Introduction to Spiritual Bypassing

In the realm of psychology, the concept of spiritual bypassing has gained significant attention in recent years. First introduced by transpersonal psychotherapist John Welwood in the mid-1980s, spiritual bypassing refers to the use of transcendence to avoid psychological pain. This phenomenon occurs when individuals in spiritual communities use meditation, states of transcendence, or the language of oneness to sidestep grief, rage, and other difficult emotions that arise when a life falls apart or blows up.

Source: cdn2.psychologytoday.com

However, what is less understood is the reverse phenomenon: psychological bypassing. This occurs when clinical language is used to avoid the numinous, the experience of the sacred or the mysterious. In essence, the clinician converts an experience the person found meaningful into a symptom of something more real beneath it, effectively reducing the numinous to its psychological function.

History of Spiritual Bypassing and Psychological Bypassing

The concept of spiritual bypassing has been around since the mid-1980s, while the term ‘psychological bypassing’ does not appear anywhere in the clinical literature. Despite this, the phenomenon has been documented for decades under other headings. The DSM-IV, introduced in 1994, included a category called Religious or Spiritual Problem, which aimed to address the issue of pathologizing spiritual and religious experiences. However, this category has largely been ignored in practice, and the working assumption in many healthcare settings is still that mystical experience is psychotic experience until proven otherwise.

Transpersonal clinicians such as Stanislav and Christina Grof have acknowledged the existence of mental disorders arising from brain dysfunction and the collapse of other bodily systems. However, they also claimed that some presentations that look psychotic are better understood as spiritual emergencies, with treatment implications diverging sharply depending on which one is actually in the room.

The Difficulty in Recognizing Psychological Bypassing

Spiritual bypassing is comparatively easy to identify because it looks like avoidance. However, psychological bypassing is more challenging to recognize, as it resembles a clinician doing the work properly. The interpretive move that reduces an experience to its psychological function can be exactly what the person needs, making it difficult to distinguish between serving the person in front of us and protecting the clinician from material they were not trained to hold.

The reason for this difficulty lies in the fact that naming psychological bypassing implies that clinical authority can itself operate as an unconscious defence. This realization is uncomfortable, and most psychologists and psychotherapists will not know, in the moment, which one they are doing. Noticing that we cannot always tell is where the work starts.

Conclusion

In conclusion, spiritual bypassing and psychological bypassing are two phenomena that have been overlooked in the clinical literature. While spiritual bypassing is relatively easy to identify, psychological bypassing is more challenging to recognize, as it resembles a clinician doing the work properly. By acknowledging these phenomena, we can begin to address the issue of pathologizing spiritual and religious experiences and work towards a more comprehensive understanding of human experience.