A Brief History of Transpersonal Psychology

In the middle of the twentieth century, American psychology was dominated by two major schools - behaviorism and Freudian psychology. Increasing dissatisfaction with these two

orientations as adequate approaches to the human psyche led to the development of humanistic

psychology. The main spokesman and most articulate representative of this new field was the well-

known American psychologist Abraham Maslow. He offered an incisive critique of the limitations

of behaviorism and psychoanalysis, or the First and the Second Force in psychology as he called

them, and formulated the principles of a new perspective in psychology (Maslow 1969).

Maslow's main objection against behaviorism was that the study of animals, such as rats

and pigeons, can only clarify those aspects of human functioning that we share with these animals.

It thus has no relevance for the understanding of higher, specifically human qualities that are unique

to human life, such as love, self-consciousness, self-determination, personal freedom, morality, art,

philosophy, religion, and science. It is also largely useless in regard to some specifically human

negative characteristics, such as greed, lust for power, cruelty, and tendency to "malignant

aggression," He also criticized the behaviorists' disregard for consciousness and introspection and

their exclusive focus on the study of behavior.

By contrast, the primary interest of humanistic psychology, Maslow's Third Force, was in

human subjects, and this discipline honored the interest in consciousness and introspection as

important complements to the objective approach to research. The behaviorists' exclusive emphasis

on determination by the environment, stimulus/response, and reward/punishment was replaced by

emphasis of the capacity of human beings to be internally directed and motivated to achieve self-

realization and fulfill their human potential.

In his criticism of psychoanalysis, Maslow pointed out that Freud and his followers drew

conclusions about the human psyche mainly from the study of psychopathology and he disagreed with their biological reductionism and their tendency to explain all psychological processes in terms of base instincts. By comparison, humanistic psychology focused on healthy populations, or even individuals who show supernormal functioning in various areas (Maslow's "growing tip of the population"), on human growth and potential, and on higher functions of the psyche. It also emphasized that psychology has to be sensitive to practical human needs and serve important interests and objectives of human society. Within a few years after Abraham Maslow and Anthony Sutich launched the Association for Humanistic Psychology (AHP) and its journal, the new movement became extremely popular among American mental health professionals and even in the general public. The multidimensional perspective of humanistic psychology and its emphasis on the whole person provided a broad umbrella for the development of a rich spectrum of new effective therapeutic approaches that greatly expanded the range of possibilities of dealing with emotional, psychosomatic, interpersonal, and psychosocial problems. Among the important characteristics of these new therapies was a decisive shift from the exclusively verbal strategies of traditional psychotherapy to direct expression of emotions and from exploration of individual history and of unconscious motivation to the feelings and thought processes of the clients in the here and now. Another important aspect of this therapeutic revolution was the emphasis on the interconnectedness of the psyche and the body and overcoming of the taboo against touching, previously dominating the field of psychotherapy. Various forms of bodywork thus formed an integral part of the new treatment strategies; Fritz Perls' Gestalt therapy, Alexander Lowen's bioenergetics and other neo-Reichian approaches, encounter groups, and marathon sessions can be mentioned here as salient examples of humanistic therapies. In spite of the popularity of humanistic psychology, its founders Maslow and Sutich themselves grew dissatisfied with the conceptual framework they had originally created. They became increasingly aware that they had left out an extremely important element -- the spiritual dimension of the human psyche (Sutich 1976). The renaissance of interest in Eastern spiritual philosophies, various mystical traditions, meditation, ancient and aboriginal wisdom, as well as the widespread psychedelic experimentation during the stormy 1960s made it absolutely clear that a comprehensive and cross-culturally valid psychology had to include observations from such areas as mystical states; cosmic consciousness; psychedelic experiences; trance phenomena; creativity; and religious, artistic, and scientific inspiration. In 1967, a small working group, including Abraham Maslow, Anthony Sutich, Stanislav Grof, James Fadiman, Miles Vich, and Sonya Margulies met in Menlo Park, California, with the purpose of creating a new psychology that would honor the entire spectrum of human experience, including various non-ordinary states of consciousness. During these discussions, Maslow and Sutich accepted Grof's suggestion and named the new discipline "transpersonal psychology." This term replaced their own original name "transhumanistic," or "reaching beyond humanistic concerns." Soon afterwards, they launched the Association of Transpersonal Psychology (ATP), and started the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology. Several years later, in 1975, Robert Frager founded the (California) Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, which has remained at the cutting edge of transpersonal education, research and therapy for more than three decades. Transpersonal psychology, or the Fourth Force, addressed some major misconceptions of mainstream psychiatry and psychology concerning spirituality and religion. It also responded to important observations from modern consciousness research and several other fields for which the existing scientific paradigm had no adequate explanations. Michael Harner, American anthropologist with good academic credentials, who also experienced during his field work in the Amazon a powerful shamanic initiation, summed up the shortcomings of academic psychology very succinctly in the preface to his book The Way of the Shaman (Harner 1980). He suggested that the understanding of the psyche in the industrial civilization is seriously biased in two important ways: it is ethnocentric and cognicentric (a better term would probably be pragmacentric).