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The First Meeting: Creative Ferment or Unholy Jumble?

2018; Volume: 46; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5298/1081-5937-46.4.05

2158-348X

Johann Stoyva,

Biotechnology and Related Fields

Our first meeting was held at a modest seaside motel in Santa Monica, California. This oceanic setting was somehow symbolic of our group's mindset and sense of mission. Here we were, a small salient of Western civilization, facing out over the limitless Pacific toward the great and ancient civilizations of the Far East—West meets East! In another part of the motel, a meeting of the plumbers' local union was in progress. I like to think our group had more diversity.The year 1969 was a turbulent time. The Vietnam War was in full tilt. In the big cities, it had been a summer of demonstrations, riots, and fires. There were mass protests against the draft, especially by students and the counterculture. Some students even wanted course credit for skipping class to participate in demonstrations. And some—of an anarchic bent—wanted their course grades to be the subject of negotiation with the professor in question. Richard Nixon—a native of Southern California—was still riding high, having just assumed the presidency. Armstrong and Aldrin had recently left footprints on the moon—a breathtaking leap in the evolution of life on earth and in the annals of human achievement. External space had been dramatically conquered. Would inner space be next? Biofeedback technology offered great promise.But back to the meeting. In recalling a distant event, you quickly realize that, as with history, this is an extremely selective business. You have to leave out at least 99% of what happened. So what to include?Then there's the question of interpretation. People may interpret the same event in diametrically opposed ways. Take an example from Colorado. A drug conference was being held in Aspen, attended by police chiefs from all over the country. A marshal from back East commented to a deputy sheriff, “I hear you have quite a drug problem in this place.” The Aspen deputy sheriff looked puzzled for a moment, but then cheerfully replied, “Well, no, I wouldn't say that. You can pretty much get what you want, when you want it!”As just noted, this first meeting was at the Surfrider Inn in Santa Monica. The time was mid-fall, 1969, after the Society for Psychophysiological Research (SPR) conference in Monterey. Organized through the initiative of Barbara Brown, the meeting's emphasis was heavy on free-form—mainly panels where people could become expansive, discursive, even cosmic! “Linear” thinking was not obligatory.Quite an interesting mix of people was gathered at this seaside location. Some had just come from the SPR meetings in Monterey, a group that recognized the usual criteria of scientific work—controllability, predictability, replicability—the “engineering” criteria. Many, though, were definitely apostles of the counterculture. At least one identifiable guru was in attendance, along with a cluster of his followers—all of them outfitted in flowing white robes. (There were also some people in dark business suits.) And, prominently, there were experts from many different fields: hypnosis, dreams sleep, meditation, psychophysiology, alternative lifestyles, various schools of mysticism, operant conditioning, electronics, communications, and cybernetic control theory.Overall, there was an emphasis on the experiential and on a counterestablishment orientation. Among the psychologists one could sense a reaction against the hard-boiled, bare-boned behaviorism of the 1950s: Maybe there was more to their science than scrutinizing rat behavior or memorizing nonsense syllables! Perhaps behavioral techniques could be used to improve the quality of consciousness! Perhaps with the help of biofeedback we could catapult ourselves into desirable states of consciousness—without needing to crank away for years at tiresome meditation exercises.The meeting vibrated with a great sense of energy and excitement. After years of laboring more or less in isolation, people had discovered that there were kindred spirits in the world. One could say, too, that there was definitely an anarchist streak present—a counterculture touch. Unlike so many scientific societies, we were not going to get bogged down in a top-heavy organizational structure, or suffocated by a plethora of committees, or saddled with presenting annual awards for this, that, or the other piece of meritorious work.Mostly the conference was deliberately freeform. People would hold forth on panels, keeping more or less to the designated topic, though speculating freely. There was even some space for formal scientific papers—for those who insisted on that sort of thing. I recall one incident; I think it was on the first morning of the meeting. A recent PhD from Canada reported firmly and coherently on his experimental work—complete with slides, F ratios, t values, and so forth. Off to one side, a bearded hippy lay sprawled out on a wide windowsill. He looked like he was asleep, but he had actually been taking it all in—because about 5 minutes into the talk, he suddenly boomed out, “That's not what we want!” The speaker looked startled. But after some brief rumbling among the audience—for and against the hippie's objection—the speaker was allowed to continue and gamely finished his paper.Another incident: Probably not many members are aware that we almost became the Gardner Murphy Society (true story)! The question came up, “What should we call ourselves?” Freeform notwithstanding, we needed a name. Gardner Murphy, a fine gentleman and distinguished elder statesman of American psychology, happened to be in attendance, as were a sprinkling of his acolytes. One of them proposed that we should call ourselves The Gardner Murphy Society. Murphy himself politely declined the offer. Nonetheless, animated discussion followed—for and against. Finally, Tom Mulholland got up and remarked, “We shouldn't have an eponymous name for the Society!” Since nobody else knew what “eponymous” meant, Tom's point carried the day. End of discussion. The name we finally settled on was Biofeedback Society of America (BSA), which sounded respectable and not too long-winded.A third incident I recall bears on the topic of large ideas, of which several were floating around. One was put forward by Jean Houston, a very upbeat lady, and self-reported as holding a doctorate in experimental philosophy from a major research university. Capable of whipping up great enthusiasm in an audience, Houston could easily have surfaced as a top-notch motivational speaker.On this occasion, she proposed a large and intriguing idea. We 20th-century humans are in the midst of a massive intellectual upheaval, a vast process of remythologizing. Old myths, religions, and philosophies are now discredited, crumbling, and falling by the wayside. But new configurations of beliefs and ideas are emerging—including even a new synthesis of what it means to be human! And the biofeedback concept—equipped with a technology offering prospects for vastly enhanced control of one's internal environment—would surely be central to the newly emerging configuration, a bold new fusion of elements!Some esoteric communications: Houston was, in the mid-1990s, involved in a noteworthy Washington event. Having been invited to the White House during the Clinton administration, Houston apparently conducted some therapeutically oriented guided imagery sessions for the benefit of Hillary Clinton. These encounters involved imagining and communicating with various past occupants of the White House. A favorite personality to be recalled was that of Eleanor Roosevelt: “What would she say?” Although whether any particular advice was offered remains unclear.Not unusual for Washington, these sessions were supposed to be super hush-hush. But then—also not unusual for Washington—the press somehow got hold of the story. In the hands of the media, the guided imagery sessions now became “conjuring up spirits of the dead,” a sort of shamanistic “ritual,” and one carrying overtones of the black arts. Eventually, to quiet things down, President Clinton had to provide a public explanation. But I digress.* * *To sum up these scattered impressions—one abiding thought running through our discussions—and already long present in the eastern meditative disciplines—was the idea that desirable states of consciousness could be systematically cultivated. Very likely this quest could be expedited by building on the rapidly evolving body of sophisticated electronic techniques becoming available for detecting all manner of minute physiological signals. Epitomizing this quest was the pioneering work of Joe Kamiya and that of Elmer and Alyce Green using information feedback of alpha EEG and other rhythms in gaining voluntary control over particular physiological processes and in exploring the associated states of consciousness. In future forays, various brain rhythms—and combinations of such rhythms—could probably be recruited for these projects. (Disclosure: Joe Kamiya was my advisor in graduate school.)Another main theme was practical. Did biofeedback techniques have any clinical applications? Could they expedite the relaxation techniques used, for example, in the European tradition of autogenic training, or in Jacobson's progressive relaxation? Or in the abbreviated relaxation training used in the behavior therapy technique of systematic desensitization of anxiety reactions? Also looming was the prospect of enhanced voluntary control over autonomic activity. Could such control, for example, be used to lower blood pressure, or change heart rate? Or could it be used to moderate the vasoconstrictive reaction in Raynaud's syndrome?So, what has been accomplished in the past five decades? Any discoveries? Anything clinically useful? Come to the 50th meeting and find out! Hope to see you in Denver, mid-March, 2019.