British Autogenic Society

Assuming that no-one reading this actually knew Einstein, I can confidently tell you that he used to keep a quotation of Sir George Pickering chalked on his blackboard at Princeton University.

Not everything that counts can be counted,
And not everything that can be counted counts.
-- George Pickering

This has always struck me as containing something of value, particularly for those of us who are trying to function in a world where some things are easy to analyse and quantify; and yet other things which we may value, are less easy to evaluate. It's nice to know that even Einstein, whose intellect turned the twentieth century on its head, reminded himself of that stance in the course of his everyday work.

I invite you to a simple experiment: look around you for a moment. What sort of world do you seem to be in right here, right now? It's a room where there are people, objects, walls. Objects are governed by gravity; there is predictability about that and about the 'world out there', where the body lives its life.

And now close your eyes, to be in a different world, an 'inner space' where different (psychological) laws operate. As soon as we close our eyes, we seem to experience not the predictability of the outside world, but our sensations, emotions, imaginations, memories - this is where the mind lives its life. This world is what gives us our sense of individuality.

This simple experiment - or a too simplistic analysis of what it seems to show - seems to me to be at the heart of something complex and important: the regrettable divide between establishment and complementary therapies. This analysis prompts the question: Which is the 'real' world? This is of course a futile philosophical argument. It is a matter of opinion: whether one is really 'in an objective world where the laws of science operate' or whether one is really 'in an internal world where the laws of psychology are paramount'. To set up those two things as alternatives has been quite damaging to much thought over the last century.

Each view has its pros and cons, especially as a basis for trying to improve the human condition, both general and particularised to the suffering individual.

The strengths available in the objective scientific world provide a sound starting point for treatment. It's predictable, lends itself to logic, to science, to rational analysis and intervention. But it also has its weaknesses of which we are all too well aware: too great an emphasis on a scientific approach. This is sometimes perceived as a threat to choice, individuality, or a holistic gestalt unified way of thinking. It can seem a threat to look at the individual as a source of healing.

On the other hand, too great an emphasis on the internal world also has its strengths and weaknesses. If we look purely to our internal experience as a place to begin our journey of healing, its strengths are that it's sensitive, subtle, intuitive, and honours what seems to be personal. But, as we all know, it's potentially woolly, possibly self-deluding, and all the things that the 'softer' aspects of therapy are often accused of being.

In fact the distinction is not clear cut. This somewhat false dichotomy is an unfair starting point. A Zen teacher would now say 'Unask the question' - this is not an 'either/or'. I'm sure you will agree that each of these apparent worlds influences the other in very powerful ways. And even conventional science would readily acknowledge that one's internal world completely constrains and structures the way in which we receive information from the outer world.

We know that the way we perceive pain and distress is very much governed by our emotional state at the time. And we know quite a lot about the way in which these things operate in terms of the function of the hypothalamus of the brain and the autonomic nervous and immune systems. One's internal mind-set, one's internal experience, completely shapes the types of things that our sense organs will perceive, and therefore the evidence on which we base our analysis.

Likewise, if we look to see how the external world influences our internal mental lives, it is probably fair to say we are not really free spirits, but carry with us the baggage of our physical selves. We find that our emotions, feelings, memories and imaginations are very much coloured and structured by real things that have happened to us. If we set up the two as complete alternatives, we shall blind ourselves to their more fruitful but complex inter-relationship.

It is fair to say that all of the many different healing approaches around start from some assumptions. Imagine a continuum of 'point of therapeutic access' - i.e. whether one tries to make therapeutic intervention primarily in the 'outer' or the 'inner' world.

At one extreme is the purely physical, advocating the scientific method: orthodox medicine, anatomy and physiology, biochemistry. At the other extreme is the group who say that the prime point of contact with somebody should be purely with the mental life: meditation, certain forms of prayer, perhaps psychoanalysis.

And there are all the points in between - certain forms of therapy which are mainly, but not exclusively, science based: eg osteopathy, Alexander Technique, where physical work goes on, but within a greater sensitivity to the individual's internal life.

I believe that Autogenic Therapy is somewhere in the middle, in that the practice of the Standard Exercises depends upon a certain amount of physical input, and the mental aspects of the exercises concern physical things. So this is a centre ground where AT operates.

Towards the extreme of the mental world, we might find hypnosis, self-hypnosis, Gestalt psychotherapies, visualisation techniques. And there are some intermediary positions such as reflexology where the body is 'mapped' on to the feet. This may not be a real physical thing - perhaps a symbolic or metaphorical starting-point.

Undeniably, science has made a huge and valuable contribution to the therapeutic potential of orthodox medicine. There are valid criticisms about the way it delivers treatment, but it can defend its track record. The scientific paradigm is that the world is objective and testable, and that research processes are reliable.

When we look at how the inner centred therapies make their contribution, it's more contentious. Why? It's more difficult to convince the sceptical because these 'inner centred' therapies don't have a generally accepted research paradigm for telling what's 'true' or 'false'; what's sound and what's unsound; how to learn from anecdote/subjective experience. It lacks a coherent framework.

So we find ourselves not knowing how to reply to people who say, for example, 'it's all just placebo effect or self-suggestion', or 'iridology is as valid as chiropractic'. For lack of a coherent framework, 'inner science' practitioners are relatively at the mercy of formal science. But that's not to say there couldn't be such a coherent framework for inner therapy. I believe that there not only could be, but there should be. And I feel that Autogenic Therapy is uniquely placed to take the lead in devising such a framework.

Let's see if we can agree on this: it seems to be the case that there is a configuration of various mental and physical parameters which is optimal for health; it does seem that there is a state of mind, balance or functioning from which a state of well-being seems to emerge. And this might be attained with minimal input from the outer world, as it concerns sympathetic/parasympathetic balance, immune functioning, arousal, value congruence, cognitive resonance. It would seem that the ability to access such a state is health-maintaining/restoring.

The placebo effect is one example of how that state can be accessed. Some people might say, 'That's just the placebo effect'. 'It's merely the placebo', as though to dismiss it. The placebo effect is astonishing - there is nothing 'mere' about it. In most studies where a treatment method is compared against placebo, the placebo (i.e. the body's own ability to relieve its own suffering) usually scores at least 30% improvement. And this effect isn't all in the imagination. Shrinkage in swollen arthritic joints have been measured, in subjects taking a fake pill.

The interesting question about the placebo effect is not whether it exists or how it operates (cortico-pituitary, messenger chemicals), but why it wears off. If we only knew that, we really would be in business. After three months the effect of the sugar pills wears off - why? And what maintains it? For some individuals, who continue to take placebo, the benefit continues. If we knew how to generate and prolong it at will, and how we could mobilise it more effectively, we would carry ourselves a long way towards understanding healing. Maybe AT is at least in part a technique for mobilising and perpetuating the placebo effect?

I wonder if some of the answer might lie in the belief system of the individual: the personal investment made to believe in. It's better to believe in what is true than in what is not. Cognitive dissonance probably plays a part here - this is what makes people kid themselves. An incident such as hitting a lamp-post while driving ('Who put that lamp-post there? I'm a good driver; it's not my fault.') gives us that little jolt which might knock the self-image of being a good driver. That feeling of 'ouch!' is cognitive dissonance, and a very powerful stimulus to learning. It challenges the truth of our belief system.

So I think that something like cognitive dissonance could prolong the placebo effect. Here's another example: I offer you a smartie and say, 'This will make you feel fantastic.' You'll say, 'Oh yeah?', eat it, and the lift lasts for 10 seconds. If I invite you to my rooms in Harley Street and charge you Ł500 for the same smartie, the effect of that will last very much longer. It's nothing to do with the smartie; it might be to do with me; but it's much more likely to do with you, who would feel so foolish with having parted with Ł500 for a smartie that you simply daren't let it not work.

This leads on to the fact that there's something about the framework, the setting, the accoutrements with which treatment is conveyed, that has an effect in addition to the intervention itself. Each therapy brings its own individual flavour, but which may actually be irrelevant. The differences we see between, say, massaging people's feet, or swallowing dilute flower extracts, or using guided visualisations may just be superficial variations of the same deep structure.

I found myself wondering, at this point in my thinking (as the writer said: he didn't know what he thought until he saw what he said), whether this kind of unnamed healing state is probably accessed by virtually all the complementary therapies. At the heart of lots of inner world therapies lies a common thread: an ability to tune or tap into, foster, encourage this internal healing state. My hunch is that surely there is much common ground in the effects of those being successfully treatment by acupuncture, homoeopathy, psychotherapy, autogenics.

I have a feeling that probably at the 'inner world' extreme there is a core structure in common and it's to do with an ability to access and foster an internal healing state. There is also a surface structure, the route of access: needles in acupuncture; words in AT; mantra in meditation. If it's true that beneath them all is something akin to a common core, then it's very unfortunate that 'internecine warfare' breaks out. ('I don't believe in homoeopathy because how can it work?' says the osteopath; 'When you stick needles in someone it ignores the inner person,' says the meditation teacher.) This is sterile debate. A more humble (and profitable) approach would be: 'We all have our different routes in, to a common ground'.

So each of the therapies come towards the common territories with their own histories, value systems, explanatory frameworks, language - things which may not matter too much on the surface. For instance, take three modalities which are quite closely allied: hypnosis, AT, meditation. I'm sure you'll agree there is a lot of common ground, and yet when you set out to reach them you start from an entirely different set of assumptions. For a hypnotic state you will go to a hypnotist who will 'say things to you'; for AT you end up 'saying things to yourself'; in meditation, eventually the memory of an outside teacher is long gone. These different starting points lead to a very common end point.

So one way of thinking about therapies is to appraise the efficiency with which they access the healing state. Is the journey short, direct and effective? Or is it long and convoluted and unnecessarily complex? What are the messages that they teach the individual on the way? This is very important because all the various therapies carry their specific philosophies and values, together with the meta-messages (the message about the message) they convey about how the individual sees himself/herself in relation to the world.

The message about hypnosis is: 'You should look to somebody else, who knows better than you, to help you do it. It's OK to hand over power to a third party'. This is perfectly effective and valid, there is evidence that it works, yet those are the values it teaches. Whereas with prayer and meditation the assumption is that the internal life is so rich, can be trusted so completely, that external human input isn't necessary. That is a different set of messages.

The message that AT puts across is that other people know how to do it and can very easily show you; it's an entirely sound thing to put across; such research that has been done on it is in no doubt of its beneficial effects. I personally think that Autogenic Training provides the shortest, most direct and most effective way into this healing state. You can't beat it. Lots of other complementary therapies can get to a very similar state, sometimes on a convoluted route, sometimes coming across messages which are not as sound or enhancing of the individual as AT is.

The challenge for all complementary therapies, and autogenics in particular, is to secure a shift in the relationship with scientism, away from confrontation to mutual respect. The scientific paradigm is valid; its record of success, based on evidence, logic, rationality, proof, is not to be decried. Science does not have all the answers, but it does provide the language for asking questions. It knows how to couch things in a way which commands acceptance.

For instance, when you say 'AT restores balance in the autonomic nervous system', I don't know what 'balance' means in that context. We need to find a more scientific way of exploring exactly what is meant, a good language for understanding, or we are going to find ourselves easily laughed at. So my message to this Society is not to run scared of opening up what we're doing with AT, to scientific scrutiny. We are looking at the same world. I think we will find that the scientific community is more open-minded than it used to be. Perfectly respectable scientists (many of them Nobel Prize winners) are now writing and thinking about the impact of inner life on external sciences: Karl Sagan, Kapra.

This challenge is not something that can be done without some knowledge of contemporary science such as neuro-psychology or immunology. Unless in principle we can put ourselves in that position, we do risk prolonging this wholly artificial separation between the physical and inner worlds. If we can progress the development of AT in such a way that we are clearly interested in 'how we're doing what we're doing', then we'll find all sorts of doors will be open to us. We'll find that AT par excellence will align itself to the mainstream of health care research, which would be the most enormous gift from this movement to the population. To make a success of this contribution, it does demand involving people who can move freely between the internal world and the scientific community. This enormous potential will only flourish if it is backed up by a method of delivery and enquiry from an organisation such as the one being offered.

Let's end with Pickering's thoughts extended:

Not everything that counts can be counted,
And not everything that can be counted counts.
But some things that count can be counted -
and they should be.