Toward an Integral Treatment Methodology for Schizophrenia: Part Five

States of Consciousness

There are two general types of states, ordinary and non-ordinary. Virtually all human beings have access to ordinary states of consciousness. These include: waking, dreaming, and deep sleep states.  The waking realm is that of our everyday relative world. The dreaming realm consists of images, visions, and emotions. The deep sleep realm consists of formlessness, and provides one type of access to the causal spirit.32

Non-ordinary experiences include things such as meditative experiences, drug-induced experiences, peak experiences, near-death experiences, and psychotic experiences.33 These major states are available to human beings at virtually any stage of growth. The way in which those states are experienced and translated depends on the stage of development of the person having the non-ordinary experience.34 These states are available for anyone to experience at any time. States of consciousness are fleeting. They arise and they dissipate. States are temporary unlike stages of consciousness which are permanent.35

Individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia often seek treatment to relieve symptoms associated with altered states of consciousness. These altered state experiences include auditory and visual hallucinations—as well as spiritual emergence/emergency, psychosis, and paranoia. There is a small grain of truth in the schizophrenic experience. Some people are authentically plugged into subtle state realms. In schizophrenia, the self does not filter out subtle realm experiences in the way that it should. Sometimes people with schizophrenia get flooded by these subtle realm experiences –some of which are very authentic. The integrally informed therapist acknowledges and validates these aspects of subtle truth in the client’s experience. The client usually interprets these subtle state experiences narcissisticly, where there is already a great deal of interior wounding that usually, but not always, occurs with schizophrenia. These subtle state experiences need to be looked at from higher levels of complexity. The integrally informed therapist interprets these experiences with the client at the ethno- or world-centric perspective.

Stages of Consciousness

Stages represent the actual milestones of growth and development.36 The Integral Model views development through stages of consciousness beginning with pre-personal to personal to transpersonal levels or stages of development.37 Integral Theory acknowledges over 100  developmental models across all developmental disciplines and cultures. The synthesis of all these developmental models has produced what appears to be the most comprehensive developmental model to date. Stages of consciousness are not linear, rather this evolutionary process envelops as it moves from one stage to the next. As the individual transcends his previous stage of development, he includes it in the next developmental stage. Dysfunction in either the differentiation or integration process of a stage provides the opportunity for the development of pathology.

Pathology can occur at each stage of development and to varying degrees. Schizophrenia is hypothesized to correlate with what appears to be an early developmental fragmentation. Schizophrenia can have origins in any of the four quadrants. Primarily, the etiology appears to be in the Upper-Right quadrant. The integrally informed therapist can do an AQAL (all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all states, all types) analysis to assess risk factors in any of the elements of the AQAL matrix. And the greater the number of risk factors of a particular kind, the greater the likelihood of what we recognize as schizophrenia will occur. It is important to assess the developmental level of one’s client accurately to develop a treatment plan to meet the client where he is. By identifying the developmental level at which the client has fragmentation, the therapist has some foundational knowledge to inform their overall treatment plan.

Filed under: Integral Psychology , altered states, AQAL, causal, consciousness, deep sleep, development, dreaming, dysfunction, ethnocentric, formlessness, fragmentation, Integral approach, Integral model, integrally informed, meditative experiences, pathology, peak experiences, personal, perspective, prepersonal, schizophrenia, Spirit, stages, states, subtle, therapist, transpersonal, treatment plan, Upper-Right quadrant, waking, worldcentric