An enthusiastic and fast growing strand of Western Psychology - but still far from mainstream - Transpersonal Psychology grew out of Humanistic Psychology which, in it's earlier turn, took inspiration from the east in it's emphases on 'being in the here and now', 'going with the flow' and focussing on psychological health rather than disorder and, at best, conformity.

"....to oversimplify the matter somewhat it is as if Freud supplied to us the sick half of psychology and we must now fill it out with the healthy half" (Maslow,1968,p5)

Maslow, a founding father of the humanistic movement, discovered that some people whom he regarded as particularly healthy had what he called 'peak experiences.' Peak experiences were subsequently recognised as occurring in other cultures and times under other names and circumstances. It was recognised that various eastern philosophies, psychologies and relegions described not just peak experiences but whole families of peak experiences and claimed, contrary to Maslow's 'self-transcenders' for whom these experiences were ususally spontaneous, to be able to induce them at will.(Walsh,1992; Tart,1983a,1983b; Vaughn,1986). Transpersonal psychology grew out of interest in these peak experiences and other 'altered states of consciousness' - known as ASC's.

It's also the one area of western psychology which has really embraced the 'less than substantial' notion of self held by eastern psychology.

Mainstream western psychology's reluctance to engage with peak and ASC experiences can be traced back to the atitude of one of it's most influential founding fathers. In Civilisation and It's Discontents (Freud 1930) speaks of his reaction to a letter received from the poet Romain Rolland -who had become a student of the Indian sage Sri Ramakrishna. In it Rolland described a feeling of something 'limitless and unbounded' which he saw as 'the physiological basis of much of the wisdom and mysticism'. Freud, puzzled with no similar referrent of experience, labeled this feeling 'oceanic' and suggested, as its origin, a feeling of infantile helplessness which he saw as the source of religious feelings.

Another reason is epistemological:

"Unfortunately, science, an immensely powerful and valuable tool, has frequently degenerated into the pseudophilosophy of scientism. Scientism and it's philosophical analogue, logical positivism, argue that only sensory observation and science are capable of yielding valid knowledge. The result has been that phenomena incapable of sensory observation and scientific analysis have all too often been devalued and denied validity. Two importnat realms of denied knowledge have been the subjective realm of mind, meaning and purpose and the transcendental experiences revealed by contemplation" (Walsh,1992,p27)

In a paper entitled 'Western Analytical Philosophy and Transpersonal Epistemology" (Chinen,1996) identifies the following five distinct concepts of truth: correspondence, coherence, pragmatic, metaphoric and presentational and in conclusion asserts:

"All the modes of truth are needed for an adequate understanding of the human condition: from the mundane to the sublime, childhood to elderhood, and prepersonal to transpersonal.......the question is not simply whether transpersonal experiences are true or not. The real question is, true in what sense?" (in Scotton,B; Chinen,A; Battista,J. eds.1996.p.227)

In 'Assumptions of Transpersonal Psychotherapy' ,Wittine (1996), in the same volume, offers five postulates to help to describe the core concepts of therapy informed by a transpersonal perspective.

1)Transpersonal Psychotherapy is an approach to healing/growth that addresses all levels of the spectrum of identity- Egoic, Existential, and Transpersonal.

2)Transpersonal Psychotherapy recognises the therapist's unfolding awareness of the Self and his or her spiritual worldview as central in shaping the nature, process, and outcome of therapy.

3)Transpersonal Psychotherapy is a process of awakening from a lesser to a greater identity.

4)Transpersonal Psychotherapy facilitates the process of awakening by enhancing inner awareness and intuition.

5)In Transpersonal Psychotherapy the therapeutic relationship is a vehicle for the process of awakening in both client and therapist.

Postulates 2 & 5 together point to a commonly held transpersonal adage which suggests that the therapist cannot assist the client in stepping further than the therapist herself has trod.

Ken Wilber is a prolific writer who has emerged as a leading theorist in the transpersonal field. He is perhaps best known for his 'Pre/Trans Fallacy.' (Wilber,1983) Calling on the evolutionary philosophy of Aristotle, Hegel and Teilhard de Chardin, also of Aurobindo from the Eastern tradtion, he develops and elaborates a simple developmental model which goes from:

prepersonal -> personal-> transpersonal, and correlates with:

sub-conscious-> conscious-> superconscious, and

nature-> humanity-> divinity

Since development moves such a way, argues Wilber, and since both prepersonal and transpersonal are, in their own ways, non-personal, then prepersonal and transpersonal tend to appear similar, even identical, to the untutored eye.

Mistakes can be made in both directions - to erroneously describe a transpersonal experience as a prepersonal experience is to make a pre-trans fallacy (1), a ptf1 Freud made a ptf1 error,maybe, when he dismissed Rolland's deeply contemplative experience as 'infantile'.To erroneously describe a prepersonal experience as a transpersonal experience is to make a pre-trans fallacy (2), a ptf2 Jung makes a ptf2 error, perhaps, when he:

"occasionally ends up glorifying certain infantile mythic forms of thought" (Wilber 1996, in Scotton,B; Chinen,A; Battista,J,1996,p128)

His other major contribution is the 'Atman project theory' (Wilber,1980) in which he essentially represents an 'anatta' argument of non-dualistic reality in contemporary psychological terms with copious references to the wisdom of the 'perennial philosophy' (Huxley, 1946 ) and 'the transcendent unity of all religions' (Smith,1976; Wilber, 1977) The idea of substitute gratification is at the heart ot the theory, - the fundamental human drive to regain awareness of our true nature, Atman, is displaced by a craving for objects and experiences.

"When applied to the separate self, the intuition that one is the All is perverted into the desire to possess All. In place of being everything, one merely desires to have everything. That is the basis of substitute gratifications, and it is the insatiable thirst lying in the soul of all separate selves." (Wilber,1980, p.72)

Here is a contemporary restatement of the second noble truth of Buddhism.This and much of his following work, is seductive reading to any, such as myself, who wish to see Spirit take it's place in contemporary psychology. He is not, however, without his critics. Heron(1992) describes the theory as:

"monopolar reductionism in favour of transcendence at the expense of immanence, in favour of the Real One at the expense of the Real Many." (p.198)

Subsequently, Wilber has had another major outpouring of work, Heron has a 12,000 word web document entitled "A rebuttal to the Wilberians" (Heron,1997) Struggling to keep track of what appear to be to opposed positions - particularly regarding the existence (or not) of a distinct spiritual monad, I am reminded of the corpuscular versus the wave theory in classical physics earlier in this century. That argument has died down into an acceptance that 'it depends how you observe it'. Though Wilber's theses offer a refreshing contrast to traditional psychology's unquestioning acceptance of the substantiality of the self, it could also be said that Heron offers a cautionary brake to the setting up of an opposing ideological camp. He also questions to what extent the Wilber position is grounded in contemporary experiential inquiry, rather than it being a postmodern, intellectual gloss on the received wisdom of the ancient spiritual patriarchs.

Updated 16 June 99
by Martin Wilks