Integration in Breathwork

What does integration mean when we talk about “integrative” breathwork?

In my “Manual of Breath Therapy” (2004, in German) I have described the meaning of “integrative” on four levels:

“In conscious breathing, the intimate engagement of body and soul/spirit occurs.

In letting the breath happen, scattered, disparate parts of the inner life find each other. As the spiritual realm encounters the physical body, the areas of experience that have become separated from each other in the course of personal development also reconnect.

From a methodological point of view, the aim is to create the best possible conditions for this reunion and finding oneself in the therapeutic process, with the breath as the center and other methods of experience as additional aids. If possible and appropriate, the experience of breathing should be placed in a larger context in order to open up a broader and more multidimensional approach to the areas of psychological problems.

Integrative Breath Therapy uses the broad spectrum of methods that come from various schools of breathwork. The method of choice is found by taking into account the personality, the inner state of development and the physical suitability of the clients and is varied according to the development of the therapeutic process.” (p. 96)

I would like to explain these levels in more detail here.

Ad 1): When we breathe consciously, we not only feel our body through the incoming and outgoing flow of air, but also ourselves in the act of breathing. We are therefore more deeply and intimately connected with ourselves when we are aware of our breathing than when our senses are directed outwards or our thoughts are focused on something. In the moment of conscious breathing, we are one with ourselves; we experience ourselves as an integral whole.

Ad 2): When we engage in a longer breathing process, as it happens, for example, in a connected breathing session, we experience more of ourselves and come into contact with parts of ourselves on different levels. Coming into contact means that something that was previously separated reunites. As I would like to explain, such separations or divisions at the soul level are the result of traumatic experiences. The re-encounter with earlier experiences, which have been stored in the subconscious, increases and broadens our wholeness, our inner togetherness. White or gray spots on the inner map become colorful again.

Ad 3a): The breathing process in a breathwork session is always embedded in the context of the therapeutic relationship between the person breathing and the person accompanying the breather. These two people are connected to each other through breathing, but also through the communicative field they have created together. We assume that an exchange between these persons also takes place on a subconscious level. This interaction can be noticed in the fact we often hear that the therapist can perceive the needs of the person breathing without a verbal exchange taking place. The reason for this intimate form of communication could be that breathing together creates a shared vibration between the two people, a field of resonance in which information flows back and forth.

Ad 3b.): In addition, this aspect of integration includes a practical part of the therapeutic work: during the breathing process, there is a space in which other helpful and effective methods can be applied. First of all, there is the whole area of physical interventions, touching, applying pressure, massage-like relaxation, etc. In addition, there are verbal messages that can be used to provide reassurance or encouragement. If the client comes to the breathing session with an issue, she can also be supported with phrases that help to resolve the issue. For example, if she is afraid of an upcoming job interview, the therapist might say, “You'll do great. Believe in yourself and your abilities.” Or: ”As you breathe in, feel the strength to take control of your life, and as you breathe out, let go of your fear.”

Ad 3c.): The presence of the companion is another influential factor that should not be underestimated. Someone who follows the unfolding inner experiences with a non-judgmental and attentive attitude, without interfering with their own intentions, represents a person that everyone would have wished for as a parent in childhood. With this attitude, it becomes possible to compensate for emotional deficiencies from childhood, especially on the communicative level, and to create the inner space for new relationship patterns. Integration here means that the experience of a new relationship model overwrites the relationship concepts adopted from childhood and incorporates them into the overall complex of the soul.

Ad 3d.): Finally, this point also includes everything that is used as a method after the end of the breathing process. The aim here is to familiarize other areas of the inner self with the new experiences so that the deeper insights into one's own soul life can be connected with what is already well-known. These areas include the mental, the visual and the symbolic level. The transfer of the new insights to different levels of the soul ensures that these experiences can have a lasting effect and that old, no longer useful patterns in these areas are weakened or overwritten. The more sensory modalities that are actively included in the healing process, the more anchors are planted in the various departments of our brain and soul. Examples for these ways to integration are drawing, painting or working with clay; creative processes that enable the right hemisphere of the brain to process and integrate the breathing experience. Writing also supports the integration process.

Ad 3e.): These integrative activations are about creating connections and links where there have been fault lines running through the landscape of the soul. Traumatic injuries cause interruptions, i.e. discontinuities within the psyche. There is a before and an after, and in between there is a gap. The before was still good, while the after is dark. The reason for the deterioration is hidden because it had to be split off due to its intensity of pain and fear. All experiences that had to be suppressed because of their intensity and could not be integrated leave white (or black) spots in the course of one’s life story. Due to trauma, the narrative flow, which normally links the events and forms the meaningful whole of a continuous life experience, disintegrates into incoherent parts. In moments of healing, it is possible to reintegrate previously excluded experiences, that is, to integrate them into the context of one’s life. In a sense, the flow of breathing, which guarantees and represents the continuity of life but which faltered and was interrupted at the moment of traumatization, is restored retrospectively.

Ad 4): Modalities of Breathing

In this context, integrative breathing means that the modalities of breathing are adapted to the client as opposed to adapting the client's breathing to a predetermined form of breathing. So initially there is no right or wrong breathing, but the breathing of the breathing person as it is. The facilitator may sense or notice that the breathing is restricted, held back or blocked in one way or another, but he does not intervene immediately. Instead, he allows the breather to have time to perceive for herself how her breathing flows or falters, and to allow the breath to unfold its effects within the breathing person. So trusting the power of the breath is at the center of integrative breathwork, and not the ideas, expectations or self-experienced notions of ideal breathing of the facilitator. Integrative breathing is about self-experienced breathing, how it works in the moment and how it changes when it gets the attention of the breathing person.

Relying on the breath as such means that no special knowledge about optimal breathing is needed to bring the healing power of the breath into effect. Methods, such as physical interventions, massage techniques or other means to bring breathing into a desired or expected form, are initially unnecessary; the idea is rather that breathing itself comes closer to its best form when it gets the space to do so. This space is created by the attention of the person breathing to their breathing and by the compassionate presence of the facilitator.

Better and Worse Breathing

Sometimes clients come to me with the question of what the right or optimal breathing would be. An integrative view of breathing implies that there is a suitable breathing for each situation, but no generally valid form of breathing for all times. Our breathing reacts automatically to our current state and the level of activity in which we find ourselves. It constantly adapts to the needs of our body and soul.

At the same time, we notice that this adaptation works better or worse. Often our breathing is too shallow and too fast for the needs of the current situation, as a result of acquired dysfunctional breathing habits. This kind of breathing provides us with enough oxygen to ensure our survival, in other words, with a minimum to enable us to carry out our activities. But it does not promote lasting health and well-being.

Respiratory therapy in the narrower sense begins where blockages and restrictions of breathing become conscious and the accompanying person can offer support from their own knowledge and from their own experiences of the possibilities of breathing, in order to resolve the obstacles that stand in the way of deeper, fuller and slower breathing.

As we know, shallow and rapid breathing is always stressful breathing, which in many people has become chronic over the years, often starting in childhood. They suffer from stress all the time, although they hardly notice it anymore because it has become a habit. In these cases, the organism is constantly in a survival mode, and this mode drains the energy reserves of the body and psyche without contributing to regeneration and replenishment of the energy depots. Shallow and rapid breathing is an indication that the person is exhausting their resources, which will sooner or later create physical or emotional problems. The unused potential in terms of depth and slowing down breathing leads to stiffness and rigidity in the respiratory muscles. In addition, shock experiences or emotional injuries, e.g. through humiliation or embarrassment, lead to a reduction in breathing depth and thus to an acceleration, which further inhibits the breathing and restricts its mobility and flexibility. These inhibitions can even develop when someone has experienced as a child that their liveliness was not appreciated by their parents; to adapt to this condition, there is the simple option of reducing the tidal volume, and suddenly less vital energy is available. Traumatic experiences, which are often accompanied by breathing interruptions, have an even more detrimental effect on breathing. Many people therefore carry deficit breathing patterns from their childhood with them, which have become chronic and sooner or later express themselves in various health problems.

The relaxation and flexibilization of the breathing musculature, especially of the diaphragm and the intercostal muscles, which can be achieved in breathing therapy, leads to more freedom in breathing and to open up for its various possibilities. This is the type of breathing that we can use to best strengthen our own health and ability to regenerate. Often, clients have difficulty breathing in slowly and evenly or breathing out in a relaxed manner. Both abilities are accessible when the respiratory muscles become more flexible. This allows the parasympathetic nervous system to become more effective, in turn helping to decelerate and relax one’s breathing. It is the same with yoga asanas: with continued practice, the corresponding muscles and tissues grow and become more supple, increasing flexibility and mobility. In addition, the fasciae of the respiratory muscles are activated and invigorated, making them softer and loosening adhesions.

Regularly practiced breathing exercises and longer breathing sessions help to activate and train the respiratory muscles and the fascia tissues involved, increasing blood flow and improving performance, both in terms of breathing depth and in regulating breathing speed from very slow to fast. Muscles and tissued that are used in their various ways become more powerful and flexible. In this way, we integrate the diversity and variability that is inherent in our breathing.

With well-stretchable respiratory muscles, a wide variety of breathing exercises can be practiced effortlessly. These exercises are available in large numbers and all have specific benefits. Some of them are described according to Indian or Chinese tradition, for example in terms of their effects on the chakras or the meridians. Many of them lead to scientifically measurable improvements, for example in blood circulation, stress relief or sleep quality.

Integration with the Self

Here we have described the integration of physiology and health. With breathing, which we can consciously influence, control and train, we have a regulatory process at hand, that we can use again and again to come into harmony with ourselves. This is an important prerequisite for the lasting health of our organism. If we act against our body, i.e. take actions that harm it, we come into conflict with ourselves. We are separated from ourselves, disintegrated, split off. Then we not only feel uncomfortable, but also exert a strain on our physical health.

With conscious breathing, we integrate ourselves, thus coming to inner unity and often to a deep connection with ourselves. The intact self-relationship is the basis for our mental well-being and our organic flourishing. Peace reigns within us, and in times of peace all our powers and abilities can develop at their best. On the physiological level, this state of integration manifests itself in a high degree of coherence, that is, in uniform rhythms or vibrations in various regulatory systems in the body – breathing, heartbeat, blood circulation, autonomic nervous system and cranio-sacral fluid.

The self-connection that is created through breathing exists independently of whether we are aware of it at the moment or not. This attunement even takes place during sleep. But when we consciously breathe, our consciousness is also included in this harmony and we live from the core of our wholeness.

Breathing and Integration of the Environment

With every inbreath we take in the outer air and with our exhalation we expel the inner air. We are in a constant exchange with the medium that permanently surrounds us and represents our elixir of life. Through breathing, we are in touch with our environment in every moment. In a continuous flow, we give and take in the form of inhaled and exhaled air. Air is our primary outside world, which we turn into our inside by inhaling and turn it back to the outside by exhaling. The air gives us our first and most important information about the outside: temperature, quality, odours and other atmospheric messages that have an immediate influence on our experience. With breathing, the inner and the outer world integrate into a vibrant unity.

Coherent breathing and science

In a scientific study conducted in England with 400 participants, a comparison was made between slow and fast breathing. The participants were divided into two groups. Both were asked to do 10 minutes of breathing exercises every day for four weeks, one group at 5.5 breaths/minute (a breathing rate used in coherent breathing), the other at 12 breaths/minute (this breathing rate represents the lower limit of breathing speed in the average population). The results showed that the subjective perception of stress and depression decreased in both groups, while the values for well-being increased. However, there were no significant differences between the slow and fast breathers. 

Since the slow breathing method was named „coherent breathing“ in the study, the study would prove that coherent breathing, in which you are supposed to take between 3 and 6 breaths/minute, is just as effective as breathing more than twice as fast. There are a number of other studies and overviews that show that slow breathing improves well-being and reduces stress arousal.  

So what should we think of this study? I claim that title and text of the study wrongly refer to coherent breathing. Coherent breathing not only means breathing slowly and regularly, but also relaxing the exhalation and regulating the depth of breathing in such a way that breathing is controlled primarily via the diaphragm. We know from practice that some beginners in the method find these elements of coherent breathing easy, while many struggle at first: They do not succeed in relaxing the exhalation, the inhalation takes too long, abdominal breathing is unfamiliar, the breathing rate is too slow, so that the necessary stretching of the breath creates stress, etc. There are remedies for all these initial problems, which are taught by a competent instructor. After a few practice sessions, these difficulties are overcome in almost all cases thanks to the special interventions and suggestions. 

In the study, the participants were initially given information about the method, but there was no opportunity to ask questions in case of difficulties. We can therefore assume that some of the participants of the study had problems with relaxing the breathing and were therefore unable to gain better recovery results. As simple as the method of coherent breathing appears, because only three or four basic elements need to be considered, there are many pitfalls in practice. Everyone has their own breathing habits that have been ingrained over years and decades. It therefore takes time, motivation and consistent practice to change them in a favourable direction. The discussion of the study results in the publication also addresses this fact and cites studies in which coherent breathing was practised under individual guidance, with clearly positive effects. While the study criticized the insufficiently "robust" design of these experiments, these studies also provide important findings. 

A further point of criticism of the study that I (like the authors of the study) have is the fact that the average number of practice sessions was 20, i.e. that it is not possible to speak of a consistent practice discipline, which is particularly important at the beginning in order to make lasting changes of firmly established breathing habits. In addition, no one knows whether the method was practiced correctly at all or only somehow. 

The participants were also not informed as to why they should take 5.5 breaths/minute. With coherent breathing in particular, it is important for many beginners to understand why they should breathe in this way and not in a different way so that they can motivate themselves to practise coherent breathing. For some people, motivation comes from experience: they like an exercise because they feel the positive effects. For others, it comes from mental understanding: they recognize that the exercise could be valuable from a theoretical point of view and then practice it.  There are always beginners who refuse to adhere to a strict guideline such as that required for coherent breathing. Only when they understand the reason they are prepared to train with it. Such resistance, which we know from teaching coherent breathing, was not taken into account in the study. So consequently, the authors of the study also assume that appropriate "psychoeducation" would have led to better results with coherent breathing. 

Furthermore, the study authors point out that there is a study that shows that a breathing rate of 8 breaths/minute produces better results for vagal activation, i.e. for stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system, than 12 breaths/minute, which in turn performs better than 16 breaths/minute. It therefore proves that the slower you breathe, the greater the effect on relaxation and on lowering blood pressure. In the study discussed here, the positive results for the "placebo" group, who breathed at 12 breaths/minute, can be attributed to the fact that many were able to experience a reduction in their otherwise even higher usual breathing rate as relaxing and mood-enhancing. Both study groups obviously benefited from the breathing awareness, regularity and deepening of breathing. Both groups were also instructed to breathe through the nose, which has multiple health effects, including improving oxygen uptake and regulating anxiety and stress management in the brain. 

The next point of criticism relates to the lack of physiological evaluations of the breathing exercises. The study results come from questionnaires completed by the participants. They are therefore subjective mood reports, and there is no data on heart rate, heart rate variability, blood pressure or sleep quality. It is often impressive for beginners in this method to see in real time, how their breathing pattern and their heartbeat synchronize, and those who like to go deeper can measure their heart rate variability and its improvement over the time of practice. In this study, it could well be that the physiological status of those who practiced coherent breathing was improved without being noticed.  

To summarize: The study discussed raises more question marks than it answers - and these are suggestions for more and more detailed research. Anyone working in this field can derive from this study the many benefits of working with conscious breathing. 

Further reading:
Coherent Breathing

  

Capitalism and Socialism: Fear Orientation vs. Shame Orientation

 Our Future and Four Horror Narratives

Looking into the future is sometimes done with hope and confidence, but sometimes also with concern and fear. These worries and fears are based on current experiences and facts that we have gathered from various information channels. The emotional charge of these images of the future comes from our childhood and prenatal experiences, as well as from collective traumas from history.

We can distinguish four different scenarios, all of which overlap and interact with each other somewhere, but which are also served, propagated and reinforced separately by political parties and groups: 

• the scenario of a desolidarized society
• the scenario of a society flooded from outside
• the scenario of dwindling prosperity
• the scenario of a destroyed nature.

The first narrative is about social inequality. It is an ancient theme of humanity that has arisen at least since the transition from tribal cultures to arable cultures about 10,000 years ago. Many fairy tales and legends deal with the hard-hearted rich and the suffering poor. Since industrialization, the problem has massively intensified, and political movements under the banner of socialism and communism have emerged, dedicated to the struggle for greater social justice.

Since that time, the facts show a permanently increasing divergence between the accumulation of wealth by the very few on the one hand and the working poverty, old-age poverty, single-parent poverty and unemployment poverty of the very many on the other, with a middle class in between that is increasingly in danger of slipping into poverty. The climate crisis adds another dimension to this development, because it has a completely different impact when someone has to survive the heat in a crowded slum under a corrugated iron roof or in a secluded and fully air-conditioned villa by the sea. Life courses, dates of death, and causes of death are significantly influenced by position in the social fabric, which is defined by the imbalance in the disposal of material resources. Those who are rich not only live better, but also longer.

The Indispensability of Social Balance

Reason tells us that a certain degree of social balance is needed for people to be able to form a community. Not everyone needs to earn the same amount or have the same wealth, but there must be a framework within which the differences operate, as well as permeabilities that allow for equality or comparability of opportunity. For otherwise there is a danger that society will fall apart and a war of all against all will break out, or that there will be a closing off of the happy few in their fortified ghettos from the mass of the badly off. A dynamic balance between performance norms and individual strengths and weaknesses is necessary to reduce the stress of survival for the individuals and to make the creative potential that is in all people available for each other and for a humane development.

It is also easy to understand that during crises and disasters, those who are socially and monetarily weaker suffer even more severely than those who can do better because of their means. At the time of the rush of refugees and asylum seekers to Central Europe, there were the wealthy who fled from the refugees to their vacation domicile on the Balearic or Canary Islands. There were and are similar departures in the current pandemic times. The climate crisis, like any other, is always also a social crisis.

Horror Scenarios and Ideologies

Horror narratives are designed to wake up humanity and motivate it to act. But they have a tendency to become loaded with ideologies - as long as there are unresolved emotional energies behind the reasonable concerns, i.e. mainly fears and feelings of shame.

The ideological ballast comes to light where the background and causes of the imbalance are mythologized by identifying apparent masterminds behind developments. Either it is a few conspirators who pull the strings and play with people's fate, or it is "capitalism" that steers humanity to its downfall with its destructive power. When it comes to responsibility for "evil," social revolutionaries tend to use truncated concepts. In this way, the complex systems that drive these developments are reduced to simple images of the enemy, which then appear so overpowering that there seems to be no basis for political counter-activity and anything done to improve the situation or correct the destructive tendencies can be dismissed as a symptom cure. The ideology, which goes back to Karl Marx, says that the whole society must be overturned in order to do away with the specter of capitalism. Until that can be done, everything will only get worse, because even any attempt at reform will stabilize capitalism and make it more resistant.

But the communist revolution, when we overlook the history of modern times, has never really and fundamentally succeeded. Today, the capitalist system operates unabated throughout the world, and one of its strongest powers is the communist People's Republic of China. Communism (or "real existing socialism"), as it has appeared in history, is a system of rule that establishes power structures and controls and suppresses possible opponents. The economy serves as a field of experimentation that is tinkered with using the instruments of power. Experience has shown that any attempt to completely subordinate capitalism to political power has had disastrous effects on economic performance. This was a major reason why the communist system in Eastern Europe went down without a sound in 1989. It was not possible to look that quickly, already many of the former standard bearers of socialism became the most successful capitalists. 

Chinese communism produced famines and other economic disasters as long as attempts were made to eradicate capitalism with political power. Only when more and more capitalist elements were allowed in did economic successes then set in, and with it corruption of previously unknown proportions.

No Communism with Traumatized People

Karl Marx understood much of the nature of capitalism, but his conclusion that capitalism must be eliminated by revolution of the oppressed masses was short-sighted. What Marx overlooked was the interwoven nature of capitalism into the human condition. (Karl Marx was not familiar with psychology and even less with trauma theory). Capitalist thought and action is an aspect of being human and is intimately connected to the emotional drives of fear and greed. Psychologically, capitalism represents the playground of a widespread survival strategy: Coping with the fear of one's own extinction through the accumulation of goods. Paradoxically, fear increases further when more security is to be created from the life threats posed by greed-led acts of accumulation. Fear begets greed, and greed increases fear. Thus, capitalism only mirrors fear management and in reality reproduces it constantly.

As we have seen, we can understand capitalism as the interactive system driven by the emotions of fear and greed, which has developed from it a life of its own that can no longer be controlled by single individuals. Everyone is subjected to it, no one can completely escape its pull, and consequently everyone also participates in ensuring that the power of the capitalist system continues to grow. (We all have to buy food and other goods that are produced and distributed within the framework of capitalism. With every price we pay, we consent to these conditions of production and distribution. We all have to earn our living and sell our labor power, thus agreeing to the rules of the labor market and wage labor).

Capitalism thus arises as a community product that operates supra-individually. It is composed of the sum of people's actions motivated by capitalism. Therefore, capitalism cannot simply be destroyed; this is the illusion through which communist ideas become an ideology. People and their emotional survival strategies remain the same whatever system is installed on the political level. People do not lose their fears and greed as a way of coping with fear, merely if the political and economic system is regulated differently. Every communist dictator and apparatchik is historical proof of this.

So capitalism is not a historical error or an evil power that has come over humanity, but the collective creative attempt of humanity to ensure its survival from a certain stage of complexity of social development (I have described it as the fifth stage of the evolution of consciousness). It takes a delicate balance of individual and social motives at each stage to ensure collective survival. The predominance of individual survival incentives over collective ones in the capitalist system shows its roots in people's primal fears. For fear always calls attention to the threat to one's own life from others. In fear, other people become hostile and dangerous beings to us.

From the point of view of psychology, in capitalism the fear of shame holds sway. Shame demands social consideration in one's acts of survival: When we behave selfishly in an emergency situation, for example, when we crowd onto the last boat before others in a shipwreck, shame calls in. When intensive care beds are in short supply during a pandemic, we must do everything we can to avert the shame that arises when we fail to do everything humanly possible to cure the sick.

The threatening potential of capitalism lies in the fact that it has succeeded in largely disempowering shame. It is not by chance that the most shame-free people are at the top of capitalist machinations. This is precisely why we need shame-driven systems that balance the power of fear-driven systems. Only in this way will there be a balance at the level of survival impulses. 

Here we see the indispensable task of socialism. If the counterforces against capitalism are not maintained and strengthened, fear-driven individualism inevitably takes over, and the principle of solidarity goes out the window. The freely unleashed struggle of everyone against everyone is the beginning of the end of humanity. In contrast, socialism demands solidarity between the stronger and the weaker, between the richer and the poorer. There is a deeply human need for balance between top and bottom, and massive anxieties arise when it is disregarded.  

Capitalism not only promises security for one's survival anxieties by generally increasing wealth, but at the same time feeds them by demanding more and more from people. This is the destrucitve feedback system for which people in industrial and post-industrial society have to pay an increasing toll of physical and, increasingly, mental exploitation. Here, too, a socialized shame reports back, pointing to the shame that, despite the amazing achievements of modern luxury societies, the quality of life and life satisfaction have not increased, but that people are afflicted by new fears, by greed, envy, arrogance and self-doubt.

Fear Orientation and Shame Orientation in Interplay

As long as there is no awareness that capitalism is driven by fear and socialism by shame, the distribution of power will swing back and forth between the two forces. At one time one will rule, at another time the other will rule. For the electorate vacillates just as much between these patterns of emotion, which they both carry within them. In the meantime, many socialists have become a little more capitalist and some capitalists a little more shamefaced. But the basic structure has not changed: The anxieties that capitalism pretends to reduce are actually increased by pressures on individuals. It is similar with the shame that is supposed to be calmed under socialism: It seeks other fields of activity once social balance is realized on a broader basis. 

An example is the (shameless) surveillance of individuals, which was installed in all communist states. It was intended to maintain a sense of shame among people so that they would subordinate their individual aspirations, their egoisms, to the collective. In reality, however, the power-hungry egoists in the ruling power apparatus prevailed over the subjects, often with extreme physical and mental cruelty.  

Another typical example is formed by the forced self-shaming performed as rituals of power affirmation in these systems: The absurd confessions of defendants in the Stalinist show trials and the forced self-criticism of officials under Chinese communism testify to the instrumentalization of shame for the purposes of maintaining power and suppressing individual freedoms.

Contemporary China also demonstrates the interplay between a capitalist and a socialist dictatorship. After recently growing the Chinese economy at record rates and producing more and more billionaires, the government now seems to be steering back in the shame direction. Shame barriers are being imposed on the entertainment industry, large corporations are being reprimanded, and rampant working hours are being restricted. Under the rubric of "general prosperity," the social side of Chinese socialism is being reactivated. 

Beyond the Survival Pattern: Optimism instead of Horror

The horror of the scenario of a society diverging along the wealth gap only clears when the influence of ideology fades from the contexts. Ideologies tend to produce a reality-distorting black-and-white view and friend-foe thinking. The unprejudiced view of reality enables the actions necessary to counteract desolidarization and bring to bear the social intentions inherent in every human being. The commitment to greater social justice at all levels is then not driven by shame, but by the desire for a just and humane society, a deeply human concern. It is a concern that must be formulated, demanded and urged again and again for the sake of a just society.

Much has already been achieved on this path, much is still open and must be tackled with all our strength. Many people are committed to these issues. There is much cause for optimism, and this is the attitude that releases and focuses energies.     

Capitalistic Trauma Trance

"It's the economy, stupid."

Why is economic growth such an effective killer argument when it comes to climate protection measures? 

A simple explanation would say: this is due to the propaganda used to represent the lobbying interests of companies that would see their profits dwindle if they had to change their ways of production. We would not have to be impressed by this. It is part of the business world that production has to modernize on an ongoing basis, and if modernization now consists of producing in a climate-friendly way, then that is simply the task that the company has to face up to.

What often happens, however, is that the ecological debate stops there and climate measures are shot down because economic growth would be jeopardized, jobs would be lost, the economy would shrink, everyone would be worse off, and finally everything would collapse.

The Clinton slogan: "it's the economy, stupid," could be translated this way: It's all about the economy, and if you don't understand that, you're a fool. Or: The economy is the most important area around which everything else revolves and must revolve. Or: The economy affects people most directly and most effectively, and everything else is secondary.

The Trauma of Capitalism

The fact that we understand such slogans and consider them as plausible and correct is related to the collective trauma caused by capitalism. The economy is a subfield in any human society, but since the introduction of the capitalist economic system, this subfield has taken over the central position. This leading role has been deeply engraved in our consciousness. It is integrated into all educational and training processes and is drummed into children and young people from an early age. They are supposed to be made fit "for life" in schools, i.e., they are supposed to be able to exist in the economy and build an "existence." Capitalism has thus succeeded in making human existence dependent on economic success: If we don't make it in the economy, we lose our existence.

What has happened here? Of course, people always knew that their survival depended on having enough to eat and a safe place to stay. But they also knew that they could never do it alone, instead that they could only succeed if everyone stuck together. 

In the early days, our ancestors could and had to provide themselves in their communities for everything that was necessary for survival. Especially since the Neolithic revolution, the economy has become increasingly complex due to the progressive division of labor. A system of interdependencies emerged, which was then intensified by the capitalist system with its principles of profit maximization and competition. Whereas in the Middle Ages it was regulated how much a craftsman could earn, under capitalism the one who produced the cheapest and most efficiently was supposed to outdo the other competitors. A relatively balanced system of mutual dependencies, in which social balance plays an important role, becomes a system of competition according to the motto: everyone against everyone. Whoever fights too little goes down. You perish before I perish. Existential fear provides the underlying drive for economic action and is implanted in every participant in the economy. 

As I have proposed elsewhere, capitalism is a fear-driven system that imposes a chronic stress burden on everyone. The hidden ideology of this system suggests that survival is permanently precarious. One can never try hard enough to finally be safe from going under. People are forced to "voluntarily" inflict violence on themselves, not at gunpoint, but with the fear of survival implanted. 

The Capitalistic Trance

From a purely logical point of view, the environmental problem that mankind has maneuvered itself into takes precedence over the economic problems. For on a planet that can no longer be inhabited, no economy can be run either. The economy would therefore have to do everything in its power to avert this global threat, and for this it would need the compelling guidelines from politics. But because in capitalist thinking, short-term gain is always better than a long-term perspective, the representatives of the economy drum out their slogans about the primacy of the economy and its growth, no matter what other costs this causes and what problems arise from it in the longer term. Because the general public, or the state, is liable for damages resulting from economic processes; these need not concern the representatives of the economy. 

But why is politics not in a position to prescribe to the economy the framework conditions that are necessary so that the environmental catastrophe can be averted? Apparently, like most people, it is just as much under the pressure exerted by survival anxiety, the driving force of capitalism. Collective traumas lead to collective dissociations, and dissociations lead to trance states. As soon as there is talk of threats to the economy, most politicians enter a trance state in which they forget everything else they are responsible for. 

For most, waking up from this entranced state apparently only occurs when experiences occur that are so powerful that they can no longer be ignored. Disappearing glaciers or abnormally hot summers are unpleasant experiences, but we can live with them. A storm that knocks down your house or a flood that washes away everything you own can no longer be so easily ignored. 

The danger is that, just as climatic conditions and all the phenomena dependent on them change, we slowly adapt to the changed circumstances and therefore delay everything that would be necessary in terms of new laws and new habits of behavior. We behave like the frogs in the glass of water that is slowly heated, and we do not notice the misery we are in until we are already scalded. (By the way, the story with the frogs is a fake, frogs are not that stupid, they jump out of the water as soon as it gets too hot for them).

We have a choice: the trauma trance, driven by capitalist fear of survival, or waking up, driven by the will to survive and by responsibility for humanity and the planet.

The Role of Collective Trauma in the Actual War

Cause for horror

Every war is cruel and inhuman. The war that broke out these days is, beyond the inhumanity associated with any war, a cause for horror and dismay for all those who believe in the power of peace and non-violent conflict resolution and who hoped that in the millennia of civilizational progress the primitive law of the strongest would be overcome. It is cause for disillusionment about the power that individuals, supported by compliant elites and enthroned by manipulation and dictatorial tricks, can bear violence in the 21st century. The Russian autocrat has unleashed an aggressive war of aggression against his "brother nation," driven by sheer greed for power and by a nationalist ideology with a contorted view of history. 

We feel thrown back to the 18th or 19th century, where wars were started when a neighbouring state was weak and one's own army was well equipped. Potentates put their troops on the march to expand their own power realm and increase their historical glory. These were gruesome wars, but they mostly affected the civilian population only marginally. Unlike today, almost every war of aggression in those days resulted in coalitions in which the relevant great powers pursued their interests. Another difference was that wars were fought on battlefields, not in major cities.

The Russian aggression of February 24, 2022, was possible because it was clear that the West did not want to interfere militarily. The European continent has two world wars behind it and intensive learning and reappraisal processes have taken place in many countries. The horrors of the wars have left deep scars on souls and led many people to believe that international conflicts must be resolved nonviolently, without the sacrifice of human lives. The threshold for entering into warlike actions is high in functioning democracies, because it is probably impossible in any country to mobilize majorities for a war of aggression. 

But how do democracies deal with dictatorships in which wars can be waged without regard for their own populations? The response options are limited to economic sanctions and moral ostracism. The situation is reminiscent of that before World War II, in which the dictatorship in Germany took advantage of the dithering of the English and French democracies to invade Czechoslovakia, first in the so-called Sudeten territories, including guarantees for the integrity of the rest of Czechoslovakia, only to occupy it six months later. Dictators have an advantage in action over more discussion oriented democracies. They have the disadvantage that the decisions that are made are driven by the emotions of individuals who are highly prone to error.

Sooner or later (more likely over the long haul), the model of Western democracies is so attractive that more and more people living under different conditions will aspire to it. One component of the current war lies in the dictators' fear of this attraction, which would go to their own heads. Putin wants to dictate to Ukraine what form of life and government the country "wants" to have, so that he can, in a sense, create a buffer zone against the democratic bacilli coming from the West, for which there is much fertile ground in Russia as well. 

Shameful Finding

We must experience the present state of humanity, that is, of the community of people, as shameful. How can it be possible that a long-term ruler with his military machinery starts a war of aggression in the 21st century and nobody can put a stop to this outrage? Unfortunately, we are still a long way from a world order in which states are deprived of their monopoly on the use of force. There is no world police force that can arrest individual state perpetrators of violence and take away their means of violence. Individual states function only because of the internal monopoly of power among the forces of order. How can a world function if there are no forces of order responsible for the whole world to stop such inhumane aberrations?

Collective Traumas and their Devastating Effects

Putin has named the denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine as the aim of this war. Everyone knows that Ukraine is not ruled by Nazis and is no potential military threat for highly armed Russia. So these are propaganda lies. At the same time, it becomes clear what historical trauma is behind the aggression. Putin has pointed out that he avoided a mistake made by his predecessor Stalin, namely naively believing in World War II that Russia would not be attacked by Nazi Germany. Then, when German troops unexpectedly invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 and inflicted defeat after defeat on the Russian army, the shock was great and could be dealt with only slowly after the situation turned in favour of the Soviet army starting in late 1942 and finally Germany was defeated in 1945.

The collective trauma has obviously not been overcome, and Putin sees himself as the executor of a victim-perpetrator reversal. He finds the Nazi opponents in Ukraine and wants to eradicate the "Nazis" there before they can become dangerous to the Russian fatherland. Moreover, the Ukrainian "brother people" are to be saved from wickedness of their leaders. 

But the Ukrainians suffer from an even earlier trauma, the Holodomor between 1931 and 1933, which can be considered as genocide. About 3.5 million Ukrainians fell victim to the Soviet agricultural policy with the collectivization of agriculture. About 10% of the population was exposed to starvation at that time. In addition, there were extensive "purges", i.e. the execution or internment of artists, teachers, scientists and intellectuals, as well as lower and middle party cadres. Historian Gerhard Simon writes: "For Stalin, the Holodomor was not only an instrument to discipline the peasants, but also to destroy once and for all in Ukraine all dreams of autonomy or even independence." (Source here) 

These events dug a deep hole in the collective Ukrainian soul. This was also one of the reasons why many Ukrainians joined the invading German soldiers in WW2, fought for them and also assisted in mass murders of Jews, albeit instigated by the German Nazis. This turn of events in turn resulted in the hatred of many Russians for Ukrainians. 

Putin has Studied his Hitler

Here also lies a root of today's Russian propaganda, which accuses the democratically elected government of Ukraine of Nazism and uses this insinuation as a pretext for forcibly invading the country, invented and presumably fed by an unreflective and unprocessed history. The Nazis, who invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 out of greed for power, are to be punished and avenged in Ukraine - with tricks copied from the Nazis: Using fake news to feign Ukrainian attacks in order to have a justification for attacking. So Putin has learned his Hitler: Assume that the victim of your aggressiveness is under attack, if necessary staged, then you have the right to destroy the state with your superior military machinery. Of course, Putin uses a propaganda trick because there would be no signs or reasons why Ukraine should attack Russia.

Even the goal of demilitarizing Ukraine, which the Russians have taken up, is justified by an apparently deep-seated fear of external aggression - not surprising for a country that has been invaded from the West several times in history. This time, however, the tables are turned and the aggression goes from Russia to the south and west.

We don't know if Putin really believes what he is talking about, in any case his propaganda serves the dark stains of the Russian soul that characterize the thinking and feeling of many of his compatriots, who have little idea of history and its complexity and of the effect of collective traumas. In addition, Russia's own population has long been inundated with false news and manipulative propaganda. Dictators need stupid people as followers and also count on their stupidity; that is part of their impudence. 

Disillusionment

The sobering insight is: we have to change our ways and scale back our expectations of humanity's progress in reason. A world order based on the principles of non-violence, characterized by freedom and self-determination, can only exist to the extent that it is shared and respected by all concerned. It is enough for a ruler or a regime not to share these principles, but to subordinate them to its own striving for power, to undermine their validity and their effectiveness. In the long run, nonviolence will triumph over violence, but with infinite casualties. In the short term, Russia's arbitrary unilateral aggression means that the arms spiral must continue to go upward around the world and that we continue to need a balance of terror to prevent global nuclear war from breaking out.

In the combat zones in Ukraine, not only people are dying and not only material goods are being destroyed, but the order of values that mankind has painstakingly acquired and fought for over centuries is being attacked. The opportunity, however, lies in making ourselves aware of these values and in representing and defending them with commitment. We must not allow the level of humanity we have achieved to be thrown overboard by potentates flexing their muscles with the pathos of smear dictators and projecting their destroyed inner selves into brutal destruction in the outside world.

Collective processing of historical traumas is an indispensable basis for making it impossible for autocrats to play the piano of unprocessed collective emotions and to channel these energies in aggressive directions.