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The Primal-Homeodynamic Connection

by Daniel W. Miller, Ph.D.

My ideas come from two major streams of experience: one is from doing psychotherapy—for over forty years, the last thirty of which include primal; and the other is from reading avidly in many areas of science. I should add a third, the domain of the spiritual, which is hard to pin down to a time frame. These three (psychology, science, and spirituality) are vitally important parts of most people's lives with varying degrees of emphasis on each, but they remain irreconcilable as thought systems in today's culture. Their separation is legitimized through institutionalized barriers of scientific and non-scientific specialization, and by fragmentation into many opposing disciplines. The result is inner conflict for many people concerning which one has the more important values. For myself, it became important to understand what might constitute an inner core of humanity that connected these fragmented systems as equals in consciousness.

In the 1970s there were others who were dedicated to a similar search, and hearing renowned physicist Fritjof Capra lecture in New York about the relationship between science and spirituality, then reading his book The Tao of Physics (1975) helped me to start putting the pieces into place. Here was a scientist who had seen a scientific connection in spirituality, and was thereafter ostracized by the physics community. A second seminal point was the book Birth Without Violence by Frederick Leboyer (1975) whom I interviewed for the IPA Newsletter (summer 1980) while I was in France. His work as an obstetrician confirmed much of what we then knew about birth primals with their initiation into primal pain, and he was defrocked as an MD by the French medical society for his brilliant insights. These were just a couple of the courageous researchers whose pioneering work helped me formulate the Homeodynamic concept during the 1980s and 90s.

So what has the Homeodynamic Process got to do with it? There is no way at present to claim that it is a scientific concept because, like consciousness, it is an ongoing, unmeasureable, changing process that is not definable in material, reductionist terms. Unlike homeostasis, which is popularly considered the attainment of an ideal static state of balance, its dominant characteristic is the management of change so that the system in question, organic or otherwise, improves through changes that optimize its survival. Survival is a key motivation for systemic operations in a universe that seems often on the brink of chaos. Human beings can be viewed as a singular system composed of innumerable subsystems from the brain, nervous system, digestive tract and related organs down to the cells. Cells are tangible, scientifically definable systems subject to organization by the homeodynamic process. They have self-organized through eons of evolution to combine and recombine into larger, more complex structures that eventually became the form of human beings, like waves from a pebble growing by adding waves from the same pebble. Each subsystem, or wave-circle, is subject to messages received as information from the other subsystems regarding their needs in relation to the system's total state of functioning, allowing each subset to adapt itself to meet the survival requirements of the whole system. The Homeodynamic Process effectively guides messaging, conductivity, and part-to-whole balancing in complex adaptive systems under the inner mandate of systemic survival. In dysfunctional states these messages are either not transmitted or occur in a distorted form that stressfully harms the system: i.e., illness becomes a warning signal about an inner dehomeotic trend.

Consciousness is a complex adaptive system (CAS) that is intangible. However, like the physiological system, it is primarily concerned with survival, and it operates by receiving information from all possible sources, including the spiritual domain. Communication of information between physical and mental structures is at the core of the Homeodynamic Process. So the physical psychoneuroimmunological system receives information about internal threats to the body proper (toxins, viruses, wounds) and sets up its array of defense mechanisms to protect itself from current and similar future dangers and also forwards information to consciousness through feelings. The system of consciousness receives information about interpersonal, social and national threats, sets up an appropriate array of defense mechanisms and sends its information to the body. However, when our physical and mental processes receive inappropriate information, or become damaged on either level, survival suffers.

At the extremes, a vegetative state is the body functioning without the mind, therefore it becomes unable to meet its own needs and tends toward death, unless external means of survival such as hospitalization is provided. A mind without a body to represent it also has no means of communication and can't be said to be alive. Body and mind are symbiotic partners in the preservation of life. Therefore, an active relationship between body and mind that I call unifunctional consciousness is always in effect. Internal and external communication pathways for the transmission of new and relevant information are critical for its effectiveness; therefore when these pathways become blocked or damaged, they become dysfunctional and dehomeotic. The Homeodynamic Process can be betrayed and thrown off course by misinformation, or bad, self-destructive information given to the organism at any time during its life space. This betrayal of the survival mandate causes stress, which is a warning signal that may progress if untreated into severe physical and/or mental illness. The warning signs may be as simple as a stomach ache or as complicated as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's, and schizophrenia.

Restitutive measures such as appropriate medical and/or psychological treatment may lead to recovery of fully effective communication pathways that will again transmit appropriate homeodynamic communications. The Homeodynamic Process, then, provides body and mind with a guidance system within which the organism is afforded a kind of internal intelligence that is needed to sort out and transmit valuable information. Though innate, it can also learn from experience since body and mind provide it with ample unused neural space in the brain and nervous system to create its own connections from its own growth experiences. Once corrected, the new internal connections it makes are supported by positive experiences, and are destroyed again by negative ones.

Regressive psychotherapy, in which I include both primal and past life therapies, offer a person under stress the means of returning to earlier, unresolved issues by means of feelings. The information provided the individual through feelings and emotions under regression will guide him/her to the stressful situation that needs to be resolved. Because the homeodynamic process is an innate guidance system that operates on mental as well as physical levels of function, it provides information to consciousness about stress on either or both levels. It is up to the consciousness system (in which I include the unconscious functions) to decide which steps are appropriate to reinforce survival operations. Contrary to popular medical dictum, neither sickness nor wellness are solely caused by random accidents of genetics. Decisions that lead to one or the other are not coincidental but are related to a complexity of interactive precipitating factors that have many developmental, unconscious and genetic antecedents.

RHE chart

The Range of Homeodynamic Efficiency (RHE-graphic above) is an abstract summation of the relationship between stress, the state of communication pathways, and homeodynamic effectiveness whose interactions determine potential outcomes. With a unified evaluation method such as this, it is unnecessary to rely on the Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM) for diagnoses that split body and mind problems into separate categories. With the homeodynamic formulation, all physical and mental illnesses can be placed appropriately on the RHE continuum following evaluation. Though tests have not been specifically developed, there are stress tests, interviews, and medical reports available that provide substantial information to rate a person's placement in the RHE. However, critical stress and neural psychophysiological communication indicators as well as behavioral indices still need to be developed if a precise evaluation is desired.

Using the RHE Diagram

The range of efficiency in internal and external levels of relationship may vary considerably from person to person and varies in each person from day to day. Normally, there can be a fairly wide range of levels of communications even with dampened connectivity that organisms can effectively tolerate while the overall system remains relatively effective, but there are also danger points that put a system in jeopardy. RHE is also therefore a gauge of how effectively connectivity is maintained in the face of stress, which, in turn, determines how physically and mentally healthy a person is.

A. Peak Performance: Not the daily state of affairs, the highest level of spiritual, mental, and physical integration, S1-2, FC5-6.

B. Average Functioning: Makes allowance for stresses and some disconnection that don't cause dysfunctionality within minor illnesses. Spontaneous recovery is due to unconscious care-taking in a homeodynamically effective mind-body system, S3-4, FC3-4.

C. Dehomeosis: The most stress and the least connectivity among the elements constituting a mind-body system, high moderate to severe illness, S5-6, FC1-2

Unifunctional consciousness, as the aware unifying function between mind and body, is a crucial participant in the efficiency of the system. This is a relative statement that depends on the level of development of the psychology and physiology of the organism, and is specific to the milieu within which it functions (compare cells, animals, and fish). The milieu is constituted not only of the material environment such as air, water, and earth but consists of trillions of other like and unlike organisms. If the environment itself is destructive or toxic to its locale then the adjustments demanded of an organism will be harsher, and if adjustments are not possible the system itself may take a dehomeotic course. This imperiled state is the current condition of a toxic, polluted ecology and of increasingly toxic interactions among societies.

Daniel is a licensed psychologist practicing in Brooklyn and is one of the original members of the IPA. He has recently published  The Web and the Cloth: Science Consciousness and Homeodynamics: What they are and what they do, has contributed many articles to IPA and other journals, and introduced Primal Therapy internationally. Currently he is the Vice President of the Association for Spirituality and Psychotherapy and member of the UN/NGO Committee for Mental Health.

This article appeared in the Fall 2003 IPA Newsletter.

 
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