Transpersonal Psychology – New Perspectives

Article by Jevon Dängeli — MSc Transpersonal Psychology

Transpersonal psychology is a school of psychology that integrates the spiritual and transcendent aspects of the human experience with the framework of modern psychology. It is also possible to define it as a “spiritual psychology”.

According to the Transpersonal Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society, “Transpersonal Psychology addresses the spiritual nature of humankind. Unlike religion and theology, its interest centres on the mind and behaviour; hence it is a branch of Psychology. All the major spiritual and mystical traditions of the world incorporate teachings about the nature of mind and promote behavioural practices intended – amongst other goals – to bring about psychological transformations. Transpersonal psychology addresses these teachings and practices, researching their value and evaluating their relationships to ideas promulgated in Psychology. In essence Transpersonal Psychology seeks to integrate non-scientific spiritual insights with observations and models associated with the rigorous methodological approach of psychological science.”

The transpersonal is defined as “experiences in which the sense of identity or self extends beyond (trans) the individual or personal to encompass wider aspects of humankind, life, psyche or cosmos” (Walsh & Vaughn, 1993). It has also been defined as “development beyond conventional, personal or individual levels” (Scotton, 1996).

Issues considered in transpersonal psychology include spiritual self-development, self beyond the ego, peak experiences, mystical experiences, systemic trance, spiritual crises, spiritual evolution, religious conversion, altered states of consciousness, spiritual practices, and other sublime and/or unusually expanded experiences of living. The discipline attempts to describe and integrate spiritual experience within modern psychological theory and to formulate new theory to encompass such experience.

As has been long recognized by humanistic psychology, the conventional psychological perspective on health is that it is something obtained when pathology has been ameliorated. That is, health is the absence of pathology and suffering. In Maslow’s (1968, 1970) terms, conventional psychology has primarily focused on deficiency (i.e., states of need or lack) and not on growth and being (i.e., realization of fullest human potential as persons in the world). Putatively, most extant clinical psychological theory, research, and practice is oriented towards understanding and treating pathologies.

In contrast to the traditional view and akin to the humanistic movement, transpersonal psychology is motivated to investigate and facilitate the emergence of optimal psychological health. It proposes that the study of positive states and qualities of functioning should be incorporated into our efforts at constructing a more complete and holistic understanding of the individual. Consequently, health is seen not merely as the absence of pathology but instead as the presence of growth-orientedness and a movement toward well-being and self-realization.

“Transpersonal psychology extends psychological research to optimal mental health, consciousness, and its non-ordinary states, and unexplored human potentialities, such as meaning, will, values, creativity, etc.” (ETPA, 2002, p. 110). Throughout its existence, transpersonal psychology has held a strong interest in exploring the implications of consciousness and spirituality for health, both physical and mental. As a function of this interest, a great deal of energy has been directed towards the development and advocacy of transpersonally-oriented theory, research, and practice in the realm of clinical and counselling psychologies.

Walsh and Vaughn (1980) suggest that each state of consciousness reveals its own picture of reality, which in turn makes one’s perception of reality only relatively real, therefore one’s perception of reality is a reflection of one’s state of consciousness. What one identifies depends largely on the state of consciousness in which the mind or self are observed. This echoes the overarching idea in quantum theory that reality is observer created, or as it was stated by Anaïs Nin, we don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are (1961). Another concept in alignment with this is one of the presuppositions upon which the field of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is based, namely that each individual is the co-creator of their personal map of reality (Bandler & Grinder, 1976). Furthermore, Hartelius & Ferrer (2013, p. 196) suggest that one’s location in life is their starting point – from where one relates to one’s experiences – giving each experience meaning based on the implications of their starting point. On this basis then, valid perceptions – as agreed upon in Western scientific models have been determined because of their general location, one which is based on the Cartesian subject-object split.