March/April 2001
Articles on the theme "Controlling the Mind"
Good Servant, Bad Master
by Patrick Plaskett
Recognizing how little we control the
mind. How to gain control.
Choosing Love
by Edward Abel
Releasing ourselves from fear and other
negative energies.
The Greatest Discovery
by Betty Perry
The Silva Method approach to controlling
the mind.
Past Life Alert
by June G. Bletzer
How productively to use our mental
and physical links with past-lives.
Calming the Unruly Mind
by George J. Felos
A lawyer's account of how meditation
can help control the mind.
Moving Into Mindfulness
by Jeanne Fortunato
Of creative visualization, yoga and
meditation.
Thoughtful Use of Reason
by Dolores T. Puterbaugh
Impulse; the traps of the Ostrich,
the Foolish Optimist and the Hopeful Christian; reason and principal.
Your Mind... A Control Issue
by Ernesto J. Fernandez
What is the mind? Is it ours? How can
we control it?
Battle For The Mind
by Charles Larsen
External vs. internal mind control.
Hypnosis and psychotherapy.
Human Vs. Divine Mind
by Rev. Pat Cross
Choosing to use the mind consciously
rather than trying to control the mind. Becoming at-one with the Divine
Mind.
A Wild Horse
by Steve Shealy, PhD
Taming the mind to experience mindfulness.
Informal and formal meditation.
Other Feature Articles
Natural Health Q & A
by Maria Moraca
Of blood sugar levels and chelation
therapy.
What is... Natural Progesterone?
by Vanessa Lee Hurst
The differences between natural and
synthetic progesterone. The relationship to estrogen. How natural progesterone
can help both women and men.
PeopleTalk
Readers' Open Forum
Minerals from Mother Earth
by Judy Power
Features stones for March & April.
Agate and Elestial.
NEW SECTION!
COMMON-SENSE SOLUTIONS
David Findlay
Battle For The Mind
Charles Larsen
Brain-washing, subliminal messages, aliens entering humans through the one orifice we seem unable to close completely our minds. Notions of mind control from without have apparently been with us since time immemorial. Possession by demons appears to be a cross-cultural phenomenon; the fear of being controlled by outside forces is a very frequent delusion in those we term psychotically paranoid.
On the other hand, exerting control over one's mind and the power of mind are exemplified by Descartes' "Cogito ergo sum," i.e. "I think therefore I am." To be human is to be a thinking being.
This dichotomy, external vs. internal mind control seems worth examining.
During the Korean War we first heard of brain-washing when captured military personnel were submitted to conditioning aimed at making them betray their country. It appeared to work quite well at times. However, most of those subjected to the techniques did not "break." What was responsible for the differing results is probably as varied as those involved.
During World War Two the Japanese dropped leaflets on U.S. military bases to demoralize the troops. I have one which portrays a soldier in a fox hole while his wife back home is making love to a "draft dodger" with joyous abandon. Tokyo Rose's sultry voice was another such attempt. These efforts to influence minds, although unsophisticated, were not always without effect.
Mind control from without is an attempt to modify perceptions, both external and internal. The Trojan Horse is a wonderful example of such an attempt in antiquity.
Hypnosis has often been depicted as mind control. In movies of long ago, the mesmerist would swing a watch in front of the subject until the unwitting victim was completely under his control. When Lamont Cranston, a.k.a. The Shadow, clouds minds it is not something the subjects are aware of. He controls their perceptions. (In therapeutic hypnosis my clients always are aware and have control - but my name is not Lamont.)
The idea that humans can be controlled from without is not limited to events as bizarre as Lamont Cranston's efforts to cloud minds. If you look at government attempts to reduce the use of illegal drugs by teens, you see that education and advertising are thought to be capable of so influencing teens that they will cease using those substances. Another attempt to control the minds of others - "for their own good," as many parents used to say when about to paddle the bottoms of their errant offspring.
In psychotherapy, we like to think that we are freeing clients from the control of old, less adaptive influences; that we are respecting our client's autonomy as we work collaboratively to achieve this liberation. Yet the famous existential psychoanalyst Carl Rogers once stated that successful therapy occurred when the "value system of the client more closely approximates that of the therapist." In my fourth decade of therapizing I conclude that clients quite frequently do adopt some of the values of the therapist - hopefully more positively adaptive than those replaced. For the most part, however, they remain quite autonomous.
How then can you achieve more control over your own mind?
How about becoming a hermit, avoiding contact with the outside world? Not appealing? Not too healthy either since the lack of external stimuli can result in psychological decomposition. Also, if you remove all of a person's identities you ripen (or rot, depending on your view) their minds for the implantation of whatever ideas you favor. Anyone who has gone through basic military training has experienced this to a greater or lesser extent.
Some might say they are objective, hence not subject to external influence. Objectivity was once expected of therapists, physicians, judges and police, to mention just a few professions. One might wonder how much pain has been created by such unachievable expectations. Or what pain still is inflicted since that notion is far from dead. However, for many psychotherapists today the term therapeutic objectivity has been replaced by the notion of knowing one's own biases and predispositions to reduce their contamination of the therapy.
There is always bias, distortion based upon irrational remnants from long ago or recent times, and to expect otherwise is unrealistic. When I am impatient with myself for some slight error, is that not an irrational response based upon the input long ago of a parent or other authority figure?
I hypothesize that a means of controlling one's mind is self awareness perhaps it's the best way. In every therapy situation my goal is to assist my client become more self aware: knowing their own biases, vulnerabilities and strengths. This doesn't act as a Teflon shell, making you invulnerable to negative influences, but rather as a filter which allows some weighing of notions prior to accepting them and making them a part of your internal landscape and a basis for action. It also works retrospectively, allowing you to free yourself from negative past influences and distortions, or at least to be aware of them and not automatically act upon them.
Looked at in the above fashion it appears that psychotherapy does indeed have the opportunity to help free humans from less adaptive patterns of thought and actions, to aid them in achieving more control of their own minds.
The terms oppressor and oppressed come to mind because, to quote Stephen Banta, "The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed."
Charles Larsen L.C.S.W. has been practicing psychotherapy
and hypnosis for over thirty years. St. Petersburg, FL. (727) 323-4220.
Pager (727) 438-7509.
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