Carl Jung (1875-1961), founder of Analytical Psychology, called the deeper aspects of the human psyche the “collective unconscious.”
Roberto Assagioli (1888-1974), founder of Psychosynthesis, referred to the higher aspects of the human psyche as the “superconscious.”
Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801-1887)
Gustav Theodor Fechner. G. T. Fechner (1801-1887), the acknowledged founder of the branch of experimental psychology known as psychophysics, “developed his psychophysical science for the purpose of providing a scientific foundation for his belief in the survival of the human spirit or soul” (S. Rosenzweig, 1987, p. 788) and authored a book, The Little Book of Life After Death in 1835, that gave an explicit defense of the idea of life after death (Fechner, 1992).
While Gustav Theodore Fechner (1801-1887) is often, and rightly so, lauded as the founder of modern experimental psychology, it is not generally recognized (and has even been kept as a kind of secret, if not held as a scandal) that his extensive ‘scientific’ output [of 183 articles and 81 books] was paralleled by an equally imposing body of work concerned with the immortal human soul, the soul of the world, and the nature of God as the soul of the cosmos. The secret, one might say, is that modern psychology was, in its inception, thoroughly transpersonal in character. (Kelly, 2002, p. 77)
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Fechner’s espousal of the cause of panpsychism. Fechner, whose 1860 book Elements of Psychophysics arguably marks the beginning of experimental psychology, “believed that consciousness cannot be separated from physical things… that is, all things that are physical are also conscious” (Hergenhahn, 2001, p. 221), a philosophic position called panpsychism. Fechner maintained, “that the whole world is spiritual in character, the phenomenal world of physics being merely the external manifestation of this spiritual reality…. Consciousness is an essential feature of all that exists” (Zweig, 1967, quoted in Wilber, 2000, p. x).
Fechner’s defense of life after death. It was in his 1851 book, Zend-Avesta, or Concerning Matters of Heaven and the Hereafter (Fechner, 1851; Lowrie, 1946) that Fechner first described his insights concerning the possibility of measuring mental events and systematically relating them to physical one – a thesis that would eventually be published in his famous Elements of Psychophysics in 1860 which would launch the new science of experimental psychology (Fechner, 1966). From the viewpoint of the history of psychology, Fechner’s defense of life after death is not “to be regarded merely as an historical accident,” but rather “as something more intrinsic and of a more general interest in connection with the nature of the science of psychology” (Bakan, 1992, p. 32).
[The Little Book of Life After Death] is not a work that came early in his life, when he might have been immature. Nor is it a work at the end of his life when he might have been senile, or grown afraid at the approach of the inevitable. He was born in 1801 and died in 1887. He published a major contribution to the study of electricity in 1831. He was appointed as a professor of physics at the University of Leipzig in 1834. He completed The Little Book of Life After Death in 1835. He continued along the lines of [that book] and, in 1851, published Zend-Avesta: On the Things of Heaven and the Hereafter. And it was only after that that he published the work, which has had so great an influence on the subsequent development of psychology, Elements of Psychophysics in 1860, as the fruition of the thought developed earlier. (Bakan, 1992, p. 35)
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Psychophysics was Fechner’s attempt to clarify the relationship between body, mind, and spirit. The whole point of Fechner’s psychophysical methods (method of limits, method of constant stimuli, method of adjustment) was to explore the nature of the mind-body relationship, and provide inductive support for what he called the “daylight view” – the idea that the whole physical universe is inwardly alive and conscious – as opposed to the “night view” that regarded matter as dead and inert, lacking in any intrinsic purpose or meaning in itself. He wished to use his psychophysical methods, not to reduce immaterial spirit or soul to material brain or to deny spirit and soul altogether, as contemporary experimental psychologists tend to do, but to clarify the relationship of body, mind, and spirit.
Whether as Dr. Mises or not [Dr. Mises was a pseudonym Fechner used to publish views that were incompatible with the science of the time], Fechner was always interested in spiritual phenomena. He was also interested in parapsychology and even attended several séances in which he experienced the anomalous movements of a bed, a table, and even himself… Fechner always used Dr. Mises to express the “daytime view,” the view that the universe is alive and conscious. Always behind Fechner’s satire and humor was the message that the “dayview” must be taken seriously. (Hergenhahn, 2001, p. 222)
Clinical psychologist David Bakan points out the irony of Fechner’s role in the history of experimental psychology. “It is precisely that Fechner who advanced the idea of life after death who is also the founder of experimental psychology; and the denial of life and consciousness is most strongly maintained among the experimentalists” (Bakan, 1992, p. 33).
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Williams James (1842-1910)
William James. Williams James (1842-1910) is regarded by many transpersonalists to be a forerunner of modern transpersonal psychology (James, 1936, 1956; Taylor, 1982, 1996a, 1996b). “The American philosopher-psychologist William James is arguably the father of modern transpersonal psychology and psychiatry” (Taylor, 1996a, p. 21). Historian of Jamesian psychology, Eugene Taylor, lists the numerous “firsts” that William James accomplished as a progenitor of modern transpersonal psychology (Taylor, 1996a, p. 21)
He was the first to use the term transpersonal in an English-language context.
He was the first to articulate a scientific study of consciousness within the framework of evolutionary biology.
He experimented with psychoactive substances (i.e., nitrous oxide) to observe their effects on his own consciousness.
He was a pioneer in founding the field that is now called parapsychology.
He helped to cultivate modern interest in dissociated states, multiple personality, and theories of the subconscious.
He explored the field of comparative religion.
He was probably the first American psychologist to establish relationships with or to influence a number of Asian meditation teachers.
He pioneered in writing about the psychology of mystical experience.
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