Michael Washburn interviewed by Paul Bernstein
PB:
You describe the human condition as an interplay between our individual self as
ego (the self we think we are), and a larger realm of vital, spiritual, and
often unconscious forces you call the "Dynamic Ground". How did you
come to this term, "Dynamic Ground," and what does it
MW:
Actually, it took me ten years to write the book, The Ego and the Dynamic
Ground, and I didn't come up with the title until I was very nearly done. So I
was pleased when the concept and
PB:
Now that's a bit surprising. Most traditions see those as two opposed forces --
the "id" versus the "superego", the profane versus the
sacred, "demonic forces" versus "angelic". What led you to
be unwilling to keep those things separate, to reject that traditional dualism?
MW:
That's an extremely important question. There are Gnostic and dualist traditions
that look at religion basically as an otherworldly, disembodied affair and
regard instinctuality on the one hand and spirituality on the other as being in
conflict. They assume that both powers vie for the
PB:
You always put the term "Dynamic Ground" in capital letters. Does that
mean it includes --or stands for -- God?
MW:
It could, but I don't know. I don't really know what the sources of our
spiritual life are. It may well be that what I call the power of the Ground,
which we experience within the context of our own psyche, has its ultimate
source beyond the psyche. The power of the Ground may in fact be the spirit of
God, as we experience it within the intimacy of the soul, and within the
intimacy of our relationships with other people. But I don't know whether it
originates outside the psyche. I suspend judgment on its ultimate source because
a judgment on that isn't needed, as
PB:
In one of your books you have a chart that shows this surprising range of our
personal
MW: Well, Paul, that is a pretty ambitious suggestion. It could lead to a very technical and convoluted response on my part, and I could end up confusing myself and everyone else! But let me see if I can say a few things about the major turning points in life. I do believe that the powerof the Dynamic Ground -- the very stuff of spirituality that emerges within our soul, even if its ultimate origin is beyond our soul -- does manifest through our life in a wide variety of ways which are nonetheless coherent.
MW: At the very
beginning of life, I consider the infant to be embedded in the Dynamic Ground,
and to be very much absorbed in its numinous power. The baby can hardly
distinguish between feelings that arise from within its own body and feelings
that come from its interaction with Mother (or
whoever is the primary caregiver). But after a few months of experience, the
infant begins to discover that some things are connected to its body (like its
fingers and toes) and other things are not (like mother's breast and the bars of
its crib). The infant begins to locate a boundary between its physical self and
the rest of the world and this begins the emergence of our "Body Ego",
our division of the world into "self" and "other"
Nevertheless, this self and other are still warmly contained within an
intimate, cherished relationship of the infant with the caregiver. The baby
still experiences the outer object (the mother or other primary caregiver) along
with an inner correlate, a sort of inner womb along with the outer womb. Besides
enjoying the embrace and nurture of the outer caregiver, we still feel immersed
in the inner ground of our being. Then, as psychoanalytic object-relations
theorists have explained, the baby begins to realize how acutely its safety and
well-being depend upon actions of the caregiver and finds itself in what might
be called an acute approach-avoidance, ambivalent relationship with the
caregiver. On the one hand, the infant is committed to exploring the world, and
to enjoying its independence as a separate being (ego). On the other hand, it
still wants delicious intimacy with the caregiver. This ambivalence -- wanting
to be independent from and merged with the same Mother -- becomes intolerable,
so the child decides that there are two Mothers, the "Good Mother" and
the"Terrible Mother".
PB:
One could say that the Good Mother is the image the baby creates inside his mind
when the real mother holds him lovingly when he wants, and lets him move
independently when he wants. And the Terrible Mother is the image the baby
creates when the real mother ignores him or when
MW:
Yes. And because the relationship between the child and its primary caregiver is
experienced at the same time internally as a relationship between the ego and
the inner ground, this depth dimension of experience also splits dramatically
into two sides, light and dark. Yet such
PB:
But this separation from the anxiety of its dependency is won at a certain cost?
MW:
Yes. To make the passage I am talking about involves serious loss; not just the
loss of intimacy in relationships but also the loss of contact with inner
spiritual resources. The two go hand in hand. So if we are never again as open
to interpersonal possibilities after original repression, neither are we ever
again as open to our inner spiritual resources.
PB:
And what happens after "original repression"?
MW:
After repression, the power of the Dynamic Ground is rendered dormant for the
most part. Original -- or as I now prefer to call it, following Freud,
"primal" repression -- reduces the Dynamic Ground to the power of the
"unconscious". Perhaps it's re-experienced in our dream life at night
--
PB:
Yes. It's pretty clear that the moment of orgasm is a release from entrapment
within the ego and a re-opening to the eternal, and to energies of transport and
union. But immediately after that moment, people tend to hurriedly withdraw back
into their egos. The cliche question of two lovers in bed, "Was that good
for you?", is a question framed by the ego, not an expression of
being-here-now! So would you say
that for adults to end the loneliness they feel from confinement within the
once-safe boundaries of the ego, by risking intimacy with somebody else, means
forcing open those gates of primal repression? And is that why it's so hard for
people to sustain intimacy and why, in the process of trying to make a
relationship work, they often have to go through a psychotherapeutic process? It
would seem that reaching out to others in intimate honesty often requires
undoing the early repression. And doing so can be so fearful and difficult that
we turn to therapy to help guide us through. The defended boundaries that
earlier protected us as children, now restrict us as adults. And adults who
choose not to burst those boundaries we observe as rigid indeed, and unhappy,
confined.
MW:
An excellent point. That is indeed an implication. Deep interpersonal intimacy
is at the same time deep psychodynamic opening. And they both are experienced as
threatening, unfortunately, as much as we may desire them.
PB:
That may also explain why many spiritual traditions find it helpful to lead
somebody through that re-opening of the primal repression by establishing a
warm, trusting, personal, intimate relationship, either in the "teaching
religions" like Hinduism and Zen with their gurus and sensei-masters, or in
some forms of Christianity where the first step expected of someone is to
develop a personal relationship with Jesus -- not to think of him as the entire
Dynamic Ground, so to speak, the entire universal God, but just as another
person, to get a trusting sense of intimacy in
MW:
Yes, I agree entirely. At those junctures in our life when it seems as though
we're opening both to deeper interpersonal intimacy and, correspondingly, to
deeper intrapsychic opening, we
PB:
Besides intimacy, another way that you emphasize for adults to let in the
Dynamic Ground is meditation. Indeed, you call meditation the "Royal Road
to the Unconscious" – reapplying Freud's famous label for our dreamlife.
MW:
Yes, a question I asked myself was, "Once repression has succeeded in
walling off the ego from the Dynamic Ground, how can the ego still access the
unconscious?" One answer is: by quitting the posture that separates the ego
from the unconscious -- a posture of repression and alienation. And that is
accomplished, I suggest, by the practice of steadfast attention -- by NOT DOING.
Not-doing helps to dismantle the resistances by which the ego keeps itself
closed to the influences of the unconscious. And the practice of not-doing is
especially effective when it is combined with a sense of humble, grateful
reverence. But that's only one direction. I also asked myself, "How does
the unconscious contact the ego?" And here I think we can talk about
dreams, about neurotic symptom formation as Freud and Jung did, and about the
therapeutic practices of "free association" and "active
imagination". Also, altered states of consciousness are ways in which the
deep unconscious communicates with the ego.
PB:
When you studied these various methods for reopening communication with the
Dynamic Ground (the unconscious), did you read about them only, or did you also
try to experience them personally?
MW:
My experience was, I think, typical for the time in the late 60s and early 70s.
Eastern spirituality was popular and, yes, I practiced meditation and yoga for
many years. Indeed, the initial ideas of the book grew out of a transformative
process I began to undergo about twenty years ago, a process that could well be
called "a dark night of the soul". It was a difficult period in my
life. I experienced openings which were painful and challenging.
In the midst of that process, I was urgently motivated to understand what
was happening to me, both in terms of the psychology behind the process and the
spiritual potentiality inherent in it.
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*[Editor's
Note: Michael Washburn's first book is The Ego and the Dynamic Ground, and his
second, Transpersonal Psychology in Psychoanalytic Perspective. Both are
published by the State University of New York Press, Albany, NY 12246.].11