Intimations of a Spiritual New Age: II. Wilhelm Reich as Transpersonal Psychologist. Part I: Context, Development, and Crisis in Reich’s Bio-energetic Spiritual Psychology
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies September 1, 2018 DOI: 10.24972/ijts.2018.37.2.1 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Mysticism |
| Keywords | Disenchantment Transpersonal psychology Consciousness Spirituality Vitalism Transformative learning Context archaeology Psychoanalysis Depth psychology Identity crisis Astrology Vision Alchemy Parapsychology Epistemology Theology Politics Law |
| Citations | 1 |
| Key points | Argues that Wilhelm Reich's later work offers a vitalistic transpersonal psychology that should be separated from his scientifically dubious orgone research, and that his personal development mirrors classical mystical stages. |
Abstract
Wilhelm Reich is the focus of this second in a series of papers on a group of independent figures from the 1930s into the 1950s—also including Jung, the later Heidegger, Toynbee, Bergson, Teilhard de Chardin, and Simone Weil—who in the context of those years of crisis articulated overlapping visions of a future “New Age” spirituality that might in some more distant future serve to balance and even transform a globalizing materialism and disenchantment with traditional religion. The later Reich developed a highly original version of a “vitalistic” transpersonal psychology, as his “religion for the children of the future,” which needs to be differentiated from its more doubtful supportive research in his orgone physics and biology. The spiritual nature of his larger intuitions of a transformative life energy is also reflected in the parallels between Reich’s personal development and the classical purgation/illumination phases of unitive mysticism, and the “spiritual emergency” of his final “dark night” crisis. A later paper will concentrate on largely unrealized implications of Reich’s work for still evolving directions in consciousness studies, neoshamanism, the historical Jesus, emergent systems approaches in science, and a future planetary identity.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on mysticism, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| The mystical mind: probing the biology of religious experience | 2000 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Religious and Mystical Experiences as Artifacts of Temporal Lobe Function: A General Hypothesis | 1983 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The Problem of Pure Consciousness: Mysticism and Philosophy | 1993 | Edited collection of essays | |
| Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century | 2020 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mysticism and schizophrenia: A phenomenological exploration of the structure of consciousness in the schizophrenia spectrum disorders. | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
Citations in the library
Cites 2
- Implications and Consequences of Post-Modern Philosophy for Contemporary Transpersonal Studies III. Deleuze and Some Related Phenomenologies of Felt Meaning: Psychosis and Mysticism as Inherent “Structures of Thought” International Journal of Transpersonal Studies July 1, 2014
- Creativity, Schizotypicality, and Mystical Experience: An Empirical Study July 1, 2013