A colloquium on a spiritual approach in psychiatry is a sign of the times, a sign of an openness to a vertical dimension - too long neglected - in the fields of medicine and modern psychology. With his verticality diminished, man is reduced to an ensemble of functions which are more or less automatic, generating psychic and physical reactions which, at a certain moment, can become illness.
The term "spiritual approach" indicates a knowledge of one's self, living, sensitive, enriched by each moment, unfamiliar with narrow-mindedness. An open mind should be briming with the understanding of that which we call ourselves seen through an honest and non-biased observation. It is only in this way that subtle psychic mechanisms can be seen and carefully perceived.
The theme of this colloquium will draw on the relationship between meditation and psychotherapy. Meditation is a subject practically unknown in the world of psychiatry. Generally it is fit into a series of techniques and methods which try to stabilize and pacify mental activity. While psychology and psychoanalysis look to the content of thoughts, meditation focuses attention on non-thought, on that which doesn't relieve mental activity, the continuum that underlies the production on thought.
The way in which we look at the world is generally through a mental prism freighted with memory: preconceived ideas, fears, a prioris. This static vision is an obstacle to a global perception. When our way of seeing is stripped of its past - mental images, projections, residues -, a new comprehension appears based not on acquired knowledge, but on a direct vision.
In common parlance, when we speak of meditation, it is generally about the attention given to an idea, a word, an object or plan. It is evident that when the mind focuses on something, the flow of ideas slows down, actually breaks off. In effect it is impossible to focus on two things at a time. What usually happens is that attention is switched very rapidly from one object to another. This rapidity gives the impression of simultaneity, but when closely examined, we see that is in fact succession. And so, for example, if attention is held long enough on one image or sound, the flow of thoughts is interrupted. It is restarted once attention is loosened.
This is the first stage of meditation. To appease mental activity by holding attention.
Once the mind is used to being more focused, less dispersed, comes the second stage: a more supple concentration, looser, which is a kind of permanent listening, lucid vigilance, a continuous presence to all that is perceived - images, sounds, sensations, emotions.
Progressively, the way of seeing shifts away from focusing on an object and stays sort of suspended in itself, open relaxed, not directed. Situations are no longer apprehended through fear or desire, but are integrated into a totality, the observer no longer being detached from what is being observed. This global observation is favorable to a harmonious response, adapted to a situation. Meditation then is a way of being, that is neither a method nor a technique, but a direct expression of life itself.
It is easy to sense the interest in such an approach in the field of therapy. A large part of psychic troubles, whether they are "neurotic" or "psychotic", are accompanied by agitation, instability or mental hyperactivity: the unpredictable behaviour of the physically and mentally tense psychopath, the stream of mental images creating phobic automatisms, the incessant mental activity - fixed and stereotyped in its form - of the obsessional, the de-structurations accompanied by instability and mental inconsistency. With depression, the flow of thoughts may be slow, but it is fixed in a closed perspective which self-generates suffering like a cybernetic retro-active loop. A clear comprehension of the mechanisms at play is thus necessary in order not to feed pathological growth.
A real psychotherapy, then, should not only explore the subject of thought but also liberate the individual from the enslavement of mental processes.
In the course of this colloquium which will unite psychiatrists, psychotherapists
and "specialists" of meditation, we will explore the wide open field of
a global approach that seeks to render man free of himself. The idea of
health appears in this way to be inseparable from an accomplished interior
realization and a living plenitude in which therapist is the vector and
the artisan.