I just reread the meditation article I posted yesterday. An extract appears below. I’m always suspicious, when I read things like meditation is good for everybody except the mentally unstable, that the people pushing this opinion are trying to keep schizophrenia under the paid protection of psychiatry. Before I wised up, I used to ask the opinion of Chris’s psychiatrists as to different ideas that I would like to try with him, e.g. sound therapy, assemblage point shifts, or even vitamins for crying out loud, and what do you know, they were not in favor of him attempting these things. These things, after all, are not under their control. These kind of weird things, after all, might destabilize him. Well, Chris has tried these weird things, and they have had the opposite effect — they have integrated him.

extract
But Sara Weber, the chairwoman of the Contemplative Studies Project of New York University’s postdoctoral program in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, expressed some skepticism.

“Believe me, it’s a great relaxation and everyone needs to relax, and probably relaxing makes everyone feel better and promotes some of those things,” Dr. Weber said. “And some people can deal with what arises just by calming down. But other people who have been through trauma disassociate and go into a deadened space where they don’t feel. So what happens if that breaks down in the middle of one of those bliss sessions?”

In her experience, Dr. Weber said, the technique could even have adverse side effects. “Some people report falling apart,” she said. “They can have very intense and bad emotional experiences.

You might also like a real life example of this attitude.

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I’m getting sensitive about being “a square.” Tell me that the word “party pooper” isn’t hopelessly out-of-date. Please? I’ve never heard of Russell Brand, the comedian snuggling up to David Lynch in yesterday’s photo. I have heard of David Lynch, though. He’s more my age. The other night I asked my middle son Alex not to drive the car all over “Hell’s half acre.” He broke up laughing.