Rudolf Steiner's Vision for the Future - Anthroposophical Society in ...

The Radical Re-Visioning of Psychology
Movement II
James Dyson spoke of one of the cardinal dilemmas
of the soul: its separation from substance and the longing
for re-unification with substance. This journey of separation
was explored from an esoteric evolutionary point of
view. Dyson was able to characterize this movement of the
soul as desire and its longing for reunification with
substance as part of the dynamic of human relationships.
Through his explication the world of desire became more
than a polarity of sympathies and antipathies, more than
the psychoanalytic notion of sexuality as the basis of
human maturation. Instead it became filled with an
ontological drive for wholeness, for a sense of completion
that souls seek through relationships with one another.
Movement III
In William Bento’s talk the soul’s relationship with
time was highlighted. He described observations of how
the soul is undergoing a high level of stress due to an actual
acceleration of time. Of particular note were his remarks
about the stream of time coming from the future as being
intensified with images of the Apocalypse, and his sharing
the occult fact reported by Steiner that the etheric (protective)
sheath of the heart would continue to loosen in this
century. Bento inferred that these two phenomena have
created a cultural pathology of Pre-Traumatic Stress
Syndrome. His diagnostic and interventional formulation
of and for this pathology was presented in the following
chart:
30 • being human
Bento concluded by stating a pressing need to transform
the context of psychotherapy from one of encounter
to one of accompaniment — accompaniment as friends
on a universal human path of initiation. In this assertion
Bento struck a note of the radical re-envisioning of
psychology that seemed to pervade and persist throughout
the conference.
Movement IV
From an entirely different orientation than William
Bento, Dennis Klocek was also able to point out another
alarming pathology of our time. Dennis explored a
neuropsychological map of the brain that cast light upon
the rapidly increasing autistic spectrum. If one did not
have a certain respect or reverence for science prior to
listening to Dennis’s cogent and incisive illustrations of
how the soul is at play in utilizing the instrument of the
brain, one would surely have been given reason to do so.
Dennis explained that in the autistic spectrum issues of
sensory integration, spatial perspective, and contextual
meaning (key factors in the limbic region of the brain)
become fragmented, impaired and dysfunctional agents of
processing stimuli. Due to an underlying lack of neural
stability and agility this phenomena tends to lock one into
a set pattern of idiosyncratic behaviors. Yet Dennis also
reported recent research that states one can stimulate and
grow more neurons, thereby giving hope to the autistic
person, whom so many have accepted as souls entrapped
by deficient neurological apparatus.
Movement V
Dr. Dyson returned to his theme concerning the soul
and substance. Referring to Dennis’s neurological map of
the brain James cited the interplay in the two hemispheres
of the brain as possibly depicting how the soul lives in
space and time. This time he probed the mystery of the
will and its role in psychological development. Some of
this content was further developed in his workshop on the
seven life processes, as it can be understood in the domain
of the soul. His thesis led us through the esoteric physiology
of body and soul into Wilford Bion’s radical psychoanalytic
ideas about the foundation for mental