Healing the Split: People who are troubled by disturbing psychic experiences or who have other mental disturbances involving spiritual concerns often believe they have nowhere to turn. "If I told the psychiatrist what was bothering me," such a person might exclaim, "he'd think I was crazy!" The Spiritual Emergency Network has been an important resource for those suffering from glitches in their spiritual emergence. That network has helped spread the idea that some forms of "madness" may actually be the process of transformation gone astray--"kundalini crisis" being a case in point. Now there is an important new resource for the mental health practitioner who wants to serve the needs of the spiritual seeker who is suffering symptoms but who requires the proper psychiatric pedagogy to practice. That resource is the book, Healing the Split, Madness or Transcendence?: A New Understanding of the Crisis and Treatment of the Mentally Ill (Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc., publishers). Its author, John E. Nelson, M.D., is a board-certified, practicing psychiatrist with over twenty years' experience treating patients and who is also involved in his own spiritual quest. One of the book's important focuses is on how to tell the difference between a struggling spiritual emergence disguised as a diseased disruption and a malfunctioning mind disguised as a preternatural prophet. Serving his ideal of the "artful healer," Dr. Nelson provides a compassionate combination medication and medicine. In treating manic disorders with lithium, for example, he suggests providing the patient with some spiritual practices that will help the person regain some of the sense of magical wonder that the mania provided; otherwise, he warns, the patient will drop into a depression over the loss of feeling connected to the infinite. The word "split" from the book's title refers to the distinction between mind and brain. To heal it, Dr. Nelson uses the holographic approach, where mind and body become two aspects of an all-pervading field of vibrations. He then uses the holographic approach to explain the chakra system of the spiritual centers, devoting a separate chapter for each of the seven centers. He explains the characteristic ways in which each center can contain potentialities for both madness and spiritual transformation. Whether that chakra's opening spells weal or woe for the person depends upon a variety of factors, including specific developmental tasks. Like Edgar Cayce, he describes the problems that arise from an untimely opening of that center. Unlike Cayce, he mentions very few natural remedies for these crises. Whereas the book contains many references to body chemistry and medicinal drugs, there are practically no references to diet or exercise. As Cayce pointed out and laboratory evidence is verifying, these two avenues of physical intervention can have powerful effects on body chemistry without the risk of side effects. Dr. Nelson does note the value of massage and, in future editions of what may become a cornerstone classic in the field, the author is advised to add nutrition and exercise to his otherwise holistic approach. By integrating the transpersonal psychology of spiritual traditions with the medical science of psychiatry, Dr. Nelson has created a textbook that many enlightened psychiatric patients will require their therapists to read in order to be qualified to treat them in an enlightened manner. |