[Irrationality in psychiatry. I. Irrationality in analytical psychology]

In the author's opinion the contemporary western world is experiencing an offensive of irrationality which affects also psychiatry. When psychiatry got rid of irrational illusions of preceding centuries, analytical psychology contributed to the introduction of irrationality into psychiatry. In the first part of his paper he maintains that Freud's share was not substantial in this respect and that in particular Jung contributed towards the development of irrational trends in psychiatry by this concept of collective unconscious. In the second part of his paper the author deals with so-called transpersonal, psychology, in particular the contribution made by the Czech psychiatrist Grof who, based on his experiments with LSD, created the theory of three levels of experience from unconscious (psychodynamic, perinatal, and transpersonal). His interpretation is a relapse of neoplatonism and represents antirational agnostic spiritualism with utopic antipsychiatric elements. In the third part of his paper the author deals with Capro's ideology of the New Age Movement to the establishment of which Ghof contributed in an important way. The New Age ideology is an irrational conglomeration of anti-civilization trends which negate modern thinking. The chances of manking are fallaciously seen in alienation from science and an approach to mysticism and irrational Asian traditions. Contemporary popularity of irrational trends, incl. transpersonal psychology, is a reaction of the overationalized society. Consequential enforcement of transpersonal psychology would imply a negation of the entire arsenal of thinking in psychiatry as a medial discipline.