Figure 4-7. Differences between Transpersonal and Traditional Approaches to Research |
Transpersonal Approach
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Traditional Approach
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1. Starting point is subjective, conscious experience
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1. Starting point is observable behavior or biological processes (conscious experience is secondary)
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2. Respect for the total experience of the person with feelings included.
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2. Disconcern for feelings; more concern with biological makeup and environmental stimuli
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3. The world is personalized and individualized.
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3. The world is impersonal and general.
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4. Individual consciousness is unique, valid and significant; worthwhile to study and creative; each of us possesses a thinking self.
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4. Consciousness is relatively unimportant by-product of external environmental stimuli or internal biological processes.
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5. The unconscious is dynamic, creative, personal, and the source of conscious life.
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5. The unconscious is static, mechanistic, impersonal (if acknowledged at all), conscious mind (or its brain) is the source of all thoughts.
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6. Verbal reports of experience are a source of valid information.
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6. Facts and proofs are gained through sensory data and physical, quantitative measurement.
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7. Non-materialistic (mind and body though they operate as one, are basically distinct)
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7. Materialistic (mind is brain, brain like all matter is insentient).
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8. Non-reductionistic (the whole is something different in quality than the mere sum of its parts)
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8. Reductionistic (The whole is simply the complex sum of its individual parts and is thus explainable in terms of its parts) explainable in terms of reinforcement contingencies or biological events.
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9. Non-mechanistic (The natural body is organic, not a machine)
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9. Mechanistic (The physical body, nature, and the universe is mechanistic like a clock)
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10. Experimenter/participant dialogue is encouraged.
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10. Reduced contact between experimenter and participant is encouraged; empathy and subjective involvement discouraged.
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11. Participant’s humanness and experimenter’s humanness is emphasized; I – Thou relationship with openness and trust.
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11. The It-ness of the participant is emphasized (as in animal experimentation); deception permissible.
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12. Freedom and dignity, choice and autonomy of the individual is acknowledged.
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12. Control and manipulation of behavior by outside or inside forces are emphasized, not the will or intention of an autonomous agent.
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13. Open-mindedness to all areas of human experience like creativity, love, psi, religious experiences, human transformative capacities.
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13. Skeptical of all phenomena that cannot be studied in artificial experimental settings or displayed in laboratory demonstrations.
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14. Ecological systems view of phenomena as they occur in natural settings emphasized.
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14. Laboratory demonstrations are highly prized as most valid demonstrations of the existence, nature, and limits of a phenomenon.
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