Scientific Apophenia
“Harder still it has proved to rule the dragon Money… a whole generation adopted false principles, and went to their graves in the belief they were enriching the country they were impoverishing.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
Introduction
Apophenia is a term for when one sees patterns of connectivity where none actually exist (McKay & Coreil, 2024). We would agree that one can quantitatively see patterns of connectivity where none exist (e.g., psychedelics), but we also disagree because the qualitative “many” can see what does not actually exist because the actual psychological observer has been defined (O’Brien, 2023a). The absence of connectivity is not the absence of existence and by suggesting that “nothing” doesn’t actually exist (because the patterns of connectivity don’t add up to the observer making the observation), one cannot know what isn’t real. We will argue that “the many” can. Lived experience is the source of all wisdoms, which is produced by our implicit memory system and becomes our implicit bias or worldview (O’Brien, 2023a). In a concrete stage of development, developing people and professions can only see how “one plus one equals two” because it is easier for them, not necessarily the rest of us.
What if one plus one actually equaled three? What if that which no longer exists actually does still exist, making what doesn’t exist real because it has existed before and is still here; death does not mean gone forever, it simply means that it is not here right now. To reference South Park’s “Imagination Land” observation that Luke Skywalker may not be real, yet still had a major impact on the real world, we must reject their notions that what is not here is not real or that there is not not a connection between patterns. We would agree with South Park, as we see the fallacy of McKay and Coreil (2024) because we can confirm Industrialize Psychology’s main assumption that one can consciously know what is unconsciously unknown (O’Brien, 2024c); therefore, implicit bias and worldview is based on the qualitative science of lived experience (O’Brien, 2023a).
Knowledge is gained by those who did not have it, but those who hold the knowledge are those who know. Therefore, we posit that thoughts are the past, emotions are the present, and the ability to integrate the two is what creates your future. We argue that the unconscious can be known, talked to, felt, and engaged with right here and right now because patterns are unrecognizable to the conscious mind (where the past does not readily exist) and because they really come from unconscious processes (where the past actually does exist and new connections can be made) that are generated in the body (e.g., the psychological unconscious).
With the readers answers being what they are, this is our recognition that the past is still here like rings in the tree and cannot be gone because we are all connected, even in our disconnection because that is scientifically proven with physics (e.g., uniform gravitational field) and is clinically what we call dissociation. People and professions who believe that this logic or reasoning is untrue, flawed, or based in “pseudoscience” must awaken to the fact that qualitative science has now become a hard science with brain imaging, common sense, and historical context (O’Brien, 2023a). These misunderstandings stem from their inability to see that the physical body is the psychological unconscious and what that implies because they do not know who the labeler is or labelers are (O’Brien, 2023a) because they do not know what is real and what is not (O’Brien, 2024c).
Orientation
Patterns that are recognizable to a certain intelligence can only be observed today (in the now) by that level of consciousness; therefore, it is the observer who is implicitly liable for labeling (O’Brien, 2023a) because their interpretation and word choice represent their bias or worldview (based on their lived experience [e.g., “dissociated material”]) and dependent reward systems conditioning (e.g., addiction). How labelers decide to label their observations shows their implicit bias (e.g., belief system based on their lived experience, training, and education). To be clear, training and education are different because they have a different source memory system orientation and dominance (e.g., somatic versus cognitive) (O’Brien, 2024c). Our definition of implicit bias is based on our lived experience, which is made of memories that become a part of the body; therefore establishing the physical body as the unconscious (O’Brien, 2024c). With implicit knowledge, one can see behind the veil of any reality to know who is who, who is not, and who is going to learn something new (e.g., know who is woke and who is not yet, moral and ethical, and alive or the living “dead”).
The scientific reality of addiction and dissociation (O’Brien, 2023a) has not yet set into the field of psychology, but this needs to happen soon because psychedelics will open their minds to the facts that “everything that has ever existed is still here”, “nothing exists as something”, and “what is intangible becomes tangible when you start to believe that what you don’t know, see, or feel will hurt you”. We have argued that psychology and the medical model should be separate from psychedelics because they are sacred and because psychology is hampered by legal precedents and overreach, business models, finance, and psychology’s lacking philosophical basis (O’Brien, 2024c). What we have to witness now is that, until these professions understand what addiction and dissociation are and aren’t, there can be no equity, equality, or justice in a free and democratic society that follows the law over ethics and morals (O’Brien, 2024d). When laws are illegal, immoral, and unethical, we have to accept the outcomes of not living by our values (O’Brien, 2024b). Since professions and their professional associations (e.g., APA, AMA, ACA) have been identified as corporations (because corporations are now people), it may be time to address the professions and professionals that require ethics be equated to law and who tout morals like they know their personal cost. We must question their decision making and wish there was a protocol that could help those in charge and those with implicit bias make better decisions (HINT: apparently there is: HERE).
Background to the Problem
Kohlberg’s research on moral development outlines six stages of moral growth; the first (obedience and punishment) and fourth (law and order) stages honor those who are anal retentive, obstinate, fixed, concrete, and operational in their thinking. Kohlberg notes that the later stages (i.g., fifth [social contract] and sixth [universal ethical principle or morality]) that coincide with abstract thinking (after the ages of 11+ [Piaget]; e.g., openness to experience) and ethical and moral stages are relatively equal, but that morality stands alone in the face of illegal laws and the questionable ethics behind those laws. Piaget, in his stages of moral development, saw that the ability to recognize arbitrary rules can be changed by group consensus and this, as the next stage of development, has been achieved. The question becomes then, if laws are equated to ethics (in the minds of those who publicly state it; O’Brien, 2024b), then where do morals fit in when the laws are changing, agreed upon by group consensus, and were Constitutionally illegal to begin with (e.g., my body, my right), particularly around psychedelic care?
In their recent article, McKay and Coreil (2024) identified that there are professionals in the field of psychology who may have a “higher degree of openness to experience” and this in turn attracts clients who are like this as well. Their statement inadvertently implies that there are professionals/professions who don’t have a high degree of openness and that this is a concern to those who are not open to their experience. As a trait, openness to experience is appealing in mental health, but it also exists as a reason or excuse when clients explore solutions that require a level of suitable scientific skepticism. The relative lack of scientific skepticism among clinicians who embrace “pseudoscientific methods” results in those who are open to experience, implying that they are not afraid of it.
The opposite can be implied for professions who remain rigid to the facts of scientific evidence; the science (qualitative/quantitative) they are willing to follow makes them feel safe because the numbers add up and they have proof (e.g., just like the Big Bang (O’Brien, 2024c)). For clarity, qualitative thinking (lived experience/street smarts) is more right-brain dominant people and quantitative thinking is for more left-brain dominant people (documentation/book smart) (O’Brien, 2024c). We would contend that perhaps the people who use both should be more involved in the decision making process because they have a fully developed mind. To be clear, people are not their professions, however, if their profession is immoral, unjust, unscientific, immature, or ill, then the person upholding these values will experience cognitive and ethical dissonance because they are living addictively dissociated into their identity, image, and personality. Clinically, we have a diagnosis for that.
McKay and Coreil (2024) also write that people who are open and find strength in processes that open people up are limiting, lacking, and may interfere with care. This is because, if operating openly, these clinicians would not be practicing from a major theory of mental health care and would therefore have poorer scientific knowledge based on established research. McKay & Coreil (2024) note that citizens may find these kinds of professionals attractive (i.e., those who practice opening approaches like traumatic healing or somatic approaches like Brainspotting and Psychedelics) and that these people have characteristics consistent with that of “apophenia”, or high levels of openness to experience. As a reality that cannot be stopped, this is what psychedelics do and if even the “smartest book smart” professionals cannot see how the physical body as the psychological unconscious is essential to understanding their own dissociative phenomena and addictive denial system, then the sick professions and professionals will continue to not see the truth in front of them. Unless morality can win out, legal ethics have failed to produce the laws that moral people/professionals need to be moral.
Discussion
We recently pointed out elsewhere (HERE and HERE) that a “protocol” to “reduce implicit bias in decision making” is a rich statement from a governmental entity given that implicit bias is simply another way of saying “lived experience” and “worldview” (O’Brien, 2023a). These qualitative terms are not quantitatively valued by society the same as training, credentials, licenses, or professions (e.g., psychology is considered a “soft science” and is therefore dominated by the “hard sciences” like medical “science”). We are avoiding saying education because that word has a different definition (O’Brien, 2024c) and when an education can be bought or is a system of conditioning or grooming tools used by governments to subdue their population, then it becomes questionable.
We observe that since the physical body is the psychological unconscious, the physical expression of our lived experience produces our emotional experience, if it is accessible. If it is not accessible, then it is dissociated; therefore, dissociation does not mean gone, but rather inaccessible to the observer who is answering the question. If this aspect of self or profession is the dominant intellect and does not know the setup, then their conclusions would be faulty by design and logic because the observer believes that this cannot exist, not everything is connected, or that their body does not have wisdom because it is undocumented or inaccessible to them (O’Brien, 2023a; O’Brien, 2024c). As a result, they want to know everything like a parent demanding their child to tell them everything while giving them a drug test. Therefore, we have to document everything to prove that we exist, as their outcomes become our reality.
Apophenia may be a dissociative experience that is being labeled by professions and professionals who do not know what dissociation means clinically and cannot see the part addictions play in how dissociative experience can disappear without one’s recollection. This loss of memory is because of their concrete stage of development; or it is an indicator that they are living dissociated from reality AND that their pattern recognizing system is unable to see the narrative behind the numbers because they do not believe that one plus one can equal three in the real world because they know that one plus one can only equal two in the real world. Should those be the professions or class of society that we want to be morally in charge of psychedelics? We see psychedelics as sacred organics, spiritual food, and an aid in the integration of religious and spiritual experiences, but because modern quantitative psychology does not understand them (because the medical model is stuck at an earlier stage of moral development, traumatized, and hamstrung by the concrete stage of the legal profession and their archaic non-evidence based processes), we have to question their authority to do them and to tell others how to do them.
As professionals, we have to acknowledge that we are in an abusive relationship with who we either think our parents are or who they think that we are as their children. We see the need for the law to apply the States’ “protocol” to its own behaviors and unjust laws, like those seen in drug policy (e.g., War on Drugs), tax incentives for the rich, and corporate bailouts. The recent lived experience of the citizen population with psychedelics is that the law (therefore, the police) has been on the wrong side of history for so long when it comes to drug policy that we have to question why they are still in charge of these policies at all. Coupled with the medical model’s failure to provide psychologically-informed decisions with COVID, we ask the same question of Psychology’s pathology (e.g., APA and ACA): why has no one stood up against them?
Conclusion
At one time, people thought that the continents looked like they went together, but they did not know how. At one time, people thought that the world wasn’t round, but now they are so sure of it that they would question anyone who questions it. At one time, they thought they could create a non-addictive opiate, but instead they created more addictions. At one time, you thought we were writing about you.
Maybe when we talked about how the professionals who cannot be open and honest shouldn’t be in charge and shouldn’t be regulating the ones who are open and honest (and have to be to be good at their job) because they clearly do not understand mental health and are clinically living dissociated from their morals; hence, they are living separate from their ethics because one cannot be moral without being ethical (and not vice versa). With proper understanding of recovery, psychedelic care, and major mental health theory in place with Addiction as Dissociation Model (O’Brien, 2023a) and Path of the Wounded Healer (O’Brien, 2024a), we offer all a chance to learn how to become Healers.
Meditation and psychedelic therapies are already evidence-based because of our work (O’Brien, 2023b). The question becomes, will they accept their own science being reflected to them? Will they see that is more likely that it was them that could not see the connections due to their dissociation, denial, and addiction? Isn’t it more likely if they could not define addiction correctly, thought that they produced a “non-addictive opiate”, sold that mental health was due to a “chemical imbalance”, or that they insist on ethics and law over morals/equate ethics to law? What is their core mission is that they want to “eradicate disease” because they think that they have done it before with vaccines, plants, medications, or knowledge, but to think that they can get rid of the disease that they cannot see, cannot acknowledge, and do not exist in their worldview should have everyone question their motives, intentions, and intelligences.
Maybe we should let those who know science lead instead of the professions and professional associations that have a hard time interpreting it because they are filled with trained people instead of educated people who did not bought into the claimed that the adults know what they are doing. As an adult, we must question what the previous generation knows because we have a massive advantage over them with our level of education and access to information. With all of our access to information and our history, what we are all become conscious of is that societally we are involved with intergenerational slavery though debt (choice right?); people, professions, or professionals who only eat the carrots given are the ones who get careers. We should all start listening to the people dying, leaving, or retiring from the field of psychology instead of the ones controlling it because they do not know the difference between being here and not, what is real or not, or what connection is based on. This is how we know that we have the morals and they don’t. When we look at their trauma history, is it any wonder? We also know who is the slave waiting to be freed by their retirement, but the problem this logic is that one has acknowledge before they die that the past can never leave them because it has always been here and will always remain.
“The world is his, who can see through its pretension… See it to be a lie, and you have already dealt it its moral blow.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
References
McKay, D. & Coreil, A. (2024). Hypothesis testing of the adoption of pseudoscience methods. Medical Hypotheses, 182. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mehy.2023.111229
O’Brien, A. (2023a). Addiction as Trauma-Related Dissociation: A Phenomenological Investigation of the Addictive State. International University of Graduate Studies. (Dissertation). Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2023b). Memory Reconsolidation in Psychedelics Therapy. In Path of the Wounded Healer: A Dissociative-Focused Phase Model for Normative and Pathological States of Consciousness: Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2023c). Path of the Wounded Healer: A Dissociative-Focused Phase Model for Normative and Pathological States of Consciousness: Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2024a). Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and healing professions as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2024b). Diagnostic Privilege: Meta-Critical Analysis. In Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and the healing profession as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Appendix 2. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2024c). Meta-Critical Analysis: The “Science” of Pseudoscience. In Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and the healing profession as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Appendix 3. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2024d). Moral-Ethics. In Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer andhealing professions as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Chapter 14. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2024e). Path of the Wounded Healers for Thrivers: Perfectionism, Altruism, and Ambition Addictions; Re-education and training manual for Abusers, Activists, Batterers, Bullies, Enablers, Killers, Narcissists, Offenders, Parents, Perpetrators, and Warriors. Re-Education and Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
