THE Land of Hypnagogia

After a long career as a psychotherapist and scholarly writer, Adam Crabtree gathers together the principle threads of his view of the meaning of human life. He describes his life-long search for the means to explore human depth. His approach is unique in that he uses narrative to explore the twilight world of hypnagogic experiences as he has experienced them. He does not claim to have answers, but only his own personal experiences to serve as specimens of what one day may become a science of the Land of Hypnagogia. He claims that hypnagogic experiences are our most direct access to the true depths of human persons for the truest formulation of human meaning. The book has three main parts. In the first, he describes the nature of hypnagogic experiences and provides many personal examples. In the second part, He tells the story of how a book moth had burrowed into his writings and felt compelled to take the time to lecture him on the failures in his career. The third part describes his encounters with Friedrich Nietzsche at a well on his retreat property and descends into the depths of the inner human abyss. The book is completed with an examination of the fears that have kept the human community from allowing an adequate exploration of those depths, and a call for a radical shift in language and attitude in this fundamental voyage of discovery.

Evolutionary Love and the Ravages of Greed

The widespread turmoil in the human community today is a symptom of the dominance of unchecked desire, or Greed. This book distinguishes two ancient concepts of love (the Greek ideas of agape and eros) and explores how agape, the driver of evolution, when put into play through the harmonious action of eros, displays the true essence of love – Evolutionary Love– that alone is the antidote to the ravages of Greed.

“Adam Crabtree has given us a thoughtful, original, nuanced, and both philosophically- and psychologically-wide-ranging exploration of the two basic forms of love--agape and eros, emphasizing the primacy of the former and its critical role in the advancement of humankind. At the same time, his book is also a valuable contribution to the study of philosopher Charles Peirce. Crabtree's discussions of the varieties of greed and the manifestation of greed in the group mind of religious institutions are especially penetrating. And his trenchant critique of institutions of higher learning is especially timely.”

Stephen Braude, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Maryland

ADAM Crabtree

It is no accident that hypnotism and its history were central subjects in my academic research, since I have regularly used trance states in my clinical practice over the years. However, a thorough study of the history of trance states did not give me a satisfactory definition or full understanding of their nature. It is well known to those who work in the field that there has never been an agreed upon definition of hypnosis. Bothered by this unsettled state of affairs, I undertook yet another book. It dealt with the subject of trance states in everyday life and was called Trance Zero: Breaking the Spell of Conformity (Toronto: Somerville House Books, 1997). In this book I propose a definition of trance which applies to the entire gamut of experiences to which that term has been applied over the centuries. From the definition it follows that trance states are not extraordinary experiences after all, but rather something that we are constantly going in an out of as we live our lives. The book also takes up the issue of cultural trance which, without our realizing it, limits and rigidifies the way we think about the world and each other.

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All of us are endowed with an innate ability to renew and heal ourselves in mind, body, and spirit. We can gain access to our inner healing resources by entering a concentrated state of being called "trance."

Our inner resources include both wisdom about what is needed and the power to effect change. In some cases the changes that occur are sudden and spectacular; in other cases they are gradual and ordinary.

In psychotherapy, trance states can be used to tap the client's inner wisdom about what is needed for healing and to mobilize the client's latent self-healing power. The relationship between client and therapist is important, not because the therapist has the answers or does the healing, but because the client's own healing resources can often best be accessed in rapport with a skilled guide.

Therapeutic trance makes use of a natural ability we all have to go into trance states--something that we do in everyday life without realizing it. Therapeutic trance shifts our focus from the outer world to the inner world, in that way making the inner mind accessible.

By giving us access to the inner mind, therapeutic trance can help us become aware of forgotten memories. It can also give us the opportunity to solve present problems and envision future possibilities.

There are many misconceptions about the nature of trance. It is not a mystical or occult state. It does not involve one person having control over another. It does not produce unconsciousness--awareness is maintained through the whole experience and a memory of what has happened remains at the end.

Therapeutic trance is not magic--but it is a powerful tool for personal growth. It provides a safe environment in which the individual can become aware of the riches of the inner mind and make use of them in whatever way is most helpful.

BIOGRAPHY

I came to be a Toronto psychotherapist in a rather round-about way. I grew up on a farm in Minnesota. I was christened Gary Lee and took the name Adam when, in 1958, I entered St. John's Abbey in Minnesota and became a Benedictine Monk. After ordination to the Catholic priesthood in 1964, I came to Toronto to do graduate work in philosophy. There I became part of a unique therapeutic community that was just taking shape in 1965. Initiated by the innovative Welsh psychotherapist, Lea Hindley Smith, this unusual experiment, called Therafields, developed a psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy training program. After experiencing the therapeutic process for myself, I received training as a psychotherapist and began what has become a practice of more than thirty years.

Eventually chafing at the psychoanalytic bit, I broadened my view of what is and is not possible for the human psyche, pursuing a study of the unusual, the anomalous, and the paranormal. This resulted in referrals from colleagues who were baffled or even frightened by the symptoms they encountered in some of their clients.

Another outcome of this interest was the revivification of my academic career, since I was convinced that the only way to intelligently learn about anomalous experiences was to study the research already done. So I augmented my clinical work with the examination of the classical writings in psychical research, hypnotism, and dissociative phenomena. Out of this scholarly work and my clinical experience were born three books. The first was Multiple Man: Explorations in Possession and Multiple Personality (Toronto: Collins, 1985; Somerville House (Canada) and St. Martin's Press (U.S.A.), 1997). This work combines material from my clinical work with dissociative states and my research into the history of the phenomena. There followed Animal Magnetism, Early Hypnotism and Psychical Research, from 1766 to 1925: An Annotated Bibliography (White Plains, Ne w York: Kraus International, 1988). This tome, dealing with some 2000 titles in three languages, became the background research for my next book, From Mesmer to Freud: Magnetic Sleep and the Roots of Psychological Healing (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993) tracing the rise of what I termed the "alternate consciousness paradigm," a framework of thought that became an essential ingredient in all modern psychotherapies of the unconscious mind.

ADAM CRABTREE’S WORKS

Books

1. Multiple Man: Explorations in Possession and Multiple Personality
--Collins Publishers, Toronto, 1985
--Grafton Books, London, 1989
--Somerville House, Toronto, 1997

2. Animal Magnetism, Early Hypnotism, and Psychical Research, 1766-1925: An Annotated Bibliography
--Kraus International Publications, White Plains New York, 1988

3. From Mesmer to Freud: Magnetic Sleep and the Roots of Psychological Healing
--Yale University Press, New Haven, 1993.

4. Trance Zero: Breaking the Spell of Conformity
--Somerville House, Toronto, 1997.
--St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1997 [Trance Zero: The Psychology of Maximum Experience

5. Memoir of a Trance Therapist: Hypnosis and the Evocation of Human Potentials
--Friesen Press, Victoria, B.C., 2014

6. Evolutionary Love and the Ravages of Greed
--Friesen Press, Victoria, B.C., 2017

7. The Land of Hypnagogia
--Privately Published through Kindle Direct Publishing, Toronto, 2020

Chapters of Books

1. “Mesmerism, Divided Consciousness and Multiple Personality,” Franz Anton Mesmer und die Geschichte des Mesmerismus, Heinz Schott, ed. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart, 1985.

2. “Explanations of Dissociation in the First Half of the Twentieth Century,” Split Minds/Split Brains: Historical and Current Perspectives, ed. Jacques Quen. New York University Press, New York, 1986.

3. “Introduction to: Contemporary Approaches to Releasement,” Regression Therapy: A Handbook for Professionals, Vol. 2., by Winafred Lucas. Deep Forest Press, Crest Park, California, 1993.

4. “Automatism and Secondary Centers of Consciousness,” Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century. By Edward Kelly, Emily Kelly, et al. Rowman and Littlefield, 2007.

5. “The Transition to Secular Psychotherapy: Hypnosis and the Alternate Consciousness Paradigm,” History of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology, eds. E. Wallace and J. Gach. Springer Science and Media, New York, 2008.

5. “Continuity of Mind: A Peircean Vision,” Beyond Physicalism: Toward Reconciliation of Science and Religion, eds. Edward Kelly, Adam Crabtree, and Paul Marshall. Rowman and Littlefield, 2015.

7. “Animal Magnetism and Mesmerism,” The Occult World, ed. Christopher Partridge. Routledge, Oxford, 2015.

8. “Mesmer and Animal Magnetism,” The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism, ed. Glenn Magee. Cambridge University Press, New York, 2016.

9. “Parapsychology,” Encyclopedia of the History of Psychological Theories, Vol 1, ed. Robert Rieber. Springer Science and Business, New York, 2017

Journal Articles and Papers

“’Automatism’ and the Emergence of Dynamic Psychiatry,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences. 39, 1, 2003

“Hypnosis Reconsidered, Resituated, and Redefined,” Journal of Scientific Exploration. 26, 2, 2012

“1784: The Marquis de Puységur and the Psychological Turn in the West,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences. 55, 3, 2019.

Papers on various topics: https://www.esalen.org/ctr/resources

Papers on various topics: https://ctp.academia.edu/AdamCrabtree

LINKS TO ADAM CRABTREE’S BOOKS

Multiple Man: Explorations in Possession and Multiple Personality:
https://www.amazon.ca/Multiple-man-Explorations-possession-personality/dp/0002172259/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=crabtree+multiple+man&qid=1593958697&sr=8-1

Animal Magnetism, Early Hypnotism, and Psychical Research, 1766-1925: An Annotated Bibliography:
https://www.esalen.org/ctr-archive/animal_magnetism.html

From Mesmer to Freud: Magnetic Sleep and the Roots of Psychological Healing:
https://www.amazon.ca/Mesmer-Freud-Magnetic-Psychological-Healing/dp/0300055889/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Crabtree+From+mesmer+to+freud&qid=1593958451&sr=8-1

Trance Zero: The Psychology of Maximum Experience:
https://www.amazon.ca/Trance-Zero-Psychology-Maximum-Experience/dp/0312244258/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=crabtree+trance+zero&qid=1593958539&sr=8-2

Memoir of a Trance Therapist: Hypnosis and the Evocation of Human Potentials:
https://www.amazon.ca/s?k=crabtree+memoir+of+a+trance+therapist&ref=nb_sb_noss

Evolutionary Love and the Ravages of Greed:
https://www.amazon.ca/Evolutionary-Ravages-Greed-Professor-Crabtree/dp/1525509675/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=crabtree+evolutionary+love&qid=1593958982&sr=8-1

The Land of Hypnagogia:
https://www.amazon.ca/s?k=crabtree+land+of+hypnagogia&ref=nb_sb_noss

LINKS TO PODCASTS

1. THINKING ALLOWED podcasts

2. Other Podcasts

--This is not a Scottcast; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dR6US1FOWk&t=17s
--Shrink Wrap Radio 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njtntUI1DJw
--Shrink Wrap Radio 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2Oz1MSFWDs