A bad trip (also known as challenging experiences, acute intoxication from hallucinogens, psychedelic crisis, or emergence phenomenon) is a term describing an acute adverse psychological reaction to effects produced under the influence of psychoactive substances, namely hallucinogens. With proper screening, preparation, and support in a regulated setting these are usually benign. A bad trip on psilocybin, for instance, often features intense anxiety, confusion, agitation, and psychosis.
They manifest as a range of feelings, such as anxiety, paranoia, the
unshakeable sense of one's inevitable and imminent personal demise or
states of unrelieved terror that they believe will persist after the
substance's effects have worn off. As of 2011, exact data on the frequency of bad trips are not available.
Bad trips can be exacerbated by the inexperience or irresponsibility of the user or the lack of proper preparation and environment for the trip, and are often reflective of unresolved psychological tensions triggered during the course of the experience.
In clinical research settings, precautions including the screening and
preparation of participants, the training of the session monitors who
will be present during the experience, and the selection of appropriate
physical setting can minimize the likelihood of psychological distress. Researchers have suggested that the presence of professional "trip sitters" (i.e., session monitors) may significantly reduce the negative experiences associated with a bad trip.
In most cases in which anxiety arises during a supervised psychedelic
experience, reassurance from the session monitor is adequate to resolve
it; however, if distress becomes intense it can be treated
pharmacologically, for example with the benzodiazepinediazepam.
The psychiatrist Stanislav Grof
wrote that unpleasant psychedelic experiences are not necessarily
unhealthy or undesirable, arguing that they may have the potential for
psychological healing and lead to breakthrough and resolution of
unresolved psychic issues. Drawing on narrative theory,
the authors of a 2021 study of 50 users of psychedelics found that many
described bad trips as having been sources of insight or even turning
points in life.
Intervention
Medical treatment consists of supportive therapy and minimization of external stimuli. In some cases, sedation is used when necessary to control self-destructive behavior, or when hyperthermia occurs. Diazepam is the most frequently used sedative for such treatment, but other benzodiazepines such as lorazepam are also effective.
Such sedatives will only decrease fear and anxiety, but will not subdue
hallucinations. In severe cases, antipsychotics such as haloperidol can reduce or stop hallucinations. Haloperidol is effective against acute intoxication caused by LSD and other tryptamines, amphetamines, ketamine, and phencyclidine.
There is a tremendous danger of
confusing the inner world with the outer world, so you'll be dealing
with your inner realities but at the same time you are not even aware of
what's happening, You perceive a sort of distortion of the world out
there. So you can end up in a situation where you're weakening the
resistances, your conscious is becoming more aware, but you're not
really in touch with it properly, you're not really fully experiencing
what's there, not seeing it for what it is. You get kind of deluded and
caught into this.
In a 1975 book, Grof suggested that painful and difficult experiences
during a trip could be a result of the mind reliving experiences
associated with birth, and that experiences of imprisonment, eschatological
terror, or suffering far beyond anything imaginable in a normal state,
if seen through to conclusion, often resolve into emotional,
intellectual and spiritual breakthroughs. From this perspective, Grof
suggests that interrupting a bad trip, while initially seen as
beneficial, could potentially trap the tripper in unresolved
psychological states. Grof also suggests that many cathartic experiences
within psychedelic states, while not necessarily crises, may be the
effects of consciousness entering a perinatal space.
Rick Strassman
Professor of psychiatry Rick Strassman is critical of reframing the experience of bad trips as one of "challenging experiences".
Ego death is a "complete loss of subjective self-identity". The term is used in various intertwined contexts, with related meanings. Jungian psychology uses the synonymous term psychic death, referring to a fundamental transformation of the psyche. In death and rebirth mythology, ego death is a phase of self-surrender and transition,as described by Joseph Campbell in his research on the mythology of the Hero's Journey. It is a recurrent theme in world mythology and is also used as a metaphor in some strands of contemporary western thinking.
In descriptions of drugs, the term is used synonymously with ego-loss to refer to (temporary) loss of one's sense of self due to the use of drugs. The term was used as such by Timothy Learyet al. to describe the death of the ego in the first phase of an LSD trip, in which a "complete transcendence" of the self occurs.
The concept is also used in contemporary New Age spirituality and in the modern understanding of Eastern religions to describe a permanent loss of "attachment to a separate sense of self" and self-centeredness. This conception is an influential part of Eckhart Tolle's
teachings, where Ego is presented as an accumulation of thoughts and
emotions, continuously identified with, which creates the idea and
feeling of being a separate entity from one's self, and only by
disidentifying one's consciousness from it can one truly be free from
suffering.
Definitions
Ego death and the related term "ego loss" have been defined in the context of mysticism
by the religious studies scholar Daniel Merkur as "an imageless
experience in which there is no sense of personal identity. It is the
experience that remains possible in a state of extremely deep trance
when the ego-functions of reality-testing, sense-perception, memory,
reason, fantasy and self-representation are repressed [...] Muslim Sufis
call it fana ('annihilation'), and medieval Jewish kabbalists termed it 'the kiss of death'".
Carter Phipps equates enlightenment and ego death, which he
defines as "the renunciation, rejection and, ultimately, the death of
the need to hold on to a separate, self-centered existence".
In Jungian psychology,
Ventegodt and Merrick define ego death as "a fundamental transformation
of the psyche". Such a shift in personality has been labeled an "ego
death" in Buddhism, or a psychic death by Jung.
In comparative mythology, ego death is the second phase of Joseph Campbell's description of the Hero's Journey, which includes a phase of separation, transition, and incorporation.
The second phase is a phase of self-surrender and ego-death, after
which the hero returns to enrich the world with their discoveries.
In psychedelic culture, Leary, Metzner and Alpert (1964) define
ego death, or ego loss as they call it, as part of the (symbolic)
experience of death in which the old ego must die before one can be
spiritually reborn.
They define ego loss as "... complete transcendence − beyond words,
beyond spacetime, beyond self. There are no visions, no sense of self,
no thoughts. There are only pure awareness and ecstatic freedom".
Several psychologists working on psychedelics have defined
ego-death. Alnaes (1964) defines ego death as "[L]oss of ego-feeling".
Stanislav Grof (1988) defines it as "a sense of total annihilation
[...] This experience of "ego death" seems to entail an instant
merciless destruction of all previous reference points in the life of
the individual [...] [E]go death means an irreversible end to one's
philosophical identification with what Alan Watts called "skin-encapsulated ego".
The psychologist John Harrison (2010) defines "[T]emporary ego death
[as the] loss of the separate self[,] or, in the affirmative, [...] a
deep and profound merging with the transcendent other. Johnson, Richards and Griffiths (2008), paraphrasing Leary et al. and Grof define ego death as "temporarily experienc[ing] a complete loss of subjective self-identity.
The conceptualisation of mystical union as the soul's death, and its replacement by God's consciousness, has been a standard Roman Catholic trope since St. Teresa of Ávila; the motif traces back through Marguerite Porete, in the 13th century, to the fana, "annihilation", of the Islamic Sufis.
Jungian psychology
According to Ventegodt and Merrick, the Jungian term "psychic death" is a synonym for "ego death":
In order to radically improve
global quality of life, it seems necessary to have a fundamental
transformation of the psyche. Such a shift in personality has been
labeled an "ego death" in Buddhism or a psychic death by Jung, because
it implies a shift back to the existential position of the natural self,
i.e., living the true purpose of life. The problem of healing and
improving the global quality of life seems strongly connected to the
unpleasantness of the ego-death experience.
In Jungian psychology, a unification of archetypal opposites has
to be reached, during a process of conscious suffering, in which
consciousness "dies" and resurrects. Jung called this process "the
transcendent function", which leads to a "more inclusive and synthetic consciousness".
According to Leeming et al., from a religious point of view psychic death is related to St. John of the Cross' Ascent of Mt. Carmel and Dark Night of the Soul.
In 1949, Joseph Campbell published The Hero with a Thousand Faces, a study on the archetype of the Hero's Journey. It describes a common theme found in many cultures worldwide, and is also described in many contemporary theories on personal transformation. In traditional cultures it describes the "wilderness passage", the transition from adolescence into adulthood. It typically includes a phase of separation, transition, and incorporation.
The second phase is a phase of self-surrender and ego-death, whereafter
the hero returns to enrich the world with his discoveries. Campbell describes the basic theme as follows:
A hero ventures forth from the
world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder. Fabulous
forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won. The hero
comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons
on his fellow man.
This journey is based on the archetype of death and rebirth, in which the "false self" is surrendered and the "true self" emerges. A well known example is Dante's Divine Comedy, in which the hero descends into the underworld.
Concepts and ideas from mysticism and bohemianism were inherited by the Beat Generation. When Aldous Huxley helped popularize the use of psychedelics, starting with The Doors of Perception, published in 1954, Huxley also promoted a set of analogies with eastern religions, as described in The Perennial Philosophy. This book helped inspire the 1960s belief in a revolution in western consciousness and included the Tibetan Book of the Dead as a source. Similarly, Alan Watts, in his opening statement on mystical experiences in This Is It, draws parallels with Richard Bucke's 1901 book Cosmic Consciousness, describing the "central core" of the experience as
... the conviction, or insight, that the immediate now, whatever its nature, is the goal and fulfillment of all living.
This interest in mysticism helped shape the emerging research and popular conversation around psychedelics in the 1960s. In 1964 William S. Burroughs drew a distinction between "sedative" and "conscious-expanding" drugs. In the 1940s and 1950s the use of LSD was restricted to military and psychiatric researchers. One of those researchers was Timothy Leary, a clinical psychologist who first encountered psychedelic drugs while on vacation in 1960, and started to research the effects of psilocybin in 1961.
He sought advice from Aldous Huxley, who advised him to propagate
psychedelic drugs among society's elites, including artists and
intellectuals. On insistence of Allen Ginsberg, Leary, together with his younger colleague Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) also made LSD available to students. In 1962 Leary was fired, and Harvard's psychedelic research program was shut down. In 1962 Leary founded the Castalia Foundation, and in 1963 he and his colleagues founded the journal The Psychedelic Review.
Following Huxley's advice, Leary wrote a manual for LSD-usage. The Psychedelic Experience, published in 1964, is a guide for LSD-trips, written by Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner and Richard Alpert, loosely based on Walter Evans-Wentz's translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead.Aldous Huxley introduced the Tibetan Book of the Dead to Timothy Leary. According to Leary, Metzner and Alpert, the Tibetan Book of the Dead is
... a key to the innermost recesses
of the human mind, and a guide for initiates, and for those who are
seeking the spiritual path of liberation.
They construed the effect of LSD as a "stripping away" of ego-defenses, finding parallels between the stages of death and rebirth in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and the stages of psychological "death" and "rebirth" which Leary had identified during his research.
According to Leary, Metzner and Alpert it is....
... one of the oldest and most
universal practices for the initiate to go through the experience of
death before he can be spiritually reborn. Symbolically he must die to
his past, and to his old ego, before he can take his place in the new
spiritual life into which he has been initiated.
Also in 1964 Randolf Alnaes published "Therapeutic applications of
the change in consciousness produced by psycholytica (LSD, Psilocybin,
etc.)." Alnaes notes that patients may become involved in existential
problems as a consequence of the LSD experience. Psycholytic drugs may
facilitate insight. With a short psychological treatment, patients may
benefit from changes brought about by the effects of the experience.
One of the LSD-experiences may be the death crisis. Alnaes discerns three stages in this kind of experience:
Psychosomatic symptoms lead up to the "loss of ego feeling (ego death)";
"Rebirth", the return to normal, conscious mentation,
"characteristically involving a tremendous sense of relief, which is
cathartic in nature and may lead to insight".
Timothy Leary's description of "ego-death"
In The Psychedelic Experience, three stages are discerned:
Chikhai Bardo: ego loss, a "complete transcendence" of the self and game;
Chonyid Bardo: The Period of Hallucinations;
Sidpa Bardo: the return to routine game reality and the self.
Each Bardo is described in the first part of The Psychedelic Experience. In the second part, instructions are given which can be read to the "voyager". The instructions for the First Bardo state:
O (name of voyager)
The time has come for you to seek new levels of reality.
Your ego and the (name) game are about to cease.
You are about to be set face to face with the Clear Light
You are about to experience it in its reality.
In the ego−free state, wherein all things are like the void and cloudless sky,
And the naked spotless intellect is like a transparent vacuum;
At this moment, know yourself and abide in that state.
O (name of voyager),
That which is called ego−death is coming to you.
Remember:
This is now the hour of death and rebirth;
Take advantage of this temporary death to obtain the perfect state −
Enlightenment.
[...]
Scientific research
Stanislav Grof
Stanislav Grof has researched the effects of psychedelic substances, which can also be induced by nonpharmacological means. Grof has developed a "cartography of the psyche" based on his clinical work with psychedelics,
which describe the "basic types of experience that become available to
an average person" when using psychedelics or "various powerful
non-pharmacological experiential techniques".
According to Grof, traditional psychiatry, psychology and
psychotherapy use a model of the human personality that is limited to
biography and the individual consciousness, as described by Freud.
This model is inadequate to describe the experiences which result from
the use of psychedelics and the use of "powerful techniques", which
activate and mobilize "deep unconscious and superconscious levels of the
human psyche". These levels include:
The sensory barrier and the recollective-biographical barrier
The perinatal matrices:
BPM I: The amniotic universe. Maternal womb; symbiotic unity of
the fetus with the maternal organism; lack of boundaries and
obstructions;
BPM II: Cosmic engulfment and no exit. Onset of labor; alteration of
blissful connection with the mother and its pristine universe;
BPM III: The death-rebirth struggle. Movement through the birth channel and struggle for survival;
BPM IV: The death-rebirth experience. Birth and release.
The transpersonal dimensions of the psyche
Ego death appears in the fourth perinatal matrix. This matrix is related to the stage of delivery, the actual birth of the child. The build up of tension, pain and anxiety is suddenly released. The symbolic counterpart is the death-rebirth experience,
in which the individual may have a strong feeling of impending
catastrophe, and may be desperately struggling to stop this process. The transition from BPM III to BPM IV may involve a sense of total annihilation:
This experience of ego death seems to entail an instant merciless destruction of all previous reference points in the life of the individual.
According to Grof what dies in this process is "a basically paranoid
attitude toward the world which reflects the negative experience of the
subject during childbirth and later". When experienced in its final and most complete form,
...ego death means an irreversible end to one's philosophical identification with what Alan Watts called skin-encapsulated ego."
Recent research
Recent research also mentions that ego loss is sometimes experienced by those under the influence of psychedelic drugs.
The Ego-Dissolution Inventory is a validated self-report
questionnaire that allows for the measurement of transient
ego-dissolution experiences occasioned by psychedelic drugs.
View of spiritual traditions
Following
the interest in psychedelics and spirituality, the term "ego death" has
been used to describe the eastern notion of "enlightenment" (bodhi) or moksha.
Buddhism
Zen practice is said to lead to ego-death. Ego-death is also called "great death", in contrast to the physical "small death".
According to Jin Y. Park, the ego death that Buddhism encourages makes
an end to the "usually-unconsciousness-and-automated quest" to
understand the sense-of-self as a thing, instead of as a process. According to Park, meditation is learning how to die by learning to "forget" the sense of self:
Enlightenment occurs when the
usually automatized reflexivity of consciousness ceases, which is
experienced as a letting-go and falling into the void
and being wiped out of existence [...] [W]hen consciousness stops
trying to catch its own tail, I become nothing, and discover that I am
everything.
According to Welwood, "egolessness" is a common experience.
Egolessness appears "in the gaps and spaces between thoughts, which
usually go unnoticed".
Existential anxiety arises when one realizes that the feeling of "I" is
nothing more than a perception. According to Welwood, only egoless
awareness allows us to face and accept death in all forms.
David Loy also mentions the fear of death, and the need to undergo ego-death to realize our true nature. According to Loy, our fear of egolessness may even be stronger than our fear of death.
"Egolessness" is not the same as anatta (non-self). Where the former is more of a personal experience, Anatta
is a doctrine common to all of Buddhism – describing how the
constituents of a person (or any other phenomena) contain no permanent
entity (one has no "essence of themself"):
the Buddha, almost ad nauseam,
spoke against wrong identification with the Five Aggregates, or the
same, wrong identification with the psychophysical believing it is our
self. These aggregates of form, feeling, thought, inclination, and
sensory consciousness, he went on to say, were illusory; they belonged
to Mara the Evil One; they were impermanent and painful. And for these
reasons, the aggregates cannot be our self.
Taoism
The Taoist internal martial artist Bruce Frantzis reports an experience of fear of ego annihilation, or "ru ding":
I
was in Hong Kong, beginning to learn the old Yang style of Tai Chi
Chaun when ru ding first struck me… It was late at night, at a still and
quiet terrace on the Peak, where few people came after midnight…the
park was quiet, and the moon and the sky felt as though they were
descending downward, putting enormous pressure on every square inch of
my skin, as I tried to life my arms with the expansive energy of tai
chi…I felt as if Chi from the moonlight, stars, and sky penetrated my
body against my will. My body and mind became immensely still, as though
they had dropped into a bottomless abyss, even though I was doing the
rhythmic slow motion movements…At the depth of the stillness, an
overwhelming, formless fear began to develop in my belly…. Then it
happened: an all-consuming, paralyzing fear seemed all at once to invade
every cell in my body… I knew if I kept practicing there would be
nothing left of me in a few seconds… I stopped practicing… and ran down
the hill praying hard that this terror would leave me….
The ego, goes into a mortal fear when the false reality of being
separate from the universal life force is threatened by your
consciousness having reached an awareness of connection to everything in
existence. The ego spews forth all sorts of terrifying psychological
and physiological reactions in the body and mind to make meditators
petrified of leaving the state of separation.
Bernadette Roberts
Bernadette Roberts makes a distinction between "no ego" and "no self". According to Roberts, the falling away of the ego is not the same as the falling away of the self. "No ego" comes prior to the unitive state; with the falling away of the unitive state comes "no self". "Ego" is defined by Roberts as
... the immature self or consciousness prior to the falling away of its self-center and the revelation of a divine center.
Roberts defines "self" as
... the totality of consciousness,
the entire human dimension of knowing, feeling and experiencing from the
consciousness and unconsciousness to the unitive, transcendental or
God-consciousness.
Ultimately, all experiences on which these definitions are based are wiped out or dissolved.
Jeff Shore further explains that "no self" means "the permanent
ceasing, the falling away once and for all, of the entire mechanism of
reflective self-consciousness".
According to Roberts, both the Buddha and Christ embody the
falling away of self, and the state of "no self". The falling away is
represented by the Buddha prior to his enlightenment, starving himself
by ascetic practices, and by the dying Jesus on the cross; the state of
"no self" is represented by the enlightened Buddha with his serenity,
and by the resurrected Christ.
Integration after ego-death experiences
Psychedelics
According to Nick Bromell,
ego death is a tempering though frightening experience, which may lead
to a reconciliation with the insight that there is no real self.
According to Grof, death crises may occur over a series of
psychedelic sessions until they cease to lead to panic. A conscious
effort not to panic may lead to a "pseudohallucinatory sense of
transcending physical death". According to Merkur,
Repeated experience of the death
crisis and its confrontation with the idea of physical death leads
finally to an acceptance of personal mortality, without further
illusions. The death crisis is then greeted with equanimity.
Vedanta and Zen
Both
the Vedanta and the Zen-Buddhist tradition warn that insight into the
emptiness of the self, or so-called "enlightenment experiences", are not
sufficient; further practice is necessary.
Jacobs warns that Advaita Vedanta practice takes years of committed practice to sever the "occlusion" of the so-called "vasanas, samskaras, bodily sheaths and vrittis", and the "granthi or knot forming identification between Self and mind".
Zen Buddhist training does not end with kenshō, or insight into one's true nature. Practice is to be continued to deepen the insight and to express it in daily life. According to Hakuin, the main aim of "post-satori practice" (gogo no shugyo or kojo, "going beyond") is to cultivate the "Mind of Enlightenment". According to Yamada Koun, "if you cannot weep with a person who is crying, there is no kensho".
Shinzen Young, an American Buddhist teacher, has pointed at the
difficulty integrating the experience of no self. He calls this "the
Dark Night", or
... "falling into the Pit of the
Void." It entails an authentic and irreversible insight into Emptiness
and No Self. What makes it problematic is that the person interprets it
as a bad trip. Instead of being empowering and fulfilling, the way
Buddhist literature claims it will be, it turns into the opposite. In a
sense, it's Enlightenment's Evil Twin.
Willoughby Britton is conducting research on such phenomena which may
occur during meditation, in a research program called "The Dark Night
of the Soul". She has searched texts from various traditions to find descriptions of difficult periods on the spiritual path, and conducted interviews to find out more on the difficult sides of meditation.
The propagation of LSD-induced "mystical experiences", and the
concept of ego death, had some influence in the 1960s, but Leary's brand
of LSD-spirituality never "quite caught on".
Reports of psychedelic experiences
Leary's
terminology influenced the understanding and description of the effects
of psychedelics. Various reports by hippies of their psychedelic
experiences describe states of diminished consciousness which were
labelled as "ego death", but do not match Leary's descriptions. Panic attacks were occasionally also labeled as "ego death".
The Beatles
John Lennon read The Psychedelic Experience, and was strongly affected by it. He wrote "Tomorrow Never Knows" after reading the book, as a guide for his LSD trips. Lennon took about a thousand acid trips, but it only exacerbated his personal difficulties.
He eventually stopped using the drug. George Harrison and Paul
McCartney also concluded that LSD use didn't result in any worthwhile
changes.
Radical pluralism
According
to Bromell, the experience of ego death confirms a radical pluralism
that most people experience in their youth, but prefer to flee from,
instead believing in a stable self and a fixed reality.
He further states this also led to a different attitude among
youngsters in the 1960s, rejecting the lifestyle of their parents as
being deceitful and false.
Controversy
The relationship between ego death and LSD has been disputed. Hunter S. Thompson, who tried LSD,
saw a self-centered base in Leary's work, noting that Leary placed
himself at the centre of his texts, using his persona as "an exemplary
ego, not a dissolved one". Dan Merkur notes that the use of LSD in combination with Leary's manual often did not lead to ego-death, but to horrifying bad trips.
The relationship between LSD use and enlightenment has also been criticized. Sōtō-Zen teacher Brad Warner has repeatedly criticized the idea that psychedelic experiences lead to "enlightenment experiences". In response to The Psychedelic Experience he wrote:
While I was at Starwood, I was
getting mightily annoyed by all the people out there who were deluding
themselves and others into believing that a cheap dose of acid,
'shrooms, peyote, "molly" or whatever was going to get them to a higher
spiritual plane [...] While I was at that campsite I sat and read most
of the book The Psychedelic Experience by Timothy Leary and
Richard Alpert (aka Baba Ram Dass, later of Be Here Now fame). It's a
book about the authors' deeply mistaken reading of the Tibetan Book of
the Dead as a guide for the drug taking experience [...] It was one
thing to believe in 1964 that a brave new tripped out age was about to
dawn. It's quite another to still believe that now, having seen what the
last 47 years have shown us about where that path leads. If you want
some examples, how about Jimi Hendrix, Sid Vicious, Syd Barrett, John
Entwistle, Kurt Cobain... Do I really need to get so cliched with this?
Come on now.
The concept that ego-death or a similar experience might be
considered a common basis for religion has been disputed by scholars in
religious studies but "has lost none of its popularity".
Scholars have also criticized Leary and Alpert's attempt to tie
ego-death and psychedelics with Tibetan Buddhism. John Myrdhin Reynolds,
has disputed Leary and Jung's use of the Evans-Wentz's translation of
the Tibetan Book of the Dead, arguing that it introduces a number of misunderstandings about Dzogchen. Reynolds argues that Evans-Wentz's was not familiar with Tibetan Buddhism, and that his view of Tibetan Buddhism was "fundamentally neither Tibetan nor Buddhist, but Theosophical and Vedantist". Nonetheless, Reynolds confirms that the nonsubstantiality of the ego is the ultimate goal of the Hinayana system.
During winter dormancy, plant metabolism comes to a virtual standstill, due in part to low temperatures that slow chemical activity.
Dormancy is a period in an organism'slife cycle when growth, development, and (in animals) physical activity are temporarily stopped. This minimizes metabolic activity and therefore helps an organism to conserve energy. Dormancy tends to be closely associated with environmental conditions. Organisms can synchronize entry to a dormant phase with their environment through predictive or consequential means. Predictive dormancy occurs when an organism enters a dormant phase before the onset of adverse conditions. For example, photoperiod and decreasing temperature are used by many plants to predict the onset of winter. Consequential dormancy occurs when organisms enter a dormant phase after
adverse conditions have arisen. This is commonly found in areas with an
unpredictable climate. While very sudden changes in conditions may lead
to a high mortality rate
among animals relying on consequential dormancy, its use can be
advantageous, as organisms remain active longer and are therefore able
to make greater use of available resources.
Hibernation is a mechanism used by many mammals to reduce energy
expenditure and survive food shortages over the winter. Hibernation may
be predictive or consequential. An animal prepares for hibernation by
building up a thick layer of body fat
during late summer and autumn that will provide it with energy during
the dormant period. During hibernation, the animal undergoes many physiological changes, including decreased heart rate (by as much as 95%) and decreased body temperature.
In addition to shivering, some hibernating animals also produce body
heat by non-shivering thermogenesis to avoid freezing. Non-shivering
thermogenesis is a regulated process in which the proton gradient
generated by electron transport in mitochondria is used to produce heat
instead of ATP in brown adipose tissue. Animals that hibernate include bats, ground squirrels and other rodents, mouse lemurs, the European hedgehog
and other insectivores, monotremes and marsupials. Although hibernation
is almost exclusively seen in mammals, some birds, such as the common poorwill, may hibernate.
Diapause is a predictive strategy that is predetermined by an animal's genotype. Diapause is common in insects, allowing them to suspend development between autumn and spring, and in mammals such as the roe deer (Capreolus capreolus, the only ungulate with embryonic diapause), in which a delay in attachment of the embryo to the uterine lining ensures that offspring are born in spring, when conditions are most favorable.
While endotherms and other heterotherms are described scientifically as hibernating, the way ectotherms such as lizards become dormant in cold is very different, and a separate name was invented for it in the 1920s: brumation. It differs from hibernation in the metabolic processes involved.
Reptiles generally begin brumation in late autumn (more specific
times depend on the species). They often wake up to drink water and
return to "sleep". They can go for months without food. Reptiles may eat
more than usual before the brumation time but eat less or refuse food
as the temperature drops. However, they do need to drink water. The
brumation period is anywhere from one to eight months depending on the
air temperature and the size, age, and health of the reptile. During the
first year of life, many small reptiles do not fully brumate, but
rather slow down and eat less often. Brumation is triggered by a lack of
heat and a decrease in the hours of daylight in winter, similar to
hibernation.
Plants
In plant physiology, dormancy is a period of arrested plant growth. It is a survival strategy exhibited by many plant species, which enables them to survive in harsh conditions and climates where part of the year is unsuitable for growth, such as winter or dry seasons.
Many plant species that exhibit dormancy have a biological clock that tells them when to slow activity and to prepare soft tissues
for a period of freezing temperatures or water shortage. On the other
hand, dormancy can be triggered after a normal growing season by
decreasing temperatures, shortened day length, and/or a reduction in rainfall.
Chemical treatment on dormant plants has been proven to be an effective
method to break dormancy, particularly in woody plants such as grapes,
berries, apples, peaches, and kiwis. Specifically, hydrogen cyanamide
stimulates cell division and growth in dormant plants, causing buds to
break when the plant is on the edge of breaking dormancy.
Slight injury of cells may play a role in the mechanism of action. The
injury is thought to result in increased permeability of cellular
membranes.
The injury is associated with the inhibition of catalase, which in turn
stimulates the pentose phosphate cycle. Hydrogen cyanamide interacts
with the cytokinin metabolic cycle, which results in triggering a new
growth cycle. The images below show two particularly widespread dormancy patterns amongst sympodially growing orchids:
Annual life cycle of sympodially growing orchids with dormancy after completion of new growth/pseudobulb, e.g., Miltonia, or Odontoglossum
When a mature and viable seed under a favorable condition fails to germinate, it is said to be dormant. Seed dormancy is referred to as embryo dormancy or internal dormancy and is caused by endogenous characteristics of the embryo that prevent germination
(Black M, Butler J, Hughes M. 1987). Dormancy should not be confused
with seed coat dormancy, external dormancy, or hardheadedness, which is
caused by the presence of a hard seed covering or seed coat that prevents water and oxygen from reaching and activating the embryo. It is a physical barrier to germination, not a true form of dormancy (Quinliven, 1971; Quinliven and Nichol, 1971).
Seed dormancy is desired in nature, but the opposite in the
agriculture field. This is because agricultural practice desires rapid
germination and growth for food whereas in nature, most plants are only
capable of germinating once every year, making it favorable for plants
to pick a specific time to reproduce. For many plants, it is preferable
to reproduce in spring as opposed to fall even when there are similar
conditions in terms of light and temperature due to the ensuing winter
that follows fall. Many plants and seeds recognize this and enter a
dormant period in the fall to stop growing. The grain is a popular
example in this aspect, where they would die above ground during the
winter, so dormancy is favorable to its seedlings but extensive
domestication and crossbreeding has removed most dormancy mechanisms
that their ancestors had.
While seed dormancy is linked to many genes, abscisic acid (ABA),
a plant hormone, has been linked as a major influencer to seed
dormancy. In a study on rice and tobacco plants, plants defective in
zeaxanthin epoxidase gene, which are linked to ABA-synthesis pathway.
Seeds with higher ABA content, from over-expressing zeaxanthin
epoxidase, led to an increased dormancy period while plants with lower
numbers of zeaxanthin epoxidase were shown to have a shorter period of
dormancy. A simple diagram can be drawn of ABA inhibits seed
germination, while gibberellin (GA, also plant hormone) inhibits ABA
production and promotes seed germination.
Typically, temperate woody perennial plants
require chilling temperatures to overcome winter dormancy (rest). The
effect of chilling temperatures depends on species and growth stage
(Fuchigami et al. 1987).
In some species, rest can be broken within hours at any stage of
dormancy, with either chemicals, heat, or freezing temperatures,
effective dosages of which would seem to be a function of sublethal
stress, which results in stimulation of ethylene production and increased cell membrane permeability.
Dormancy is a general term applicable to any instance in
which a tissue predisposed to elongate or grow in some other manner does
not do so (Nienstaedt 1966). Quiescence is dormancy imposed by the external environment. Correlated inhibition
is a kind of physiological dormancy maintained by agents or conditions
originating within the plant, but not within the dormant tissue itself. Rest
(winter dormancy) is a kind of physiological dormancy maintained by
agents or conditions within the organ itself. However, physiological
subdivisions of dormancy do not coincide with the morphological dormancy
found in white spruce (Picea glauca) and other conifers (Owens et al. 1977).
Physiological dormancy often includes early stages of bud-scale
initiation before measurable shoot elongation or before flushing. It may
also include late leaf initiation after shoot elongation has been
completed. In either of those cases, buds that appear to be dormant are nevertheless very active morphologically and physiologically.
Dormancy of various kinds is expressed in white spruce (Romberger 1963).
White spruce, like many woody plants in temperate and cooler regions,
requires exposure to low temperature for a period of weeks before it can
resume normal growth and development. This "chilling requirement" for
white spruce is satisfied by uninterrupted exposure to temperatures
below 7 °C for 4 to 8 weeks, depending on physiological condition
(Nienstaedt 1966, 1967).
Tree species that have well-developed dormancy needs may be tricked to some degree, but not completely. For instance, if a Japanese maple (Acer palmatum)
is given an "eternal summer" through exposure to additional daylight,
it grows continuously for as long as two years. Eventually, however, a temperate-climate plant automatically goes dormant, no matter what environmental conditions it experiences. Deciduous plants lose their leaves; evergreens
curtail all new growth. Going through an "eternal summer" and the
resultant automatic dormancy is stressful to the plant and usually
fatal. The fatality rate increases to 100% if the plant does not receive
the necessary period of cold temperatures required to break the
dormancy. Most plants require a certain number of hours of "chilling" at
temperatures between about 0 °C and 10 °C to be able to break dormancy
(Bewley, Black, K.D 1994).
Short photoperiods
induce dormancy and permit the formation of needle primordia. Primordia
formation requires 8 to 10 weeks and must be followed by 6 weeks of
chilling at 2 °C. Bud break occurs promptly if seedlings are then
exposed to 16-hour photoperiods at the 25 °C/20 °C temperature regime.
The free growth mode, a juvenile characteristic that is lost after 5
years or so, ceases in seedlings experiencing environmental stress
(Logan and Pollard 1976, Logan 1977).
Bacteria
Many bacteria can survive adverse conditions such as temperature, desiccation, and antibiotics by forming endospores, cysts, or states of reduced metabolic activity lacking specialized cellular structures. Up to 80% of the bacteria in samples from the wild appear to be metabolically inactive—many of which can be resuscitated. Such dormancy is responsible for the high diversity levels of most natural ecosystems.
Recent research has characterized the bacterial cytoplasm as a glass forming fluid approaching the liquid-glass transition, such that large cytoplasmic components require the aid of metabolic activity
to fluidize the surrounding cytoplasm, allowing them to move through a
viscous, glass-like cytoplasm. During dormancy, when such metabolic
activities are put on hold, the cytoplasm behaves like a solid glass, 'freezing' subcellular structures in place and perhaps protecting them, while allowing small molecules like metabolites to move freely through the cell, which may be helpful in cells transitioning out of dormancy.
Dormancy, in its rigid definition, does not apply to viruses, as they are not metabolically active. However, some viruses such as poxviruses and picornaviruses, after entering the host, can become latent for long periods of time, or even indefinitely until they are externally activated. Herpesviruses,
for example, can become latent after infecting the host, and after
years they can activate again if the host is under stress or exposed to
ultraviolet radiation.
Torpor is a state of decreased physiological activity in an animal, usually marked by a reduced body temperature and metabolic rate. Torpor enables animals to survive periods of reduced food availability. The term "torpor" can refer to the time a hibernator
spends at low body temperature, lasting days to weeks, or it can refer
to a period of low body temperature and metabolism lasting less than 24
hours, as in "daily torpor".
Animals that undergo daily torpor include birds (even tiny hummingbirds, notably Cypselomorphae)
and some mammals, including many marsupial species, rodent species (such as mice), and bats.
During the active part of their day, such animals maintain normal body
temperature and activity levels, but their metabolic rate and body
temperature drop during a portion of the day (usually night) to conserve
energy.
Some animals seasonally go into long periods of inactivity, with
reduced body temperature and metabolism, made up of multiple bouts of
torpor. This is known as hibernation if it occurs during winter or aestivation
if it occurs during the summer. Daily torpor, on the other hand, is not
seasonally dependent and can be an important part of energy
conservation at any time of year.
Torpor is a well-controlled thermoregulatory process and not, as previously thought, the result of switching off thermoregulation.
Marsupial torpor differs from non-marsupial mammalian (eutherian) torpor in the characteristics of arousal. Eutherian arousal relies on a heat-producing brown adipose tissue
as a mechanism to accelerate rewarming. The mechanism of marsupial
arousal is unknown, but appears not to rely on brown adipose tissue.
Evolution
The evolution of torpor likely accompanied the development of homeothermy.
Animals capable of maintaining a body temperature above ambient
temperature when other members of its species would not have a fitness
advantage. Benefits of maintaining internal temperatures include
increased foraging time and less susceptibility to extreme drops in
temperature.
This adaptation of increasing body temperature to forage has been
observed in small nocturnal mammals when they first wake up in the
evening.
Although homeothermy lends advantages such as increased activity
levels, small mammals and birds maintaining an internal body temperature
spend up to 100 times more energy in low ambient temperatures compared
to ectotherms.
To cope with this challenge, these animals maintain a much lower body
temperature, staying just over ambient temperature rather than at normal
operating temperature. This reduction in body temperature and metabolic
rate allows the prolonged survival of animals capable of entering
torpid states.
In 2020, scientists reported evidence of the torpor in Lystrosaurus living ~250 Mya in Antarctica – the oldest evidence of a hibernation-like state in a vertebrate animal.
Functions
Slowing metabolic rate to conserve energy in times of insufficient resources is the primarily noted purpose of torpor. This conclusion is largely based on laboratory studies where torpor was observed to follow food deprivation. There is evidence for other adaptive functions of torpor where animals are observed in natural contexts:
Circadian rhythm during torpor
Animals that can enter torpor rely on biological rhythms such as circadian and circannual
rhythms to continue natural functions. Different animals will manage
their circadian rhythm differently, and in some species it's seen to
completely stop (such as in European hamsters). Other organisms, such as a black bear,
enter torpor and switch to multi-day cycles rather than rely on a
circadian rhythm. However, it is seen that both captive and wild bears
express similar circadian rhythms when entering torpor. Bears entering
torpor in a simulated den with no light expressed normal but low
functioning rhythms. The same was observed in wild bears denning in
natural areas. The function of circadian rhythms in black, brown, and polar bears suggest that their system of torpor is evolutionarily advanced.
Energy conservation in small birds
Anna's hummingbird (Calypte anna) in nocturnal torpor during a cold winter night (−8 °C (18 °F) near Vancouver, British Columbia. The bird remained in torpor with an unchanged position for more than 12 hours.
Torpor has been shown to be a strategy of small migrant birds to preserve their body energy stores.
Hummingbirds, resting at night during migration, were observed to enter
torpor which helped to conserve fat stores during migration or cold
nights at high altitude.
This strategy of using torpor to preserve energy stores, such as fat, has also been observed in wintering chickadees. Black-capped chickadees,
living in temperate forests of North America, do not migrate south
during winter. The chickadee can maintain a body temperature 12 °C lower
than normal. This reduction in metabolism allows it to conserve 30% of
fat stores amassed from the previous day.
Advantage in environments with unpredictable food sources
Torpor can be a strategy of animals with unpredictable food supplies.
For example, high-latitude living rodents use torpor seasonally when
not reproducing. These rodents use torpor as means to survive winter and
live to reproduce in the next reproduction cycle when food sources are
plentiful, separating periods of torpor from the reproduction period.
The eastern long-eared bat uses torpor during winter and is able to arouse and forage during warm periods. Some animals use torpor during their reproductive cycle, as seen in unpredictable habitats. They experience the cost of a prolonged reproduction period but the payoff is survival to be able to reproduce at all.
Survival during mass extinctions
It is suggested that this daily torpor use may have allowed survival through mass extinction events. Heterotherms make up only four out of 61 mammals confirmed to have gone extinct over the last 500 years. Torpor enables animals to reduce energy requirements allowing them to better survive harsh conditions.
Inter-species competition
Interspecific competition occurs when two species require the same resource for energy production. Torpor increases fitness in the case of inter-specific competition with the nocturnal common spiny mouse. When the golden spiny mouse experiences reduced food availability by diet overlap with the common spiny mouse it spends more time in a torpid state.
Parasite resistance by bats
A drop in temperature from torpor has been shown to reduce the ability of parasites to reproduce. In temperate
zones, the reproductive rates of ectoparasites on bats decrease when
the bats enter torpor. In regions where bats don't undergo torpor, the
parasites maintain a consistent reproductive rate throughout the year.
NASA deep sleep option for a mission to Mars
In
2013, SpaceWorks Engineering began researching a way to dramatically
cut the cost of a human expedition to Mars by putting the crew in
extended torpor for 90 to 180 days. Traveling while hibernating would
reduce astronauts' metabolic functions and minimize requirements for
life support during multi-year missions.
In psychology, grandiosity is a sense of superiority, uniqueness,
or invulnerability. It may be expressed by exaggerated beliefs
regarding one's abilities, the belief that few other people have
anything in common with oneself, and that one can only be understood by a
few, very special people. The personality trait of grandiosity is principally associated with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), but also is a feature in the occurrence and expression of antisocial personality disorder, and the manic and hypomanic episodes of bipolar disorder.
Measurement
Few
scales exist for the sole purpose of measuring grandiosity, though one
recent attempt is the Narcissistic Grandiosity Scale (NGS), an adjective
rating scale where one indicates the applicability of a word to oneself
(e.g. superior, glorious).
Grandiosity is also measured as part of other tests, including the Personality Assessment for DSM-5 (PID-5), Psychopathy Checklist-Revised,
and diagnostic interviews for NPD. The Grandiosity section of the
Diagnostic Interview for Narcissism (DIN), for instance, describes:
The person exaggerates talents, capacity, and achievements in an unrealistic way.
The person believes in their invulnerability or does not recognize their limitations.
The person has grandiose fantasies.
The person believes that they do not need other people.
The person overexamines and downgrades other people's projects, statements, or dreams in an unrealistic manner.
The person regards themself as unique or special when compared to other people.
The person regards themself as generally superior to other people.
The person behaves self-centeredly and/or self-referentially.
The person behaves in a boastful or pretentious way.
In narcissism
Grandiose narcissism is a subtype of narcissism
with grandiosity as its central feature, in addition to other agentic
and antagonistic traits (e.g., dominance, attention-seeking,
entitlement, manipulation). Confusingly, the term "narcissistic
grandiosity" is sometimes used as a synonym for grandiose narcissism and
other times used to refer to the subject of this article (superiority
feelings).
In mania
In mania, grandiosity is typically more pro-active and aggressive than in narcissism. The manic character may boast of future achievements or exaggerate their personal qualities.
They may also begin unrealistically ambitious undertakings, before being cut down, or cutting themselves back down, to size.
In psychopathy
Grandiosity features in Factor 1, Facet 1 (Interpersonal) in the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) test.
Individuals endorsing this criterion appear arrogant and boastful, and
may be unrealistically optimistic about their future. The American Psychiatric Association's DSM-5 also notes that persons with antisocial personality disorder
often display an inflated self-image, and can appear excessively
self-important, opinionated and cocky, and often hold others in
contempt.
Relationship with other variables
Grandiosity is well documented to have associations with both
positive/adaptive and negative/maladaptive outcomes, leading some
researchers to question whether it is necessarily pathological.
Positive/Adaptive
Grandiosity
demonstrates moderate-to-strong positive correlations with self-esteem,
typically becoming larger in size when controlling for confounding
variables. It relates positively to self-rated superiority and is inversely associated with self-rated worthlessness.
It is also associated with a host of other variables (often even when
controlling for self-esteem), including positive affect, optimism, life
satisfaction, behavioural activation system functioning, and all forms of emotional resilience. It also correlates positively with adaptive narcissism, namely authoritativeness, charisma, self-assurance and ambitiousness. Moreover, it exhibits negative associations with depression, anxiety, pessimism and shame. Grandiosity has a small positive relationship with intelligence and achievement.
Negative/Maladaptive
Grandiosity
has a well-studied association with aggression (both physical and
verbal), risk-taking (e.g. financial, social, sexual) and
competitiveness. It also has reliable associations with maladaptive narcissistic traits like entitlement and interpersonal exploitativeness.
Even when controlling for exploitativeness, however, grandiosity still
predicts unethical behaviours like lying, cheating and stealing.
Grandiosity seems to be specifically related to rationalised cheating
(i.e. opportunistic cheating behaviour whose context allows the
behaviour to be construed as something other than cheating), but not
deliberative cheating (i.e. conscious premeditation to violate rules and
cheat).
Mechanisms
Despite
the prominence of grandiosity in the research literature, few theories
or even studies of its underlying mechanisms exist. Approximately 23% of
the variance in grandiosity is explained by genetics, with the majority
of remaining variance attributable to non-shared environmental factors.
Cognitive
Research
has consistently indicated a role of positive rumination (repetitive
positive self-focused thoughts). Recently, an experimental study found
that having neurotypical participants engage in overly-positive
rumination (i.e. think about times when they felt special, unique,
important or superior) lead to increases in state grandiosity, whereas a
control distraction condition conferred no such increment.
Another study confirmed that positive ruminations confer grandiose
self-perceptions in the moment, and found that (grandiosity-prone)
patients with bipolar disorder (compared with healthy controls)
exhibited heightened connectivity between brain regions associated with
self-relevant information-processing during this task (medial prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices)
Further, experimental studies suggest that grandiose narcissists
maintain their inflated self-esteem following criticism by recalling
self-aggrandizing memories.
Correlational designs further confirm the associations of
mania/hypomania and grandiose narcissism with positive self-rumination,
and to specific expressions of positive rumination after success (e.g.
believing that success in one domain indicates likely success in
another). Grandiose fantasies, conceptually similar to positive rumination, also feature in narcissism.While grandiose narcissism has been associated with attentional and mnemonic biases to positive self-related words, it remains to be seen whether this reflects grandiosity or some other trait specific to narcissism (e.g. entitlement).
Other theories
A
common characteristic of disorders and traits associated with
grandiosity is heightened positive affect and potential dysregulation
thereof. This is true of mania/hypomania in bipolar disorder, grandiose narcissism, and the interpersonal facet of psychopathy. Such associations partially inspired the Narcissism Spectrum Model,
which posits grandiosity reflects the combination of self-preoccupation
and "boldness" - exaggerated positive emotionality, self-confidence,
and reward-seeking, which is ostensibly linked with neurobiological systems mediating behavioural approach motivation.
While no neuroimaging studies have specifically assessed the
association between grandiosity and the reward system (or any other
system), some neuroimaging studies using composite scales of grandiosity
with other traits offer tentative support of these assertions, while others using the same measure suggest no association.
Contrary to frequent assertions by narcissism researchers, and
despite much study of the matter, there is only weak and inconsistent
evidence that grandiosity (when specifically and reliably measured) and
grandiose narcissism have any association with parental overvaluation. The largest study on the matter found no association whatsoever.
Reality-testing
A distinction is made between individuals exhibiting grandiosity which includes a degree of insight into their unrealistic thoughts (they are aware that their behavior is considered unusual), and those experiencing grandiose delusions
who lack this capability for reality-testing. Some individuals may
transition between these two states, with grandiose ideas initially
developing as "daydreams" that the patient recognises as untrue, but
which can subsequently turn into full delusions that the patient becomes
convinced reflect reality.
Psychoanalysis and the grandiose self
Otto Kernberg
saw the unhealthily grandiose self as merging childhood feelings of
specialness, personal ideals, and fantasies of an ideal parent.
Heinz Kohut
saw the grandiose self as a normal part of the developmental process,
only pathological when the grand and humble parts of the self became
decisively divided.
Kohut's recommendations for dealing with the patient with a disordered
grandiose self were to tolerate and so re-integrate the grandiosity with
the realistic self.
Reactive attachment disorder
The personality trait of grandiosity also is a component of the reactive attachment disorder (RAD), a severe and relatively uncommon attachment disorder that affects children.
The expression of RAD is characterized by markedly disturbed and
developmentally inappropriate ways of relating to other people in most
social contexts, such as the persistent failure to initiate or to
respond to most social interactions in a developmentally appropriate
way, known as the "inhibited form" of reactive attachment disorder.
Related traits
Grandiosity
is associated and often confused with other personality traits,
including self-esteem, entitlement, and contemptuousness.
Self-esteem
While the exact difference between high self-esteem and grandiosity
has yet to be fully elucidated, research suggests that, while strongly
correlated, they predict different outcomes. While both predict positive
outcomes like optimism, life and job satisfaction, extraversion and
positive affect, grandiosity uniquely predicts entitlement,
exploitativeness and aggression.
Entitlement
Entitlement is regularly confused with grandiosity even in
peer-reviewed articles, but the literature nevertheless offers a clear
discrimination of the two. Psychological entitlement is a sense of
deservingness to positive outcomes, and can be founded on either grandiosity or feelings of deprivation.
Like self-esteem, grandiosity and entitlement are well documented to
predict different outcomes. Entitlement appears to be associated with
more maladaptive outcomes, including low empathy, antisocial behaviour,
and poor mental health, whereas grandiosity predicts better mental
health.
Devaluation/contempt
Surprisingly, and quite counterintuitively, grandiosity is only
weakly related to regarding others as worthless (devaluation or
contemptuousness). Moreover, grandiosity should not be conflated with arrogant social behaviour.
