Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychologies Existential-Humanistic

Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychologies

Existential-Humanistic Psychology Compared with Transpersonal Psychologies

There are fundamental differences between Existential-Humanistic Psychologies and Transpersonal Psychologies. First of all, the Existential-Humanistic Psychologies do not agree on basic questions having to do with human personality and change as a result from their widely different origins. Significantly different programs of application and therapy are used by these psychologies. And they do not agree on the final goal for the human psyche. But they do agree on their basic approaches.

The Transpersonal Psychologies find their similarities in their approach to the body-mind relationships and transformation. Essentially they believe that the mind controls the body and if you can put your mind at peace, the body will respond. Based on the work of Carl Jung, who first coined the term "transpersonal" (uberpersonlich) in the phrase "transpersonal unconscious" which he used as a synonym for his well-known "collective unconscious," it refers to the human condition as essentially healthy and full of potential, not as ill and diseased (Schneider,2004).

The mind is everything to the Transpersonal psychologies. The body is just the "crust" covering the transpersonal essence, that is, the mind and soul and spirit that navigates the body through the world. The psychotic and unstable are seen as not having developed and achieved object constancy or ego identity, as the normal mind has. Yet the "normal" mind still has not reached its full potential and it is believed that there are several steps upward from the normal into disidentification from one's personality or personal identity, with recognition of object impermanence or transiency. This stage is typified by the states of consciousness obtained by advanced meditators. A further step in development may be obtained when the person realizes the Supreme Identity (i.e., enlightenment or connection with God), and the relative state of normal reality, as seen in saints and mystics. (Cortright, 1997)

Similar to the mystics' Transcendental Meditation," the Transpersonal psychologies study the different states of consciousness, recognizing certain states in attaining them, such as dreaming, hypnotic trance, "waking" consciousness and all their sub-levels. Transpersonal psychologies believe that there is a mystical experience that becomes permanent, and through development of one's states or stations of consciousness, one can come to live in superconscious state continually. (Daniels, 2005)

An offspring of Freud and his successors, Jung, Rank, and Reich. Roberto Assagioli, who believed in a superconscious, as well as a subconscious, the therapeutic stream integrated transpersonal and depth psychology, based on the beliefs of Carl Jung. The transpersonal psychologists like to say that they may be most simply defined as spiritual psychologists, recognizing that humanity has both drives toward sex and aggression and drives toward wholeness, toward connecting with and experiencing the divine. They believe one cannot separate the spiritual and the psychological, as the mainstream psychologies have up to this time. Originally, the texts of ancient India, China and Greece did not distinguish between the psyche or spirit and practices associated with religion. But in the 18th and 19th centuries formalized psychology sometimes denied the existence of spiritual experiences altogether. In the 1960's, Zen, Yoga, Vpassana, Transpersonal Meditation began to be practiced and studied in the West. Practitioners found that these meditational practices reaped various beneficial effects, including reduced anxiety, increased creativity, cardiac health and decreased dysfunctional behaviors. Biofeedback therapies utilized Eastern techniques of psychosomatic control. Often prescribed by mainstream physicians as "complementary therapies" are meditation, stress-management and mindfulness practices. Twenty million people now practice Yoga and meditation within the U.S., and millions more do, worldwide. (Transpersonal, 2006)

The Indian philosophies of "being-here" is used by both Existential and Transpersonal psychologies, and psychoanalytic "evenly-suspended tension" borrows from Eastern meditation. "First-person empiricism" and "different ways of knowing" are phrases applied to and borrowed from shamanist and native religions, and incorporated into the scientific studies of renowned psychologists. There is a growing interest in the techniques of narrative, visualization that occur within traditional Eastern religions, and incorporated into therapies, while spiritual concerns with basic character, faith and resilience are spoken of. Gandhian, Buddhist and Christian nonviolent activism and unity of perspective are recognized in social psychology and have been broadened into Art Therapy, Wilderness Therapy, Women's spirituality and planetary ecological movements as well as brought into Transpersonal psychological therapies.

Both Existential and Transpersonal psychologies have this in common, a respect for and utilization of Eastern techniques to reach a state of stress-free maintenance of human psychological health.

But the differences lie in their origins. While Transpersonal psychologies are related to the Eastern or Western indigenous epistemologies, Existential-Humanistic psychologies have a Freudian origin, coming through Freud and his descendents. While Transpersonal psychology is considered to be a "fourth force" in psychology, psychoanalysis, behaviorism and humanistic psychologies are outside of the "transegoic" elements, ignoring insights from the world's contemplative traditions in both Eastern and Western religions. Labeled "Western," Existential and Humanistic psychologies are focused mainly on prepersonal and personal aspects of the psyche.

Existential and humanistic psychologies are based on the writings not only of Freud, but Kierkegaard, Nietzche, Heidigger, Sartre, Camus and other European intellectuals who had experienced European wars and chaos during the twentieth century. Important to them were qualities of survival of the ego in a healthy state. Self-reliance, responsibility, mortality and authenticity were the characteristics that brought humans through suffering and this became an abiding theme in the psychologies that come from this era. (Sartre, 1969)

Rollo May, one of best known of the existential-humanistic psychologists, was influenced by American humanism and was interested in reconciling existential psychology with other approaches, especially Freud's. He described existential psychology as focusing on the "here and now." He went on to describe how:

At each moment, a person is free to choose what he or she will do and be. The most important aspect of a person is not what she has genetically inherited, or how her parents treated her when she was an infant, but how she interprets and responds to the world around her at each given instant, and the kinds of choices she makes about what to do next (May, 1969, p. 114).