The psychodynamic perspective focuses on those subliminal ideas and memories, fears and desires, needs and drives that exist just below the stream of waking consciousness or more deeply in what is commonly referred to as the unconscious of which a person is consciously unaware but that none the less influence behavior and experience. The psychodynamic approach has been applied to the study of numerous transpersonal phenomena, including meditation (Epstein, 1990; Leone, 1995). Work by transpersonal psychologists such as Roberto Assagioli, Stanislav Grof, and Michael Washburn has made the psychodynamic perspective a respectable approach in the study of the nature, structures, and functions of human consciousness in contemporary transpersonal psychology.
Roberto Assagioli (1888-1974) was an Italian psychiatrist who developed an early paradigm of transpersonal psychology called Psychosynthesis. Influenced by the Jungian concepts of the times, he proposed an original formulation of the ego-Self axis in which self-realization required ego contact with an inner self-structure called the Transpersonal self. In order to achieve this realization of one’s greater identity, a personal Psychosynthesis was required in which repressed, ignored, or overlooked elements of the ego-directed personality become integrated into self-awareness. Once personal psychosynthesis is accomplished, a spiritual psychosynthesis may be achieved in which this integrated personal identity becomes expanded to incorporate elements of one’s transpersonal identity into ego-directed self-awareness (Assagioli, 1991, 1992 1993).
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Stanislav Grof is one of the co-founders of the transpersonal psychology movement who was trained as a psychiatrist (Grof, 2000; Yensen & Dryer, 1996). His observations of the effects of LSD on consciousness pioneered state-of-consciousness theory and research and expanded our understanding of the unconscious dimensions of the human psyche (Grof, 1980b, 1985). More recently, he has verified the existence of these same areas or regions of the psyche that were observed during LSD therapy sessions using a nondrug experiential technique called “holotropic breathwork” (Grof & Bennet, 1993).
A cartography of the psyche – its human expression. Grof’s LSD and holotropic breathwork research has revealed a cartography or map of the psyche that includes not only the Freudian personal subconscious, but also Rankian birth memories, the Jungian collective unconscious, and deeper levels containing reincarnational and racial memories, and multidimensional encounters with nonphysical beings and entities (Grof, 1985). Rather than consider patients’ experiences in psychedelic sessions (high dose of 300-500 mcg to facilitate mystical experiences) as manifestations of toxic psychosis, Grof views LSD as an “unspecific amplifier or catalyst of mental processes that confronts the experiencer with his own unconscious” (Grof, 1980b, p. 342) that has great relevance for the understanding the levels of actuality of the human mind.
Dimensions of the human psyche. Clinical observations reveal four major types of experiences catalyzed and amplified by LSD and holotropic breathwork sessions:
Abstract and aesthetic experiences, involving vivid, dramatic, and intense changes in sensation and perception.
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