Elmer Green:  There never was a time I wasn't aware that there was a collective unconscious. I knew about this from the time I was about three years old. Since I knew about it, I took it for granted.

Beyond Biofeedback – Drs Elmer and Alyce Green

Parapsychological problems were marvellously intriguing, and I began skipping classes, spending my time reading the literature of the psychical research societies of Europe and America. What might have happened if I had continued that way I cannot say. What did happen was that I met Alyce in 1939 and had to face the fact that no employer would pay me to think about psychophysical energies. If we were to get married (which we did in 1941), I would need a job to support a family, so I turned toward more practical studies, and in 1942 graduated with a degree in physics.

I immediately took a job at Minneapolis-Honeywell, where I worked in instrument development and later as a technical representative with the Air Force during World War II. After the war I enrolled as a graduate student in physics at UCLA. On the side I began a study of the retina as a biological energy converter, still thinking, though, of methods for direct detection of psychophysical energies. Money was in short supply, for Alyce and I were raising four children by this time, Pat and Doug from her previous marriage and our own two, Sandra and Judy, so I left UCLA and took a job as a physicist with the Naval Ordnance Test Station (NOTS) at China Lake, California. Our business was research and development of guided missiles and rockets.

My work involved optics, photography, electronics, computing, design of instruments, management of an optical-research group of about eight physicists, and management of a data-reduction group. When I left NOTS I was head of the assessments division, supervising the work of sixty-five mathematicians, physicists, electronics engineers, and statistics aides in evaluating optical and electronic data obtained in weapons tests. During those years Alyce and I read continuously in the fields of metaphysics, parapsychology, and theosophy, searching for and constructing a framework of ideas that would correspond with our own experiences and at the same time be reasonable in terms of a possible science in which mind and matter were not forever separate. I took it for granted that I would return to UCLA for further graduate work in physics, but as time passed and information on sensory systems came to my attention (such as the excellent book by Frank A. Geldard titled The Human Senses, 1953) it began to seem that for the study of psycho-physics I would need much more physiological and psychological information. Possibly I could get a Ph.D. in psychology while gathering the information. That would be especially useful, Alyce and I decided, in finding a position where we could conduct research of our choosing. Freedom is not easily obtained, even with a Ph.D., but we were more fortunate than most research couples in finding a good situation in which to work.

In 1958 we enrolled at the University of Chicago, Alyce as an undergraduate student in psychology and I as a graduate student in bio-psychology. One of our reasons for choosing the University of Chicago was that Carl Rogers was there, and we looked forward to contact with him. He had developed a system called "client-centered therapy," in which the therapist is essentially a psychological mirror in which the client can confront himself; one might say that the therapist provides "psychofeedback," in contrast to biofeedback. But when we arrived at the university, Rogers had departed. Behaviorist experimental psychology and a positivist philosophy held sway. Having a philosophy of our own, we were able to take what was useful from these paradigms without being disturbed by their anti-humanistic orientation. The same could not be said for many of the students, however. Some were disturbed because of the conflict with their belief systems, and some, we felt, were depressed because of the conflict without knowing the cause. It is not easy to be a graduate student, and it is especially difficult in psychology if you feel that there is something wrong with the interpretation of humans that you are obliged to espouse in order to get a degree. The return to college was a challenge of the first magnitude. Although I was familiar with the elements of perception, it was necessary to fulfill academic requirements in biology, zoology, neuroanatomy, and especially in the neural basis of sensory discrimination. Going to school was also expensive. Not only were Alyce and I in college, but our youngest children were high-school students in the Laboratory School of the University of Chicago. Fortunately, I was able to obtain a pre-doctoral fellowship from the National Institute of Mental Health, which helped our finances.

I spent the first two years in the electrophysiology laboratory of Professor Dewey Neff, helping his graduate students trace audio signals through cat brains. These years of study and practice taught that electrophysiology was a useful technique for mapping sensory-projection areas (such as brain areas that respond to visual and auditory information) but shed almost no light on the problems of mind and volition I wanted to explore. As Alyce and I continued our own studies of metaphysical systems it became clear that for us the primary problem was not the classical mind-body problem (Is there a mind that has nonphysical characteristics?) but that of will (Is there a force called "volition" that operates in the domain of mind?).

Volition, we have come to believe, is the key problem of our day, because control of the individual by society and by the, state has taken away some of our own responsibility for our health, out education, and our activities. When Dr. Neff left the university, I was fortunate enough to obtain the sponsorship of the late Ward C. Halstead. His Laboratory of Medical Psychology in Billings Hospital at the university was justly famous for scientific innovation. He was a pioneer in studying the relationship between brain damage and associated psychological deficits in humans. My area of specialization, biopsychology, included the detailed study of the brain and nervous system, neuroanatomy and neurophysiology, and perception and behavior in humans and animals. My doctoral dissertation (1962a)-on pain perception in humans under conditions of sensory barrage, including vibration, noise, and flashing lights-clearly demonstrated that an important factor in the perception of pain is the focus of attention.

When attention is directed away from pain, pain is not felt.

Many people had experienced this, of course, but I was able to measure changes in pain threshold and relate these changes to measured amounts of distracting stimuli, with subjects' reports on their locus of attention as an independent variable. Attention per se cannot be defined operationally, but as one professor remarked long after the oral examination in which I defended my thesis, "We certainly know when we've got it."

About once a year while attending graduate school I thought about research on mind-body processes and wondered how best to begin a study of yogic-type skills without arousing opposition before the research had had a chance to prove itself. Then, in 1962, a fellow graduate student in the department told us about a book he had come across called Autogenic Training (Schultz and Luthe, 1959). The book was about a system of therapy especially applicable to psychosomatic (mind-body) disorders. Curious, the student had tried some of the techniques for relaxation and for warming the hands. The results had upset him: The techniques worked! His hand got so warm and swollen that he couldn't remove his ring for several minutes. That was impressive enough, for none of his previous studies had so much as hinted that a person could control the temperature of his hand at will, but what truly startled him was a sudden and profound change in sensations from his body when he used a relaxation exercise for inducing a feeling of heaviness.

Surprising body-image changes often accompany deep relaxation; for example, many people experience sensations of floating just before falling asleep. We talked about the perceptual distortions that occurred, and I told him about some of the relevant things I had read about yogis, such as their ability to control heart rate, metabolic rate, peristaltic action (movement of the intestines), and awareness of pain.

“Some time ago I decided it was time, in my life, to read more, to think, to meditate, to clarify my life.  I believe each one of us is on a path, a path of growth, a path toward greater enlightenment—a path of transformation.  I believe that treading the path is inevitable, it is a law, a truth.”

Beyond Biofeedback – Drs Elmer and Alyce Green

Sooner or later, it seems, almost everyone who seriously trains with biofeedback equipment comes to an existential awareness (in contra-distinction to a simple cognitive awareness) of mind-body unity. Such people experience a degree of self-possession, which may irritate their colleagues who have not shared in this kind of awareness. The best cure for that is merely to try it. It does not take long for a hypothesis of self-regulation to become a certainty. The beneficial effects on one's self-image are tremendous.