TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY

Miles E. Drake, Jr., M.D., Ph.D.

INTRODUCTION

Transpersonal Psychology is the branch of the discipline of Psychology that deals with spiritual and transcendant experiences. It is one of the newer branches of psychological science; its pioneering practitioners and theorists began to publish their work in the 1960s, its professional organizations and journals date mostly from the 1970s and after a period of hiatus the field has begun to show new growth in the early 21st century (Davis, 2003). It is still not fully recognized by some organizations, including the American Psychological Association, and there has been criticism of its tenets and methods, but there is increasing recognition of the role that transpersonal psychology can play in the understanding of spiritual experiences and transformation (Caplan, 2009).

Although a relatively new field, psychological aspects of spiritual experiences were first studied at the turn of the 20th century, and writers on the history of the transpersonal movement have argued that awareness of and receptiveness to spiritual dimensions was greater in 19th and early 20th century medicine and psychology was greater than is generally realized, and perhaps than in modern scientific psychology and psychiatry (Ryan, 2008). The antecedents of transpersonal psychology emerged in subsequent decades from several other schools of psychology, chiefly psychoanalysis, behaviorism and humanistic psychology (Grof, 2008). This review will summarize some in more or less chronological order some of the psychiatric and psychological antecedents of transpersonal psychology, review the major tenets of humanistic psychology and the emergence of the transpersonal field from that branch of psychology, outline the extensive research in nonordinary states of consciousness that has been a major contributor to transpersonal therapy and consider in a necessarily limited way the development of integral psychology and psychotherapy, a recent permutation of the transpersonal approach that integrates insights from Eastern philosophical and spiritual traditions.

WHAT TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY IS

The more or less official definition of transpersonal psychology from its chief journal is the branch of the discipline that “is concerned with the study of humanity’s higher potential and with the recognition, understanding and realization of unitive, spiritual and transcendent states of consciousness” (Lajoie & Shapiro, 1992). These authors also reviewed some 40 definitions of the field published between 1969 and 1991 and identified 5 predominant areas of inquiry: spirituality, transcendence, that which is beyond the ego or the personal self, the achievement of a higher or ultimate potential and the manifestations and mechanisms of altered or alternative states of consciousness. An overarching theme of experiences outside the usual realm of consciousness and development beyond the individual person or self was identified by Walsh and Vaughan (1993). They also sought to distinguish transpersonal psychology from perennialism or the perennial philosophy, a doctrine which holds that all belief systems and religious doctrines share an underling universal truth which is expressed in different ways in different systems (Huxley, 1945). A third analysis of the many definitions of transpersonal psychology (Hartelius, Caplan & Rardin, 2007) suggested that the field grew from the study of altered states of consciousness to investigate the mechanisms by which wholeness and transformation are achieved.

Transpersonal psychology has also been labeled “personal plus” because it “adds those dimensions of deeper or higher human experience that transcend the ordinary or the average” (Wilber, 2007). Its clinical

domain has been suggested to be “the realm of the human spirit, that part of humanity that is not limited to bodily experience” (Scotton, 2007a). The British Psychological Association considers that this branch of the discipline deals with “those areas of the human mind which search for higher meanings in life, and which move beyond the limited boundaries of the ego to access an enhanced capacity for wisdom, creativity, unconditional love and compassion” . Specifically, transpersonal psychology focuses on the nature of transpersonal experiences, the transpersonal impact of the creative arts, models of the mind that reflect spiritual and mystical traditions, spiritual and mystical practices such as meditation or ritual and the transformations that they can induce, transpersonal techniques in psychotherapy and spiritual healing, the psychology of religion and spirituality, paranormal phenomena such as extrasensory perception or near-death experiences, and transpersonal approaches to the environment and to societal problems (British Psychological Society, 2014). Frager and Fadiman (2005) suggested that transpersonal psychology encompasses a continuum of behavior ranging from mental illness and maladjustment to normal healthy behavior with a superimposed “serious scholarly interest in the immanent and transcendant dimensions of human experience: exceptional human functioning, experiences, performances and achievements, true genius, the nature and meaning of deep religious and mystical experiences, non-ordinary states of consciousness, and how we might foster the fulfillment of our highest potentials as human beings.”

WHAT TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY IS NOT

With the proliferation of definitions, it may be easier to define what transpersonal psychology is not about, is not concerned with and does not do (Tartakovsky, 2011). It does not have specific tools or methods, but uses the tools and methods of psychological movements from which it is derived. The therapist is not considered an expert, although many of its practitioners are highly distinguished psychologists and psychiatrists, but rather a facilitator who helps the client uncover his or her own truth and reflects the client’s truth with as little imposition as possible. Transpersonal psychology also does not involve interpreting or judging the client’s experiences. Although transcendental and immanent experiences are often associated with religion, transpersonal psychology is not or should not be related to theology. Similarly, although some of the tenets of transpersonal psychology overlap with the “New Age” movement, transpersonal psychotherapy is not necessarily a countercultural manifestation. Finally, although the transpersonal school of psychology was founded in California and is still principally centered there, the insights of the transpersonal field are not or should not be restricted to that milieu and culture.

WILLIAM JAMES AND THE ORIGIN OF TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY

The Association for Transpersonal Psychology celebrated the centennial of the field at its conference in 2006, dating the history of the transpersonal thought from the coining of the term by William James in 1905. The first use of the term “transpersonal” is thought to have been in a series of Psychology lectures given at Harvard University, and the word was actually hyphenated and restricted in meaning, intending to clarify the word “objective”, specifically the situation in which two people perceive an object: when “your object is also my object”, James wrote, the object is “trans-personal” (Vich, 1998). The same lecture also included the terms “trans-visible”, “trans-palpable” and “trans-mental” to refer to realities outside the realm of normal perception, possibly unknowable by the usual forms of cognition and inexplicable by the customary uses of science (Perry, 1935). Although the founders of transpersonal psychology have generally listed Jung, Rank, Rogers and others as their progenitors, the earliest transpersonal writers cited James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience as a seminal influence in the consideration of mental processes outside of usual consciousness (Harman, 1969), and later essays have

pointed to the 1901 and 1902 Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh as the birth of both that book and of transpersonal psychology (Daniels, 2005).

James was first trained as a chemist and then attended medical school, and was first engaged at Harvard to teach anatomy and physiology. His early work was as much neurological as psychological, and the psychology laboratory that he established at Harvard , the first in the United States, was modeled on the experimental facilities at German universities. He stated at the time of publication of his first important work, The Principles of Psychology, that he sought to make psychology into a natural science by treating it like one. In the philosophical writings in subsequent years, James came to be identified with “radical empiricism” and the Pragmatic school, which he felt would introduce the influence of Darwin into philosophy (Richardson, 2006).

In his own life and later writings, however, James gave indications of important spiritual inclinations and experiences. His father was a noted religious philosopher and follower of the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, and the family’s social circles included Emerson and other transcendentalists . James was frequently affected by depression and reported that religious and spiritual thoughts and activities were the only remedy for this; he joined the Theosophical Society of Madame Blavatsky in 1872. A particular spiritual crisis occurred in his 29th year, perhaps precipitated by the death of a cousin with whom he was in love, and he wrote later that he “should have grown really insane” and that this struggle “had a religious bearing” (Allen, 1967). He subsequently consulted homeopathic and naturopathic practitioners on various health questions, underwent hypnosis for the alleviation of depression, and first studied and corresponded with individuals who had had experiences of altered consciousness under the influence of chloroform, ether or nitrous oxide anesthesia and then took nitrous oxide himself in order to experience an “artificial mystic state of mind”. James also recorded several mystical experiences without pharmacological assistance, most notably during trips to the Adirondack mountains and in the Swiss Alps.

James became acquainted with the Society for Psychical Research while visiting Britain in 1883, and in the following year was one of the founders of an American society aimed at the investigation of paranormal phenomena, and was for many years the vice-president of the combined society formed by the merger of the two psychical societies. James also provided many Harvard students for hypnosis as part of the society’s inquiries into spiritualism, and became acquainted through the organization with F.W.H. Myers, who postulated the existence of a “subliminal self” before the identification of the subconscious by psychoanalysis, coined the term “telepathy” and was the first to study near-death experiences. Myers’s work with paranormal phenomena came to be discredited by his support of the British medium Eusepia Palladino, who was caught faking psychic events at Cambridge séances, but James had better luck with Mrs. Leonora Piper and published numerous reports in collaboration with her concerning automatic writing, thought transference, multiple personalities and spirit apparitions. James considered her not to be a charlatan and to have exhibited telepathy but could not find evidence to support her claims of “spirit control”, although she was viewed with increasing skepticism by G. Stanley Hall, C.E.M. Hansel and others who studied her during and after a long spiritualistic career that lasted until her death at 93 in 1950 (Ryan, 2008).

James also endorsed the theories of Gustav Theodor Fechner, the founder of pschophysics and pioneer of exact measurement of psychical phenomena as well as an early advocate of panpsychism, the concept that all matter had some form of consciousness, most of it beyond that of humanity; James wrote the introduction for the English version of Fechner’s The Little Book of Life After Death, and commented sympathetically on Fechner’s view of a universe “everywhere alive and conscious” and an “earth-soul or earth-consciousness” that subsumes the consciousness of individual life forms in his late philosophical

work A Plural Universe. Finally, James’s writings and journals indicate a long-standing familiarity with many tenets of Eastern religions and philosophies, at a time when these were not generally known or widely embraced in Europe or America, and he advocated yoga, relaxation techniques and meditation as a means of inculcating “watchfulness”, which might today be called “mindfulness”, as well as achieving “calmness and harmony in your own person” (Taylor, 1996a).

James came to view the spiritual dimension of psychology as so important that he testified before the Massachusetts legislature in opposition to legislation limiting the practice of faith healing and restricting the practice of psychotherapy to medical doctors, arguing that “exceptional mental states” were crucial to understanding the normal and abnormal psyche and advocating “the comparative study of trances and subconscious states”. His association with concepts later subsumed under transpersonal psychology brought him the disapproval of many in the psychological profession: at the famous 1909 Clark University conference that occasioned Freud’s only visit to the United States, Jung observed that “James was not taken quite seriously on account of his interest in Mrs. Piper and her extra-sensory perceptions” (Ryan, 2008).

James’s principal contributions to the modern transpersonal school may have been as a moderating influence on the mechanistic approach and apparatus of the exact sciences that he had earlier done so much to introduce into the discipline of psychology. His philosophical works dealing with religious belief and experience, his increasing interest in “consciousness beyond the margin”, his support for the subliminal consciousness of Myers and others a decade before Studies in Hysteria and almost two decades before The Interpretation of Dreams and his advocacy of the universal consciousness proposed by Fechner almost a century before the collective unconscious, and his attempts to amalgamate Eastern and Western views of mental function were important influences on the foundations of transpersonal psychology. Although neither a medical nor a psychotherapy practitioner, he made along with Jung and important clinical contribution in his recognition that “the sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature”; the “willingness to believe” in a higher power is crucial to most successful addiction recovery programs, and Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson explicitly cited The Varieties of Religious Experience from the earliest days of its operation (Taylor, 1996b).

THE INFLUENCE OF CARL JUNG ON TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY

Carl Gustav Jung was most often cited by the founders of transpersonal psychology as their progenitor. James may have used the word first, but Jung’s concept of the überpersonliche unconscious can also be rendered as “transpersonal”. In some respects, Jung’s life paralleled that of James, with a religious background as the son of a Reformed minister and the scion of a family of Swiss clergymen and an intense youthful religious interest that was replaced by disappointment and disaffection as he grew older. It has been suggested, not least by Jung himself, that his subsequent life and career was a series of attempts to find a replacement for that lost religious faith (Jung, 1989). The early death of his father and the experiences of university life and medical school were the first such attempt, and the decision to enter the specialty of Psychiatry, which was then widely regarded as unscientific and unpromising, and to study and work under Krafft-Ebing and Bleuler, two of the relatively few academic clinicians who did not think this, was a second effort. His intense attachment to Sigmund Freud and the psychoanalytical movement is likely to represent a third attempt at immersion in something larger than himself, and although he broke acrimoniously with Freud and the movement that became psychoanalysis, Jung’s own term for his works was the very similar “analytical psychology” (Storr, 1998).

In another parallel with James, Jung had mystical and paranormal experiences, one of them notably during an early visit to Freud, when a crash was heard from a bookcase while the two were discussing paranormal phenomena. Jung expressed the feeling that the noise and the discussion were related and predicted that further crashes would occur, while Freud disagreed; Freud later wrote to Jung that the noises had continued after Jung had departed, which suggested that the sounds and their discussion were unrelated, while Jung was led by this experience to enunciate the idea of synchronicity or “meaningful coincidences”. Jung also experienced a period of mental symptoms that some have suggested was a psychotic episode after breaking with Freud, and in response to this and periodically thereafter carried out on himself the kind of analysis he was developing with his patients. This included writing, painting, carving and playing in sand, techniques that would come to be integral parts of Jungian therapy. During this time he also began to dream about and later to converse with Egyptians, Greeks, early Christian Gnostics and medieval Cathars and alchemists, who influenced and in some cases purportedly composed through automatic writing some of the works that are cited today as contributions to transpersonal psychology (Scotton, 2007b).

Jung early became interested in altered states of consciousness through the analysis of his cousin, Helene Preiswerk, who had periodic trances, and this led him to the view that the psyche contained semi-independent entities he called “autonomous feeling-toned complexes”, which were separate from the ego and from conscious awareness but had within them particular and specific patterns of thought and emotional content . He also prefigured the transpersonal movement with an early interest in mysticism, alchemy and the perspectives of other cultures. He traveled increasingly in Asia and Africa and encouraged the publication of European editions of mystical texts from China, India and Tibet, writing introductions or commentaries for several of them. In addition he collected alchemical texts, and in his writings espoused alchemy as not just a fruitless effort to make gold out of dross but as a symbol for psychic development and transformation. Finally, he experienced a near-death experience with a 1944 myocardial infarction, and had spiritual experiences during his convalescence and subsequently took a more transpersonal turn in his later writings (Scotton, 2007b).

In his autobiography Jung (1989) wrote that “my life is the story of the self-realization of the unconscious”, a lifelong process of continuing development that he termed “individuation”. The insights that Jung passed, through some historical intermediaries, to transpersonal psychology were chiefly that human potential was not merely determined by the experiences of infancy and childhood, and that the unconscious could and should be examined in adulthood with transformative effect . He in fact postulated two forms of the unconscious, the personal and the “suprapersonal” or collective. The first of these, analogous to the Freudian unconscious, contains memories, feelings and beliefs that are not conscious but can be accessed by thinking about them (“preconscious”), as well as other material that requires effort or an external stimulus to recall (“subconscious”). The latter consists of daily experiences, some of them uncomfortable or traumatic, some of them never to be recalled again and some of them disagreeable if consciously remembered. A major difference between Jung and Freud was the second type of unconsciousness, which was independent of and deeper than individual experience, determined by brain structure and shared with the rest of humankind (Mitchell, 2014).

The collective unconscious, by contrast, contains drives, instincts and patterns of behavior that all people share, and is both the genetically-determined residue of previous human history and a dynamic entity which present-day humans can access by psychical means. The common and variously-defined clinical entity of a “complex” was thought to represent a “node in the unconscious”, unconscious feelings and beliefs manifested indirectly as otherwise puzzling behavior; complexes could be projected onto others and cause erroneous perceptions, or drain the conscious ego of energy and cause maladjustment, and

could be relieved by appropriate confrontation. The many kinds of complexes were thought to arise from either internal conflict or external trauma but to originate in deep patterns of life and experience that comprised an inherited human memory, presumably subserved by deep anatomical structure s and termed archetypes (Colombos, 2014).

Archetypes were defined as innate predispositions that are the substrate of human experience, and when joined with memories and interpretations form complexes. Jung proposed that these are physiological systems analogous to the physical organisms although anatomically not as precise, organizing and directing thought and behavior by activating sequences of neurological events which were termed stages of life. Each life stage was called forth by an archetypal imperative seeking fulfillment through action, and these imperatives are reflected in the instincts and myths of human beings as well as their symbols and rituals in different cultures, such as those of childhood, initiation, courtship and marriage, parenting and death (Mitchell, 2014).

Jung (1964) and his later adherents (Campbell, 2008) suggested that individuals have particular archetypes that are predominant in their personalities and lives, but this differentiation and the relationship of the archetypes to human experience has sometimes been unclear because what have been called “archetypes” are actually what Jung called in other writings “primordial images”. The commonly-cited archetypes such as Mother, Hero, Wise Man and Goddess are in fact crystallized images, around which traumatic experiences form complexes if they cannot be assimilated by the ego. The complex serves to defend the ego against pain, but replicates troublesome figures that can repeat troubled relationships and can result in inappropriate behavior in certain situations. Complexes were felt to be universal but to vary in different clinical circumstances, and some of them like “inferiority complex” have entered the general vocabulary. The concept of complexes was largely dropped by psychotherapists and psychoanalysts during the years in which Jung became a more marginal figure, but reappeared in the transpersonal literature through therapeutic experiments with LSD and other psychedelic drugs (Yensen & Dryer, 2007). Complexes have been rehabilitated to some degree in the psychoanalytic literature under the rubric of “internalized object relationships”. Because the complex is outside of the conscious ego, its archetypal core can be approached with psychotherapy and may permit the patient or client to have a numinous experience, one which is imbued with transcendent energy, and thereby experience significant relief of symptoms as their basis becomes conscious (Scotton, 2007b).

Complexes are generally bipolar, with one complex often paired with another complementary one. Jung suggested that the psyche was dominated by such dichotomies, and that the mind did not perceive singular qualities but appreciated them in relation to their opposites. Reconciliation of opposites has been a prominent feature of both psychoanalysis and analytical psychology. Other important concepts of the Jungian system include the Self and the Persona. These were thought to be components of the conscious mind along with Ego, which predominates in early life but in the normal state or with successful analytic work comes to act increasingly for the benefit of the Self, which was conceptualized as the archetype of wholeness and is ideally part of an ego-self axis during the second half of life (Jung, 1964). The Self, like other archetypes, is also part of the collective unconscious. The Persona, named after the masks worn in Greek theater, was proposed as a component of consciousness which acts on behalf of the Ego to present an optimal appearance to the world and to generate polite and socially acceptable behaviors (Colombos, 2014).

Animus and anima are clinically important aspects of Jung’s theories, and represent the male aspect present in every woman and the female traits present in every man, respectively. These often figure in dreams as individuals of the opposite sex, and serve the therapist as a guide to other areas of the psyche. The animus and anima, too, have passed into the general consciousness even as some therapists have

criticized them as too closely associated with the 20th century European culture in which Jung lived: it is very common, for example, for modern men to aspire to be in better touch with their feminine sides. The other Jungian character of importance is the Shadow, which refers to the aspects of the Self that are outside conscious awareness, especially characteristics that are unlike the Persona and are therefore unwanted and repressed. The Shadow is often a strange and ominous figure in dreams, and is used by therapists as an indication of the projection of bad characteristics onto others, which when recognized can be curtailed with subsequent improvement (Scotton, 2007b).

The libido is generally recognized, but usually in the Freudian sexual incarnation. Jung envisioned libido as life energy, a concept similar to the Eastern traditions in which he was increasingly interested during his life. His principal interest, however, was in individuation, the development of individual identity and ego security followed by the subordination of the personally-centered ego to the humanity-centered Self. This ego transcendence was to be accomplished with the guidance of the Self, sometimes with spiritual assistance as Jung himself received from his Hellenic interlocutor Philemon and assorted other apparitions, and sometimes from transpersonal symbols, whether derived from the individual’s cultural background or the product of the psyche. The absence of spiritual experience was thought to be an indication of developmental arrest (Mitchell, 2014).

Jung’s contributions have in recent years been undervalued, partly due to his philosophical breadth and partly because of an unfortunate tendency toward obscurity in writing; he was also tarred in a way that Freud could not be with the Nazi brush because of misguided statements in praise of a supposed “German psyche”, but the evidence suggests that any objectionable comments arose during his bitter estrangement from Freud and that he repented of these statements, rejected the philosophy of National Socialism and acknowledged his error and reconciled with Judaism and Jewish colleagues (Kirsch, 1991). In his recent survey of The German Genius, historian Peter Watson (2010) dismissed Jung as the “most overrated” German-speaking thinker of the 20th century.

Along with William James, Jung is generally credited with a major contribution to what may be the greatest success of transpersonal psychology, the widespread success of drug and alcohol rehabilitation through the spiritual awakening engendered by 12-step programs. Rhode Island industrialist Rowland Hathaway, intermittently disabled by alcohol abuse since the First World War, consulted Jung around 1931 and was told that his only hope for recovery was a “vital spiritual experience”, which Jung had on occasion observed to be efficacious for otherwise-hopeless alcoholism. Hathaway returned to the United States, joined the spiritually-oriented Oxford Group and achieved sobriety; he later saved his dipsomaniac neighbor Ebby Thatcher from commitment for alcoholism, involved Thatcher in the Oxford Group and gave him James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience. Ebby Thatcher transmitted this message, and apparently gave that copy of the James book, to his childhood friend Bill Wilson, then in the depths of alcoholic ruin and despair, in November, 1934, which resulted in the establishment of Alcoholics Anonymous. Wilson wrote a letter of appreciation to Jung in 1961, which was not sent on account of Jung’s death (Kurtz, 1991).

FREUDIAN INFLUENCES ON TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY

Sigmund Freud was believed to have little patience with transpersonal experiences; the story about the noises heard during his conversation with Jung has been recounted, and during their ocean voyage to the famous Clark University conference on Psychology in 1909 Jung proposed that they analyze each other’s dreams, but Freud wished only to analyze and not to be analyzed (Scotton, 2007b). The early figures in transpersonal psychology defined the discipline largely in opposition to psychoanalysis as well as the school of behaviorism (Grof, 2008). Some of Freud’s writings, such as The Future of an Illusion and

Moses and Monotheism are antipathetic to religion and critical of spiritual experience, but several contributions to current transpersonal psychology have been recognized, and some writers in the field are “still trying to sort out where Freud’s contributions begin and where his misunderstandings end” (Epstein, 2007).

Freud is credited in transpersonal circles with the association of oceanic feelings, which he associated with primary narcicissm and the union at the breast of mother and infant, with mystical or religious experiences. His writings concerning the pleasure principle as a cause of discomfort during life and the use of sublimation to transcend it resonate with the teachings of some other cultures and traditions and prefigure some elements of transpersonal psychology. He also used the alteration of awareness as an analytic and therapeutic tool, first with hypnosis and then with free association and subsequently with evenly suspended attention; this is also consistent with the meditative strains to be found in much transpersonal writing.

Freud described in Civilization and its Discontents (1961) his understanding of the mystical experiences that his friend French novelist Romain Rolland had undergone after involvement with the Indian mystics Vivekenanda, who had also impressed William James in earlier lectures at Harvard, and Ramakrishna, with whom Jung had corresponded. Freud interpreted Rolland’s experiences as “a peculiar feeling, which [Rolland] himself is never without, which he finds confirmed by many others and which he may suppose is present in millions of people….a sensation of eternity, a feeling of something limitless, unbounded, as it were, ‘oceanic’.” He noted with perplexity that “I cannot discover this ‘oceanic’ feeling in myself”, and was thereby led to question his earlier assertion that “there is nothing of which we are more certain that the feeling of ourself, of our own ego. This ego appears to us as something autonomous and unitary, marked off distinctly from everything else”, but came to the view that the ego is in fact “a kind of façade” that surrounds the unconscious but is not in fact separate from it, and that the ego is along with the id a part of an internal unconscious. Freud and many others like him became aware of this unconscious and sensed its infinite depth, but could not feel a connection between it and the external world, which was apparently what Rolland experienced along with others who became adept in meditation.

This led Freud to consider ego boundaries and situations in which the ego might not maintain its usual “clear and sharp lines of demarcation…towards the outside”. He decided that the one normal state in which this happened was love, as “against all evidence of his senses, a man who is in love declares that ‘I’ and ‘you’ are one, and is prepared to behave as if it were a fact.” This led him in turn to suggest such a state must have been present in earliest life and was then replaced by the customary condition of ego separation: “originally the ego includes everything…later it separates off an external world from itself. Our present ego-feeling is, therefore, only a shrunken residue of a much more inclusive – indeed, an all-embracing – feeling, which corresponded to a more intimate bond between the ego and the world around it”. He concluded, based on Rolland’s experiences and those of others who had attempted “the most unusual experiments with yoga” that spiritual or meditative practices could allow the experience of “primordial states of mind”. Freud came over time to the view that “each individual…contains the entire universe, because each ego extends infinitely to encompass both the inner unconscious and the external world” (Epstein, 2007), and that transcendental experiences could restore the infantile unity of external and internal world, possibly with therapeutic effect. In fact, his last written words address the question of whether mysticism could illuminate the psyche, as it was “the obscure self-perception of the realm outside the ego, of the id” (Freud, 1964).

His later writings about the pleasure principle, postulated to be the cause of most unhappiness, approximate some of the eastern beliefs that inform modern transpersonal psychology. The child, he suggested, developed a feeling of omnipotence in early life because its needs were magically met by the

mother. This fostered a belief that every pleasurable sensation could be obtained, every unpleasant sensation avoided and every need met, and led to a state of pervasive unhappiness when in time this could no longer be accomplished. With the “non-occurrence of the expected satisfaction [and] the disappointment experienced”, it became necessary to “form a conception of the real circumstances in the external world and to endeavor to make a real alteration in them”, so that “what was presented in the mind was no longer what was agreeable but what was real, even if it happened to be disagreeable” (Freud, 1958a). The replacement of the “pleasure principle” by the “reality principle” was necessary for the experience of higher pleasures, and is also the cornerstone of various spiritual disciplines, from the Noble Truths of the Buddha to the Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola.

Another contribution of Freud to transpersonal psychology was the suspension of the “critical faculty” of the thinking mind while listening to the patient, which he thought was necessary in order to “give impartial attention to everything there is to observe” (Freud, 1958b). His 1912 recommendations to aaspiring psychoanalysts are quite similar to the practices of contemporary mindfulness and to the teachings of Zen Buddhism (Epstein, 2007), and propose that the psychoanalyst “withhold all conscious influences from his capacity to attend, and give himself over completely to his ‘unconscious memory’….He should simply listen, and not bother about whether he is keeping anything in mind”. This led Freud in time to believe that the analyst and patient might have some unconscious psychic communication that was more important than anything else that passed between them: the “attitude which the analytic physician could most advantageously adopt was to surrender himself to his own unconscious mental activity, in a state of evenly suspended attention, to avoid so far as possible reflection and the construction of conscious expectations, not to try to fix anything he heard particularly in his memory, and by these means to catch the drift of the patient’s unconscious with his own unconscious” (Freud, 1955).

Freud felt that this state of suspended attention was optimal for attending to the patient’s unconscious, but did not consider the effect of the therapist’s state of mind on the patient. The expectations or desires of the analyst, or the patient’s understanding and anticipation of these, have subsequently been recognized as a source of pressure or intrusion on the patient. This is an area in which transpersonal psychology has diverged from Freudianism, as it has held that “it is possible for a single conscious state of mind – a poised and balanced state of bare, or evenly suspended, attention – to encompass both nonverbal and rational, intellectual thought” and that “experiencing a patient’s being…and enter[ing] the jointly-experienced not-being…makes discovery a real possibility” (Epstein, 2007). In later years Freudian psychoanalysis became increasingly less friendly to meditational, mystical and spiritual methods: for example, Otto Fenichel (1941) wrote after Freud’s death that analysts who attempted to follow the above recommendations were “merely floating in their unconscious and doing hardly any work at all.”

The psychoanalytical figure most often cited by transpersonal writers as a precursor is Otto Rank, who was Freud’s protégé at age 19, secretary of the Vienna psychoanalytical society and for a time essentially the godfather of the Freud children. Freud persuaded Rank, a self-educated locksmith at their first meeting, not to go to medical school but to obtain a doctorate of philosophy at the University of Vienna. Charged by Freud with making the “new science” of psychoanalysis not just a medical specialty but a “comprehensive statement on the human condition...[in] an active relationship with larger historical and cultural perspectives”, the diminutive psychologist Freud fondly called “little Rank” produced a dissertation at 20 on psychoanalytical aspects of the Lohengrin saga and at 25 wrote The Myth of the Birth of the Hero, which influenced first Jung and later Joseph Campbell (Amundson, 1981). Rank is hardly remembered today by most psychologists and psychiatrists, but made seminal theoretical and practical contributions. His theories have entered the popular consciousness: the trauma of the birth experience, the

need for patients or clients to want to change in order for therapy to be successful (the “will to health”) and the difficulties of life crises or “passages”.

Rank suggested in The Trauma of Birth (1993) that violent expulsion from a blissful existence in the womb into loud, brightly-lit and frightening life, with the danger of asphyxiation along the way, causes us thereafter to seek that bliss again, either adapting the world to ourselves as mother or adapting ourselves as mother to the world. Prenatal memories of bliss and the terrible birth trauma are both repressed but are played out again and again in the experiences of living and dying, and we are trapped in this state by anxiety. Rank felt that he had extended his master’s work and dedicated the book to Freud, who accepted it after reading about half but was then gradually turned against the book by his American disciple A.A. Brill and by Karl Abraham in Germany and Ernest Jones in Britain (Lieberman, 2010).

Rank’s practical innovations may be even more important: he pioneered ion of time limitation to psychoanalysis, and is thus the father of brief supportive psychotherapy and the “50-minute hour” of psychiatric practice. The idea of time limitation in analysis did not bother Freud, but Rank became increasingly independent of Freudian doctrine as he approached 40. Rank spent time in the United States and returned in 1924 an honored member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and published along with Sándor Ferenczi The Development of Psychoanalysis, which began to set forth a new type of psychotherapy that involved an egalitarian relationship between therapist and client, a focus on the present day and on relationships rather than on the past and on transference and the exploration of the conscious will to change behavior and feelings rather than of the unconscious mind. Freud regarded this as corruption by the superficial values of American mass culture, and their relationship deteriorated steadily until Rank withdrew from psychoanalytical circles in 1926; the ostracism was continued by Freud’s acolytes, and the aforementioned Fenichel would not speak to Rank when they later met in exile on the streets of New York.

Rank went first to Paris, where he analyzed Henry Miller and Anais Nin and then had an affair with Nin. He emigrated to New York in 1935, and practiced psychotherapy in New York and taught at the University of Pennsylvania. The continued ire of the Freudians led to the allegation by Brill that Rank was himself mentally ill, and to his ouster from the American Psychoanalytic Association. Orthodox Freudians were told that anyone analyzed by Rank had to be re-analyzed in order to remain in the Association. Divorced, remarried and preparing to become an American citizen and move to California, Rank became an enthusiastic reader of Mark Twain, was fascinated by the resilience and will of Huckleberry Finn and took to calling himself “Huck”. Rank was given sulfonamide for an infection and died from an allergic reaction at age 55, only a month after the death of Freud; some implacable Freudians insisted that Rank had died insane or by suicide (Lieberman, 2010).

Rank published several influential books in sometimes obscure English: Truth and Reality, Will Therapy, Modern Education and Art and Artist were to have been followed by his magnum opus titled Beyond Psychology. His writings about birth trauma led the English psychiatrist Marian Kenworthy to suggest in 1928 that pregnant women be put on restricted diets so as to have smaller babies that could more easily pass through the birth canal, without “profound nervous and emotional shock, a concomitant of every hard birth experience”; moreover, Cesarean section birth might be preferable because a child so delivered “is prone to be less sensitized – he cries less, is markedly less irritated by the contacts of handling, etc., - than the child delivered through the birth canal” (Kenworthy, 1966). Rank’s views have also been suggested to be the progenitors of the natural childbirth methods of Leboyer, primal scream therapy as advocated by Janov and, specifically prefiguring transpersonal psychotherapy, the therapeutic use of mind-altering drugs by Grof (Orban, 1988).

In addition to the protracted psychoanalytical acrimony described above and Rank’s premature death, the fact that he was not a physician and taught in schools and departments of social work limited his influence on physicians practicing psychiatry and psychologists doing psychotherapy. His concept of a traumatic sequence of events during and after birth that is recurrently addressed and worked through in subsequent life is, however, the explicit basis for much of the transpersonal research of Stanislav Grof (2000). Rank’s ideas also strongly influenced Carl Rogers, and so played a role in the development of humanistic psychology, one of the most important precursors of the transpersonal movement (Grof, 2008). Throughout his career Rogers insisted that he had no specific mentors but was influenced by a wide range of thinkers and writers, from theologians like Kierkegaard and Paul Tillich to philosophers such as John Dewey and William Kilpatrick. Rogers also had correspondence and sometimes dialogues with figures as disparate as Martin Buber and B.F. Skinner, and studied for a year under Alfred Adler, the first of Freud’s disciples to break with psychoanalysis (Thorne, 2006). Roger’s biographers are uncertain whether he ever read any of Rank’s works, but he did attend a series of lectures Rank gave in Rochester, New York, where Rogers began his professional career at the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, in the last year of Rank’s life. Rogers recalled later that these “had a very decided impact on our staff and helped me to crystallize some of the therapeutic methods we were groping toward”. He also considered “the roots of client-centered therapy to be found in the therapy of Rank and the Philadelphia group which has integrated his views into their own” (de Carvalho, 1999). His celebrated 1951 text Client-centered Therapy also integrated the ideas of Rank, but replaced Rank’s terms of “passive”, “noninvasive” and “reflective” with “client-centered” and “nondirective”.

CARL ROGERS, HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY AND THE TRANSPERSONAL MOVEMENT

As soon as it began to be widely practiced, it was clear that the analyst-centered method of psychoanalysis might not necessarily be the “talking cure” that Freud had hoped for. Much of the talking was often done by the analyst, and the analyst’s interpretation might not be helpful or palatable to the analysand, particularly when the discussion turned chiefly on infantile events that could not be remembered and sexual feelings and conflicts that were hard for patients to understand or accept. Much of subsequent psychological thought was developed at least in part in opposition to Freudian psychoanalysis, and one of the most influential of these schools, and one with a particularly strong influence upon transpersonal psychology, was humanistic psychology, which grew chiefly from the work of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow (Benjafield, 2010).

Rogers stated late in life that he had had two chief teachers, “Otto Rank and my clients” (deCarvalho, 1999). Rogers accepted the Rankian concepts of time-limited treatment intended to address particular problems and a therapist who guided the patient or client toward adaptive behavior, manageable feelings and effective solutions for life problems, but largely purged the language and framework of psychoanalysis that are still present in Rank’s later writings. Rank (1993) anticipated the arguments of modern feminists when he pointed to the almost exclusive focus of Freudian doctrine on the father: “it has been noticed, especially in recent times, that our whole mental outlook has given predominance to the man’s point of view and has almost entirely neglected the woman’s”. Rank sought instead to emphasize the mother-child relationship, but Rogers had little interest in the mother as the determinant of the child’s personality . Where the orthodox Freudians had sought understanding of psychic conflicts and Jung had aimed for catharsis, reconciliation and healing, Rank hoped to encourage psychic and personal growth out of difficult situations; Rogers interpreted growth as making a personality self –determining and self-directing, and this would come to be called “self-actuating”. Rank sought to direct the neurotic will into artistic expression and creativity, while Rogers felt that directing anything was inappropriate and that the

therapist might best simply listen and display authenticity, empathy and unconditional positive regard (Rogers, 1957).

Rogers suggested 19 propositions governing psychotherapy in Cient-centered Therapy (1951). The first of these is that all individuals or organisms exist in a constantly-changing field or experience or phenomenal field of which they are the center. From this it follows that the perceptual field is “reality” for the individual, who reacts to it as it is experienced and perceived., and does so as an organized whole. A portion of this whole is gradually differentiated as the “self”, and the structure of the “self” is formed as perceptions of the “ I” or “me” and the values attached to these as a result of interactions with the environment. The “I” or “me” has one basic tendency, to maintain, enhance or actualize the organism. The best way to understand the behavior that this involves is from the internal frame of reference of the individual. Behavior is the goal-directed attempt of the organism to satisfy its needs, and is usually accompanied by emotion, generally related to the perceived significance o the behavior for the maintenance and enhancement of the individual. The values that are attached to the self or to experiences are those experienced directly by the organism, or taken over from others but perceived as if they had been experienced directly. Experiences that occur in the life of the individual are either organized into some relation to the self, ignored because there is no apparent relationship to the self or not symbolized or given distorted expression because the experience is inconsistent with the structure of the self. Most of the ways of behaving that the organism adapts are consistent with the concept of the self, but in some situations the behavior may be brought about by experiences and needs which have not been symbolized and in such cases the behavior may not be “owned” by the individual. Psychological adjustment is present when all of the sensory and visceral experiences of the organism can be symbolically assimilated into a consistent relationship with the concept of the self. Psychological maladjustment occurs when the organism denies awareness of sensory and visceral experiences, which consequently are not symbolized and assimilated into the self concept; this results in psychological tension. An experience which is inconsistent with the structure of the self may be perceived as a threat, and the more of these there are the more rigidly the self structure is organized in defense. When there is no threat to the structure of the self, experiences that are inconsistent with the self structure may be perceived and examined, and the self structure revised to assimilate such experiences. When the individual perceives and accepts all sensory and visceral experiences, he will be more understanding and accepting of others. As the individual perceives and accepts more experiences into the self structure, a value system based largely on introjections from others that may have been inaccurately symbolized will be replaced with a continuous valuing system that is his own.

Rogers is often cited as a progenitor of transpersonal psychology because of his expressed belief that “whatever I have learned is applicable to all of my human relationships, not just working with clients with problems” (Rogers, 1961). In the last decades of his life, Rogers traveled the world attempting to apply the principles of client-centered therapy to the resolution of political and national conflicts, and his methods were widely disseminated for the training of counseling professionals (Kirschenbaum, 2004). At the same time, criticisms have been made that his theories are superficial (DeMott, 1979) and do not account sufficiently for human perversity and evil (May, 1982). An undue alignment between his views and methods and liberal or progressive political theories has been alleged by some critics: “when Rogers’s colleagues found fault with some of his innovative therapeutic practices, Rogers fought back …he was especially harsh to those who politically disagreed with him, calling them zealots, ‘right-wingers’ and implying they were fascists….On the one hand he advocated a non-judgmentalism that countenances odd and conventionally outrageous behavior. On the other hand, he was censorious of anyone who challenged his eccentric principles and practices” (Somers & Satel, 2006).

Rogers (1980) also prefigured transpersonal psychology with his prediction that “the new world will be more human and more humane, It will exploit and develop the richness and capacities of the human mind and spirit, It will produce individuals who are more integrated and whole, It will be a world that prizes the individual person – the greatest of our resources.” There is, however, some question about whether Rogers was “transpersonal” in the way that this is currently understood. Wood and Jacobá (1997) complained that “researchers have linked Rogers’ ideas with those of the psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and Heinz Kohut ; the psychiatrist Milton Erickson; the anthropologist Gregory Bateson; the communitarian H.C. Boyte; the pedagogue Paulo Freire; the philosopher Martin Buber; and the politician Franklin Roosevelt. …Carl Rogers’s ‘philosophy’ has also been matched with that of Zen Buddhism, the Bach Flower Remedies, as well as with the Christian doctrine of original sin , and the New Testament virtues.” In his later writings, Rogers (1980) considered reports of alternate states of consciousness and concluded that “all these accounts indicate that a vast and mysterious universe – perhaps an inner reality, pr perhaps a spirit world of which we are all unknowingly a part – seems to exist.” His position that “the only reality I can possibly know is the world as I perceive and experience it this moment” can be adduced in favor of the transpersonal view or as an indication of the relativity of human perception.

Rogers also became interested in death experiences and life after death when contemplating his own mortality and in caring for his wife during her terminal illness. Although “10 or 15 years ago I felt quite certain that death was the total end of the person”, he wrote in 1980, “it does not seem to me a tragic or awful prospect…[and] I already have a degree of immortality in other persons”. His late-life experiences led him to contact with mediums and to the observation that “I could only be open to an incredible and certainly non-fraudulent experience….I now consider it possible that each of us is a continuing spiritual essence lasting over time, and occasionally incarnated in a human body.” Those who accompanied him on subsequent inquiries have reported that this interest in the physical manifestations of spirituality waned, but that “he remained sympathetic toward experiences that increased human awareness (a good deal of what transpersonal psychology concerns itself with)” (Wood & Jacobá, 1997).

Two observations cited by his students indicate that , if not a practicing transpersonal psychologist, Rogers had from his early professional years integrated a transpersonal perspective into his psychotherapeutic work. His psychotherapy interviews were often “:mediumistic”, and involved perceptions that extended beyond the actual and concrete. He acknowledged an “almost mystical subjectivity” during interviews in his major clinical writings, but sought a scientific and conservative explanation for the success of the psychotherapeutic process (Rogers, 1955). In later writings (Rogers, 1985), he took a more expansive view: “at these moments, it seems that my inner spirit has reached out and touched the inner spirit of the other. Our relationship transcends itself, and has become part of something larger. Profound growth and healing and energy are present.” In addition, his works indicate an increasing belief in and reliance on a hidden order in the universe, which he identified as the “formative directional tendency”, which is “an evolutionary tendency toward greater order, greater complexity, greater interrelatedness. In humankind, this tendency exhibits itself as the individual moves from a single-cell origin to complex organic functioning , to knowing and sensing below the level of consciousness, to a conscious awareness of the organism and the external world, to a transcendant awareness of the harmony and unity of the cosmic system, including humankind” (Rogers, 1980). Among his last comments on the subject is the assertion that “there is some kind of a transcendant organizing influence in the universe which operates in man as well….My present very tentative view is that perhaps there is an essential person which persists through time, or even through eternity” (Bergin, 1991).

ABRAHAM MASLOW AND TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY

Although there has been some debate about whether the psychological work of Carl Rogers was actually within the purview of transpersonal practice, there is general agreement that Abraham Maslow was both an important figure in the humanistic school of psychology and one of the founders of the transpersonal school (Frager & Fadiman, 2005). Maslow (1969) was a prominent critic of the behavioral approach of Skinner and his associates and also of Freudian and other types of psychoanalysis, which he termed the First and Second Force, respectively (Maslow, 1969). He proposed the term “humanistic” for the kind of psychotherapy that Rogers called client- or person-centered, and considered this to be a Third Force in psychology. Maslow’s criticism of psychoanalysis was that its conclusions were drawn from the application of biological reductionism to the symptoms of mental illness and did not take into account the responses of healthy individuals and even the “growing tip of the population”, individuals with supernormal attainments or functioning. He also argued that behavioral analysis based on the study of animals would only clarify those functions that humans share with the animals, and was not useful in understanding uniquely human higher qualities, whether positive ones like love, self-determination and morality or negative ones like cruelty, greed and aggression. The Third Force was intended to honor consciousness and introspection, mental characteristics which are apparently specifically human (Grof, 2008).

Humanistic psychology was launched at a conference in Old Saybrook, Connecticut in 1964. It was from the first characterized by 5 basic principles or postulates (Greening, 2006). First, human beings are greater than the sum of their parts, and cannot be reduced to components. Second, human beings exist in a unique human context, as well as in a cosmos. Third, human beings are conscious – they are aware and are aware of being aware; human consciousness includes an awareness of self as well as of other people. Fourth, human beings generally have choice, and along with that have responsibility. Finally, human beings are intentional and aim at goals, and are aware that their actions will cause future events, and they seek creativity, meaning and value. Practitioners of humanistic psychology also emphasized the need for their work to be practically useful to patients, clients and society. The new approach became popular with both mental health professionals and members of the public, and was thought to enhance therapists’ ability to deal with psychosocial and interpersonal problems as well as psychosomatic and emotional issues. An important effect of this new approach was an increased emphasis on the connection between the body and the psyche and renewed interest in the therapeutic effects of touching, which had long been nearly absent in psychiatric medicine. This contributed to the introduction of new therapeutic methods, such as encounter groups, treatment approaches influenced by the physical and energetic ideas of Wilhelm Reich and therapies involving relaxation, meditation and bodywork (Grof, 2008).

The founders of humanistic psychology, most prominently Maslow, came to believe that spiritual and transcendental elements needed to be included in therapy as well. This belief coincided with an increasing interest among the general public in mystical traditions, native American healing methods, the influences of religion and creativity on mental function, Eastern philosophies and the effects of psychedelic drugs. Maslow and Anthony Sutich proposed to include some of these approaches in a revision of humanistic methods that they called “transhumanistic”, but it was agreed in 1967 to use the term “transpersonal” (Sutich, 1976). Although an active therapist, Maslow’s major contributions to both branches of psychology may have been as a theorist: Frager and Fadiman (2005) observed that “his work is a collection of thoughts, opinions and hypotheses rather than a fully developed theoretical system. More a theorist than a research scientist, Maslow rarely came up with final answers. His genius was in formulating significant questions that many social scientists today consider critical”. He and other founders of transpersonal psychology often critized psychoanalysis and behavioral science for their limited applicability in daily life, but his own work is now widely studied in business and industry. One of the many programs for workplace health that has grown from his work among others (Conway, 2008)

neatly observes that “Humanistic Psychology wants to examine what is really right with people, rather than just what is wrong with them…[while] Transpersonal Psychology is interested to explore extreme wellness or optimal well-being.”

Maslow’s most important contributions were the hierarchy of needs, proposed in 1943, and the concept of self-actuation, articulated in 1954 (Mittelman, 1991). Motivated first by the examples of his teachers at City College of New York and Columbia University, most notably Alfred Adler, anthropologist Ruth Benedict and Gestalt psychologist Max Wertheimer, Maslow went on to study the top 1 percentile of college students as well as the lives of highly effective people such as Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jane Addams and Frederick Douglas in order to identify determinants of health and success, observing that “the study of crippled, stunted, immature and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy” (Maslow, 1954).

The hierarchy of needs is customarily represented by a pyramid, although this image was not used by Maslow. He identified 5 types of need of ascending refinement: physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem and self-actualization. Physiological needs are those things necessary for survival, including air, food, water, sleep, excretion, sex and bodily homeostasis. Safety involves the security of the body and its health, as well as security of the family, resources, employment, property and morality. Belonging to and giving and receiving love constitute the next level, involving sexual intimacy, family ties and friendships. Esteem is obtained from achievement, confidence, respect for others, the respect of others and self-esteem. Self-actualization is the highest level of need (“what a man can be, he must be”), and involves the acceptance of facts, creativity, lack of prejudice, morality, problem solving and spontaneity (Maslow, 1943).

At the end of his life Maslow (1968) defined self-actuation as “the full use and exploitation of talents, capacities, potentialities, etc.” He suggested that this was not a plateau to be reached but an ongoing dynamic state in which these attributes are efficiently, joyfully and creatively utilized. “The average man,” he wrote, “is a full human being with dampened and inhibited powers and capacities….I think of the self-actualizing man not as an ordinary man with something added but rather as the ordinary man with nothing taken away” (Lowry, 1973). He identified 15 characteristics of such individuals: more efficient perception of reality and more comfortable relationship with it; acceptance of self, others and nature; spontaneity, naturalness and simplicity; being centered on a problem at hand rather than on the ego; the ability to be at times detached from the situation and the occasional need for privacy; independence of culture or environment (autonomy); continued freshness of appreciation of the situation or environment; the ability to have peak and mystic experiences; a feeling of kinship with others (Gemeinschatsgefühl); interpersonal relationships that are deeper and more profound than usual; a democratic or nontyrannical character structure; the ability to discriminate between good and evil, and between ends and means; a philosophical sense of humor that is not hostile; the ability to resist enculturation, or being entirely transcended by a particular culture; and self-actualizing creativeness, creativity which contributes to the preceding attributes.

A theory of self-actualization is outlined in Maslow’s last book, The Father Reaches of Human Nature (1971). This identifies 8 behaviors which can lead to self-actualization: concentration, growth choices, self-awareness, honesty, judgement, self-development, peak experiences and relaxation of ego defenses. Concentration involves heightened awareness, “experiencing fully, vividly, selflessly…with total absorption.” He postulated a series of choices throughout life, each with positive and negative aspects, and suggested that self-actualizing people routinely made choices for growth as opposed to safety and for progress rather than regression. The self-actualizing process confers greater self-awareness and the ability to recognize one’s inner nature and act in accordance with it. Taking responsibility for one’s actions and

giving honest answers and opinions is also conducive to greater contact with the inner self. The first 4 steps provide the basis for the use of our judgement to make :better life choices”. Self-development involves using one’s intelligence and abilities effectively, and “working to do well the thing that one wants to do”. Maslow came to regard peak experiences as “transient moments of self-actualization”, in which individuals heading in that direction are more aware of themselves and the world, more whole and integrated, able to think more clearly and act more effectively, less conflicted and anxious and better able to make constructive use of talents and energies. Recurrent peak experiences are a gift enjoyed by some people, whom he termed “transcending” self-actualizers. Self-actualization also requires the ability to recognize ego defenses such as denial, projection and regression, and to reduce or eliminate them.

Maslow lived only a few years after the foundation of transpersonal psychology, but took a particular interest in the phenomenon of peak experiences during this time. He noted that peak experiences were often associated with intense emotions produced by exposure to nature, art, music or love, and suggested that “all peak experiences may be fruitfully understood as completions-of-the act…the Gestalt psychologists’ closure, or on the paradigm of the Reichian type of complete orgasm, or as total discharge, catharsis, culmination, climax, consummation, emptying or finishing” (Maslow, 1968). He found peak experiences to be associated with the experience of inspiration, excellence or perfection, but also with tragic events, serious illness and the confrontation of death, and to stand out from the long periods of inattentiveness, lack of involvement or even boredom that characterize most of life for most people. The rarest type of peak experiences could take the form of intense beauty or mysticism depending upon the artistic or religious inclinations of the individual, but had in common “feelings of limitless horizons opening up to the vision, the feeling of being simultaneously more powerful and also more helpless than one ever was before, the feeling of great ecstasy and wonder and awe, the loss of placing in time and space” (Maslow, 1970). His major contributions to humanistic and transpersonal psychology have been summarized in 3 central ideas: there is an innate human tendency to move toward higher levels of health, insight, creativity and self-fulfillment; neurosis represents blocking of this innate tendency toward self-actualization; and self-actualization brings about increased efficiency and productivity (Frager & Fadiman, 2006).

Maslow’s work has been criticized from several viewpoints. Much of his experimental work was observational and it was often inconclusive; Maslow himself (1972) acknowledged that “I haven’t got the time to do careful experiments myself….I myself do only ‘quick and dirty’ little pilot explorations, mostly with a few subjects only, inadequate to publish but enough to convince myself they are probably true and will be confirmed one day.” Some attempts to confirm the hierarchy of needs have found little evidence for the proposed ranking, and in some cases for the existence of a hierarchy at all (Wahba & Bridwell, 1976); the highest attainment of individual self-fulfillment has been suggested by some critics to be an ethnocentric western concept (Hofstede, 1984), and the classification of sex as only a physiological need has been suggested to neglect its evolutionary and cultural importance (Kenrick, Griskevicius, Neuberg & Schaller, 2010).

Maslow’s writings have also been criticized by conservative commentators as prominent contributions to deleterious cultural developments from the 1960s to the present day: the attenuation of religious and moral constraints on behavior, decreased emphasis on personal responsibility and individual effort, unwarranted emphasis on self-esteem as the chief determinant of personal development and educational success, an increasingly permissive attitude toward drug use and the emergence of a culture of “therapism”. Somers and Satel (2006) conclude that “Maslow was a thoroughly decent man and a cultivated, imaginative and serious thinker. Unfortunately, he left his ideas unprotected from eccentric followers who applied them in ways he privately deplored….It may not be fair to blame a scholar for the

failing s of his disciples. But, even when he could, Maslow did little to discourage the misapplication of his ideas…[which] lent themselves to distortion. If they were false, Maslow never told us how we could prove they were. His theories were never formulated with sufficient precision to allow for critical experiments that could confirm or disconfirm them.”

ROBERTO ASSAGIOLI AND PSYCHOSYNTHESIS

Little is known biographically about the Italian neurologist and psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli, who envisioned transpersonal psychology more than half a century before the field was formally demarcated. Assagioli strongly discouraged any attention to himself rather than to his theories of “psychosynthesis”. He came from a wealthy Jewish family and was privately educated with early exposure to art and music, but also to the theosophical movement and Eastern spiritual philosophies through his mother, who was an acolyte of Madame Blavatsky. He learned English and French from his parents and taught himself Greek, Latin, German, Russian and Sanskrit as a child; he published his first psychological paper on the unconscious at age 15 in 1901. He received M.D. and Ph.D. degrees at 21, with a thesis on the integration of psychological development and spiritual growth. He began almost immediately an epistolary debate with Freud, who professed interest “only in the basement of the human being”. Assagioli replied that he wanted “to build an elevator which will allow a person access to every level of his personality...to open up a terrace where you can sunbathe or look at the stars” (Keen, 1974).

He went to Switzerland in 1910 to train under Bleuler, and there met and befriended Jung. He elaborated at this time a multi-level method of analysis which included a hierarchical arrangement of love, will, creativity and wisdom, thereby anticipating the work of Maslow described above. He published articles in the Viennese psychoanalytic Jahrbuch and became the Italian translator for Freud’s works. In the 1920s he immersed himself in Christian mysticism, and during the 1930s studied Buddhism and was closely associated with the English mystic Alice Bailey, who revived the theosophical movement and founded the Arcane School to study the “science of the soul”. During this time, he also developed the theory of a multi-layer unconscious (lower, middle and higher or “superconscious”) with the conscious Self on the inside and the transpersonal Self on the outside, surrounded in turn by a collective unconscious (Firman & Gila, 2002).

His psychiatric institute was closed and he was imprisoned when fascist Italy adopted Mussolini was obliged by his Nazi allies to adopt anti-semitic policies in 1938, and Assagioli spent the Second World War in hiding on his family farm and in the mountains of the Alto Adige. During this time he meditated for several hours a day and wrote voluminously. From the end of the war until his death in 1974, he published multiple books on psychosynthesis and “transpersonal development”, uncannily synthesizing Freud, Jung, Rank and Maslow in a theory of psychic development that “put the main emphasis on the organism’s striving for wholeness, on the human being’s potential for growth, expansion of consciousness, health, love, joy” (Hardy, 1996).

Assagioli proposed that psychic development occurred in two stages. The first, which he called “personal psychosynthesis” involved the development of a conscious Self or “I”, which integrated or balanced the different characteristics of the personality that developed during early life. The second stage or spiritual psychosynthesis resulted in the emergence of a transpersonal or suprapersonal Self, through the contact of the “I” and the spiritual energies of the “superconscious”. The superconscious is a transcendent and universal energy outside the Self that is accessed through art, music, active imagination, meditation and other techniques for transcendence (Assagioli, 1965).

Personal psychosynthesis involves achieving some awareness of one’s own unconscious and exploring the contents of one’s own psyche, a process he called “mapping”. The normal experiences and conflicts

of life and development cause subpersonalities, while traumatic experiences are retained in the unconscious as complexes, and these are identified by patient and therapist, and the client gradually learns about the personal unconscious, the surrounding superconscious, the I and the transpersonal self. This is done by projective psychological testing, the analysis of dreams and daydreaming or active imagination. Daydreams are analyzed for archetypal content, and subpersonalities are identified and described while remaining separate from them, a process of “disidentification” that was derived from Buddhist meditation practices. The subpersonalities could be combined over time into a personal center, the “I”, which is the projection into consciousness of the transpersonal Self. The patient or client chooses an ideal “I” under the guidance of the therapist, and uses visualization, fantasy and guided imagery to strengthen the “I” to control and integrate the subpersonalities (Assagioli, 1973).

Once the personal Self is established, the transpersonal Self is constructed or reconstructed through spiritual psychosynthesis. The spiritual or transcendent Self is evoked through the use of symbols, and a sense of unity or connection with all things is established. The symbols used may be personified ones, such as an angel or a sage, or abstract ones, such as the sun or the lotus; these become the subject of meditation techniques, and a dialogue is developed with an inner teacher in which spiritual questions are asked and answered. Visual imagery is used to ponder spiritual quests from legend or literature or spiritual cycles from life or nature (Assagioli, 1973). Spiritual or existential crises in which people question their values, their self-worth or their existence are considered a necessary and helpful part of spiritual development. If a spiritual awakening begins before the second stage of synthesis has taken place, the personal I may be unduly inflated when the personality is suffused with light and spirit; for this reason the integration and stabilization of the personality should be accomplished first (Assagioli, 1976).

Although first conceived at the beginning of the 20th century, psychosynthesis has many connections with existentialism and humanistic psychology, as well as the ideas of Jung, to a lesser extent those of Freud and also with meditation, yoga and other Eastern traditions. Assagioli’s theories emphasize the development of consciousness and an ongoing psychic process of advancement to higher levels. Choice, identity, values and meaning are at the core of psychosynthesis, but the emphasis is more meliorist and optimistic than in much of existential philosophy. His views are also very similar to those of Jung, but emphasize to a greater degree the tutorial role of the therapist, the achievement of development through use of the will and involvement with a transcendent as well as a personal reality. External observation of one’s own psyche, personal development through meditation and the use of both an inner sage and an external therapist spiritual teacher are features more in common with Eastern philosophy and spirituality than with Western psychoanalysis (Battista, 2007).

STANISLAV GROF AND TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY

The Czech-American psychiatrist Stanislav Grof was one of the founders of transpersonal psychology and coined the name of the field, as well as being a foundational figure in professional organizations and journals devoted to the subject. He has carried out extensive and sometimes controversial research on the use of LSD and other psychedelic drugs for psychological research and psychiatric treatment, extended the work of Otto Rank in the area of birth trauma and its aftermath, developed the concept of spiritual emergency or transformational crisis, contributed to the literature on the spiritual determinants of alcoholism and addiction, studied the phenomenology and aftermath of dying and near-death experiences and developed theories of normal and alternative consciousness, with copious publications in each of these areas. He has for this work been saluted as the foremost depth psychologist and consciousness researcher of the present day, and also attacked as a commercial purveyor of new age shamanism and an advocate of drug abuse, sexism and hostility to mothers (Curry, 2002).

Grof was involved in experiments involving LSD as a medical student in Czechoslovakia in 1956, and “the combination [of stroboscopic light and the drug] evoked in me a powerful mystical experience that radically changed my personal and professional life. Research of the heuristic, therapeutic, transformative and evolutionary potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness became my profession, vocation and personal passion” (Grof, 2012). He was subsequently involved in extensive clinical research concerning serotonin pathways and psychiatric disorders, and made the crucial discovery that he deleterious effects of LSD intoxication could be minimized by maintenance of a supportive environment during the experience. His subsequent training in Freudian psychoanalysis brought exposure to the writings of Otto Rank regarding birth trauma, which led in time to clinical studies of prenatal and perinatal psychology. At the time of his immigration to the United States Grof encountered Walter Pahnke, who along with Timothy Leary and Huston Smith had recently induced transcendental experiences in a high proportion of divinity students with LSD and shown that the drug could also alleviate anxiety in the terminally ill. Extensive clinical work with hallucinogens and related substances in psychiatric patients at Johns Hopkins University led to the conviction that psychedelic drugs, “used responsibly and with proper caution, would be for psychiatry what the microscope is for biology and the telescope is for astronomy” (Grof, 1980).

Grof also became increasingly involved with California-based practitioners of humanistic psychology, and there recognized the contributions that Eastern philosophies and meditative traditions could make to the induction and study of alternative states of consciousness, which led to the demarcation of a field of psychology largely focused on such transcendental experiences and its identification as transpersonal psychology (Grof, 2008). After the suppression of psychedelic drug research in the late 1960s, Grof transferred his activities to California, first the Esalen Institute and then the California Institute of Integral Studies, and there developed alternative methods for the elicitation of such experiences and studied the role of near-death experiences in their provocation (C. Grof & S. Grof, 2010).

Grof’s writings distinguish between two modes of consciousness, the “holotropic” and the “hylotropic”. The latter is normal everyday reality, or what is generally agreed upon as real, while the former are meditative, mystical or drug-induced experiences in which the totality of existence is perceived. Hylotropic consciousness is considered normal in the West, but is regarded as an illusion of autonomy and individuality by some Eastern philosophies; holotropic consciousness, on the other hand, is sought after by many religions and traditions but is felt to be a manifestation of mental illness by Western psychiatry. Holotropic states have historically been held in high esteem, used for religious and ceremonial purposes, considered helpful for diagnosis and healing and felt to be a source of inspiration and creativity, but are now disparaged in Western civilization, and this attitude has contributed, in his view, to the various problems of modern society: “[t]he deepest sources of the global crisis lie inside the human personality and reflect the level of consciousness evolution of our species” (Grof, 1997).

Administration of LSD and later MDMA (Ecstasy) to many psychiatric patients produced a variety of effects in the 1950s and 1960s. Grof (1980) classified these into 4 major categories: abstract aesthetic experiences, systems of condensed experience or COEX systems, perinatal experiences or basic perinatal matrices (BPMs) and transpersonal experiences, in which “the experiential domain of consciousness continued to expand beyond the usual space-time boundaries of the skin-encapsulated ego” (Yensen & Dryer, 2007). The first and most superficial category involved distortions of geometrical and architectural patterns, hypersensitivity to sound, the combination of experiences from different sensory domains (synesthesias) and optical illusions. These were sometimes the amplification of thoughts or fantasies, had no discernible psychodynamic correlates and presumably reflected the physiological effect of the drug.

Most patients relived remote or recent events but some individuals had highly-charged reenactments of infantile or childhood traumas, sometimes with defensive displacements or distortions and at other times

with dreamlike symbolic features or manifestations of fantasy and in some cases requiring extensive subsequent psychotherapy to resolve. Specific combinations of affect and memory were observed and labeled COEX (condensed experience) systems. At the same time, Hanscarl Leuner independently made almost identical observations with LSD in German psychiatric patients, and called these episodes “transphenomenal dynamic governing systems” or TYDYSTs. The COEX systems or TYDYSTS involved a series of memories with similar thematic content, feeling tone and expressed affect, that governed emotional state during the LSD and often for a period after, apparently representing a summation of the affect of all similar previous experiences. Each COEX system or TYDYST contained a core of vivid childhood or infantile memories that had been repressed or forgotten, which were now relived and became the basis for subsequent therapy. Once the repressed or forgotten memory was dealt with in therapy, another such system would emerge and dominate subsequent sessions. Over time, psychological conflicts were systematically eliminated, and this approach became known as “psycholytic” therapy (Yensen & Dryer, 2007).

After the resolution of the issues revealed by psycholytic therapy, continued LSD sessions often resulted in intense experiences of universal concerns, such as physical pain, aging and death. Grof was often told that patients felt they were experiencing the suffering of all humanity, and many alternated between these cosmic concerns and intense agony concerning either their births or their deaths. The death agonies generally came first, and patients resolved these but in subsequent experiences often felt that they were reliving their own traumatic births. Grof termed this the “Rankian phase” of psychedelic-assisted therapy, but observed that the patients’ experiences and concerns related to the agonizing experiences of the birth rather than to the separation from the mother. Patients with a variety of psychiatric symptoms had improved after LSD sessions led to the expression of COEX systems that became the focus of therapy, but during this Rankian phase most patients had clinical retrogression and tended to develop a common psychiatric syndrome. Grof therefore proposed that death and rebirth was the fundamental domain of psychopathology, and identified several basic perinatal matrices or BPMs (Grof, 1985).

Four perinatal matrices were described, corresponding basically to the stages of prenatal development and birth. BPM I was the experience during the 9 months of fetal development; it was generally warm, gentle and safe, with no emotional or physical trauma, and was perceived as radiating bliss and beauty. The “physical unit” or fetus is connected to the “Fabric of Consciousness”, and normally experiences mystical unity or “cosmic identification” with all things. When there is trauma or assault on the physical unit before labor and delivery, this becomes the root of a COEX system and the nidus for subsequent psychopathology. Toxic chemical exposure in the womb, for example, could result in a COEX root related to “toxic” experiences, and could result in psychological disturbances related to cleanliness, purity or lack of boundaries. These COEX symptoms could also be affected by subsequent experiences and training, such as the association by religious training of blissful experiences with “heaven” or of noxious ones with “hell”.

BPM II was the stage of experience initiated by the onset of the birthing process, which is highly negative for the sensitive fetus. The physical and chemical changes at the onset of labor could be aggravated by the traditional obstetrical methods of the 19th and 20th centuries, and might be mitigated by the more gentle and pleasurable surroundings and techniques now widely practiced as “natural” childbirth. The development of a COEX system at this stage primed the physical unit for aggressive, submissive or helpless behavior, and resulted in a later antagonistic or victim relationship with the surrounding world. Anger, depression, inferiority complexes, and a predisposition to addictive behavior could result, with psychosis potentially produced by continued trauma or “indoctrination into fear-based religious systems”

and an eventual predisposition to suicidal ideation if the initially hostile and unloving world continues to be perceived as such.

BPM III was the experience of active labor, with anxiety, fear, physical pain and the sensation (sometimes the reality) of asphyxiation from intense uterine contractions and passage through the terrifying birth canal. An immediate, empathic and strong bond between newborn and parents could dissipate this experience and result in healthy psychic development. The roots of COEX systems could otherwise arise that with reinforcement during childhood development and insufficient or aberrant socialization result in neurosis, psychosis and self-destructive behavior. Actual complicated labor and delivery and perinatal injury were less important in the development of psychopathology than the immediate post-partum experience and life events of subsequent years.

BPM IV represented the termination of the symbiotic union of mother and fetus, and the formation of a new relationship. Comfort was re-established, oxygen was again plentiful and biological needs like food were ideally satisfied speedily. Sometimes, however, they were not, and a host of new concerns and dangers began to assail the ego, which might even die at this time with the resultant feeling of inevitable failure in life. If prenatal experiences had been positive, a blissful state of wholeness and in oneself and oneness with others similar to BPM I would result. Grof noted that many subjects described surrender and a sense of annihilation, followed by such experiences as blinding white light, bodily expansion and the sensation of having just escaped death or the recollection of previous episodes of mortal danger avoided. Love, humility, solidarity with all humanity, heightened sensations and appreciation of beauty, a feeling of foregiveness and purification and renewed respect for values of justice, service and compassion were commonly reported. These experiences of death and rebirth were also accompanied normally by ego death and rebirth. These perceptions and feelings were very similar to the qualities of mystical experience delinated by Pahnke (1969) in his celebrated Harvard experiments.

Grof (1976) identified a philosophical or spiritual counterpart to each of the matrices. BPM I related to experiences of cosmic unity, BPM II to experiences of Hell or inability to escape or exit, BPM III to the struggle of death and rebirth and BPM IV to ego death and rebirth. All the experiences in COEX systems could be related to a root in one of the BPMs, positive experiences generally to BPM I or IV and negative ones usually in BPM II or III. He pointed out the similarity between the BPMs and the erotogenic zones of Freudian theory, and noted a similarity between his COEX systems, the TYDYSTs of Leuner and the complexes of Jung. LSD sessions after passing through the perinatal matrices and resolving the COEX conflicts took on a different subjective quality and were labeled “transpersonal”. These experiences were divided into 2 categories: extension of ego boundaries into objective reality and extension of ego boundaries beyond the borders of normal or “concensus” reality. The first of these involved identification with life, the earth, the universe, previous generations or previous lives; the second category included paranormal phenomena, out-of-body experiences, precognition, spirit communication, encounters with deities and archetypes, activation of the energies of the chakra and kundalini systems and consciousness of and contact with the universal mind. Work with the prenatal and perinatal experiences and the systems or complexes they engendered was often helpful to neurotic and even some psychotic patients, but Grof reported that “it was the peak, transcendent or mystical experiences, however, that ultimately reorganized the individual psyche into a more coherent and conflict-free way of being” (Yensen & Dryer, 2007).

The passage of the United States Controlled Substances Act in 1970 led first to the restriction and then to the proscription of research or therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs, particularly LSD. Grof and his coworkers (2010) thereafter set out to develop other methods of inducing the extraordinary psychic states needed for transpersonal therapy. Meditation practices, dancing and chanting and various bodywork methods have been used, but the most effective non-drug method has been “holotropic breathwork”,

named after the alternative mode of consciousness described above and derived from the Greek for “moving toward wholeness”. It is similar to the “rebirthing breathwork” developed by Leonard Orr to produce a paradigm shift in perception and subconscious decision-making by recalling to conscious awareness emotions and experiences connected with a traumatic birth (Orr & Ray, 1977). The two techniques were developed independently, however, and the techniques of Orr and Ray were not derived from the psychoanalytic writings of Rank or the practices of yoga.

There are 5 components in holotropic breathwork: a group process, hyperventilation or “intensified breathing”, focused body work, expressive drawing and evocative music. These are intended to amplify parts of the psyche which are capable of generating mystical experiences. The work is usually done in groups, with pairs of participants who alternate between the roles of “experience” or “breather” and “sitter” over the course of a 1 to 2 hour session. The sitter focuses attention on the breather and may assist the breather if needed, as may a facilitator. Hyperventilation often does not trigger emotional or physical symptoms, and may lead to progressive relaxation and ecstatic feelings. Emotional distress or physical discomfort sometimes develops and then subsides as breathing continues. Continued emotional distress or physical discomfort may be dealt with by massage or other forms of focused bodywork, particularly if these persist after the termination of the session. The breathwork is not recommended for those with significant cardiovascular disease, pregnancy or psychotic illness, and should be done with caution by persons with epilepsy. It is also recommended to carry out the technique in a residential facility for patients with a past history of psychiatric hospitalization.

Four general categories of experience have been reported during holotropic breathwork, which are similar to the experiential phenomena that accompanied LSD use. Sensory and somatic experiences include hallucinations, mainly images or geometrical patterns; greater awareness of body processes and an ability to act these out with movement, posture and sound; re-experiencing, as opposed to simply remembering, past conflicts, experiences and traumas; images and sensations felt to be from the breather’s own birth; and transpersonal experiences as described above (Taylor, 1994). There have been few studies of the efficacy of the therapy: one controlled trial showed a significant reduction in death anxiety and increase in self-esteem with holotropic breathwork plus psychotherapy as compared to psychotherapy alone (Holmes, Morris, Clance & Putney, 1996)

The mechanism by which such breathwork might induce mystical states is not clear. Rhinewine and Williams (2007) suggested that exposure to feared internal representations may result in the extinction of covert avoidance behaviors, which is a form of disinhibition that may produce a sense of catharsis in the breather. Although concerns have been raised, particularly in the United Kingdom, about the safety of rapid breathing in psychiatric patients, the procedure has been safely applied with appropriate precautions for the diagnosis of anxiety and its treatment by desensitization (Rhinewine & Williams, 2007). Eyerman (2013) reported on 11,000 experiences with holotropic breathwork and the reports of 482 individual patients over a 12-year period, and found no adverse effects and general patient satisfaction with its effects.

The “spiritual crisis” is another area of transpersonal psychology extensively explored by Grof, one not until recently given much attention by mainstream psychiatry and psychology. Such a crisis can arise from terminal or non-terminal medical illness, intensive meditation, complications of shamanism or the practice of kundalini, a near-death experience or mystical states, and involves issues that transcend the considerations of ordinary daily life (Lukoff, Lu& Turner, 1996). This has been subdivided into “spiritual emergence” and “spiritual emergency”, and has been suggested to be an opportunity for growth and healing if correctly treated (C. Grof & S. Grof, 1989). Transpersonal psychologists proposed that a diagnostic category for such problems be added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental

Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association (Turner, Lukoff, Barnhouse & Lu, 1995), and the diagnosis of “Religious or Spiritual Problem” was added to the fourth edition of the Manual and continued in the recent fifth revision (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). A diagnostic code (V62.89) has also been added to permit the specification of such a crisis.

A spiritual emergence is defined as “gradual unfoldment of spiritual potential with no disruption in psychological-occupational-social functioning”, while the unfoldment is intensified beyond the control of the individual in a spiritual emergency (Lukoff, Lu & Turner, 1996). This differentiation reflects the fact that many transcendental states that involve perceptual or emotional changes or are accompanied by psychosomatic symptoms may be interpreted as manifestations of psychosis; as Thomas Szasz observed, “if you talk to God you are praying, but if God talks to you you are schizophrenic” (Szasz, 1973). The addition to psychiatric treatment teams of counselors adept in various spiritual traditions and familiar with non-ordinary states of consciousness has been recommended as an alternative to traditional treatments for such crises. Like the observations during LSD therapy, explorations of the perinatal matrices and near-death experiences and the development of holotropic breathwork, this recommendation may be another example of “the work of Freud, Rank and Jung…expanded to explore the great mysteries of human existence…[but] within the prevailing scientific epistemological limits, there appears to be no way to arrive at a conclusive proof of Grof’s theories” (Yensen & Dryer, 2007).

KEN WILBER AND TRANSPERSONAL/INTEGRAL THEORY

Several philosophers and depth psychologists have elaborated theories of psychic development and functioning that are relevant to the transpersonal field. Chief among these are Ken Wilber, John Battista, Michael Washburn, Stuart Sovatsky and Jorge Ferrer. The biochemist and polymath Wilber (2001) has been among the most comprehensive theorists of transpersonal psychology, but has in recent years withdrawn from the transpersonal movement and prefers to call his model “integral” (Walsh & Vaughan, 2007). He developed in the 1970s and 1980s a large-scale theory of the evolution of consciousness through a hierarchy of levels, and proposed in essence the integration of Western academic philosophies of psychic development and spirituality with the Eastern traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism (Wilber, 1977). A sequence of evolution is proposed, beginning with matter and progressing to body, mind, soul and spirit, first called a “great chain of Being” and then reformulated as the “great nest of Being” (Wilber, 1980).

In its initial articulation, Wilber’s theory identified 3 categories of consciousness: prepersonal or pre-egoic, personal or egoic and transpersonal or transegoic. This was later expanded to 9 levels of personal development, again divided into prepersonal (levels 1-3), personal (levels 4-6) and transpersonal (7-9) stages, with the later addition of a transcendant tenth level. As human consciousness develops it ascends each of these levels, and the various schools of psychology are all relevant to one or another of these levels of consciousness; different kinds of psychopathology will result if psychic development is arrested or necessary developmental tasks are not completed at one level or another. Wilber also observed that Western psychology and psychiatry tends to equate transpersonal phenomena characteristic of the higher developmental levels with pathological and regressive phenomena associated with the lower levels of development, which he called the “pre-trans fallacy” (Wilber, 1996).

Later refinements of the theory stratify human development according to waves of consciousness or “developmental levels”, streams of consciousness or “developmental lines” and the emergence of a “self-system” (Wilber, 2003). The levels and lines of development converge to form states of consciousness, and with experience and practice structures of consciousness or awareness are elaborated: “states are free but structures are earned” (Wilber, 2006). Several types of states have been defined: natural diurnal states

of biological existence, phenomenal states of experience or perception and altered states of consciousness that can be induced (exogenous) or achieved (endogenous). Higher animals generally have 3 diurnal states of consciousness, which are waking, sleeping and dreaming. During waking and dreaming, phenomenal states can arise from external sources like sensation or motor activity, or from internal sources like mentation, memory or bodily sensations. Altered states can be induced by external influences like drugs, hypnosis, guided imagery, biofeedback and various kinds of psychotherapy. These states can also be achieved by training and practice, through spiritual training like meditation or through physical training like exercise. The progression from one stage to the next was initially conceived of as more or less linear unless interrupted, but later definitions of development as “fluid” and “flowing” admit the occurrence of partial or nonlinear development as well (Wilber, 2003).

JOHN BATTISTA, INFORMATION THEORY AND TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY

Psychiatrist John Battista (1978) elaborated an information theory of consciousness that involved 6 forms: perception, emotion, subjective awareness, ego awareness, self-awareness and transpersonal consciousness. These were proposed to represent structures of increasing comprehensiveness that emerged during the development of the self. Six different structures of self were identified, each concerned with a specific developmental task and each associated with a particular ego function or information-processing operation. These 6 levels have been related to 6 structures of consciousness identified by Wilber, Engler and Brown (1986).

The first developmental step proposed was the formation in utero of the nervous system, with the separation of consciousness from unconsciousness the developmental step that was thereby accomplished. This established awareness of the environment or a “perceptual” state of consciousness, and generated a perceptual self-structure: “sensory information is the object of consciousness and perception is the subject of consciousness” (Battista, 2011). The next developmental task was the separation of external reality (the world and others) from internal reality (me), which required the development of motor function to communicate and interact with the world and others, and which resulted in an “emotional” level of consciousness and established an emotional self-structure; the object of consciousness was now perception and the subject of consciousness was emotion in relation to attachment figures around the infant. The third developmental step was the separation of the person from others, and the development of an ability to operate interpersonally. This results in a subjective consciousness of self apart from emotions experienced and a subjective self-structure, which is usually achieved at about 2 years of age and results in the ability to recognize “me” in a mirror.

A longer-lasting transition to another self-structure began around age 5, when “primary process” operations were replaced by concrete ones after the development of the necessary cognitive and language abilities. This transition lasted until puberty or early adolescence, and involved the differentiation of identity from the subjective sense of self. Attributes good and bad assigned by other people in the environment to the child at this time as well as rules and expectations regarding behavior and emotions and feelings present in the environment, whether verbally expressed or not, were internalized and an identity is developed that distinguished the child from others. The operation at this stage was internalization, the state of consciousness achieved was ego awareness and the resultant self-structure was the ego-identified self: “one’s being has become the object of consciousness while one’s identity has emerged as the subject of consciousness, who one is” (Battista, 2011). The fifth stage lasts for many years, and is characterized by the development of formal operational thinking. A child had previously perceived his or her being through concrete operations, the identified self being told how it is or experiencing a specific situation, but the adolescent self is now able to imagine how it would like the world to be, to distinguish how it is from how it would like to be and to imagine what it might feel and

do under a variety of conditions. How one is can be differentiated from how one would like to be, how one thinks of oneself can be distinguished from how one is and how one feels can be separated from how one acts. This leads to the understanding that identity is not immutable but can be chosen, developed or changed, to the differentiation of a personal self from a social one and and an ideal self from a real one and to the ability to have and speak about one’s own psychology. The developmental task involved is the separation of the “authentic self” from the identified self; the operations involved are discrimination, acceptance and integration; the level of consciousness is self-awareness and the self structure that emerges is the existential self.

The final stage involves questioning the purpose, significance and meaning of one’s life and work, sometimes triggered by the contemplation of aging and mortality, sometimes as the result of a physical illness or an encounter with death and sometimes by the spontaneous occurrence of a transcendent or mystical experience. The developmental task is the separation of the transpersonal self from the existential self and the development of a transpersonal level of consciousness and a “realized” self-structure. This involves a process of disidentification or deconstruction of self-awareness, which may occur spontaneously or can be assisted with spiritual and meditative practices. In this transpersonal stage, “there is no subject or object of consciousness, only pure awareness” (Battista, 2011).

The theory also predicts the development and type of psychopathology. Failure to separate the “inner” from the “outer” can result in very severe psychopathology, specifically psychosis, with disturbances of perception (hallucinations) and thinking (delusions, ideas of reference, projection); intact reality testing, on the other hand, is an indication that this developmental task has been successfully completed. Incomplete or ineffective formation of the person and separation from the “other” can result in severe symptoms, usually of a borderline nature, with idealization, abandonment concerns, projective identification, grandiosity, splitting, fragmentation, emotional dyscontrol and dissociation; proper intra- and interpersonal emotional regulation is an indication of successful completion of this task. Moderate characterological disturbance is the result of failure to achieve formation of the identity; this can take the form of acting out, denial, dishonesty displacement and impulsivity. Social adaptation and an effective self concept result from success in this developmental task. If the authentic self is not successfully formed, mild neurotic symptoms may result, such as aloofness, ambivalence, disavowal, doing and undoing, intellectualization, passive-aggressive behavior and reaction formation; acceptance, grace, humor, and integration are the ego fruits of successful development. Many people do not achieve the spiritual transformation needed to realize the self, and may have undue ego inflation or a false spirituality in connection with spiritual problems or challenges; compassion, humility, love and selflessness are signs that this developmental task has been accomplished (Battista, 1982).

MICHAEL WASHBURN AND SPIRITUAL POWER

A fusion of Freudian psychoanalysis, Jungian imagery and the consciousness observations of Grof and Wilber was proposed by philosopher Michael Washburn (1994). He proposed a spiral course of human psychic development in which the ego emerges from the depths of the unconscious, diverges from it to form the various aspects of the conscious mind and then attempts to reintegrate with it at a higher level. Life is thus a spiritual path or a pilgrimage, with departure from a psychic “home” and return to that home later, when it is not quite the same because a new structure has been built on its foundations. This return and reintegration represents spiritual awakening, and has physical, cognitive, emotional, psychodynamic and energetic features. Whereas the Battista theory focuses on information functions, psychic development in the theory of Washburn is mostly driven by various forms of life energy. Energy manifests itself in several ways, most importantly as psychic energy, libido and spiritual power.

Psychic energy is active, being employed all the time in our ongoing conscious experience. It is involved in all modes of consciousness, such as feeling, willing and thinking, but is not necessarily confined to thinking, willing or feeling, so is neutral energy. It enables the ego to carry out the many ego functions that are needed in conscious performance in everyday life and so is functional energy. One is usually aware of thoughts, feelings or decisions powered by psychic energy rather than of the energy itself, so psychic energy is also invisible energy; at times intense or unfocused psychic energy can be perceived as anxiety or excitement, but psychic energy itself is generally not perceived.

The libido is instinctual energy, potential rather than active, system-specific rather than neutral, productive of excitement or enhancement rather than of function and visible rather than invisible when it is awakened or activated. Libido is usually latent until activated by some instinctual stimulus, so it is potential energy. These instinctual stimuli have particular effects on specific systems, especially those involved in sex and reproduction, so libido is specific rather than neutral energy; when the instinctual energy is not being expressed, it is dormant and provides the energy for the deep unconscious or id. This energy also affects the operation of the ego by arousing, preoccupying or exciting it, and can cause intense ego effects such as ecstasy when it is applied in strong bursts, so it is “impassioning” rather than simply functional energy. When this energy is applied to the ego the effects are often conspicuously evident to conscious awareness, so this is visible energy (Washburn, 1995).

Spiritual power has some features of psychic energy and some of libido. Spiritual power is neutral energy like psychic energy. because it energizes experience in all modes and systems but is not specifically related to any. On the other hand, like libido or instinctual energy, spiritual power is dormant until it is awakened and is therefore potential energy, and once awakened is experienced by the ego, so is visible energy. In contrast to either psychic or instinctual energy, spiritual power is transformative: it does not just energize the ego or impassion it but permanently changes the ego. An ego initially resistant to spiritual life, which represents “ignorance” from a philosophical perspective or “sin” from the standpoint of religion, is transformed to one that is expressive of spiritual life, and has thus been “enlightened” philosophically or “saved” religiously (Washburn, 2003).

A natural question is whether the three forms of energy are separate forces or entities, or whether they are three different manifestations of the same energy. The question is often posed with respect to libido or instinctual energy versus spiritual energy, because these are visible when active, while psychic energy is active but invisible all the time: is there a lower instinctual power and a higher spiritual power, or are the two energies ultimately one? Some of the proposed answers to this question have included Manichaeism or Gnosticism, which involve in essence an ongoing struggle between a darker power of instinct and a spiritual power of light, or dynamic monism, the view of Tantric Buddhism or Nietzschean spirituality among others, that both are harmonious dimensions of a single life. Washburn (1994) supports the latter view, and suggests that the three types of energy are different manifestations of the energy of the deep psyche, the origin of which is not known but which is covered and subdued by an almost impenetrable barrier. The barrier is “primal repression” and the nearly-smothered deep unconscious is the id.

Washburn (1995) suggests the simile of a bowl filled with smoldering embers, covered by a heavy lid that has a hole in it. The hole in the lid allows enough oxygen to enter so that the embers continue to smolder, and the bowl is filled with smoke of which only a very small and almost invisible plume escapes through the hole and diffuses everywhere. The bowl represents the deep psyche or unconscious, and the lid is primary repression, while the attenuated stream of smoke is psychic energy. The bowl is occasionally rubbed or agitated and bursts of heat and smoke are released through the hole: this represents the stimulation of instinctual drives and resultant bursts of charged, “smoky” instinctual energy or libido. If the hole in the lid is gradually increased in size, which represents the lessening of primal repression, the

fire in the bowl will burn higher but also more cleanly, and the fire is more brilliant and less smoky. This represents the gradually less charged and more transformative spiritual power or energy. The fire had initially been repressed, smoky and confined to the depths of the psyche, but became more powerful, cleaner and more transformative and affected consciousness as well as the unconscious.

This model suggests that basic psychic energy, intense instinctual energy and transformative spiritual energy are different expressions of the same energy, the differences being due to the effects of primal repression. Under strict primal repression the energy of the deep psyche is confined and can only escape as attenuated psychic energy and occasional bursts of libido; as repression is lessened, the energy of the psyche is no longer confined to the unconscious id but can reach consciousness in a spiritual and creative form, and once unencumbered by primal repression, the deep psyche can be reorganized and become “our access way to the Sacred Ground, the Fertile Void, the Formless Godhead” (Washburn, 2003).

If the different forms of energy are due to the effects of repression, once the repression is lifted the differences will disappear, and Spirit will emerge, now burning brightly and cleanly and having the power of spiritual transformation as well as the former roles of psychic energy and libido. Spirit thus released will energize general experience, now in a plenipotent rather than an attenuated way, and will perform the former instinctual role of the libido, but in a “clean” rather than a “sooty” way. The corollaries of this view are that the awakening of Spirit greatly increases the energy level of consciousness, and that spirituality and instinct are ultimately in harmony with each other, as suggested by the Tantric and Nietzschean traditions: “the lotus of Spirit rises out of the swamp of the unconscious” (Washburn, 1995).

JORGE FERRER AND SPIRITUAL PLURALISM

Catalan psychologist and philosopher Jorge Ferrer was transplanted to California around 2000, and has since that time written extensively about “whether or not we can preserve the ontological integrity of religion, spirituality and mysticism without sacrificing the integrity of modern critical scholarship” and “the integration of religious experience and practice with modern critical thinking and postmodern epistemological insights about the constructed nature of human knowledge” (Gleig & Boeving, 2009). His major contribution has been to question the role in transpersonal psychology of three of its major presuppositions: experientialism, or the understanding of the transpersonal as an individual inner experience; perennialism, or the tendency to relate transpersonal psychology to the perennial philosophy; and empiricism, or the evaluation of transpersonal phenomena by the standards of empiric science. Instead, Ferrer has emphasized the many different kinds of spiritual insights that can contribute to the transpersonal experience, and points out that “the ocean of emancipation has many shores”. The “participatory turn” in transpersonal thought means that most transcendental events are participatory phenomena and involve “co-creation”; adopting the terminology of the Grofs, such events are “emergencies of transpersonal being that can occur not only in the locus of an individual, but also in a relationship, a community, a collective identity or a place” (Ferrer, 2001).

SOVATSKY AND COURTRIGHT: THE INTEGRATION OF EAST AND WEST

Many practitioners and theorists of transpersonal psychology have sought to integrate Western psychiatry and psychology, occidental religion and philosophy and the philosophical and meditative traditions of India, China and Japan, but Stuart Sovatsky (1998) and Brant Cortright (2001) have been among the most systematic. Sovatsky, trained in ethics and philosophy, traces transpersonal psychology’s lineage to the anthropologist and philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, who influenced Marx, Neitzsche and Freud among others with one of the first critical analyses of religion: “consciousness, in the strict or proper sense, is identical with consciousness of the infinite…in the consciousness of the infinite, the conscious subject has for his object the infinity of his own nature” (Feuerbach, 1957). Sovatsky argues from this that “each

individual is ineluctably embedded in (or constituted as a subject by) his or her own personal infinity of consciousness’, and any limit or boundary of consciousness that an individual may encounter is ultimately illusory, as “his or her consciousness will necessary be there” (Sovatsky, 2001).

Sovatsky proposes a “soteriological” or spirit-redeeming approach to psychology and psychotherapy, which reflects Feuerbach’s view that God does not have an existence separate from mankind and is also influenced by Kierkegaard’s observation (1946) that the subjective response to truth is as important as the objective facts about it. Yoga and Buddhist teachings are also cited as influences on the concept of “consciousness as infinitely divisible sentience congruent with relentless impermanence” (Sovatsky, 2001). Awareness of this impermanence is responsible for what Kierkegaard called angst and Freud labeled “separation anxiety” , and requires the development of “self-soothing” methods for moments of “spiritual terror”. These range from the infant sucking on a thumb to the “timeless” or “infinite time” states of dissociation, autism or catatonia, and are epitomized in the healthy state by spiritual or mystical experiences and their hormonal and neurochemical correlates. These somatic states and the combination of “infinitely divisible sentience conjoined with eternal time” form a metaphorical sea, in which psychotic individuals drown and mystic practitioners swim (C. Grof & S. Grof, 1989). The task of the therapist thus involves the creation of a therapeutic “holding environment” beyond the traditional “empathy”, the cultivation of “clinical admiration” for patients or clients engaged in spiritual struggles and awakening them when in discomfort to the significance of moments of “endless and recurrent temporal impermanence”.

Cortright (2001) has attempted to fuse the depth psychology of the various occidental schools, particularly Gestalt, and the yoga-based psychology of Sri Aurobindo and his followers, and has called this “integral” or “integral depth” psychology by analogy to the more recent writings of Wilber (2006). Integral psychology has been defined as the combination of existential psychotherapy and some of the modern refinements of psychoanalysis in a framework that combines occidental and oriental spiritual insights (Cortright, 2007). It has also been characterized as “a psychological system concerned with exploring and understanding the totality of the human phenomenon…the body-mind-psyche-spirit spectrum…[and] previously- unexplored unconscious dimensions of the psyche, as well as the supraconscious dimension traditionally excluded from psychological inquiry” (Shirazi, 2001).

The integral psychology set forth by Cortright was strongly influenced by the teachings of Sri Aurobindo, the poet, naturalist and philosopher Aurobindo Ghose, and The Mother, born Blanche Rachel Mirra Alfassa in Paris but resident for most of her life at the Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry. The term was first coined, however, by Indra Sen, trained in philosophy and psychology at Delhi and then exposed to Heidegger and Jung in Germany, who after returning to the Aurobindo Ashram codifed these teachings and observed that “the theoretical and practical motives of life are combined” (Sen, 1999); the Indian integral system, which differs substantially from the Wilber system of the same name, was transmitted to the United States and introduced into transpersonal psychology by Haridas Chaudhuri (1990). Cortright (2007) proposes that the three human powers (body, heart and mind) have produced three paths to the Divine: karma yoga, or bodily action; bhakti yoga, or love; and jnana yoga, or mind and knowledge. Each type of yoga develops one of the human powers but neglects the other two; integral yoga ties these together, and is also a unique form of yoga of its own. Integral psychotherapy uses these methods as lenses to examine the psychotherapeutic process. Therapeutic success in one dimension, body, mind or heart, will allow exploration of and growth in the other two.

Behavior is one approach to the inner being and is the manifestation of bodily action; ineffective or maladaptive behavior that does not meet one’s needs causes pain, while acting differently causes better feelings. Western behavioral psychology does not focus on deeper levels of consciousness, but rather on

their visible behavioral expression. Cognitive and behavioral therapy is aimed at producing different thinking and different behaviors, which are more effective and therefore cause better feelings. Phobias and fears are particularly sensitive to this kind of therapy, as avoidance increases fear and exposure lessens it, which is taught in Indian traditions as well as Western psychotherapy. The exposure must be safe and controlled, however, and associated with a relaxed body and a calm mind, which come from the inner spirit that can be facilitated by teaching relaxation techniques and replacing illogical or inappropriate cognitions with more adaptive ones. This is also consistent with the recommendations of Indian sacred texts that one’s essential or unique being (svadbavha) be sought, which is similar to the essential self of Western theories, as the path of self-realization that comes from the development of the authentic self (svadharma) is analogous to the Western process of self-actualization, in that both are manifestations of spiritual unfolding that in its behavioral manifestations “touches into the deeper essential spiritual being without fully recognizing it” (Cortright, 2007).

The mind can also be used to enter the inner world, using jnana yoga to discover the foundation of consciousness, which is atman or Buddha-nature. Mindfulness, as many Western disciplines term it, is in the present moment, but the ego operates in the past and in the future. Consciousness is dulled by these distractions, and beset by habitual reaction to events of the past and anticipation of developments in the future.The application of mindfulness techniques allows the recognition that “unconscious defenses result in fixation and developmental arrest [as] psychotherapy brings attention to these avoidances, defenses and contractions of awareness.” This is similar to the Freudian psychoanalyst’s goal of “making the unconscious conscious” but also leads to spiritual growth by making therapy “present-centered and show[ing] how neurosis, wounding and our defensive machinations take us out of the now…All forms of psychological impairment reduce present-centeredness and involve us in fantasies of the past and future” (Cortright, 2005).

The third component of integral psychotherapy is “opening the heart”. This involves identifying why and how the heart has become closed through defenses against feelings and the avoidance of negative emotions, as is done in psychoanalysis, and also finding ways of opening the heart, through bhakti, love, devotion and identifying with positive emotions and dis-identifying with negative ones, which are the effects of spiritual activities and processes. Cortright distinguishes two types of heart: the frontal or outer one that Western psychology studies, with unconscious drives and defenses, and the deeper soul or psychic center described in Eastern traditions. Western psychotherapy arguably “opens the frontal, outer levels of the heart but does not attempt to go further. It embraces earth and ignores heaven. But without a larger, spiritual context, the self becomes the measure of all things”. Depth psychology indicates that a closed outer heart is the greatest impediment to opening the inner heart and, in considerable distinction from the traditional Western review, the role of psychotherapy is to “align the authentic self with the true soul. Then a harmonization of our inner and outer being takes place”. Whereas Freud felt that dreams represented the royal road to the unconscious, this version of transpersonal psychology suggests that “heart-centered psychotherapy can be a bhakti yoga for the 21st century that brings together our outer and inner hearts.” (Cortright, 2007).

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