What Is Transpersonal
Psychology? by Ken Wilber THE LAUGHING MAN MAGAZINE (originally published Vol 5. No 2,
1984) “Transpersonal
psychology is not a praxis,
Laughing Man: From a scientistic perspective,
mainstream psychology in one or another its forms is the
last word on the nature Man. But from the perspective of the
great Realizers and Adepts, the viewpoint epitomized by
modern psychology is seen to be myopic and reductionistic –
unable or unwilling to move beyond the narrow spectrum of
human possibilities that “fit” within the confines of the
world-view of objectivist science. Transpersonal psychology stands
at the borderline where science meets religion and
spirituality and where therapy and discussion meet spiritual
practice and personal commitment. Thus, transpersonal
psychology has fallen liable to criticism from both sides of
the border, since it is neither conventionally objective
science nor an all-embracing way of spiritual
transformation. In the following article, Ken
Wilber offers an honest and insightful assessment the
position of transpersonal psychology. While frankly
admitting its limitations as a transformative path, he
points out that transpersonal psychology nonetheless serves
a useful mediative purpose between the more traditional
schools of psychology and truly transformative spiritual
disciplines. Wilber also affirms that
transpersonal psychologists are generally practitioners of
one or another spiritual path. However, many spiritual paths
and systems themselves do not communicate the
seventh
stage, God-Realized
point of view. In these cases, the orientation of the
transpersonal psychologist himself is – necessarily limited
and may not go beyond fascinated acknowledgment of the
extraordinary possibilities discovered in the fourth and
fifth stages of life. Such a point of view, by itself, is as
self-possessed and opaque to the Radiance of God as the
mainstream psychological models. Nevertheless, sympathy with both
higher psychic and transcendental realities is necessary and
also sorely lacking in our Spirit-denying culture.
Transpersonal psychologists have attempted, within the
“respectable” limits of a third-stage theoretical framework,
to persuasively counter the psyche-denying and Spirit
denying points of view of mainstream behavioral
sciences. KEN
WILBER is a leading
transpersonal psychologist and editor in chief of Re Vision,
an academic journal devoted to the psychological and
sociological impacts of consciousness research. His books
include A Sociable God, Eye to Eye, Up from Eden, The Atman
Project, No Boundary, and The Spectrum of
Consciousness. Abraham
Maslow-who is generally regarded as the modern founder of
transpersonal psychology pointed out that there are now
“Four Forces” in the field of psychology: (1) behaviorism,
or objective empirical (and therefore often physicalistic)
approaches; (2) psychoanalysis, or psychodynamic and
psychosexual approaches; (3) humanistic, or existential and
mental intentional approaches; and (4) transpersonal, or
spiritual and transcendental approaches. In a sense, the
four major forces of psychology deal, respectively, with the
first four stages of life as outlined by Master Da Free John
– the physical-vital, the emotional-sexual, the
mental-intentional, and the beginning-spiritual. Each of the
“four psychologies,” then, has something very important,
very necessary, very significant – and very limited – to
tell us, and thus each should be approached, in my opinion,
with a mind both open-appreciative and critical –
evaluative. In a sense, however, transpersonal
psychologists have always attempted to do just that. In
other words, it is not quite accurate to say that
transpersonal psychology is interested solely or even
predominantly in the fourth stage of life. Transpersonal
psychology is theoretically interested in all stages of life
or levels of consciousness, one through seven. It accepts
the valid aspects of the first three stage-schools of
psychology, and it then attempts to bridge or unite them,
theoretically, with the three higher stage schools of
development (e.g., yogis, saints, and sages). Now I emphasized the word
“theoretically” for an important reason: Transpersonal
psychology is not a praxis, not a way of life or a complete
psychospiritual discipline-it is not, that is, a genuinely
transformative path leading individuals to the Radiant
Ground and Goal of all development. But to criticize
transpersonal psychology on that score alone would be to
miss the point entirely. No genuine transpersonal
psychologist I know considers himself or herself a guru,
master, or adept and those that do have always ended up
looking silly or pathetic. No, most transpersonal
psychologists (I would say around 70%) themselves – are
practitioners of a particular path yogic, saintly, sagely
and are fully cognizant of the difference between level 3/4
theoria and level 5/6/7 praxis. Rather, the aims of transpersonal
psychology are more modest, but not, therefore, less
important. I would generally state them as follows:
(1) To render spirituality
theoretically acceptable to the “other” or “lower schools of
psychology. By presenting mental (stage-three) models that
persuasively and comprehensively include the higher or
spiritual stages of adaptation, transpersonal psychology
forces schools such as psychoanalysis to reconsider their
reductionistic dismissal of transcendental possibilities.
(2) When it comes to
“psychotherapy,” transpersonal psychologists act much like
“General Practitioners” (GPs) in medicine. Medical GPs know enough about
organic brain disorders, for example, to recognize the
condition when they see it and recommend a competent brain
surgeon. Just so with “spiritual GPs”-they might treat
low-level disorders themselves (using standard
psychotherapeutic procedures for which they were trained),
but when it comes to upper-level disorders (stages 5/6),
they recommend competent Masters. Genuine transpersonal
psychologists never attempt “brain surgery” themselves.
Rather, they recommend that the client see a competent
spiritual Adept perhaps Buddhist, perhaps Christian, perhaps
Hindu, perhaps Master Da Free John, and so on, each
therapist having his or her own favorite
Teachers. Transpersonal psychology, then, is
not a total psychospiritual or completely transformative
path (despite the silly claims made by some of its less
intelligent advocates); it is not a way of ultimate
liberation or radical transcendence. Nor, on the other hand,
is it a reductionistic, positivistic, spirit-denying
psychology. Rather, it is a theoretical approach that,
standing precisely between the upper and the lower
hemispheres of existence, is attempting to get each to talk
to, not at, the other. That, I think, is the genuine
service that transpersonal psychologists are performing,
quite apart from the individual work they are doing on their
own chosen spiritual paths. The genuine transpersonalists
(and there are many) have no illusions about what they, as
transpersonal psychologists, are doing – which is, we might
say, to make room in the minds or the psyches of men and
women for an intellectual acceptance of God – at which
point, as always, the work of the genuine Adepts and Masters
can more easily begin. Transpersonal psychologists are, in
plain language, apologists for the soul, gnostic
intermediaries whose function is made necessary by the fact
that, incredibly enough, modern psychology has forgotten its
own soul, its own psyche (!), which has always been held to
be the intersection of the Temporal and the Eternal – that
still point in the Heart where the Divine resurrects the
Mortal and tacitly announces a new Destiny in Consciousness.
They sit silent at the crossroads and point; no more, no
less.
The Movement to Intergal Life
Psychology “I quit referring to myself as a
transpersonal psychologist in 1983”, Ken Wilber On Critics, Integral Institute, My
Recent Writing, and Other Matters of Little Consequence: A
Shambhala Interview with Ken Wilber THE
DEMISE OF TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY Shambhala: Do you consider yourself
part of the transpersonal movement today? KW: No, I don’t. Shambhala: Tell us about
that. KW: Well, the basic difficulty is
that transpersonal psychology, to its great credit, was the
first major school of present-day psychology to take
spirituality seriously. Yet because there is a great deal of
disagreement as to what actually constitutes spirituality
itself, there is a great deal of disagreement as what
constitutes transpersonal psychology. These are not minor
inner tensions as one might find in, say, the various
schools of psychoanalysis or Jungian psychology. They are
instead major internal divisions and barbed disagreements as
to the nature, scope, and role of transpersonal psychology
itself. This makes the field more rife with political
schisms and warring ideologies. This is why, I believe, that
in three decades, and aside from one or two specific
theorists, the actual school of transpersonal psychology has
had no major impact outside of the Bay Area, and it is
today, many people agree, in an irreversible, terminal
decline. What’s left of the four forces
(behavioristic, psychoanalytic, humanistic, transpersonal)
will survive, if they survive at all, only by being taken up
and into a fully integral approach [see
“A Summary of My Psychological Model,” section “The Death of
Psychology and the Birth of the Integral,” posted on this
site.] 
not a way of life or a complete psychospiritual
discipline”
Ken
Wilber