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On the Way to the Altar: An Illustration of Transpersonal Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
Full text linkThis paper illustrates transpersonal psychoanalytic psychotherapy through a detailed clinical example. A creative synthesis of Voice Dialogue work and Dreamtending, applied through storytelling and active imagination, is presented with a patient who is about to be married. Areas such as the therapeutic relationship including skills, techniques, clinical decisions, goals, interventions and the therapeutic space and presence are explored and discussed throughout the paper as they relate to transpersonal psychoanalytic psychotherapy
Peak Teaching: Exploring and Fostering Sacred Experiences in University Classrooms
Full text linkSupporting the spiritual growth of college and university students with diverse backgrounds and orientations is both important and challenging. It is important not only because spirituality is a crucial dimension of human life but also because the majority of students at both private and public schools want their teachers to address spiritual issues in the classroom. A powerful way to address spirituality is to explore and foster sacred experiences in university classrooms. Sacred experiences include religious, spiritual, mystical, transcendent, numinous, and peak experiences as well as many other nonordinary experiences. The author offers guidance to educators on how to: 1) discern their own motivation, commitment, and preparedness for teaching sacred experiences; 2) support the diverse spiritual lives of their students as well as the inner lives of students who deny or are uncertain about the reality of spirituality and the sacred; 3) maintain the separation of church and state by developing an educational approach that is pluralistic, transformative, integrative, comparative, impartial, non-coercive, and dogma-free; 4) welcome multiple definitions, terminologies, descriptions, and perspectives on spirituality and the sacred, including those that doubt or deny its existence; 5) skillfully interweave holistic and conventional pedagogies that activate and integrate multiple modes of consciousness and being; 6) create a supportive learning environment for pluralistic discussions of the sacred; 7) cultivate epistemological humility; 8) pursue personal development, professional training, and lifelong learning; and 9) develop, experiment with, and conduct research on new pedagogies and combinations of pedagogies
How Widely Are Near-Death Experiences Recognized in Indian Society and Health Care? A Preliminary Survey
Full text linkPatients who have had near-death experiences are often profoundly changed by the event, and they and their families can find these phenomena bewildering or even distubing. Despite this, awareness of near-death experiences appears to be minimal among health care providers in India. This cross-sectional study was conducted on 100 individuals who attend patients at the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences in Kochi, Kerala, India, and on one hundred physicians at the same institution. Acquaintance with the phenomenon of near-death experiences was found to be quite low among both samples—lower than rates seen in Western societies. Almost half of the physicians who claimed adequate knowledge about these experiences did not think that they were medically important. These findings point to a need for education about neardeath experiences for health care providers in India, and possibly in other developing societies as well
Psychological Energy: Early Theorists in the Analytical Tradition
Full text linkSince the dawn of Western psychology, theorists have used variations of the term “energy” to describe the dynamic forces at work within the psyche and the soma and the psychotherapeutic processes of change. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, terms used for psychological energy included “libido,” “psychic energy,” “orgone energy,” “bioenergetics,” and “psycho-energetics.” This paper uses philosophical hermeneutics to compare the major theorists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century: William James, Pierre Janet, Sigmund Freud, C. G. Jung, Wilhelm Reich, Alexander Lowen, and Roberto Assagioli. The analysis reveals that these theorists generally agreed that psychological energy is (a) a nonrational force that the rational mind attempts to harness, tame, or understand; (b) can be felt as part of an emotional experience, but is not, strictly speaking, the cognitive components of emotion; (c) characterized by a movement whose directionality and intensity are directly related to psychological well-being; and (d) fuel for action that can be directed by the conscious will or desire. The major point of disagreement is the nature and source of this energy. Some theorists argued that it is a physical energy as defined by the natural sciences, some contented it has a metaphysical or supernatural source, and others have placed it somewhere between the physical and metaphysical
Leadership Awakening: Shifting Towards Eco-Consciousness Through Psychedelics
Full text linkCorporate leaders, wielding influence and decision-making power over world resources and capital, are key drivers of systemic change to address current social, economic, and ecological crises. To address the myriad complex and interdependent crises, a transformative shift in consciousness is required in leaders and leadership teams, from ego-consciousness towards eco-consciousness, which can be supported through psychedelic experiences. Shifting towards eco-consciousness can facilitate holistic decision making and an expanded sense of leadership responsibility to the planet and all its inhabitants—ultimately supporting the creation of healthier eco-nomics in our Earth community.
Shifts towards leadership eco-consciousness have the potential to open up space to explore new models of eco-nomics (Korten, 2021), which supports social good for the planet. This consciousness requires stepping out of the crumbling Western late-stage capitalist paradigm and stepping into a new phase of human/nature evolution with generative business models and eco-nomic structures that create more human and humane work environments. To prepare for this evolutionary shift, leaders and leadership teams must awaken to an expanded consciousness, grounded in a connected sense of Self that is in unity with all life on this planet—a movement from ego-consciousness to eco-consciousness. Considering that business is the most powerful institution in the world today, business leaders not only have the ability to shift future planetary patterns that support healthy life on planet Earth but have a moral responsibility to do so (Yau & Brutoco, 2012)
What is Transpersonal Psychotherapy? A Conceptual Template
Full text linkTranspersonal psychotherapy (TPT) lacks systematization, as it lacks a model that
characterizes what qualifies a psychotherapy as transpersonal. Due to this situation, TPT
has been developed in a state of fragmentation, through a multiplicity of idiosyncratic
approaches. This idiosyncratic fragmentation jeopardizes the theoretical development
of the field, undermines the possibilities of obtaining a wider recognition, and hinders
the training and the research. To remedy this, this paper proposes a model of five
components which characterize TPT: (1) purposeful use of states of consciousness,
(2) transpersonal therapeutic framework, (3) transpersonal techniques, (4) focus on
spirituality and/or existential meaning, and (5) suitable phenomenology and therapeutic
demands/goals. Given that each component admits varied implementations, the
model serves as a conceptual template able to cover the rich variety of transpersonal
psychotherapies while providing the much-needed systematization
Psychological Energy: Early Theorists in the Analytical Tradition
Full text linkSince the dawn of Western psychology, theorists have used variations of the term “energy” to describe the dynamic forces at work within the psyche and the soma and the psychotherapeutic processes of change. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, terms used for psychological energy included “libido,” “psychic energy,” “orgone energy,” “bioenergetics,” and “psycho-energetics.” This paper uses philosophical hermeneutics to compare the major theorists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century: William James, Pierre Janet, Sigmund Freud, C. G. Jung, Wilhelm Reich, Alexander Lowen, and Roberto Assagioli. Analysis reveals these theorists generally agreed psychological energy is (a) a nonrational force that the rational mind attempts to harness, tame, or understand; (b) can be felt as part of an emotional experience, but is not, strictly speaking, the cognitive components of emotion; (c) characterized by a movement whose directionality and intensity are directly related to psychological well-being; and (d) fuel for action that can be directed by the conscious will or desire. The major point of disagreement is the nature and source of this energy. Some theorists argued that it is a physical energy as defined by the natural sciences, some contented it has a metaphysical or supernatural source, and others have placed it somewhere between the physical and metaphysical
Dreams, Synchrony, and Synchronicity
Full text linkThis essay presents the dreams of a long-term patient over the course of treatment in order to explore the transpersonal potential of the relational unconscious—those open channels of unconscious communication between people. At a key moment, the patient brings in the therapist’s own childhood dream, serving to break a period of impasse and reset the therapy. Dreams and their interpretation reveal the essence of fractal consciousness, by which a sliver of experience can shed light on the whole of the psyche. A fractal model of understanding suggests open boundaries between self/other and self/world at multiple levels. The deep intimacy of ongoing therapy can capitalize on this openness by promoting shared states of physiological resonance between patient and therapist. Such conditions are ripe for facilitating and amplifying uncanny knowing, synchronicities, and other transpersonal experiences
Fluid Homes: Navigating Gender, Sexuality, and Housing Insecurity Discourses on Social Media
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As part of the Sexuality Summer Research Fellowship organized and facilitated by the California Institute for Integral Studies, this dataset focuses on 2SLGBTQI+ experiences and perceptions of housing insecurity and homelessness. Housing and rental affordability pressures, particularly for low-income earners, have become a pressing issue worldwide, especially as inflation has escalated over the past three years (Barrett, 2022). Much of this can be attributed to the build-up and fallout of the global financial crisis of 2008, where the culmination of stagnant growth in real wages and a sustained reduction in access to social security and welfare provisions has pushed many households into poverty and caused rising homelessness (Delclós & Vidal 2021; Broadbent, et al., 2023). The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated much of these pre-existing pressures, as measures to curb the spread of the virus such as lockdowns, revealed the absence of safe and secure housing, especially for vulnerable groups such as the 2SLGBTQI+ community (Salerno, et al., 2020; Lederer et al., 2021).
According to Cox et al. (2017), housing insecurity exists on a continuum of multidimensional housing-related issues, including stability, affordability, quality, safety, neighborhood safety, and neighborhood quality. Homelessness also exists on the continuum as the most extreme form of housing insecurity, which consists of the lack of a fixed, regular, and nighttime residence (Broton & Goldrick-Rab, 2018; Cox et al., 2017). Queer-and-trans youth are disproportionately overrepresented in such experiences as 28% of 2SLGBTQI+ youth reported experiencing homelessness or housing instability at some point in their lives in the United States while 24% of youth experiencing homelessness in the UK identify as 2SLGBTQI+ (Bhandal & Horwood, 2021; DeChants, et al. 2021). Family rejection when “coming out” or being “outed” is a leading factor in causing 2SLGBTQI+ homelessness, leading to many queer-and-trans folx to rely on informal support networks for temporary shelter such as couch surfing (Abramovich, 2012; Petry, et al. 2021). Those who do end up on the streets can be exposed to dangerous and harmful situations such as substance misuse and violence. Furthermore, living on the streets can have a longer-term impact on the emotional, physical, and psychological well-being of queer-and-trans folx, especially for youth (Abramovich, 2012). As shelter services predominantly operate on a cisheteronormative basis, it means that systemic and cultural barriers prevent queer-and-trans folx from accessing safe and supportive services that cater to their specific needs (Abramovich, 2017; Fraser, et al. 2019)