Psychoanalysis and Post Freudian in Wilber's Spectrum of Consciousness

             Ken Wilber’s spectrum of consciousness model comprises the following four levels: shadow, ego, existential, and mind. To come right to the point, the second force (psychoanalysis and post Freudian) is situated on the ego and shadow level. The first, Wilber (1975) explains that human beings tend to identify with his or her ego. While human beings in the existential level are regarded as organism which has a rational thought, human beings in the ego level are deemed to have a mental picture of his or her total psychophysical organism. The second, Wilber (1975) describes the shadow level in the following: “Under certain circumstances, man can alienate various aspects of his own psyche, dis-identify with them, and thus narrow his sphere of identity to only parts of the ego, which we may refer to as the persona” (p. 110). As mentioned above, human beings in the ego level are likely to identify with his or her whole ego. On the other hand, human beings in the shadow level become gradually able to dis-identify with some aspects in his or her ego.

As well as Wilber’s remarks, psychoanalysis addresses human ego and shadow realm. In psychoanalysis, human ego is defined as “the part of the psyche in contact with external reality” (Frager & Fadiman, 2002, p. 24), and human shadow is described as “an archetypal form that serves as the focus for material that has been repressed from consciousness” (p. 69). I think that the second force is categorized into the ego and shadow level in Wilber’s model in that both of them refer to the same aspects of human beings such as ego and shadow.  

Reference

1 The Spectrum of Consciousness  

2 Personality and Personal Growth (6th Edition)

Quantum Holism

As for the concept of “quantum holism,” I think that the main characteristic of this concept is interdependence. While a mechanistic view which insists that all natural events are like machines or artifacts tends to neglect interdependence, quantum holism pays attention to reciprocal influences in reality. When we think about social issues such as international conflicts, environmental issues, or global economic crisis, the above worldview like mechanism will not give any beneficial clues to these global issues, because in that paradigm, these issues are recognized as isolated ones in countries and never thought as comprehensive issues in the world. As we know, our world is becoming more and more interconnected, so the first step toward a solution of such global issues might be to understand that our world is not separated but closely connected with each other.  

Quantum Society: Nonlocality

Memo: Nonlocality: “The concept of the interconnectedness of all things leads to the last and perhaps the most bizarre tenet of quantum physics” (Zohar & Marshall, 1994, p. 48). This concept challenges the phenomena such as healing from a distance and shared dreams, which can’t be expounded fully in terms of materialistic views. Though this idea of nonlocality is often lionized by New Age people, in fact, thousands of well-controlled researches show the existence of these kinds of phenomena, so we might acknowledge a part of the wisdom of nonlocality which has been regarded as an unscientific concept.
The following book which I don't read yet is also fascinating for me..."Quantum Psychology..." I heard this word in the class.

Radical Nature: Quantum Theory VS Determinism

One of the key concepts in quantum theory is “noncausal.” This term means that quantum events are not causal and intrinsically unpredictable (De Quincey, 2002). This concept refutes the idea of determinism which insists that every event is a cause-and-effect relationship. Of course, this deterministic idea made a numerous contribution to the modern psychics, but it includes an inherent limitation. For instance, the deterministic view couldn’t elucidate the logical connection between one event and another in a certain random event (e.g., weather). Although quantum theory also can’t illuminate the mechanism of a certain random event, it has a value in that it forces us to investigate the view of traditional paradigms (materialism, determinism, etc.).

My Integral Coaching for Whom?

While engaging in Integral Coaching, I just came to think: “For whom do I provide this coaching?” Needless to say, I do it for my clients. That’s right, but my coaching offers tremendous benefits for my growth and development as a human being (I don’t like the word “benefit,” but I can’t find a more appropriate word…perhaps, welfare, well-being…I don’t know.). It is true that I “give” something to my clients as a coach, but at the same time, I obviously “take” or “learn” something important from my wonderful clients.

My coaching is full of agony and joy. In each coaching session, epitome of our life manifest in that moment. I suppose so. I live my life, but I sometimes seem to live others’ life…For whom does my coaching exist in this real world? For me? For my clients? For the universe?

“The Developing Mind”: The Locus of Our Emotion in Our Brain

In this book, the author articulates our emotions like this: “[E]motion is at the core of internal and interpersonal processes that create our subjective experience of the self” (p. 155). To tell you the truth, I have one coaching client right now, who wants to control emotions, so I’ve kept my antenna fully spread out toward “human emotions (trigger, process, mechanism, types of emotions, etc.).” 

This is my assumption, but there seems to be two types of emotions within us: The first is personal emotions, and the second is interpersonal emotions. The former emotions are for example joy, sadness, happiness, and so on. These emotions can be happened without others. On the other hand, the latter emotions are for instance anger, empathy, jealousy, love, and so forth. Generally speaking, these emotions arise from the relationship with others (in a word, these emotions are like psychological projections). Then I came up with the following questions. “Do both types of emotions happen in the same process in our brain? Do they activate the same parts in our brain? Why do we have different types of emotions?; some of them are not toward others, but some of them are toward others.” I’m still searching and thinking about this topic.   

Reference

The Developing Mind: Toward a Neurobiology of Interpersonal Experience

Philosophy in the Flesh [The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought]: Our Body and Conceptual Systems

This book is really insightful, but I had some questions in this book. Below is one of my questions about the author's explanation between our body and conceptual systems.

I found an interesting sentence in this book: “Because our conceptual systems grow out of our bodies, meaning is grounded in and through our bodies” (p. 111). In this book, the author emphasizes the importance of the “body” in our conceptual systems. Regarding this point, the author articulates how our body works for our conceptual systems in the following way. 

Our rational mind (reason) arises from the commonalities of our bodies and brains and the environments we live in. This implies that reason doesn’t transcend our body. Of course, this is a part of his explanations, but if the author’s above explanation is true, our conceptual systems seem to be emanated from our body, and the meaning is embedded in our bodies at first glance. However, I don’t still make sense of the commonalities of these three factors: body, brain, and environment. What are the commonalities between them? Also, the author tries to explain our subjective experience (mind or reason) from objective things (body, brain, and environment), but I suppose this approach seems a categorical mistake between UL and UR quadrant.