User:Vanlegg/Segal

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NOTE: THE ARTICLE HAS BEEN MOVED TO THE MAINSPACE. PLEASE EDIT IT AT Suzanne Segal. Ocaasi ^c 19:19, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Discussion/notes

Notes

• Let's keep this short, and focused on the best sources. Once notability is established, it can be augmented with primaries. Ocaasi ^c 04:41, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

• Sources are here: User_talk:Ocaasi/Segal. Feel free to add to them.

ToDo

• Update biography with sourced information. Did she die in 1997 or 1998?
• Add infobox
• Get free photograph, or a digital image of the book cover
• Update google books and other references to proper citations
• Add sourced information from the Ocaasi/sources page linked above

Lead

Suzanne Segal
Cause of death	Brain tumor
Alma mater	UC Berkeley; Wright Institute
Known for	Experience of depersonalization, spiritual teachings

Suzanne Segal (1955-1997) is an individual noted in the modern literature about spiritual enlightenment as well in the psychological and neurological research community regarding depersonalization, derealization, and depersonalization disorder. After a life of psychological searching, Segal experienced a dramatic shift in her mental state when she was 27. It was 1982, and Segal was boarding a bus in Paris when, she reported suddenly losing all sense of connection to her self. She published a popular autobiography describing the experience, Collision With the Infinite: A Life Beyond the Personal Self, in which she detailed the initial fear and confusion, the search to understand her condition, and the deepening realization she achieved when her awareness of the split turned into a sense of oneness and universal connection. The book was popular among New Age readers, and Segal became a noted spiritual guide. Segal eventually returned to the uncomfortable state of distress she had first experienced, at which point she returned to exploring psychological themes from her childhood. She died of a brain tumor in 1997, leaving many questions about the root cause of her experience unanswered.

Background

Segal's childhood was filled with attempts to evoke a state of psychological detachment from her identity. She experienced moments which she described as "vastness" after repeating her name as a mantra. She started studying Transcendental Meditation and found the experience similarly awakening, but left the organization when she began to dislike the rigidity of the format. She moved to California and received a degree in English from the UC Berkeley. She then moved to Paris where she had a daughter, and where she had her marked depersonalization experience while boarding a bus in the city.

Experience

In Collisions, she wrote: "I lifted my right foot to step up into the bus and collided head-on with an invisible force that entered my awareness like a silently exploding stick of dynamite, blowing the door of my usual consciousness open and off its hinges, splitting me in two. In the gaping space that appeared, what I had previously called 'me' was forcefully pushed out of its usual location inside me into a new location that was approximately a foot behind and to the left of my head. 'I' was now behind my body looking out at the world without using the body's eyes."

Segal's story was profiled in the book Feeling Unreal: Depersonalization Disorder and the Loss of the Self written in 2006 Daphne Simeon, Jeffrey Abugel. (The Journal of the American Psychological Association wrote of Feeling Unreal: "[it] offers an excellent introduction to the topic of depersonalization, on the spectrum from a transient symptom to an enduring distorder. Their book will be of considerable interest to analysts...." ). Feeling Unreal recounts Segal's story, beginning with her sudden break from her self into a witness mode, where she was aware of watching herself but not a part of her own body or emotions, and then entering a state where the witness too disappeared.

In the period after her break Segal continued to function with seeming normalcy. She even received a doctorate psychology degree from the Wright Institute, but inside she felt completely depersonalized, literally as if her own name did not refer to anyone. Feeling Unreal quotes Segal who wrote in Collisions: "The body, mind, speech, thoughts, and emotions were all empty; they had no ownership, no person behind them. I was utterly bereft of all my previous notions of reality." Segal's state of mind terrified her, and she sought advice from California's Buddhist community. Buddhism intentionally cultivates loss of ego and a sense of emptiness and oneness, and spiritual teachers tried to help Segal see her condition positively. In fact, several even congratulated her: "This is a wonderful experience. It has to stay eternally with you. This is perfect freedom. You have become (moksha) of the realized sages."

In the years following this transition, Segal recovered memories of childhood abuse and recounted a history of migraines. Her sudden death in 1997 from a brain tumor left numerous questions about the source of her depersonalization--whether it was a result of childhood trauma, a side-effect of the tumor, or something independently, was never answered.

Spirituality

Segal's story and her book, Collisions received attention by many New Age writers and publications. It was briefly reviewed by Yoga Journal magazine in 1997, the reviewer writing: "This frank and engaging account is a fascinating view of the unfolding of a realization without a spiritual practice or intention."

Segal interviewed for the chapter devoted to her in the 2003 book The Awakening West by Lynn Marie Lumiere and John Lumiere-Wins. (Also in this book are interviews with Eckhart Tolle).

A 2008 graduate dissertation by Arvin Paul used Segal's experience as an example of "Shift/s in the Locus of Identity Upon Initial Awakening", "a shift from the conventional sense of self to the uninvolved witness, and/or allpervasive presence, and/or boundless spaciousness, and/or pure awareness, and/or Being, and/or emptiness/void, and/or the Self, and/or the simple recognition of nonseparateness." Paul quotes Segal: "That recognition doesn’t change who you really are, ever. You have always been That. And yes, there is a way that the Vastness Itself can perceive Itself so directly, without any fogging or shadowing or taking anything else to be who you are. I guess you could call it a waking up, but what seems most important to convey is that this is who everyone is all the time whether the direct awareness of it is there or not. (Segal, 2003, p. 273)"

Depersonalization disorder

In "Collisions", Segal wrote “I might as well call the experience by a clinical name in the hope that someone in world would recognize it.”need the exact quote where she mentions depersonalization, or dp, or derealization by name

After her break, Segal consulted psychiatrists. Some diagnosed her with Depersonalization Disorder, while others had no clear explanation.

The Journal of the American Psychological Association, in reviewing Feeling Unreal discussed Segal:

"More recently, Suzanne Segal (discussed by the authors on pp. 142–146) has written of her personal experiences with depersonalization, which led her Buddhist teachers to validate her loss of self as reflecting a high level of spiritual enlightenment. Allegedly, she eventually recovered memories of childhood abuse. Once again, I would wonder if this illustrates the phenomenology of a possible dissociative disorder, rather than simply depersonalization. The authors write of patients whose chronic depersonalization had an acute onset, at a specific moment. In some cases this moment might represent a “switch” from one enduringly dominant alter to another (as occurs in some patients with dissociative identity disorder). The authors ask a key question: “How does an individual, over time, create a predictable, cohesive sense of self?” (p. 173).

The 2011 book Stranger to My Self: Inside Depersonalization; the Hidden Epidemic by Jeffrey Abugel. It contextualized Segal's experience thusly: "Sometimes, however, even a person well-versed in eastern philosophy may find themselves depersonalized in a way that seems to be anything but part of the road to enlightenment. Such a case was well documented by Suzanne Segal in her book..." Stranger put Segal's reportedly sudden depersonalization experience in the context of a long history of searching for that phenomenon:

As a young girl, Segal would sometimes repeat her own name in her head over and over. Eventually, "a threshold was crossed and the identity, as that name, broke like a ship released suddenly from its mooring to float untethered on the ocean waves...Vastness appeared...There was no person to whom that name referred, no identity as that name. No one." Then came fear, eventually followed by a return to normalcy. But the compulsion to do the same thing once again always returned. Many people with DPD have cited similar early life incidents. They may involve repeating words until they lose their meaning, or looking intently in the mirror until an overwhelming sense of strangeness emerges. Usually these episodes pass, are forgotten, and remain in the realm of youthful mind games.

Strangers documents the period in Segal's life after her sense of enlightenment faded, and the distress of her initial break returned:

The enlightened state of mind did not last. The fear and anxiety she thought she had left behind reappeared with renewed intensity. She continued meeting with fellow therapists and, in time, revealed that she had suffered from a long history of migraine heaches. She also began to recover memories of abuse during her childhood. As a psychologist, she was well tutored in a possible ramification of childhood abuse--dissociation. Once again, Segal began to perceive things differently, this time from the psychological viewpoint rather than that of transcendent spirituality.

Death

At this point in her life Segal was again experiencing the chronic depersonalization and fear from her initial "bus hit". Segal did not have time to discover what the source of her dramatic and shifting experience had been. Her physical and mental capabilities began to quickly decline, and doctors discovered a malignant brain tumor. She died in 1997.

See also

• Buddhism
• Anatta (no-self)
• Shunyata (emptiness)
• Skandhas (personality functions which remain after the loss of ego)
• Enlightenment
• Nirvana
• Dissociative disorder