Keeping in
mind that
every "
alternative"
therapy ever invented have positive effects on
some people (and that even in the absense of any kind of therapy there are
spontaneous cures), I think I´ll risk pointing to the other side of the story. The one that holds Dr. Grof and some of his highly
questionable work as "
pseudoscience":
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"Holotropic Breathwork (Grof breathwork,
holonomic breathwork, holonomic therapy, holotropic breath therapy, holotropic therapy): Psychotherapeutic technique developed in the 1970s by Czechoslovakian-born
psychiatrist Stanislav Grof, M.D., and his wife, Christina Grof, author of
The Thirst for Wholeness. It involves breathwork (
hyperventilation), sound technology (mainly loud music), and the drawing of
mandalas (aids to
meditation), and it may include "focused bodywork." Holotropic Breathwork is an alleged access to one's "natural healing energies." It purportedly can induce "transpersonal experiences," which, according to Dr. Grof, can provide
information about any "
aspect" of the
universe in the
present,
past, and
future"
Psychiatrist Stanislav Grof, the codeveloper of Holotropic Breathwork,
coined the name "transpersonal psychology."
Dictionary of Metaphysical Healthcare
Unnaturalistic Methods: H, T
© 1997 Jack Raso, M.S., R.D.
-----
"The
evidence, such as it is, is exhaustively examined by Edwards. Much of it comes from
seemingly credible witnesses who
claim to have seen the projected "astral bodies" of others at the time of the latter's
death, or from children who seem remarkably
precocious, or who "
remember" people, places or events that they seem
unlikely to have known about if they had not actually experienced them in a previous life. Edwards shows that the
empirical evidence, like the supporting arguments put forth by past-life
explorers such as Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, Stanislav Grof, Raymond Moody, and Ian Stevenson are far less compelling than the
tabloid headlines would have you
believe. As with most
anecdotal evidence of this sort,
examination reveals that
tales retold by the
faithful have a way of becoming tidier and more convincing as they pass from mouth to mouth."
A Cogent Consideration of the Case for Karma (and Reincarnation)
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"So, what kinds of naturalistic
explanations might there be for all of these
NDEs? One of the earliest explanations was offered by Stanislov Grof in 1976. Grof
argued that these
experiences were actually
memories from when each of us went through something very
similar:
birth. Even if this explanation were
accurate in
some cases, it
still would
fail to
explain why people delivered through
cesarian section have such NDEs and why so many people are able to
retain such
accurate infantile memories. This explanation might explain a few NDEs, but is
generally rejected."
Shermer, Michael. Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and other Confusions of our Time. Freeman: New York, 1997.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/2850/NDE.html
-----
"
Grinspoon's own
commitment to the use of
psychedelic drugs as part of
spiritual psychotherapy was detailed in a 1986 article in the
American Journal of Psychotherapy entitled "
Can Drugs be Used to Enhance the Psychotherapeutic Process?" in which he argues that
LSD can and
should be used to
trigger spiritual conversion as a
psychotherapeutic treatment. The central "
evidence" he
presents is a late 1960s
experiment run by a
paranormal New Age mystic named
Stanislav Grof at the
Spring Grove State Hospital in
Maryland. Grof subjected terminally-ill
cancer patients to
horrendously nightmarish LSD-
induced hallucinations as part of an "experiment" in
stress reduction.(12, 13)
12. E. Patrick Curry, "
Carl Jung, Stanislav Grof and New Age Medical Mysticism," to be published in the Spring 2002 issue of the
Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine.
13. A chapter on the
paranormal,
mystical Dr. Stanislav Grof is included in
Paul Edwards'
Reincarnation: A Critical Examination, Prometheus Press, 1996. Dr. Grof's
mystical ideas can also easily be
determined by
simple Web searches. He is a
major champion of
New Age mysticism."
E. Patrick Curry