Autogenics

one by the American Dutch musical duo The Books. I've never heard of autogenics either. When you first proposed the subject, I was like, what is this? Is this where you create your own geno? That doesn't sound right? Uh? So yeah, I was totally unfamiliar with this, uh kind of obscure. I guess relaxation technique developed in the twentieth century. And and I will say I had never heard this song that you were linking to, but but I looked it up and it's a great song. Robert. Yeah, it's kind

of it's hard to describe. It's kind of a cut up of clips from various self help and self hypnosis tapes set to some very pleasing music. It's a wonderful track, and it's one that I find myself coming back to again and again just because it has a very you know, pleasing atmosphere to it, and some of the little clips in it I actually do kind of help me engage

in a certain amount of self relaxation. But it's really hard to compare the books to other musical acts, or at least for me anyway, I feel like there's not a lot else out there that reminds me of the books. So this raised a big question though for me. When I started listening to the song over and over again, I was like, Okay, it's it's clearly referring to something

what is autogenics UM? And I'm not sure how much of the sampled material is actually rum autogenics rather than other self help and self hypnosis tapes, but the book's member Nick Zamuda implied that it was, you know, essential to the intention of the track. In a two thousand and ten WordPress post that he made about about the release, he wrote, quote, Wikipedia does a pretty good job of

defining autogenics. Autogenic training restores the balance between the activity of the sympathetic fight or flight and the parasympathetic rest and digest branches of the autonomic nervous system. This is a pretty good description of what music does as well, so it seemed like a good pairing. And then he continues, Unfortunately, a lot of the music that a company's guided meditation productions is schlocky New Age. Don't get me wrong, I'm

not opposed to schlock It certainly has its place. But my goal became to reframe this bizarre narrative with music that could propel the track gently and still go on unexpected tangents where necessary. You know, I'm not sure if these recordings of of these guys meditations or or or exercises are autogenics, because, at least in some of what we were reading, the classic works on autogenics did not come with recorded audio because you were not supposed to

listen to somebody else telling you what to do. You're supposed to direct your own behavior, which is what provides the auto part of the autogenics. Right, yeah, there there is at least a pardon where here a woman saying I'm calm, and that is that It is at least a mantra that you here recited in autogenic training, which one. We'll come back to that later on. But okay, so,

so what is this technique called autogenic training. Well, it is an actual desensitization relaxation technique that has existed since the early nineteen thirties. Autogenic. The word comes from the Greek word autogenitos, meaning generated inside the body or self regulated. Yeah. I've seen it translated as autogenic meaning sort of self

starting or uh self triggering. Right, yeah, And so basically the idea here is that German psychologist Johannes Heinrich Schultz, who lived eighteen eighty four through nine seventy he developed autogenic training with the goal of removing the therapist and or the hypnotist from the equation, focusing on what seemed

to be an inner switch that facilitated these states. So the idea is, like the rough argument I guess you would say, is, Okay, you're going to see a therapist, you're going to see a hypnotist, and they're helping you reach the state, but you were the one who like allowed it to happen. Like that switch is not external, it is in you, and therefore this relaxation. Uh, the state that you're reaching is auto generated. It is its

origins are within you. Now, later in the episode, we'll get more into the specifics of autogenics and what what what what research has to say about its effectiveness. But we have to say that this is definitely a topic where the research led us into some unex efectively weird and decidedly dark material. Uh, namely, first of all, eugenics, which will will discuss the the distinction between autogenics and eugenics here and a bit they're not directly related concepts.

And then also the persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany. So fair warning that we're going to be discussing some heart mentioned content and some examples of humanity at its worst, even as we explore the origins of an otherwise inocuous sounding practice. So before we turned to Schultz and autogenic training, we have to lay the groundwork a little bit regarding

hypnosis and psychology going into the twentieth century. So let's start with modern hypnotism or Mesmerism, which became popular due to the work of German physician Franz Mesmer, who lived seventeen thirty four through eighteen fifteen. We've discussed hypnotism on the show before. Mesmer's work was was a point of inter risk for a number of individuals, including the inventor of the guillotine. Uh what Zosi, India's guillotin? Did I

say that correctly? I mean close enough? Okay? And then Ben Franklin, of course was was was a fan as well. I believe it's Franklin Franklin Okay, Franklin m Franklin effect. Yeah. One of the funny things about hypnotism is that whatever clinical relevance it actually has, the ways that we most often encounter it are are in the more kind of mesmerism tradition as a kind of like public performance, and I think this in some ways undercuts it's credibility as

a as a scientific phenomenon. Yeah, Like we generally encounter it in TV shows, Right, there's some sort of a

hypnotism episode. Somebody's hypnotized, and either it's played just for sheer laughs, someone clucks like a chicken, or it has a more fantastic treatment, uh, you know, in some sort of a fantasy Buffy the Vampire Slayers sort of ship, or you're putting down the red Queen and the Manchurian candidate and all that kind of uh, mind control stuff, all of which it can be kind of distracting when you're trying to understand what hypnotism actually is. We, like

you said, we've covered it on the show before. I'll try to give the very short version of our conclusions from previous investigations. First of all, yes, it's basically a real thing, it's not just like made up. On the other hand, no, it is not magic. There's nothing especially spooky going on with it. Hypnosis refers to a particular type of mildly altered state of consciousness, a state of heightened relaxation and very importantly focused attention, reduced peripheral awareness,

and increased suggestibility. The research makes it very clear that not everybody is equally susceptible to hypnosis. Some people appear to not respond to it at all. Other people seem very suggestible. The stuff you see in movies where people get hypnotized and turned into a sleeper agent assassin, that that's not very realistic. I don't think it makes sense to think of hypnotism as a form of mind control. I think hypnotism could better be compared to other mildly

altered states of consciousness, like the things people achieve in meditation. Yeah, I agree. I think if you if you think of it more in terms of a meditative state, uh, certainly as opposed to TV mind control, you're you're far closer to the mark. Yeah. However, it appears very possible and even consistent with a lot of research that hypnosis could in some cases be useful in treating medical complaints, especially medical complaints with a subjective or psychosmatic component, maybe in

pain management or in treating stress. So while hypnosis itself, I think is a real phenomenon, it's invoked in the service of a lot of hoaxes and fakeery and pseudoscience. So when you go into the world of hypnotism and people start making claims about what can be done with it, you should you should have your guard up at solutely, and and that can be said up for a number

of different meditative practices out there. You know, whenever the claims begin to venture more into the the supernatural, uh, you know, be cautious. I mean, not even just the supernatural, even when they venture into the physically plausible but grandiose. You know, the people who say like you know, through my meditation technique or my self hypnosis tapes, you'll learn to master you know, it's your it's your guide to weight loss and confidence in the boardroom and all this stuff.

People say there might be some real clinical effects of things like hypnosis, but just be cautious when the promises get big, right, I mean it could kind of like the the interview episode on the science of yoga that put out several months ago. It's like, there are things that there are things that yoga can do, and things that the research shows that it it can or may be able to do. And there are then there are things for which there's no like plausible reason that it

would have that effect on you. Uh. And again you can extrapolate that to a number of these diff and mindfulness exercises potentially so Mesmeter's work. Again, it interested a number of people have made quite a splash. One of the individuals that it interest was a man by the name of Oscar Vault who lived eighteen seventy through nineteen fifty five, and his wife, Cecile Vat, a magnier who

lived eighteen seventy five through nineteen sixty two. They were neurologists and neuro anatomous and they were really these two were really quite a team. I was not I don't think I was specifically aware of them, but they were early pioneers in functional neuro anatomy and genetics, and then made a number of important contributions to the study of

the brain during the twentieth century. Uh And and not only that, their their daughter Martha Vaut, who lived nineteen o three through two thousand and three a good solid century there she was one of the twentieth centuries leading neuroscientists as well. And then her younger sister, Marguerite Vaught, who lived nineteen thirteen through two thousand and seven, was

a cancer biologist and bologist. So Oscar and Cecil they clashed with the Nazi regime during this time and were forced out of government service in ninety seven, and they continued there were in a privately funded institute in New stat One of the sticking points, apparently with the Third Reich, was there was there collection of Russian contacts, and in fact Oscar was charged with inspecting the brain of Vladimir Lenin following his death from a following a series of strokes.

Uh So So these were brain experts. They studied the physical structure of the brain and how that contributed to the functioning of the brain. And one of the things that Oscar was apparently interested in was what you could see with how the structures of the brain responded to

hypnosis exercises. Yeah, so he apparently used it with his patients for a number of years, and along along the way he did, he managed to cross paths with a with this German psychiatrist, this man by the name of Johannes Heinrich Schultz, and reported him that, you know, his patients could use their own volition to produce sensations of heaviness and warmth in their bodies and transfer into a

self hypnotic state. So Schultz uh took this idea, combined it with his own experiences using hypnosis with patients, and this brought about the birth of autogenic training. So basically he just he just really you know, dove into this this particular topic like what can be done in the

realm of of you know, self regulated self hypnosis. Yeah. Now, I think it's important to understand that in the first half of the twentieth century especially, there is a lot of stuff happening in the world of psychology and psychiatry that is very interesting, but is not what we would probably consider science today. There's a lot of stuff going on in this world that I think is better to think of as philosophy. It's kind of more broad observational

science than it is science based on controlled experiments and rigor. Yeah, we're we're talking about again the late nineteenth century, the early twentieth century, the heyday of individuals like Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. The discipline of psychiatry itself was only entering its second century of existence, and the first half of the twentieth century was dominated by this idea of psychoanalysis, before chemical advances would bring about a new age of

pharmacology in the second half of the twentieth century. Yeah. Now, obviously it's it's not just drugs that change psychometry. I mean, I mean, it's it was empirical methods of all sorts, I think, because you can also run empirical tests on the efficacy of therapeutic techniques that don't involve drugs and that kind of stuff. But the world of Freud and and Carl Young, while you know, I enjoy their writings that I think they're very interesting, but it's not really science.

It's especially if you could drill into an idea like the collective unconscious, you know, it's very it's fascinating stuff. It can it can certainly benefit you from a philosophical standpoint, of creative standpoint, you know, fascinating concepts. But is it something that is you know, has any scientific validity to it? Uh,

probably not. Might it might be were it might be able to generate ideas that could be put to rigorous testing by experimental psychologists and psychiatrists who would come later. So it was I guess you could say that it was, you know, an age of optimism in many respects. You had all these new tools that were coming online to enable the treatment of nervous conditions, nervous conditions that had

plagued humanity for for for quite some time. The secrets of the mind were being explored, and yet this was also a time of incredible darkness and tailing some truly horrendous studies and of course the horrors of eugenics. That's right, I mean generally, Uh, science and medical practice under the

Third Reich is just a litany of horror stories. Of various kinds, and of course psychiatry under the Third Reich is is really no different, right, and we're not gonna attempt to do any kind of a deep dive into that, but we will touch on, I think on some examples that exemplify the sort of the sort of pressure that was applied by the Third Reich on the sciences and the sort of you know, corrupted results that you that you get when that sort of relationship is in place.

So we're gonna take a quick break, but when we come back, we will continue with our story and we'll will bring in the character of Johannes Heinrich Schultz. Thank all right, we're back. So we've been talking about this idea of autogenics, which is some kind of form of purported self hypnosis that was created by a German psychiatrist named Johannes Heinrich Schultz in the nineteen twenties and thirties. Yeah, and he is. He has a troubling figure I think

to figure out again. Early twentieth century. This was the heyday of psychoanalysis, and Schultz certainly believed in the power of psychoanalysis, though he also thought that it was an idea was not ideal for the treatment of psychosomatic disorders, and in these cases he became convinced that the key lay in self hypnosis, and of course in his in his concept of autogenic training. Right, So hetero hypnosis would be the opposite of what hetero hypnosis would be where

there is uh, it was the so called authoritarian method. Right, there's a hypnotist guiding you, whereas auto hypnosis you take into your own hands. Okay, So what's the distinction here with psychosomatic disorders. Psychosomatic refers to problems in the body that are caused or aggravated by psychological factors. So you can have psychosomatic pain, Uh, you can, you know, you can have hypochondriasis. Uh. Schultz was cited by a biographer to have said, quote, it is complete nonsense to shoot

with psychoanalytic guns after symptoms sparrows. So I think what he's saying there is, to whatever extent you can use psychoanalysis. That's more for problems that are fully within the mind, you know, the psychology realm Uh. Psycho Somatic disorders where the problems are somewhere in the body and may have roots in psychological issues, are not best addressed with psychoanalysis. He thought they would be better addressed with hypnosis or

even auto hypnosis. So Schultz noted that, you know, there were two very common reports of unique body experiences during the process of hypnosis, and those two common reports were heaviness in the limbs and this weird sensation of warmth. How common these sensations were drove Schultz to see hypnosis as a treatment for relaxation in the body, not just something that affects the mind, but something to affect, for example,

the autonomic nervous system. And also based on the reports about what Vote had been able to achieve with his own patients, Schultz came to believe that the authoritarian figure triggering the hypnotic state, within the authoritarian process, within the hetero hypnosis, that that was not actually necessary. Yeah. Again, the basic idea here is that when we undergo hypnosis, the changes are occurring within us, and with training, we would be able to trigger them without the aid of

another person. The patient permits it to happen, rather than it being something that the hypnotist does to the patient. That, Schultz is the whole argument. So inspired by Vote in his own experiences with hypnosis. Schultz began employing these ideas in private practice, and this would have been when he opened his private clinic in neurology and psychiatry in Berlin in ninety four, So by the twenties he's already trying

this out right. And then in nineteen thirty two he published his first book on autogenic Training DOS autogene Training and and again we'll get to the specifics of autogenic training and a bid here, But in discussing nineteen thirty two, we're of course just a year away from the establishment of the Third Reich, and this is where Schultz becomes a problematic figure. So first, let's be very clear about

the Nazi regime. It was a dictatorship and a totalitarian date based on an ideology that celebrated nationalism, UH, the pseudoscience of racial hierarchy, anti semitism, scientific racism, and eugenics. Germany contained a great many brilliant minds in nineteen thirty three, but the Third Reich was only interested in how these minds and ideas could be used to serve the Nazi ideology and the war efforts. And UH rocketry, I think is a good example to look at here. Just in

brief um you know that this was you had. You had German rocket scientists who were inspired by things like science fiction and dreams of exploration. But Bernard von Braun von Bron is a great example of this. But of course, what did the what did the Third Reich want out of these minds? They wanted weapons, They wanted ways to deliver um V two one, etcetera, to rain hell down

upon England and punish their enemies. So there was no interest in something like space exploration or moon bases or whatever kind of like you know, fanciful extrapolation you find in conspiracy thinking. I think the Third Reich is one of the greatest examples in history of just an utter

waste of intellectual potential. You know that there was a lot of great scientific infrastructure in Germany in the Weimar period and going into the Third Reich, and the way all of that great intellectual potential was just bulldozed by Nazism is is a great tragedy. So all the sciences become the domain of the state in Nazi Germany, and of course that also means psychology and psychiatry as well.

Uh and and and really they were these were fields that were I think especially vulnerable because, especially at the time, given all the changes that were taking place in these fields, they were highly susceptible to manipulation by a totalitarian regime.

I mean, even the hardest of the hard sciences were under attacked by the Nazi ideology, you know, like they wanted to rid themselves of what they believed to be Jewish physics, not understanding that physics is physics, like it doesn't matter what the ethnicity of the scientists who discovered it was. Oh yeah, I mean that's the whole other

side to it too. I mean it's one Not only were of course the German scientist pressured to be a part of this machine, but then people who were who were suspected of having ties to say the Russians, like the votes that we discussed earlier, they were at least partially pushed out, and then Jewish scientists were completely pushed out.

But I mean, if there are that many problems in a supposedly hard science like physics, you'd imagine that things get even weirder when you get into burgeoning fields like

psychology and psychiatry. Yeah, so the Nazi regime apparently didn't have any real strong opinions on self hypnosis or autogenic training, but there were other ideas in the field that were far more central to their ideology and uh, and so all this is going on, Schultz ends up publishing another book on autogenics, but his star continues to rise within German psychiatry, and is his star rises others all from grace in this now state controlled realm of the German

science is again namely Jewish scientists. In psychology it was no different, But what were they to do about psychoanalysis? It was again highly favored by Schultz and others, but it was the product of Sigmund Freud, who was of course Jewish himself. His books were among those burned and he eventually had to flee the country as well. So part of German psychiatry at the time part of the

mission statement of of the Goring Institute. This was named for Matthias Heinrich Goring, cousin to the more famous and at the time were powerful Herman Goring. Uh. Part of its whole aim was to rid psychiatry of quote Jewish influence and established quote a new German psychotherapy, which of course is ludicrous. It's like if someone were to say, well, let's just focus on on an American science. You know,

how do you what what would that even mean? What that means you'd have to press out all like non American ideas of what of how the world works and what the cosmos consists of. I mean, it wouldn't be the only time in history that there's been a kind of like stupid nationalist lens applied to science is like non understanding that the sciences are about figuring out what's true about the world, and that those things are true no matter what your ethnicity is or what your nationality is.

I guess the closest thing to validity you could find there would be that like, well, you might say, as a nation, we have these priorities about what we want to find out. But yeah, again this is just a tragedy of stupidity. So Schultz, again he keeps focusing on autogenics, but he also ends up getting involved in these ideas that are far more valuable to the Third Reich. So

he publishes work supporting eugenics. Um eugenics of course, and involves the idea that you should, uh, you want to encourage you know, the good genes within a population by eliminating um uh, so called destructive genes uh. And this generally takes the form of pretty horrific efforts like forced sterilization for men with mental retardation, psychiatric or neurological disorders.

Those were exactly the forms it took under the Third Reich. Now, while eugenics was sort of one of the founding principles of the Third Reich ideology, I think it's worth acknowledging that in the first half of the twentieth century, I mean, eugenics was all over the place. It was fashionable among intellectual elites all around the world, even in the United States and in other Western nations that ended up fighting the Nazis. Yeah, absolutely it was. But yeah, by no

means was it a German idea. Uh, you know, you saw it. Plenty of examples of it in the United States. We talked a lot about eugenics. Actually in our interview with Karl zimmerwent excellent book about heredity. So if you want to go back and listen to that episode you can. But yeah, he explores a lot of the roots of

eugenics within the United States at the time. But in this case, the s the eugenics movement would eventually sterilize some four hundred thousand individuals by the end of the war, and Schultz also focused on sexual education and the subject of homosexuality and the idea that it could be cured. So at the time, homosexuality was in general poorly understood from any sort of scientific standpoint and was highly susceptible

to pre existing prejudices. We know today, of course, that the notion of curing homosexuality is pseudoscience at best, and generally it's it's worse than that. Two thousand nineteen study published in the journal Science, the largest study to ever analyze the genetics of same sex sexual behavior, points out that there's no one, you know, gay gene or anything

of the sort. Rather, to quote Pam Bellock in the New York Times quote, the influence comes not from one gene, but many, each with a tiny effect, And the rest of the explanation includes social or environmental factors, making it impossible to use genes to predict someone's sexuality. Right, So, sexual orientation, like almost everything else out us, is in fact controlled by a number of different genes acting in

concert with our environment. As were brought up, Yeah, yeah, it's this complex interplay of nature and nurture individual in the environment. And more to the point of course, it's not something to be corrected at all. It's not as it was often thought at the time. And some of these regimes, including you know, the Third Reich, it was it's not a societal problem, though it again is often framed like that, and and was and was outlawed as

such in various nations. And uh, homosexuality was certainly at odds with the Nazi ideology, which celebrated, among other things, this exaggerated and toxic vision of masculinity. Historians, however, have also pointed out that this that this this Nazi hyper masculine ethos paradoxically may have encouraged male bonding and homosexual relationships as well. But you know, I guess it's one of these situations where that the kind of proximity of

ideal and antithesis are often a common feature of homophobia. Meanwhile, under in the sciences of the Third Reich, you had scientists that were who were, you know, taking a eugenics approach to the issue of homosexuality, believing that homosexuality was centered in a person's genes and could therefore be addressed via the violence of eugenics. Schultz, on the other hand, thought psychotherapy was the answer that homosexuality was based in

quote perversion, a profound disorder of the entire personality. And uh. That quote was pointed out in a paper that I'm gonna refer to again here, uh, titled Johannes Heinrich Schultz and National Socialism by Jurgen Brunner, m d. Matthias Shrimp, and Florian Stagger, m d, pH d. This was published in the Israeli Journal of Psychiatry in two thousand and eight.

So here we get around to a different version of anti gay reaction, right, which instead of thinking, okay, there's just a there's a gene we can eliminate somewhere, this instead says, no, it's something that's wrong with with you, know how your brain is working, and we can sort of train it out of you. And unfortunately, this point of view is not entirely gone from the world today. No,

I mean, that's that's that's the thing. You could take Schultz out of this this particular place and time, and you could easily place him, say in the United States today, and there would be some place for him with this kind of rhetoric. Yeah, the most common being things that are known as like gay conversion therapies, which are utterly

condemned by every psychological organization. From the American Psychological Association is issued statement after statements saying these treatments do not work and they don't do anything good for the person, that they should be discouraged at all costs. So, without a doubt, Schultz definitely echoed and amplified Nazi homophobia and uh and and and gay persecution within German psychiatry, and that alone is reprehensible. But on top of that, he

also engaged in experimentation. So under under Nazi rule, homosexuality was illegal in Germany, and it was it was apparently previously technically illegal as well, though not prosecuted during the Weimar Republic, and convicted homosexuals under the Third Reich were

sent to concentration camps. According to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum quote, between nineteen thirty three and nineteen forty five, and estimated one hundred thousand men were arrested for violating Nazi Germany's law against homosexuality, and of these, approximately fifty thousand were sentenced to prison and estimated five thousand to fifteen thousand men were sent to concentration camps while on

similar charges, where an unknown number of them perished. And I also read that the death rate in the camps for homosexuals has been estimated to something like sixty Now interestently enough, um, you know, we briefly touched on the during the Weimar public heal. It was was not prosecuted, and there was more of a uh, you know, a feeling really I've read of you know, liberation. They were actually you know, gay, there's a gay rights movement at

the time. Um So, when you look at the early days of the Nazi regime, apparently it stands on homosexuality was a little more ambiguous and uneven, with some individuals not having really much of a stated opinion, while you had other people like uh s, you know, s s Commander in chief Holocaust architect Heinrich Kimmler being one of the the the early you know, strong voices in favor of violent persecution of homosexuals, and his view increasingly one out.

So Schultz began to experiment with treating homosexuals through psychoanalysis, including many inmates that were brought in from concentration camps, and part of this was apparently that he needed to demonstrate concrete psychotherapeutic success to maintain his position within the

Goring Institute. And according to Bruner at All, between nineteen three and nineteen thirty eight, five hundred and ten homosexuals were quote treated at the Goring Institute, three hundred and forty one of them were said to be cured, and the cure was tested by forcing the individual to have sex with female prostitutes. So these all all would have been gay men. Yes, so that I think that that just paints the horrific picture. Obviously. Now Schultz wasn't the

only one involved here. According to the U. S. National Holocaust Museum, there was an expanded program of medical experimentation on homosexual inmates that ultimately caused illness, mutilation, and even death with absolutely no scientific benefits whatsoever. So again we said, we're gonna be talking about a dark period of history, and and so here we are. So the war ends.

Of course, Schultz dies in nineteen seventy and never faced any repercussions for his ideas or his experiments, and in fact, he continued to discuss his findings published his findings even and support or did the outlaw of homosexuality for the rest of his life. And this is apparently not out of the ordinary. Sadly, as much of the Third Reich's crimes against homosexuals went unrecognized at a governmental level until the like the well into the nineteen eighties that the

German government formally apologized in two thousand and two. I mean, part of this, I think would just have to do with attitudes around the rest of the world as well. I mean, I think about what happened to Alan Turing even in England, England which wanted to purport itself to be, you know, the free alternative to the to the authoritarian Germany. You know, like gay people did not have equal rights there at all. Yeah, and and Alan Turing was was

subjected to the hors of eugenics. He was uh, chemically sterilized. One of the topics that Brunner and his co authors discussed concerned Schultz's legacy and to what extent he actually bought into Nazi ideology, because you'll certainly encounter the argument that, okay, he didn't fully buy into Nazi idea oology, and and you know, there you also see it written. Then, Okay, through his experiments, he actually retrieved inmates from concentration camps.

Though of these some were ultimately returned to the concentration camps, and even the cured in the case of of cured, the so called cured, uh, ultimately they were sent back to the front. So both of these would have been high mortality fates. Uh. You know, certainly one is as an inmate and one as a soldier. They're not directly comparable. Um, But it does sound like this, this argument that he was saving lives in any sense is is kind of ridiculous.

The conclusion of Brunner and the co authors is that, well, first of all, they say that, you know, they're limited, uh, in that they had to depend on writings rather than interviews, and certainly they couldn't actually interview Schultz himself. But their conclusion was that Schultz perhaps was more of an opportunist and a political survivor. But still he certainly expressed these

amophobic beliefs throughout his life, and that quote. The use of typical Nazi vocabulary, as well as the dissemination of the Nazi body of thought as late as nineteen fifty two, give reason to believe that the statements from nineteen thirty five and nineteen forty were not only about opportunistic lip service, but instead we're an expression of his fundamental conviction. So we're left with this, this image of a discipline and a practitioner certainly caught up in the storm of Nazi

ideology and also embracing much of its vileness. He and he helped enable homosexual persecution and engage an abusive, unethical experimentation. And yet he also created this practice of intercalming that is still practiced to this day. We mentioned how autogenic training is maybe, you know, not that widely known here in the United States, but it's it's apparently more widely practice or has been more widely practiced in Canada, England,

Germany and Russia and Russia. Yeah, so we're gonna take another break, but when we come back, will discuss autogenic training a little bit on its own. Alright, we're back, all right, So we've been talking about johanness Heinrich Schultz, the creator of this self hypnosis process that is called autogenics.

The idea is that you could, uh, you don't need the authoritarian figure telling you you know you are you are feeling relaxed, you feel your limbs being heavy, and all that stuff that you can train yourself to undergo this process on your own. I thought it was interesting that even though I've read about hypnosis before, I had never really encountered anything about autogenics before you you brought up this topic as a possibility to talk about on the show, and I was wondering why it is that

I've never heard of this at all before. Well, something that I had heard of and you may have heard of this previously as well, is the practice of progressive

muscle relaxation, which is sometimes integrated into yoga practices. I've been to the yoga classes where they engage in like a little of this anyway, And this was developed independently by the American physician Edmund Jacobson in nineteen o eight, So pretty much emerging from the same, the same, you know, realm of of psychiatry and contemplation of the human mind. As we're going to discuss, autogenic training, I think suffers from a dearth of research into its you know, high

quality research, recent research into its efficacy. But what is out there, A lot of it focuses on different types of relaxation techniques all sort of put together. So it looks at progressive muscle relaxation, autogenic training, and then maybe also something like mindfulness meditation or biofeedback feedback. Yes, so it seems to be considered part of a class of stress relief for relaxation and exercises. A standard autogenic training

exercise tends to consist of several phases. There's a heaviness exercise of limb and body relaxation, a warming exercise, a heart regulation exercise, a breathing exercise, and then organs and then head And it involves spoken mantras and focusing on

specific parts of the body. So for instance, you might say, you know, might you might say that your arms are heavy, and you'll repeat that like six times, and then you'll say, I am very quiet, and then you'll do another six on the the arm, on the other arm, and uh, and then you will again return to this mantra of of of quietness. Yeah, we were looking for a good recent, uh you know, skeptical scientific source on autogenic training, and I think one of the best things we came across

was a chapter in a book. It's a it's a psychiatry textbook called The Principles and Practice of Stress Management, and this chapter was by a professor emeritus in the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia named Wolfgang Linden, and Lindon points out one thing that's kind of unique to autogenic training, which proponents of autogenic training call passive concentration. So I'm gonna read from Lyndon here

it's blaming what this is. Passive concentration may sound paradoxical in the concentration usually suggests effort. What it means in a T is that the trainee is instructed to concentrate on inner sensations rather than environmental stimuli, and this is indeed somewhat effortful, especially for the novice. If this concentration does not come easily, the trainee is told to let thoughts wander for a while or to rearrange the body position for more comfort, rather than to force inner concentration.

Not forcing, allowing sensations to happen, and being an observer rather than a manipulator are what the passive refers to. The a T trainee is warned that trying too hard is counterproductive. It main lead to negative reactions such as muscle spasms, and it stands in the way of acquiring the necessary passive attitude. Interestingly, I I see a couple of pail I'm sure they're unintended, but parallels here with

some mindfulness meditation practices. Yeah. Yeah, again, I feel like we come back to the idea that that these are all kind of discussing the same phenomena. There are just different ways of getting there. They're sort of you know, getting to that. You need different sort of trails of language and trails of culture to approach it. Some people are gonna be able to best approach it through something through a trail that is more spiritual, you know, in

its trappings. Others needs something more based in psychiatry, or you know, something that is either attached to the latest thinking or has perhaps an air of history to it. I would say, ultimately, what all these things have in common?

To me? It might be not what the proponents of something like autogenic training would say, which is that, well, you know, it's about the relaxation of the body, and the self control aspect is very important and all that to me, what seems most important unifying all these different

relaxation techniques is the control of attention. Yeah, yeah, to be able to to take the wandering mind u uh, you know, it's in the default mode network and it's it's uh, you know, the voice of narrative, and all these things that are occurring are are ponderings and our our our anxiety over past and future, and to be able to sort of refocus that onto something very specific like what is your arm doing right now? Or or you're breathing being the prime example across numerous different practices

focusing on the breath. Yeah, I think that's right. Uh So, Lyndon says that the passive concentration principle here, the thing we were just talking about, is the one thing that supposedly separates autogenic training from other methods of relaxation techniques like like progressive muscle relaxation or biofeedback. It's you know, if you talk to an autogenics training person, they would

probably heavily emphasize this passive concentration part as important. Beyond that, when you go through the different stages, Robert, what you were talking about earlier, you know, where you go through the the limb and body relaxation and then the heart regulation, and then the breathing, and then your guts and then

your head. Uh that when you go through these you will have sort of like formulaic schemes of repeated things that you go through in order to to do those different parts of the body each time, and that what you want to do, Lyndon says is have vivid, personally meaningful imagery to accompany each of these formulate body relaxation schemes. So I was trying to know exactly what that is.

But apparently, like for the head, you're supposed to picture something about a cooling forehead, maybe something about water, and then for your guts it's something about rays of light. But I just kept thinking, picture your head as a toilet, all the stresses flushing away. Well, it makes me think back to the books Track autogen Group Autogenics Part one, where one of the clips they use as someone saying

your body is a warm orange colored liquid. That seems to be potentially a specific exam ample of this, you know, to a very very specific bit of mental imagery, and probably one of the details that that I really dug about that song. It's like your bodies of warm orange colored liquid. There's something very relaxing about that concept. I mean, whether or not these techniques actually reduce stress. That image reduces stress for me. I like that, like it's it's

it's weird and it takes you. Yeah, maybe that was the warm fago, some hot fago to get you through the winter. Um. So Linden rights that in a clinical setting, uh autogenic training is used primarily to reduce unnecessary autonomic arousal, in other words, to reduce stress. This shouldn't be surprising given what we've already talked about. Though in theory, he points out, it's it is designed and believed by its

advocates to work in any direction. So in theory it could be used not just to reduce stress, but to raise problematically low levels of autonomic arousal. Though how often do you need to do that? No? I mean he mentions like a like a low heart rate or something. As for the question of whether Schultz himself was rigorous in in how he presented the benefits of this technique, uh, Linden's writing about a book published by Schultz and a student of his named Wolfgang Lutha. I believe this was

published in nineteen sixty nine or nineteen seventy. I think Schultz died in nineteen seventies, so it would have been right around the time of his death. But Lyndon writes quote for a reader with a strong empiricist bent, reading the original works will likely be a frustrating task because in the ultimate evaluation of eighties effectiveness, no distinction is made by Schultz and Lutha among opinions single case reports

and controlled studies, of which there were precious few. So by nineteen seventy they're still advocating, you know, our technique is great, but there is not a strong experimental record to back that up. Now, Wolfgang luth he would have he would have been a Canadian at the time, but he had moved there. He was a German by birth and moved there in the late nineteen forties. And I found that in in like the Wikipedia entry about him, for instance, it kind of it doesn't really mention what

he did during uh the Second World War. I did find another source that said that he served as a junior medical officer on the Eastern Front. And also he's not to be confused with the U boat captain Wolfgang luth Um, who was a different figure altogether. But Luther would have would have practiced autogenic training in Canada during this post war period. Do you know if he was primarily responsible for bringing it to Canada. I'm not certain on that, but I would Yeah. I kind of suspect

that he was given his affiliation. Um, you know, especially throughout the post war period with Schultz. Now, there were others you know that definitely tried to bring I mean it, certainly it came to the United States and was practiced and is practice in the United States by by some.

But one in resting story I came across where someone was strongly advocating for it was a nineteen seventy seven New York's New York Times report that pointed to a psychologist and hypnotism advocate, Dr william S. Kroger, who warned in ninety seven that the Russians were training their Olympic athletes with hypnosis and autogenic training to improve performance, and that the United States would need to get with the program if they if they were hoping to keep up.

This is also when they were training psychic assassins. So it all works out, yeah, I mean, it does kind of tie into the whole Cold War fear of like, Okay, the Russians are doing something, or the reverse, the Americans are doing something, what if it works? And then adding in perhaps some misinformation and disinformation about it actually working. Yeah, I mean, it does appear to have been popular with some therapists in Russia. A lot of the studies on

the effectiveness of autogenic training are older. I would hesitate to rely on them too much. I mean, I would say overall, auto genic training's efficacy at treating specific diseases such as hypertension, I think remains sort of an open question. But Lyndon does draw attention to a few studies in his assessment of the effectiveness of a T. For example, he writes, quote, A particularly striking demonstration of treatment affect variability is provided by I got I got some names here.

I have a zion Zetsev and urinev in n who randomly assigned hypertensive patients to either a T or a no treatment control condition. When mean changes were broken down into percentage improved ratings, the following figures emerged In the autogenic training treated group, thirty two percent improved, fifty nine percent remained unchanged, and nine percent deteriorated. In the control group also remained unchanged, thus the same as the last group,

eleven percent improved and thirty percent deteriorated. Clearly, therapy did little for the majority of patients, whereas the between group difference is effectively attributable to treatment effects, consisting of both direct improvement and the prevention of worsening. Thus, valuable healthcare funds may be better invested if patients who are not going to benefit from treatment can be identified a priori

and left out of the treatment comparison. And there are a few other studies that Lyndon talks about the show. You know, maybe there is some effectiveness of techniques like a t AT reducing stress or physiological arousal, maybe reducing some downstream effects of stress, like hypertension. I wasn't seeing anything that makes it look like autogenic training is any kind of you know, like magic bullet, that's that's gonna that's gonna solve all the world's problems, though it may

have some benefits similar to some other relaxation techniques. Now, another idea that comes up in autogenic training is the idea that that in these practices you'll have like this urge of say negative emotion. Oh, Yeah, that that is the ultimately is like a purging of negative feelings from the body. Yeah, this was Schultz's idea of autogenic discharge. This is where I mean. So there are some elements

of the autogenic training that you can see. Okay, it just seems like this is a technique that could plausibly have psychosomatic benefits and you know, could reduce stress and all that. There are other things that seem a little more kind of freudy, just kind of like you know, like talking about the discharging of all these pent up things that come out during the process. I think there was this belief in like discharging of sexual tensions and things like that, which I don't know, I don't see

any good reason to believe stuff like that is happening. Yeah, I mean, on one hand, I you know, I I think, like a lot of us, you know, you can I can certainly think two examples in my own life where I'm engaged in some sort of uh you know, yogic or relaxation meditative experience and there is some feeling of purging, you know, of some emotional negativity you know, coming out

and then you're being free of it. On the other hand, One of the frequent things that occurs when you try and meditate or you know, or or or enter into kind of relaxed state is that you'll you'll stumble and sometimes you'll fail. Right, And the more you try and focus on nothing, sometimes your brain will just really want to stab you with a with a big piece of negative shrapnel. Uh. And that's just how our brain often works.

And it's it seems like this might be an interest interesting way of working that into a meditative practice so that when those thoughts emerge. Uh, that's just that's just the purging in process. Uh. And I don't know to to some extent, I can see that being a helpful technique if it keeps you on the horse as it as it were, you know, if it keeps you on the bicycle of meditation, and it keeps you from just

giving up and stopping. So I think that you know, this is this all makes for an interesting case to cat and considering you know, first of all, how how state promoted ideology can impact professions and professionals, and it also presents a problem of how we relate to a possibly beneficial idea that springs from the life and the mind of someone who's engaged in unethical or morally reprehensible

UM movements. So, first of all, I will say, if you're listening to this and you have some experience with autogenic training, you've you've practiced it yourself, you've looked into

it yourself, etcetera. We would obviously love to hear from you about this your first hand, uh, you know, take on the practice itself and maybe even on its history as well, because you know, I think this is ultimately an interesting case to look at and considering how state promoted ideology can impact professions and professionals, and it also presents a problem of how we relate to possibly beneficial ideas that spring from the lives and minds of people

engaged sometimes an unethical or morally reprehensible movements. Now, of course, his autogenic is the only concept or idea to have its origins and a problematic individual certainly not, though it perhaps is a pretty jarring example to turn to given his role again in gay conversion therapy under the third

reich Um. But you know, this is a question we again, we have to we have to contemplate regarding a number of different UM concepts and ideas that have any kind of historic origin or even not so historic origins, because ultimately, no matter how you know, elevated a concept may seem to us, uh, no matter how you know great a particular teaching, they are inevitably, you know, have their origins in the minds of human beings, uh, who at the very best are flawed and at worst can be engaged

in in monstrous practices. Well, you know, there have been other cases I can think of where there are attempts to I don't know distance a practice that in some way people believe to have found helpful from a problematic individual who it came from. I mean, I think about for example, there there were some efforts I know, to try to come up with a kind of secular version of of mantra based meditation to kind of get away

from the transcendental meditation movement origins. Oh yes, yeah, yeah, And there's certainly used examples of this throughout um, you know, yoga practices as well, where that we say, a particular school of yoga that emerges and then the individual that is associated with there will be you know, some some you know, scandal or whatnot that occurs, but people will

want to hold onto the teaching. So you know, sometimes it's more of a rebranding attempt or you know, order to take you know, what works about something, distance it from the individual, and and and um and and celebrated their practice it there. I mean Ultimately, a corrupt yogi or even a gay conversion therapy nazi does not own

the way you find peace, whatever your techniques are. So obviously, again, this is a topic that we'd love to hear from folks about if you have any experience with autogenetic training, certainly, but also just this broader question we're asking here as well. Uh, we're curious to hear what everyone has to say. Uh. In the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes of our show, you can find it wherever you get your podcast. Stuff to Blow your mind is everywhere

wherever you get it. Just make sure that you rate, review, and subscribe. This really helps us out in the long run. And oh, for our listeners out there, any listeners who are in the Atlanta area, UM, I want to let you know that there is an event coming up part of the Atlanta Science Festival. It's called How Snakes Work. It is going to be on Saturday, March seven, from two pm to four pm. You can find out about

it at Atlanta Science Festival dot org. But it's pretty cool because it is a It is a team up effort from how Stuff Works, the website from which we spawned, and the Amphibian Foundation uh Mark Bendinka's organization. Matt Mark Mendick, of course, is a friend of the show and has been on to discuss amphibians, uh snakes, lizards and more. Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer Seth

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