The Taproot Podcast - Ritual and Animism in Psychology

Episode Date: September 17, 2024

Explore the fascinating world of ritual and animism in psychology! This in-depth look covers the evolution of human consciousness, psychotic experiences, and therapeutic approaches. From James Frazer's "The Golden Bough" to Julian Jaynes' bicameral mind theory, discover how our understanding of the human psyche has evolved. Learn about the changing nature of psychosis in America and how it reflects societal shifts. Dive into the works of Jung, Edinger, and Neumann to understand the role of animism in psychological development. Perfect for psychology students, therapists, and anyone interested in the intersection of spirituality and mental health.   #PsychologyOfRitual #AnimismExplained #ConsciousnessEvolution #PsychologyOfRitual #AnimismExplained #ConsciousnessEvolution #JulianJaynes #BicameralMind #JamesFrazer #GoldenBough #PsychosisInAmerica #JungianPsychology #TherapeuticApproaches #SpiritualPsychology #MentalHealthAwareness #CollectiveTrauma #SymbolicThinking #RitualHealing   What is the Psychology of Ritual and Animism? Ritual and animism are distinct but related concepts that offer insights into the workings of the emotional and preconscious mind. While they are often associated with religious or spiritual practices, they can also be understood as psychological processes that serve important functions in human development and well-being (Edinger, 1972; Neumann, 1955). Animism can be defined as the attribution of consciousness, soul, or spirit to objects, plants, animals, and natural phenomena. From a psychological perspective, animism involves "turning down" one's cognitive functioning to "hear" the inner monologue of the world and treat it as alive. This process allows individuals to connect with the preconscious wisdom of their own psyche and the natural world (Tylor, 1871). Ritual, on the other hand, is a structured sequence of actions that are performed with the intention of achieving a specific psychological or social outcome. In depth psychology, ritual is understood as a process of projecting parts of one's psyche onto objects or actions, modifying them, and then withdrawing the projection to achieve a transformation in internal cognition (Moore & Gillette, 1990). It is important to note that animism and ritual are not merely primitive or outdated practices, but rather reflect a natural state of human consciousness that has been suppressed or "turned off" by cultural and environmental changes, rather than evolutionary ones. This natural state can still be accessed through various means, including psychosis, religious practices, and intentional ritualistic behaviors (Grof, 1975). In times of extreme stress or trauma, individuals may experience a breakdown of their normal cognitive functioning, leading to a resurgence of animistic or ritualistic thinking. This can be seen in the delusions and hallucinations associated with psychosis, which often involve a heightened sense of meaning and connection with the environment (Jaynes, 1976). Similarly, many religious and spiritual traditions incorporate practices that deliberately induce altered states of consciousness, such as meditation, chanting, or the use of psychoactive substances. These practices can help individuals access the preconscious wisdom of their own minds and connect with the living world around them (Eliade, 1959). Even in secular contexts, engaging in intentional ritualistic behaviors, such as art-making, dance, or storytelling, can serve a similar function of integrating the emotional and preconscious aspects of the psyche. By creating a safe, structured space for self-expression and exploration, these practices can promote psychological healing and growth (Turner, 1969). James Frazer and "The Golden Bough" James Frazer (1854-1941) was a Scottish anthropologist and folklorist who made significant contributions to the study of mythology, religion, and ritual. His most famous work, "The Golden Bough" (1890), was a comparative study of mythology and religion that identified common patterns and themes across cultures. Frazer's work was influenced by the concept of animism, which had been introduced by Edward Tylor (1832-1917) as a primitive form of religion. Frazer saw ritual as a means of controlling the supernatural world through sympathetic magic, which operated on the principles of homeopathic magic (the belief that like produces like) and contagious magic (the belief that things that have been in contact continue to influence each other) (Frazer, 1890). The title of Frazer's work, "The Golden Bough," was a reference to the mythical golden bough in the sacred grove at Nemi, Italy. According to the myth, the priest of the grove had to defend his position against challengers, and the successful challenger plucked the golden bough and replaced the priest. Frazer saw this story as a symbol of the cycle of death and rebirth in nature and in human society (Frazer, 1890). Frazer's work was significant in highlighting the prevalence of animistic thinking across cultures and throughout history. He observed that many cultures engaged in practices that attributed consciousness and agency to natural objects and phenomena, such as trees, rivers, and celestial bodies (Frazer, 1890). While Frazer's interpretations of these practices were shaped by the ethnocentric assumptions of his time, his work laid the foundation for later anthropological and psychological studies of animism and ritual. By identifying common patterns and themes across cultures, Frazer helped to establish the comparative study of religion as a legitimate field of inquiry. However, Frazer's work has also been criticized for its reliance on secondary sources and its lack of fieldwork, as well as for its oversimplification and overgeneralization of complex cultural phenomena. His evolutionary view of human thought, which posited a progression from magic through religion to science, has been challenged by later scholars who emphasize the coexistence and interplay of these different modes of thinking (Tylor, 1871). Despite these limitations, Frazer's work remains an important touchstone in the study of animism and ritual, and his insights continue to influence contemporary debates about the nature of religion and the evolution of human consciousness. Julian Jaynes and the Bicameral Mind Julian Jaynes (1920-1997) was an American psychologist and philosopher who proposed a controversial theory about the evolution of human consciousness in his book "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" (1976). Jaynes argued that the human mind had once operated in a state of bicameralism, where cognitive functions were divided between two chambers of the brain. In this state, the "speaking" right hemisphere issued commands, which were experienced as auditory hallucinations, while the "listening" left hemisphere obeyed. Jaynes proposed that the breakdown of this bicameral mind led to the development of consciousness and introspection (Jaynes, 1976). According to Jaynes, the bicameral mind was a normal and universal feature of human cognition until about 3,000 years ago, when a combination of social, environmental, and linguistic changes led to its breakdown. He argued that the development of written language, the rise of complex civilizations, and the increasing use of metaphorical language all contributed to the emergence of self-awareness and inner dialogue (Jaynes, 1976). Jaynes' theory has been criticized for its lack of direct archaeological or biological evidence, as well as for its reliance on literary interpretation rather than empirical data. Some scholars have argued that Jaynes' interpretation of ancient texts and artifacts is selective and biased, and that his theory oversimplifies the complex processes involved in the development of consciousness (Wilber, 1977). However, Jaynes' work has also been praised for its originality and its interdisciplinary approach, which draws on insights from psychology, anthropology, linguistics, and history. His theory has inspired a wide range of research and speculation about the nature of consciousness and the role of language in shaping human cognition (Huxley, 1945). From the perspective of animism and ritual, Jaynes' theory offers an interesting perspective on the experience of "hearing" the world speak. The bicameral mind can be seen as a metaphor for the animistic experience of perceiving the natural world as alive and conscious, and of receiving messages or commands from a higher power (Otto, 1917). Jaynes himself drew parallels between the bicameral experience and certain forms of religious or mystical experience, such as prophecy, possession, and divine inspiration. He argued that these experiences reflect a residual capacity for bicameral cognition, which can be triggered by certain environmental or psychological factors (Jaynes, 1976). However, Jaynes also emphasized the differences between bicameral and conscious cognition, and he argued that the development of consciousness marked a significant evolutionary shift in human history. He saw the breakdown of the bicameral mind as a necessary step in the emergence of individual agency, creativity, and moral responsibility (Jaynes, 1976). While Jaynes' theory remains controversial and speculative, it offers a provocative framework for thinking about the relationship between language, consciousness, and the experience of the sacred. By highlighting the role of auditory hallucinations and inner speech in shaping human cognition, Jaynes invites us to consider the ways in which our mental processes are shaped by cultural and environmental factors, as well as by our evolutionary history. The Changing Nature of Psychotic Experience in America Research has shown that the content and themes of psychotic experiences in America have shifted over time, reflecting the underlying insecurities and forces shaping the collective psyche. Before the Great Depression, psychotic experiences were predominantly animistic, with people hearing "spirits" tied to natural phenomena, geography, or ancestry. These experiences were mostly pleasant, even if relatively disorganized. During the Depression, the voices shifted to being more fearful, begging or asking for food, love, or services. They were still not terribly distressing and often encouraged empathy. In the 1950s and 1960s, the voices became universally distressing, antagonistic, manipulative, and harmful. Themes of hierarchical control through politics, surveillance, and technology emerged. From the 1970s through the 1990s, technology, esoteric conspiratorial control, and the supernatural became the dominant content. Surveillance, coercion, and control were central features. These changes in the nature of psychosis reflect the evolution of collective trauma and the manifestation of unintegrated preconscious elements in the American psyche. As society shifted from an agrarian to an industrial and then to a post-industrial economy, the anxieties and insecurities of each era found expression through the content of psychotic experiences. Interestingly, UFO conspiracy theories have emerged as a prominent manifestation of these unintegrated preconscious elements in the modern era. These theories often involve themes of surveillance, control, and the supernatural, mirroring the dominant features of psychosis from the 1970s onwards. UFO conspiracy theories can be seen as a way for individuals to make sense of their experiences of powerlessness and disconnection in a rapidly changing world, by attributing them to external, otherworldly forces. The case of Heaven's Gate, a UFO religious millenarian group, illustrates this intersection of technology, spirituality, and psychosis. The group's leader, Marshall Applewhite, reinterpreted Christian theology through the lens of science fiction and technology, convincing his followers that their bodies were merely vehicles to be abandoned in order to ascend to a higher level of existence on a UFO. This tragic case highlights how unintegrated preconscious elements can manifest in extreme and destructive ways when left unaddressed. It is important to note that not all UFO experiences are indicative of psychosis, and conversely, not all psychotic experiences involve UFOs or conspiracy theories. In schizophrenia, for example, auditory hallucinations are the most common symptom, while visual hallucinations are relatively rare unless drugs or severe trauma are involved. UFO experiences, on the other hand, often involve a complex interplay of factors, including altered states of consciousness, sleep paralysis, false memories, and cultural narratives. Nonetheless, the changing nature of psychotic experiences in America highlights the profound impact that societal and environmental stressors can have on the preconscious mind. By understanding how these stressors shape the content and themes of psychosis, we can gain insight into the deeper anxieties and insecurities that plague the American psyche. This understanding can inform more comprehensive and compassionate approaches to mental health treatment, which address not only the symptoms of psychosis but also the underlying social and cultural factors that contribute to its development. Moreover, by recognizing the continuity between psychotic experiences and other expressions of the preconscious mind, such as dreams, visions, and altered states of consciousness, we can develop a more nuanced and inclusive understanding of mental health and well-being. Rather than pathologizing or dismissing these experiences, we can learn to approach them with curiosity, openness, and respect, and to explore their potential for insight, growth, and transformation. Ritual as a Psychological Process The work of anthropologists Victor Turner (1920-1983) and Robert Moore (1942-2016) has shed light on the psychological dimensions of ritual and its role in personal and social transformation. Turner's concepts of liminality (the transitional state in ritual where participants are "betwixt and between") and communitas (the sense of equality and bond formed among ritual participants) highlight the transformative potential of ritual. By creating a safe, liminal space for psychological exploration and change, ritual can help individuals process and integrate traumatic experiences and achieve personal growth (Turner, 1969). Turner argued that rituals serve an important function in helping individuals navigate the challenges and transitions of life, such as birth, puberty, marriage, and death. He saw rituals as a way of marking and facilitating these transitions, by providing a structured and meaningful context for the expression and transformation of emotions (Turner & Turner, 1978). Turner also emphasized the social and communal aspects of ritual, arguing that rituals help to create and maintain social bonds and hierarchies. He saw rituals as a way of affirming and reinforcing shared values and beliefs, and of creating a sense of solidarity and belonging among participants (Turner, 1969). Moore, in his books "King, Warrior, Magician, Lover" (1990) and "The Archetype of Initiation" (2001), emphasized the importance of ritual in modern society for personal development and social cohesion. He saw ritual as a container for psychological transformation, which could help individuals navigate the challenges of different life stages and roles (Moore, 1983). Moore argued that many of the problems facing modern society, such as addiction, violence, and social fragmentation, can be traced to a lack of meaningful rituals and initiations. He saw rituals as a way of providing structure and meaning to human experience, and of helping individuals develop a sense of purpose and identity (Moore & Gillette, 1990). Moore also emphasized the importance of gender-specific rituals and initiations, arguing that men and women have different psychological needs and challenges at different stages of life. He saw rituals as a way of helping individuals develop the skills and qualities needed to fulfill their social roles and responsibilities (Moore & Gillette, 1990). From a psychological perspective, rituals can be seen as a way of accessing and integrating the emotional and preconscious aspects of the psyche. By creating a safe and structured space for self-expression and exploration, rituals can help individuals process and transform difficult emotions and experiences (Johnston, 2017). Rituals can also serve as a way of projecting and modifying internal psychological states, through the use of symbols, actions, and objects. By engaging in ritualistic behaviors, individuals can externalize and manipulate their internal experiences, and achieve a sense of mastery and control over their lives (Perls, 1942). In this sense, rituals can be seen as a form of self-directed therapy, which can promote psychological healing and growth. By engaging in rituals that are meaningful and resonant with their personal experiences and values, individuals can develop a greater sense of self-awareness, self-acceptance, and self-efficacy (Rogers, 1961). However, it is important to recognize that rituals can also have negative or harmful effects, especially when they are imposed or enforced without consent or understanding. Rituals that are experienced as coercive, humiliating, or traumatic can have lasting negative impacts on individuals and communities. Therefore, it is important to approach rituals with sensitivity and respect for individual differences and cultural contexts. Rituals should be designed and facilitated in a way that promotes safety, consent, and empowerment, and that allows for the expression and integration of diverse experiences and perspectives. Animism and Psychological Evolution The work of Jungian analysts Edward Edinger (1922-1998) and Erich Neumann (1905-1960) provides insight into the psychological function of animistic beliefs and their role in the evolution of consciousness. Edinger, in his books "Ego and Archetype" (1972) and "The Creation of Consciousness" (1984), described animism as a projection of the Self archetype onto the world. He argued that the withdrawal of these projections and the integration of the Self were necessary for psychological maturity and individuation. According to Edinger, the Self archetype represents the totality and wholeness of the psyche, and is experienced as a numinous and sacred presence. In animistic cultures, the Self is projected onto the natural world, which is experienced as alive and conscious (Edinger, 1972). Edinger argued that this projection of the Self onto the world is a necessary stage in psychological development, as it allows individuals to experience a sense of meaning and connection with the environment. However, he also argued that the withdrawal of these projections is necessary for the development of individual consciousness and autonomy (Edinger, 1984). Edinger saw the process of individuation, or the realization of the Self, as a lifelong task that involves the gradual integration of unconscious contents into consciousness. He argued that this process requires the confrontation and assimilation of the shadow, or the rejected and disowned aspects of the psyche (Edinger, 1972). Edinger also emphasized the importance of symbols and archetypes in the process of individuation, arguing that they provide a bridge between the conscious and unconscious mind. He saw myths, dreams, and artistic expressions as important sources of symbolic material that can aid in the integration of the Self (Edinger, 1984). Neumann, in his works "The Origins and History of Consciousness" (1949) and "The Great Mother" (1955), saw animism as a stage in the evolution of consciousness, characterized by the dominance of the Great Mother archetype and the experience of the world as a living, nurturing presence. Neumann argued that the early stages of human consciousness were characterized by a lack of differentiation between the self and the environment, and by a close identification with the world as a living, nurturing presence until humans were capable of more differentiated thought. Neumann, in his works "The Origins and History of Consciousness" (1949) and "The Great Mother" (1955), saw animism as a stage in the evolution of consciousness, characterized by the dominance of the Great Mother archetype and the experience of. Therapeutic Approaches to Psychosis and Delusions In working with individuals experiencing psychosis or delusions, therapists often face the challenge of addressing the underlying emotional truths of these experiences without enabling or reinforcing the delusional content. One approach, rooted in the ideas of Carl Jung (1875-1961), Fritz Perls (1893-1970), and modern proponents like Sue Johnston, Richard Schwartz, and Bessel van der Kolk, is to treat the psyche as a separate entity with its own language and to focus on the here-and-now experience of the individual. Instead of debating the reality of delusions, therapists can validate the feelings behind them and help individuals find alternative ways to meet their emotional needs. For example, a therapist might say, "You feel alone and persecuted. That must feel terrible. What do you need to feel better?" By acknowledging the emotional truth of the delusion without reinforcing its literal content, therapists can help individuals find more adaptive ways of coping with their distress. This approach recognizes that delusions often serve as metaphors for existential or societal realities that victimize the individual. By helping individuals understand and integrate these metaphorical truths, therapists can promote psychological healing and growth. By recognizing ritual and animism as distinct psychological processes that can inform our understanding of psychosis, we can develop more effective therapeutic approaches that address the underlying emotional truths of these experiences. Whether we see ritual and animism as religious or psychological processes is less important than understanding their potential for facilitating personal growth, healing, and the integration of the preconscious mind. Bibliography Brewster, F. (2020). African Americans and Jungian Psychology: Leaving the Shadows. Routledge. Doe, J. (2023, April 15). Personal communication. Jung, C. G. (1959). The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Princeton University Press. Moore, R., & Turner, D. (2001). The Rites of Passage: Celebrating Life's Changes. Element Books. Nakamura, K. (2018). Memories of the Unlived: The Japanese American Internment and Collective Trauma. Journal of Cultural Psychology, 28(3), 245-263. Smith, J. (2021). The Changing Nature of Psychosis in America: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 130(2), 123-135. Somé, M. P. (1993). Ritual: Power, Healing, and Community. Penguin Books. Further Reading Abramson, D. M., & Keshavan, M. S. (2022). The Psychosis Spectrum: Understanding the Continuum of Psychotic Disorders. Oxford University Press. Duran, E., & Duran, B. (1995). Native American Postcolonial Psychology. State University of New York Press. Grof, S., & Grof, C. (1989). Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis. Jeremy P. Tarcher. Hillman, J. (1975). Re-Visioning Psychology. Harper & Row. Kalsched, D. (2013). Trauma and the Soul: A psycho-spiritual approach to human development and its interruption. Routledge. Kirmayer, L. J., Gone, J. P., & Moses, J. (2014). Rethinking Historical Trauma. Transcultural Psychiatry, 51(3), 299-319. Metzner, R. (1999). Green Psychology: Transforming Our Relationship to the Earth. Park Street Press. van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking. Watkins, M., & Shulman, H. (2008). Toward Psychologies of Liberation. Palgrave Macmillan. Woodman, M., & Dickson, E. (1996). Dancing in the Flames: The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness. Shambhala Publications.

Wounded in similar ways, wounded in similar ways, it sounds like something that a hippie would say, but the truth is we're wounded in similar ways. Hey guys, it's Joel, and I'm going to try and do a quick little podcast today because I haven't done one in for a minute. People have requested that there be video even when it's just me talking and they seem to rank better. So yeah, even though it's just me today, I will put a video up if you want to look at the bags under my eyes that badly. Go for it. So today we're going to talk about ritual and animism and some of the thinkers that I like around those things. One of the things that I think is sort of interesting, if you look at, and you can read about it in my upcoming novella in 2026, but one of the things that I think is really interesting is the way that psychotic experience sort of informs, not informs, but lets us, gives us like secrets about how we think, gives us information about how we think. I mean, there's a huge history in psychoanalytic practice, you know, sometimes ethically, sometimes not so ethically of people seeing psychotic experiences this way where people's

ego is sort of turned off and they're able to just tell you about these deep archetypes and functions of consciousness. Like, you know, Carl Jung famously was working with people who had schizophrenia and he realized that they were telling him, you know, mythology from these really elaborate systems, some that had just been translated or were the cutting edge of academia at that time. And these people were homeless and alcoholic and had no formal education, yet they're telling him Zoroastrian mythology. Well, you know, how are you doing that if this is just something that somebody wrote down in the Bronze Age, and then that was a single experience? Well, it isn't, you't. There are perennial philosophies in how we think. And so not to go on too much about that. This, again, is about ritual and animism is this kind of belief that the world is alive. You see it in things like Japanese mythology. Like I just wrote an episode about Miyazaki, if you like his anime, you know, the guy who did Spirited Away and recently The Boy and the Heron. We have an article on that on the blog. But this idea that there are spirits in a rock and an animal and a

plant in the weather even, you know, and we're sort of just in conversation with these things that I'm alive, but also the world is alive. That would be an animistic worldview. You know, slightly different from pantheism, which says there's like tons of gods, you know, everywhere. I mean, there's this like deep sort of natural world and all the systems that we inhabit are also alive. So you see in animism a lot of reverence for everything. They tend to be cultures that don't double down on greed or exploitation or killing the natural world because you're respecting it as a living creature that you are in conversation with that has power over you. Ritual is a different thing. So ritual, I think, is when you take a set of things, and it can be to enact what we do both

at the same time, we're just fighting about the causation or the reality of it, right? Either a psychological or a metaphysical conversation that you're having through a repetitive or controlled practice, you know? So, if you go to church and you have communion, like, that's a ritual because what you're doing is you're saying, I remember Jesus had a last supper, and I remember that the last supper was a metaphor for him going to die for me, and, you know, his body is bread, his blood is wine, and he said this when he did this. And now we continue to do this in remembrance of him, you know, in the Episcopal church, that's what they say.

So, you know, that is a ritual where we are saying that this thing is connecting us to either psychological, uh, or a metaphysical reality or a little bit of both. And animism, one way to think about it is that you're taking your psychology, your consciousness, and you're turning it down. You know, your ability to be like, the responsibility is turned down a little bit of like, I have to understand the entire world. I have to know everything. I am the only thing that is alive. And I'm taking this image of this other person and this image of this other person and this image of the mountain. And I have to know how to build the engine.

And I have to – you're turning that down a little bit and you're becoming sort of like less conscious or less solely responsible for the conscious ordering of the world so that you can hear the rest of the world be alive. And you can – somebody may be listening to this and they may be pagan or lean animistic and believe in these things as a literal force. Other people are going to understand that as a psychological or anthropological reality, but that's the way to think about it. I'm turning my consciousness down a little bit, my inner voice down a little bit so that I can hear the world you take these forces of the unconscious, these emotional realities in the brainstem, and you project them onto objects to do a reenactment of something or to have power over something in this external way to later have it reflect this internal reality. So say I want to go do a spell, like I want to go down to the pagan store and I'm going to do a spell with some candles. And I look at astrology that speaks to the significance of how I do the ritual and I say, I broke up with my girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever. I'm very sad about it. I don't want to be sad anymore. And why am I sad? I'm sad because I'm missing this thing that is a part of me and so I take a candle

and I light it on fire and I do a ritual where I say this is me you know this little candle and it's missing this piece so I'm going to let it burn all the way down and now that it's burning all the way down and going out I'm going to get another candle so this represents you know this depleted and reduced and depressed and sad me that has been burned all the way down to the ground over the time that I've done my drum circle ritual represents the old me. And I'm going to light this new candle, which represents the new me and all of its fullness that is now not missing anything that has been restored. And I'm going to take, you know, in the ritual circle, this old candle away, or turn the disc that it's on so that it's in a different position, and then put the new candle there. And what I've done is I've said, I'm no longer sad, I am okay, I'm enough, I'm whole, after this setback internally. I've said that externally, right? So that I can later say the internal reality that

this thing that I was doing was describing has changed. Now that I can withdraw this projection back inside of me and I can feel like I've changed this internal reality of being sad to this external practice or this external, maybe it's an external thing that you want, like a new job or something, you're doing a ritual to get it. But that's one way of thinking about ritual is that you're projecting on these objects, then internal reality, moving them around and then withdrawing the projection to have back, you know, that, that, um, uh, change you're wanting change. You want some results from it. Um, whereas animism is a sort of giving up control. You know, ritual is a taking control. And there's a lot of different kinds of ritual. I mean,

this can't go through the entire history of how these things work. But the relationship to something like animism and ritual to psychotic experience is interesting because like you can be psychotic and go to church and take communion, but most people who go to church and do communion are not psychotic. You could, I guess, be psychotic when you are psychotic. You may have animistic phenomenon where you hear things that otherwise are not there speaking to you. But that doesn't mean – I don't think everybody who believes in animism, who experiences it, is psychotic because for a large period of our development, I mean, this episode is kind of a sequel to that Neolithic anthropology, that architecture, Neolithic architecture, one about the Dolmen, because a lot of people

responded and this is a follow-up to that. But remember, for a large part of our existence, like our humanity, like we were sort of animistic or if you want to call that psychotic then you're saying that humans were psychotic up to fairly recently on the timeline i mean more recently than the brain changed so then i think there were if you want to define psychosis as any participation in in religion like this um which i don't think most people do i've heard some people say that then you have to kind of see that the forces of consciousness is more of a cultural phenomenon than an evolutionary one. Because we were living this way up until fairly recently, where there were just sort of assumptions

about how things worked, that were part of our life that we heard. And one of the early people who kind of examines this is James Frazier, if you've ever read The Golden Bough. And James Frazier is like a really early anthropologist who is going through these different ways of thinking and trying to figure out what it is that makes mythology of the ancient world and the modernist conception of gods and everything, what changed? Why do people think so differently now than they did? I would argue that they don't really. So, James Fraser writes The Golden Bough in, I think, like 1890. And it gets controversial. It gets kind of more popular until the 20s. But it's this comparative study of mythology and religion that looks at these different patterns and religion and the way that people believe things. He's influenced by Tyner's work on animism.

And one of the things that Fraser is looking at is how ritual is this means of controlling the supernatural, that you're controlling something and then you're, and so he comes up with this idea of sympathetic magic that like produces like. If you do a tiny ritual play of rain with dolls or corn or something, that that will actually, because that is like, you know, greater reality of this universe, that the universe will hear it and respond to it. And there's a synthesis between your recreation of this thing in a microcosm and the macrocosm reality that you're trying to control, either to get something out of the universe, like the physical natural world, or in the emotional sphere inside of you or both. There's rituals, I think, where

you're taking the little thing and you're modeling a supernatural reality. And there's ones where you're modeling an internal reality of I want to get over a breakup or I want it to rain on my crops. Those are two different rituals. And then there are places, probably like something like communion or most of the major religions, the things that endure become more broad, where you're doing both. You're talking about a psychological inner state in you, like communion or most of the major religions, the things that endure become more broad, where you're doing both. You're talking about a psychological interstate in you or a spiritual interstate in you and a bigger state in the world. There's rituals that do one, the other, both. And somebody who comes after Frazier, Julian Jaynes. Jaynes is one of those people who I think he's looking at something that is like an unavoidable reality that you have to look at. But then also you're going to be describing that unavoidable perennial reality with a metaphor.

And Jaynes' metaphor is probably not the most popular. It doesn't really work. So in 76, he publishes The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, which is about bicameralism. And there's this idea that the reason that in Greek mythology, you know, we heard gods and people just said, oh, the altar's speaking to me or whatever. The reason that that existed is because we just had a mind that was evolutionary and biologically different, where the creative side of my mind was not cut off from the logical yet, biologically. And so, it would just tell me information, and I would hear Poseidon talk to me when I was trying to get home to Ithaca, and I would just hear Athena tell me that I was going to win this war after I made an offering, you know, at the Parthenon, or the Oracle of Delphi, maybe, you know, it wasn't so much the gas she was huffing, she was just hearing

the voice of the God more. And he's saying that biologically, we used to hear our ideas as physical realities, and that slowly the unconscious mind kind of separated and became something that we could ignore more. But it was still there, but we no longer heard it directly. And, I mean, the book is interesting depending on how literally you want to read it. Jaynes dies feeling like he's not wrong, but he didn't really say what he wanted to say. Right. Um, his perspective is definitely this reaction to behaviorism, like all the behaviorists. Uh, I think the line that he says is that, um, they solve the problem of consciousness by ignoring it, that you can say that you've solved, uh, how cognition and the inner monologue works. If you only study behavior, introduce everything down to empiricism, which is funny because that is the study of behavior and

the study of, I think, cognition are related but separate sciences. But don't tell that to a behaviorist or a cognitive behavioral therapist. So, what James is doing is trying to explain why animism and ritual went away, or we have a different relationship to it. And he's trying to ground that in an evolutionary change in the brain. But the problem is, it isn't an evolutionary change in the brain. It's not a biological change. It is a cultural change. Because these animistic states, these ritual states, they're much less common, but they are still possible, right? You know, like a ton of people have emailed me about how they want me to go to this ayahuasca cult that they do. Or not cult in a bad way, but there's like a group.

It's not just one of them. Multiple people have said like, oh, I like your podcast, whatever. I appreciate it. I'm not going to go do ayahuasca, but I would imagine that if I did, um, you know, fly to the Amazon or whatever, uh, that I could have a very animistic experience on this drug. Maybe if I inhabited that world, talk to those shamans, embodied their reality for a really long time, learn to like turn part of my brain off and listen to the trees. I would just start knowing, you know, on this kind of intuitive spiritual way that it was about to start to rain based on changes in the way the world smelled, based on changes in the way that the world looked, you know,

patterns of light, wind patterns, you know, my unconscious, if I inhabited that space, would just start to intuitively notice these things, you know, if I could really turn intuition on. And when you really turn it on a lot, there is, you know, this unfiltered information where some of those things feel like a message or a knowing or a voice, which a lot of people are scared of, because that's also what psychosis is, right? Like psychosis is just knowing something without there being any evidence or ability to reality test. You know, your creative mind just comes up with something, but your ability to discern what's creativity created for me and what's an outer reality picked up on my senses, it's just gone. You know, I had a patient a long, long, long time ago when I first started social

work as an intern who was very well-spoken and he also was unmedicated and had schizophrenia. And I asked him one time, I said, you know, you're always telling me you figured out what the government's doing with the lasers and that the satellite's here and it's going to beam these words into your head and different things. And you used to read a lot. You go to the library and there are books about gang stalking or books other people write about these things. And you would learn from that. And then you stop doing that when your car quit working. And then you used to have Internet.

So you get on your phone and you'd get on these forums and people talk about how they were persecuted and you would figure things out that way but you've just kind of been in your house alone for a year you haven't gotten on the internet because you hadn't had it you hadn't gone out to the get these things so how do you how are you figuring this out you know just alone in your house you're talking about satellites in space and he told me something that is the best description of a delusion I think phenomenologically you're ever going to get which was you get that feeling where you're wondering if something is true and you start wondering if it's true or not but then you just know that it is and you don't have to do that thing where you figure it out so when you when people hear

animism ritual ritual, whatever, you know, religious experience, I think a lot of times they think you have to be stupid or you have to be delusional to participate in these things, which it isn't. I mean, whether or not, and I'm not even really saying if it's a good thing or a bad thing. I mean, I think respecting the planet a little bit more, treating it like a living system that we are in communication with might prolong our species a little bit longer. But I'm not even saying, you know, what your religious experience should be or what our relationship should be. I'm just saying that the evolutionary capacity for these states of mind is still present

in the species. Like we are still, we want to say, okay, we're modern and they used to be ancient, but that change is cultural. It's not environmental. I mean, it's environmental, it's not biological. You know, the modern human and the ancient human are the same. And so we have the capacity for these states. And I used when I wrote the spider in the birdhouse, which is like, um, uh, a novella that I had published.

It's supposed to come out this summer, but it's actually coming out next summer. Now, um, the publisher wanted to, to wait. so when I was writing that, there's this huge meta analysis of like all of these studies,

um, on psychosis that the government had commissioned going back forever. It was paid for for some – probably NIS or something. I don't remember. I don't have the citation anymore. I did this when I was in grad school. But there's this giant study on like the evolution of psychosis in America. And how you read that as a behaviorist and you don't change what you think

i don't understand um but one of the things was that you know essentially like pre um like pre-depression era psychotic states looked a lot like animism people just spoke to things that either had ancestral or geographic features so you'd have people that were just saying like they're talking to the spirit of their mother or their great-grandmother you know something just that either had ancestral or geographic features. So you'd have people that were just saying like, they're talking to the spirit of their mother or their great grandmother, you know, something just pops up and most of the, with schizophrenia especially, most of what you're going to get,

unless there's any kind of substance use, it's just going to be an auditory hallucination. You're not really going to see things. So that's what they would hear if somebody was schizophrenic or somebody went into a psychotic state due to trauma. Also geographic, you know, the thing that lived in the river, the town, you know, it was the nature of these things kind of spoke to you. And largely they weren't distressing.

I mean, sometimes people aren't as productive when they're psychotic. But the town and the people kind of compensated for it. The idea of the people who were spiritual or people who go into psychosis become violent just wasn't a bias that americans had because it wasn't a reality that we had and then during the depression what would happen largely is those voices started to change into asking for uh help it was like they were needy they were hurting they were hungry they tired, they'd ask if you could help them, or they would just be crying. But there was still this through line of like empathy and compassion in them. Like they were grateful if people spoke to them or helped them. And then also, a lot of times they were encouraging you to help others. So it wasn't even asking for something, it was just saying like, give your money to the poor, you know, get a blanket. Could I have a bite to eat? Can you help me? And also I'll help someone else when I'm back on my feet. It was just this sort of reflective cultural trauma of people were, had nothing, but in

the depression, a lot of them weren't hopeless. Like they still felt like they would pull through this, that the state of the great depression was not the way that the world was going to be forever, even though it changed it a lot. As you lose that greater hope, you know, I'm not going to go through like the Vietnam War and, you know, like all of, there's a lot of other cultural studies that you could cite here, not about psychosis, but there's a lot of things that start to happen post that, um, post like 1960, where people don't think the world will go back to being as good as it was. And you can see

that when you ask about economics, when you ask them about what their generation versus their parents' generation versus their children's generation, you see people start to say, actually, I am hopeless. You don't see that in the depression, even though they have nothing, they're spread lines, they feel like the ship will right itself. So when you get past the Depression, when you start to get into modernism, like in the 50s and 60s, the voices become distressing, they're manipulative, they're antagonistic, and there's always this theme of hierarchical control, fascism or racial superiority or some kind of power struggle. And then as technology picks up 70s, 80s, 90s, just exponentially, the voices become about esoteric conspiracy theories, controlling people with technology. And even if there's a religious characteristic to the delusion, there's some sort of technological surveillance. there's this meta organism of technology growing around us, like a virus that's connecting everything and we can't get away from it. It's something that we

start to like see in psychotic experience. And so what I think is that site and a ton of the ability in that, especially in the nineties for you to talk about your religious delusion, but also your technology delusion and fuse those together was around UFOs because UFOs sort of, they filled in all the blank spaces and where religion or, you know, Christianity, the paradigm of Christianity that Americans had in the 90s was failing to explain the world. Like if you make this stuff more of a technological metaphor, then you can do it, you know, better. Or you can fill in the gaps in the explanatory power of that cosmology. And so, like, I think that what you're seeing through psychosis

changing is you're seeing people's insecurities and their fears about America and what it is and the world that they inhabit be shown to you when they become psychotic because they can't tell the difference in their unconscious insecurity, you know, the emotional world they inhabit, like James is noticing, and the logical one. And a metaphor, like the psychosis, like if you debate that somebody has a dragon in their basement, it's the biggest waste of your time as a social worker. You'll never win that debate. If you try and do psychoeducation and you say before they're stable, you know, when they're psychotic, if you're like, well, the medication will take it away and you think you see that, like that, that is, you're letting them intellectualize and you're letting them confabulate and you think you see that like that that is you're letting them intellectualize and you're letting them confabulate and you will always win that because you're debating an emotion

you know the kind of things that get you places um are when you're starting to say like oh you instead of oh there's not a dragon in the basement there's not a cabal of people coming after you you're making that up you're not actually that important nobody cares what you're saying is like you feel alone and you feel persecuted and that must feel terrible. And I wonder what you need to feel better, you know? And I feel like that sometimes. And we have so little control over our lives, don't we? And I wonder what we do have control over here. You know, I feel like sometimes, you know, I want to make a list of what I can change. You're right. The thing you're talking about, maybe we can't change that. What can we change? And now I'm meaning them in the emotional truth that they're going to defend tooth and nail that I'm alone. I'm persecuted. Nobody

gets me. There's a system that's go out there. Now it's not aliens or it's not the CIA or whatever, you know, most of the time, but that is true. You know, they are part of a class that nobody cares about. They are a bunch of people that a whole lot of people don't really care if they live or die. They are a person who does not fit into this world and that people look at in a kind of judgmental othering bad way. You know, all of these things are real. They're just not real in the way that this person is literalizing that emotion. And so I'm not enabling the psychosis. I'm not saying, well, if you take the pills, they'll kill the dragon. I'm not telling them that this thing is real. I'm only telling them the part of it that is most important is real and that makes everything else irrelevant. And so I think ritual is a psychological process is something that I've written about before. Robert Moore is the UNGN analyst. I don't like all of his work, but where he's most interesting to me is where he's kind of like working with Victor Turner and looking at ritual process and different things. There's this idea of like liminality that comes from Turner,

that there's this transitional state and ritual where the people are between worlds. You know, Joseph Campbell's going to take that and run with it later, even though he's not going to give credit to anyone because Joseph Campbell never gave credit to any of the Jungians that he stole a lot of this stuff from. Well, not stole, I mean, whatever, you know, it's Perennial philosophy. I guess it's free. But he was directly influenced by them, or he was put in touch with these ideas through them. Liminality is there's this transition state where you're between worlds. On one side, you're in the real world. On the other side, you're in the emotional, spiritual world, but that the ritual or that experience is in between them. That, you know, when I go into

the dolmen, when I go into the cave, when I see these paintings, when they read this list of names, I'm not just myself right now. I'm also all of my ancestors that have gone through this when they were my age, long before I was born. And I'm also the entire future of my clan and all of the people that will come after me and i am uniting both the present and the past by being here in this liminal moment you know those are very um those are that's the kind of thing that you get from turner like that understanding of what ritual is doing you know comparative religion evolved i think pretty well with psychology to understand the psychotic the subconscious and you, you got people like Elodie

Murcha saying kind of interesting things, but the idea of like what ritual was actually doing as a psychological thing, not just as a cosmological reflection, I think Turner gets that it isn't just a recreation of, you know, a sympathetic magic. It's you actually trying to pull together two parts of the mind that don't want to go together and sitting through the tension of that opposite or the paradox of those opposites in the same way that a lot of psychologists are describing. You know, Adler says compensation. Jung says the shadow, you know, Freud makes it very sexual and says the id. But they're really saying that there's two opposing forces in the biggest parts of our phenomenological conscious identity as humans. So I got to get my kid from school in just a minute. I'm trying to think of the other things that I really wanted to get to. I know,

I was going to wrap it up with Neumann. So Eric Neumann that I write about a lot, the origins and history of consciousness guy, he takes, he's got more of a philosophy background, at least academically than Jung does. Jung read a lot of philosophy. And so, you know, when Eric Neumann writes, you know, the origin and history of consciousness in 49, I think, 50 something maybe, but he, what he's doing is he's saying, okay, you know, Jung believed in introversion, which there's an inner world, and I believe in extroversion. Jung also believed in extroversion, where there's this external world. And he saw that people were sort of inclined through his personality stuff to notice one or the other more. If you leave me alone in a room, I'm very social. I get along with people.

I'm talkative. I'm highly motivated by relationships and community. But if you leave me alone in a room, I'm going to gravitate towards pulling ideas out of my head and then putting them on paper and then trying to chart that inner world and then trying to go somewhere with that. I'm not going to figure out how to paint a picture to show somebody later because I want them to see it or call my friend. That's just what i would do is probably something like this well i mean i'm guilty alone in a room now so you neumann is saying there's also this process of central version which is where a historical process where the ego was made where the self was made that as animals are evolving as the as the mind is evolving that you have all of these different

forces that are popping up these different um parts of self you know like i had to have a part of me that wanted to mate and and have offspring i had to have a part of me that knew how to like become aggressive and hunt and and threaten the people trying to hurt my offspring i had to have a part of me all of that stuff that gets watered down into evo psych bs and like repackaged on youtube by men's rights guys um like he there was this sort of archetypal unconscious energy when we were an animal and we were an animal because we were like completely part of nature and then slowly we became smarter and when we became smarter. And when we became smarter, there became so many forces, so many drives, or Jung would call them, no, no, no, I'm going to pick between these drives. I'm going to be something separate from them so that I can still hear the evolutionary language, but I can decide when I want to apply it and which one to apply when these

evolutionary forces are disagreeing with one another. I mean, if you want to look at neurobiology, I think that's extremely related to the development of the precuneus because the precuneus in the brain gave us this sense of self. You'll see like on a QEG precunial dysregulation in most trauma patients that have an impaired sense of ability to integrate self and world because this part of the brain is essentially like the hub where multiple other parts of the brain that have different agreements about how to handle information are crossing paths and being reconciled so like of course it's going to be a little stressed if that's a task that is impossible so what neumann is saying is that

these these things um these these drives needed to be forgotten by the mind in order for it to manage them. But now that creates another problem because when the ego is weak or the self is traumatized or the ego is turned off because you took LSD or you have schizophrenia or you have enough trauma to create a psychotic experience or maybe you dissociate when you go into lots of things, those forces become unmanaged. And then they start to be unconscious emotional reactions that can't be understood logically. And so the ego is going to be very inclined to deny them and say, oh, those just aren't real. They're not there. I didn't really say that. Or I said that because, which is what somebody with schizophrenia is doing. But it's also the way that everyone

deflects when I'm like, no, every single time in marriage counseling, your wife says this, you get upset. Oh no, I was just in a bad mood. I just ate a thing. Okay, well, 80 times in a row. Well, I just, okay. That's the way that all of us don't want to pretend that our emotional reality, you know, that archetypal subjective experience that's down there still has power over us. And if we don't notice that, we can't integrate it and it can't be something that the ego notices and uses. So, an anointment is interesting, origins and history of consciousness. I also really like Edward Edinger. I always talk to him or I always talk about him. Sorry. Yeah, I know. He was dead before I started doing this, so I haven't talked to him. But Edward Edinger in his book, Ego and Archetype, talks about how there's the ego and the self.

And I think that he doesn't mention Frasier, at least if he does. I've read that book a couple of times and I don't remember him ever mentioning it. So I don't think he does. But that's a weird omission in there because he's almost trying to observe the exact same thing he definitely would have known who he was but he's almost like he probably doesn't mention him in the middle and i'm i've just forgotten and i'm some i'm gonna be stupid someone's gonna send me an email but i don't remember if it is there isn't there edward edinger definitely knows who he is. I don't remember him mentioning Frasier, but so much of his work is going back and sort of like consciousness. And we kind of want to go back into this animistic state. But we realize that if we do,

we aren't really alive in a way that we understand, or we aren't really conscious in a way that we associate with our identity. So it's this confusing experience, that kind of push and pull. But also that we have this objective reality of what I can see, taste, touch, count, you know, ego, consciousness, objective with a subjective reality of what I feel, a mystical nature of self. You know, maybe I can't see it, but I feel connected to the world. I feel interdependent on it. You know, from from an emotional relational standpoint, it is true that the world is a giant living, breathing organism that is alive because it gives us food and it's full of millions of networks that like coexist and talk to each other in order to take care of me and it is sort of my great mother because it lets you know like that that stuff isn't objective but it is still something that like is true right you know from a certain perspective

that objective and subjective mind don't know how to be in the same head. And that the purpose of what, you know, Edward, Edward Endgers, a Jungian, what he would see therapy doing is making them make sense, making them talk to each other and be on the same page. So that even though they're opposites that don't understand each other and don't value each other's perspective, there can be a harmony of that. There can be like a greater resonance in that paradox. Whereas with a lot of people, most people, they repress one and over-identify with the other. And then they resort to that other one in crisis. I mean, think of all the like logical engineer types, like the people who like fight with you online and are like, oh, well, you had a feeling there. That's an ad hominem

absurdum mistake in logic. I am just a perfectly logical being, sir. Like that person is emotionally nuts. Like that person who's pretending to just be a calculator when they go into crisis, like you've all known these people, they become extremely over emotional and then break down. And then a lot of times blame somebody else for that or deny that it happened same thing on the other side what do people who live in a mystical space that is very um just open-ended and subjective and totally about my experience that i feel at any moment when they're in crisis a lot of times those people become extremely logical and edward edward edinger in a way that is not fair or good,

you know, um, like they cling to reason, um, as a way of making meaning when their preferred way of making meaning fails, because they don't have two ways to make meaning that we need as humans, which is the subjective and the objective, the ego and the unconscious self is Edger's perspective.

So that, you know, Edward Edinger doing that, um, I guess is a good ending um i don't really have i don't have a lot more and i need to hop off here uh and go get get my kids but the the thing that is relevant there i think when you're looking at you know animism ritual whatever is we're never going to come up with the best way to uh talk about this we're never going to come up with like the best metaphor i think edgers may be one of the better ones that is out there

but it is still real even though we can't see it you know this this unconscious and we've been trying to grapple with that forever through anthropology through you know uh evolutionary biology through psychology through anthropology through philosophy, you know, evolutionary biology, through psychology, through anthropology, through philosophy, a lot of the time that is leaning this way, that there's this problem with object relations where our inner world doesn't match our outer world. You know, the world that I live in isn't really the one I want to or the one that I feel like I should live in. And these two realities are colliding against each other. And we're trying to make sense of it by making these pictures of it. And maybe like instead of seeing all of this stuff as like as like right, yeah, the moon and the stars move around in the sky, but then Stonehenge also is able to capture and reflect and predict the way that the this day i'm still in the position of you know where the moon is

during march so i'm saying that i want the harvest to be good later on you know like a model within a model within a model you know a synecdoche uh when you have like uh things that are reflecting indefinitely that i make a representation of my own emotion with art and now other people can see it and other people are looking at my internal emotional world in this external world all of that art myth mythology the development of our relationship between the unconscious and subconscious you know unconscious and conscious mind i think that magic is in there um in a way where um what you're seeing is like cognition get weird. Like the brain reflect itself through metaphor in a way that like it can't quite understand, but it's sort of designed to do because that is like this greater resonance that helps resolve issues. And there's not a way to put that well. I mean,

I'm certainly not putting that well right now trying to summarize these things. But the point of that is that it's inevitable. And so we sort of have to reflect on it a little bit or learn how to deal with it. And when we do, you start to see, I think, religion and conspiracy theory and artistic practice and a lot of those things in a more gentle one, but also like more nuanced way. And then two, we see a ton of the people that are fighting about politics or fighting about religion or fighting about, you know, am I the victim? Do I get to be the victim? Are you the victim? Is victimhood real? You know, all of these things where they're trying to do this in this emotional way, but it really isn't about emotion. Like it's about their inability to, or in a logical way, when it really is about emotion, that we have this dual nature of logic, intellect, objective nature, and subjective, you know, subcortical.

Yeah, and there's trauma and there's intuition and there's all this stuff down there in the brainstem too. You know, voices of self that both want to be heard. And what civilization or modern civilization did was turn a lot of the subjective parts of self off, or at least devalue them, you know, feel like they weren't as useful. And when it did that, it made them unconscious. And so you have, when I'm talking in the beginning about how people want to say, well, the ancients believed this and then we evolved. Evolution doesn't happen that quickly. Culture happens that quickly. And so you are thinking about when we look at anthropology a lot, evolutionary realities like they are, or cultural realities like they're evolutionary. And they're not, they're cultural. Our culture does affect us. It affects us more than we can notice. And kind of smushing these things together and sitting with them is one of the better ways to get rid of the certainty that leads, because the opposite of lies is the worst kind of psychotherapy. I think that psychotherapists need to be trained a little bit in anthropology, maybe a little bit in philosophy, depending on

how you think, in order to be able to help other people sit with these realities. Because we have to be able to help who walks in. Who walks in the room is different from who we are. And we are all creatures that are 100 million years old. We all have been on this journey for a long time, can partially understand it in our life, but we're still in communion with the way that we evolve, whether we want to think about that or not, we are. And, you know, again, you know, I'm a psychotherapist, not a priest. I'm not, if you want to take these things literally and interact with them, and that's helpful for you, do it. If you want to take these things as evolutionary scientific material realities,

that's fine too. I mean, the result is the same, which is that we understand and not necessarily understand where it comes from, but understand how they affect us. So my point isn't to argue for what's real, essentially. My point is to argue that if you don't acknowledge these things, I'm not telling you where they come from, I'm telling you what will be real is that we mishandled these forces in our culture and in our therapy and our recovery. So, yep. Hope that is a fun, concise episode and answers some of the questions I got about the other anthropology, you know, Dolman episode, the dialectic architecture.

Thanks. Signing off. Wounded in similar ways. Wounded in similar ways. It sounds like something that a hippie would say, but the truth is we're wounded in similar ways