Regression in the Service of Transcendence: Reading Michael Washburn

Michael Washburn, in the second edition of his seminal work, The Ego and the Dynamic Ground: A Transpersonal Theory of Development (1995), provides a rich discussion of a pivotal feature of his dynamic-dialectical model of development. His concept of regression in the service of transcendence is a twist of the phrase, regression in the service of the ego. The Freudian application of using regressive techniques to help restructure the personality is transformed almost a century later to address themes and debates within the field of transpersonal development. Washburn employs the concept to illustrate a stage in spiritual development where there is a crisis or dark night of the soul preceding a spiritual awakening. What was lost or repressed in the psyche through the primal repression of the ego is retrieved once again through regression (p. 171). Regression is mediated by a renewed relationship with what Washburn calls the Dynamic Ground. Washburn is interested in explicating the essential features of this relationship between the ego and the Dynamic Ground. In his schema, the ego differentiates itself from the ground into a body ego, this later becomes a repressively dualistic dissociation called the mental ego, until finally the ego is able to reintegrate with the ground (Washburn, 1995, p. x). Central to his stage theory orientation is Washburn's transcendent notion of Dynamic Ground. Here, Dynamic Ground serves as the psychic energy that powers all. It is undifferentiated potential and the site inhabited by spirit. It is also conceived as the state of consciousness that one is born into at the pre-egoic stage of development. Kundalini rising, Reich's psychic energy within the sexual system (1942), Grof's nonspecific amplifier (1975), Otto's notion of the numinous (1917), are all included as manifestations of the Dynamic Ground according to Washburn. Regression in the service of transcendence, then, is the primal repression of the ego giving way to the experience of the ground directly within consciousness (p.126). It is the first part of a much larger psychic reorganization (p. 201). Washburn views regression in the service of transcendence as a two-fold process. The first stage is marked by a withdrawal from the world. The mental ego loses its raison d'etre and there is a type of existential suffering experienced. The chains of primal repression are loosened and the Dynamic Ground grabs a foothold. The second stage is where the person encounters the prepersonal unconscious. This level follows the opening of the Dynamic Ground. The person may exhibit psychotic features and produce somatic symptoms. On the other hand, people can experience rapture, great intuitive insight, and a plethora of psychic abilities all subsumed within this emergent experience (pp. 172-174). The idea of using regression as a process that may actually serve spiritual development is attractive for many reasons. First, it transmutes a more pathological orientation toward manifestations of psychological suffering into one that has the ability to hold greater value for the life purpose of an individual. Instead of viewing people as clusters of symptoms needing to be treated, or as less spiritually evolved when suffering is present, Washburn offers a model that places suffering within a larger paradigm of spiritual unfolding. This approach may be quite helpful to those in the spiritual and psychotherapeutic communities, as clients or practitioners, because it allows a frame from which to view what may seem like a mere snapshot metamorphose into a full motion picture by allowing presenting symptoms to have a larger meaning. Washburn, in this way, is faithful to his long-time interest in depth psychology. Depth and regression are seen as part of the hero's journey. The journey to the underworld takes courage not because it glorifies the condition of suffering but because it somatically and symbolically enacts the integration of dualisms. …