and will expand into a book
eventually).  I am concurrently applying them clinically in my (alas)
ordinary, drug-free practice of psychotherapy.
Due to the natural tendency of Ecstasy to promote euphoria, its therapeutic
use has apparently tended to weight the value of euphoria.  In my opinion,
the key thing is to keep the euphoria from being an end in itself, by adding
analytic self-understanding to the programme.  I offer these remarks not in
polemic, but as a suggestion for those who care to try out in their
practices, and see if it works for them.
Best wishes to you all
Dan Merkur
University of Toronto


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