Grofians Unauthorized
Discussion Group
Grofian Peyotists
Critical Situations in Psychedelic Sessions - Part VI
The following excerpts are from
LSD PSYCHOTHERAPY. Grof, S. 1980
ISBN 0-89793-166-1
http://www.promind.com/bk_lps.htm
--excerpts from Chapter 5:
[PAIN, NAUSEA, AND PROBLEMS RELATED TO EXCRETORY FUNCTIONS]
"Physical pain is an important and integral part of the psychedelic process and should also be experienced fully if it starts emerging in the session. It usually occurs in the context of reliving actual physical traumatizations such as diseases, accidents and operations, or the birth trauma, although it can also have various symbolic connotations. Intense physical pain may sometimes be associated with various transpersonal phenomena such as past-incarnation memories and ancestral or phylogenetic experiences. In the later stages of the sessions, when the pharmacological effect of the drug is not strong enough, it is useful to increase the sensations by pressure or deep massage in the places indicated by the patient. In working with pain the sitters should always emphasize full experience of the pain, and the physical or emotional expression of the emotion that is inevitably behind it. Quite commonly patients themselves ask for more intense pressure, sometimes considerably beyond the point which the therapists feel comfortable with. Under unsupervised conditions individuals may actually try to hurt themselves to exteriorize the pain. . . .
Nausea and vomiting usually occur in individuals who have suffered from this problem in childhood or in whom this is a habitual reaction to stress in everyday life. Nausea should not be alleviated by any means and the sitters should encourage vomiting whenever the patient seems to be fighting it. Breakthrough vomiting has a powerful purging effect, and in many instances means a positive turning point in a difficult . . . session. It can be of particular significance in persons who have a very strong negative charge about it in everyday life. Unwillingness to vomit can represent a very important block and may be associated with powerful emotional material on various levels. After having thrown up in the middle of an LSD session, some patients talk about having dumped generations of garbage. Others feel that they rid themselves of the introjected image of a bad parent or step-parent. In some instances, projectile vomiting can be associated with a sense of expelling alien transpersonal energy forms, almost in the sense of exorcism.
Problems related to urination and defecation are unusually frequent in psychedelic sessions. They either take the form of urethral and anal spasms and an inability to evacuate or, conversely, an intense physiological urge in these areas and fear of losing control over bladder and bowels. Difficulties with urination typically occur in persons who in their everyday life respond to various stresses by frequent micturition (pollakisuria), or show the classical Freudian characteristics of a urethral personality, such as intense ambition, concerns about prestige, a disposition to shame, and fear of blunder. If the . . . subject had problems with enuresis (wetting the pants or bed) at some point in his or her past, one should expect the problems in this area to be reenacted sooner or later in the sessions. This is also true for women who suffer from orgastic insufficiency or frigidity that is associated with fear of losing bladder control at the same time as sexual orgasm is supposed to occur. On the psychodynamic level, urethral problems are associated with specific traumatic biographical material in agreement with psychoanalytic descriptions. However, they always have deeper roots on the level of the birth process; there exist quite specific associations between urethral dysfunction and certain aspects of perinatal matrices. . . ." (pp. 199-200)
"When a patient loses control of the bladder during an . . . experience, it is usually associated with reliving traumatic incidents from childhood which involved ridicule by peers or parents for urethral accidents. This release opens the way to the libidinal pleasure originally related to unrestricted urination, removes the psychological block, and facilitates letting go. On a deeper level, it frequently connects the patient with the moment of birth, where a fundamental relief after hours of agony can sometimes be associated with reflex urination.
Problems related to defecation follow a similar pattern. They typically occur in obsessive-compulsive patients of both sexes, in males with latent or manifest homosexual tendencies, and in anal personalities. On the psychodynamic level they are usually associated with conflicts around toilet training, gastrointestinal disorders in childhood, and a history of enemas. Anal retention, an urge to defecate and conflicts about it, and explosive release or loss of anal control are physiologically associated with various stages of the ego death and the moment of birth. Although anal problems of various kinds are very common in LSD sessions, actual uncontrolled defecation and manipulation of feces is extremely rare. . . . This may be an artifact of cultural programming and therapeutic technique rather than clinical reality. Our taboo against feces is much stronger than that against urine, and the common unwillingness of the experient and the sitters to deal with the aftermath of anal letting-go is also a factor that should not be underestimated. . . . If problems of an anal nature keep occurring in . . . therapy, the patient should be encouraged to give up adult concerns and be willing to abandon control if it becomes necessary during the experience. As in the case of urination, surgical pants can be a great psychological help, for the patient as well as the sitters." (p. 201)
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