Self - Encounters & the Intention Method E-Book

Franz Ruppert

• Herausgeber: Eigenverlag
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Deutsch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 431

Beschreibung

This book explains in detail Identity Oriented Psychotrauma Theory (IoPT) and the method of therapy that goes along with it (The Intention Method). Illustrated through numerous examples, the book shows the amazing abilities our human psyche has to resonate with the psyche of others and how we can help bring unconscious processes to light. This is an extremely effective therapeutic process for genuine change.

Leseprobe

Franz Ruppert

Self - Encounters & the Intention Method

The Practice of IoPT

Translated by Simon Lys

© 2023 Prof. Dr. Franz Ruppert

Review: Ute Boldt

Typesetting & Layout: Susanne Bhangu

Translated by: © 2023 Simon Lys

Language of original edition: Deutsch

Publisher label: Eigenverlag

ISBN Hardcover: 978-3-9822115-6-5

ISBN E-Book: 978-3-9822115-7-2

Printing and distribution on behalf of the author:

tredition GmbH, An der Strusbek 10, 22926 Ahrensburg, Germany

The work, including its parts, is protected by copyright. The author is responsible for the contents. Any exploitation is prohibited without his approval. Publication and distribution are carried out on behalf of of the author, to be reached at: tredition GmbH, department "Imprint service",An der Strusbek 10, 22926 Ahrensburg, Germany.

www.franz-ruppert.de

Thanks

I would like to thank Simon Lys for the wonderful work he has done in translating this book into English.

I would also like to thank Ute Boldt for proofreading the original German manuscript. She did an excellent job. The layout and book production were done by Susanne Bhangu. Many thanks for that too.

I would also like to thank Sabine Albus, Thilo Behla, Susanne Baldini, Lydia Bauer, Bernd Casels, Robert Finke, Susanne Honold, Vivine van der Velden, Ralf-Dieter Abraham, Marta Thorsheim and Daniela Wochinger for providing me with their powerful reports and case studies.

Franz Ruppert

Munich, February 2023

Inhalt

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

1. the Development of Iopt

Family Constellations - a chance encounter?

ON PATIENCE

Constellations and Self-Encounters

DO I REALLY HAVE TO BE GRATEFUL FOR MY LIFE?

Each person can only free themselves from their own trauma

The Central Themes of IoPT

The Human Psyche

EVERY CELL HAS A PSYCHE

EARLY TRAUMA

BUDDHA AND HIS EARLY TRAUMA

MATERIALISTIC SOLUTION

BEING A SUBJECT

A HEALTHY IDENTITY: I WANT

UNCONSCIOUS AND CONSCIOUS

BEING IN MY BODY

THE EXTRAORDINARY CAPABILITIES OF THE HUMAN PSYCHE.

THE EXPERIMENTS OF RUPERT SHELDRAKE

MARINA ABRAMOVIC: MIND-READING AND CLAIRVOYANCE

RE-INCARNATION?

PAST LIVES

NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES

TRAUMA SHARPENS THE SENSES

RE-LIGION

NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THERE – THE WORST CASE SCENARIO

INTRACTABLE PSYCHOLOGICAL CONFLICTS

TRAUMA SURVIVAL STRATEGIES

‘I TENSION’

HOW TRAUMA TRANSFERS BETWEEN GENERATIONS

Any Living Organism has Needs

NEEDS AND DEPENDENCE

The Need for Love from my Mother and my Father

WHAT ARE THE QUALITIES OF A MOTHER’S LOVE?

WHAT ARE THE QUALITIES OF A FATHER’S LOVE?

A MODUS OPERANDI OF FEAR

PARENTS AS A TRIGGER FOR OUR TRAUMA

A MODUS OPERANDI OF LOVE

BEING DEPENDENT OF PEOPLE WHO ARE OPERATING FROM A PLACE OF FEAR

NAILED TO THE CROSS OF MY MOTHER

THE LOVE OF A MONKEY COMPARED TO THE LOVE OF A HUMAN MOTHER

The Trauma of Love

MONEY AND POWER AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR LOVE

THE PARANOIA OF THE SUPER-POWERFUL AND THE SUPER-RICH

FROM AN UNDERLYING FEAR TO AN UNDERLYING ‘I’

Healthy Intimacy and Sexuality

TRANSGENDER

‘Disease’ and the Trauma of Health

‘CATARACT’ - THE GREY STAR

An Economy based on Trauma- Survival

A HEALTHY ECONOMY

A TRAUMATISING ECONOMY

MONEY IS WORTH NOTHING

War or Peace within, War or Peace without.

PERMANENT STATE OF WAR

THE ELITE AND THE MASSES

THE WORLD AT WAR

WHAT DOES PEACE LOOK LIKE?

WAR AS A CONSEQUENCE OF THE INTERNALISED PERPETRATOR-VICTIM DYNAMIC

WARS ARE SYSTEMATIC TRAUMATISATION

A PEACEFUL WAY OUT OF THE PERPETRATOR-VICTIM DYNAMIC

HUMANITY PROGRAMS ITSELF

VIOLENCE IS NOT NECESSARY OR NORMAL

Restaging our Trauma for the rest of our lives

WHY AM I AN UNDERTAKER?

MOVING TO A COUNTRY FULL OF TERROR

Identifying and naming the causes, the consequences and the conditions

GENETIC EFFECT

I NEED HELP

STOP TRYING TO BE STRONG

FEELING OUR OWN TRUTH

HOW CAN I ACHIEVE ‘HEALTHY AUTONOMY’?

TRUSTING THE LANGUAGE OF OUR OWN BODY

LETTING OUR OWN BODY HEAL ITSELF

COMPASSION

THE SUCCESS OF THE THERAPY

FINALLY ABLE TO SLEEP THROUGH THE NIGHT

2. Self Encounters and the Intention Method

The Intention

Working in a Group Setting

LIKE A PUPPET

Working One-to-One - The Individual Session

WHICH I IS THE HEALTHY ONE?

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

Working with Couples

The Logic of Healing

The everyday ‘coincidences’ that happen in my practice

Little examples from my Practice

EXAMPLE OF AN ONLINE INDIVIDUAL SESSION

SELF ENCOUNTERS AS A MIRRORING RESONANCE PHENOMENON

COMING IN CONTACT WITH THE ORIGINAL TRAUMA FEELINGS

THE ESSENCE

FOLLOW THE IMPULSES THAT COME

A COVERT INTENTION - 1 2 3

Bringing in Other People

Offering Helpful Sentences

LISA CAN FINALLY SLEEP AGAIN

A SELF-FACILITATED SELF-ENCOUNTER ON THE MOUNTAINSIDE

3. Case Studies - Descriptions and Analyses

HOW DOES EMPIRICISM RELATE TO THEORY?

How does empiricism relate to theory?

SAFETY FROM MY FEAR

COLLECTING AND ORGANISING THE LINT AND THE FLUFF

FALSE CLOSENESS AND SAFETY THROUGH SEX AND DRUGS

DIFFICULT BIRTH

FEAR OF BEING TESTED

UNBEARABLE BACK PAIN - ON THE VERGE OF GIVING UP ON MYSELF

INFIDELITY COMES TO LIGHT

SUFFOCATING WITH A PILLOW?

SCALDED WITH BOILING WATER

PIG BARN

ALONE IN THE CAR

POWER SURGES IN THE MOTHER’S BELLY

SPEARS AND TEARS

ELECTROSHOCK TREATMENT OF A PREGNANT MOTHER

IT BECOMES VISIBLE

BLACK AND WHITE BECOMES TECHNICOLOUR

GENITAL WARTS

BROKEN KNEECAP

SPIRAL

RELIGIOUS ZEAL

NO TIME

BEING GOOD

LEAVES IN THE WIND

AT 17

DOT, DOT, DOT

EMERGENCY BAPTISM

BLACK JAGUAR

EAU DE COLOGNE

ETHEREAL BALANCE

HE INSIDE

BACK OR BACK?

TAKING OFF MY BELT AND WANTING TO HIT SOMEONE

I NEED TO GO TO THE TOILET

A FEAR OF GERMANS

THE DRESSMAKER

HEAD-ON COLLISION

A BULLET TO THE HEAD.

JUST A MISSPELLING OR A CONCEALED TRUTH?

FREUDIAN SLIPS

DOGS AND BUTTERFLIES

WHO IS THAT CLINGING TO YOU?

ABORTED CHILDREN PRESERVED IN FORMALDEHYDE

A CHANGE OF CLOTHES

SPEAKING IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

BLACK AND WHITE

SOMETHING IS WRONG

THE UNKNOWN INHERITANCE

WANTED CHILDREN AND ABORTIONS

HANGING ONESELF

I WANT TO DRINK ALCOHOL

THE MISSING FULL-STOP

A BLEEDING NOSE

YES, YES, YES

THIS COULD BE MY INTENTION TOO

NOISE ON THE INSIDE AND THE OUTSIDE

BLURRED IMAGES

FROZEN

BEING SPLIT

I. T. SUPPORT WITH A SELF-ENCOUNTER

THE BEE STING

FEEDBACK FROM PARTICIPANTS AFTER A SELF-ENCOUNTER

4. are Self-Encounters Reliable & Valid?

Methodolgocial artefacts

Methodological criteria

EXAMPLES OF AFFIRMATIONS BY THE INTENTION HOLDERS

FAIRY TALES, POEMS OR SONGS

VALIDATIONS DURING THE SELF-ENCOUNTER

Checking the reliability in different groups

CASE STUDY: DISGUSTING CHILD

What is needed to ensure a Self-Encounter is valid?

Objectivity

5. Studies and Surveys

WHAT SPECIFIC RESULT DOES A SELF-ENCOUNTER ACHIEVE?

CAN THOSE IN RESONANCE RELIABLY MIRROR YOUR TRUTH?

NEW INSIGHTS THROUGH SELF-ENCOUNTERS

SELECTING THE SAMPLE AND CONDUCTING THE INTERVIEWS

WHY DOES SOMEONE DO A SELF-ENCOUNTER?

REAL-WORLD CONFLICTS WITH OTHER PEOPLE:

WHAT DO PEOPLE EXPERIENCE DURING THE PROCESS OF THEIR OWN SELF-ENCOUNTER?

THE ROLE OF THE IOPT FACILITATOR

THE ROLE OF THE GROUP

THE GENERAL FRAMEWORK AND CONDITIONS

The reliability of the people in resonance

FEELING IN TO THE RESONANCE

BEING TAKEN OVER BY SOMETHING OUTSIDE OF OURSELVES?

HOW DO WE DISTINGUISH BETWEEN WHAT IS OUR OWN STUFF AND WHAT IS GENUINELY SOMEONE ELSE’S?

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SELF-ENCOUNTER FACILITATOR

Same family - same experiences

Wanting to help?

Releasing oneself from the resonance

The benefits of going into resonance

New Information

THE KINDS OF NEW INFORMATION THAT GETS REVEALED

SEXUAL TRAUMATISATION

PARENTAGE IS CALLED INTO QUESTION

THE MURDER OF CHILDREN IN THE FAMILY SYSTEM

OTHER NEW INFORMATION IS REVEALED

Another Survey of IoPT Workshop participants

WHAT CAN BE ACHIEVED WITH A SELF-ENCOUNTER PROCESS?

CHOOSING PEOPLE TO RESONATE

RELIABILITY OF THE RESONATORS

THE EFFECTS SELF-ENCOUNTERS HAVE AFTERWARDS ON PEOPLE’S PERSONAL LIVES

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE GROUP

EMOTIONAL CONNECTION

Studies into IoPT by other authors

RESEARCH BY SIGRID STJERNSWÄRD

RESEARCH BY ANNA HERRMANN

RESEARCH BY MARIA MACARENCO

MASTER’S THESIS BY NIKLAS MÜLLER

Published personal journals and books

6. the Search for a New Understanding of Humanity and the World

IN-FORMATIONS IN THE VIRTUAL WORLDS

PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE

Spirituality and Materialism

Psychological Realism

Self-Encounters as a source of insight

7. Being an Iopt Practitioner

IOPT AS A SUPPORT IN OUR EVERYDAY LIVES

The core sentences of IoPT

IoPT-informed-societies

IoPT Group Self-Encounters

References

Original German Bibliography

Appendix 1: Trauma Checklist

Self - Encounters & the Intention Method

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

1. the Development of Iopt

Bibliography

Appendix 1: Trauma Checklist

Self - Encounters & the Intention Method

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1. The Development of IoPT

Family Constellations - a chance encounter?

It all began for me back in June 1994, at a workshop given by Bert Hellinger at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. This was the first time I had been picked to act as a representative in a Family Constellation. The moment I was chosen, I got this incredible sensation that I had a big hole in my stomach. As the person whose Constellation it was then went on to explain, they wanted me to represent a Jewish relative who had been shot during the Holocaust.

The second role I got called upon to represent during that workshop was that of someone’s son. During the representation I got this sense of being really big and feeling vastly superior to my parents. In many ways I could relate to in terms of how I was with my own parents and as part of my own story, but I was still very struck by how quickly the experience took me over and the speed at which these feelings all came up in me.

The experiences that I had during that workshop were completely revelatory to me, and if I hadn’t had them I probably wouldn’t have carried on doing Family Constellations over the next few years. Nor would I have spent the next thirty years going on to develop Identity-oriented Psychotrauma Theory (IoPT) and the Intention Method.

Was it just a coincidence that in an auditorium of over 200 participants, I got chosen as a representative on each of the two days? Was it just chance that one of my wife’s friends had only told me a day or so before that this workshop was even taking place, because she happened to be part of the team that was helping organise it? Was it purely coincidental that I had just seen Hellinger’s book ‘The Orders of Love’ on another friend’s kitchen table and he’d spoken to me about what a furore Family Constellations were causing in Germany at that time? And was it just chance that in this very book there were case studies about ‘adoption’, the very topic that I was currently discussing in a series of lectures at my university?

I never was then, and still am not now, what you could describe as a ‘spiritual’ person. I am very sceptical when it comes to anything bordering on the esoteric. If something is inherently illogical or contradictory then you’re never going to convince me otherwise. I need explanations to be rationally comprehensible and I reject arbitrary assumptions. Therefore, I am also very cautious when it comes to speculating or conjecturing how or why something is the way it appears. I prefer to wait until the actual explanation of a phenomenon gradually reveals itself to our human consciousness, in accordance with those wonderful lines of Rainer Maria Rilke:

ON PATIENCE

‘You have to give things their own,

quiet undisturbed development.

This comes from deep inside,

It cannot be pushed,

It cannot be accelerated,

Everything must take its gestation - and

Only then can it give birth…

Things must ripen like the tree,

Who does not force his sap

But stands confidently in the storms of spring,

Unafraid

That beyond it, summer

May not come. But it does come!

But it only comes to those who are patient,

Who stand there as if eternity

Lay before them,

So unconcerned, silent and vast…

You have to be patient

With all that is unresolved in your heart

And to try to love the questions themselves

Like locked rooms and like books that are written

For now in the most foreign of tongues.

The point is to live everything.

If you live the questions now

Perhaps then, someday far in the future,

You will gradually,

Without even noticing it,

Live your way into the answer

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 -1926)1

The word ‘coincidence’ comes from the latin roots cum/com meaning ‘with’ or ‘together’ and incidere meaning ‘to fall upon.’ So it literally means ‘to fall upon together’. It’s what falls in your path - however that may come about. And then you have a choice. Do you pick up what has fallen infront of you or do you pass on by, pretending not to see, which means you will never get to appreciate it? Despite the criticism I may have for them today, I am still very grateful that Family Constellations fell across my path back in 1994.

Constellations and Self-Encounters

I went on to work intensively with Family Constellations for the next five years, and it is because of that, that I call the work that I do now ‘Self-Encounters’ rather than ‘Constellations’ (see Figure 1).

Family Constellations

Self-Encounters

Focused on ‘the Orders of Love’

Focused on ‘Identity-oriented Psychotrauma Theory’

A search to find one’s place in the family

The truth on one’s own childhood

An emphasis on forgiveness/reconciling with the parents

The integration of our split-off parts

Respect for the parents/the perpetrators

The clear naming of the parents as perpetrators

Support of symbiotic illusions

The making clear of any symbiotic illusions

Spirituality

Reality

Ritual

Finding the right solution for each individual

A one-off ‘fix’

Part of an ongoing process

The idea of ‘representation’

The concept of ‘resonance’

Figure 1: The differences between ‘Self-Encounters’ and ‘Classical Family Constellations’.

In Family or Systemic Constellations there is the idea that a person’s suffering is likely to have come about because of one of the following core reasons:

■ Because the family system, or organisation concerned, is no longer aligned along the ‘Orders of Love’.

■ Because, for example, we don’t properly appreciate our parents or we are not sufficiently grateful to them for their ‘gift of life’.

■ Because someone who should be part of the system is not properly acknowledged - this may be a former partner of one of our parents, a child who has been kept secret, a family member who has been excluded etc.

■ Because the rule that those who were born earlier should have priority over those who were born later is not being properly observed (for example in the order of siblings or in the hierarchy of a company).

In Family Constellations, therefore, the focus is on searching for who or what has fallen ‘out of order’, and this may be to do with one of our ‘ancestors’ from many generations back. This has led to ‘dis-order’ in the system, and this has to be corrected. According to ‘Family Constellations’, this can be done by appreciating each and every member of the system. Above all, we must forgive our own parents for the harm that they have done us (this may even include sexual abuse). We must reconcile with them - generally this takes place through a symbolic gesture of subordination. Only in this way can we get to take our rightful place in the system. Once this is done, we can be loved and recognised by others. If our system, from which we come or which we have created for ourselves, is in order, then we are also in order and our suffering will disappear.

DO I REALLY HAVE TO BE GRATEFUL FOR MY LIFE?

A man came to one of my workshops with the Intention ‘I am permitted to live’. During his Self-Encounter, it became clear that he thought he had to be grateful to his traumatised mother for ‘the gift of life’ that she had given him, despite the fact that his mother had mercilessly bullied him within an inch of his life. This is an extreme victim attitude. During the process of the Self-Encounter, it became clear that his mother didn’t have the slightest interest in him. And, of course, this is one of the worst possible things for a child - they do not want to imagine that such a thing is even possible. It is too threatening and painful for them. The only way the young child’s psyche can cope with this is to split. The survival part of the child can then continue to idealise the mother and resolutely hold on to the illusion that one day she will love him too.

Each person can only free themselves from their own trauma

If we properly understand human development we can see that the source of our life is within us. Yes, the egg comes from our mother and the sperm from our father and these fuse together, but it is our will to live that initiates that spark of life. We ourselves are the source of our own lives and are also responsible for how our lives develop. But our mother and father, and our relationship with them, provide the framework for this, and the favourableness or otherwise of those conditions, will have a direct effect on our development.

IoPT states that there can be interpersonal bonding and attachment systems that are in themselves traumatising. Primarily, we see this when traumatised mothers and fathers in turn go on to traumatise their own children and abuse them to satisfy their trauma survival strategies. Therefore, the way out of the problems that result from this is not to attempt to repair these kind of bonding systems, but to detach ourselves from these traumatising relationships, to detach ourselves from the entire traumatising systems, and, in this way, allow ourselves to grow up internally and become, not only psychologically, but in a very real practical sense, autonomous.

Any attempt to try to heal these kind of traumatised systems will prove impossible. And to think we can save others from being traumatised by these systems is in itself a trauma survival strategy. Because only each individual traumatised person can resolve their own trauma and liberate themselves from their own internal splits. No child can save their mother, father, brother or sister from their trauma. And similarly, parents cannot heal their children, even when they themselves have already severely traumatised them. But Family Constellations do not properly acknowledge this and so allow for a principle that is well-known in psychotraumatology, that of identification with the aggressor and the attitude of protecting the parent/perpetrator. There is no attempt made to resolve emotional conflicts by feeling the emotions, instead this is bypassed and resolution is attempted on a spiritual or intellectual/rational level.

What is possible in terms of IoPT however is that if a mother or father is prepared to face their own trauma and integrate those experiences into themselves in a deep and real way, a great burden is then lifted off of their children. Their children no longer have to be available to the parents as a ‘survival aid’. Relieved of this burden, their children can then finally devote themselves to looking at their own inner conflicts. Their focus can then be wholly concentrated on their own biography and what traumatising situations they themselves have experienced during their own life.

Because our whole biography is taken into account when it comes to this work, any problems cannot be quickly ‘fixed’ by one-off ‘Constellations’ that supposedly bring the external system back into order. What he have to work through is an in-depth exploration of our own inner system and that takes great courage and patience. I talk of this inner system in terms of our own psyche and inner world - and this is where we have to bring the trauma feelings to light that have often been repressed, split off and packed away from a very early age in our development.

I want to keep the many differences between IoPT and Family Constellations clear, and so I differentiate on a linguistic level as well as a methodological one. In this way, I speak in IoPT of ‘people going into resonance’ rather than referring to them as ‘representatives’ and I term the processes themselves ‘Self-Encounters’ and not ‘Constellations’.

Self-Encounters are a methodology that allows the rational, intellectual leftside of our brain, with all its focus on analysis and problem-solving, to take a back seat and allows more room for the right-side of our brain and indeed our entire body, with all its immediate responses, perceptions, experiences and feelings. This means that Self-Encounters can bring the psychological processes, that are going on inside us unconsciously, to light. The whole of our body is involved in this process of change and healing. And because of this, good therapeutic results can be achieved relatively quickly, which can’t be reached by methods that rely purely on the verbal.

The Central Themes of IoPT

IoPT is a theory of psychology that I have been developing since 2000, and have written about in eleven books so far, which have been translated into many different languages.22 There are also a number of excellent books written by Vivian Broughton which do a wonderful job of summarising, describing and expanding on IoPT thinking and theory (Broughton 2013, 2014, 2021). IoPT focuses its attention on:

■ The human psyche.

■ How the psyche develops, right from the very beginning of a person’s life, in other words from the moment of fusion between the egg and the sperm.

■ The possible causes and ways that a human psyche can be traumatised: usually rejection, violence and lack of love, with the awareness that this can happen prenatally, during the birth process and in those first few years afterwards before our conscious memory develops.

■ Identity and the Trauma of Identity.

■ Interpersonal attachment and bonding relationships, especially the mother-child bond.

■ Traumas in the mother-child relationship: I call this the Trauma of Love.

■ Death and the Trauma of Loss, the trauma of the loss of the bonds of love.

■ The development of human sexuality and the different forms of sexual trauma.

■ How identity disorders and traumatisation effect us on a physical bodily level.

■ The victim-perpetrator dynamic and the fact that perpetrators traumatise themselves through their own actions.

■ The impact on society because of how massively traumatised members of that society are, and how this leads to widespread perpetrator-victim dynamics and a complete lack of compassion in the economic and political sphere and ultimately results in war.

The Human Psyche

At its core, IoPT is concerned with the human psyche. What it is and how it develops from the beginning of a person’s life all the way through to their death.

I think of the psyche as the ability of a living organism to take in information that is relevant to it, to process it in a way that is in accordance with its needs, and to store that information. In conjunction with this, the psyche also governs the release of information into its external world, that is relevant to its coexistence with the world around it. I therefore assume that other living organisms such as plants and animals also have a psyche that is appropriate to them. Looked at in more detail, our ‘psychic abilities’ - I mean this in the literal sense as in referring to the abilities of the psyche - consist of:

■ The various forms of perception (seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling)

■ Different feelings (fear, anger, love, joy, shame, disgust, pride)

■ An infinite number of ideas

■ Billions of thoughts

■ Memories stored in various forms in different parts of the human organism

■ Multiple ways of expressing oneself linguistically (mimicry, gestural, verbal)

■ A highly complex ability to control how the body moves from general movement to fine motor skills…

■ And the ability for self-reflections and to make one’s own life decisions.

This ‘information processing’ has two main purposes: the self-preservation of the individual living organism concerned and its contribution to the continued reproduction of the species. The psyche helps the individual to fulfil its inherent needs for fresh air, water and food, for movement, interpersonal relationships and sexual desire. It helps the person care for their own offspring in an appropriate and creative way in accordance with the situation and conditions they are in and in a way that is age-appropriate to the child.

EVERY CELL HAS A PSYCHE

In any living organism, the smallest unit is the cell. And every cell has the ability to absorb information from its environment, to process that data and to transmit information back to the outside. Each cell can also be said to be self-reflective in that it process information about itself, for example about its own current state or condition (Lipton 2006). Nerve cells are only special cells in that they are faster in their highly complex network of information processing, but all cells do this on some level. When these cells are packed together they form parts of an organ and then together those parts form a whole organ, like, for example, the brain, with its various parts, hemispheres and sub-brains.

And this is happening throughout the body. There is a constant stream of information being received by our sexual organs, our intestines and our heart. This information is then passed on from there, and transmitted both inside and outside the body. We therefore not only have a head brain, but also a sex brain, a gut brain and a heart brain. People who think of themselves as ‘cerebral’ or ‘brainy’ are using very little of the full potential that their psyche as a whole offers them.

When a new human being comes into existence, when the maternal egg and the paternal sperm cell unite, the psyche of a new human being is also born in that moment. It can experience life and store those experiences right from the very beginning (Alberti 2012; Chamberlain 2013). We should therefore not draw the erroneous conclusion that cognitive psychological processes are only possible through nerve processes in the brain.

EARLY TRAUMA

As soon as any living being begins to develop, the psychological functions become highly active because they are needed for self-preservation. For this reason, a person can still feel a fear of death even though it may have been from an experience very early on when their life was under threat. For example, the uterus may have been highly resistant to implantation and the newly formed child had to work with all its might to nestle its way into the uterine wall. For the child concerned, that first contact with their mother then had to become a fight to the death. They had to fight for their life or die. I saw this situation for real in a woman’s Self-Encounter that I was accompanying. At the end she said, “Slowly, the more I shiver the calmer I get, because in reality I am actually soft and loving.”

It is also a matter of life and death when someone who is still in the womb is on the receiving end of an abortion attempt. The child has to try to make themselves invisible, essentially hiding somewhere in the womb. Fear and panic permeate the child’s entire body. He or she has to split off this experience and then, if they survive, this split-off fear of death is taken with them into the rest of their life.

There are similar lifelong consequences when a child, whilst still in the womb, witnesses the death of their twin. This is then their first trauma of loss because an unborn child instinctively loves their twin sibling and wants to keep them alive (Bourquin and Cortes 2020).

There are many ways a child’s life can be threatened during the pregnancy, for example if the mother eats something toxic or if she smokes. The birth process too can be a life-threatening experience, especially when it comes to medical interventions such as caesarean deliveries, ventouse (suction-cup) extraction, pulling the child out with forceps or inducing the labour in the first place, all these can traumatise the child - as well as the mother - at this very early stage in their life. In extreme cases, the mother may die during, or shortly after, the birthing process and this obviously represents a massive early trauma of loss for the child and will have far-reaching consequences such as lifelong latent depression, a profound mistrust in partnership relationships, diffuse feelings of guilt and even chronic suicidal tendencies.

When we are a baby or a young child, we are especially vulnerable to trauma. Being born prematurely is a traumatisation (Specht 2014). Adoption is massively traumatising (Krüger 2014). Being farmed out into external care by relatives (Stoffers 2014) or nursery staff (Freund 2014) is also traumatising.

These are all facts but they are not recognised by society and are not properly acknowledged as traumas. Mainstream science and medicine has so far steadfastly refused to look at all the traumatisation that it systematically causes in the pre-, peri- and postnatal spheres (Assel 2016). In many therapies, however, these early traumas show themselves to be key to helping a person improve their physical and psychological health and their relationships. But if society at large continues to ignore their importance, is it any wonder that so many people are suffering from something whose causes they do not or cannot understand and that no one from the medical, psychotherapeutic or social-work system can properly explain to them?

Our unconscious early life experiences govern our lives in such a far-reaching way. It is heartbreaking that we have to give up contact with ourselves so very early on and then spend the rest of our lives on a futile quest to find ourselves again. Not only that, but there is also the wealth of problems these traumas go on to cause us in our future relationships and interactions, and the knock on effect that this has on society in general and our whole political system and climate.

It is also worth remembering that we experience these early traumas before we have a language for them. We feel the threats, but they remain unnameable.

BUDDHA AND HIS EARLY TRAUMA

It looks like this was also the case for a certain prince called Siddhartha who was born over 2600 years ago in what is now Nepal. He came from a wealthy family. On the outside it seemed he wanted for nothing, and yet he gave up all his wealth and his family life and set out on a solitary quest for the truth of human suffering. From his teachings came the philosophy of Buddhism (Khyentse 2007). It seems to me that Siddhartha searched high and low, in every nook and cranny that his mind could reach, but he could not see into the darkness of his own biography where the source of his suffering lay hidden: his mother had died shortly after his birth and he was raised by his father’s sister.

According to my experience in working with people whose mother died in childbirth, this is like a nuclear apocalypse for a child - it is a massive trauma of loss. The child not only desperately misses his or her own mother but there are also immense feelings of guilt: ‘It’s my fault that my mother died’. All this happens on a psychological level in a completely pre-conscious and unconscious way, and so is cut off from our conscious awareness, which only gradually develops in most people from their second to third year of life.

Perhaps this early loss of the primary mother bond is also the reason why Siddhartha recommended to completely detach oneself from all bonds or ‘attachments’, because then we can appear to no longer have any needs that may prove to be painful when they go unmet. In terms of IoPT, however, this is a trauma-survival strategy and it can never resolve the split in our own psyche.

The spiritual path as preached by the Buddha and others often involves the idea of detaching ourselves from our body, seeing ourselves as separate from it. The more extreme the spirituality the closer we think we are to pure consciousness. But this too can be seen as just a trauma-survival strategy in order not to have feel the distress we felt as a child and the unbearable pain of losing our mother. Because of the fears we have - the very real and justified fear of death, the pain and the enormous rage and disappointment we feel in relation to our own mother - we can then take refuge in the ideas of connecting to something ‘higher’ or ‘greater’ than us, connecting to ‘nature’, to the ‘cosmos’ and the ‘world whole’ but in doing so we just lose ourselves further and further. In contrast, IoPT focuses on a embodied and emotionled solution to traumatic conflicts instead of a spiritual and cognitive one.

MATERIALISTIC SOLUTION

In my view, the second dead end that we can take in trying to solve our emotional problems is based on the idea that we can eliminate them by putting ourselves into an ‘altered state’ by consuming drugs, medicines, medicinal plants or by fasting. Eating sugar, drinking coffee, smoking tobacco are the most widespread habits to get us out of a state of discomfort and back into a ‘better place’, but any alleviation of our pain is purely temporary.

Society’s answer to an individual’s emotional distress is, in most instances, for a doctor to prescribe the afflicted person psychiatric drugs. The effect of these psychotropic drugs can be roughly thought off as tampering with essential hormones or neurotransmitters so as to put the brain and the entire organism into an altered state - a dissociation from reality. Any emotional conflict that in reality still exists and remains unresolved is pushed to the side and the person concerned finds himself in an illusory state of apparent inner harmony.

But these kind of states only last for a short time, because the brain compensates for the medication. Therefore, upping the dosage and ultimately being on permanent medication are the inevitable consequences of relying on a material solution to one’s emotional problems. On top of that we are then prescribed new medication to combat the ever-increasing damage that is being done to our body as a ‘side-effect’ of the consumption of the previous medication. This, of course, leads to a vicious circle. With every drug there are more undesirable effects, which we then try to suppress with even more new drugs.

BEING A SUBJECT

A living organism is not a passive object that responds only to the whims and mercies of life. It is a subject. From its own power within itself, it shapes and expresses its own life in its own way and deliberately influences its surrounding environment. Subjects are self-regulating in terms of the information they take on from the outside world. They are also selective when it comes to this information - they decide what is relevant to them and what is not. They transform in their own way what comes at them from outside so that it is useful for their inner world. Every subject is unique in this regard and becomes more and more individual during the course of their lives. Subjects shape themselves and their own psyche. And the way they shape themselves affects how they continue to develop. This becomes particularly clear when studying human brains and neural networks (Hüther 2020).

A HEALTHY IDENTITY: I WANT

Because the way we live is social, part of the function of our human psyche is to connect us with other people and their psyches. To do this, the psyche must be able to distinguish itself as separate so as not to lose its sense of self in the general stream of information that is being exchanged all the time.

That is why the human organism needs to develop a psychological entity that is referred to in IoPT as the ‘I’ - a point of reference that all other psychological functions can orientate themselves to. Likewise, we have a entity called the ‘want’, which helps us make our own decisions which govern our existence. ‘I want’ is therefore the psychological core that determines a living organism’s subjectivity. It is the basis for our healthy identity.

It is enormously important if we wish to live a self-determined life to understand the significance and function of the ‘I’. And perhaps even more importantly than understanding it, that we actually feel this ‘I’. To ask ourselves: Where and how in my body do I feel my ‘I’? Am I even aware of this feeling of ‘I’ at all? Some people only get to really know themselves in an emotionally connected way at the end of their lives, but it is never too late.

I’m going to take the liberty of another brief reference to Buddhism at this point, because in Buddhism it is explicitly stated that the ‘I’ is the problem: ‘We assume that each of us is a self, that there is an entity called ‘me’ (or ‘I’). The self is just another misunderstanding, however… Clinging to the fallacy of the self is a ridiculous act of ignorance; it perpetuates ignorance; and it leads to all kinds of pain and disappointment.’ (Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse. (2007) ‘What Makes You Not a Buddhist.’ Ch. 2 ‘Emotion & Pain’).

Here we can see that in failing to recognise the source of our own suffering, which stems from early traumatisation, the baby is thrown out with the bathwater: Because I have an unfulfilled need for loving contact with my mother, but she proved unreachable, I then see my own needs and my whole existence to be a problem that needs to be overcome. Thought through to its logical extreme, if existence itself is a problem we can only overcome it when we are dead.

Materialism denies us our psychological ‘I’ and our free ‘want’ - we are not subjects; free will is an illusion. If we see ourselves as objects, it easier for others to change or manipulate us, maybe by genetic means or by media brainwashing. We are not aware this is going on because we don’t have a real language that unites the correct findings we can take from the materialistic with the true insights we can gain from the spiritual: ‘That emergent level (of consciousness) has its own time course and is current with the actions taking place. It is that abstraction that makes us current in time, real and responsible. The whole business about the brain doing it before we are conscious of it becomes moot and inconsequential from the vantage point of a different level of operation. Understanding how to develop a vocabulary for those layered interactions, for me, constitutes the scientific problem of this century.’ (Gazzinga 2011, Afterword).

UNCONSCIOUS AND CONSCIOUS

One major way we can go wrong in our thinking here is to equate and confuse the concept of the psyche with the idea of ‘consciousness’ or ‘the mind’. Consciousness is only one of many possible levels on which the psyche can operate. The majority of work that the psyche is doing with the information that it is processing is happening unconsciously. Consciousness represents only a small subset of the entire set of processes that are happening within the psyche.

And that is a good thing. Normally, we don’t need to be aware of how our digestion or breathing are regulated. It is only when something is no longer working properly that we need to consciously become aware of it in order to support and improve our self-regulation. Or to organise targeted help and find support measures from the outside.

Consciousness is therefore a special facet of the human psyche. It is just one of its phenomenal abilities that help to clearly orientate itself to reality and it is then able to go on and share that gained awareness with others. Consciousness is not something abstract, but can always be thought of as relating to something specific and concrete. Consciousness is usually also co-consciousness because it arises from dialogue with others. It is what connects us to others, but this consciousness can be informed by both right and wrong ideas.

Our consciousness can be clouded or just fundamentally wrong. Usually, this inability to see and think clearly is the result of violence or the threat of it. This can happen on a society level, where toxic power relationships can deliberately create false consciousness about what is reality. Then whole societies and communities can get stuck in their false consciousness and this can lead to them doing a lot of harm to themselves. If we don’t have truth and our consciousness is not correct and clear, then there is no chance for us, and humanity at large, to live a good life. A life built on false assumptions and lies is dangerous to ourselves and others.

BEING IN MY BODY

Every human being is his body. Therefore everyone is either a man or a woman. The idea that one can be a woman when one is a man or a man when one is a woman is delusional. For me, it most likely has its roots in a person’s trauma biography. Subjecting our own healthy body to gender reassignment is the most aggressive thing that we, as a human being, can do to ourselves. When this level of perpetration against ourselves is supported by society and orthodox medicine, it shows the extent of the confusion of everyone involved (Schwarzer, A. & Louis, C. 2022).3

THE EXTRAORDINARY CAPABILITIES OF THE HUMAN PSYCHE.

We can only begin to guess at the whole extent of amazing things our human psyche can do. We see examples of people with what seem like extraordinary ‘psychic’ abilities:

■ People with photographic memories: someone who can read 30 or so books and can remember on which page everything appears.

■ ‘Mnemonists’: People who can remember and recall extremely long lists of data such as memorising entire telephone directories by heart.

■ ‘Polyglots’ : There are people who speak 20 or more foreign languages effortlessly and can learn a new language within a short time.

■ Mathematical geniuses: Some people can calculate the most complicated of sums in their heads to tens of decimal places.

■ Musical prodigies: Some people can master many different musical instruments all at the same time - they play the piano, saxophone, drums, they compose and they can sing…

■ Acrobatic skills: High-wire and trapeze artists, acrobats, gymnasts, jugglers … every time I visit a circus I can’t help but be amazed.

It seems that these people have an innate, natural talent - they do not have to painstakingly acquire these skills by exerting a lot of diligent effort and hard work - it just comes naturally to them, we say it’s ‘in their blood’. Of course, many of them do hone their skills with lots of practice and intensive training and in doing so reach heights of achievement that no one has ever achieved before. I recently saw a video of children who were able to read, write, draw and play ball games with their eyes completely closed. Perhaps all children, up until about the age of ten, can learn and practise this. But only a few make use of this talent.4

It is also amazing how extraordinary animals’ psyches must be, when it comes to things like their levels of perception which are unimaginable to us. Eagles see so much sharper than we do, bats hear more, dogs smell more, ants can climb vertical walls, the capabilities of the psyche are phenomenal. It is one of our many human illusions and self-delusions that we call ourselves ‘the pinnacle of creation’ and think of ourselves as gods who can design themselves at will (Harari 2017).

THE EXPERIMENTS OF RUPERT SHELDRAKE

The English biologist Rupert Sheldrake has for many years been documenting extraordinary feats of ‘psychic’ ability. Among other things, he has recorded video evidence of how dogs, when left home alone, suddenly get up from their beds and run to the door to wait, just at the exact moment when their owner heads home from the office.

He’s also collated reports of animals exhibiting unusual behaviour before earthquakes.5 And he did experiments to show that people can predict who is going to be on the phone before they answer it. Sheldrake uses the term ‘morphic resonance’ to explain why people have access to what he sees as common fields of consciousness (Sheldrake 1999).

MARINA ABRAMOVIC: MIND-READING AND CLAIRVOYANCE

In her book ‘Walk Through Walls’ (Abramovic 2016), the performance artist Marina Abramovic writes about her experience of contact with the Aborigines in Australia:

‘One night … I was sitting around the fire with some tribeswomen when I noticed that they were talking in my head. We were not speaking, but they were telling me something: I was thinking, and they were answering me.

That was when my mind really started opening. I began to notice that we could sit around in total silence and have a full conversation. For example, if I wanted to sit in a certain place next to the fire, one of the Aborigines would tell me in my head that this was a bad spot and I should move. And I would move, and nobody had spoken one word—everything was understood.

Living in this kind of heat, in a tranquil state and with very little food or water, I became a kind of natural antenna. I would receive the most amazing images, as clearly as if they were on a TV screen. I wrote down the images in my diaries, and eerily (as I later found out), many of them seemed to foresee actual events. I dreamed of an earthquake in Italy: forty-eight hours later, there was an earthquake in southern Italy. I had a vision of someone shooting the Pope: forty-eight hours later, someone tried to shoot Pope John Paul II.

This also worked on the simplest and most personal level. For example, back in the spice loft in Amsterdam, my friend Marinka had a bed that was always in a dark corner of her room. And sitting in the middle of the desert in January,

I had a vision of her room in front of me, in three dimensions. In this vision, her bed was next to the window instead of in the corner, and she was nowhere to be seen—it was just an empty room, a bed by the window. I made a little note: “Strange image—how great that she put her bed next to the window.” That was all. And I wrote the date.

A year and a half passes. I come back to Amsterdam. I go to her room, and I see the bed in the dark corner as always. I said, “Marinka, this is so strange; I had this vision in Australia, in the middle of the desert, that your bed was next to the window. I wrote it in my notebook.” She says, “Can I see the date?” She looks at the date. She says, “At that time I went back to Belgrade, and I rented my place to some Swedish couple. And the first thing they did was put the bed next to the window. When I returned, I put it back.”’ (Marina Abramovic, ‘Walk Through Walls’).

RE-INCARNATION?

Some people have bizarre experiences that they cannot relate to their own lives, but which nevertheless seem to be based on actual events that really happened. Udo Wieczorek, for example, from when he was four years old, started having recurring and extremely vivid dreams of war, but it was not until he was 45 that he was actually able to relate them to real events that took place in the South Tyrol mountains back in August 1915. A young soldier had accidentally shot a friend who was fighting on the enemy side. This soldier himself was then killed in the war a short time later, but he wrote a letter to get the burden of his friend’s murder off his chest. Led by his dreams, Udo Wieczorek then found this letter that had been buried for decades in a tin can in an ammunition depot in the Hochpuster Valley. (Wieczorek 2021).6

How is that possible? Such stories feed into the idea that we as humans exist as pure spiritual beings and can energetically incarnate again and again in a different body in order to heal unresolved conflicts in a later life.

This attempt at explanation is based on the dualism of body and soul and equates the body with a vessel into which the spirit pours itself and which it can leave again after the body’s disintegration in order to look for a new home.

In IoPT, on the other hand, I advocate for a monism - for me the body and psyche are inseparable. The psychological life of a human being begins with the physical existence of the body and ends with its death. When the body dies the psyche of this particular human being also ceases to exist.