Chapter 15 Some Intersections Between Autogenic Training
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In New Horizons in Buddhist Psychology: Relational Buddhism for Collaborative Practitioners edited by Maurits G.T. Kwee Taos Institute Publications, 2010 ISBN: 13-digit: 978-0-9819076-6-6 http://www.taosinstitute.net/new-horizons-in-buddhist-psychology Chapter 15 Some Intersections between Autogenic Training, Cathartic Autogenics, and Buddhist Psychology Ruth Tiffany Naylor1 Introduction In practice, teaching Autogenics begins with teaching a person about the inextricable link between stimulus (whether internal or external), body-mind (including thoughts, feelings, intentions, drives, emotions, and so on), action (wilfully or conditioned and “automatic”), and cyclical response cycles (Hayward, 1965). From a Buddhist perspective, Autogenics practice can be seen as an indirect way of teaching people about karmic cycles, about the actual intentionality of the mind, the cognitive/affective processes, in developing and maintaining thought/action cycles. The cognitive/affective processes are larger than just thoughts and feelings – they extend to “holding” and “releasing” memory throughout the body-mind and speech (Body/Mind/Speech). The release, or “discharge” in AT terms, happens in all the senses and in 1 Acknowledgement: I am completely indebted to my late husband Brian Harold Naylor, who helped me by being, by listening and thinking along with me, and by translating Schultz’s Das Autogene Training for me in the weeks before his sudden death. I am grateful also to my colleague, friend and guide, Tamara Callea, DiplPsych (Heidelberg), Clinical Psychologist and Autogenic Psychotherapist, and Monika Sanson, linguist, for their detailed review of my work and her helpful and essential translations of books, interviews, and papers on Autogenic methods which originally appear in German, Italian, and French. the mental contents, spontaneously, and at its own pace, when people pay attention to the Body/Mind/Speech in a contemplative and compassionate way. AT is a meditative approach which starts with concentration and culminates in insight. There is a “switch” or “release” during practice itself, and an uptake of a mindfulness approach along with the release process which generalises to everyday life. A western shorthand way of talking about the “autogenic switch” or shift is: decrease and turn off the “stress response” and turn on and increase the “relaxation response”. In other words, turn off the unwholesome conditioned (automatic) responses and turn on the wholesome unconditioned, natural responses. While the didactic, whole system the Buddha worked out is not made fully explicit in Autogenics, the bare bones are there, and the variety of experiences which have been reported by practitioners over the last 80 years attest both to its usefulness and its convergences with Buddhist practices. The basic or “small” Autogenics, Autogenic Training, or “AT”, as it is fondly called by practitioners and trainers was developed in mental health settings and is foundational for all the other applications of the Autogenic method in various settings. It has been extensively studied in clinical and research settings since its beginnings in the early 1900s. Schultz’s colleague, Wolfgang Luthe, expanded basic AT in the early 1960s by adding what he called “cathartic” exercises, which also have much in common with Buddhist practices. They focus people on freely expressing nonsense movement and sound, putting the body through expressions of anger, anxiety, and grief, and facing fears of vomiting and death. Many contemporary AT practitioners also include cathartic exercises which focus on expressing laughter, appreciation, and love. Today, westerners are easily able to discern AT’s connections to eastern methods since meditation-based practices have thoroughly entered the cultural mainstream via western education and medicine, first through Transcendental Meditation, then through Henry Benson’s efforts, and today with the general uptake of Yoga, Tai Chi, Qi Gong, and similar practices across the board. As Russell Cassel, a prominent American educator and proponent of AT throughout his working life, remarked in 1995 (p.251): “In 1990 Fourth Force Psychology, Transpersonal Psychology, and Autogenics came of age... Autogenics, of course, tracing its history back to early Eastern philosophic meditation techniques.” Would it be too bold to suggest that Schultz’s disciplined approach, which engages and trains observation and the body in a context of compassionate acceptance, when applied either by itself or with Luthe’s cathartic practices, is a few buds nestled in the Buddha’s whole bouquet? Or perhaps to suggest, that the footprint of (Cathartic) AT fits neatly within the Buddhist footprint? Autogenics background For readers who are not familiar with basic Autogenic Training (AT), here is a brief synopsis. AT was developed by Dr. Johannes Schultz, a psychiatrist and neurologist, at his Berlin-based mental health clinic. In 1932 he published his seminal work on the method, including its connections with related religious, psychological, and philosophical methods, both eastern and western. Autogenic methods are now used clinically and prophylactically worldwide. In its youth during the first half of the 20th century, AT went through the same developmental phases that other meditation based western practices have gone through during the latter half of the century: pilot and case study work to show the method was promising, followed by psycho-physiological exploratory work (e.g., EEG, EKG, GSR), and dissemination of the method worldwide. However, by today’s standards, the development of the Autogenics’ evidence base was severely hampered not only by technology’s limits but also by the simple political and geographic facts that AT was presented in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, during Hitler’s rise. AT was non- ideological, non-religious, and presented no apparent threat to the regime, so it seems that practitioners of the method were able to continue their work unhampered within Germany. Wider dissemination of AT did not take place until after WWII, just as the Randomised Control Trial (RCT) research paradigm came into prominence, and well after Autogenics as a basic practice was fully developed. After the war, Autogenic Training, and methods built upon it, were embraced in Europe as Schultz intended, in its foundational form as a “small” (kleine) psychotherapy, and in its advanced forms as a complete, ”big” (grosse) psychotherapy. The recently launched European Journal of Autogenic and Bionomic Studies clearly sets out how Schultz’s method was influenced in Italy, Spain, and Germany over the last 50 years, and Ranty (2008) writes specifically about the situation in France as it stands today. It may be because of the parallels between Autogenics and Buddhist Psychology that AT was rapidly taken up in the East and continue to flourish there, and to be built upon today as the ground there is fertile for this approach. Naruse (1965), for example, noted that AT, neutral hypnosis, Zen-training and Yoga-exercises have a “state of meditative concentration” in common. In the East, Autogenics have long been taught as a “do” (doh) (equivalent to the Chinese “tao”, which means “way”) process – an individually tailored coaching method – and have also been well integrated into psychosomatic medicine, psychotherapy, and bodywork programmes since the 1960s (cf. Weidong, Sasaki, & Haruki, 2000). In the English speaking world, particularly in North America, where the traditions of behaviourism dominated through much of the 20th century, Autogenics were often stripped back, diluting the essentials they share with Buddhist meditative methods. Abbreviated AT has been used in the brief talking therapy context, especially cognitive behaviour therapy variants, as a way to quickly relax highly anxious individuals before therapy proper begins (e.g., Benson 1974; Hayward 1965; Linden 1980; Smith 1980). More radical stripping of the method was undertaken in the biofeedback context, when AT was adopted and then adapted with a variety of instruments and methods in order to exert control over physiological processes. A variant of these exercises used by NASA astronauts was patented in the USA in 1997 (Cowings 1977). Aspects of Autogenic meditative techniques have also been used in other therapeutic techniques, often without reference to their origins (Smith 2004). Autogenics has been in use in the British National Health Service (NHS) since the early 1960s in both mental and psychosomatic settings and continues in use today. In the mid-1980s Schultz’s student and colleague, Dr. Wolfgang Luthe, who practised in Canada in his later years, invigorated further uptake of the method in Britain, and his contributions have been influential in the way AT and the other Autogenic methods are taught in the UK today. We learn both Schultz AT and Luthe’s Cathartic AT which was designed specifically to support the uptake of Schultz AT practice when resistances are met. Cathartic exercises are specific contemplative and physical practices designed to put the body-mind-and-speech through the expression of emotion, usually without tapping directly into the “triggers” or the “feelings” which accompany these triggers in ordinary waking life, and always in a context of compassionate self-acceptance. For example, a “crying” exercise involves simply rocking the body gently and making the whimpering or wailing sounds of grief, but does not involve actually producing tears or the feelings of sadness or grief.