Interpersonal reflex is a term created by Timothy Leary and explained in the book, ‘Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality: A functional theory and methodology for personality evaluation’ (1957). While examining recorded protocols of communications in adults, Leary discovered that typical patterns of interaction existed. Individual units of these behaviors were called interpersonal mechanisms or interpersonal reflexes: ‘They are defined as the observable, expressive units of face-to-face social behavior.’ These reflexes are automatic and involuntary responses to interpersonal situations. They are independent of the content of the communication. They are the individual’s spontaneous methods of reacting to others.
Leary states, ‘The reflex manner in which human beings react to others and train others to respond to them in selective ways is, I believe, the most important single aspect of personality. The systematic estimates of a patient’s repertoire of interpersonal reflexes is a key factor in functional diagnosis.’ Examining interpersonal reflexes helps to explain communication and behavioral patterns in healthy and unhealthy relationships. For example, tender, supportive operations tend to train others to agree, conciliate, and depend. Rigid autocratic individuals seek out docile admiring followers. Competitive, self-enhancing behavior pulls envy, distrust, inferiority feelings, and at times respectful admiration from others.
Interpersonal Reflex
Interpersonal Circumplex
The interpersonal circumplex is a model for conceptualizing, organizing, and assessing interpersonal behavior, traits, and motives. It is defined by two orthogonal axes: a vertical axis (of status, dominance, power, or control) and a horizontal axis (of solidarity, friendliness, warmth, or love).
In recent years, it has become conventional to identify the vertical and horizontal axes with the broad constructs of agency and communion. Thus, each point in the interpersonal circumplex space can be specified as a weighted combination of agency and communion.
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Indra’s Net
Indra’s net (also called ‘Indra’s jewels’ or ‘Indra’s pearls’) is a metaphor used to illustrate the concepts of emptiness, dependent origination (all things arise in dependence upon multiple causes and conditions), and interpenetration (all phenomena are intimately connected — and mutually arising) in Buddhist philosophy. The metaphor of Indra’s net was developed by the Mahayana Buddhist school in the 3rd century scriptures of the ‘Avatamsaka Sutra,’ and later by the Chinese Huayan school between the 6th and 8th century.
For the Huayan school, Indra’s net symbolizes a universe where infinitely repeated mutual relations exist among all members of the universe. This idea is communicated in the image of the interconnectedness of the universe as seen in the net of the Vedic god Indra, which hangs over his palace on Mount Meru, the axis mundi of Vedic cosmology and Vedic mythology. Indra’s net has a multifaceted jewel at each vertex, and each jewel is reflected in all of the other jewels.
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Eight-circuit Model of Consciousness
The eight-circuit model of consciousness is a transhuman (an intermediary form between the human and a hypothetical posthuman) theory proposed by Timothy Leary and expanded on by Robert Anton Wilson and Antero Alli. The model describes eight circuits of information (eight ‘brains’) that operate within the human nervous system.
Each circuit is concerned with a different sphere of activity. The lower four, the ‘larval circuits,’ deal with normal psychology, while the upper four, the ‘stellar circuits,’ deal with psychic, mystical, enlightened and psychedelic states of mind.
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Mind at Large
Mind at Large is a concept from ‘The Doors of Perception’ and ‘Heaven and Hell’ by Aldous Huxley. This philosophy was influenced by the ideas of philosopher and historian C. D. Broad. Psychedelic drugs are thought to disable filters which block or suppress signals related to mundane functions from reaching the conscious mind.
In this book, Huxley explores the idea that the human mind filters reality, partly because handling the details of all of the impressions and images coming in would be unbearable, partly because it has been taught to do so. He believes that psychotropic drugs can partly remove this filter, which leaves the drug user exposed to ‘Mind at Large.’
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Hallucinogen
Hallucinogens [huh-loo-suh-nuh-juhns] are drugs which can cause hallucinations (seeing, hearing, or otherwise perceiving things that are not real). They are a general group of pharmacological agents that can be divided into three broad categories: psychedelics (drugs with perception-altering effects), dissociatives (drugs that produce feelings of detachment – dissociation – from the environment and self), and deliriants (drugs that induce a state of delirium in the user).
These classes of psychoactive drugs have in common that they can cause subjective changes in perception, thought, emotion and consciousness. Unlike other psychoactive drugs, such as stimulants and opioids, these drugs do not merely amplify familiar states of mind, but rather induce experiences that are qualitatively different from those of ordinary consciousness. These experiences are often compared to non-ordinary forms of consciousness such as trance, meditation, dreams, or insanity.
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Psychedelic Therapy
Psychedelic therapy refers to therapeutic practices involving the use of psychedelic drugs, particularly serotonergic psychedelics such as LSD, psilocybin, DMT, and 2C-B. As an alternative to synonyms such as ‘hallucinogen,’ ‘entheogen,’ ‘psychotomimetic’ and other functionally constructed names, the use of the term ‘psychedelic’ (‘mind-manifesting’) emphasizes that those who use these drugs as part of a therapeutic practice believe these drugs can facilitate beneficial exploration of the psyche.
Proponents of psychedelic therapy also believe psychedelics enhance or unlock key psychoanalytic abilities, and so make it easier for conventional psychotherapy to take place. Psychedelic therapy, in the broadest possible sense of the term, undoubtedly dates from prehistoric knowledge of hallucinogenic plants. Though usually viewed as predominantly spiritual in nature, elements of psychotherapeutic practice can be recognized in the entheogenic or shamanic rituals of many cultures. Shamans have historically been well known throughout the world to mix two or more substances to produce synergistic effects.
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