Transpersonal psychology can provide unique approaches to clinical supervision by offering an interconnected self-expansive view of the self across time and space, as well as can provide a secular avenue to consider the importance of spirituality without relying on supernatural assumptions. Transpersonal supervisors can challenge conventional notions about what and how supervisees know, and...
Abstract This chapter focuses on exploring various models of spiritual and transpersonal development. It first addresses philosophical dilemmas underpinning the concept of spiritual development by questioning whether these can be addressed without metaphysical assumptions embedded in religious worldviews and thus understood in any consensual way across different historical and cultural...
Self-transcendence is an ambiguous construct without consensual meaning, yet many claim that it relates to, or even causes, beneficial outcomes. Few discuss its potential deleterious side effects, choosing to focus primarily on positive effects. However, anything with sufficient potency to heal may have unintended side effects, especially when it leads beyond a transitory state to becoming an...
Sometimes more is less, even within scholarly writing, known for its all too frequent verbosity. This paper follows approaches that sparingly used words, even to the point of using no words at all. One example of this strategy is a renowned psychology article describing its author’s unsuccessful self-treatment of his own writer’s block, which led to a blank paper (Upper, 1974). Another, in the...
Transpersonal psychology has at times critiqued the broader psychology field for perpetrating a somewhat arbitrary Cartesian subject-object divide. Some phenomenologists claim that reframing this purported divide as an experienced phenomenon can defuse its philosophical impact. If subjective experiences are viewed as continuous with the lifeworld out of which objective phenomena are abstracted,...
Recent randomized controlled trials of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy for patients with cancer suggest that this treatment results in large-magnitude reductions in anxiety and depression as well as improvements in attitudes toward disease progression and death, quality of life, and spirituality. To better understand these findings, we sought to identify psychological mechanisms of action...
The psychological mechanisms of action involved in psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy are not yet well understood. Despite a resurgence of quantitative research regarding psilocybin, the current study is the first qualitative study of participant experiences in psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy. Semistructured interviews were carried out with 13 adult participants aged 22 to 69 years ( M = 50...
Meant to be an authoritative guide for psychiatrists and others interested in understanding and applying ketamine psychedelic psychotherapy (KPP), this paper focuses on its pharmacology, phenomenology, and clinical applications. Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic widely used by physicians and veterinarians in the United States. In addition to its anesthetic and dissociative properties,...
Three computer-aided qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) were compared to each other and to a hand-coded method for analyzing spiritual content in 49 dream journals and 11 diary entries. The CAQDAS ratings demonstrated strong convergence with each other, despite using different assumptions; the hand-coded ratings were less correlated with the CAQDAS than the CAQDAS were to each other....
Harris Friedman has made a unique contribution to science by constructing the first explicitly transpersonal measure, helping to bring transpersonal psychology into the realm of more conventional science. He has also engaged in a wide range of professional activities during his career, including mentoring younger scholars and professionals. This paper consists of an introduction written by...
Awe is a concept central in much of humanistic and transpersonal psychology, but it still lacks a consensual scientific meaning. Consequently, this article conceptually clarifies awe for its further use in scientific research and theory, as well as in applications such as psychotherapy. Previous understandings of awe and its changing meaning are discussed in their historical context. Six...
Abstract Transpersonal psychology (TP) emerged in the United States during the 1960s, a turbulent time when psychedelic experimentation and the rediscovery of mysticism, primarily from Eastern and indigenous traditions, caused much deep reflection. It grew from the growing discontent by some humanistic psychologists who questioned the limitations of a solely human‐based psychology that paid...
This chapter focuses on exploring various models of spiritual development. It first addresses philosophical dilemmas underpinning the concept of spiritual development by questioning whether these can be addressed without metaphysical assumptions embedded in religious worldviews and thus understood in any consensual way across different historical and cultural contexts. Traditional models of...
This article presents information on standardized paper-and-pencil measures of spiritual and transpersonal constructs that hold promise for use in yoga research. Nine instruments are discussed at length including the Assessment Schedule for Altered States of Consciousness, Ego Grasping Orientation, Expressions of Spirituality Inventory, Hindu Religious Coping Scale, Measures of Hindu Pathways,...
The International Transpersonal Association (ITA) was formed in 1978 for the purposes of promoting education and research in transpersonal subjects, as well as sponsoring global conferences for the international transpersonal community.The association was subsequently dissolved in 2004, but is now in the process of being reactivated and revitalized.As background for this development, this paper...
Ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic commonly used by US physicians, has recently been shown to be a powerful anti-depressant and is also capable of eliciting transpersonal experiences that can be transformative. Although currently approved in the US only for use as an anesthetic, physicians there can legally prescribe it off-label to treat various psychological/ psychiatric problems and it has...
Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic widely used by physicians in the United States and also a psychedelic drug that physicians can legally prescribe off-label within the United States for other therapeutic purposes. It has been used in Russia and elsewhere to successfully treat alcoholism and other psychological or psychiatric problems, but has not been researched for this purpose in the...
A number of medication trials at major U.S. research universities are now, once more, legally exploring psychedelics' vast potential for treating various physical and psychological problems. These studies have been approved based on a medical model that considers psychedelics' effects as primarily biochemical, but some are also addressing wider humanistic and transpersonal implications for...
The importance of the development of transpersonal psychology as a science is considered. Arguments from romanticism, scientism, and constructionism that challenge this possibility are countered. A distinction is drawn between the field of transpersonal psychology as a science and the broader area known as transpersonal studies that may legitimately use scientific or nonscientific methods. The...