Consequences of a narrow environmental approach: Volition is an illusion. From a strict environmental perspective, intentionality (purpose, intent, will) has no reality apart from its manifestation in specific observable behavior. The “mind” itself is just a “black box” unobservable by empirical science (that is, unknowable by the physical senses) and thus not open to scientific investigation (translation: not really real). All behavior is determined by material causes outside the organism from the environment. Will and active agency is an illusion. Transpersonal psychologists do not take this extreme position to be an accurate representation of the psychological facts.
The same environmental principles that govern exterior behavior also govern interior experience. Mainstream psychologists who use the environmental approach and focus on observable stimuli and responses may, in some cases, grant the mind existence and obtain a verbal self-report (another kind of behavior) about what people say concerning their conscious experience. The same kind of environmental principles that are believed to shape and influence observable exterior behavior, however, are used to explain and understand mental activity inferred from the verbal reports. The mind itself, if its existence is granted at all, is then considered to be a tabula rasa – a blank slate – filled with nothing but internal stimuli and responses. There is nothing in the mind that was not first in the physical senses, and thus all modes of cognition are reduced to internal conditioned and unconditioned stimuli and responses, discriminative stimuli and operant responses.
A psychology without a psyche. Now when psychologists who use the environmental approach focus their attention on the external physical, social, and cultural conditions and circumstances assumed to operate on individuals and condition their behavior and report what they see, then the environmental approach can provide an accurate report of the environmental correlates of interior experiences. When behaviorists go further to say not only that interior experiences have environmental correlates, but also that such experiences are nothing but the result of reinforcement contingencies, conditioning, or social influences, then we end up with what Jung (1960) called “a psychology without a psyche” (p. 343). Transpersonal psychologists, while honoring the partial truths of the environmental perspective, recognize that environmental correlates of transpersonal experiences and behavior are not the whole story.
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The cognitive perspective focuses on the cognitive processes assumed to underlie transpersonal experience and behavior, and relates all transpersonal events to these underlying mental processes and their contents. The cognitive approach attempts to understand exceptional human experiences and behaviors in terms of attention and perception, thinking and memory processes, imagery and general knowledge, language production and comprehension, creativity and problem solving, reasoning and decision making.
Examples of transpersonal research using the cognitive approach. The cognitive perspective has been employed to study the relationship between meditation and visual sensitivity (Brown, Forte, & Dysart, 1984a, 1984b), reaction time and perceptual motor skill (Jedrczak, Toomey, & Clements, 1986), field independence (Fergusson, 1992), concentration and attention (Spanos, Steggles, & Radtke, 1979), memory and intelligence (Cranson, Orme-Johnson, Gackenbach, et al., 1991), and other mental processes (Boals, 1978). Michael Murphy and Steven Donovan’s 1997 The Physical and Psychological Effects of Meditation (Chapter 3) provides an excellent overview of how the cognitive approach has been applied to specifying the sensory, perceptual and cognitive abilities that are enhanced by meditation, for instance.
Understanding altered states of consciousness (ASC). The cognitive approach has made great strides in helping transpersonal psychologists understand and assess consciousness (a “behavior” unobservable to external viewers) through verbal reports and other measures, how ASCs can be self-produced and controlled, and how cognitive processes in an ASC (e.g., dreams, hypnosis, drug-induced) differ from performance in the waking state of consciousness (Wallace & Fisher, 1991).
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