Dynamic potentials are not inherently stage specific. Washburn’s theory proposes an alternative spiral-dynamic paradigm to Ken Wilber’s structural-hierarchical paradigm of human development (Washburn, 2003). Instead of viewing human development as movement through a progressive series of increasingly more differentiated-and-inclusive hierarchical stages, Washburn (1995) proposes a spiral movement that is played out between the ego and its ultimate source - the Dynamic Ground. Instead of inherently different potentials as asserted in Ken Wilber’s structural-hierarchical model, the same “dynamic potentials” are given expression at each prepersonal, personal, and transpersonal stage of personality development.
The Phenomenological Perspective
The phenomenological perspective focuses on the individual’s subjective and intersubjective experience of transpersonal events, how this experience is represented in conscious awareness and social (cultural) cognitions, and how these abstract representations of experience and culture guide behavior (Polkinghorne, 1983; Valle, 1998). All transpersonal events are related to the conscious, subjective and intersubjective representations that people actively construct (values, norms, symbols, language, communal meanings, and shared values). Mainstream psychologists commonly refer to the phenomenological approach as “the subjectivist perspective” (Smith et al., 2003).
The subjectivist perspective contends that human behavior is a function of the perceived world, not the objective world…. To understand human social behavior, this view holds, we must grasp the person’s own “definition of the situation,” which is expected to vary by culture, personal history, and current motivational state. This perspective, then, is the most open to cultural and individual differences and to the effects of motivation and emotion. (Smith et al., 2003, p. 13)
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The phenomenological approach to meditation. The phenomenological approach to meditation tries to understand this contemplative experience qualitatively, from a “holistic viewpoint, looking at the human being as a unity of body and mind, behavior and situation” (Moss, 1989, p. 63). Experiential dimensions of the meditative experience that have been explored using the phenomenological method reveal the quality of equanimity (i.e., tranquility of mind and body) (Walsh, 1977), detached neutrality (Brown et al., 1982-1983), ineffability (Kornfield, 1979), bliss (Goleman, 1978-1979), energy and excitement (Kornfield, 1979), altered body image and ego boundaries (Deikman, 1982), hallucinations and illusions (Walsh, 1978), dream recall (Reed, 1978), empathy (Lesh, 1970), and a variety of disturbing experiences such as anxiety, tension, and anger (Walsh, 1979). Michael Murphy and Steven Donovan’s (1997) The Physical and Psychological Effects of Meditation (Chapter 4) provide an excellent overview of how the phenomenological approach has been applied to identifying the qualitative, experiential aspects that accompany the act of introspection called meditation.
Transpersonal-phenomenological Inquiry. Ronald Valle, senior editor of Phenomenological Inquiry: Existential and Transpersonal Dimensions, and Mary Mohs, transpersonal psychologist at Rosebridge Graduate School of Integrative Psychology (Valle and Mohs, 1998) report how the phenomenological approach can be applied to experiences with transpersonal qualities
Thematic analysis of verbal reports as data. In a thematic analysis of seven phenomenological studies of experiences with transpersonal qualities (i.e., experiences of being silent, being with a dying person, being with suffering orphaned children, being carried along by unforeseen events, feeling grace, experiencing unconditional love, encountering a divine presence during a near-death experience) previously reported in Valle (1998), 11 common themes or elements were subsequently identified as being interwoven throughout the description of the seven transpersonal-type experiences.
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The eidetic structure of transpersonal experience. The following 11 themes can be thought of as comprising an identifiable structure or essence that characterizes each of the seven experiences as “transpersonal” (Valle and Mohs, 1998, pp. 105-106):
An instrument, vehicle, or container for the experience
Intense emotional or passionate states, pleasant or painful
Being in the present moment, often with an acute awareness of one’s authentic nature
Transcending space and time
Expansion of boundaries with a sense of connectiveness or oneness, often with the absence of fear
A stillness or peace, often accompanied by a sense of surrender
A sense of knowing, often as sudden insights and with a heightened sense of spiritual understanding
Unconditional love
Feeling grateful, blessed, or graced
Ineffability
Self-transformation
Similars are to be similarly understood. These 11 characteristics are consistent with Richard Bucke’s (1969) description of cosmic consciousness, Abraham Maslow’s (1968) discussion of peak experiences, Stanislav Grof’s (1985) research of nonordinary states of consciousness, Daniel Goleman’s (1988) study of the varieties of meditative experience, Evelyn Underhill’s (1961) classic study of mysticism, Bernadette Roberts’s (1984) experience of no-self, Lex Hixon’s (1989) descriptions of the experience of enlightenment in sacred traditions, and Swami Muktananda’s (1978) account of his spiritual realization.
Similar but not identical states of consciousness. It is important to keep in mind that all these are spontaneous states of consciousness, and that it would not be proper to claim that they are identical states of consciousness. Major differences are likely to emerge if we are to map these transpersonal experiences on multiple experiential dimensions (e.g., self-sense, content of the experience, cognitive control) as occurs in the research method called “phenomenological mapping.”
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Phenomenological mapping. Another example of how the phenomenological perspective may be used to look at topics within transpersonal psychology is called “phenomenological mapping” (Walsh, 1993). Using this method, alternate states of consciousness and the psycho-technologies that produce them (e.g., meditation, yoga, LSD, hypnosis) may be categorized and compared along specific experiential dimensions (e.g., cognitive control, concentration, arousal, emotion, sense of self) to identify differences between states of consciousness that, on the surface, appear similar or identical.
Phenomenological mapping…allows us to map, compare and differentiate states of consciousness on not one, but multiple experiential dimensions with greater precision than has heretofore been achieved… [so that] we can better appreciate the richness and variety of transpersonal states as well as clearly differentiate them from pathological states such as schizophrenia, with which they have sometimes been confused. (Walsh, 1993, p. 126)
Using this method, Walsh (1993) identified major differences in variables such as cognitive control, arousal, affect, sense of identity, awareness of the environment, and content of experience among the states of consciousness which occur during shamanic, yogic, and vipassana meditation, and that differentiate them from pathological states such as schizophrenia.
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The Integral Approach
The integral perspective. All interior experiences and exterior behaviors are inextricably embedded within their biological, environmental, cognitive, and psychodynamic correlates and cannot be easily understood without reference to those correlates. An adequate understanding of exceptional human experiences and transformative capacities can only be obtained when seen within the context of other domains of knowledge. This is exactly the aim of the integral approach. The integral perspective focuses on the integration of biological, environmental, cognitive, psychodynamic, and phenomenological aspects of transpersonal events into a comprehensive, logically-coherent, multi-dimensional overview of transpersonal experience and behavior.
A multi-factorial approach. The integral perspective is a multi-factorial approach that includes and integrates our understanding of psychology’s four distinct subject matters: mental processes (including phenomenological experience), behavior (including its neurobiological substrates), social situations (including environmental stimuli such as the presence and behaviors of others), and culture (including social cognitions such as knowledge, language, symbols of all kinds, values, and norms) (Wilber, 2000a, 2000b). Every objective behavior has subjective and intersubjective components; every subjective and intersubjective action has objective, material correlates. Since subjective consciousness, objective behavior, and intersubjective culture and society are interdependent, mutually arise and develop, jointly limit and constrain each another, and reciprocally influence and determine one other, then any one domain cannot be easily understood without reference to the others (Wilber, 2000a, 2000b).
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An integral approach is not tied to any set of contingent beliefs. Transpersonal psychology regularly builds upon, extends, and integrates traditional concepts used in neuropsychology, psychoanalysis, experimental analysis of behavior, cognitive science, and phenomenological-existential psychology to describe and explain transpersonal behavior and experience. Not being limited to one domain or one type of demonstration, the scientific pursuit of truth is not tied to any set of contingent beliefs (e.g., the elementary units of nature are devoid of sentience or intrinsic value, the laws of nature are constant and unchanging, freedom and purposive or teleological causation are illusory, brain causes mind, humans are completely determined by genetic inheritance and environment).
Ken Wilber is regarded by many transpersonal psychologists to be the leading proponent of the integral approach. Using the metaphor of the spectrum of light, Wilber orders the various states and traits of consciousness with their corresponding deep structures and functions, psychopathologies and psychotherapies into a series of “holoarchical levels” (Wilber’s phrase) from which he formulates his various ontological (Wilber, 1977), epistemological (Wilber, 1990), developmental (Wilber, 1980; Wilber et al., 1986), psychotherapeutic (Wilber, 1979, 1984), sociological (Wilber, 1983), and evolutionary (Wilber, 1981) theory of the development and structure of human consciousness. Roger Walsh and Frances Vaughn (1996) summarize Ken Wilber’s contributions to transpersonal psychology in the following way:
[Wilber] has forged a systematic, broad-ranging, multidisciplinary, integrative, visionary yet scholarly worldview based in psychology, grounded in philosophy, spanning sociology and anthropology, and reaching to religion and mysticism. His integration of apparently conflicting schools and disciplines reduces conflict and sectarianism; his incorporation of Asian traditions reduces Western ethnocentricity; and his contemporary interpretation of the perennial philosophy makes its wisdom comprehensible and helps us recognize that at their contemplative core, the world’s great religions contain road maps and techniques for inducing transcendent states of consciousness. (Walsh & Vaughn, 1996, p. 71)
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An integral approach avoids committing the “category mistake.” Transpersonal theorist Ken Wilber (2002b) identifies an important problem in modern psychology that an integral perspective attempts to avoid.
The great problem with psychology as it has historically unfolded is that, for the most part, different schools of psychology have often taken one of those aspects of the extraordinarily rich and multifaceted phenomenon of consciousness and announced that it is the only aspect worth studying (or even that it is the only aspect that actually exists). Behaviorism notoriously reduced consciousness to its observable, behavioral manifestations. Psychoanalysis reduced consciousness to structures of the ego and their impact by the id. Existentialism reduced consciousness to its personal structures and modes of intentionality…. What if… all of the above accounts was an important part of the story? What if they all possessed true, but partial, insights into the vast field of consciousness? At the very least, assembling their conclusions under one roof would vastly expand our ideas of what consciousness is and, more important, what it might become. (Wilber, 2000b, pp. 1-2)
A constructive postmodern transpersonal psychology. A truly constructive postmodern transpersonal psychology finds a way to assemble together the enormous wealth of theories, research, and practices of the various schools of thought to honor the truths and profound insights of all perspectives in a way that does them justice while bracketing their excesses, overstatements, and distortions (Wilber, 1997). A constructive postmodern psychology moves away from reductionistic accounts of the individual that are a part of the given wisdom of modern psychology to a more holistic account that allows 1st-person (“I”) subjectivist accounts of phenomenological experience, 2nd- person (“We”) intersubjective psychoanalytic and cognitive interpretations that give the facts of experience their shared meaning, and 3rd-person (“It”) objective scientific descriptions of the corresponding biological mechanisms, environmental events, and overt behaviors that give the interior subjective experience and intersubjective meanings their exterior, concrete, material expression and form (Wilber, 2000a).
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We can, for example, investigate meditative states using first-person phenomenological accounts (the accounts of those actually doing the meditating), while also investigating any effects meditation has on brain wave activity, blood chemistry, immune functions, and neurophysiology. We can examine the ways in which various cultural backgrounds, linguistic processes, and ethical systems affect meditative states, and the types of social institutions and practices that are most conducive to those states. (Wilber, 2000b, p. 77)
Benefit of an integral approach to resolving the “crisis of disunity” in mainstream psychology. The transpersonal vision of a theoretical and methodological unified psychology is accomodative, not assimilative. The answer to the problem of the “crisis of disunity” in psychology (Staats, 1991, p. 889) is not to forcibly translate the goals of the social science of psychology into the theoretical language of the natural sciences, impose positivist philosophic assumptions and theoretical models on our understanding of psychological and spiritual phenomena, or restrict topics to be investigated to those amenable to laboratory demonstration. As Ernest Hilgard (1992) of Stanford University in an article with the telling title, “Psychology as an Integrative Science versus a Unified One” said: “There is no point in forcing all interpretations to fit some standard or ‘accepted’ model” (p. 7). Unification of psychology as a science under a single explanatory scheme or common set of theoretical principles “may be neither possible nor necessary” (McNally, 1992, p. 1054). All perspectives need to be honored and incorporated into an integrated view of transpersonal experiences and behaviors and their correlates.
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Gregory Kimble of Duke University notes the potential benefits that a truly integrative model of psychology would have for illuminating the practice of psychology:
Most obviously, it would bring coherence to the science by offering a framework within which the diverse perspectives on psychology could work together instead of in opposition…. A unified psychology would be in a stronger position than it is now to fulfill the obligation that George Miller (1969) identified as giving psychology away to serve the common good. (Kimble, 1994, p. 518)
Benefit of an integral approach seen in health psychology. The benefit of an integral approach is seen most clearly in the field of health psychology. The establishment of a reciprocal relationship between the immune system and behavioral, psychological, and social factors by the field of psychoneuroimmunology, for instance, have involved numerous academic disciplines working in collaboration, including: biochemistry, biophysics, endocrinology, immunology, microbiology, neurobiology, neuropharmacology, pathology, physiology, psychiatry, and psychology. In terms of the body’s health and illness, our mental states are indeed highly important. A person’s private experience of health and illness occurs not only within the context of his or her personality type, personal habits, and levels of social support, but basically cannot be separated from the larger framework of his or her philosophic and religious beliefs, cultural and political environment, psychological and socio-economic status (S. Taylor, 2003). The individual’s personal experience of health and illness must be viewed in the light of all these issues. The question of health and illness simply cannot be answered from a biological standpoint.
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Benefit of an integral approach to resolving the “crisis of disunity” in transpersonal psychology. The need for an integral approach in transpersonal psychology is as great for transpersonal psychology as it is for psychology generally. As transpersonal psychologist Jorge Ferrer states in his 2002 book, Revisioning Transpersonal Theory:
Disagreements among transpersonalists are the norm rather than the exception. And these divergences are not merely about minor theoretical issues, but often about the central philosophical and metaphysical foundations of the field, for example, the understanding of transpersonal phenomena, the meaning of spirituality, or the very nature of reality. The lack of consensus on fundamental matters in the transpersonal movement is so pronounced that rather than talk about a transpersonal paradigm, it may be more accurate to talk about different transpersonal paradigms under the roof of one transpersonal vision. (Ferrer, 2002, p. 7)
Diversity as a sign of heath. This state of disunity in transpersonal psychology, in certain terms, represents a sign of its vitality and reflects the natural history of psychological sciences in general. As historiographer B. R. Hergenhahn (2001) of Hamline University notes, “In psychology’s long history, there has never been a time when all psychologists accepted a single paradigm” (p. 568). Differing definitions of the nature of psychology, philosophical orientations and perspectives, hypotheses and theories bearing on the same domain are striking characteristics of the history of psychology from voluntarism to structuralism to functionalism to behaviorism to Gestalt psychology to psychometric psychology to psychoanalysis to cognitive psychology to neuropsychology to humanistic psychology (Hergenhahn, 2001; Schultz & Schultz, 2004). The lack of consensus in transpersonal studies on goals and subject matter, research methods and topics to be investigated, philosophic assumptions and theoretical models, definitions of the field and theoretical language is a part of the dignity of our discipline, and is something to be recognized, acknowledged, and embraced as “a consequence of the natural maturation of the science and the expanding range of its application” (Bower, 1993, p. 906).
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