Transpersonal psychology
| Style over substance Pseudoscience |
|
| Popular pseudosciences |
| Random examples |
Transpersonal Psychology is a hypothesis of mental health masquerading as legitimate psychology. Transpersonal psychology is based on the notion that trauma in past lives, birth, gestation and disconnection from God/energy/transcendent/soul[1] has left everyone sick. Practitioners attempt to heal this sickness… usually at a large cost, which would not be a problem except they are treating a disease that doesn't exist.
Transpersonal psychology has fundamental problems: it has a multiplicity of definitions from within the field,[2] it is based on metaphysics[2] (which is unfalsifiable), it was strongly influenced by the New Age Human Potential Movement[3] and it is lacking in a biological basis, peddling a wide range of pseudoscientific ideas, e.g.: [4]:25-28
Stanislav Grof[5] coined the term but it has a long tradition; it has peppered the works of pseudoscience promoters, of all stripes and colours, since the eighteenth century including Jeffrey Sumber, William James, Carl Jung, Deepak Chopra, Bruce Greyson and Ervin Laszlo.[6] According to Grof, shamans have something to do with transpersonal psychology and hold the secret for the Western world.[7]
Frameworks used by transpersonal psychologists, such as by Ken Willbur, may lack outside reference points and thus lead to tautologies and ambiguity.[8]
Transpersonal psychology may look like this:[9]
A Soul Realignment™ session will help you find the clarity you need to make decisions that will serve your higher path and purpose… Soul Profile and Realignment One hour reading plus a 15 minute support call a few weeks after the reading – $197 Buy Now… For those who cannot receive an e-mail recording and wish to have the recording e-mailed on a disc, there is a $10 Shipping and Handling charge. Reading plus $5 shipping and handling – $207 Buy Now.
Or this:[10]
I reach into the many ‘files’ of a client's energy and follow as I am lead.[sic] There is no one modality I use — and I work completely by instinct. One client may require Tong Ren along with a past life clearing before balancing. Another may have entities and I will go in to find them another place to live before I'm able to work with the client's physical body.
It's best to stay clear of these people.
Gems of transpersonal psychology[edit]
Abraham Maslow:[11]
I find not only self-actualizing people who transcend, but also nonhealthy people, non-self-actualizers who have important transcendent experiences.
William James:[12]
Notwithstanding my own inability to accept either popular Christianity or scholastic theism, I suppose that my belief — that, in communion with the Ideal, new force comes into the world and new departures are made here below — subjects me to being classed among the supernaturalists of the piecemeal or crasser type.
Transpersonal psychology is interested in a significant subgroup of these states that have heuristic, healing, transformative and even evolutionary potential. This includes experiences of shamans and their clients, those of initiates in native rites of passage and ancient mysteries of death and rebirth, of spiritual practitioners and mystics of all ages, and individuals in psychospiritual crisis (“spiritual emergencies”).
It is only through the psyche that we can establish that God acts upon us, but we are unable to distinguish whether these actions emanate from God or from the unconscious. We cannot tell whether God and the unconscious are two different entities. Both are border-line concepts for transcendental contents. But empirically it can be established, with a sufficient degree of probability, that there is in the unconscious an archetype of wholeness. Strictly speaking, the God-image does not coincide with the unconscious as such, but with this special content of it, namely the archetype of the Self. God is reality itself.
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ↑ Theoretical and empirical basis of transpersonal psychology and psychotherapy: Observations from LSD research by Stanislav Grof (1973) Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 5(1):15-53.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 "The Challenges, Prospects, and Promise of Transpersonal Psychology" by Paul F. Cunningham (2007) International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 26(1):41-55. doi:10.24972/ijts.2007.26.1.41.
- ↑ Transpersonal Psychology: Exploring the farther reaches of human nature. by Steve Taylor (Sep 25, 2015) Psychology Today.
- ↑ Bridging Psychological Science and Transpersonal Spirit: Introduction to Transpersonal Psychology by Paul F. Cunningham (2011).
- ↑ New Perspectives in Psychiatry, Psychology, and Psychotherapy: Observations from Modern Consciousness Researchby Stanislav Grof
- ↑ 6 Facts about Transpersonal Psychology by Margarita Tartakovsky, PsychCentral (archived from November 4, 2011).
- ↑ Psychology of the Future Lessons from Modern Consciousness Research by Stanislav Grof (2000) State University of New York Press. ISBN 0791446220.
- ↑ A Theistic Perspective on Ken Wilber's Transpersonal Psychology by George Adams (2002) Journal of Contemporary Religion 17(2).
- ↑ Soul Realignment™ (archived from February 4, 2016).
- ↑ Energy Realignment by Maralie Martin (archived from August 23, 2018).
- ↑ Abraham Maslow, Transpersonal Psychology, and self-Transcendence by Timothy Conway (2008) Rare-Leadership.org (archived from June 28, 2016).
- ↑ William James, Theosophist By Tony Lysy (2013) Theosophical Society (archived from 11 Feb 2014 22:00:14 UTC).
- ↑ New Perspectives in Psychiatry, Psychology, and Psychotherapy: Observations from Modern Consciousness Research by Stanislav Grof (archived from April 15, 2015).
- ↑ Carl Jung says God is reality itself (January 7, 2013) these things inside, WordPress.