articles by Peter Wilberg

Peter Wilberg is a British-born philosopher and psychologist. What follows is an offering of articles and selections from his early writing. I have only included those that I feel are relevant to this site, and may be helpful to those people who are suffering and who are looking for answers. As opposed to his later work, they focus upon finding meaning in life, rather than prescribing techniques or offering religious practices. Although on first reading his writing may seem quite dense or intense, I see it as an invitation to think seriously and question deeply rather than merely accepting superficial platitudes or external solutions. He writes of a world that has meaning, depth and soul.

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All computer paintings on this page are by Peter Wilberg

Beyond Fight and Flight - The Healing Value of the Depressive Process

In every way, our society and our systems of healing see depression as something that we must get rid of, something we have done wrong, or something that has gone amiss in our biology somewhere. We are told to take pills, take up a hobby, take a holiday, be more assertive, put a smile on our face, sit in the sunshine, burn incense, cuddle a teddy bear ... on and on it goes. For many years I did many of these things, and the fact was that they didn't work. And so I believed that I really did have some sort of "disease", because why else would it keep coming back? It seemed an indication of depression's cyclical nature. But what I realise now, is that I was never given any idea of what depression actually IS! Nobody seemed to care about that. And in retrospect, the idea of getting rid of something, without first asking oneself what that thing actually IS, seems absurd. Peter Wilberg explains what depression IS and outlines how essential it is for all of us .... There is a short Glossary at the end.

Little Black Book of Negative Thinking - A Philosophical approach to Depression

Negative thoughts and feelings are out. The overwhelming commandment in our society is to be happy and to function normally. But what happens when we put pressure on ourselves to be happy? What would the world be like with only happy music, happy art with flowers and sunshine, happy people, happy colours? It would be a bland and one-dimensional world. Why do we continue to demand that from ourselves and from others? Peter's introduction reads: "This book aims to question and rethink many of our ordinary assumptions about ‘depression’ and in doing so help us to understand our own and other people’s depressive symptoms in a more philosophical way. Its motto is: "melancholics of the world unite - you have nothing to lose but your shame".

Body, Soul and the Circle of Depression

A quote from this article: "Each time a medical patient, therapy or counselling client goes to see and be heard by a professional, they bear with them an unspoken but often desperate message: “Will someone please see and hear me and not just circle, tick off and seek to treat my symptoms?” Yet as Marianne Broug writes, though the patient or client may have no pre-prescribed name for their inwardly felt dis-ease, each of the countless different approaches to medical or psychological therapy, not least in the ‘treatment’ of ‘depression’ effectively “…prescribes a circle around the patient, client or analysand and their symptoms, and then seeks to explain and treat the client’s suffering in terms of other things that are contained within that circle.”

Depression - A Meta-Medical Approach (PowerPoint presentation)

ESSENTIAL READING. Many of the points made by Peter Wilberg in the papers above, are simplified in this PowerPoint presentation - a step-by-step understanding of what depression is. It is brilliant thought, and once understood makes complete sense of something that our current ways of thinking render virtually incomprehensible. It addresses many points including the stigma and guilt a person who is depressed may feel. In his own words - "The depressive process is our most natural form of meditation, not raising us into the light but helping us to feel our way down to the innermost core of our being". "The depressive process is essentially a deepening process, helping us to feel the meaning of events at a deeper level and respond to them from a deeper level of our being".

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Introduction to Meta-Medicine - A non-Medical Philosophy of Health and Healing

Have you ever been to the doctor and you sense without a doubt that he or she simply isn't listening to you? Have you felt that they are merely listening to a group of symptoms that are seen as quite separate from who you are as a person? Have you ever had the feeling that there is more to "getting the flu" or "having a sore knee" than merely the physical aspects? Do you remember those times as a child when you knew perfectly well that you were sick because you didn't want to go to the Swimming Carnival or sing that solo in the School Concert? Have you ever considered that you actually might be "meaning" something through your illness or pain? And then have you ever wondered "who" it might be that is doing this "meaning"? Peter's Meta-Medicine (literally "Beyond Medicine") sees illness as the expression of a healing process of change, but it is not just a change in our general lifestyle or our eating habits that he is talking of, it is a change of our very sense of who we are.

This piece was the first I ever read of Peter's. I can still clearly remember the sense of relief that I felt.

The Truth about Stress (PowerPoint presentation)

As with Depression, people talk about stress as though they know what it is - as though it is a "thing" that needs to be managed or treated. Peter says that stress is not a "thing" but rather a way in which people relate to time. He writes of three sorts of time - physical time, physiological time and psychological time. Stress comes about when we don't allow enough time to ourselves that has quality and depth (psychological time) and we give precedence to measurable time quantities and periods (physical time). One reason for this is a failure to distinguish between the quantity of time we have for something or someone, and the inner quality of the time we make for them. Time is seen as money, but what is it that we sacrifice?

Damaged Brains - A Health Warning

A short article on the effects and dangers of psycho-pharmaceutical drugs. I have tried many of these drugs over the years and can only agree with the points Wilberg makes. I have had many occasions when the side-effects of these drugs were merely seen by the prescribing psychiatrist or doctor as further symptoms of my depression or anxiety. My thoughts to the contrary are then seen as even further evidence of my "problem". I remember once being prescribed Zoloft and having an acute gastro-intestinal reaction (I lost over 8 kilos in 3 weeks). The doctor saw this reaction as a sign of my "nerves", and almost demanded that I not stop taking them and that "in my state" I could not know what was best for me. I walked away ... It took me many months to regain my weight and my health. The fact of having my intuitions and Knowing disregarded, as well as the acute side-effects only served to add to my misery. If I have taken sleeping pills or anti-anxiety medication I am always aware that I have to weigh up the pros and cons, for often they only leave me less able to deal with anxiety, less able to feel any sense of Inner Self, and awash in a see of numbness that may often takes days to dissipate.

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The Zone - Reflections on Mysticism, War and Psychosis

A powerful, personal and poetic piece of writing, the experience and reading of which I find difficult to sum up in just a few words. What would we do when faced with someone who is injured, lying in the street, bleeding? What we do when faced with someone whose injuries are internal? Someone whose injuries are to the psyche? Would we fear them? Would we walk away? Would we ask them to tell us what was wrong? Would we ask them to tell us what has caused their agonies? Are these the questions that need to be asked? Or are there other questions? And different ways of questioning?

Human Ontology or Human Genomics - Heidegger's Health Warning to Humanity (PowerPoint presentation)

Fancy words, but don't let them put you off ... a step-by-step presentation that simply asks the question "Are you a human being or are you just a body and brain?" This is vital reading, for the outcome of seeing a human being as only a biological machine is catastrophic and utterly dehumanising. On a small scale I have felt that catastrophe in the offices of psychiatrists and some doctors. I have felt the impact as all expressions of meaning - all my anguish, my sorrow, my agony, my hope - were relegated to the purely meaningless. And if my sorrow and fear are meaningless then surely my love and happiness are too? We aren't machines. We aren't technological contraptions ... this writing is a profound confirmation of something I had always intuited but had never been able to fully articulate for myself.

Bodying - A New Way of dealing with our Negative Thoughts and Feelings

Four pages with enough wisdom to last a lifetime. Conventional therapies talk of either expressing or repressing our feelings as though there are no other alternatives. This article proposes that we can also body our feelings or thoughts - bear with them in a bodily way - so that just as with a pregnancy they may grow and give birth to new aspects of ourselves

A New Science of Soul - The Essence of my Philosophy

In a few short pages Peter sums up his philosophy but every paragraph is of a richness and depth that I find quite astounding. And yet perhaps it is really no surprise for the world that he describes and the world from which he writes is indeed a world that is filled to brimming with richness and depth. For me this short piece is a bit like coming home. For so many years I had struggled to live in the soul-less world he describes, trying to find the answers to life from a soul-less medicine and a soul-less "psychology", while at the same time intuiting that there must be some address of our spiritual reality if the answers were to have any meaning. I have read many books which aim to marry these two aspects but have always for different reasons, found them immensely unsatisfying, daunting or smacking of hierarchy. Peter Wilberg describes what soul is in a way that makes complete sense in my life. He describes the soul world in which I have always lived, but did not have the wherewithal to articulate.

Soul-Schooling - The Purpose of my Philosophy

"What passes today as ‘education’ on the other hand, is simply the imparting of abstract knowledge designed to be ‘applied’ in the form of skilled practices and vocations – whether plumbing or corporate management, political activism or academic philosophising. Soul-schooling, by contrast, does not have as its purpose the cultivation of such practical skills, whether arithmetic or aesthetic, manual or intellectual, technical or linguistic. Instead it understands all such ‘skills’ as the expression of latent soul powers or potentials. This is what makes the difference". This includes Basic Principles of Soul-Science and Soul-Scientific Research and The Basic Principles and Practice of Soul-Sensing

Spiritworks - A Handbook of Spiritual Teachings

One of my favourite pieces of writing from Peter Wilberg. He writes - "Our bodies or minds suffer a type of amnesia of soul and spirit. We become like immigrants who do not feel fully at home in their new country, but have completely forgotten their spiritual homeland — or believe that it is only a mythical country which doesn’t actually exist. ... If we cannot accept the heritage we bring with us from that world how can we feel fully at home in this one? To feel comfortable in our own bodies we need to retrieve our bodily sense of our own soul and spirit, not only in our dreams but also in our waking lives. Science tells us that the existence of this homeland cannot be proved, that we must therefore get along with just understanding ourselves in a materialist way ... Priests, rabbis and mullahs ... offer us stories instead — scriptures that provide us with mere symbols of spiritual truth, spiritual values and the spiritual world. But they do not know this world themselves. They have lost the capacity of their religious founders for direct spiritual knowing or gnosis, and their own spirit is instead trapped in the archaic languages and symbols with which this inner knowing was once translated". Amen to that!!!

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Soma-Psychology and Soma-Sensitivity - A missing dimension of Mental Health Care

You go to a psychiatrist or a psychologist or a social worker. You are in desperate strife. You want to commit suicide, you want to hurt yourself, you want to drink yourself into oblivion, your partner has left you, your parents think you're crazy, your dog has just died, and then they start to talk about your destructive behaviours and self-defeating cognitive processes. You know you should listen to them and because you don't really have any other options you might even start to believe them, but it seems that all this talk is only adding to the bulk of your problems, and you know that they really aren't taking in where you're coming from. They don't really "get" what it is like to be YOU on the inside, what your body feels like on the inside, what you're actually trying to say to them ... This is an article for therapists who perhaps want to explore a different way of relating to themselves and clients ... and for clients to realise that they can indeed relate to themselves in a different way, and that they don't have to accept the pap that they are usually fed.

The Psychology of Mood - Fields of Awareness (PowerPoint presentation)

As with other pieces of Peter Wilberg's writing this can on first glance seem a little daunting, but the points it brings out and discusses are simply brilliant. It makes sense of ALL experience. Psychotherapy concentrates solely on feelings and our ability to put our personal meanings into words, but what is the fundamental ground from which these arise? And what is the fundamental ground of relationship? Peter Wilberg says that our meaning or sense is not something that is only verbally represented, signified or symbolised. It can also be directly experienced or felt independently of its expression in words or symbols. This is called our "felt sense". Once I read this it became startlingly apparent to me that we are missing things in our lives, and in our relationships to others and ourselves that are patently and blindingly obvious. This is wonderful thought that has enormous ramifications for what we call psychotherapy. And frankly enormous ramifications for our entire lives.

Modes of Relatedness in Psychotherapy - Laing, Winnicott and Relational Psychoanalysis

Peter Wilberg quotes Karen Horney: "The loss of self ... is a despair which does not clamour or scream. People go on living as if they were still in contact with this alive centre. Any other loss - that of a job say, or a leg - arouses far more concern ... Patients coming in for a consultation complain about headaches, sexual disturbances, inhibitions in work, or other symptoms; as a rule they do not complain about having lost touch with the core of their psychic existence". I completely identify with this quote. I had lost contact with my core self, but I had no way of articulating that except through symptoms. This is a piece about relating to one's core self and the core self of others. Most therapies focus solely on the ego, and thus this most basic mode of relating remains untouched and unacknowledged, and yet it is the most vital and fundamental of all.

Intimacy, Inergy and Inner Relationality - A Fundamental Critique of Somatic Psychotherapy

This is a critique of bodywork. I did bodywork for five years, and learnt much about myself. However after it was over I realised I had lost my passion somehow. I had lost something fundamental. I felt reasonably at home in my body for the first time in my life, but in the end this was simply not enough. It was an emptiness. There was no meaning and no address of the fact that it was relationship that was the basis for the most profound healing. This article answers many of the doubts I had. Bodywork had used words like "energy", or "feelings" or even just simply "body" but had made absolutely no reference to what it was they were actually referring and as a result had no language for expressing their profound importance within relationship (with myself and others) .... much much more wisdom in here.

The Therapist as Listener - A Missing Dimension of Psychotherapy Training

Peter's work on listening is extraordinarily diverse, but I only include three short articles in my selection. I have been to so many different rooms to see so many different therapists, and as a rule they only ever heard what they were looking for. Listening was just a set of skills or techniques - an outer activity. Nothing more. But to truly be heard and received in an inner way is the beginning of healing. Nowhere else have I seen these concepts truly addressed and expanded.

Charging the question - Listening, Questioning and the Counselling Dialogue

Is there a different way of understanding the counselling relationship other than just one in which questions are asked and the client's issues clarified or verbally articulated? Is it possible to respond to clients or indeed other people in an inner way? There is such a taboo in our society on silence between people, and yet perhaps it is only in silence that we can truly allow ourselves to listen, to question and then respond.

Maieutic Listening - Towards a Fundamental Rethinking of Psychotherapy Training

Peter writes - " ... listening is never a mere prelude to verbal or physical response. It is itself a form of direct inner response. The way we hear what someone says, says something to them. The way we understand their words communicates wordlessly. Our way of listening, in and of itself, carries back (re-lates) something to the speaker. In a most fundamental sense, listening is relating — our way of being with another human being, of being with that human being and of responding to what goes on between ourselves and another".