An overview of transpersonal psychology

Abstract

An overview of transpersonal psychology is provided with specific focus on a number of its central themes (nonduality, intrinsic health, self‐transcendence, and inclusivity) and practices (meditation, ritual, and inquiry). The relationship of transpersonal psychology to both mainstream psychology and spiritual wisdom traditions is discussed. The field's implications for diversity issues, research, and service applications are also considered.     

The Phenomenology of erwin Straus: An overview and appraisal of its relevance for human studies

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the veridicality of nonconventional cognitions as they pertain to transpersonal psychological inquiry. It is argued that the validation and efficacy of transpersonal constructs are dependent upon the manner by which they are theoretically and empirically supported, namely, accurately conceptualized and operationalized, and not metaphysicalized. Salient impediments germane to the study of transpersonal phenomena are also reviewed with the concomitant assumption that their ontological and epistemological status should be consistent with objective, nomothetic, empiricism. In response to this scientific appropriation, one measurement instrument is discussed, the Self‐Expansiveness Level Form (SELF; Friedman, 1981; 1983), which is both reliable and valid in measuring transpersonal‐like phenomenon. Taking into consideration these notions, this paper closes with a discussion on the implications of this measurement scale to the field of transpersonal psychology as well as to conventional psychological research and clinical applications.     

Meditation and psychosocial adaptation: An exploratory study

The current study examined differential patterns of interrelationships between meditators and nonmeditators on issues pertaining to psychosocial adaptation. Subjects (N=66) were randomly selected from mailing lists provided by theAssociation of Transpersonal Psychology or were solicited via classified advertising in theChicago Tribune and theDallas Morning News. The findings of the current study indicate that there are no differences between meditators and nonmeditators on level of psychosocial adaptation. However examination of the zero-order correlations between dependent measures revealed differential patterns of interrelationships within the meditator and nonmeditator groups. The findings suggest that further research is needed which expands upon the influence of meditation on psychosocial adaptation by addressing topics specific to meditative practice. The implications for the development of qualitative research methods designed to investigate psychosocial parameters in transpersonal psychology are discussed.     

向整合的超个人心理学

超个人心理学是20世纪60年代末在美国兴起的一种心理学流派。它认为个体能够通过对自我潜能的发掘,通过对意识状态的扩充,达到超越自我,超越时空的所谓超个人状态。本文追溯了超个人心理学产生的历史渊源,阐释了其基本理论框架和研究特点,从历史与现实、理论与实验相结合的角度探讨了这一学派的一些最新研究成果,如转换的意识状态,意识谱理论,沉思的研究与训练,揭示了当代西方心理学正在走向整合的新趋向。     

Transpersonal psychology,physical health,and mental health: Theory,research, and practice

Abstract

Throughout its existence, transpersonal psychology has held a strong interest in exploring the implications of consciousness and spirituality for health, both physical and mental. This article provides a brief overview of the theoretical, empirical, and clinical contributions of transpersonal psychology to the understanding and facilitation of human health and well‐being. It also critiques the methodological basis of some of these contributions, concluding that transpersonal psychological studies of the relationship between spirituality and health are still in their infancy and that practitioners interested in using approaches based on these findings need to exercise caution as well as excitement about the interesting developments unfolding at an ever increasing rate.     

Living stories: Modern storytelling as a call for connection

Abstract

This article presents an intuitive inquiry into storytelling using creative arts and media within the context of modern culture. Taken from a relational and transpersonal perspective, the Living Stories style of personal storytelling is explored and developed in response to the need for connection expressed in the culture‐at‐large and to create opportunities for transformation. The research question asks, What makes storytelling elicit compassionate connection? The researcher engages in a creative and collaborative storytelling process with 1 storyteller who shares her breast cancer experience over the course of several years. The resulting story is presented to 95 participants via an interactive mixed media gallery exhibition featuring photography, poetry, and music, and stations where feedback is invited. Data includes questionnaire and creative expression responses from participants and researcher observation. Key findings include (a) participant reports of participatory knowing and transpersonal phenomena, including the experience of interconnection; (b) emotional narrative as an essential storytelling feature; (c) photography as a visual anchor; and (d) the story as inseparable from the act of storytelling. Study findings expand the storytelling definition to include modern forms whereby the storyteller is not present and suggest applications in television, film, digital storytelling, and community.     

A response to Nordstrom and pilgrim's critique of Alan watts’ mysticism

Abstract

Experiencing the sacred is a paradigmatic spiritual phenomenon, revered across diverse eras and cultures. This empirical research is a human scientific inquiry into the sacred in everyday life. In‐depth interviews are interpreted via a rigorous phenomenological method. A dialogue involving transpersonal psychology, existential phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and the world's spiritual traditions is presented, including an appreciation and critique of Freud's interpretation of religion. Revelation and awareness of an essential, interpermeating communion between self and world constitutes the core of experiencing the sacred. This involves a metamorphosis from an egoic to transpersonal self‐sense and way of being.     

Transpersonal approaches to counseling

The transpersonal movement is concerned with expanding the personal boundaries of individuals to facilitate mind and body self-control through various unusual modes, such as autogenic feedback, hypnosis, yoga, and meditation. This article discusses transpersonal approaches to counseling with emphasis on the possibilities of using suggestion, relaxation, hypnosis, imagery, and dreams. The author offers a concept of transpersonal counseling in which children would be trained to control their own mental, emotional, and physiological processes.     

Exploring mystery: can Christian meditation at school nurture students’ relationships with God?

ABSTRACT

While there is growing international interest in meditation and mindfulness initiatives in schools, little research has focused on exploring the impact of such practices on students’ spirituality. This paper reports data from a mixed method study involving primary school classes engaged in the regular practice of Christian meditation between Years 4 to 6 in Catholic schools in New South Wales, Australia. Student focus group data (n = 114 students) and a student survey (n = 250 students) suggest Christian meditation offers an inclusive and ‘hospitable’ space for many students, where their spiritual well-being can be nurtured, including their connection to God. However, the findings suggest that accompanying dialogue with students around the purpose and possibilities of Christian meditation may help to better situate the practice as a ‘hospitable space’ thus enabling deeper engagement with the spiritual in contemporary Catholic classrooms.     

Journal review: Methods: A Journal for human science

Abstract

A model of transpersonal human development is described. This model links higher levels of later development back to earlier levels by a spiral movement. By such a developmental shift, a restorative return can lead beyond ego development toward a goal of transpersonal, whole psyche integration.     

Stimulated brains and meditative minds: A systematic review on combining low intensity transcranial electrical stimulation and meditation in humans

BackgroundLow intensity transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) and meditation are two promising, yet variable, non-pharmacological interventions. Growing research is investigating combined effects of both techniques on one's cognitive, emotional, and physical health.ObjectiveThis article reviews the current research that combines tES and meditation interventions in healthy and diseased participants. The review considers the intervention parameters and their effects in a well-organized manner.MethodA systematic search for clinical and experimental published studies was conducted in the PubMed, Cochrane, and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) databases using common keywords for tES and for meditation techniques well defined by previous studies. Unpublished ongoing studies were identified with the ClinicalTrials.gov and DRKS.de clinical trial websites.Results20 published studies and 13 ongoing studies were included for qualitative analysis. 13 published articles studied patients with chronic pain, psychological disorders, cognitive impairment, and movement disorders. Anodal tDCS was the only tES technique while mindfulness meditation was the most common meditation type. Eight studies had a main group effect, with outcome improvement in the active combined intervention. However, most published studies showed improvements after at least one combined intervention with variable effects.ConclusionPairing anodal tDCS with meditation shows promising improvements of the physical, mental, and emotional aspects of daily life. Further studies are required to confirm the relevance of this combination in the clinic.     

Whitehead and Wilber: Contrasts in theory

Abstract

The question of how to interpret the ideas and evidence from the transpersonal realm has been a challenge to western psychology since its inception. This article illustrates how process philosophy, as developed by Alfred North Whitehead, can serve as a theoretical foundation for transpersonal psychology. Making it especially qualified for this role are process philosophy's unique approach to the nature of experience, its openness to spiritual matters, and its ability to offer a single framework of thought capable of integrating these issues with the concerns of the scientific and academic communities as well as our experience of everyday life. Following the introduction of some of Whitehead's basic ideas that illustrate this philosophy's relevance to psychological and transpersonal metatheory, aspects of Ken Wilber's new work are examined and criticized from a Whiteheadian perspective.     

Harry stack sullivan: Opening the door for a transpersonal vision?

Abstract

As an apparently typical neo‐Freudian theorist, Harry Stack Sullivan may appear to have had little to offer to the development of transpersonal thought. Yet a closer examination of his work reveals several elements in his theorizing that (1) are surprising, given his intellectual heritage, and (2) allow for the extension of his theorizing in the direction of a transpersonal perspective. Sullivan's views on the nature and origin of anxiety, the inescapability of anxiety, empathy, and the need for sleep are examined with an eye toward parallels between his views and a transpersonal perspective. It is suggested that these elements of Sullivan's work provide a type of bridge between conventional and transpersonal perspectives on self and personality development.     

Engaging the anomalous: reflections from the anthropology of the paranormal

Abstract

This review article looks at some of the parallels between the contents of this special issue on the paranormal and insights from the anthropology of religion, the anthropology of consciousness, transpersonal anthropology and the anthropology of the paranormal. The paper introduces the history of anthropology’s engagement with the paranormal, from the early evolutionist perspectives of anthropology’s pioneers to the most recent experiential approaches of the anthropology of consciousness. The paper concludes by highlighting the potential benefits of a cross-pollination of psychotherapeutic and anthropological research on the paranormal.     

Nimitta and visual methods in Siamese and Lao meditation traditions from the 17th century to the present day

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on a range of meditation practices in Siam and Laos from the early sixteenth century to the present, using primarily published materials from the early twentieth century, especially a survey of traditional or boran meditation published in 1936 by the Thammayut monk Phramahachoti Jai Yasothararat (1897–1963). The works he compiled stem from high-ranking Lao and Siamese clerics including three Supreme Patriarchs: Sivisuddhisom (Laos; sixteenth century), Suk (Siam; 1733–1822) and Don (Siam; 1771–1852). All are examples of what might be called the boran kammatthan, i.e. a traditional and somewhat technical form of meditation that had flourished widely prior to the encroachment of monastic and social reforms, eventually losing out to Burmese Vipassana and Thai Forest tradition meditation techniques. To facilitate the comparison, the study focuses on nimitta and other visual aspects of meditation in the systems, revealing considerable diversity even within boran kammatthan. Continuities with contemporary meditation systems amongst three living traditions are then explored. These include meditation lineages at Wat Ratchasittharam, Wat Pradusongtham and the network of temples that adopt Sodh Candasaro’s (1884–1959) Dhammakaya meditation method.     

A Scientific Theory of the Development of Meditation in Practicing Individuals: Patañjali’s Yoga,Developmental Psychology,and Neurobiology

This article considers the psychology of meditation and other introverted forms of mystical development from a neo-Piagetian perspective, which has commonalities with biogenetic structuralist and neurotheological approaches. Evidence is found that lines of meditative development unfold through Patañjali’s stages at different rates in an echo of the unfolding of lines of cognitive development through Piaget’s stages at different rates. Similar factors predicting the degree of independence of development apply to both conventional cognitive and meditative contents. As the same brain and the same nervous system are involved in both cognitive developmental psychology and meditation there are likely to be commonalities between conventional psychological and transpersonal development. Neo-Piagetian transpersonal psychology predicts a variable landscape of spiritual development across traditions and individuals, in line with variability in the cultural learning environment.     

Via Kundalini: Psychosomatic excursions in transpersonal psychology

Abstract

A model of psychosomatic mysticism (PM) is proposed that reintroduces the body into transpersonal psychology. The argument for PM develops links between transpersonal psychology and neuroimmunology and includes scientific notions of the mind as embodied not just in the brain but more widely throughout the body, as well as the comparative analyses of perspectives on the body in various spiritual traditions. PM is used to examine how transpersonal psychology can integrate the body, thus meeting the goals of the clinician, the standards of the researcher, and the emerging needs of psychosomatic medicine. The core principles of PM are explicated, such as: 1) decentralized consciousness, 2) structural phenomenological correlations between the psyche and the body, 3) in‐depth understanding of energy as intentionality, and 4) the possibility of actualizing cosmic awareness in the individual psyche. Examples of the clinical use of psychospiritual practices of PM show practical applications of these principles. It is concluded that the studies of the embodied consciousness and subtle energies through PM can help to develop both transpersonal theory and applications.     

Meditation,well-being and cognition in heartfulness meditators – A pilot study

Meditative practices can vary considerably in technique as well as their effects. Heartfulness is a popular meditation technique that includes in its repertoire, a unique passive form of meditation. We carried out a pilot study recruiting male heartfulness meditators (proficient n = 24, with 6–28 years of meditation experience; novice n = 24, 5 to 16 months of experience) and subsequently recruited matched controls (n = 15). We examined well-being, and carried out high-density EEG recordings to examine indices of meditation and cognition in these groups. Well-being scores were significantly higher for the proficient meditators as compared to novice and intermediate for the controls. We did not find any group differences in cognitive processing. During meditation, enhanced occipital gamma was found in proficient meditators as compared to controls. We discuss the findings from this pilot study and suggest avenues for future research.