What Would You Do?
“Man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life. That is why man is ever ready to suffer, on the condition, to be sure, that his suffering has a meaning.” In Victor Frankl “Man’s Search for Meaning”
Moral-Ethics: What Would You Do?
Introduction
What would you do if your state licensing board required you to prove something that you were already educated and trained to do (e.g., your masters’ degree program teaches you to diagnose)? We wrote a paper on it (O’Brien, 2024b).
What would you do if other professionals called a primary healing approach a “pseudoscience”, based on the APA’s “research” on the standardization and industrialization of modern psychology to a more rational and cognitive foundation? We wrote a paper on it (O’Brien, 2024c).
What would you do if you knew, based on your life’s works, that the medical and psychological professions are so far in their denial that they believe themselves over common sense? They also suffer from the same condition that every mental health presentation struggles with, but cannot see it. Our work on addiction recovery highlights that not only are trauma and dissociation transdiagnostic, but so is addiction (O’Brien, 2023a).
What would you do if you were reported to your state licensing board by another professional (similarly licensed profession) for something that you are fully trained to do and were destined to do? What if you were turned in for doing psychedelic work in 2022 and are someone who educates others on the risks (e.g., how in denial the system is) and how to do this kind of work from a recovery tradition that honors all involved? What if you knew how sick the medical and psychological models are, what diagnosis they don’t know they have, and have the knowledge and the skillset to help heal it?
Orientation
If you are a licensed professional, being reported to your licensing board for anything is one of the scariest things that you can imagine happening in your career. Enduring has been bad enough, but when one compares it to the struggle it has been to continue to comply with a system in denial, it pales in comparison. What has also been a bureaucratically daunting task with this whole endeavor has been engaging with legal authorizes (who don’t know that Kohlberg’s research on moral development, ethics, and law demonstrated their level of it and where ethics and morality present), does reveal a lot about how and why “the system” operates. While we have been weathering a storm of our own with the State of New York, we have noticed a few things about the process, the field, and the professions involved that are worth highlighting more directly to the reader who wants to learn about our extended work on trauma, dissociation, and addiction (O’Brien, 2023a). We suggest reviewing our recovery advocacy work for the deconstruction of professional rationalism and perfectionism, addictive tendencies to power and control, and exponential profiting without equal contribution (O’Brien, 2024b; O’Brien, 2024c).
Re-Orientation
Yes, we were turned in for working with psychedelics by another licensed psychological professional in the field and are fully trained to do it. We also have too much professional education, training, and clinical experience to know what to do with it. When you can legally buy products with illegal psychedelics in them readily online, use legal cannabis (in our state) as a psychedelic, and have them both legally delivered to your door, the licensed professional who was working with a disabled Vet, is more than qualified, is the problem or has done something wrong? Well, we have had enough of that logic because recovery is here and is here to stay. Ironically, they made Recovery a profession when they should have been allowed to because that tradition had been addressed by the founders of Recovery (11th tradition of AA). On the other hand, those in recovery should not have allowed it to happen. They made recovery into a profession (because they addictively promoted a “non-addictive opiate”) but forgot the role of the Recovery Healer or Wounded Healer. As Recovery and Healing is our advocation, we offer our experience to readers who need to understand what we are driving at and for those who will come to our work late.
Background to their Problem
Currently, legal and illegal psychedelics are available to purchase online and are offered in everyone’s newsfeed who searches for “psychedelics” or “mental health”. A lot of people are turning to this alternative because their standards of care are failing them, not because they know what the system knows what they are doing. We completely agree in exploring this psychedelic option, but not from a system that sells you a non-addictive opiate, cigarettes as not addictive, tells you that mental health is due to a chemical imbalance, or that an experimental vaccine is safe and effective for children. If real solutions are not what you want, then avoiding our work on Healing and Recovery is what you are doing. We offer our research to support our stance (O’Brien, 2023a; O’Brien, 2023b; O’Brien, 2024c), but the reader has to know who they are before they can understand and accept our work.
We see that psychedelics are another new fad in medicine and psychology that are being capitalized on for profit over people and have many concerns for a field that cannot define their own definitions or philosophical premise accurately (e.g., the physical body is the psychological unconscious) (O’Brien, 2024c). We also know that what is being presented as psychedelic therapy is as revolutionary as meditation was 150 years ago (O’Brien, 2023b). What our clinical knowledge and experience has taught is that most people are unaware of how dissociated, addicted, and unconscious they really are. This is why we recommend a quantitative brain scan in combination with our Meeting Area Screening and Assessment (MASA). This way anyone can confirm where or not you are on the consciousness awareness map, but non-actions already speak to that truth.
Our concern is also that psychology and “the system” psychology are missing a few key ingredients for successfully doing psychedelics (e.g., recovery, regulation, and common sense), but we know that they will not do it because it is not in their awareness to do so (O’Brien, 2024c). So, the irony of our current situation in psychedelica is that those who are trained to do them cannot because the drugs are still illegal (however, breathwork, meditation, cannabis, and ketamine offers an alternative route). They don’t know how to do psychedelic therapy appropriately because other professions have sterilized their ability to do so. As other professionals are vying for access to psychedelics, what we can see is that our emerging profession is being gatekeep for their own profit, power, and future pay.
So, the uninformed professionals (even medical prescribers) who do not understand drugs, dissociation, or addiction (and are ironically afraid of them for their own subconscious reasons and are the ones prescribing their drugs), avoid addiction and dissociative clients, promote the competitional aspects of our professional dynamics that extends deep into their profession and our society and culture, and also stoke fear into the collective unconscious by cautioning against doing them because their “science” isn’t clear. Why would they do these things?: Professional gatekeeping (O’Brien, 2024b), ignorance/denial (O’Brien, 2024c), and trauma-related symptoms from unresolved traumas (O’Brien, 2023a). Why? Profit and job security (O’Brien, 2024c). However, they will sell anything and everything as protection but shy away from actual solutions (like vitamin D during COVID). Okay… but if it was a matter of safety for clients or citizens, particularly from psychedelics, we would want to see their research on the dangers of them and an explanation as to why they are making them legal. We would also have to ask about their stance on diabetes, screen time for children and computers in schools (research is clear on this), daylight savings time (research is clear on this), toxins in the environment promoting medical conditions (clear), Standard American Diet (clearer), lack of access to quality healthcare (systemic moral poverty), subpar education (U.S. is ranked what in the world?), overprescribing of psyche medications (by professionals who get legal financial kickbacks), and financial scarcity (in the richest nation ever)?
Our Solutions to Our Problems
When completing our doctoral studies, we founded a psychedelic research and academic institute for anyone who identifies as a Wounded Healer or wants to either learn the art of healing, the science and research, or get re-educated by our ancient take on modern science. Based on our lived experience as a clinical therapist, a researcher, and qualitative scientist and artist, we believe that it is time to offer our experience and solution to the greater world. Our solution is to restart the profession of Healing as an advocation (O’Brien, 2024a) from the dissociative perspective that we have come to know intimately through our academic studies, personal and professional experience, trauma resolution methods, and psychedelic use. As our research (O’Brien, 2023a) observes that the dissociative state is a healing state, it also expands upon the world’s existing knowledge base on these subjects and validates and confirms our qualitative approach and reasoning. Furthermore, we do not need to pay the estimated 80,000 dollars it would take to get it “evidence-based” because it already is (O’Brien, 2023a; O’Brien, 2023b) by common sense standards (O’Brien, 2024b; O’Brien, 2024c).
Our work is based on our research-informed Addiction as Dissociation Model (O’Brien, 2023a), which highlights accurate definitions of psychological terms. As a result of our research, we accurately defined (or redefined) trauma, dissociation, addiction, and the unconscious as the result. These would be helpful terms for psychology to have defined prior to our arriving in the field thinking that they know what they are doing. Furthermore, our path is also for the undiagnosed addictions that we believe to be missing from the Pantheon of mental health disorders for the last several editions of the DSM (e.g., perfectionism, altruism, and ambition addictions) (O’Brien, 2024e). We have created an open sourced approach for the next generation of Healers to form future Healers. We also developed a dissociative-informed model of care for addictions using psychedelics and for delivering recovery-focused care called Path of the Wounded Healers (O’Brien, 2023c). Healers heal publicly and therapy is done individually. In the absence of bureaucratic shortcomings, Healer’s support healing from developmental trauma, normative dissociation, and universal addictions.
We are qualitative, with a deep appreciation for the quantitative efforts. However, we choose to learn from both sides of the issue, but with a firm leaning towards qualitative because it can be confirmed by our lived experience and has held up over history (O’Brien, 2024c). We have learned a lot about human nature, existential truth, and mental health by scanning people’s brains with quantitative EEG (qEEG) equipment. We have also learned a lot about who does benefit and who doesn’t. We encourage everyone to get a brain scan (qEEG) if they do not know what is going on within themselves or so they can confirm what they are experiencing. Findings from a scan may be conformational or revolutionary, but should be taken with a grain of salt for those who are unaware of their own level of dissociation. We can measure consciousness with our MASA, qEEG, and qualitative interview, but can people accept our researched, quantifiable, and qualitative reasoning?
Discussion
The reality of the field of psychology is that they are supporting the same laws that have been imprisoning citizens for a “disease” that does not exist like they think it does (O’Brien, 2023a). This challenges their moral character, not ours at this point in human history. What has destroyed families as a result of their denial to their addiction/dissociation, is also what helps them remain in power. Their fear of change is what protects their lifestyle, projected income, their kid’s college tuition, or they can pay off debts from other professions moral business models like finance (charging interest on money), insurance (charging for something that might not ever happen), or government (that believes that their money is not ours). However, as they legalize these medicines, let’s not pretend that they know what they are doing and why they do what they do and don’t do.
No wonder citizens are confused by psychology and don’t trust their business practices. However, are our business practices really ours? What we observe is that the state and the legal/political/business realms of society follow the science they want, when they want, and how they want (O’Brien, 2024b). Why is the state or federal government so slow to legalize psychedelics? Is it because the science is slow or is it the lobbying, gatekeeping, and bureaucracy? This is like we see with their approach to changing daylight savings. Even when the research is so clear, they cannot follow it because of the dependent bureaucracy and fear of outcomes. Our more complete clinical answer is that they are in an active state of addiction to their dissociation as a result of their unidentified and unconsciously unresolved traumas that they are living dissociated in and do not know it (O’Brien, 2023a; O’Brien, 2024b; O’Brien, 2024c). As a result, they are not behaving morally-ethical, but ironically hold us to it (O’Brien, 2024b). Now, we are holding being morally-ethical to them (O’Brien, 2024c).
As a byproduct of our journey with the state, we are introducing what we call Moral-Ethics (O’Brien, 2024d). Moral-Ethics is an existential concept that highlights that common sense is missing from the professional domain of society, particularly in economics and is due to unresolved trauma, dissociation, and addiction. As an example, citizens shopping for psychological services are expecting professionals to be moral first before being ethical, particularly if the laws, common sense, and research do not match. If the professions were behaving morally, we would be able to tell them the truth about psychology, medicine, and how the modern world, particularly the medical model, is what is making them sick with chaos, poor diet, stress, and disease. The professions of psychology are limited by the competition between what is “right” for the client and what is legally wrong. However, lawyers, finance, business, and governments can charge or print money when they want, act as immoral as they want, and tell others what to do because they have the money and power. Welcome to the abusive relationship you are in reader because this is our abusive father and our mother is becoming aware of what he has been selling her as love.
Moral-Ethics is our take on what should (e.g., self-actualized, authentic thinkings and feelers, or fully morally developed adults who can prove that they are) be happening in the field of psychology, which our observations are recovery-based because psychology has been and is so far off base from its emotional roots that it has convinced itself that it is “right” something or “knows” everything (O’Brien, 2024c). As a point of reference, psychological professionals are expected by licensing boards to be both moral and ethical (O’Brien, 2024b). When renewing our license to practice every two years, all licensed professionals have to click on (like we do to use their phones, network, and society) a “moral character clause”. If you are a professional reading this, you may have not noticed, but all of the items are asking if we have been following the law or if you have been in trouble with the law or “the systems”. Historically, equating law or policy to ethics is extremely dangerous, particularly when the law and policy cannot follow science because of competing business interests. Was making psychedelics illegal in 1968 moral? In hindsight, it is anything but; and with the “war on drugs”, crack and opiate epidemic, or overprescribing those that do not admit that they are the ones with the problem with drugs (e.g., 1st step in self-help is admitting that you have a problem) are the ones with the drug problem. Those who do not know that they are living dissociated, do not know it. How can you know? What values are you espousing to your children by buying into a system that tells/sells you that you are free, but does look or feel like freedom.
First, people expect professionals to be moral, which is a reasonable expectation. Second, before we can be moral, we must be ethical and herein lies the issue with the state and psychedelics. We, as Americans, do not live in an ethical professional world (O’Brien, 2024b; O’Brien, 2024c); therefore, professionals cannot be moral. Our point with moral-ethics is that the clause to advocate against professional gatekeeping is in our ethics and is not being done. Therefore, morality is not happening. Third, if holding one accountable is what the government is for, we do have to take a look at the conditions governments are creating with their lack of urgency on this topic, dependence on Big Medical to scare them, and their support for other more lucrative pharmaceutical products instead of doing the necessary work to heal.
Our main contention here is that being moral is highly subjective and equating it as equal to the law or ethics is dangerous (O’Brien, 2024b). Doing the ethical thing is required, but suggesting that we are also supposed to be moral in a broken system where professionals gatekeeper as they need, is a bit much for our moral center as we go into another election cycle of choosing the lesser of two evils. By their own code of ethics, professionals are supposed to advocate against systems of oppression or barriers to care. In our shared lived experience, what could be a bigger barrier to mental health care than the insurance-based healthcare system or law? What about the people or professions that invest in them? Big Business, Big Government, Big Media are all major contributors to people’s level of mental health. Ironically, being moral is to break one’s ethics when necessary and just, but is this true for all professions? Bankers, business, financiers, real estate, or government? Are we to believe that every licensed professional or politician can check a moral character box honestly?
In our professional code of ethics, there is a clause that says that it is our professional responsibility to advocate against systemic oppression, which would take the form of unjust laws or unfair business practices. Therefore, being moral means making decisions that are against the law, when the laws are unjust. With psychedelics, we have that exact case – but because a law (particularly business law) does not have to be ethical or moral, it can be persuaded by other professional interests, reasoning, or rationale. We see this as based in irrational beliefs and cite this legal stage of awareness in Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development as one who maintains obedience and compliance, despite the facts. Like a client, we see this as arrested development due to unresolved trauma that is predicated on dissociative responses. The other higher stages are ethics and morals. If people want to start living by research and science, there you have it. The law is developmentally equivalent to a toddler, which makes sense because it is the base of human agreement. What the law has become is our social credit system that produces exponential profits for those who get in early and do not have to work another day in their life or produce anything.
Laws are subjective at best, depending on class and resources (e.g., Jeffrey Epstein); therefore, Moral-Ethics Clause must be placed in every profession if professions are serving those they claim to serve. One cannot follow the law or ethics morally when the law and ethics are amoral. The case of psychedelics exemplifies this because research has shown that they have medical value, yet they remain illegal due to professional incompetence, ignorance, or greed. As a byproduct of freedom of speech, we must be able to state reasons why they are keeping them illegal and hold them accountable for delaying open healing to the public. With the State of New York Education Department siding with legalities in our case (not research, science, evidence, or common sense) the moral imperative that everyone on the frontlines of our “mental health crisis” must ask is whether or not it is you or your employer that is being immoral? Did we forget unions and labor laws?
Psychedelics represent another clear example of how the system has failed to meet its ethical and moral obligation to “its’” citizens. Because the case that we were called on was with a disabled Veteran as a result of their service, we see another level to our moral injury that we will not forget. So again, what would you do for someone who has agreed to die and kill for you, in the name of your and your children’s freedom, rights, and life? Would you do psychedelics with them if you were more informed and skilled then those who educate on or regulate them? What would you do if your life’s work sees that the whole business model as addicted to exponential profits over people, everyday hears about the double standards from people who have directly experienced them, and have witnessed people healing from them?
As Healers we are healing through a process of recovery and we know the way back and forth between conscious reality and unconscious truths. More to our bigger picture point, what would you do to ensure that your kids firmly understood what drugs are before they start taking them so you did not repeat the same mistakes of the last generation? Their solution: D.A.R.E. War on Drugs, denying research, and starting epidemics. Our solution is our Addiction Re-education Program that is now available.
Conclusion
A criticism of Kohlberg is that because he asked “what would you do if…”, no one can really know what one would actually do when confronted with the circumstances presented. When we were confronted with the state, we were also confronted with the truth of our work. We would argue that every moment of every day is a moment where you can start doing what you do, and, if we are being held to a moral standard that is ethically and legally bound, then the ones/professions who hold us accountable better be able to demonstrate the same level of maturity and development.
Confucius said, “those who know and do not do, do not really know”. When one realizes that street smarts are different than book smarts and people who have both have the advantage, then everyone can start to see where they measure up. We all need contrast to make sense of it all. There are more than enough resources to go around if we stop consuming more than we need, but that is addiction, which is predicated on dissociative features and trauma-related stress. The wisdom to know the difference does not come from a textbook; it comes from the lived experience of losing everything to gain the world. This is where we are at personally.
What is real and what is not is essential to understanding psychology. We re-educate on spiritual psychology with psychedelic medicines for healers and any profession, parent, person who wants to come to learn the greatest con of them all: convincing you that a material God exists so you can believe that the emotional devil doesn’t. By unleashing psychedelics without a recovery-based model or clear definitions of dissociation and addiction is like asking for a psychedelic crisis. Who are they going to blame? With the medical model’s influence, there needs to be a secular stance that allows medical, psychological, spiritual and moral freedom. Bill Wilson, co-creator of Alcoholics Anonymous, wanted to bring psychedelics into self-help. Now we can utilize mindful dissociation, meditation, breath, and psychedelics to help people learn how to heal themselves and have the spiritual awakening that is needed to recover. By doing so we learn to heal others.
As we are concluding a legal matter with the State of New York, we are deciding if we still want our license anymore from a system that expects ethical and moral behavior from us, but requires that we follow the law above all else. How do we know that the law is ethical and moral? This kind of ignorance is their own. However, our real main issue is that our work would go unrecognized because it confirms why our ability to do something is so common that it does not need their permission to do. We have evolved out of being a therapist to become what we are now. What we are now is a Healer, Philosopher, Educator, Researcher, Artist, and Spiritual Teacher. What they are, is what they claim to be.
Because the medical and psychological models have not accurately defined several key aspects of psychology, as outlined in our work (O’Brien, 2023a), our program acts as a screening program for safe healing and for Healers to become what they already are and for the general public to learn or be re-educated about medicines, drugs, medical history, and drug policy. As an academic institute, we are performing research to solidify our stance that perfectionism, altruism, and ambition addictions should be added to the DSM. We are also educating on how to utilize memory reconsolidation, consciousness, states of dissociation, psychedelic medicines, principles of conditioning, spirituality, and morality to perform universal healing.
At the end of the day, we are helping people learn how to live and die with moral fortitude and the dignity that they deserve for living a virtuous life. If this is against the law to educate on healing from living on this planet, then we must ask why? When the unconscious consciousness wakes up to the fact there are ways to heal oneself, then everyone can truly know who they are. Without healing and recovery, we are nothing, but, according to qualitative science (O’Brien, 2024c), nothing is something and there is a lot of nothing around. Until we all realize that what we do to one we do to all, then psychology will never be able to reach those people. However, Healers can. As an example of our abilities, being morally unfit means that one is ethical and being moral means being unethical. When we know the score and who is keeping it, we find out who is playing what game. As morality and ethics are considered equal in Kohlberg’s work on spiritual development, a third point of view is the educated mind and start to see the kind of relationship between the two. The difference between ethics and morals is action and the difference between truth and action is the humility of our actions. If not, then holding people and systems accountable for what they have done is moral-ethical, but not ethically-moral.
References
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 and healing 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/
