When Our Hair Stands on End

Abstract

Karen Peoples, Ph.D., from the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California (PINC) in San Francisco believes that telepathic dreams between patient and analyst are “surprisingly common” and can occur so frequently for some individuals as to seem “quite ordinary.” However, for Karen, the impact of shared similar dreams between her and her patient collided for her “with an electric shock,” making her hair stand on end. She believes that telepathic occurrences often engender non-ordinary states of consciousness in the analyst, states that are markedly altered in contrast to ordinary ego awareness. Further she shows that these states exist across cultures and highlights the importance of expanding our clinical receptivity to and containment of pronounced state shifts in ourselves and in our patients. She proposes a psychoanalytic model of consciousness that places non-ordinary states on a normative spectrum from highly differentiated to highly undifferentiated, and identifies some of the neurological functions underlying psychic states along this spectrum.