JUNGIAN ANALYST POSITS “EVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS” IN NEW BOOK, “Living in the Borderland”: Says Transrational Experiences Are Evidence of New Consciousness
For Immediate Release: December 1, 2005
Jerome S. Bernstein, a Jungian analyst, has written a new book (Living in the Borderland / Routledge Press / $34.95 / November, 2005) which claims that just as we are evolving on a biological level, we are as well evolving psychologically.
Chief among the many signs of this shift, being seen in therapist’s offices with increasing regularity, is what Bernstein has termed “Borderland consciousness.” People who are “borderlanders” regularly experience transrational realities – experiences that do not fit into a standard cause and effect logical structure, including, most significantly, a profound sensitively to nature, animals and the environment.
» Read the entire press release
. . . . . .
BOOK REVIEW BY SUZANNE WAGNER, Ph.D.
Published in Spring: A Journal of Archetype and Culture
Spring 2006 Issue
Suzanne Wagner, Ph.D., is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Sausalito, CA and a training analyst at the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. She co-created the feature documentary, Matter of Heart, 1985 and is Director of The Remembering Jung Series: 28 hours of interviews with people who were close to Jung, forthcoming in DVD format.
This is a groundbreaking book for psychotherapists interested in the extension of Jung’s original findings on the dynamics of the ego and the collective unconscious. More broadly, it breaks ground for all people who are reflecting upon the destructive nature of the neurotic, one-sided Western ego. Jerome Bernstein is a man with a unique background of experience, reflection and action. With more than thirty years of experience as a Jungian analyst, he has worked directly with Navajo and Hopi medicine men exploring their healing traditions. He also has worked with the Navajo tribal council in their attempts to sustain healing rituals now in danger of being lost.
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BOOK REVIEW BY KATHRYN G. WHITE, Ph.D.
Reprinted with permission from Psychoanalytic Psychologist, Journal of the Division of Psychoanalysis, American Psychological Association, Fall 2006, pp. 64-65 and 69 with all rights reserved.
Broadly speaking, contemporary Jungian writers fall into three categories: “classic” writers who amplify symbolic themes with little to no reference to psychoanalytic theories, “integrators” who link contemporary Jungian ideas to classic and contemporary psychoanalytic theories, and those somewhere in the middle. Jerome Bernstein’s Living in the Borderland appropriately fits right in this middle territory. He has written a book that will be interesting to many Jungians, that will feel speculative or “flaky” to use Bernstein’s word to many psychoanalytic rationalists, and will stir up some provocative ideas for others.
Living in the Borderland is not a book to introduce contemporary Jungian thought to psychoanalytic readers, but is readable by non-Jungians. Although Bernstein does link his thoughts to psychoanalytic writers such as Joyce McDougall, Robert Stolorow and Harold Searles, his role is neither translator nor apologist. Rather, he uses psychoanalytic thinking as he uses the writings of linguists, historians of medicine and religion, scientific theorists, brain researchers, and Navaho teachers. Within this breadth, Bernstein is careful to introduce his many references. In particular, his description of the Jungian psyche and collective unconscious is short, sweet and clear..
. . . . . .
From Renos Papadopoulos, Ph.D.
Professor: Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex. Consultant Clinical Psychologist: The Tavistock Clinic.
This original and fascinating book advances innovative thinking and refreshing clinical insights of concern not only to academics and professionals but to the general public. Jerome Bernstein proposes and supports his idea of the emergence of a new kind consciousness – Borderland consciousness -- and argues that it calls for rethinking what we traditionally have called “pathology” and re-framing many of our approaches to treatment. Rooted in Jungian thought, this book also impressively applies Jungian concepts to the understanding of environmental illness and trauma.
The author offers new explanations for the meaning of mankind’s split from nature and proposes a new collaborative clinical model involving western medicine, analytical psychology and Navajo medicine as a modality for integrating nature as a clinical tool in the treatment and healing of trauma. His clinical descriptions are as understandable to the layman as they are insightful for the professional. He succeeds in developing a coherent argument that reflects intellectual astuteness, clinical sensitivity and compassion.
This remarkable book will be appreciated by specialists as well as the general reader because it helps us grasp phenomena that are too often erroneously labeled pathological when they in fact represent newly emergent psychic reality of vital importance in our lives in our world of today.
Other Publications of Jerome S. Bernstein
• Living in the Borderland: The Evolution of Consciousness and the Challenge of Healing Trauma, (Routledge, 2005).
• “Collective Shadow Integration of the Jungian Community: Atonement” in: Jung and the Shadow of Anti-Semitism, Aryeh Maidenbaum, ed. (Nicholas-Hays, 2003)
• “Report to the Delegates of the XIIth Congress of the International Association for Analytical Psychology,” in: “Collective Shadow Integration of the Jungian Community: Atonement” in: Jung and the Shadow of Anti-Semitism, Aryeh Maidenbaum, ed. (Nicholas-Hays, 2003)
• “September 11th: Piercing Our Unconscious.” C.G. Jung Society, Seattle Inside Pages In-Depth (September 2001)
• “September 11th: Piercing Our Unconscious.” The C.G. Jung Page (September 2001)
• “On the Borderland” in: The Institute of Noetic Sciences Review, September-November 2000, No. 53.
• “Listening in the Borderlands,” in: The Salt Journal, The Salt Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico, January/February 2000, Volume 2, No. 2.
• “Genocide as an Archetypal Phenomenon” Unpublished paper presented at CIDSE-CARITAS International workshop on Rwanda, Leuven, Belgium, 1995.
• “An Archetypal Dilemma: The L.A. Riots” in The Shadow in America: Reclaiming the Soul of a Nation, Jeremiah Abrams, ed. (Nataraj Publishing, 1994.)
• “Beyond the Individual: Analytical Psychology Applied to Groups and Nations,” in: Carl Gustav Jung: Critical Assessments, Renos Popadopoulos, ed. (Routledge, 1993)
• “Penetrating the Archetypal Dilemma of Racism,” in: Psychological Perspectives: A Journal of Global Consciousness, Issue 27,1992.
• “Workshop on Jung and Anti-Semitism” – Eleventh International Congress of The International Association for Analytical Psychology (IAAP) in: Lingering Shadows: Jungians, Freudians, and Anti-Semitism, Aryeh Maidenbaum and Stephen A. Martin, eds. (Shambhala, 1991)
• “The U.S.-Soviet Mirror,” in: Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature, Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams eds. (Tarcher, Inc. 1991)
• “Victory in Iraq?: A question of Moral Consciousness” in: Psychological Perspectives: A Journal of Global Consciousness, No. 24, 1991.
• “Jung and Anti-Semitism (Workshop)” in Paris 89: Proceedings of the Eleventh International Congress for Analytical Psychology, Marry Ann Mattoon, ed. (Daimon 1991)
• “Beings from within Us,” in: Dreams and Dreaming, (Time-Life Books, Inc. 1990)
• Power and Politics: The Psychology of Soviet-American Partnership, (Shambhala Publications, Inc., 1989)
• “Guest Editorial,” in: Quadrant, Volume 18, No. 2, 1985.
• “Power and Politics in the Thermonuclear Age: A Depth-Psychological Approach” in: Quadrant, Volume 18, No. 2, 1985.
• “Jung, Jungians and the Nuclear Peril,” in: Psychological Perspectives: A Journal of Global Consciousness, Vol. 16, No.1, 1985.
• “The Decline of Rites of Passage in our Culture: The Impact on Masculine Individuation,” in: Betwixt & Between: Patterns of Masculine and Feminine Initiation, Louise Carus Mahdi, Steven Foster & Meredith Little, eds. (Open Court, 1987)
• “Teaching the Mentally Retarded to Read,” in: Journal of Rehabilitation, Vol. XXIX, No. 5. September-October 1963.
reviews in detail:
JUNGIAN ANALYST POSITS “EVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS” IN NEW BOOK,
“Living in the Borderland”: Says Transrational Experiences Are Evidence of New Consciousness
For Immediate Release: December 1, 2005
Liz Williams, WMS Media
publicity@borderlanders.com
Jerome S. Bernstein, a Jungian analyst, has written a new book (Living in the Borderland / Routledge Press / $34.95 / November, 2005) which claims that just as we are evolving on a biological level, we are as well evolving psychologically. Chief among the many signs of this shift, being seen in therapist’s offices with increasing regularity, is what Bernstein has termed “Borderland consciousness.” People who are “borderlanders” regularly experience transrational realities – experiences that do not fit into a standard cause and effect logical structure, including, most significantly, a profound sensitively to nature, animals and the environment.
“Borderland people personally experience the split from nature on which the Western ego has been built,” Bernstein says. “They feel, not feel about, the extinction of the species. They feel, not feel about, the plight of the animals that are no longer allowed to live freely by instinct. They are acutely, sometimes painfully aware of the Earth’s pain as the destruction of nature continues in a pace never before seen in human history. They experience a visceral identification with nature which most Westerners don’t grasp even intellectually. Our medical systems label it and pathologize it, thus compounding the pain these people feel.”
The human mind has never been so glorified, Bernstein writes. Beginning with the Book of Genesis, where man was admonished by no less than God to have dominion over the Earth and its creatures, Western civilization has been estranged from the natural world for more than 2,500 years. In modern times, Bernstein says, “The Western ego has replaced Yahweh as the powerful, guiding force in man’s life.”
However, with the discoveries of depth psychology beginning with the work of Freud and Jung, a new awareness of, and respect for, the more subtle regions of consciousness beyond ego began. Jung’s work with the collective unconscious, his emphasis on dreams and his discovery of synchronicity were pioneering and contributed much to our understanding of the psyche. In fact, Jung’s work remains the only psychology that embraces transpersonal experience and spirituality as an integral part of human experience and an essential consideration in clinical practice.
Clinical psychology and modern medicine are often suspicious of transrational events, calling them at best “phenomena” and at worst, “crazy.” But what if some of these kinds of experiences were actually the result of an evolutionary force, pushing its way into our personalities with the same insistence that genetic mutations have allowed the human species to adapt to new environments? As Bernstein says, “We acknowledge and even applaud our biological evolution. How could it be that our psychological selves are not evolving as well?”
That our rational functions became separated from the transrational dimension is both a disastrous occurrence which has had profound repercussions in ecology and spirituality and one which has meaning. Bernstein passionately and with considerable erudition argues that this evolutionary trend will heal that split and may even be a self-serving mechanism to prevent our species from self-inflicted extinction. As Jung himself said, “Man feels isolated in the cosmos because he is no longer involved in nature.”
Bernstein’s call is for a modified clinical approach that integrates the body-mind divide. In the final section of the book, he explores the rich tradition of Navajo healing which holds promise for providing some of the elements missing in Western treatment models. He discusses a new clinical approach and his collaboration with Navajo medicine men integrating Jungian psychology, Western medicine and Navajo healing in the treatment of such ”Borderland syndromes” as Environmental Illness as well as some auto-immune disorders.
Compelling and controversial, “Living in the Borderland” is an important contribution to the fields of psychology, psychoanalysis, medicine, ecology and spiritual development, and is sure to engender much discussion and debate.
Living in the Borderland: The Evolution of Consciousness and
the Challenge of Healing Trauma, By Jerome S. Bernstein
A Routledge Trade Paperback Original / Nonfiction / November 15, 2005
Jungian Psychology / 1-58391-757-8 / $34.95 / 261 pages
BOOK REVIEW BY SUZANNE WAGNER, Ph.D.
Published in Spring: A Journal of Archetype and Culture
Spring 2006 Issue
Suzanne Wagner, Ph.D., is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Sausalito, CA and a training analyst at the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. She co-created the feature documentary, Matter of Heart, 1985 and is Director of The Remembering Jung Series: 28 hours of interviews with people who were close to Jung, forthcoming in DVD format.
This is a groundbreaking book for psychotherapists interested in the extension of Jung’s original findings on the dynamics of the ego and the collective unconscious. More broadly, it breaks ground for all people who are reflecting upon the destructive nature of the neurotic, one-sided Western ego. Jerome Bernstein is a man with a unique background of experience, reflection and action. With more than thirty years of experience as a Jungian analyst, he has worked directly with Navajo and Hopi medicine men exploring their healing traditions. He also has worked with the Navajo tribal council in their attempts to sustain healing rituals now in danger of being lost.
In this new book, he proposes that we are undergoing a major shift in the nature of consciousness itself. He sees this shift in consciousness as an evolutionary development with its basic source in the mysterious intelligence operating from deep within the psyche and the natural world. He calls this new consciousness Borderland consciousness. He defines a new space—The Borderland — that is opening up between the Western ego and the deeper dynamics in the body, in the natural world and in the collective psyche. He suggests that there are growing numbers of people who exhibit this new kind of consciousness. The “transrational ” communications they receive often reflect the problems experienced in other life forms suffering from the destructive effects of industrialized society. The messages are direct, symbolic and linked to events in the body, culture and nature. They are missed if they are referred only to subjective, perceptual reality. Navajo healers would instantly recognize the kinds of phenomena that Borderland people report and communicate.
The book is laid out in three major sections. Part I begins as Bernstein describes how he opened up to this new kind of consciousness through his challenging work with a woman artist who had suffered severe trauma in childhood. She experienced a special awareness of nature and direct connection to the feelings of animals in her environment. Bernstein listened more deeply and recognized he could not continue to pathologize her feelings and perceptions as defensive, dissociated experience or as projected material. It took an expansion of his feeling orientation, his empathy and his willingness to listen to this patient without clinical judgment to discover her particular gifts of consciousness. His experiences with her are used as a kind of Ariadne’s thread through later sections of the book to help the reader better comprehend the nuances of this new consciousness.
Bernstein then gives a scholarly presentation of the history of the Western ego. He designates the story of the creation myth in Genesis as the source of our orientation to the Word, to logic and to an attitude of total domination over nature. He explores the nature of evolution first explicated by Darwin, and discusses the problems for survival created by “overspecialization”. He shows how we developed an “anthropomorphized ego cleaved from nature”. This development of a rational, narrowly focused ego, favoring thinking and abstraction, has made possible the wonders of scientific discovery and technological development. This had to happen, but now it must change if we are to survive as a species and if life on planet earth itself is to survive our destructive habits. He brings in his understanding of new developments in chaos theory and the psychological notion of a “fragmentation complex” to illustrate the fact that the Western ego is prone to fear of chaos and enacts a super-determined need to control, assuming godlike omnipotence. This focused ego becomes deaf, dumb and blind to new information and to a “survival intelligence” attempting to reach us through experiences which are “transrational” and often appear to the one-sided ego as chaotic, when, in fact, they carry messages of a wider and deeper system of order.
The first section ends with the hopeful idea that human consciousness can change and can begin to cooperate with the larger systems of life intelligence speaking to us in Borderland experience. He writes, What holds hope for our species is a containing dynamic outside the ego. Reconnection with nature offers that since it does connect the ego—in spite of itself—to the transpersonal dimension…the evolutionary thrust is to have a containing/ constraining dynamic outside the ego that can contain its inflation, arrogance, and hubris.(p. 62)
He offers an example of a life-saving decision made by Nikita Krushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, which moved him to back down in the face of imminent nuclear mutual annihilation by the United States and the Soviet Union. He was undoubtedly aware that it would cost him his political life, if not his physical survival. In essence, he placed the highest value on the preservation of life above and beyond the value placed on (geographical, political) power. I call this dynamic that gripped Khrushchev in that moment, ‘moral consciousness.’ (pp. 62-63)
Such consciousness stems from a transcendent place, and “we can choose to behave consonant with it or counter to it.” If we can behave in ways consonant with it, we become “co-evolutionary partners” with the forces in the psyche and nature aimed at sustaining life.
All of this follows the outlines of individuation as it proceeds according to Jung’s discovery: the conscious ego, opening to the collective unconscious, inevitably comes to a confrontation with the greater intelligence and superior powers of the Self. The ego experiences a defeat as the forces of the deeper Self may overwhelm and fragment it but can as well offer new paths for life which are hidden from it. In my view, Bernstein is giving us fresh examples of this phenomenon as it plays out in both individual lives and in the greater dynamics of our current cultural crises.
In Part II, Bernstein takes pains to describe how Borderland consciousness develops out of three different “portals”: (1) evolutionary pressures whose source is the deep unconscious, (2) basic ‘givens’ in personality structure, and (3) the effects of severe trauma. Rational prejudices of most psychotherapists lead them to deal with unconscious material in dreams and symbolic events in reductionistic, categorical and abstract terms. They fail to receive the messages being sent, and they translate them inadequately. This ends up hurting and pathologizing the experiences of Borderland patients. They are apt to resist psychotherapy because it can and often does injure them further. He makes a plea to therapists to be more open, to listen more deeply and empathically to the “transrational” phenomena that are described by patients. Borderland people are carrying grief for the destructive effects of our cultural-shadow and are knowingly and unknowingly doing psychological work toward the transformation of the Western ego. He shows that these people are not necessarily identified with utopian visions, or with a regressive return to a “participacion mystique” with Nature. He differentiates the Borderland person from both the strongly dissociated trauma patient and from the patient who exhibits patterns of Borderline personality disorder.
Things come alive in Part III with the presentation of material relating to the Navajo world-view and ancient healing rituals. The Navajo recognize that a wound to the environment or the spirit in the natural world surrounding the patient can injure the body and spirit of the patient just as much as would a direct assault upon his body and psyche. This view provides a meaningful link to the Borderland phenomena Bernstein has discovered. Both views tell us that our vitality is interdependent with our surroundings at the levels of body, psyche and nature. Healing the individual restores order and brings healing to the environment and vice versa. He discusses the ways in which the mind/body split that we experience can be bridged and healed in depth psychotherapy and through Navajo healing practices. He draws parallels and emphasizes the use of witnessing as a clinical tool and the use of story to reflect new insights into the connection between psyche, body and environment.
Another chapter relates stories of synchronistic phenomena that seem to be attempts to prevent or intervene with untimely death or the onset of destructive diseases. In one impressive example, he tells about his own early detection of cancer in a woman patient using his sensitive reading of the strange qualities in her dreams and the gestalt inherent in a symbolic drawing she did in the course of her therapy. Other examples include stories showing that many people anticipated the World Trade Center attacks in their dreams and imaginative life before it happened. Bernstein also explores issues raised by treatment of Environmental Illness disorders and Attachment disorders. He makes the creative proposal that much could be gained by forming a fully cooperative team effort between Navajo medicine men, analytical psychologists, and environmental physicians to treat such difficult syndromes.
This description gives only the barest outline of the rich, thoughtfully and sensitively presented material in this fine book. It is scholarly as well as anecdotal. There is a wide-ranging bibliography, and there are pithy endnotes for each chapter which illuminate many of the questions that arise in the reader’s mind. There are useful diagrams as well as photos of Navajo medicine men in their native habitat. A sense of being with Bernstein in an intimate and elaborate conversation is created by this unusual balance between scholarly thinking, intuition, and passionate feeling. An Epilogue presents a poetic story, expressing from the Native American view how the world of the white man has been experienced. There is humor, and there are touching and refreshing images to be found here. It presents an imagined invitation to sit together on either side of a Borderland, to meet each other with respect and openness, to exchange and learn from the different ways and special skills each has developed.
It is deeply moving to read this and to remember Jung’s heartfelt wonder when he discovered the depths of spiritual sensibility in the sacred rituals of the Pueblo people and of other Native American cultures. He was moved to realize the close and vital connection with spirit-in-nature shining through all the “life-ways” of the native people. Jung knew the destructive, shadow aspects of his white man’s mentality better than most men of his time. He opened himself to learn from and work with “brown-skinned people” of his dreams, of Africa, of Native America and eventually of many other early indigenous earth cultures. Such experiences were part of Jung’s own discovery of the Self and the defeat and transformation of his ego.
This book presents a challenge and a call to the rest of us to listen more deeply and openly and to see more clearly the dynamics between ego and Self. We need not fall victim to depression, panic or despair as we face the powerful forces at work fragmenting our present cultures and our rational views. Our blind and unconscious ways do need to be given up and sacrificed. We do have some hope of bringing ourselves through this terrifying crisis of unconsciousness that we face at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Bernstein has given us a great gift in the form of this book, to read, to discuss and to contemplate together. We can answer this call by paying more attention, using Bernstein’s cues and discriminating evaluations as a help to discern better the messages carried in our own “transrational ” experiences. This is an exciting prospect that offers us the possibility to heal some of the many old wounds we carry as well as to take us into new lifeways as of yet unimagined.
BOOK REVIEW BY KATHRYN G. WHITE, Ph.D.
Reprinted with permission from Psychoanalytic Psychologist, Journal of the Division (39) of Psychoanalysis, American Psychological Association, Fall 2006, pp. 64-65 and 69 with all rights reserved.
Broadly speaking, contemporary Jungian writers fall into three categories: “classic” writers who amplify symbolic themes with little to no reference to psychoanalytic theories, “integrators” who link contemporary Jungian ideas to classic and contemporary psychoanalytic theories, and those somewhere in the middle. Jerome Bernstein’s Living in the Borderland appropriately fits right in this middle territory. He has written a book that will be interesting to many Jungians, that will feel speculative or “flaky” to use Bernstein’s word to many psychoanalytic rationalists, and will stir up some provocative ideas for others. Living in the Borderland is not a book to introduce contemporary Jungian thought to psychoanalytic readers, but is readable by non-Jungians. Although Bernstein does link his thoughts to psychoanalytic writers such as Joyce McDougall, Robert Stolorow and Harold Searles, his role is neither translator nor apologist. Rather, he uses psychoanalytic thinking as he uses the writings of linguists, historians of medicine and religion, scientific theorists, brain researchers, and Navaho teachers. Within this breadth, Bernstein is careful to introduce his many references. In particular, his description of the Jungian psyche and collective unconscious is short, sweet and clear.
Bernstein strikes out in new psychological territory, which he names “the Borderland.” The word “Borderland,” opens the metaphor of space or territory to describe phenomena “that does not readily fit into standard cause and effect logical structure” (p. xv). The title also implies some reframing of the “borderline” category of psychopathology. Indeed, Bernstein acknowledges the allusion to the diagnosis, and notes that in part he intends the concept to address dynamics that “are sometimes … used as a basic for diagnosing Borderline pathology” (p. 103). However, his goal is to differentiate certain aspects which may be seen in the context of Borderline personalities, but that he believes are not pathological. Whether arising within or without borderline pathology, they are subject to serious misunderstanding and iatrogenic wounding.
By “transrational” he refers to “objective nonpersonal, nonrational phenomena occurring in the natural universe…the kinds of experience that typically are labeled and dismissed as superstition, irrational, and, in the extreme abnormal or crazy.” (p. xv-xvi) Bernstein does not deny the reality of superstition or psychosis. He notes that in the clinical consultation, “Borderland features…are virtually always mixed with/accompanied by pathological features” (p. 137). And he is careful to distinguish between the imaginal world, the source of which is within the individual, and what he sees as the nonpersonal origin of Borderland phenomena. Bernstein feels that differentiating Borderland from pathological elements clarifies pathology and enables a less defended approach to the pathology. At the same time it allows healing of core trauma in the therapist’s witnessing without interpretation or evaluation genuine and often “secret” experience: “A major theme of this book is that there is an increasing number of people who have transrational experiences that are real—not real seeming “as if” experiences, but real” (p. xv-xvi).
Bernstein’s Borderland does not encompass all forms of transrational experience, although his clinical discussion is pertinent to all forms. Rather, he is concerned with a very specific form of experience that can link the individual with “split-off roots in nature.” Bernstein’s term describes a psyche that “straddles the split between the developed, rational mind and nature in the western psyche, and one who holds and carries the tension of that split and an emergent reconciliation of that split at one and the same time.” (p. 17)
This knowing of nature through direct non-scientific, non-dual experience forms the language and clinical examples of the book, while Bernstein’s concerns about environmental blindness and scientific hubris provide the energy to his writing. His long professional and personal relationship with the Navaho tribe have clearly imbued his thinking and impelled his openness to alternative systems of reality. This book centers on issues of nature, using the Navaho world view and healing rituals as anchors. For those who are not captivated with environmental concerns or Native American symbolism, the book might, at first, feel a bit limited. In addition, the Jungian comfort with sliding quickly and matter-of-factly between myth, science and psychological theory may be a bit disorienting to non-Jungians. Jungians, being concerned with not only the personal unconscious, but also the cultural and collective unconscious take for granted that the individual psyche is always linked to social, ecological, and collective issues, and do tend to assume the reader can make the transition without explicit explanation—much as any psychoanalyst needs no one to explain why an early memory of being fed might have meaning. This thinking will be stimulating to some, perhaps less so to others.
Underneath the specificity of the Borderland phenomena that he describes, Bernstein speaks compellingly about what he perceives our western culture as ignoring and actively dismissing. Woven into and underlying every page in the book is a critique of the western mind’s over-reliance on what is seen as “rational,” and the forgetting that the “rational” and “science” itself are mental constructs, extremely useful, but limited in scope. He reminds us of a world outside of the logical, scientifically validated, tangible data that our culture sees as ultimate reality. In this, he takes on a serious critique of the “western ego,” which he sees as caught in narcissistic grandiosity (“inflated,” to use the more common word in analytical psychology.)
In many situations less dramatic than Borderland experience, we have neglected to assert the truth of what is psychologically “real” in deference to our culture and out of a kind of complacency. This neglect through time has caused all of us who are engaged in psychoanalysis and depth psychological work to find ourselves shocked by the literal aspects of current “scientific” and “empirical” approaches and the ridicule and criticism of what we see as the core values of our practice. To us these values have to do with meaning and experience. As “science” sees, we are irrational and our knowledge unproven.
Every time we talk about “the relational field” or the experience of projective identification we talk about non-tangible psychological reality. Our use and understanding of it might be rationalized and justified by some statistical data about what factors influence it, or perhaps even better for the literalists, some brain studies about what happens neurologically. But, these data would not in any way change our primary empirical knowledge of its importance to us in the consulting room. As I was finishing this review, the New York Times online reported that we now have brain evidence that hysteria “actually exists.” Why is brain evidence more valuable than thousands and thousands of hours of consensually validated clinical experience? Are not the tools of science merely the tools of the knower?
We all know experiences that are individual and that cannot be localized with physical
instruments nor always confirmed with statistical rigor. But, if we are good at what we do, we
use them, and all the “science” in the world will not affect our experience of them as “real.”
This realm of experienced human reality is difficult to talk about at best, and even more
difficult when one is in a profession that is seen as “scientific” and logical. So, many of us
never speak of what we accept as meaningful in our consulting rooms. Others of us ignore
and in many ways refuse to allow our patients to bring in these experiences, and others of
us work hard at the mental gymnastics necessary to qualify all of our thoughts and words
into “as if” statements. “It’s as if you felt your father’s soul came to say goodbye to you as
he was dying.”
Bernstein himself, although clearly reasonable and grounded, is not so concerned to be careful, and so he is fearless in his critique and about accepting that perhaps his patient really does know how cows feel. Yet, how often do we experience the synchronistic, the dream about what can’t be known, the experience of seeing something from the ceiling of a room when one’s body is traumatized below? One of the most important points Bernstein raises is that if we adopt a too rational need to fix and understand reality as tangible, literal, testable, then we will shut down what we see, what we hear, what can be said to us, and therefore how we can help our patients. We will tend to pathologize what is not acceptable in our culture, but what might have been taken as insight and truth in another. To accept an experience from a Native American, from a Hmong, or from a Balinese, but not from an American of northern European heritage is to reveal an underlying value system that puts science and rationality as primary.
Questions then: Are we patronizing cultures when we accept from those of particular ethnic heritage experience that cannot be accepted from northern European, as the DSM does for Schizotypal Personality Disorder? Are other worldviews mistaken and Western European more accurate? Can we hold both meanings at the same time? Can we accept that something does seem to exist at times that follows principals of meaning and timing rather than following scientific principals of controlled replication? Can we say “These things don’t happen to me, but they seem to happen to you and I’m OK with not knowing how that works?”
Living in the Borderland will be annoying to rationalists. And there is a bit of choppiness in the style. For example, his constructed epilogue “myth” feels forced and dead, without the emotional energy of his psychological theories. This is not surprising since psychological theories are some of the living myths of our time, and a Jungian should know that the new myth must seem true to be alive.1 A story only works when it feels real, not when it is constructed to prove a point. The impact of Bernstein’s book will lie not in his myth, but in his concept, in his challenges to our own highly defended world views, and in the ideas those challenges provoke.
1 Von Franz (1978): Now if you are critically minded you will say: “All right, but then you simply replace one myth by another—by our myth, the Jungian myth, you could call it.” There one can only answer, Yes, we do that, but… we know that we are doing it, and we know quite well that if in 200 years someone were to read our interpretations, they would say: “Isn’t that funny! ...They translated …myth into Jungian psychology…and thought that was it! But we know that it is —“ and they will bring a new interpretation…Therefore we should never present our interpretation with the undertone of “this is it.”
References:
Kinetz, E. (2006). Is hysteria real? Brain images say yes. The New York Times, online edition, September 26, 2006. Retrieved September 26, 2006, from source. Von Franz, M. L. (1978). An Introduction to the Interpretation of Fairytales. Irvine, TX: Spring Publications, pp. 31-32
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