new here - interested in psychological side of things

Greetings from beneath the desert sky,
I am interested in the concept of paranormal experiences in the framework Stanislaus Groff proposed. I've read a little about it & experienced it in my work with people in psychotherapy. I haven't gotten a chance to go through the forums on this but look forward to doing it. I'm not sure how far back my listening goes; it's all interesting and I appreciate the many questions you pose guests on the podcasts.

 

Your experience with psychotherapy could certainly provide many insights that many here may be blind to; especially those that have had some dramatic experiences "paranormal" and/or sightings such as ET's, Entities, UFO's that transformed their worldviews. Welcome!

Welcome to the Stanislav Grof Website

Stan Grof, M.D., Ph.D. is a psychiatrist with more than fifty years experience researching the healing and transformative potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness.
His groundbreaking theories influenced the integration of Western science with his brilliant mapping of the transpersonal dimension. On October 5, 2007 Dr. Grof received the prestigious VISION 97 award granted by the Foundation of Dagmar and Vaclav Havel in Prague.

He is one of the founders and chief theoreticians of Transpersonal Psychology and received an Honorary Award for major contributions to and development of the field of Transpersonal Psychology from the Association for Transpersonal Psychology in 1993.

Dr. Grof is also the founding President of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA) and was its President for many years. He has organized large international conferences throughout the world and continues to lecture and teach professional training programs in Holotropic Breathwork and transpersonal psychology.

Currently, Dr. Grof is Professor of Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in the Department of Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness in San Francisco, CA, and at Wisdom University in Oakland, CA.

Dr. Grof was born in 1931 in Prague where he received an M.D. from Charles University and a Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy in Medicine) from the Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences. Between 1960 and 1967, he was Principal Investigator in a psychedelic research program at the Psychiatric Research Institute in Prague, Czechoslovakia.

In the United States, Dr. Grof served as Chief of Psychiatric Research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, MD. He was also Scholar-in-Residence at Esalen Institute.

Dr. Grof’s extensive research includes experiential psychotherapy using psychedelics and non-drug techniques, especially the holotropic breathwork (a method he developed with his wife Christina), alternative approaches to psychoses, understanding and treatment of psychospiritual crises (“spiritual emergencies”), the implications of recent developments in quantum-relativistic physics, biology, brain research, and other avenues of the emerging scientific paradigm, for psychiatric theory and consciousness studies.

Among his publications are over 150 papers in professional journals and many books including Beyond the Brain, LSD Psychotherapy, Psychology of the Future, The Cosmic Game, and the newly-released When the Impossible Happens and The Ultimate Journey, as well as many more.

Western science is approaching a paradigm shift of unprecedented proportions, one that will change our concepts of reality and of human nature, bridge the gap between ancient wisdom and modern science, and reconcile the differences between Eastern spirituality and Western pragmatism.
- Stan Grof from Beyond the Brain

 

I did a quick search and found these two posts that mentioned Stanislov Grof:

[That appears to be all that I could find directly mentioning his name.]

Hotkafka, posted to someone:

This is a potentially tricky situation. Being a trained psychotherapist who is interested in this subject matter, I have to caution you - no matter what direction you choose to go to for support or to seek out an opinion on your experiences, there is always going to be a certain degree of "reframing" going on. And this simply means that those who consider themselves experts on anomalous experiences will file them away according to their main frameworks of interpretation. For example: A Jungian psychologist might see them as Transpersonal in orientation, a Psychiatrist as potentially psychotic delusions, a shaman as initiation episodes, a Hindu Yogi as "siddhi", a Dr. Stanislov Grof as experiences of non-material realms, and a Budd Hopkins type as precursors or indications of abduction-related phenemenon. The path you chose to take is an important one, for your experiences can only be validated ultimately by you. I'd say there's a few steps one might consider - First, do your best to rule out that there isn't any neurological disorder -schedule an appointment and avoid describing the backstory to your present experiences. Reveal your concern in the framework of "unexplained" phenemenon, but unless you want to be on the high road to neuroleptics, be frugal with the details. I say this only upon the assumption that you are not a potentially dual-diagnosis candidate, i.e. experiencing said phenemenon with the addition of depressive episodes, substantial mood swings or changes in energy, and or delusions of reference and hearing voices. If your psychological state happens to fit with dual symptomology, well, do consider quite seriously the option of seeing a psychiatrist. Additionally, consider the option of seeing a psychotherapist. Take the time to learn about yourself and the implications of your family of origin as well as subconscious and higher conscious activity. Do this only if you feel comfortable devoting yourself to such an enterprise, because it does demand a great deal of energy and fortitude. Therapy may stand to provide you with a clearer picture of why these things may be happening. Practically, maintain a healthy amount of skepticism and continue to investigate the phenomenon, but be sure to involve a system of checks and balances - i.e. bounce some of your findings/ideas/conclusions off someone close to you who is level headed and whom is someone you can trust. This forum is a good expression of that, but there is a considerable amount of "reframing" you will face on this board.

justcurious replied:

Hotkafka,

About re-fraiming and referring to your list of possible approaches, I'd say that I am not likely to embrace solely any of the views in the list or any other "single focus" approaches as I see them exactly as you qualified them: "frameworks of interpretation". I have read and am interested in all of them as they are all different and more or less relevant view points. To me they all make sense in their own way but are too narrow to encompass totally the "reality" of the phenomenon, if there is any. Does that make sense ? This "all but none" approach is a re-framing in itself, isn't it ?

Regarding the neurological disorder and psychiatric angle, I am not considering it (yet) since the phenomenon, as it occurs to me, is always also seen by persons accompanying me if any, and is phenomenal enough to be photographed. I have not once been in the situation of pointing it out to people with me and having them not seeing it. I do not have mood swings or depressions of any unusual scope or intensity and have a normal life, very active with two professions, some studies and time consuming activities. The phenomenon seemingly manifest itself regardless of my mood or mental state, I had wondered about that and been careful to verify it, mostly because I wanted to see if I could provoke manifestations.

On skepticism and conclusions, I am also careful not to include in the sightings count anything that is not absolutely unusual. There seem to be "psychic" effects accompanying the events, as defined by the Vallée-Davis model, but I really take this aspect as an observer (at least consciously) and I do not have any conclusions or belief system other than acknowledging that there is something certainly very unusual happening and worth studying. I tend not to favour the ETH as far as my experiences are concerned and lean toward Vallée's line of questioning since I find it to be fairly open and not prematurely conclusive, compared to other theories.

Thanks for your advice, I appreciate it for its professional and open content. If you have a more clear-cut opinion about this topic that you have refrained to express to avoid participating in the discussed re-framing, I would still like to hear it.

 

Wow! Thanks for the info. I have read Spiritual Emergency- Edited by the Grofs, as well as Direct Connection by Judith Miller (the psychologist not the journalist). I confess to a bit of a Jungian approach myself. However, one issue I have with many of these approaches is the elitism/ hierarchical nature involved in becoming 'expert' in many of these fields, so I can see the point made above and agree with it. I also love the spiritual competency,com site and find the multidimensional approach of Wilber to be helpful. In my clinical experience, I have found what they say about 'differential diagnosis' of a spiritual emergency is true (at least a 'straight' spiritual emergency and not the co occurring kind): What's the difference between psychosis and spiritual emergency? Answer: Hygiene. But, anyway... I will be trying my best to read through stuff before I respond to anything. Thanks again!!!

 

This video is great for its variety of viewpoints. I highly recommend it to anyone, as it aptly points out these varieties of UFO [insert your ideas] experiences. For some people it certainly fits some concepts from the book The Varieties of Religious Experience, and its aftereffects too.



Look forward to any personal accounts you can share with us here too. If you don't identify personal information, then maybe you can share anonymously some personal experiences you know other people have had too and shared with you.

Thanks.