Before We Alter the Mind, Should We Understand It?

Psychedelic drugs are once again being promoted as possible answers to emotional suffering.

But before trying to chemically alter the mind, perhaps there is a more fundamental question worth asking: Do we understand what is causing the problem in the first place?

People are looking for answers.

Anxiety. Depression. Trauma. Painful memories. Irrational fears. Relationship difficulties. Emotional reactions that seem to come from nowhere.

When someone has struggled with these things for years, the promise of relief can be enormously appealing. So it isn't difficult to understand why there is growing excitement surrounding psychedelic drugs as possible mental-health treatments.

Psilocybin. Ketamine. MDMA. LSD.

Substances that many people associate with recreational drug use and the counterculture are once again being discussed in the language of therapy, clinical research and mental-health breakthroughs.

Recently, I read an article titled “New Psychedelic Promises: Same Old Story” in IMPACT Magazine, Issue 184. It examines this resurgence, including the growing industry surrounding psychedelic treatments, reported risks and adverse events, and the history of psychiatric experimentation with mind-altering drugs. New Psychedelic Promises.pdfPDF

But the article left me thinking about an even more fundamental question:

Why are we so eager to alter the mind before we understand it?

What Are We Actually Trying to Change?

Suppose someone says: “I know I shouldn't feel this way, but I can't help it.”

Or: “That happened years ago. Why does it still bother me?”

Or: “I don't understand why I react this way.”

These are remarkably revealing statements.

The person recognizes that something is happening within his own mind that he cannot completely control or explain.

So what is causing it?

Before trying to change the person's mental state chemically, wouldn't it make sense to investigate why the unwanted condition exists?

Why can something that happened 10, 20 or even 40 years ago continue to affect someone today?

Why can a person intellectually know that there is nothing to fear and yet still experience fear?

Why can an otherwise rational person suddenly become angry, anxious or upset far beyond what the present situation seems to justify?

Perhaps these aren't questions to bypass.

Perhaps they're the questions we should be asking first.

What If the Past Isn't Really Past?

Consider a simple example.

Someone went through a painful relationship years ago. Eventually, the person moved on and began another relationship.

Then one day the new partner says or does something relatively innocent—and suddenly there is an intense emotional reaction.

The current situation may not warrant it.

But something about it seems to have connected with something earlier.

Most of us have experienced some version of this phenomenon. We may say someone "pushed my buttons" or that something "triggered" us.

But what exactly got triggered?

That question is central to an entirely different approach to the mind presented in L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health.

A Different Theory of the Mind

Dianetics proposes the existence of what Hubbard called the reactive mind.

According to Dianetics theory, experiences containing pain and unconsciousness can be recorded differently from ordinary memories. Dianetics calls these recordings engrams.

An engram, according to the theory, can later be restimulated when something in the present resembles something contained in that earlier experience.

The person may not consciously recognize the connection.

Yet Dianetics proposes that the earlier recording can influence present thoughts, emotions, sensations and behavior.

In very simple terms:

Something happening today may activate something recorded yesterday.

If that proposition is correct, it presents a very different way of looking at unwanted emotional and mental reactions.

Instead of asking only:

“What can make this feeling go away?”

we can also ask:

“Where is this reaction coming from?”

Those are two very different approaches.

Altering the Mind—or Looking at It?

This is where the contrast with psychedelic approaches becomes especially interesting.

Psychedelic treatments involve substances capable of producing significant changes in perception, mood, thought or consciousness. The IMPACT article raises concerns about the risks associated with such substances and challenges some of the enthusiasm surrounding their increasing use in mental-health settings. New Psychedelic Promises.pdfPDF

Dianetics starts from an entirely different premise.

Rather than introducing a mind-altering substance, its procedures are intended to enable a person to examine experiences that may be affecting him.

The procedure is called auditing.

In Dianetics auditing, an auditor guides another person through specific procedures. The person receiving auditing examines and recounts his or her own experiences.

The auditor isn't there to tell the person what happened, interpret the experience for them or tell them what they should think about it.

The individual looks.

That distinction is important.

The objective isn't to escape from the past.

It is to confront and understand what is there.

New Promises, Old Questions

Today's psychedelic movement can sound extraordinarily modern.

But the use and study of hallucinogenic drugs in psychiatry is not new. The IMPACT article traces some of that history, including earlier psychiatric experimentation involving LSD and other psychoactive substances, and argues that today's enthusiasm should be viewed in light of lessons from the past. New Psychedelic Promises.pdfPDF

That history makes asking questions especially important.

What are the risks?

What are the long-term effects?

What happens when the treatment ends?

And are there other approaches to human suffering that deserve investigation?

These aren't questions people should be afraid to ask.

When something involves the human mind, we should be asking more questions, not fewer.

Maybe Understanding Comes First

Human beings have found countless ways of trying to escape emotional pain.

We distract ourselves from it.

We suppress it.

We avoid people and circumstances that remind us of it.

Some try to numb it.

And now we are hearing increasingly about the possibility of deliberately producing altered states of consciousness as a means of addressing certain mental and emotional difficulties.

But what if we approached the problem from the opposite direction?

Not by trying to get away from what is happening in the mind, but by becoming more capable of looking at it.

Not merely:

“How can I stop feeling this?”

but:

“Why am I feeling this in the first place?”

That is one reason I believe Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health deserves to be read and investigated.

You don't have to accept its propositions simply because someone tells you they are true.

Read the book.

Find out what Hubbard means by the reactive mind.

Learn what an engram is.

Learn how Dianetics auditing is supposed to work.

Understand the theory and procedures for yourself.

Then make up your own mind.

Because as new methods of altering human consciousness are presented as answers to emotional suffering, perhaps one of the most important questions we can ask is also one of the simplest:

Before we alter the mind, shouldn't we first understand it?

Source & Inspiration: “New Psychedelic Promises: Same Old Story,” IMPACT Magazine, Issue 184.