Read Psychology for Dummies Online
Authors: Adam Cash
Tags: #Psychology, #General, #Body; Mind & Spirit, #Spirituality
Psychology for Dummies (11 page)
Perhaps one of the most common methods for altering consciousness is the use of drugs. Drug use is both a historical as well as a contemporary phenomena. Archeologists have even found traces of cocaine in mummified bodies from ancient Egypt. Some people claim that one of the purposes of taking drugs is to gain added insight into the concept of consciousness itself. Most people who have used drugs report that they do so in order to get “high” or intoxicated.
The state of being “high” actually represents a change in consciousness, perhaps going from a level of awareness that induces negative feelings to a different level of awareness where an individual no longer feels “bad.” The idea that drugs are an escape rings true, if you consider that many mind- and mood-altering drugs create an “escape” from one state of consciousness to another.
Not all drugs necessarily have an impact on consciousness. I don’t recall feeling “altered” the last time I took an aspirin or antibiotic. Drugs whose main effect is the alteration of consciousness are called
psychoactive drugs.
Common psychoactive drugs and substances include LSD, PCP, marijuana, cocaine, amphetamines, barbiturates, ecstasy, and alcohol.
Although many people see drug use for the claimed purpose of expanding their consciousness as a good thing, as a health professional I feel compelled to warn you of many of the negative effects of psychoactive substance use and abuse. Addiction, brain damage, mental illness, psychological distress, and social and legal problems are common consequences of psychoactive drug use. With these in mind, I strongly caution anyone considering the use of drugs and would strongly argue for seeking higher states of consciousness without the use of substances.
A natural highStanley Krippner defines an altered state of consciousness as a mental state that is subjectively experienced as representing a difference in psychological functioning from an individual’s normal, alert, waking state. The importance of the subjectively experienced difference can be illustrated by a story told by Baba Ram Das in his book
Be Here Now
(Crown Publishing Group). Baba Ram Das’s original name was Richard Alpert. Alpert was a psychology professor at Harvard in the 1960s, where he and Timothy Leary conducted experiments with LSD. They both were eventually fired. Ram Das traveled to India to seek the path of Hindu wisdom and to find out if anyone could explain why LSD seemed to have such a profound effect on consciousness.One day, Ram Das encountered a very wise and respected guru. Ram Das asked the guru if he could explain the effects of LSD. The guru asked for some LSD, and Ram Das complied. The guru took more LSD than Ram Das had ever seen a human being take, but the guru seemed completely unaffected! He didn’t have an “acid trip” at all. There was no change in his current state of consciousness — he didn’t experience an altered state of consciousness when he took the LSD. Does that mean that the guru was already on some sort of “reality trip” or “spiritual LSD?”
Close your eyes and relax. You are soooooo relaxed. Your breathing is slow. You’re beginning to feel sleepy. You are soooooo relaxed.
Well, did it work? Hello? Are you under my hypnotic spell? Probably not. I’m not even trained in hypnosis. It’s a special skill, and not all therapists or psychologists are trained in it.
Hypnosis
is a procedure in which a person called a
hypnotist
suggests changes in sensations, feelings, thoughts, or behaviors to a subject. Some psychologists think hypnosis is simply an increase in suggestibility that allows the hypnotist to “control” the subject’s behavior. Other psychologists propose that hypnosis is actually an altered state of consciousness in which a person
dissociates
(separates) from her normal or regular state of consciousness.
The key to understanding the mechanism of hypnosis is
suggestion.
A
suggestion
is a directive given to the subject to act, feel, or think in a particular way. A hypnotist begins the process with some pleasant suggestions and progresses to more sophisticated requests. This process is called
hypnotic induction,
and it’s considered a light hypnotic trance.
Hypnosis has been used for many different purposes ranging from entertainment to helping people stop smoking. The more controversial applications of hypnosis involve past-life regression and the recovery of repressed memories. There is little scientific evidence supporting the legitimacy of past-life regression through hypnosis. It’s virtually impossible to prove. Why? Anything that someone reports can only be verified through historical records, and if I can look it up for verification, the individual in question could have looked it up to fake a regression.
False memories?As for recovering memories from childhood, one subject participating in a study by Fromm spontaneously began speaking the forgotten language of her childhood under hypnosis. There have been hundreds, if not thousands, of claims of recovered memories from childhood, including many memories of sexual or physical abuse. Things get a little sensitive at this point. Elizabeth Loftus has argued vehemently that such memories are questionable at best and that a therapist should be very careful when conducting this type of work. Research has shown that patients under hypnosis can be easily persuaded to believe that they’ve experienced abuse when they may in fact have not. Again, the question of verifiability is a difficult one. The long and the short of it is that we still don’t know enough about the memory-enhancing effects of hypnosis to provide a definitive answer.
Sleep represents a change in consciousness. When we’re asleep, we’re unconscious. Sleep is characterized by a change in our
electrophysiological activity
— our “brain wave” activity. Sleep, as a level of consciousness, can be distinguished from other levels of consciousness by measuring this electrophysiological energy of the brain with an EEG. When we’re awake and alert, our brains emit a wave with a frequency of 13 to 30 hertz (Hz), called
beta activity.
When we’re awake but relaxed, just kickin’ it, our brains show
alpha activity
— a frequency of 8 to 12 Hz.
Carlson has distinguished four stages of sleep with one substage, which is characterized by brain activity one would expect from an awake and alert brain.
Stage 1:
When a prospective sleeper closes her eyes and begins to relax, getting into sleep mode, her brain waves are at an alpha frequency. As she drifts deeper into Stage 1, her brain waves become less regular, and they have a higher amplitude. This is
theta activity,
3.5 to 7.5 Hz. Carlson identifies this stage as a transition period between being awake and asleep, and it lasts approximately 10 minutes.
In case you’re wondering why higher amplitude waves are associated with smaller hertz measurements, it’s because hertz is a measure of frequency. Amplitude is a measure of wave height. If a wave is really high, it takes longer to get somewhere and thus has a lower frequency.
Stage 2:
During Stage 2 sleep, brain wave activity is irregular and contains spikes of very low-amplitude EEG waves called
K-complexes.
There are also short bursts of 12 to 14 Hz waves called
spindles.
We’re soundly asleep at this stage, but we may think that we’re not actually sleeping. My wife wakes me up while I’m sleeping in front of the television set all the time to tell me that I’m snoring, but I always tell her I wasn’t sleeping. I must have been snoring while awake. I don’t know which is worse — snoring while asleep or awake.
Stage 3:
In Stage 3, we emit high-amplitude waves (3.5 Hz), which are an EEG signal of
delta activity.
We spend about an hour and a half in Stage 3.
Stage 4:
This stage is signaled by the presence of more theta waves interrupting the smooth waves of delta. During Stage 4, our eyes begin to move back and forth very rapidly, which is called
rapid eye movement (REM).
Now, we’re in
REM sleep,
characterized by the presence of beta activity. REM sleep is the substage in which the brain is active, but we’re asleep.
We dream during REM sleep. After we reach REM sleep, about an hour and a half into the whole sleep process, the rest of the night is characterized by alternating periods of REM sleep and non-REM sleep (activity seen in Stages 1, 2, and 3).
Why do we sleep? I don’t necessarily know why other people sleep, but I usually sleep because I’m tired. For the most part, researchers still don’t know why we sleep, but some believe that sleep has a
restorative
function. Research that looks at the effects of a lack of sleep, or sleep deprivation, suggests that we engage in sleep so that our body can restore what was lost or damaged during our waking hours.
