15 Sep Returning to Transpersonal Study (although I never really left)
The maxim “I think therefore I am” has been lurking in my peripheral vision for as long as I’ve been a thinking person, appearing in textbooks, pleasure reading, and on coffee cups and t-shirts. I’ve never held it as much more than a historical placeholder, never really considered or was aware of the ramifications.
However, during the readings this week examining the ontological, epistemological, phenomenological, positivistic, empirical, teleological, heuristic, structuralist, Jungian, humanistic, behaviorist, feminist, participatory, existentialist, and whatever I’m leaving out worldviews, I suddenly had an “aha” moment and found myself saying out loud with some vigor, “That POV is entirely INSANE!”
If Descartes were to show up in my consulting room complaining of feeling depressed, anxious, lonely and unable to connect with others (which is what his worldview engenders) we would begin by together taking some deep, nourishing breaths. Then we would close our eyes, drop inside, until we were able to locate a felt sense of the body, of ourselves as corporal beings in the room, this room. As do most patients, he would likely feel an immediate sense of relief, and he would be encouraged to continue these and other practices. Of course, someone else will need to volunteer for this likely-to-be daunting therapy, as Descartes would never deign to work with a female therapist.
My second major response to this week’s reading has been unfolding for some time. I got my MA in TP in 1983 when the field was in its adolescence. I was irresistibly attracted to TP and becoming a TP therapist because of the distinction that the human being was not the center of the universe. Rather, something unknowable, an Other or Higher Intelligence or All-Pervading Love exists, and that is what we study in order that to know more about it. The critiques of Wilber had not occurred yet, and while I agree with ALL of them, there was still the sense of a transcendent shared reality. This is also what differentiated it from humanistic psychology.
Years later when I received an email informing us that ATP and AHP were combining their newsletters, I had a sense of foreboding that TP was losing its way, blurring the distinctions between our two very different worldviews: human at the center, or “the divine” at the center.
From reading Daniels, it appears that with the postmodern and post-postmodern developments that have occurred since the 80s, the field has kept up-to-date and revised its position so that “the divine” is no longer central as there is no agreement on what “the divine” is. TP is now defined as the study of the human response to the transpersonal, which is perhaps what a psychology should be, although this obscures its central purpose IMHO.
© 2022 Catherine Auman
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