tient because it produces further regression. It remains undetermined how great this risk factor is, but there are claims that all these procedures have ended up in psy- chosis.
In 1972 two thousand students at a Philadelphia high school went through the SMC training with no psychiatric casualties, according to a responsible school official. This aroused our curiosity in another way. Since adolescents are already in a state of ego instability, hearsay claims that the course was dangerous for unstable individuals were thrown into doubt Our dilemma was compounded. We saw three disturbed individuals in a group of 30 and did not know if they had been made better or worse. There were claims by some members of the scientific community of large num- bers becoming psychotic. The high-school study indicated this was not the case. In fact, some of our own patients, even severely disturbed ones, had taken the course and ap- peared to be dramatically benefited by it. A review of the literature showed opinions but no actual studies.
Clearly, the only way to proceed was to evaluate and test individuals before and after the training. Over the next four years 189 of our psychiatric patients voluntarily went through the Silva Mind Control training while they were in therapy. Particular emphasis was given to a group of 75 patients who were diagnosed as psychotic, borderline, or psychosis in remission, before entering the course. These we called the severely disturbed group. At some time in their lives, 60 of them had either been psychotic or had been hospitalized.
The 75 included everyone from the severely disturbed group found in McKenzte's practice over the last four years who agreed to attend the SMC course (66 patients) and a sampling found in Wright's practice over the last four years (9 patients). There were 7 severely disturbed patients who refused to attend, even when the course was offered free. They were not more disturbed than the ones who did at- tend. Those who attended included the most disturbed; those who refused simply tended to be more rigid and in-
184 / THE SILVA MIND CONTROL METHOD flexible in their thinking. Presumably they would not rep- resent persons who might get into difficulty during the course, because they were not likely to take the course in the first place.
Initially patients from the severely disturbed group were sent to the course one at a time and with great caution. During the initial part of the study the patients were sent during a time of their remission. As the study progressed, however, the patients were sent during less-stable periods of their illnesses. Toward the end of the four-year period, 17 were sent while they were actively psychotic and delu- sional, and sometimes 10 or more went through the course at once.
In addition to their ongoing psychiatric treatment and evaluation, 58 of the 75 were given the Experiential World Inventory questionnaire before and after the course. The EWI is a 400-item questionnaire designed to measure real- ity perception. Drs. El-Meligi and Osmond, authors of the questionnaire, attempted to put the Rorschach in question- and-answer form, and arrived at a sensitive test for the mar- ginal individual.
The primary purpose of the study was to find out which patients might become more disturbed with the training. In that regard the results were startling because only one patient became appreciably more disturbed after the course. He was a twenty-nine-year-old catatonic schizophrenic pa- tient who became upset two weeks after the course when he stopped taking his medication and began dating for the first time in his life. He was also the only patient who scored appreciably worse on the EWI after the course. He did not require hospitalization.
Two other patients, one who had experienced psychotic depression and one with involutional depression, showed an increase in depression following the course, perhaps in contrast to the way they had felt during the training. The high feeling during the course was a marked contrast to their depressive state, and the experience was like taking a headache away from a person who had had it all his life.
Appendix II / 185 If it returned it was more noticeable. However, these pa- tients did score better on the EWI afterward, and they were able to make use of the training. The involutional de- pressed patient was able to use the Mind Control program- ming later the same week and function with less anxiety at work; and the person with a history of psychotic depression was able to work through things in therapy she had pre- viously been unable to handle.
Twenty-six other depressed patients, including involu- tional, psychotic, schizoaffective, and manic-depressive types, were much less depressed after the course and showed no harmful effects.
One woman reported a sudden feeling of sadness during one of the relaxations. A man, not included in the 75, dropped out after the second day because he had flashbacks of unpleasant Vietnam experiences. His condition was not thought to be worse than when he began, but he did not return for further evaluation. (The relaxation puts persons in touch with feelings. Usually, because the mood of the group is high and the focus is positive, the feelings are of warmth and love, but on infrequent occasion persons evoke sadness and unhappy memories.)
Still another patient (not in the severely disturbed group) was afraid of the things to be done on the last day of the course, and after a bad dream did not go to the last day.
A paranoid schizophrenic man, age thirty, demonstrated great exuberance, approaching cyclothymic proportions, after the course. He tried various Mind Control techniques to determine what to do with the rest of his life, and spent many hours checking out possibilities from programmed dreams. This was seen as an increase of compulsive de- fenses. Nevertheless, as a result of his heightened activity, he was able to go back to school to earn his Ph.D. He also was able to discuss a delusional system he had experienced several years before, when he thought he was sent tele- pathically on a mission to kill someone. If he had not taken the course, this might never have been brought up and resolved.
186 / THE SILVA MIND CONTROL METHOD effects of the course, the positive effects and results would require a book to describe. The most consistent finding was one we were not looking for and did not expect In almost every instance there was an increase in reality perception. Of the 58 who took the EWL one became appreciably worse, 21 remained about the same, and 36 demonstrated an impressive increase in reality perception. Of the 21 who remained about the same, 15 had scores that moved in the healthy direction.
The average scores of 'the first 20 women who took the course were sent to Dr. El-Meligi, co-author of the EWI questionnaire. He lauded the dramatic changes that took place after the Silva Mind Control training and said that in some categories the before and after scores were like those of a person during and after a bad LSD trip (see charts A and B). In each of the eleven categories there was con- sistent improvement Individual scores were more impres- sive (charts E, F, and G). Composite scores of the 50 per- cent of the men and women who improved the most are indicated in charts C and D. It is thought that no conven- tional psychotherapy could produce as much change in a week; indeed, it might have required months or years of therapy.
One involutional paranoid woman's scores changed as much with the one-week course as they had on another oc- casion with eleven electroshock treatments and twelve weeks of hospitalization. After the one-week course, she was able to get on a bus by herself for the first time in four years.
Another woman, who was paranoid schizophrenic and acutely delusional, maintained some of her delusional thoughts after the course, but was able to go repeatedly to her "Mind Control level" to examine these thoughts, and each time arrive at clear, rational ideation.
Another woman, with an acute undifferentiated schizo- phrenic reaction, was too disturbed to fill out the EWI. She was given her choice: shock treatment or Mind Con- trol. At the end of the course there was clinical improve- ment, and she not only could fill out the EWI but she scored quite well on it
Appendix II I 187