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.     

An overview of South African psychology

This overview of psychology in South Africa presents a concise and historical account of its science and practice, from its early origins in the late nineteenth century to the present, and traces seminal influences on the discipline. It is a review of how psychology in South Africa developed over more than a century to become one of the most popular subjects in universities and an established and recognized profession, whose members play a variety of roles in the South African polity and larger society. The impact that apartheid racism had on key aspects of psychology's development is traversed, and the influences that previous ruling party politics had on professional psychological organizations are delineated. The unification of psychology under the Psychological Society of South Africa, a few months before the advent of democracy in South Africa, is explicated. The protection of the title of psychologist in law and certain other changes in the legislative environment, enabling a greater role for psychologists, are reported. The primary research sites for psychology and its funding and the main university psychology programs are described, as are the requirements for registration and licensure. The genesis and the importance of the work of internationally acclaimed South African psychologists, such as J. Wolpe and A. A. Lazarus, are contextualized. With the increased participation of progressive black psychologists in leadership and research in the past two decades, a transformed psychology has the potential to play a significant role in addressing human issues confronting South Africa.     

The psychology of leadership revisited: An overview

An overview of the concept of leadership as it appears in social psychology, psychoanalytic theory and group psychotherapy is presented. In the absence of a generally accepted global view of leadership, social psychology has produced limited-domain theories with relevance to group practitioners. Following Freud's early contribution on the subject, psychoanalytic investigators have neglected the subject of group psychology, and with it of leadership, until very recently. Within group psychotherapy some promising research and theorizing have emerged, but there is a need to distinguish between the roles of group leader and group therapist in both theory and practice.This paper was presented at the 1979 Annual Conference of the Eastern Group Psychotherapy Society.     

The history of psychology in former Yugoslavia: An overview

The development of psychology in the country formerly known as Yugoslavia reflects different paths in the three republics of Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia due to their distinct cultural and historical backgrounds. Although Marko Marulić, a Croatian Renaissance humanist, was credited with the introduction of the term “psychology” in the sixteenth century, psychology as a discipline was not introduced until the late nineteenth century. The establishment of psychology in academe and experimental work between the two World Wars were initiated by Yugoslavian students who were educated in prestigious laboratories in the West–Austria, England, France, and Germany. Immediately after World War II Yugoslavian psychology was influenced by Soviet experiences, but a “westward” shift followed Tito's breakup with Stalin. In the context of a unique nonaligned and nondogmatic form of communism, Yugoslavian psychology grew rapidly, providing contributions to diverse and primarily applied fields.     

Understanding the language of thought

Conclusions To conclude then, our question was, What determines the content of a thought? This question gets its punch by being set against the background assumption that thoughts are internal physical occurrences. The answer I have proposed is that thoughts can be classified in four importantly different ways. Introspection yields syntactic categories. These are important for cognitive processing, but they do not correspond to contents. A second way of categorizing thoughts is in terms of narrow content. This is determined by the functional role of the thought in rational architecture together with the way in which that rational architecture is tied to the world through input correlations. Narrow contents are indexical, so to get truth bearers we must augment the narrow contents with the values of the indexical parameters. Propositional content can be taken to consist of pairs of narrow contents and values for indexical parameters. Finally, thoughts can be classified in terms of that clauses. This kind of classification does not uniquely determine propositional content, but describes it in a more general way.     

An overview of scientific visualization techniques applied to experimental psychology

This paper presents an overview of current data visualization techniques. The various types of graphics, such as contour plots, surface plots, scatterplot matrices, and dynamic spinning, are described. Then, using a data set typical of the field, the potential merits and pitfalls of each visualization technique are presented in terms of what aspects of the data they make explicit. The results illustrate the benefits that a psychological researcher can expect from data visualization capabilities.     

Epistemological beliefs and thinking about everyday controversial issues

The authors investigated the relationship between individuals' beliefs about the nature of knowledge and the nature of learning (epistemological beliefs) and their thinking about everyday controversial issues. Adults (N = 174) ranging in age from 17 to 71 years old with a mean age of 38 completed the Schommer Epistemological Questionnaire (M. Schommer, 1990), which assessed their beliefs in the certainty and organization of knowledge and the speed and control of learning. After they had completed the questionnaire, they responded to a series of questions about two controversial issues that had been discussed in the local newspaper. Regression analyses indicated that the more the participants believed in complex and tentative knowledge, the more likely they were to take on multiple perspectives, be willing to modify their thinking, withhold ultimate decisions until all information was available, and acknowledge the complex, tentative nature of everyday issues. Epistemological beliefs that are heavily influenced by a higher level of education appear to relate to thinking beyond the classroom, and introducing controversial issues into the curriculum may reciprocally foster the development of epistemological beliefs.     

Ethical issues in exercise psychology

Exercise psychology encompasses the disciplines of psychiatry, clinical and counseling psychology, health promotion, and the movement sciences. This emerging field involves diverse mental health issues, theories, and general information related to physical activity and exercise. Numerous research investigations across the past 20 years have shown both physical and psychological benefits from physical activity and exercise. Exercise psychology offers many opportunities for growth while positively influencing the mental and physical health of individuals, communities, and society. However, the exercise psychology literature has not addressed ethical issues or dilemmas faced by mental health professionals providing exercise psychology services. This initial discussion of ethical issues in exercise psychology is an important step in continuing to move the field forward. Specifically, this article will address the emergence of exercise psychology and current health behaviors and offer an overview of ethics and ethical issues, education/training and professional competency, cultural and ethnic diversity, multiple-role relationships and conflicts of interest, dependency issues, confidentiality and recording keeping, and advertisement and self-promotion.     

Conceptual dependency as the language of thought

Roger Schank's research in AI takes seriously the ideas that understanding natural language involves mapping its expressions into an internal representation scheme and that these internal representations have a syntax appropriate for computational operations. It therefore falls within the computational approach to the study of mind. This paper discusses certain aspects of Schank's approach in order to assess its potential adequacy as a (partial) model of cognition. This version of the Language of Thought hypothesis encounters some of the same difficulties that arise for Fodor's account.An ancestor of this paper was written while I was on sabbatical leave from the University of Michigan, Flint, during which time I held a fellowship in the Computer Science Department of Wright State University. Revisions were made while I held a Visiting Lectureship at the University of Waikato. I am grateful to these three institutions for their support, and to James H. Fetzer, David Hemmendinger, and Edwin Hung for helpful comments on earlier versions.