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Modern psychotherapy often presents itself as the most advanced approach to healing the mind. Yet across cultures and throughout history, healers have achieved profound change using methods that fall far outside today’s therapeutic models. Dancing with the Abyss invites practitioners to step beyond conventional assumptions and explore how meaning, belief, altered states, and deeper forms of knowing can transform the way we understand therapy and psychological change.
NB this is a workshop designed for change workers and is different to the previous workshop which focussed on personal development.
Psychotherapy prides itself on being the apex model for treating mental health issues and problems. In reality, it is a confused and limited paradigm, beset by internal contradictions and replete with outmoded, medical-model assumptions that limit, rather than enhance, outcomes. Two assumptions are particularly egregious: 1) psychotherapy works like medicine and 2) pre-existing mental health models, particularly shamanic and esoteric spiritual paradigms, can be dismissed as “merely placebo.”
In truth, every culture has included gifted healers who independently discovered the apex practices of change and transformation. These “therapeutic wizards” attributed their successes to their mastery of the “secret knowledge” or gnosis. Aldous Huxley, in his book, The Perennial Philosophy, documented the existence of such healers and explored the secret knowledge that unites all their practices.
Moreover, psychotherapy involves “changing one’s mind” and mind exists in a constructed reality that is much more fluid and amorphous than the somatic realities addressed by the medical model. Social Constructionism is the modern discipline that both grasps the nature of mind and points towards nodes of intervention and understanding.
Finally, constructivism, when taken to its limits,always encounters a “relativity problem.” When anything can be deconstructed, a healer can find themselves without a place to stand. Happily, the gnosis inherent in shamanism and mysticism can resolve this issue by ensuring that all conceptualizations, interventions, and debriefings are grounded in what Paul Tillich calls “an ultimate concern.”
In sum, this workshop examines psychotherapy from a cross-cultural, esoteric and altered states perspective. It begins by deconstructing prevailing assumptions about therapy that are both unsubstantiated and counter-productive. The contributions of constructionism and esoteric spirituality are reviewed and pragmatic contributions are highlighted. Finally, the ability to ground interventions and interpretations on a solid path is emphasized.
Background: Standard psychotherapy models are contrasted with alternative models from constructionism and esoteric spirituality. The central goal is to enhance the healer’s options and choices once they understand the tenuous and fluid nature of the therapeutic environment. A particular emphasis is placed on the additional degrees of freedom available once one understands that psychotherapeutic techniques lack inherent power.
Experiential: The workshop is based around six experiential exercises, each of which illustrates a significant aspect of secret knowledge and spirituality. Some of these interventions will be extant psychotherapeutic practices; however, the way they are introduced and explored will reveal how they relate and lead to gnosis. As part of the workshop, there will be an opportunity to present cases and review how they could evolve given a constructionist perspective.
Deconstructionism: Conventional psychotherapeutic practice is based on shared Western assumptions about what is real and what is unreal. Access to secret knowledge requires identifying assumptions that covertly mask the truth and deconstructing them. Berger and Luckmann, noted social constructionists, argue that human suffering is universal and real but that cultures construct unique explanations for the suffering. Understand how these arbitrary constructions limit interventions and lock practitioners into a minimal range of therapeutic possibilities.
Spirituality: The Perennial Philosophy and the Secret Knowledge also have the goal of personal liberation, compassion, and access to the ground of reality. This goal of realization and gnosis is paradoxically related to the freedom and apparent chaos of a fully deconstructed sense of social reality. Paul Tillich, noted existential theologian, worked to update the Perennial Philosophy for modern, Western culture and developed an approach to spirituality that is available to all individuals—from the overtly spiritual to atheists to the undefined. The workshop reviews Tillich’s work and shows how to integrate it into a modern practice of psychotherapy.
Participants: This workshop is designed for all psychotherapists and related healers (coaches, case managers, counselors and facilitators). These ancient principles are designed to fit numerous types of structured and unstructured situations and can be easily adapted to different environments.
Interventions: While specific interventions will be taught and experienced, the emphasis will always be on understanding the fluid nature of therapeutic reality and how to design rituals that maximize client fit, expectations and beliefs. Faith in the inherent power of psychotherapeutic techniques is a misconstrual and one of the chief targets for deconstruction. Healers must do something—literally make interventions—but embracers of gnosis understand that almost anything can be therapeutic if it is framed correctly.
Altered States: Constructionists are expert at understanding how cultures and individuals create realities and the assumptions at the root of such creations. As a corollary, they are equally expert in altered states, levels of consciousness that occur when the therapist helps the client move from secular space into sacred space. The appropriate utilization of altered states is a central strategy in a constructionist-informed psychotherapy.
Lasting Change: According to the Perennial Philosophy, lasting change is always based on the manifestation of a life path that addresses an authentic Ultimate Concern. Each client is on or off their own path and at different stages on their path. Effective healers recognize the nature of their own path, accept the variability in client paths, and cultivate discernment about unproductive paths. Dancing with the Abyss is a metaphor for the dynamic tension between healthy practices and the knowledge that real wisdom and inner peace lie beyond practices. Using a common gnostic metaphor, one must “kill the Buddha to become Buddha.”
In this short introduction video, Dr Stephen Bacon shares a story about Anton Mesmer relevant to Dancing with the Abyss and explains why some of the most powerful forces in psychological change may lie outside the assumptions of modern psychotherapy.
The course is structured in two distinct parts:
Part 1: The first half of the workshop covers The Perennial Philosophy, the lineage of gnosis (secret knowledge), and the problematic assumptions and misconstruals that arise from scientific Psychology’s approach to mental health and healing. Understanding the implications of constructionism for creativity and client fit are covered; finally, there is an emphasis on cultivating a consciousness of the fluidity of the past and present.
Part 2: The second half of the workshop focuses on reprogramming the map of what Kahneman calls the “fast thinking” aspect of the unconscious mind. The central relevance of altered states to change is examined and an exploration of Tillich’s path of Ultimate Concern completes the workshop.
Stephen has a background that bridges spirituality, psychology, and psychotherapy. He has worked as a psychologist in private practice for over 30 years, served as the Vice President for Program Development for Outward Bound USA. He has a Religious Studies degree, and lived in a yoga ashram for almost 6 years.
His current focus has been on exploring how psychotherapy works, the nature of social constructionism, and the connections between spirituality and therapy. He regularly conduct workshops, in the US and internationally, on these topics and have published numerous articles and a recent book, Practicing Psychotherapy in Constructed Reality: Ritual, Charisma, and Enhanced Client Outcomes.
“Despite being on the scene for nearly 150 years, psychotherapy has never has mass appeal. The majority of people who could benefit actively choose not to go. What is more, significant numbers end contact before achieving a reliable improvement in their well-being -25% of more after a single visit. Bacon’s thought provoking book not only explains why but offers a practical and effective alternative for engaging people in therapy and improving outcomes.”
- Scott D. Miller, director of the International Centre for Clinical Excellence
“This provocative book advocates the idea that the therapist is at the core of what makes psychotherapy and effective treatment. Bacon challenges prevailing wisdom by encouraging therapists to develop greater charisma if they want to maximize their impact on client mental health.”
- Michael J. Lambert, Brigham Young University
“I got 20 pages into Practicing Psychotherapy in Constructed Reality: Ritual, Charisma, and Enhanced Client Outcomes and just knew I had to contact Stephen and ask him to share this material. I am glad I did, as Stephen’s work has profound implications for people involved in, or interested in, the whole field of change work”.
- Pete Dalton – Aether and Alchemy
