Grof on Social effects of Group Psychology
Stanislav Grof interviewed by Jerry Snider
Jerry Snider: So you see these same four perinatal matrices working themselves out in culture and history, as well as individual lives?
Stanislav Grof: In my book Beyond the Brain, there's an epilogue showing the connections between these matrices and some social/political phenomenon. For example, in a totalitarian regime, people seem to get stuck in the second matrix. It's as if they find themselves stuck in the womb. There's usually a lot of imagery of defecation. Then, when the process moves to the third matrix, you get a lot of these historical images related to revolution.
Lloyd Demause, the New York psychoanalyst/journalist who has studied a number of situations prior to outbreaks of major wars and revolutions, gives examples of how leaders, who were trying to mobilize the nation to war or revolution, all used figures of speech or metaphors related to biological birth. For example, "The enemy is closing in; it is strangling us; it's squeezing the last air out of our lungs." The solution to the political struggle is also presented in terms of birth imagery: "There is light on the other side of the tunnel; I will lead you to life; we all are going to breathe freely again," and so on.
The development of the atomic bomb included six or seven secret codes that used birth symbolism. For example, the plane that carried the Hiroshima bomb was named after the pilot's mother, Enola Gay, and they painted a nickname on the bomb, which was Little Boy. The agreed upon code that was wired to Washington when Little Boy was dropped was "the baby was born."
Jerry Snider: What about our current cultural period? The social climate today has a feeling of hopelessness, of being trapped. People have lost faith in most of our institutions, especially our political institutions. In our urban populations, the rampant crime keeps people feeling trapped. Are we in any single classic stage?
Stanislav Grof: Yes. Many people who have these inner experiences, take a larger look and see that we have now enacted in our world a lot of the elements you would encounter internally when you are in a transformation process. For example, you would encounter tremendous unleashing of aggression. You would confront destructive and self-destructive tendencies within yourself if you have an inner experience. There is also a liberation of repressed sexuality. This has been happening for years. Just about every aspect of sexual behaviour has been openly presented in the media. There are all kinds of very unusual sexual experiments such as S&M parlours, sexual slave markets, fist fucking - all these things have sprung up. So the sexual impulse is sort of being released and acted out, and also the aggressive. There is an increase not only in criminality but in terrorism as well, all over the world. Then you have satanic elements emerging from the collective unconscious. The deep levels of the psyche are now being ventilated.
See: Lightparty for full report.
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