On Autism and Psychodynamic Liberation
On navigating the highs and lows of Monday mornings before coffee.
A. Sandra Thom-Jones has a thoughtful Guardian reflection about navigating the workplace as an autistic / neurodiverse person. I have personally not had a good experience. For years, some people thought that my communication style for developmental editing advice was me being “difficult.” I was actually often drawing on life experiences: having the privileged opportunity to work directly with very successful Professoriate and even to meet some Ultra High Net Worth individuals. What such people wanted instead was for the “right” information to come from the “right” people in a status hierarchy - rather than to truly understand the cyberpunk author William Gibson’s insight that “the street finds its own use for things”.
I was formally diagnosed with autism in October 2022. Whilst my report says I’m level 1 there are some people who think I am level 2. I have a trauma history that complicates my phenomenological, subjective experience: “lived experience” rather than “trauma-informed”. In employer disclosed and organised accommodation plan meetings the focus was often on surface-level physical aspects: lighting, noise, headphones, stimming (which I never did before but started to do under stress), and being asked to provide both personal and sensitive information to HR. The actually really significant issues - such as managerial styles, team organisation, and the human factors aspects of work-task execution - were not dealt with at all. I did not have a good experience at all - despite cooperating fully with their “process”.
B. Psychodynamics of Liberation (Dr Jeffrey Mishlove & Kathleen Speeth, Thinking Allowed Productions, 2006). In the 1970s and 1980s, transformational education was an Age of Aquarius-influenced style - mainly in California in the United States. With the rise and consolidation of academic capitalism and the assetised, leveraged neoliberal university it can now only really be found in small, independent colleges and programs or on digital platforms such as Disinformation alumni Jason Louv (Magick.me) and Richard Metzger (Magick Show). Aspects of it can also be found in giftedness programs and in positive psychology / wellbeing science. But it is not a major revenue or student growth driver in today’s increasingly social stratified world.
This 83-minute conversation between Mishlove and Speeth (the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology) offers contemporary viewers a glimpse of this different pedagogical focus. It’s part of an interview series that Mishlove recorded with the vanguard of transpersonal studies research in the United States. Speeth talks about her experiences with the Gurdjieff Work and documenting it in her book. Speeth’s key insight about George Gurdjieff’s methodology is that he worked in the geopolitical context of pre-Revolutionary, Bolshevik Revolution, and Civil War era Russia, and then in France (including during Vichy occupied World War II Paris) and the United States. Today aspects of this post-Pierre Janet treatment of psychological dissociation (Speeth’s “fragmented selves” and lacking “integrity”) would be used in three-phased trauma therapy by qualified medical clinicians. Post MK-Ultra aspects of this also surfaced in the 1980s during the Satanic Panic: this divergent interpretation continues primarily in Valerie Sinason’s milieu, and in some pre-Vatican II Catholic and Evangelical Christian communities, which are influenced by Dispensationalist and Millenarian themes.
What can we learn from such dialogues today? What Mishlove and Speeth conduct here is exploratory and respectful: a “strategic conversation” on the semi-secretive Gurdjieffian tradition of trying to wake up and to become more self-coherent. Transpersonal psychology - and transformational education - have a very different agenda to the neoliberal emphasis on debt-financed consumerism and upward social mobility in a status-based class system: it is a more quiet, reflective, personal journey into your phenomenological inner world.
Sure, you can still spend a lot financially on it: books, website class subscriptions, and retreats. But the point that Mishlove, Speeth, Gurdjieff and many others have repeatedly made is that you must do the Work in your daily life and in your actual life circumstances - on the arisings and issues that come up for you. Transpersonal psychology - and transformational education - is not a silver bullet that is going to solve everything for you. It is not necessarily going to fix what your life or personal issues are. It can in fact often make things actually worse as it can create uneven lines of development; people will misunderstand you (see above); and your pets will still demand their adoration time. Sure - you might think that you are Elect (to what, why, how, and for what telos or end purpose?) - but in the meantime (a nod to Helmet) maybe having some compassion for yourself and for others might be a better solution.