Exceptional experiences (EE) occur frequently within the populations of many countries and across various socio-cultural contexts. Although some EE show similarities with mental disorders, it would be a mistake to identify them in general as disorders. In fact, the vast number of individuals reporting EE includes subclinical and completely healthy subjects. We conducted a comparative empirical study of several characteristics of EE for two samples – one from ordinary population and the other from clients seeking advice. We found surprisingly similar phenomenological patterns of EE in both samples, but the frequency and intensity of EE for clients seeking advice significantly exceeded those for the ordinary population. Our results support the hypothesis of a continuous spectrum between mental health and mental disorder for the types of experiences analyzed.
We present a typology of mind-matter correlations embedded in a dual-aspect monist framework as proposed by Pauli and Jung. They conjectured a picture in which the mental and the material arise as two complementary aspects of one underlying psychophysically neutral reality to which they cannot be reduced and to which direct empirical access is impossible. This picture suggests structural, persistent, reproducible mind-matter correlations by splitting the underlying reality into aspects. In addition, it suggests induced, occasional, evasive mind-matter correlations above and below, respectively, those stable baseline correlations. Two significant roles for the concept of meaning in this framework are elucidated. Finally, it is shown that the obtained typology is in perfect agreement with an empirically based classification of the phenomenology of mind-matter correlations as observed in exceptional human experiences.
The mental system of an individual usually generates a reality-model that includes a self-model and a world-model as fundamental components. Exceptional experiences (ExE) can be classified as subjectively experienced anomalies in the self-model or the world-model or in the relation of both. Empirical studies show significant correlations between specific patterns of ExE and socially and clinically relevant variables. In order to examine the ontological status of anomalous phenomena a psychophysical approach is presented in which the principle of complementarity is of fundamental importance. Applying a generalized quantum theory to psychosocial and psychophysical systems, complementary aspects such as autonomy versus reliability or novelty versus confirmation are identified as possible local and global variables. The findings indicate that entanglement correlations could play a role in the occurrence of ExE and that specific psychological interventions can dissolve them.
Background: Exceptional experiences (EE) are experiences that deviate from ordinary experiences, for example precognition, supernatural appearances, or déjà vues. In spite of the high frequency of EE in the general population, little is known about their effect on mental health and about the way people cope with EE. This study aimed to assess the quality and quantity of EE in persons from the Swiss general population, to identify the predictors of their help-seeking, and to determine how many of them approach the mental health system.Methods: An on-line survey was used to evaluate a quota sample of 1580 persons representing the Swiss general population with respect to gender, age, and level of education. Multinomial logistic regression was applied to integrate help-seeking, self-reported mental disorder, and other variables in a statistical model designed to identify predictors of help-seeking in persons with EE.Results: Almost all participants (91%) experienced at least one EE. Generally, help-seeking was more frequent when the EE were of negative valence. Help-seeking because of EE was less frequent in persons without a self-reported mental disorder (8.6%) than in persons with a disorder (35.1%) (OR = 5.7). Even when frequency and attributes of EE were controlled for, people without a disorder sought four times less often help because of EE than expected. Persons with a self-reported diagnosis of mental disorder preferred seeing a mental health professional. Multinomial regression revealed a preference for healers in women with less education, who described themselves as believing and also having had more impressive EE.Conclusion: Persons with EE who do not indicate a mental disorder less often sought help because of EE than persons who indicated a mental disorder. We attribute this imbalance to a high inhibition threshold to seek professional help. Moreover, especially less educated women did not approach the mental health care system as often as other persons with EE, but preferred seeing a healer.
The results of numerous surveys show that Exceptional Experiences (EE) belong to a human body of knowledge which is historically as well as trans-culturally common. They are frequent within the normal population . Although people with these experiences may develop irritations and alienations requiring treatment in consequence, the medical and psychosocial health care system hardly offers any competent help. In our study data were collected to better understand the clientele, their needs and the reported phenomena. In addition, data show the specific need for care in that area. Starting from N = 858 cases which were taken care of within the years of 1996 and 2000, sociodemographic data and mental health problems of this specific clientele are described. Moreover typical patterns of EE which were found by factor analysis are presented. Based on these patterns different EE-specific types of clients can be distinguished.
Within a state-space approach endowed with a generalized potential function, mental states can be systematically characterized by their stability against perturbations. This approach yields three major classes of states: (1) asymptotically stable categorial states, (2) marginally stable non-categorial states and (3) unstable acategorial states. The particularly interesting case of states giving rise to exceptional experiences will be elucidated in detail. Their proper classification will be related to Metzinger’s account of self-model and world-model, and empirical support for this classification will be surveyed. Eventually, it will be outlined how Metzinger’s discussion of intentionality achieves pronounced significance within a dual-aspect framework of thinking.
David Tresan wrote a truly remarkable commentary to our article on the Pauli-Jung-conjecture and some of its ramifications, a very generous commentary which surely needs no further explanations. We could hardly appreciate more how, with concise insight and the elegance of an experienced writer, he made much of what we wanted to communicate better accessible or even accessible at all. So, nothing remains to be added, really, to this excellent introduction and reflection. However, his metaphor of 'skiing over rocky terrain with many moguls covered by a smooth surface of snow' turns out to be so apt that we cannot resist the temptation to expand a bit on it.The framework of thinking that we reconstructed from the exchange of Pauli and Jung is complex indeed, rocky terrain. And the resulting outline still grossly simplifies many of its more specific features-some difficult, some subtle, some both-for the purpose of endowing the big picture with just enough details to unveil those basic structures, without which enjoyable skiing would be very tough to do. We agree with David Tresan that a big picture with a scope like this is not accidentally metaphysical, it is inevitably metaphysical. Although large parts of the 20th century witnessed an often pejorative connotation with metaphysics, insights into the nature of reality would be impossible without metaphysical assumptions and regulative principles. We thank the editors of the JAP for the opportunity to say some more words about this, emphasizing features that are not so prominent in the original paper and picking up some ideas from Tresan's admirable amplifications.The Pauli-Jung version of dual-aspect monism merges an ontic monism, which is psychophysically neutral, with an epistemic dualism of the mental and the physical as perspectival aspects of the underlying ontic domain. There are important respects in which this framework differs from neutral monism à la Mach, James, or Russell. In neutral monism, the mental and the physical are reducible to the underlying domain, whereas they are irreducible in dual-aspect monism. The reason for this diffference is that neutral monism
This commentary adds some ideas and refinements to the inspiring discussion in a recent paper by Connolly () that makes use of a dual-aspect framework developed by us earlier. One key point is that exceptional experiences (of which synchronicities are a special case) cannot in general be identified with experiences of non-categorial or acategorial mental states. In fact, most exceptional experiences reported in the literature are experiences of categorial states. Conversely, there are non-categorial and acategorial states whose experience is not exceptional. Moreover, the psychodynamics of a synchronistic experience contain a subtle mesh of interacting processes pertaining to categorial, non-categorial and acategorial domains. We outline how this mesh may be addressed in particular cases of synchronicity described by Connolly.
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