Washburn’s Stratification of the Unconscious

Washburn’s unconscious is divided into the pre-personal unconscious and personal unconscious. In the prepersonal unconscious we find the repressed Dynamic Ground, the instinctual archetypal unconscious (Good/Terrible mother archetypes, sexual and survival instincts such as aggression) and the body-unconscious (all the body-ego’s qualities and structures that were repressed at the beginning of the egoic stage). The personal unconscious contains autobiographical repressed material mainly accumulated during the Mental Ego stage. Washburn divides these into two categories: the personal embedded unconscious, that refers to categories of the unconscious that seem to have developed by the mental ego’s efforts to build and defend the self-concept and the personal submerged unconscious, that contains categories that describe the shadow of the self-concept.

Washburn calls the first transegoic stage “Regression in Service to Transcendence”. This phase starts with progressive feelings of alienation and despair, during which the world and the self-concept loose meaning and the mental ego feels very threatened. The mental ego is gradually broken down and categories from the unconscious start to emerge into consciousness. This is a fairly challenging phase during which the ego and the psychic structures are disrupted and reorganized and is usually difficult and agonizing.

Washburn’s following phase is “Regeneration in Spirit”. During this phase the resistances of the mental ego continue to be worked on and the power of the Ground starts to feel less threatening. With the gradual emerging into consciousness of the Ground and of the body-unconscious, new sensations, both physical and of a mystical nature start to come through. Some of these can be a little challenging at first (the re-emergence of the instinctual drives) and others distracting (visions, psychic phenomena and new abilities). Eventually during the last phase of “Integration” the egoic and non-egoic poles fully integrate, the unusual phenomena of the first two transegoic stages subside as what was unusual and threatening or unusual and awe-inducing becomes integrated and normal. The integrated being is spiritually powerful, charismatic and expanded and cares and sees not for only for the self but also for the collective. The integrated being can be said to be the beginning of the true experience of being human.


My review

Washburn’s theory is interesting and in some points feels quite accurate. I liked his description of the last two transegoic stages. They were quite interesting to read and there were valid points made that I feel might be fairly universal within spiritual development. In particular I was pleased when Washburn mentioned that the work of overriding the resistances of the ego can be long and repetitive. In other parts of the text I was noticing how Washburn’s theory felt inaccurate, as it seemed to suggest a linear evolution in consciousness i.e. a single deep crisis, a single shattering of the mental ego crisis after which one moves in linear fashion into the transcendent phases. My experience and that of many people I know is that growth occurs in ascending spirals, where the same material is revisited over and over and the same resistances confronted repeatedly, from different, higher and deeper angles at all times. So I was happy when he added that paragraph.

I also was interested in the part in which he talked about psychic phenomena and visions and here he seems to embrace an eastern view, that psychic phenomena and visions are distractions during spiritual development. I partly agree- if, for example, the person starts to identify with these phenomena and becomes carried away with them and develop pride with regards to these experiences. I have witnessed some spiritual people’s downfall starting when they become too self-congratulatory and prideful with regards to the psychic and healing phenomena that they can achieve. However I do still feel that psychic and mystical visions have a place in guiding towards further growth, as they are the means through which we communicate with what Washburn calls the Ground.

Generally speaking, Washburn’s theory got better the further away he got from his own autobiographical experience. The last few stages seemed to be better researched and more general and universal. The first two thirds of the book felt very much as if he was recounting his personal experience of spiritual mid life crisis using a philosophical framework to explain what had happened. I felt that extending this personal experience to the status of “theory” was, at times quite a stretch. In a nutshell, I do not think that Washburn’s theory is an objective and universal theory of consciousness but rather an interesting theoretical framework for a particular kind of evolutionary path. There are lots of glitches to this theory some of which I have talked about in previous assignments. Something that struck me often was how little importance was given to the autobiographical material during the egoic phases: there is so little room here for the role of trauma and spiritual development. Not all spiritual openings happen as a result of a midlife crisis. Also I felt that the language used was often unnecessarily abstract and did not always serve well in explaining deep human experiences that transcend words and categories. A very left brain approach to transcendence.

 ©2004 Katie Gallanti. All rights reserved. http://katiespapaers.blogspot.com. This article was an assignment for a class on Theories of Consciousness.