#65: How the Philosophy of Subjective Experience Transforms Psychiatry with Jasper Feyaerts

Pawel Toloczko is a music producer from Poland. In the last 6 years, he has produced over 110 tracks arranged for transformative breathwork practices on his YouTube channel, Breathwork Beats by Touek. Pawel’s artistic mission is to help people rediscover a sense of soul and purpose through music, breathwork, and depth psychology, so they can live with more authenticity and meaning.Due to our shared interests, our connection isn’t surprising. What is surprising is how we met. While researching a James Hillman quote for one of his productions, Chat GPT recommended a video on The Soul’s Code. The man on the thumbnail was familiar. It was one of my videos, and I was familiar because Pawel and I lived in the same Berlin neighbourhood… in the same building, on the same floor, our front doors directly facing each other.We’d crossed paths and shared casual hellos, but one day, Pawel knocked on my door, told me what had happened, and our meaningful friendship began. What’s mind-blowing is that this captures the essence of my essay, Synchronicity as the Yoga of Absolute Knowledge. To honour the multiple synchronicities, we collaborated on an interpretation of that essay, with Pawel animating my narration with profound visual art and music (watch here)In this dialogue, Pawel and I speak from a perspective that views divine knowledge as intelligent, alive, and seeking discovery through the intuitive intellect. Synchronicity is key to that discovery. It transforms perception, and makes the pursuit of knowledge a transcendent, mystic experience. We discuss this in-depth and with great enthusiasm, visiting many unexpected and wonderful places along the way.

Paul Howard is an Irish filmmaker, producer and director whose career has spanned more than four decades. Our conversation explores subjects from his documentaries, Infinite Potential and Quantum Convergence, in particular the implications of quantum theory.Paul shares David Bohm’s theories of wholeness and the implicate order, quantum potential, and non-locality. We look at the fundamental nature of consciousness, retrocausality and non-linear time, past-life experiences and reincarnation, and why the founding fathers of quantum physics were inspired by non-dual traditions such as Advaita Vedanta.We consider implications on the subjective experience, questions of free will vs. determinism, and the power of the “observer effect” on manifest reality. We end by touching upon Paul’s upcoming documentary, On Dialogue, which explores Bohm’s creative approach to shared understanding.To purchase the documentaries, use the MindThatEgo affiliate links below:Infinite PotentialQuantum Convergence

Stephan Bodian is a psychotherapist, spiritual teacher, and pioneer in the integration of nonduality and Western psychology. He leads an annual spiritual transformation program, the School for Awakening, and is the author of several books, including Meditation for Dummies and Wake Up Now. Following our last interview five years ago, Stephan returns to discuss the themes in his latest book, Infinite Awakening: A Guide to Non-Dual Wisdom and the Pathless Path.We explore the difference between direct and progressive paths, the risk of ‘trying to be mindful,’ why sudden awakening requires lifelong integration, trauma work in the context of non-duality, the multiplicity of the self and “parts,”psychological pathways from IFS to Jung, and the necessity of an open heart and awakened ego.Going deeper into awakening territory, we address misconceptions about emptiness and detachment, love’s essential role in the yoga of relationships, Buddhist non-attachment vs. attachment theory, and the taboo of sexuality. What is the role of eros in non-duality? How do we confront the sexual shadow? And what can tantric approaches offer for healthy integration of sexual energy?

Nisha Gupta PhD is a tenured psychology professor at the University of West Georgia, a trauma-informed relationship psychotherapist, phenomenological researcher, and artist. I discovered Nisha through her recent paper: Can Psychology Be An Art? A Journey from theHuman Sciences to the Psychological Humanities.Nisha explores what a more beautiful psychology might offer a wounded world. We discuss psychology’s origin as “the study of the soul”, beauty’s life-saving role in suicide prevention and offering hope amidst violence and injustice, and redemption amidst guilt and remorse.We look at artificial intelligence as a reckoning for humanity, reverence, grief, and rage as portals to God’s love, art’s role in transmuting both the sacred and the shadow, and why the anima, aesthetic sensibility, and divine feminine should sit on the throne of psychology’s future.

Eirini K. Argyri is a researcher at the University of Exeter's Psychedelic Interdisciplinary Centre (EPIC) and research Associate with the Challenging Psychedelic Experiences Project. Her thesis developed the Ontologically Diversifying Experiences (ODE) framework, which examines pathways towards prosocial and holistic integration. We explore psychedelics’ developmental potential, their disruption to assumptions about selfhood, relationships, and reality, groundlessness and existential distress, boundlessness and experiences of unity, and the importance of trust architecture and access to educational resources.We also look at what contributes to healing communities, power dynamics and the risk of abuse, open-mindedness, agency, and cognitive liberty, and alternative modes of meaning-making, including the intuitive, the embodied, and the mythopoetic.Resources:Eirni's thesis.

Sabina Wantoch PhD is a researcher, facilitator, consultant, artist and animist. They are an Honorary Associate Professor at the Centre for Multidisciplinary & Intercultural Inquiry at University College London, a consultant in peer support for mental health with Imroc, and co-founder of The Mad Psychedelics Collaboratory. Their work centres around madness and its porous intersections with varieties of altered states, as well as entanglements between paradigms and conceptual structures. Our conversation covers intersubjectivity and shared perception, reducing the fear of madness, the reciprocal nature of mythos, the varieties of meaning and sense-making, and the importance of equanimity.Sabina then shares three symbols they’ve created; the Net, the Bog, and the Crossroads. Inspired by tarot, these accompany their PhD thesis and form part of Sabina’s upcoming deck that represents the mad experience.Link to Sabina's research.

Jasper Feyaerts is a philosopher and associate professor in clinical psychology at the University of Ghent, Belgium. He is co-founder of the Too Mad to be True conference, alongside previous guest, Wouter Kusters.Jasper’s research specialises phenomenology, self-disorders, psychosis, and delusions. Our conversation enquires into the elusive, difficult-to-define nature of selfhood. We begin comparing conventional psychiatric models of pathology with direct enquiry into the subjective experience.We look at the risks and the value of objectifying and conceptualising experience, interaction and knowledge as crucial to self-understanding, the self as it relates to so-called disorder, the view of Eastern spiritual traditions, such as Buddhist no-self, the illusion and necessity of control, flow and immersion versus self-reflection, primordial shame and ontological paranoia, the fear and joy of spontaneity, and what changes Jasper would like to see in the field of psychiatry.

This episode features my talk from the 2024 edition of Too Mad to be True on the theme of The Paradoxes of Madness. In exploring Transrationality and the Paradox of Divine Madness, I use philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s theory of language games to demonstrate how the models of reality directly influence how sanity and insanity is framed.If we change our model from conventional materialism to non-duality or pure consciousness, what changes?I explore the metaphor of “The Light,” that surfaces in all religious traditions and in the phrase en-light-en-ment; the pathologising of spiritual experiences; non-duality as the ultimate paradox; what we can learn from Zen koans and no-mind, the three forms of spiritual blindness; the need to synthesise multiple perspectives; and the role of trans-rationality in human development.

Stijn Vanheule is a clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, and professor at Ghent University, Belgium. Our conversation was inspired by his most recent book, Why Psychosis Is Not So Crazy.Stijn overviews the work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. He explains Lacan’s three registers: the Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real; psychosis as a confrontation with the Real; the security and limitations of symbolic convention; how words and stories structure reality; logic versus artistic coherence; and the existential value of paranoia.We compare Lacanian and Jungian approaches on subjects such as the paradox of archetypal and individual, personal myth, and self-knowledge as a never-ending process. Underlying our conversation is the common ground of viewing psychosis not as an illness, but in Stijn’s words: “the subjective manifestation of a struggle that touches upon the fundamental aspects of human existence."

Wouter Kusters is a Dutch philosopher and linguist. He is the author of five books, including the award-winning A Philosophy of Madness, which was translated to English in 2020.His writing details his experiences of psychosis through a philosophical lens, including stays in psychiatric institutions and solitary confinement. Wouter is co-organiser of the Too Mad to Be True Conference which takes place in-person in Ghent, Belgium, and online on the 14th and 15th May.Our discussion explores the overlap of madness and mysticism and the limits of language, concepts, and the rational mind to describe or comprehend this vast terrain, which Wouter describes as “the black hole in which thought loses itself.”---Details on the Too Mad to be True Conference: https://www.psychiatrieenfilosofie.nl/too-mad-to-be-true-iv