Introduction to transpersonal psychology

Transpersonal psychology is a school of psychology that studies the transcendent, or spiritual dimensions of humanity. Among these factors we find such issues as self-development, peak experiences, mystical experiences and the possibility of development beyond traditional ego-boundaries. Thus the interest in human experiences which apparently are 'trans-personal,'or 'trans-egoic'. A short definition from the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology suggests that transpersonal psychology is concerned with 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).

The field is considered by proponents to be the "fourth force"' in the field of psychology, the three other fields being psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and Humanistic psychology. According to transpersonal theory these other schools of psychology have failed to give weight to transpersonal or "transegoic" elements of human existence, such as religious conversion, altered states of consciousness and spirituality, in their academic reflection. Thus, transpersonal psychology strives to combine insights from modern psychology with insights from the world's contemplative traditions, both East and West. The transpersonal and spiritual dimensions of the psyche have traditionally not been a focus of interest for Western psychology, which has mainly focused on the prepersonal and personal aspects of the human psyche (Cowley & Derezotes, 1994; Miller, 1998).

The development of the field
Among the thinkers who are considered to have set the stage for transpersonal studies are William James, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Abraham Maslow, and Roberto Assagioli (Cowley & Derezotes, 1994; Miller, 1998; Davis, 2003). A major motivating factor behind the initiative to establish this school of psychology was Abraham Maslow's already published work regarding human peak experiences. Maslows 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 Stanislav Grof, Ken Wilber, Michael Washburn, Frances Vaughan, Roger Walsh, Stanley Krippner, Michael Murphy, Charles Tart, David Lukoff 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. 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 of Jungian psychology of Carl Jung and his followers including James Hillman's Archetypal psychology) is integrated, at least to some extent, into many psychology departments in US 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), John F. Kennedy University (US), California Institute of Integral Studies (US), Saybrook Institute (US), Naropa University (US) and Liverpool John Moores University (UK). The transpersonal approach is also a part of such organizations as The British Psychological Society, which maintains a separate section addressing the transpersonal perspective. 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 Archetypal psychology by James Hillman), psychosynthesis founded by Roberto Assagioli, and the theories of Abraham Maslow, Stanislav Grof, Ken Wilber, Michael Washburn and Charles Tart.

Transpersonal psychology is sometimes confused with parapsychology, a mistake made due to the overlapping and unconventional research interests of both fields. While parapsychology leans more towards traditional scientific epistemology (laboratory experiments, statistics, research on cognitive states), transpersonal psychology is more closely related to the epistemology of the humanities and the hermeneutic disciplines (humanism, existentialism, phenomenology, anthropology). Transpersonal psychology is also sometimes confused with the New Age. Although the transpersonal perspective grew out of the human potential movement, a movement that many commentators associate with a broad conception of the 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 adressed problematic aspects of New Age hermeneutics.

Research Interests
The transpersonal perspective spans many research interests. The following list is adpated from Scotton, Chinen and Battista (1996) and includes:
 * The contributions of spiritual traditions - Hinduism, Yoga, Buddhism, Shamanism, Jewish Mysticism (Kabbalah), and Christian Mysticism - to psychiatry and psychology
 * Native American healing
 * Aging and adult spiritual development
 * Meditation research and clinical aspects of meditation
 * Consciousness Research
 * Psychedelics and Psychopharmacology
 * Parapsychology
 * Cross-cultural studies and Anthropology
 * Diagnosis of Religious and Spiritual Problems
 * Offensive spirituality and spiritual defenses
 * The treatment of former members of cults
 * Transpersonal Psychotherapy
 * Addiction and recovery
 * Guided-Imagery Therapy
 * Breathwork
 * Dying and near death experience (NDE)
 * Past-Life Therapy
 * Ecological survival

Contributions to the academic field
Although any model of human development can only be understood as an intellectual abstraction of reality, transpersonal psychology has made significant contributions to the understanding of human development and consciousness. While authors like Wilber and Battista tend to emphasize the understanding of development in the form of levels, where each superior level includes and integrates its junior dimensions, theorists like Washburn and Grof tend to emphasize the regressive nature of consciousness. Regressive in the sense that the individual has to integrate the deeper and prerational aspects of the psyche before it can re-enter the stream of development in a healthy fashion (Scotton, Chinen & Battista, 1996).

Wilber's main 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 a somewhat hierarchical grading, of which levels 1-3 are pre-personal levels, levels 4-6 are personal levels and levels 7-9 are transpersonal levels. According to this system each level includes a particular type of personality structuration, and a possible vulnerability to certain pathologies belonging to the 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).

Transpersonal Psychology has brought clinical attention to a number of psychoreligious and psychospiritual problems. Cowley & Derezotes (1994) notes that transpersonal theory has an understanding of spirituality as a dimension that is integral to human nature. That is, as 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 we find problematic experiences related to change in 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, and issues that are considered to transcend ordinary day-to-day reality. Many of these psychological difficulties are usually not discussed by mainstream psychology. Among these problems we find 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). A considerable share of meditation-related problems, for example, might have to do with the fact that the import of Eastern contemplative systems to 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 has 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, who has been more willing to reflect on these important dimensions of human existence (Scotton, Chinen and Battista, 1996). 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. This criticism has been answered by Wilber (1989) and Walsh (1989).

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) believes 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 &mdash; 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 ambit 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.