"The Field:" On Intersubjectivity, Mentalization, Ventral Vagal Activaton

This is a continuation of a Facebook discussion I’ve been having with Mark Dworkin, senior EMDR person with an abiding and passionate interest in the relationship field and intersubjectivity. Mark, our language IS different so we might misalign our meanings, but let’s try. This is fun. I see this as the legendary elephant that the blind men grab portions of. I'm only part way through palpating the elephant. Here are the appendages I've found so far, and there are five.

1) INTUITION AND ENERGY RELEASE

I grabbed the first appendage of this elephant I’ll call The Field in the early 90s when I felt waves of energy releasing from clients when EMDR tapped into and cleared dissociative pockets of disturbance. It was truly waveform. I’d also get pictures, ages of ego states, other intuitive information. This has continued both inside and outside of EMDR. I don’t do it out in public, just in my office, because I’ve not been invited to attune quite so thoroughly out in the world. It is an extraordinarily intimate way of knowing someone – from inside their own body and head. When I tell people what I'm getting (outside of EMDR) they KNOW they are not alone. We are attuned. Also through this early intuitive learning, I became aware of the capacity for introjects of perpetrators to cause havoc in EMDR and therapy in general.

2) THE RELATIONSHIP OR DISSOCIATIVE FIELD IN THE ROOM

The second appendage of this elephant came when I learned about the dissociative field as articulated by psychodynamic people like Loewenstein and Kluft, and it came with terms of art like projection, projective identification, transference and countertransference, which are useful terms as far as they go, but they don’t explain the first piece of info completely. They did bring the therapist experience into the discussion and normalize, welcome and incorporate the therapist's experience as part of the therapy.

3) THERAPIST RESONANCE TO INCREASE CLIENT PROCESSING CAPACITY

The third appendage came when I collaborated with John G Watkins and he talked about therapist resonance being additive energetically (his word, not a new age word) to the client’s resources, which mathematically increases the capacity of their processor. Now he was using brute force abreaction, not EMDR, more rowboat than our motorboat. His understanding was if we didn't resonate with them they may not have the strength to go through it alone. So in abreacting, say, a WWII soldier's combat trauma, Jack might say, "Let's get the bastard!" so radical was his attunement, during the abreaction, noticing the clenched fist of the patient.

4) SOMATIC EMPATHY, MIRROR NEURONS, INTERSUBJECTIVITY

The fourth appendage of this elephant came when I studied somatic work, and learned about radical somatic empathy, and mirror neurons. In that approach, as articulated by Sharon Stanley who studied and taught with Peter Levine for many years (but she took the empathy piece far further, than he did) one uses radical somatic empathy to assist client in the very tracking that will metabolize their trauma, along with an observing stance, and other devices. And in that study of somatic methods and the neuroscience behind it came the notion of intersubjectivity being a neurobiologically-based developmental milestone that fails to develop successfully in traumatogenic families.

5) PRIMARY, SECONDARY AND TERTIARY BRAIN PROCESSING LEVELS

My most recently acquired appendage of the elephant I'm calling The Field, came during dialogue with neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp, in which he matter of factly said several things: that the basic emotions (RAGE, SAD, FEAR, PANIC (that’s infant distress panic), LUST, SEEK, PLAY, CARE are subcortical or primary brain process events, ---but shame is not a basic circuit, he says, but a social one, and therefore on the secondary process level, along with object relations, and intersubjectivity (!). What a coincidence that EMDRs loop on the stuck perspective of the identification with the aggressor, rather than the child’s perspective. That's why introject work is so very key in dissociation. The child had to jettison him/herself in what they call Self Murder (somewhere in the Handbook of Emotions, I don’t have it with me) called shame, to identify with the caretaker aggressor. I haven’t had a chance to ask him if mentalization would be tertiary brain process, higher cortical function, but I’m pretty sure he’d say it is. So secondary and tertiary brain processes (object relations and blocking beliefs) can cause EMDR evacuation of clogged primary circuits to get stuck. This finally explains the introject problem, the shame problem, the inability to feel compassion for self, in neurobiological terms, and the remedy, namely, providing that self-other capacity in the work somehow, also as a neurobiologically founded phenomenon.

6) INDIGENOUS HEALING METHODS IN A SHARED VENTRAL VAGAL FIELD

There is one more appendage to this elephant of The Field that is very important and that is revealed to us by the study of indigenous healing methods. There are traditional methods of healing and releasing trauma that happen in community, tribally. In the Native American (Plains) tradition for example, it is right now Sun Dance, the most sacred healing ceremony of the year. My sweetheart Tim, a long time Sun Dancer, is off preparing for the dance with his Tiospia – “family” but we’d say community in dominant culture. The choice of the word "family" tells us how primordial the support system is. The circle of the Hochika, the tree that is transformed from the enemy to the very face of God, four days of dancing,pierced, without food or water, and with community supporting dancing and with prayers, all transforms and heals the People, whether they are present or not. The drum is the heartbeat of the people. The dance, the rhythm, all establish a shared community, a resonance field, a neurobiological field? You betcha. Coherency in a shared relationship field? None other. And traumatic experience is released and processed to an adaptive resolution in that shared ventral vagal state. Top of the line. I’d be there but can’t this year. Inipi sweat lodge too, can be analyzed this way. Incidentally, I know that Porges' ventral vagal activation (which Panksepp says is a hypothesis, may be true but is not yet proven experimentally) is defined as being social engagement or connection, but I believe it is any kind of connection. With self (between ego states in compassion with each other), with therapist or other, with what is in the energy field in the room (may not be only the two people therapist and client), and with the divine. So sacred healing ceremonies are of a very high order of ventral vagal activation by that definition.

IN SUMMARY

So we have all these means including radical somatic empathy, or intuitive resonance of what is in the field, or teaching and demonstrating mentalization in therapy, or my personal favorite, the use of ego and object cathexis to variously have the felt sense versus the observing other’s sense of the subject being processed (as in ego state therapy and as in resetting the affective circuits at arms length as in the early trauma protocol (O’Shea, 2009, O’Shea & Paulsen, 2007). These are all ways to remediate, I believe, the self/other intersubjectivity injury, the narcissistic injury. I don’t think it can ever be done alone, so the twosome is important. It happens in the neurobiology of the twosome. And that two-some organism seeks to establish coherency in its vibrational field. When we bring ventral vagal activation to that field it is helpful. Watkins used to talk about radical empathy where we feel what the client feels but never lose our own grounding and power, so we are ventral vagally activated even while we perceive – and perhaps thereby transform in the field, their sympathetic arousal or dorsal vagal shutdown.

A WORLD WITH NO PEOPLE

Let me close this length treatise with a few words from Richard Kluft, whom I had occasion to consult with on a gnarly case a month ago. He said that alters are the distractions from the truth that the client was alone in a world with no people. When they resist our ministrations, it is because they have to destroy the evidence, that they were alone in a world with no people. These words move to the heart of our most injured clients, even while we are radically empathically attuned to their sorrow and their need to destroy the evidence of their sorrow. When we "keep the score" of what is in The Field, with our authentic humanity as observing witness, we bring our very self to the work in a sacred trust. That's my experience of this pachyderm.

So Mark, where do your notions fit or not fit with all this? Let’s see if we can at least align our wheels if not attune fully our language and understandings. With appreciation for the opportunity to articulate these thoughts, warmly, --Sandra

© 2009 Sandra Paulsen Ph.D.

Bainbridge Book Signing

There are photos from the book signing with my EMDR colleagues, including: Robin Shapiro, Katie O'Shea, Ulrich Lanius, Elizabeth Turner, and others. Also attending were Tim Iistowanohpataakiiwa, also of the Bainbridge Institute, drumming in the Plains tradition. And Jaak Panksepp and his wife Anesa Miller. In this photo, they are holding the R.A.T.S. Award that I presented to Jaak. I announced that the Rough-And-Tumble-Science Award is presented only to those neuroscientists with the courage and tenacity to persist in researching emotions, when others thought they were mere epiphenomena or simply "ideas."

To see more photos, click on the heading for this post, or go to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dougplummer/sets/72157620272886491/

Periaqueductal Gray

One of the things I'm still cogitating about since speaking with Jaak Panksepp, is the interesting phenomenon of the Periaquaductal Gray structure in the midbrain. It surrounds the aquaduct, but it also is a central integrating pathway for adjacent circuits, including emotional circuits. It is a basis of coherence in the brain. When it is ablated in animals, there is no one home. It may be the seat of consciousness.

For EMDR practitioners, it is very interesting to note that very near to the PAG are the optical pathways, then the auditory, and then the tactile. Is it possible that these sensory inputs and emotional inputs all integrate here in EMDR? A curious question.

More from Panksepp - the Periaquaductal Gray PAG and more

Over the weeks I've had the opportunity to talk at length with Dr Panksepp, several key insights have emerged, the things HE thinks are very important.

One is that the PAG (periaquaductal gray) area in the midbrain is key for the locus of consciousness and emotion. In the rat, if this area is ablated, there is nobody home in the rat. This area is a final integrating pathway and critical for the establishing of coherence. As such, he finds it more important than the amygdala in emotional processing. He finds that some of the emphasis on the amygdala in recent years has been overstating the findings, and that the importance of the PAG has been understated.

Smooth state switching is an important aspect of emotional well-being. Dissociative disorders represent an extreme example of state switching disrupted from trauma. Dr Panksepp says that state switching would be located in many parts of the brain, not just subcortically between emotional states. It occurs to me that the category of "states" represents emotional states per se, object relations states, and state-dependent learning, and so would be represented across all three levels of brain functioning. Indeed we see that clinically. State switching between emotional states, object-identified states, and state dependent learning are all relevant in the processing of trauma. In EMDR, looped processing occurs when states don't smoothly switch or are in conflict. It may be that cognitive interweaves are helpful for tertiary-processing state-switching challenges, ego state interweaves for secondary-processing state-switching, and somatic interweaves for primary process. That's my musing for the day.

Bainbridge Booksigning Party

On Sunday, June 14, there was a wonderful book signing party at my log house on Bainbridge Island. Robin Shapiro, Ed of EMDR Solutions II, and I both had our books there. Various of her chapter authors read from their chapters, including Katie O'Shea, Ulrich Lanius, Robin herself, and me. I also read from my book, Looking Through the Eyes of Trauma: An illustrated Guide for EMDR therapists and clients.

Jaak Panksepp was there, and we had the unmitigated luxury of picking his brain about all matters related to emotional circuits, EMDR and possible mechanisms of action, and other giddy making subjects. He closed by reading a lovely poem his wife Anesa Miller had written to memorialize his daughter. Anesa was in attendance.

Before and after the reading, my sweetheart Tim Iistowanohpataakiiwa, who is a Native American traditionalist in the Plains (Siksika or Blackfoot) tradition, sang healing songs. For some, we all drummed along with him. Finally, as the evening dwindled, the remaining core group sat around the campfire and smoked the canupa or peace pipe (legal contents of course!) for the healing of the people.

It was an extraordinary and memorable experience. I'll be posting some key thoughts and insights from these weeks of frequent meetings with Dr Panksepp, as they shake loose.

Book Celebration

Mental health professionals are invited to a book signing celebration on Bainbridge Island. http://www.bainbridgepsychology.com/Remote-Office-Location.html

Robin Shapiro, editor of EMDR Solutions II and myself, author of Looking Through the Eyes of Trauma and Dissociation: An Illustrated Guide for EMDR Therapists and Clients, will be available to sell and sign books. No purchases are required to attend, however!

If health permits, a special guest will be Jaak Panksepp, Ph.D. renowned affective neuroscientist who discovered the scientific basis for the emotional circuits in the brain.

Also in attendance will be Katie O'Shea, from Spokane, developer of the Early Trauma protocol of EMDR and author of two chapters in Robin Shapiro's book. Ulrich Lanius is expected to come from Vancouver BC. He and I coauthored a chapter in Robin's book about the integration of EMDR, Ego State Therapy and Somatic Therapy.

Each will read snippets from their publications. Carrots will be provided for those who wish a bit of equine assisted relaxation. The horses will be demonstrating various of the subcortical affective circuits described by Dr Panksepp in his seminal volume, especially, the SEEK circuit, the PLAY circuit, and maybe the FEAR circuit, since they are a tad hinky by nature, the prey animals. The gelding will not be demonstrating the LUST circuit, but I can't be sure about the mare.

I'm hoping to get Jaak Panksepp to say something about the neurobiology of shame, and will keep you posted. What could be more interesting?