Autogenics

From a self-hypnosis practice rooted in early 20th century psychiatry to the Nazi persecution of homosexuals, Robert and Joe discuss autogenics training and its creator, Johannes Heinrich Schultz.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuft to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And
today we're going to be talking about autogenics, autogenic training, uh,

(00:23):
the the origins of this uh approach at self hypnosis.
And I have to admit that I had actually never
even heard of autogenics until I heard a very interesting
track and I think in some DJ mixes from about
a decade ago. But the track is called Group Autogenics
one by the American Dutch musical duo The Books. I've

(00:47):
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

(01:10):
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

(01:31):
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,

(01:52):
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

(02:12):
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,

(02:34):
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

(02:57):
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

(03:20):
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

(03:44):
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,

(04:07):
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,

(04:28):
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

(04:52):
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.

(05:15):
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

(05:37):
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

(05:59):
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.

(06:20):
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

(06:43):
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,

(07:06):
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

(07:31):
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

(07:51):
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

(08:12):
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

(08:36):
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,

(08:58):
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

(09:19):
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

(09:40):
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

(10:05):
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

(10:26):
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

(10:47):
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

(11:08):
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.

(11:29):
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

(11:52):
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

(12:13):
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

(12:33):
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

(12:55):
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,

(13:19):
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

(13:40):
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

(14:05):
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

(14:25):
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,

(14:46):
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

(15:07):
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

(15:28):
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

(15:49):
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

(16:10):
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

(16:33):
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

(16:53):
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

(17:14):
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

(17:35):
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

(17:56):
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

(18:19):
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

(18:39):
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

(19:00):
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

(19:22):
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,

(19:43):
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

(20:04):
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

(20:26):
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.

(20:48):
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

(21:11):
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

(21:33):
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

(21:55):
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

(22:17):
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

(22:37):
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

(22:57):
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.

(23:20):
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

(23:41):
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

(24:02):
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

(24:23):
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

(24:44):
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.

(25:06):
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

(25:29):
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

(25:49):
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

(26:10):
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

(26:32):
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

(26:54):
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

(27:16):
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

(27:38):
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

(27:58):
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

(28:21):
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

(28:42):
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

(29:08):
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,

(29:28):
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

(29:51):
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

(30:14):
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

(30:36):
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

(30:58):
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

(31:18):
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,

(31:39):
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

(32:02):
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.

(32:24):
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.

(32:45):
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.

(33:08):
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,

(33:29):
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

(33:52):
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

(34:12):
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.

(34:35):
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

(34:56):
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

(35:17):
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

(35:37):
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

(35:59):
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

(36:23):
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

(36:43):
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

(37:05):
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,

(37:27):
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

(37:51):
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

(38:12):
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.

(38:32):
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

(38:55):
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

(39:15):
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?

(39:37):
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,

(40:00):
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

(40:24):
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,

(40:45):
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

(41:08):
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.

(41:30):
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,

(41:52):
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,

(42:14):
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,

(42:39):
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

(43:00):
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

(43:22):
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

(43:43):
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

(44:04):
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

(44:26):
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

(44:48):
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

(45:09):
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

(45:30):
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

(45:52):
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,

(46:14):
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

(46:37):
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

(47:01):
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

(47:22):
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

(47:43):
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

(48:04):
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

(48:26):
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,

(48:48):
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

(49:10):
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

(49:33):
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

(49:54):
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

(50:18):
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

(50:38):
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,

(51:00):
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

(51:24):
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

(51:46):
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

(52:06):
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

(52:28):
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

(52:51):
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

(53:12):
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And oh, for our listeners out there, any listeners who
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you know that there is an event coming up part
of the Atlanta Science Festival. It's called How Snakes Work.

(53:35):
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,

(53:55):
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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(54:25):
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