Transpersonal Psychology Review
July 31, 2026
Scott Buckler
Jim Channon conceptualised The First Earth Battalion as a new generation of spiritual warriors within the US military, specifically through his report, Evolutionary Tactics: The First Earth Battalion Operations Manual. Both the Battalion and the report were immortalised through Jon Ronson’s book, The Men Who Stare at Goats and a subsequent film by the same title. While both take a light-hearted...
Transpersonal Psychology Review
July 31, 2026
David Furlong
This article explores recurring archetypal patterns across four spiritual, mythological, and esoteric systems: the Chinese I Ching, the European Tarot, Jewish Kabbalah, and the Heliopolitan pantheon of Ancient Egypt. Through a comparative symbolic analysis, it considers whether these traditions encode a recurrent structure of eight primary archetypal principles organised around a ninth unifying...
Transpersonal Psychology Review
June 20, 2025
Rachel Anderson
This paper examines the issues raised in a recent round table on the future of research in scientific transpersonal psychology. It suggests ways in which transpersonal psychology might meet both the seemingly paradoxical goals of scientific rigour and transpersonal integrity. First, the paper posits that existing quantitative and qualitative research methods are likely sufficient to study...
Transpersonal Psychology Review
June 20, 2025
Mike J. Rush
In a previous article (Rush, 2016), I argued that Western Esotericism had contributed to the development of transpersonal psychology. In the present article, I continue this argument by focusing on Roberto Assagioli and comparing his work with that of his contemporary Walter Ernest Butler. Assagioli (1888–1974) was an Italian psychiatrist and the founder of psychosynthesis, whilst W.E. Butler...
Transpersonal Psychology Review
May 31, 2024
David Furlong
One of the challenges of materialism is explaining how phenomenal consciousness emerges from physicality. The theory of panpsychism has been proposed to answer this question by suggesting that consciousness is ubiquitous within the Universe, that the Universe is a mental construct, and that even the atoms and sub-atomical particles manifest a rudimentary form of consciousness or...
Transpersonal Psychology Review
May 31, 2024
Stuart Whomsley
The late nineteenth and early twentieth century saw a resurgence of interest in the occult and the paranormal. Ideas from the occult, the paranormal and the study of altered states of consciousness influenced Freud’s theories. In turn, the work of Freud has influenced parapsychology and transpersonal psychology. This paper explores these lines of influence from occultism, through Freudianism,...
Transpersonal Psychology Review
2022
Elliot Cohen
Editor’s note: this article is a summary of the Keynote at the Section Annual Conference Transpersonal Activism on 12 September 2021.Despite its designation as the ‘Fourth Force,’ Transpersonal Psychology often occupies a peripheral and precarious place within mainstream Psychological approaches. Its historic focus on mystical/spiritual and non-ordinary states of consciousness, coupled with its...
Transpersonal Psychology Review
2022
Michael Daniels
Steve Taylor’s Review of the new edition of my book Shadow, Self, Spirit (2021) focuses on a critique of what he sees as my ‘sceptical’ stance on metaphysics and my rejection of his own ‘soft perennialism’. I respond to Taylor’s criticisms by noting: (1) that my own perspective rejects materialism and acknowledges the need for metaphysical concepts in transpersonal psychology; and (2) that, in...
Transpersonal Psychology Review
2021
Steve Taylor
131 citations
Embracing Metaphysics: Transpersonal Psychology as a Post-Materialist Approach Michael Daniels’s book Shadow, Self, Spirit is an essential book for students of transpersonal psychology – perhaps the clearest, most wide-ranging and well-written overview of the topic that has yet been written. However, this article suggests some problematic areas with Daniels’s approach, such as his criticism of...
Transpersonal Psychology Review
2021
Charles D. Laughlin, Adam J. Rock
Although phenomenologist Edmund Husserl’s project was not directed at transpersonal experiences, his methods are nevertheless applicable in a profound and effective way. We explore Husserl’s project and its methods for their relevance to transpersonal studies. Husserl laid out the proposition that science, including psychology, must be grounded in the study of perception, which after all is the...
Transpersonal Psychology Review
2020
Freya Harrild, David Luke
9 citations
This paper explores both transpersonal psychology and ecopsychology individually and in conjunction, followed by an inspection of their relationship with mystical experiences and the impact of these within a transpersonal ecopsychological context. Specifically, nature as a trigger for such experiences is examined, alongside an analysis of the effect of these nature mystical experiences on an...
Transpersonal Psychology Review
2020
Stuart Whomsley
This paper considers poetry, poets and the transpersonal. It first considers the creation of poetry in relation to the transpersonal with the focus on the poet, in particular the role of altered states of consciousness for the poet in the act of creation; the focus then shifts to the reader of poetry to consider if poetry reading can lead to transpersonal states, finding at least that poetry...
Transpersonal Psychology Review
2020
Charles D. Laughlin, Adam J. Rock
This essay provides an anthropological account of a neuroepistemological account of mystical experience. We commence by outlining the various qualities of mystical experience (e.g. time-consciousness and space-consciousness distortion). Subsequently, we analyse the epistemology of mystical experience with special reference to the constructivist versus decontextualist debate. Next, we formulate...
Transpersonal Psychology Review
2020
Scott Buckler, April Woodward
A proposed direction for transpersonal psychology is the development of empirical research within the field, specifically in assessing the effects of transpersonal practices. The areas of self-actualisation, peak experience and flow have been subjected to research predominantly using psychometrics, however a range of theoretical and methodological issues within these concepts are evident. An...
Transpersonal Psychology Review
2019
John Rowan, Law Ho
This paper is a critique on transpersonal psychologists in terms of their experience and practices. Rowan observed that most participants in transpersonal psychology conferences had not embodied the experience of Nondual – the highest level ofconsciousness in the realms of the transpersonal according to Wilber (2000). Rowan further pointed out that most great religious traditions made the...
Transpersonal Psychology Review
2019
J. Wade
Leadership since time immemorial has been considered a sacred calling, a spiritual and moral responsibility that attracted great thinkers from East and West. Only with the realpolitik of Macchiavelli, followed by industrialisation, did leadership theory become secular and transactional, a trend that lasted until the late 20th century. About the time transpersonal psychology emerged, sacred...
Transpersonal Psychology Review
2019
Scott Buckler, Jenni Gates
While there is a tradition of research in relation to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LGBTQI+) community and religiosity, there is a paucity of research relating to spirituality. Additionally, classifying such ‘non–conforming’ groups into a general classification has inherent problems, specifically in relation to those identifying as transgender more likely to...
Transpersonal Psychology Review
2019
Scott Buckler, April Woodward, Ho Law
This paper aims to provide an understanding on the meaning of transpersonal psychology. It first examines the current definition of transpersonal psychology and its inherent problems and challenges. It then offers a new insight on the definition by drawing a parallel metaphor from the Taoist perspective and concludes that the nature of transpersonal psychology is fluid like water which is...
Transpersonal Psychology Review
2018
Fraser Watts
The relationships between psychology, religion and the transpersonal are difficult to clarify because of confusion and uncertainty about the key terms. ‘Religion’ is so diverse that there is no single essence of religion that is found in all its manifestations. The ‘transpersonal’ is also hard to define, one of the issues being that it is often defined largely in what it goes ‘beyond’ rather...
Transpersonal Psychology Review
2017
John Drew, Ho Law
This paper reviews a broad range of literature on the transpersonal and spirituality in the workplace. It aims to critically examine the organisational practice that relates to transpersonal psychology by drawing on major theories and findings in the broad area of transpersonal applications. In this paper, we argue that the values of the transpersonal are being communicated indirectly at work....
Transpersonal Psychology Review
2017
The following meditation trains both awareness of present moment experience (mindfulness) as well as bringing in qualities of warmth and kindness that are designed to activate the soothing care giving system (Porges, 1995). It is an adaptation of a mindfulness breath meditation (Kabbat-Zinn, 1990), the soothing breath rhythm (Gilbert, 2009), and the affectionate breath (Neff & Germer, 2012),...
Transpersonal Psychology Review
2016
Elliot Cohen
1 citation
This paper was originally presented at the British Psychological Society’s Transpersonal Psychology Section’s 19th annual conference – ‘Psychedelics, Psychology and Spirituality’. It was my intention, in the best spirit of academic debate and inquiry, to offer some critical perspectives and considerations related to the use of psychedelics in relation to the origins and development of...
Transpersonal Psychology Review
2016
Michael G. Rush
In this article I argue that Transpersonal Psychology has a close relationship with Western Esotericism, represented by the contemporary ‘modern occult revival’. I present an overview of a few key transpersonal psychologists and how their ideas display the characteristics of Western Esotericism as defined by Antoine Faivre. I then discuss whether this approach is appropriate, the implications...
Transpersonal Psychology Review
2015
Dwight Turner, Jane Callaghan, Alasdair Gordon-Finlayson
The aim of this paper is to show, via the lens of a culturally specific dream, how the transpersonal could benefit from broadening its approach to spirituality to include the wisdom of African spiritual beliefs. Considering some of the reasons for its lack of prominence, together with an exploration of some of the richness held within African spirituality, this paper suggests that a more...
Transpersonal Psychology Review
2013
‘Spiritual Transformation’ (ST) appeared from practice with clients to be a coherent approach towards transformation for counsellors and therapists. This paper introduces the principles and praxis of the approach. It shows tools for managing ST projects that originated seamlessly from its semiotic structure, and enable measurability of outcomes according to pre-established criteria.The paper...