Dear friends,

This Journal entry features my first complete paper on the Windhorse clinical approach, written in 1992.  I had been asked by Richard Warner MD to contribute a chapter to his edited book on Alternatives to the Hospital for Acute Psychiatric Treatment (1995).  This paper was also published in the Journal of Contemplative Psychotherapy (1994) with new material on meditation practice.  This writing coincided with my family’s move from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada to Northampton, MA where a committed group of us had formed to establish a new Windhorse therapeutic community.  This community is still thriving in Northampton, MA.  This paper describes the first major evolution of the Windhorse approach in Halifax, from 1989 to 1992.  The founding Windhorse community in Boulder, CO (1981-1987) developed the initial paradigm of a full Windhorse clinical team embedded in a staffed therapeutic household.  Simultaneously in Boulder and Halifax, this paradigm evolved to providing treatment teams that were tailored to each client’s unique condition, home and family situation, and available financial resources.  This remains the primary way that Windhorse care is provided to people in extreme states.  This paper describes the pioneering work of the Windhorse Halifax group, grounded in clinical experience and guided by core principles.  During the writing, I received invaluable editorial feedback from Harold Searles, MD who was Dr. Podvoll’s primary mentor.  He always reminded me that staff and the clients were equally caring for and learning with each other

Thank you for your interest,

Jeffrey Fortuna

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Dear Friends,

I am pleased to introduce this remarkable interview of Edward Podvoll, MD, by Studs Terkel, recorded on September 13, 1990, in Chicago.  Mr. Terkel conducted hundreds of such radio interviews with influential people on his daily “The Studs Terkel Program” from 1952 to 1997.  Dr. Podvoll’s book, The Seduction of Madness (later republished as Recovering Sanity, 2003), had just been published after 12 years of writing labor.  Clearly, Mr. Terkel had read the book, closely allowing him to appreciate its “dazzling insights”, as Studs described it.  Dr. Podvoll was on a book-promotion tour, although he only did this one interview.  He later told me this meeting with Studs really captured the revolutionary energy of his book and work.  Apparently, he thought one interview was enough for his book tour.  Shortly after this event, Dr. Podvoll left the United States for his 12-year meditation retreat in France.

The historical context of this 1990 interview is interesting.  During the previous 20 years (the mid-1960’s to the mid-80’s) throughout America and Europe, there was a flowering of experimental healing communities.  The common innovation was from “doing to” to “being with” people struggling with their minds.  Being genuine in such relationships of mutual learning with staff and clients living together became the guiding light.  Virtually all of their founding visionaries personally contributed to the Windhorse Project, including RD Laing (Kingsley Hall), Edith Irwin (Tara Rokpa), Manfred Bleuler (Burgholzli Hospital), Loren Mosher (Soteria Project), Richard Warner (Cedar House), Maxwell Jones (Dingleton Hospital), John Perry (Diabasis), Otto Will (Chestnut Lodge), Chogyam Trungpa (Maitri Community), and Harold Searles (Chestnut Lodge).  The first Windhorse Community in Boulder came late in this cultural revolution of alternative care, having thrived from 1981 to 1987.  At the time of this interview, there was no active Windhorse community, and the alternative care movement seemed to be passing into history.  Yet, at the same time, the influence of mindfulness-awareness meditation on psychology and psychotherapy was just gaining momentum.  Windhorse, inspired by Naropa University, had been at the forefront of what has become known as the “mindfulness revolution.”  With mindfulness practice, therapists further deepen the skills of “being with” and learn more about true compassion.  We call this discipline “contemplative psychotherapy.”  In this interview you may hear a certain urgency in Dr. Podvoll’s voice, which he felt about spreading the message of the truth of recovery from psychosis and the means to do so.  He and we, his students, could not let this tradition of alternative care die out, and so Windhorse has survived.  Many excellent students of those early communities have also carried on beautifully.  A growing number of us are committed to evolving the legacy of this most recent generation of charismatic pioneers.  As Dr. Podvoll states in Recovering Sanity (p.4), “There is a wisdom within the history of caring for insane people that is not well known.  Motivation toward an alternative, more natural, and homelike treatment is a long and venerable tradition within psychiatry itself.  It is a tradition that has always taken many risks in the pursuit of alternative treatments for mental illness.”

I hope you enjoy this interview,

Jeffrey Fortuna.

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Dear friends,

It is an honor to keep alive the legacy of my friend, colleague, and mentor Edward Podvoll, and the second edition of his remarkable classic, Recovering Sanity.  This Entry is a continuation of Journal Entry 003 “Recovery Is Non-Linear” where the Windhorse Legacy Group explored the living significance of this book. There are interesting aspects to this current Entry. The photo is of Dr. Podvoll and myself in 1985, in the early phase of developing the Windhorse work.  The main element is Dr. Podvoll’s “Preface To The New Edition”, which was published in 2003 just months prior to his death.  He wrote this Preface as he was returning from his 12-year meditation retreat in France to the Windhorse Boulder community who loved him.  This was to be his final opening out.  He hoped to recover from the illness that would then take him over the next 12 months.  The Preface is his final and heart-felt statement on the significance of his book and the Windhorse work, written 12 years after the publication of the First Edition under the original title of The Seduction of Madness. We conclude with his biography and a collection of endorsements of his book by many of his esteemed friends, all well-known authors in the fields of spirituality and mental health care.  Dr. Podvoll has now been gone 15 years, yet his voice remains strong and clear.  He continues to point out the truth that recovery from extreme mental states is always possible, especially when supported by sane healing relationships. 

Enjoy, Jeff Fortuna.

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Dear Friends, 

Now six months since our launch, one of the great surprises of being part of the Windhorse Journal team is listening to an earlier recording and realizing that something of real value was captured. Today’s podcast is the second part of a rich dialogue between Dr. Ken Pargament, Windhorse Community Services Senior Clinician Marta Aarli, Rabbi Deborah Bronstein, and Reverend Alan Johnson. This recording was made on May 16th, 2018, just prior to the Interfaith Network On Mental Illness’ conference titled, Sacred Matters: Spirituality as a Vital Resource for Resilience, Health, and Well-Being. Dr. Pargament was the featured presenter at that conference, which focused on his groundbreaking work around the integration of spirituality and psychotherapy.  

Now listening to this some months later, I’m very pleased at what an important interchange we were able to record. The complementary voices of clergy, psychotherapists, and persons with lived experience are well embodied here. Combining insight and extensive personal knowledge, the group explores issues that include wholeness from both spiritual and psychological perspectives, the role of relationship in the recovery of one’s health, and the transformative effect of embracing our “wounds.” Also examined are the deeply individual, yet universal, experiences of the “sacred.” While perhaps unrecognized and under-utilized, the “sacred” gives energy and meaning to our lives, and importantly, can be used as powerful resources in one’s path to wholeness and happiness.  

We appreciate you joining us and hope you’ll find this as inspiring and useful as we do.  

Happy Listening, 

Chuck Knapp 

 

Alice’s Story: A Rationale for Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy

“When people walk into the therapist’s office, they don’t leave their spirituality behind in the waiting room.”

Dr. Ken Pargament has for decades examined the “peculiar tension between psychology and spirituality.” His book, Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy, manages to release some of that tension by precisely and respectfully questioning the sensitive spots and taboos that have developed between these two fields of human inquiry.

As whole-person approaches to mental health and therapies continue their positive development, Dr. Pargament’s pioneering experience offers both clergy and psychology professionals several lines of questioning and reasoning that manage to create the space and clarity needed to move these imperative dialogues forward. Dr. Pargament’s genuine search for a productive, workable understanding between the psychological and spiritual disciplines serves also to benefit our overall appreciation of human balance.

Please refer to Journal Entries 006 and 007 for additional materials on Dr. Pargament’s work, which includes a Windhorse Journal podcast dialogue between Dr. Pargament, Windhorse Senior Clinician Marta Aarli, and from the Interfaith Network on Mental Illness, Rabbi Deborah Bronstein and Rev. Alan Johnson. Look for Part 2 of that podcast discussion in upcoming Journal Entry 013.

We have excerpted here a section of the introduction from Dr. Ken Pargament’s Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy.

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