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From an interview of Clinton Callahan by David Krause for his highschool report:

DK: Hello Mr. Callahan, you are a personal development trainer and author of four books, so far. Is that correct?

CC: Yes. The books in German are titled Abenteuer Denken, Wahre Liebe im Alltag, Die Kraft des bewussten Fühlens, and just recently a family heart-communication book entitled Gute Nacht Gefühle. More about the books (also books in English) can be found at nextculturepress.org.

DK: I heard you did 40 years of research for personal development?

CC: This is correct. I started at the university in the USA in 1974 after some years of study realizing that I was not learning what I wanted to learn there. We met every week in small groups, supporting each other to become the person who could be, do, and have what our hearts and souls deeply desired. This process, of course, involves authentic personal change at the deepest levels. What I am most excited about is that we learned how to make authentic personal development experiences safe, sustainable, and also fun, without the use of any kind of drugs. One of our most important discoveries was how certain debilitating manifestations such as depression, anxiety, despair, melancholy, hysteria, etc. are often caused simply by unconsciously mixing feelings together, and can be remedied through a straightforward process of unmixing the feelings. This, I must say, is remarkable and noteworthy, and still not widely known or practiced. If the process of unmixing feelings were applied some of the people locked away in mental institutions under heavy medication might be able to lead normal productive lives, and many deaths such as Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger, and most recently Robin Williams might be easily avoided.

DK: In my research paper, I'm dealing with the connection between genius and insanity. Have you considered that issue in your research over the years?

CC: Yes we have, quite often, and in quite some depth, also accompanied by experimentation.

DK: So then what do you think is the connection or the boundary between genius and insanity?

CC: I think the distinctions between genius and insanity has to do with the level of conscious responsibility a person applies to their insights, thoughts, words, and behaviors. Geniuses make use of their state for the benefit of others. Insanity may be a similar state but an insane person is nonrelational, not using the state to provide value to others.

DK: How do you define genius?

CC: Genius is the ability to access and use information that is not readily available in the current space, conversation, or context of awareness. It involves particular skills of remaining centered while journeying into other contexts to bring back and integrate new information in practical ways.

DK: What do think makes a person insane?

CC: There are different forms of insanity, of course. Some kinds of insanity are the result of toxins, contaminants, or chemical imbalances in the brain itself, which are abundantly applied to us through using modern processed foods, manufactured clothing, out-gassing building materials and plastics, medicines, inoculations, and personal hygiene products. Other kinds of insanity have to do with adopting beliefs from external authority figures such as religions, politics, or corporate brand marketing. Obeying commands from external authority such as teachers, doctors, police or politicians is a kind of survival behavior, but certainly a desperate move for any self-respecting human being. Being adaptive blocks a person from being true to themselves. Being adaptive and trying to give away responsibility is a fundamental form of insanity because we live in a responsible universe where cause and effect consequences rule. Geniuses tend to take radical responsibility for reinventing the context of the culture they love to live in and make practical use of what they learn for the benefit of others. A person who is insane might have created a fantasy-world for themselves that allows them to feel safe, or at least to feel what they might regard as "normal," but what they perceive or learn in that private world is not brought back to benefit society.

DK: Can you imagine, why so many geniuses in history had heavy mental disorders like schizophrenia or manic depression?

CC: Based on our decades of research we think that what by modern standards may be regarded as a genius is the normal state for a properly initiated adult woman or man. All human beings are to some degree schizophrenic. Just remember the last time you were with a friend when their mobile phone rang and it was their mother, their boss, or their child calling, and your friend's tone of voice changed, their speech patterns and vocabulary changed, their face and posture changed into being who they are when talking to that other person. Then when they hang up - schwooooop! - they transform back into the personality they are when they interact with you, and they do not even notice they shifted. Did you ever notice that? Well, guess who else makes sudden shifts in their personality? We all do. The common thread of psycho-emotional instabilities among both historical and modern geniuses has to do, I think, with their lack of initiation into the adulthood skills of navigating upperworld, middleworld, and underworld spaces, their lack of training in clear inner-experiential-navigation of archetypal intensities of feelings, including the unmixing of those feelings, their lack of initiation into retaining their own authority in the face of criticism and contradictory opinions from others, making boundaries, clearly asking for what they want, clearly completing communications, listening and interacting without entering low dramas (as defined by Dr. Stephen Karpman of Transactional Analysis - the Karpman Drama Triangle www.facebook.com/pages/Karpman-drama-triangle/144263865584034) and so on. For the most part, that lack of ongoing 4-body adulthood initiations is a sad characteristic of modern culture, which is remedied as soon as a person takes steps to cross the ever-more-available personal-development bridges to more mature and rapidly-emerging sustainable cultures such as archearchy.

DK: OK then, thank you very much for this revealing interview.
Best wishes, David Krause