Russian transpersonal psychology. The establishment of a Humanistic Psychology Association in 1990, two Russian-American conferences on humanistic-transpersonal topics conducted in 1991-1992, and publication by the Academy of Science of the work of Stanislav Grof all promoted the field. From 1995-2000, the transpersonal movement entered Russian folk culture through its identification with New Age spirituality and spread through the work of figures such as Evgeny Torchinov (1956-2003) and Vassily V. Nalimov (1991-1997).
Figure 2-1 identifies selected milestones in the intellectual history of the transpersonal movement.
Figure 2-1. “Unofficial “ Intellectual History of Modern Transpersonal Psychology
Section Summary
1. There are many probable histories of transpersonal psychology, depending upon what aspect of transpersonal psychology is emphasized and considered to be important in the present – lived experience, Eastern influences, idealism and panpsychism, the unconscious and superconscious, or spiritual inner experience and concept of the soul.
2. The roots of modern psychology lie in a spiritual tradition that is thoroughly transpersonal in character as reflected in the work of Gustav Fechner, William James, F.W.H.Myers, Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, and Roberto Assagioli. Each of these early contributors attempted to address those elements of the soul that religion refused to examine.
3. Modern transpersonal psychology is a uniquely American psychology and a reflection of America’s visionary “folk psychology” and “alternative reality tradition” embodied in Swedenborgism, spiritualism, utopianism, and the New England Transcendentalist movement at the turn of the century. Psychosynthesis was the first transpersonal psychology to be embrace in American popular culture.
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4. The Americanization of Eastern and Asian systems of thought that began at the end of the 19th century and continued through the 1950s laid the groundwork for the integration of Eastern spiritual ideas and Western psychological concepts, the promotion of Eastern systems of thought into American popular culture, and the rise of a spiritualized version of the unconscious. The unprecedented cross-cultural exchanges of ideas between East and West proved most productive for understanding non-Western views of reality and theories of personality development, altered states of consciousness, and methods for cultivating them.
5. The Counterculture movement of the 1960’s that expressed the deep disquiet in American culture with the modern worldview and its militarism, nuclearism, consumerism, spiritual problems, ecological devastations, materialism, scientism, social injustices, individualism, nationalism, anthropocentricism, and androcentricism that had been building throughout the 20th century provided fertile ground for the emergence of a constructive, revisionary postmodern humanism that involved a creative synthesis of premodern spiritual wisdom and modern scientific facts.
6. Modern transpersonal psychology emerged out of humanistic psychology in the late 1960’s calling attention to possibilities of growth and development beyond self-actualization. The widening of interest among humanistic psychologists into matters of ultimate values, unitive consciousness, transcendence, and practices of meditation and spiritual paths, reached a point where a newer development of psychology was not only feasible but necessary.
7. Since the 1970s, transpersonal psychology, or what Abraham Maslow referred to as the Fourth Force of psychology, has developed into a full-fledged academic, scientific, and professional discipline nationally in the United States and internationally in Europe, Russia and other countries of the world.
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