Transpersonal psychology
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Il transpersonale è ciò che è al di là
dell’esperienza fenomenica comune, è una dimensione latente
in ogni uomo.
Transpersonal psychology is a school of psychology that
studies the transpersonal, the transcendent or spiritual
aspects of the human experience. The Journal of
Transpersonal Psychology describes transpersonal psychology
as "the study of humanity’s highest potential, and with the
recognition, understanding, and realization of unitive,
spiritual, and transcendent states of consciousness" (Lajoie
and Shapiro, 1992:91). Issues considered in transpersonal
psychology include spiritual self-development, peak
experiences, mystical experiences, systemic trance and
other metaphysical experiences of living. (Wikipedia)
The development of the field
Amongst the thinkers who are held to have set the stage for
transpersonal studies are William James, Sigmund Freud,
Otto Rank, Carl Jung, Abraham Maslow, and Roberto Assagioli
(Cowley & Derezotes, 1994; Miller, 1998; Davis, 2003).
Research by Vich (1988) suggests that earliest usage of the
term "transpersonal" can be found in lecture notes which
William James had prepared for a semester at Harvard
University in 1905-6. A major motivating factor behind the
initiative to establish this school of psychology was
Abraham Maslow's already published work regarding human
peak experiences. Maslow's work grew out of the humanistic
movement of the 1960's, and gradually the term "transpersonal"
was associated with a distinct school of psychology within
the humanistic movement.
In 1969, Abraham Maslow, Stanislav Grof and Anthony Sutich
were the initiators behind the publication of the first
issue of the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, the
leading academic journal in the field. This was soon to be
followed by the founding of the Association for
Transpersonal Psychology (ATP) in 1972. Past presidents of
the association include Alyce Green, James Fadiman, Frances
Vaughan, Arthur Hastings, Daniel Goleman, Robert Frager,
Ronald Jue, Jeanne Achterberg and Dwight Judy. In the 1980s
and 90s the field developed through the works of such
authors as Jean Houston, Stanislav Grof, Ken Wilber,
Michael Washburn, Frances Vaughan, Roger Walsh, Stanley
Krippner, Michael Murphy, Charles Tart, David Lukoff,
Vasily Nalimov and Stuart Sovatsky. While Wilber has been
considered an influential writer and theoretician in the
field, he has since personally dissociated himself from the
movement in favor of what he calls an integral approach.
Today transpersonal psychology also includes approaches to
health, social sciences and practical arts such as process
art. Transpersonal perspectives are also being applied to
such diverse fields as psychology, psychiatry, anthropology,
sociology, pharmacology, cross-cultural studies (Scotton,
Chinen and Battista, 1996; Davis, 2003) and social work (Cowley
& Derezotes, 1994). Currently, transpersonal psychology,
especially the schools of Jungian and Archetypal psychology,
is integrated, at least to some extent, into many
psychology departments in American and European
Universities. Transpersonal therapies are also included in
many therapeutic practices.
Institutions of higher learning that have adopted insights
from transpersonal psychology include The Institute of
Transpersonal Psychology (US), California Institute of
Integral Studies (US), John F. Kennedy University (US),
Atlantic University (US), Burlington College (US),
Liverpool John Moores University (UK), the University of
Northampton (UK), and Naropa University (Colorado). There
is also a strong connection between the transpersonal and
the humanistic perspective. This is not surprising since
transpersonal psychology started off within humanistic
psychology (Aanstoos, Serlin & Greening, 2000).
By common consent, the following branches are considered to
be transpersonal psychological schools: Jungian psychology,
depth psychology (more recently rephrased as the Archetypal
psychology of James Hillman), the spiritual psychology of
Robert Sardello, (2001), psychosynthesis founded by Roberto
Assagioli, and the theories of Abraham Maslow, Stanislav
Grof, Timothy Leary, Ken Wilber, Michael Washburn and
Charles Tart.
Transpersonal psychology is sometimes confused with
parapsychology due to the overlapping and unconventional
research interests of both fields; parapsychology tends to
focus more in its subject matter on the "psychic" and
transpersonal psychology the "spiritual" (relatively crude
though these categorizations are, it is still a useful
distinction in this context). While parapsychology leans
more towards traditional scientific epistemology (laboratory
experiments, statistics, research on cognitive states),
transpersonal psychology tends to be more closely related
to the epistemology of the humanities and the hermeneutic
disciplines (humanism, existentialism, phenomenology,
anthropology), although it has always included
contributions involving experimental and statistical
research.
Transpersonal psychology is also sometimes confused with
the New Age. Although the transpersonal perspective has
many overlapping interests with theories and thinkers
associated with the term "new age", it is still problematic
to place transpersonal psychology within such a framework.
Transpersonal psychology is an academic discipline, not a
religious or spiritual movement, and many of the field's
leading authors, among those Sovatsky (1998) and Rowan
(1993), have addressed problematic aspects of New Age
hermeneutics. Associations between transpersonal psychology
and the New Age have probably contributed to the failures
in the United States of America to get transpersonal
psychology more formally recognised within the professional
body, the American Psychological Association (APA). A
significant breakthrough in this context was the successful
establishment of a Transpersonal Psychology Section within
the British Psychological Society (the UK professional body
equivalent to the APA) in 1996, co-founded by David
Fontana, Ingrid Slack and Martin Treacy, "the first Section
of its kind in a Western scientific society" according to
Fontana (Fontana et. al, 2005, p.5).
Contributions to the academic field
Although all models of human development are understood to
be intellectual abstractions of reality, transpersonal
psychology has made significant contributions to the
understanding of human development and consciousness. One
of the demarcations in transpersonal theory is between
authors who present a fairly linear and hierarchical model
of human development, such as Timothy Leary and Ken Wilber,
and authors who present pluralistic or non-linear models of
human development, such as Michael Washburn and Ralph
Metzner.
Timothy Leary, who was originally a professional
psychologist and a professor of psychology, made a
significant contribution to transpersonal psychology with
the formulation of his Eight Circuit Model of Consciousness,
outlined in his 1980 book Info-Psychology, referenced below.
Ken Wilber's primary contribution to the field is the
theory of a spectrum of consciousness consisting of three
broad categories: the prepersonal or pre-egoic, the
personal or egoic, and the transpersonal or trans-egoic (Miller,
1998). A more detailed version of this spectrum theory
includes nine different levels of development, in which
levels 1-3 are pre-personal levels, levels 4-6 are personal
levels and levels 7-9 are transpersonal levels (Cowley &
Derezotes, 1994).
Wilber has portrayed the development of consciousness as a
hierarchical, ladderlike, conceptual model, with higher
levels superior to lower levels, and consciousness
progressing from lower levels to higher levels. Each new
level integrates the preceding level while demonstrating
new properties associated only with the higher level (Kasprow
& Scotton, 1999). Each level is also understood to include
a particular type of personality structure, and a possible
vulnerability to certain pathologies belonging to that
particular level (Cowley & Derezotes, 1994). Building upon
the work of Wilber, transpersonal psychologists have also
made arguments in favor of a possible differentiation
between pre-rational psychiatric problems and authentic
transpersonal problems. The confusion of these two
categories is said to lead to what transpersonal theory
calls a "pre/trans fallacy", the mistaking of transpersonal
states for pre-rational states (Cowley & Derezotes, 1994;
Lukoff et.al, 1998).
In contrast to Leary and Wilber, Ralph Metzner and Michael
Wasburn present models of human development that are not
hierarchical or linear. Metzner opts for a model that is
pluralistic, and rejects the idea of linear development.
Washburn presents a model that is inspired by Jungian and
psychoanalytic thinking, and which might be characterized
as a spiral. According to Washburn the person emerges from
the preconscious depths of the psyche. Later on, in the
first half of life, development reaches the stage of normal
egoic functioning. In the second half of life, if
development goes well, the person might get the opportunity
to return to, and reintegrate, the primordial depths of the
psyche. Within the frames of Washburn's theory this
reintegration might be said to take place at a higher,
trans-egoic, level (Kasprow & Scotton, 1999).
Transpersonal Psychology has also brought clinical
attention to a number of psychoreligious and
psychospiritual problems. Cowley & Derezotes (1994) note
that transpersonal theory has an understanding of
spirituality that is integral to human nature and an
essential aspect of being. This understanding is somewhat
different from the popular understanding of spirituality as
a statement of belief, or as a measure of church attendance;
features that could rather be seen as indications of the
psychoreligious dimension. Psychoreligious problems have to
do with possible psychological conflict resulting from a
person's involvement with the beliefs and practices of an
organized religious institution. Among these problems are
experiences related to changing denomination or conversion,
intensification of religious belief or practice, loss of
faith, and joining or leaving a new religious movement or
cult.
Psychospiritual problems are experiences of a different
category than religious problems. These problems have to do
with a person's relationship to existential issues, or
issues that transcend ordinary day-to-day reality. Many of
these psychological difficulties are not ordinarily
discussed by mainstream psychology. Among these problems
are psychiatric complications related to loss of faith,
near-death experience, mystical experience, Kundalini
opening, Shamanistic Initiatory Crisis (also called
shamanic illness), psychic opening, past lives, possession
states, meditation-related problems, and separation from a
spiritual teacher. Complications that are considered to
present problems of a combined religious and spiritual
nature are issues related to serious illness and terminal
illness (Lukoff et.al, 1998). Some meditation-related
problems, for example, might have to do with the fact that
the incorporation of Eastern contemplative systems into a
Western setting has not always been sensitive to the
socio-cultural context from which these systems originated
(Turner et.al, 1995; Lukoff et.al, 1998), a detail that
might leave Western practitioners with considerable
hermeneutic (interpretive or explanatory) challenges.
The term "Spiritual Emergence" was coined by Stanislav and
Christina Grof (1989) in order to describe a gradual
unfoldment and appearance of psycho-spiritial categories in
a persons life. In cases where this spiritual unfoldment is
intensified beyond the control of the individual it might
lead to a state of "Spiritual Emergency". A Spiritual
Emergency might cause significant disruptions in
psychological, social and occupational functioning, and
many of the psychospiritual problems described above might
be characterized as spiritual emergencies (Lukoff et.al,
1998). Besides the psychospiritual categories mentioned by
Turner et.al (1995) and Lukoff et.al (1998), Whitney (1998)
has also made an argument in favor of understanding mania
as a form of spiritual emergency.
Because of the nature of psychoreligious and
psychospiritual problems, the transpersonal community made
a proposal for a new diagnostic category entitled "religious
or spiritual problem" at the beginning of the 1990s. This
category was later included in the fourth edition of the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV)
under the heading "Other Conditions That May Be a Focus of
Clinical Attention", Code V62.89 (American Psychiatric
Association, 1994; Lu et.al, 1997). According to
transpersonal theorists, the inclusion is part of the
greater cultural sensitivity of the manual and could help
promote enhanced understanding between the fields of
psychiatry and religion/spirituality (Turner et.al, 1995;
Sovatsky, 1998). The construct validity of the new category
has been assessed by Milstein et.al (2000).
Criticisms of transpersonal psychology
Criticisms of transpersonal psychology have come from
several commentators. One of the earliest criticisms of the
field was issued by the Humanistic psychologist Rollo May,
who disputed the conceptual foundations of transpersonal
psychology (Aanstos, Serling & Greening, 2000). May was
particularly concerned about the low level of reflection on
the dark side of human nature, and on human suffering,
among the early transpersonal theorists. A similar critique
was also put forward by Alexander (1980) who thought that
Transpersonal Psychology, in light of the thinking of
William James, represented a philosophy that failed to take
evil adequately into account. This serious criticism has
been absorbed by later Transpersonal theory, which has been
more willing to reflect on these important dimensions of
human existence (Scotton, Chinen and Battista, 1996;
Daniels, 2005). Criticism has also come from the cognitive
psychologist, and humanist, Albert Ellis (1989) who has
questioned transpersonal psychology's scientific status and
its relationship to religion and mysticism.
Friedman (2000) has criticized the field of Transpersonal
psychology for being underdeveloped as a field of science,
and he further differentiates between Transpersonal
psychology as a field of scientific psychology, and the
larger area of transpersonal studies which, according to
the author, may include a number of unscientific approaches.
Doctrines or ideas of many colorful personalities, who were
or are spiritual teachers in the Western world, such as
Gurdjieff or Alice Bailey, are often assimilated in the
transpersonal psychology mainstream scene. This development
is, generally, seen as detrimental to the aspiration of
transpersonal psychologists to gain a firm and respectable
academic status. However, Scotton, Chinen and Battista
(1996) believe that much of this criticism can be nuanced
if one differentiates between the field of Transpersonal
Psychology on the one hand, and a popular mainstream scene
that operates outside of an academic context, on the other.
It could also be argued that most psychologists do not hold
strictly to traditional schools of psychology — most
psychologists take an eclectic approach. This could mean
that the transpersonal categories listed are considered by
standard subdisciplines of psychology; religious conversion
falling within the gambit of social psychology, altered
states of consciousness within physiological psychology,
and spiritual life within the psychology of religion.
Transpersonal psychologists, however, disagree with the
approach to such phenomena taken by traditional psychology,
and claim that transpersonal categories have typically been
dismissed either as signs of various kinds of mental
illnesses, or as a regression to infantile stages of
psychosomatic development. Thus, as illustrated by the pre/trans
fallacy, religious and spiritual experiences have in the
past been seen as either regressive or pathological and
treated as such. (Wikipedia)
References and related reading
Aziz, Robert, C.G. Jung’s Psychology of Religion and
Synchronicity, (1990), currently in its 10th printing, a
refereed publication of The State University of New York
Press. ISBN 0-7914-0166-9.
Aziz, Robert, Synchronicity and the Transformation of the
Ethical in Jungian Psychology in Carl B. Becker, ed. Asian
and Jungian Views of Ethics, Westport, CT: Greenwood,
(1999), ISBN 0-313-30452-1.
Aziz, Robert, The Syndetic Paradigm: The Untrodden Path
Beyond Freud and Jung, (2007), a refereed publication of
The State University of New York Press. ISBN
13:978-0-7914-6982-8.
Aanstoos, C. Serlin, I., & Greening, T. (2000). History of
Division 32 (Humanistic Psychology) of the American
Psychological Association. In D. Dewsbury (Ed.), "Unification
through Division: Histories of the divisions of the
American Psychological Association", Vol. V. Washington, DC:
American Psychological Association.
Alexander, Gary T. (1980) William James, the Sick Soul, and
the Negative Dimensions of Consciousness: A Partial
Critique of Transpersonal Psychology. Journal of the
American Academy of Religion, XLVIII(2):191-206
American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition.
Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association.
Cowley, Au-Deane S. & Derezotes, David (1994) Transpersonal
Psychology and Social Work Education. Journal of Social
Work Education, 10437797, Winter, Vol. 30, Issue 1
Daniels, M. (2005). Shadow, Self, Spirit: Essays in
Transpersonal Psychology. Exeter: Imprint Academic.
Davis, John V. (2003). Transpersonal psychology in Taylor,
B. and Kaplan, J., Eds. The Encyclopedia of Religion and
Nature. Bristol, England: Thoemmes Continuum.
Ellis, Albert (1989) Dangers of Transpersonal Psychology: A
Reply To Ken Wilber. Journal of Counseling & Development,
Feb89, Vol. 67 Issue 6, p336, 2p;
Friedman, Harris (2000) Toward Developing Transpersonal
Psychology as a Scientific Field. Paper presented at Old
Saybrook 2 conference, May 11 - 14, 2000, State University
of West Georgia
Fontana, David, Slack, Ingrid & Treacy, Martin, Eds. (2005)
Transpersonal Psychology: Meaning and Developments
Transpersonal Psychology Review Special Issue. Leicester:
British Psychological Society
Grof, Stanislav & Grof, Christina (eds) (1989) Spiritual
Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis
(New Consciousness Reader) Los Angeles : J.P Tarcher
Kasprow, Mark C & Scotton, Bruce W. (1999) A Review of
Transpersonal Theory and Its Application to the Practice of
Psychotherapy. Journal of Psychotherapy Practice and
Research, 8:12-23, January
Lajoie, D. H. & Shapiro, S. I. (1992). Definitions of
transpersonal psychology: The first twenty-three years.
Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, Vol. 24.
Leary, Timothy, "Info-Psychology" (1980) New Falcon
Publications. ISBN 1-56184-105-6
Lu FG, Lukoff D, Turner R (1997) Religious or Spiritual
Problems. In: DSM-IV Sourcebook, Vol. 3. Widiger TA,
Frances AJ, Pincus HA et al., eds. Washington, D.C.:
American Psychiatric Association, pp1001-1016.
Lukoff, David, Lu, Francis G. & Turner, Robert P. (1998)
From Spiritual Emergency to Spiritual Problem - The
Transpersonal Roots of the New DSM-IV Category. Journal of
Humanistic Psychology, 38(2), pp. 21-50
Miller, John J. (1998) Book Review: Textbook of
Transpersonal Psychiatry and Psychology. Psychiatric
Services 49:541-542, April 1998. American Psychiatric
Association
Milstein, Glen; Midlarsky, Elizabeth; Link, Bruce G.; Raue,
Patrick J. & Bruce, Martha (2000) Assessing Problems with
Religious Content: A Comparison of Rabbis and Psychologists.
Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease. 188(9):608-615,
September
Rowan, John. (1993) The Transpersonal: Psychotherapy and
Counselling. London: Routledge
Sardello, Robert J. (2001). Love and the World: A Guide to
Conscious Soul Practice. Great Barrington, MA: Lindisfarne
Books.
Scotton, Bruce W, Chinen, Allan B. and John R. Battista,
Eds. (1996) Textbook of Transpersonal Psychiatry and
Psychology. New York: Basic Books
Sovatsky, Stuart (1998) Words from the Soul : Time, East/West
Spirituality, and Psychotherapeutic Narrative. New York:
State University of New York Press (SUNY Series in
Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology)
Turner, Robert P.; Lukoff, David; Barnhouse, Ruth Tiffany &
Lu Francis G. (1995) Religious or spiritual problem. A
culturally sensitive diagnostic category in the DSM-IV.
Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Jul;183(7):435-44.
Vich, M.A. (1988) "Some historical sources of the term "transpersonal".
Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 20 (2) 107-110
Walsh, Roger (1989) Psychological Chauvinism and Nuclear
Holocaust: A Response to Albert Ellis and Defense of
Non-Rational Emotive Therapies. Journal of Counseling &
Development; Feb89, Vol. 67 Issue 6, p338
Walsh, R. & Vaughan, F. (1993). On transpersonal
definitions. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 25 (2)
125-182
Whitney, Edward (1998) Personal Accounts : Mania as
Spiritual Emergency. Psychiatric Services 49:1547-1548,
December. American Psychiatric Association
Wilber, Ken (1989) Let's Nuke the Transpersonalists: A
Response to Albert Ellis. Journal of Counseling &
Development, Feb89, Vol. 67 Issue 6, p332
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