CIANS
CONFERENCE 2007
Positive Psychology
& Well-Being
Psycho-Acoustical Transitional
(PAT) Sessions and Well Being.
Clinical applications and
theoretical hypothesis concerning the role of autopoietic phenomena unfolding
during PAT sessions.
Gubert Finsterle, EAP Psychotherapist
Societą Italiana di Psicologia Positiva, AVS
Research – Research and experimental development in the field of
Psychology
Roberta Cacioppo, Clinical Psychologist
Universitą Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano, Dynamic Psychology University Chair
Definition of PAT
session.
We think that the hearing system is
the most direct way to interact with internal brain areas, considering the fact
that the hearing system is active and interacts with brain activity from the
third month of foetal life (Fornari, 1984; Tomatis, 1993; Trzopek et al.,
2002). Therefore, some years ago, I tried to find a way to induce a general
state of brain’s working that activates foetal-neonatal original
patterns.
The hypothesis is that acceding to this
way of brain’s working should have positive general effects towards the
reduction or deletion of dysfunctional patterns related to functional and
affective disorders.
Therefore an audio technology has
been developed, which structure is shown in the next figure, based on the
“construction” of a holophonic sound field obtained by the
microsynchronization of two specular sound fields, one in front, the other
behind the listener (Finsterle, 2003) .
Structure of AVS Audio Virtual
Standard® sound reproducing system.
Front speakers
Rear speakers
The integration of these two sound fields
in a holophonic one is a particular mental operation that opens to a different
space experience that has been defined “Primary Mental Space” (PMS)
(Finsterle, 2006b). The hypothesis is that the foetus and the child, for some
months after the birth (Winnicott, 1971 & 1985), perceive-construct their
first mental events in this Primary Mental Space, that - following this
conception - is also the one where unfolds dreams, or in general autopoietic
constructions of the mind (hallucinations, ecstatic visions, see Margnelli,
Bianchi, Bolelli, Campione, Gagliardi, Garzia & Rossin, 1993).
The specific listening setting used for this
study – labelled PAT sessions – involves the use of a particular
tuning of AVS’s sound reproducing system, simulating the physical and
phenomenological conditions (with closed eyes) of a listening via liquid
without auricle, considered ontogenetically and phylogenetically a
“primary” listening condition.
A fractalic structured sound
stimulus known as Pink Noise (a =
1/f), which is perceived as a noise deprivated from any recognizable form, thus
resulting always identical in time and neutral in relation to mental events
(Finsterle, 2006a), has been chosen for its neutrality, its masking properties
related to the ambient noise and because it is the electrical background noise
emitted by the living systems which self organize their behaviour (Van Orden,
Holden, Turvey, 2003).
The PAT session can therefore be
presented as a completely defined setting from a mathematical-physical point of
view that doesn’t need an interaction with another subject to produce an
evident modulation of the consciousness’ state. The utilization of
an “informal” sound-stimulus
bypasses the problems related to the subject’s mother tongue and his
musical culture. Therefore PAT Session can be defined as a
“primary”, scientific
intervention’s methodology on the mind-body system, of possible
universal application (Finsterle, 2007).
The autopoietic
phenomena and the psychoanalytical dialogue.
Starting from the phenomenology, the
most evident PAT session’s effects are autopoietic productions, some kind
of hallucinated mental construction similar to a dream, witch can reveal
themselves in any sensorial domain (acoustic, visual, kinaesthetic, tactile,
gustative).
By a neuro-physiological point of
view, the most evident phenomena which happens during PAT sessions are cortical
synchronizations, really evident and repeated during the listening time (20
minutes). To these synchronisations are related increases in communication
capability between different cortical neuronal populations and, we think, also
sub-cortical (Aiello, Finsterle 2005; Finsterle, 2007).
By a clinical point of view, the
most evident datum is a clear shrinkage of anxiety and of fears (Aiello,
Finsterle 2005; Finsterle 2006b). We think that these effects are related to an
increase of intra psychical communication, plasticity and efficiency of the
brain-system (Aiello, Finsterle, 2005).
In this contest we want to underline
the aspects related to the application of a psychoanalytical dialogue after the
PAT session to improve the quality of life, because of the increased
subject’s conscious acceptance of the spontaneously emerging new ways to
give sense to internal unconscious fantasies and external events.
We choose this technique because it
seemed particularly effective in investigating both unconscious and conscious
ways of significance.
As basis of our reflection, we
conjecture the existence of a double unconscious dimension: one related to the
phylogenetic or primary contest (the sense of Being before any identification,
Winnicott, 1971; Ferenczi, 1932, Fornari, 1979) and the other linked to the
personal story of the subject (unconscious that structures itself as a
memory-holder by the first life experiences – even intra-uterine).
We believe that PAT session, during
the stimulus’ listening, interacts with a primordial level of psychic
organization, really closed to – and perhaps undistinguishable by the
pure somatic working. This is in consonance with the specific kind of stimulus
we choose and with the measures we made (the cortical synchronization’s
increase during the session and the 100% evocated potentials’ increase recorded after the
session).
All this material has usually
directly to do with some subject’s lived experience, even when it deals with
“somatic” symbolizations: i.e. feeling warm in the chest during the session and
later specifying to the therapist that usually
stomach is aching.
Therefore, in general we can state
that autopoietic productions are the “symbolic” translation - in
the body or through hallucinatory phenomena - of meaning’s unconscious structures, which
manifest relevant themes from an emotive point, usually restructured or
remodulated in new significance’s variations, new logic and emotional
relations. This in itself produces an improvement of the clinical situation and
a relevant psycho-somatic well-being of the subject for about 48-72 hours after
PAT session. Nevertheless, it seems necessary to bring this spontaneous
meaning remodulation to a conscious
level, to stabilize the improvement of mood, relation and resilience capacities
of the subject. Psychoanalytic dialogue seems to have in itself the theoretical
models to understand and develop the
facts happening during PAT session.
Observing the relation between conscious
and unconscious signification’s process, it seems plausible to
hypothesize that the subjective perceived well being and the resilience
capability (effective interaction with the “world’s”
problems) are related with the degree of consonance between conscious and
unconscious way to give sense to the events, consonance that tends to stabilize
the reduction of the level of anxiety, improving the personal skills and
positively influencing also the domain of external stimuli perception (i.e.
sharper view or better hearing).
Furthermore, a relation seems to
appear - on one hand - between the kind (kinaesthetic, sonorous, visual etc.)
and the unfolding’s frequency of autopoietic phenomena and - on the other
hand - the subject’s level of
anxiety and his psychical structure.
Every subject who – tested
with certificate instruments (S.T.A.I., 1989; C.B.A., 1989) – shows a
high anxiety/fear level before the session, show after very reshuffled scores
(typical variation from 95-100 to 30-15). However the way to symbolize anxiety
during the sessions is characteristic for each anxious subject. As a matter of
fact, while someone describes a kind of inhibition to open himself to the
autopoietic dimension if he arrived more troubled than usually, other people
seem to saturate the session with their phantoms and bad thoughts, feeling
later really better, like after a cathartic experience.
An example taken by a study group
made by three psychologists-philosophers, which setting foresaw to write the
phenomena unfolded during the same one (none dialogue was forecasted, to verify
the “auto-therapeutic” potentiality of the access to the
autopoietic dimension), allows us to show both, the concept of autopoietic
production as an autoremodulated construction of unconscious meaning structures,
and the concept of disidentification, essential to describe how the conscious
thinking activity becomes lucid and not invaded from negative emotions.
Psychologist, Age
… the sense of aggressiveness became more and
more obvious and tangible. My aggressiveness’ concreteness shocked me and
I realized it’s a long time that this sense of anger exists and that I
direct it always and only against myself, without ever grant myself a vent, a
crying, or a bad word from time to time.
The awareness increased with PAT sessions, also
because the sound brought me, during the experiment, to disidentificate from
myself. I was able to analyze Clara’s (mine) behaviours, feelings and
unconscious desires, because I lived them as something different from me. For
the same reason for whose it is so simple to see “regularities” in
others’ lives, while with our symptoms we are in great difficulty,
disidentification allowed me to keep the distance and to accept an evidence
that otherwise would have been removed or denied at a conscious level. In this
way the idea of a Matrioska-like thinking was born. During the 8th
session I saw an image of myself and I tried, at a first level of
disidentification, to interpret this image. When this interpretation generated
anxiety, it happened that I shifted to a second level of disidentification,
which allowed me to manage the anxiety felt by the “first myself”
while she was interpreting the vision of myself. It can seem schizophrenic, but
it worked - from the 8th session, exactly – to manage anxiety
movements.
(…) One of the significant changes that I can say PAT sessions brought
me is really linked to aggressiveness’ analysis and expression.
Today I vent more than before. I get my voice louder,
I swear inside my car: briefly, who’s around me thinks I’m more
irascible, but actually I’m only expressing what before was only in my
stomach’s acidity. Perhaps I have an aggressive behaviour, but I have the
sensation that if aggressiveness is directed to the outside it is somehow more
manageable.
I felt very intensely two other effects during this
sessions’ cycle. First, a more free and simple contact with the
unconscious and the most creative part of me: in the days after the session my creative
production was clearly brilliant. Second, an oneiric production more and more
fervid and aware of itself. I found myself dreaming, being conscious that I was
dreaming and, during the dream, giving an interpretation of it. I remember a
dream in which unconscious symbolization represented the “sound”
like a dream, as the communication path between unconscious and conscious
dimensions.
The “lucid regression”,
with the disidentification of the Self from autopoietic events, are perceived
and expounded in very different ways from one subject to another, due to their
psychic structure, to defences’ quality and level, to precise period of
the life they’re living (the same person can react in many different ways
in different sessions). We think we can trace a sort of continuum between a really pleasant and reassuring holding
experience and another characterized by aggressive impulses. After the session,
subjects frequently talk about the sensation of having perceived other people
inside the room (some of them, especially if at their first experiences, open
their eyes to control what’s truly happening around them): on one hand,
someone just relax and find delight in the pleasant, contenitive and loving
touch, on the other hand someone have choleric and persecutory experience of
someone who feels invaded and violated in his intimacy. This difference may
have to do with the saturation of the PMS during foetal-neonatal life with good
or bad emotions and/or for a genetic disposition.
Every person propose very personal
ways to elaborate autopoietic phenomena after the listening sessions. We found
how, both if the subject is able to consciously express his experience looking
for meaning attribution, both if, on the opposite side, he can only feel
eventual changes in his own body’s perception, everybody say something
about changes in their mood, in capability to react to events or in their way
of thinking. It’s just like if they put themselves in a new way in front
of situations that, as a matter of fact, they already know or they can
consider foreseeable.
Conclusion.
PAT session induces mind to produce
autopoietic phenomena, which reveal themselves to be the symbolization of
unconscious meaning structures, different from the one we can experience while
dreaming: it is, to use a musical language, something like a
“variation” on a theme. Meaning construction follows the models
that – Freud (1899) before, Matte Blanco (1975) and Fornari after –
defined and systematized, focused on a symmetric and generalizing logic and on
meaning areas pre-conceived and imagined phylogenetically defined, labelled
“coinemi” (from Koinos: common, see Fornari, 1979, 1981). These
logical structures work together, in autopoietic phenomena, with the
a-symmetric and distinctive logic typical of conscious significance logic.
Self disidentification from
autopoietic phenomena seems to “free” conscious thinking function
and the primordial Self from high negative emotive levels, allowing a keeping
of distance and a re-experiencing of the events (traumatic or not) from a new
point of view, facilitating also new spontaneous conscious meaning
constructions.
These events are in consonance with
the drastic increase of neural communication during the PAT session.
Psychoanalytic dialogue inserts in
this dynamics, facilitating meaning elaboration of lived experiences, both at
the level of unconscious symbolization, both of conscious suggestion.
Supporting consonance between the
meaning that emerge by the two models of construction-interpretation seems to
be an effective way to access to a state of greater well-being, with the Self
and with the other, because the analytic relation focuses, reinforces and
widens the new spontaneous experienced ways to react and give emotional and
rational sense to internal end external events.
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