Customer Reviews

Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death, and Transcendence in Psychology (Suny Series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology)

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BEYOND THE BRAIN presents the distilled essence of the lifework of Stanislav Grof, M.D.: the insights and conclusions he has come to as a result of his seventeen years as a
pioneering LSD psychotherapist.

The opening chapter explores the convergence of modern physics with ancient mysticism, and the resulting radical implications for human psychology, thus setting the stage for the rest of the book.

Chapter two, "Dimensions of the Human Psyche: Cartography of Inner Space," describes the stages a person passes through when undergoing a series of low-dose psychedelic therapy sessions; these stages correspond to increasingly deeper layers of the psyche.

During the first few therapy sessions, one relives childhood traumas. Subsequent sessions gradually deepen into a reliving of one's birth, and a confrontation with death. After many such death-rebirth sessions, one experiences the final ego death: a profound psychospiritual annihilation, followed by visions of blinding white supernatural light, with feelings of ecstasy and rebirth. All subsequent psychedelic sessions are transpersonal: embryonic memories, encountering deceased relatives, ESP episodes, etc.

These three levels of the psyche, as revealed by LSD psychotherapy--biographical, death-rebirth, and transpersonal--provide a working model of the psyche.

Chapter three, "The World of Psychotherapy: Towards an Integration of Approaches," describes and critiques about a dozen major schools of psychotherapy from Freud, Adler, and Jung through Maslow and the modern experiential therapies of gestalt, primal scream, and bodywork. Grof feels that each is talking about a different level of the psyche: Freud deals with events occurring since birth, Reich and Rank describe the birth trauma, while Jung and Maslow focus on the transpersonal/spiritual dimension. The author integrates all into a coherent whole: while acknowledging childhood influences, he sees the trauma of birth as primary; he also recognizes the profound healing potential of ecstatic mystical/peak experiences.

Chapter four, "The Architecture of Emotional Disorders," is for me the core of the book. It examines how the birth trauma is the root cause of much psychopathology, from sexual dysfunctions and variations (impotence, sadomasochism, etc.), to extreme violence and aggression (such as serial murders), to neuroses (anxiety, depression, psychosomatic symptoms, and the like), to psychosis. Grof holds out hope of healing for all mental/emotional illness; even with psychosis, he has found that deliberately intensifying symptoms, using experiential or psychedelic therapy, leads to a radical breakthrough and positive resolution.

Chapter five explains why the medical model is ineffective and inappropriate in psychiatry; rather than suppression of symptoms, the author has found that purposefully intensifying symptoms results in spontaneous, autonomous healing.

In chapter six, the various mechanisms of healing are discussed, from abreaction and catharsis, to death-rebirth experiences and reliving fetal traumas, to direct mystical/peak experiences of the divine.

Chapter seven describes hyperventilation therapy as well as other nondrug experiential therapies. It also outlines the basic principles of psychotherapy; Grof Feels that "the psychotherapeutic process is not the treatment of a disease, but an adventure of self-exploration and self-discovery....the client is the main protagonist with full responsibility. The therapist functions as a facilitator" (p. 375).

The book concludes with an epilogue, a fascinating examination of how "in wars and revolutions nations act out a group fantasy of birth" (p. 423), as documented by psychohistorian Lloyd de Mause.

Scattered throughout the book are three dozen or so illustrations, mostly from the author's and others' LSD psychotherapy sessions, which suitably enhance the text and help bring it to life.

This book is not light reading, but to the intellectually curious, motivated layperson or psychotherapist, I believe it will yield its fruits and prove itself well worth reading.

It has served as a guidebook on my own psychotherapeutic journey (involving legal, safe psychedelic therapy complemented by hyperventilation therapy), helping me understand what I am going through, and letting me know what to expect next; it has also helped me understand other people, including their religious fanaticism, sexual preferences, and even, with several persons, their psychotic symptoms.

In conclusion, if I could have only one book in my library (beyond a dictionary and a Bible), BEYOND THE BRAIN: BIRTH, DEATH, AND TRANSCENDENCE IN PSYCHOTHERAPY would be that book.

Other books by Stanislav Grof which I've enjoyed: THE ADVENTURE OF SELF-DISCOVERY, about the author's form of group hyperventilation therapy (which as therapeutic effects similar to psychedelic therapy); LSD PSYCHOTHERAPY, guidelines for psychedelic therapists; and STORMY SEARCH FOR THE SELF, written by Stanislav with his wife Christina, about difficult spontanious psychospiritual awakenings--such as triggered by mystical, near-death, or UFO experiences, and including Christinas's own kundalini/alcoholism crisis--which are often mis-diagnosed as psychosis, and yet have the potential for radical growth and healing.

This book is the most marked up, beat up, and well-thumbed book I have. In my opinion, it's the most complete explanation and synthesis of all that has been studied and written about the philosophy of human existence and transformational psychology. It provides a big picture that clearly explains things no other book even approaches.

Because of my severe clinical depression, I've gone through the normal route of countless anti-depressant drugs and psychiatrists. At the end of my rope, I decided that I am the only one who could help me. I turned to books and my own intellect for help, and in so doing I discovered many wonderful books, especially "Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature" edited by Connie Zweig, "The Psychology of Self-Esteem" and "The Disowned Self" by Nathaniel Branden, "Inner Work" by Robert A. Johnson, and "Life Between Life" by Joel L. Whitton. In my opinion, though, Stanislav Grof's "Beyond the Brain" is the best book ever written for expanding one's consciousness so that we can see how far we can go toward discovering our awesome heritage as human beings and beyond. "Beyond the Brain" has been and still is a tremendous guide to my personal evolution.

I also use Grof's "The Holotropic Mind" for my study.

Read it in 1990 at the age of 29 and was not yet ready to be convinced. Reread it in 1999, older, humbler and still ailing, and found it to be a work so absorbing, so obviously true, that I became depressed at how entrenched medical orthodoxy has been and may continue to be. This book rethinks virtually all aspects of human maturation science, paying crucial attention to the simple observational facts of birthing and how they vary individual to individual in contributing to a staggering range of lasting psychopathologies. The result is one of the essential speculative works of the 20th century. It became the key to my own discovery of long harbored and misunderstood neuroses, and marked the beginning of a long campaign of recovery and personal transformation. This is a massive, clinically-worded text for the advanced psychology reader that testfies to the fact that events of lasting developmental significance happen to many people before the dawn of ego and conscious memory(age 3-4). If you've exhausted all other modern medical strategies for healing without finding whats wrong with you, and are ready to open the door to the huge new world waiting, this is the book. Grof is a caring, brave voice that always allows room for every imaginable personal particular. While it does not provide any firm mechanisms which relate transpersonal phenomena to the biochemical level of functioning, it poses many questions crucial to further investigation in the realm of pure consciousness. The one book by Grof that enters the deepest, most complete account of his thought.

I first encountered Stanislav Grof in the late 'seventies at a seminar held in Pacific Grove, California. He was a featured speaker, and to say that I was impressed would be an understatement.

In this book, he speaks of paradigms--the model of reality that scientists work within, accepting certain basic assumptions. He points out that the Newtonian/Cartesian paradigm (a system of thought based on the work of Isaac Newton and Rene Descartes) is still accepted and the orthodox foundation of precepts in use in psychiatry, psychology, anthropology and medicine. He points out that physics has moved on to a new paradigm: relativity and quantum theory and beyond, while the previously named sciences have languished, and opines that it is time for them to re-examine their fundamental belief structure as well.

Grof said, at the seminar, that he was originally--in Czechoslovakia where he originated--a dyed-in-the-wool Freudian, until he began to perceive difficulties with that approach. He grew from there. He was one of the original medical investigators to use
d-lysergic acid diethylamide in serious psychiatric research, from which he derived some astonishing results.

Grof was formerly Chief of Psychiatric Research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is no lightweight airhead, but rather is a highly qualified, credentialed and credible researcher. This and his other books are well worth your time, if you have the necessary vocabulary and the scientific background to benefit from them.

Grof makes a bold argument that understanding of the perinatal and transpersonal levels changes much of how we view both mental illness and mental health. His research in transpersonal experience evokes serious questions into such areas as reincarnation and the spritual side of the human being.

Joseph H. Pierre [...]

I can't say I'm as enthusiastic about this book as all the other reviewers are. I read this shortly after finishing Grof's book "LSD Psychotherapy", which I found to be an interesting, even excellent, read. "Beyond the Brain" certainly has exciting ideas in it, and is a strong attempt to look at the idea of consciousness in a new light. Grof has much to say about the Newtonian-Cartesian worldview, and makes plain its deficiencies in relation to our concept of the human mind. The book is well researched and covers a lot of ground. Much of what Grof writes about here relates to the field of physics, which he appears to have a firm grasp of.

But, it's also long (400+ pages of text), verbose, and convoluted. A great deal of the book involves psychological/emotional issues, which Grof categorizes according to his concept of "COEX systems". He also discussed the COEX idea at some length in "LSD Psychotherapy", but I just can't buy into the COEX paradigm. As another reviewer pointed out, it pins most psychological issues directly to residual birth trauma.

If you want a very complex, thought provoking read, this should be just the thing. But don't say you weren't warned.

This book is a bit like a gold mine. There are plenty of nuggets there, but I also found a lot of gravel. I'm no psychotherapist, and I do buy into the concept of a holographic universe and transendental consciousness, which is heady stuff indeed, but the insistance that almost all psychological issues are tied in with birth trauma (perinatal matrices), and the constant references to LSD studies got a bit tiresome after a time. I found the summary of the major (historical) contributors to the field of psychotherapy excellent, and much food for thought in Grof's appoaches to mental "illness" (noting, that he seriously challenges the usual definitions of mental illness, and, indeed, mental wellness). For me the book was a bit of a plow, but definitely worth it for the nuggets.

Stanislav Grof discusses, introduces some great ideas. Many of these would constitute as revolutionary for most of us.
My issue with his book-reference to the review title- is that he repeats himself so much that reading the book became less fun than Chinese torture.
Also he would like to disprove many of today's traditional psychiatric school's findings, but he has a difficult time to built up a comprehensive argument to support his ideas.
I suspect that this is more a sign of bad penmanship than the absence of valuable findings in his field of study.
Still I would recommend the book, because it just might wake people up to a brave new world...