The Calling to a Spiritual Psychology: Should Transpersonal Psychology Convert?

Hartelius, Glenn; Friedman, Harris L.; Pappas, James D.

doi:10.1002/9781118591277.ch3

Cited by 11 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…I have lamented these dynamics at length in other publications (e.g., Friedman, 2002, 2015b), as have others who also advocate for a secular spirituality compatible with a transpersonal perspective (e.g., Walach, 2017). I have also speculated that it might be better, given the widespread success of spirituality studies within contemporary psychology, for transpersonal psychology to simply change its name to spiritual psychology and be done with its struggles to overcome its marginalization (Hartelius, Friedman, & Pappas, 2015). However, I think surrendering its title to the even more problematic subdiscipline of spiritual psychology would result in a serious loss of transpersonal psychology’s unique potential to develop as a science devoid of supernatural baggage.…”

Section: Defining Transpersonal Psychologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Transpersonal psychology as a heterodox approach to psychological science: Focus on the construct of self-expansiveness and its measure.

Friedman¹

2018

Archives of Scientific Psychology

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Humans are radically interconnected, not just isolated individuals. Their self-concepts can reflect this by expanding in space-time beyond contemporary Western understandings of people as separate, bound within their skins in the present. Instead, humans can self-identify more expansively with external others and nature, their internal organs and cells, and aspects of their past and possible future existence. However, self-identifications can go much further through including all of humanity, all of life, and even all that exists as being within one's self-concept. These extreme identifications can be seen as transpersonal, namely by expanding (“trans”) the conventional limits of how a person is usually viewed. Sometimes these extreme identifications might even be considered spiritual, but that term unfortunately invokes the metaphysical divide of “spirit” pitted against nature. In contrast, transpersonal psychology can provide a thoroughly naturalistic and scientific way to deal with extreme interconnectedness that avoids such undue metaphysical speculations. This is especially useful when addressing frontier topics, such as higher consciousness and deeper meaning, and offers ways to integrate many conventional psychological approaches under more inclusive frameworks that remain scientific. The construct of self-expansiveness, as one transpersonal approach, provides a way to understand and measure self-concept that incorporates transpersonal identifications with the same scientific rigor found in conventional approaches. This offers avenues for exploring holistic solutions for the optimum development of human potential, as well as for reconciling vexing dilemmas that stem from narrowly isolated, rather than expansively interconnected, self-concepts, such as conflicts among humans and between humans and their environment.

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Section: Defining Transpersonal Psychologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Transpersonal psychology as a heterodox approach to psychological science: Focus on the construct of self-expansiveness and its measure.

Friedman¹

2018

Archives of Scientific Psychology

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“…Hartelius and Harrahy (2010) noted that for more than thirty years, transpersonal psychology has placed an emphasis on individual spiritual development, with New Age perennialism as its philosophical foundation. While the field should not be considered a spiritual psychology (Hartelius, Friedman, & Pappas, 2015), human spirituality is clearly a recurrent theme-as well as consideration of ways in which philosophical frames may serve to reaffirm the value of this spirituality as something more than socially constructed imaginings. Ferrer (2002) has provided an extensive critique of the perennialist roots of transpersonal psychology and offered an alternative in the form of participatory thought.…”

Section: Spirituality From Transpersonal Psychologymentioning

confidence: 99%

African-Centered Transpersonal Self in Diaspora and Psychospiritual Wellness: A Sankofa Perspective

Deterville

2016

IJTS

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The West African concepts of às . e . and sankofa have distinctive transpersonal value that should be explored in greater depth by the transpersonal field, particularly for their relational and participatory aspects. Transpersonal psychology is a Western psychology with philosophical roots in transcendentalism and perennialist traditions that may include theism and non-dualism. Officially established in 1968, transpersonal psychology has gone through a number of shifts, including the participatory turn in the early 2000s. The Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi), also founded in 1968, has built a substantial body of research on a variety of African epistemology, cosmology, and philosophy to create the field of African-centered psychology. The transpersonal West African concepts discussed here may serve as a bridge to begin greater dialogue between the fields of Black psychology and transpersonal psychology.

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“…While it is tempting to eschew metaphysics in our postmodern and poststructuralist milieu, one of the reasons given for the founding of transpersonal psychology was a dissatisfaction with existing “person-centered” psychologies that “ignored placing human beings within a cosmic perspective” (Hartelius, Friedman, & Pappas, 2015, p. 44). Even more significantly, Grof (2015) sharply critiques those scientific approaches that take “leading paradigms for an accurate and definitive description of reality” and whose materialistic explanations of reality cannot account for recent observations in consciousness research.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Whitehead’s metaphysics as a cosmological framework for transpersonal psychology.

Kling¹

2019

The Humanistic Psychologist

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While it is tempting to eschew metaphysics in our postmodern and poststructuralist milieu, one of the reasons given for the founding of transpersonal psychology was a dissatisfaction with existing "person-centered" psychologies that "ignored placing human beings within a cosmic perspective" (Hartelius, Friedman, & Pappas, 2015, p. 44). Even more significantly, Grof (2015) sharply critiques those scientific approaches that take "leading paradigms for an accurate and definitive description of reality" and whose materialistic explanations of reality cannot account for recent observations in consciousness research. This paper argues that the philosophy of organism of Alfred North Whitehead provides an effective metaphysical framework for transpersonal psychology because of his integration of subjective, objective, and transpersonal experience within one integrated cosmos, his argument that existence is made up of dynamic events that are both mental and physical, his unification of body and mind, his refusal to bifurcate subject and object within a relational reality, his validation of nonsensory perception as the basis for internal relations, and his description of a participatory cosmos of creativity and freedom where novelty, value, purpose, and transformation are universally available realities.

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The Calling to a Spiritual Psychology: Should Transpersonal Psychology Convert?

Cited by 11 publications

References 42 publications

Transpersonal psychology as a heterodox approach to psychological science: Focus on the construct of self-expansiveness and its measure.

Transpersonal psychology as a heterodox approach to psychological science: Focus on the construct of self-expansiveness and its measure.

African-Centered Transpersonal Self in Diaspora and Psychospiritual Wellness: A Sankofa Perspective

Whitehead’s metaphysics as a cosmological framework for transpersonal psychology.

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