Psychoanalysis as Altering States of Consciousness*

Psychoanalysis evokes and facilitates altered states of consciousness. In the context of psychoanalysis, those various levels of awareness and experiencing are then interwoven to contribute to an enriched or broadened existence within oneself and in the surrounding world. Even though their experience is important, the evoking of those various alterations of consciousness in the course of psychoanalysis is not an end in itself. Rather, in the course of psychoanalysis a person can and does move into heightened consciousness, which itself becomes a creative base in the unending process of enlarging life.

The process of psychoanalysis is akin to that of meditation. They are identical in underlying nature, although the language and focus of one is psychological and the language and focus of the other is often spiritual. Their similarity is more clearly seen as one sears from each the specialized language or differentiating rituals and as one searches for the commonality experience.

When carefully cultivated and practiced, psychoanalysis would not need to make use of other methods or ways of altering states of consciousness. It is a method itself, although the degree to which it is so used will depend, not just on the particular analysand but quite appreciably on the analyst's own ability to engage in the shifts of the multilayered process and to lead or evoke his or her patient's participation.

Common and essential to whatever form of psychoanalysis or whatever practice of meditation are what