Narrative Psychiatry: How Stories Can Shape Clinical Practice

8. Alternative Stories: SPIRITUAL THERAPY, EXPRESSIVE THERAPY, AND CULTURAL, POLITICAL, AND FEMINIST THERAPIES

121 chapter eight Alternative Stories spiritual therapy, expressive therapy, and cultural, political, and feminist therapies Mainstream clinical stories only begin to help us imagine alternatives for Mrs. Dutta. This means that narrative psychiatry must look to additional clinical stories for important narrative resources.There are a host of additional approaches on the margins of what we could call “clinical” and many more that move beyond the clinics all together. As a group, I refer to these additional possibilities as “alternative stories,” and the ones I address include spiritual therapy, expressive therapy, and cultural , political, and feminist therapies. Spiritual Therapy Religious and spiritual approaches to psychic difference come from three broad sources: transpersonal psychology, “New Age” alternatives, and specific religious traditions. There are overlaps in these domains, but they all form separate narrative communities, so it helps to review them separately rather than lump them together. Transpersonal psychology initially emerged as a branch of humanistic psychology. Like humanistic psychologists , transpersonal psychologists go beyond the limits (as they see them) of psychoanalysis and cognitive behavioral psychology to explore the full breadth of human meaning and experience. Transpersonal psychologists go even further than most humanist psychologists, however, and have become known as a “fourth force” in psychology because of their willingness to explore the transcendent dimensions of human consciousness— the so-called transpersonal or spiritual dimensions. 122 Narrative Psychiatry These transcendent experiences are difficult to describe and must be considered ultimately enigmatic. Nevertheless, efforts at articulation can be helpful for understanding and evoking these states. Transpersonal psychologist Ronald Valle attempts to “word” the unwordable by describing six characteristics common to transpersonal experiences. These include (1) a feeling of stillness and peace along with a deep sense of being or “isness ” that exists behind all thoughts, emotions, and sensations; (2) an all-pervading aura of love and contentment with all that exists; (3) a feeling of connection to a larger whole that diminishes and dissolves the notion of an individual ego; (4) a radical forgetfulness of the body boundaries and a feeling infinite space; (5) a sense of time hovering or standing still and merging together into an ultimate eternal now; and, finally, (6) bursts or flashes of insight that have an“other-than-me”quality about them, as if the thoughts and words that emerge independently from the person are a manifestation of something greater and/or more powerful than the self alone (Valle 1989, 259). These states of consciousness resemble experiences of mystics from multiple religious traditions throughout the ages.Thus transpersonal psychologists are deeply interested in what Aldous Huxley once called “perennial philosophy” (Huxley 1945). They often turn their attention to wisdom from spiritual traditions such as Hindusim, Yoga, Zen, Buddhism , Taoism, Christian mysticism, Judaism, and Native American cultures . Transpersonal psychologists are generally less interested in becoming devotees to these practices and more in using these traditions for spiritual insights useful for therapeutic guidance in a more secular world. A similar willingness to learn from Eastern religious traditions for spiritual guidance also characterizes a wealth of “New Age” approaches to psychotherapy. There are too many of these approaches to review in detail, so I will focus on two options that provide particularly insightful metaphors for depression.These come from New Age healers who use Yoga and those who use meditation in the care of sadness. Yoga techniques for depression are worked out in great detail by Amy Weintraub in her book Yoga for Depression. Weintraub first became interested in depression through her own experiences. She was treated with mainstream psychotherapy and medication with little response; so she turned to Yoga for help. Within a year of Yoga practice, she felt much better and was no longer taking medication. She was so impressed with the power of Yoga breath- Alternative Stories 123 ing and posture techniques along with the wisdom of the Yogi tradition, she decided to become a certified Yoga teacher. Weintraub uses Kripalu Yoga practices that provide a systematic method for maintaining physical and emotional health. Kripalu Yoga teaches that sadness and suffering come when we are too tightly bound to current reality and therefore cut off from the greater cosmos. “As we live farther and farther from the truth of our wholeness, we become ignorant of that wholeness and live as though we are separate and alone” (Weintraub 2004,13). Yoga practice provides an opportunity to wake up from ignorance , “to transcend our identification with our bodies...