TOPIC OF THE SIXTH MEETING (Wednesday 14th November 20:00 CET):

A Critical Appraisal of Transpersonal Psychology With the Emphasis on the Psychology of Stanislav Grof

Excerpt:

“Grof coined the concept of systems of condensed experiences or COEX systems, which he defined as “emotionally-charged memories from different periods of our life that resemble each other in the quality of emotion or physical sensation that they share,” which he called “constellations of emotionally relevant memories stored together and which he deemed determinant in the formation of individual psychology. Among these so-called COEX systems, most determinant are the four Basic Perinatal Matrices or BPMs, which according to Grof’s initial view originated in the third of the above realms: that of “birth and death” making up the “perinatal realm” (however, in 1998 Grof acknowledged that, though he continues to classify some of the experiences that manifest in nonordinary states of consciousness [NOSC] in terms of perinatal matrices, those experiences need not be seen as determined by the birth process or as replicating the later: though BPMs often accompany the reliving of birth, they can also emerge independently of such liaison, and the manifestation of BPMs in NOSC and the process of birth itself may be both determined by an archetypal dynamic, rather than the former being determined by the latter). Grof views these BPMs—within each of which different COEX systems can manifest—as conditioning human experience in all of the levels / realms into which our author divides the human psyche, and in particular as determining the experiences of the fourth of the above levels / realms, which is the transpersonal domain…”

— Beyond Mind, p.453-475