Psychology Commons^™

Experience, Culture And Reality: The Significance Of Fisher Information For Understanding The Relationship Between Alternative States Of Consciousness And The Structures Of Reality, Charles D. Laughlin, Jason C. Throop

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

The majority of the world’s cultures encourage or require members to enter alternative states of

consciousness (ASC) while involved in religious rituals. The question is, why? This paper suggests

an explanation for the culturally prescribed ASC from the view of Fisher information. It argues

from the position, first put forward by Emile Durkheim in his magnum opus, The Elementary

Forms of the Religious Life, that all religions are grounded in reality. It suggests that many of the

structural elements of cultural cosmologies are similar and that the ritual induction of ASC may

help to bring individual experience into greater accord …

Process, Structure, And Form: An Evolutionary Transpersonal Psychology Of Consciousness, Allan Combs, Stanley Krippner

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

In the spirit of William James, we present a process view of human consciousness. Our approach,

however, follows upon Charles Tart’s original systems theory analysis of states of consciousness,

although it differs in its reliance on the modern sciences of complexity, especially dynamical systems

theory and its emphasis on process and evolution. We argue that consciousness experience

is constructive in the sense that it is the result of ongoing self-organizing and self-creating

(autopoietic) processes in the mind and body. These processes follow a broad developmental

agenda already described by psychologists such as Jean Piaget. Similar constructive transformations

of consciousness appear …

Integral Approach In Transpersonal Psychotherapy, Laura B. Gilot

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

NA

Clinical Depression: A Transpersonal Point Of View, Jaime L. Llabres

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

NA

An Integral Perspective On Depression, Dinu S. Teodorescu

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

The integral approach to therapy proposes to accommodate all the etiological factors of

unipolar depression in its theory, as well as to make use of all existing therapies, both pharmacological

and psychological, in the treatment of unipolar depression. Integral Therapy is

compared to cognitive therapy to find evidence for its superiority over the cognitive

approach. It appears that the cognitive therapy is more cost-effective than Integral Therapy

as an individual approach in the treatment of depression, but that the integral perspective

accounts better for etiological factors.

Editors’ Introduction, Harris Friedman, Douglas A. Macdonald

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

NA

Entheogens: True Or False?, Roger Walsh

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Despite 40 years of dialogue, debate still continues over whether psychedelics are capable of

inducing genuine mystical experiences. This paper first reviews the arguments against this possibility

and shows that all of them contain shortcomings. One reason the debate still continues is

that there has been no adequate theory of mystical states and their relationship to the factors

which produce them. Consequently a theory of mystical states based on Charles Tart’s systems

model of consciousness is proposed. This theory suggests how identical states of consciousness can

be induced by very different means, including contemplative practices and chemical substances,

and yet …

Gnostic Dilemmas In Western Psychologies Of Spirituality1, Harry T. Hunt

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Early Gnosticism is identified as a form of Weber’s inner-worldly mysticism that, following the

critique of Plotinus, entailed spiritual metapathologies of inflated grandiosity, despair, and/or

social withdrawal. These vulnerabilities re-emerge in the naturalistic psychologies of spirituality

begun by Emerson, Nietzsche, Jung, and Maslow and more implicitly within contemporary personality

and neuropsychological research on numinous/transpersonal experience. An updated

version of Gnostic dilemma and its conflicted dualism may be endemic to any would-be science

of the spiritual and to much current transpersonal psychology as well.

Primal Spirituality And The Onto/Phylo Fallacy: A Critique Of The Claim That Primal Peoples Were/Are Less Spiritually And Socially Developed Than Modern Humans, Steven Taylor

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Many theorists—including Freud, Habermas and Wilber—have suggested that there are strong

parallels between ontogeny and phylogeny, and that the development of the human species has

followed the same basic pattern as the development of the individual from birth to adulthood. I

discuss this view in relation to archaeological and anthropological knowledge of the world’s “primal

peoples.” I look at the spiritual, moral, and social development of primal peoples and find

that, in almost every instance, they are more advanced than these theorists suggest, possessing

characteristics which only occur—ontogenetically—at the higher “fulcrums” of development. I

argue that Wilber’s spectrum model cannot …

An Integral Approach To Depression, Harris Friedman, Douglas A. Macdonald

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

NA

Spirituality Of Depression, Marc-Alain Descamps

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

NA

The Perennial Philosophy, Axel Randrup

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

NA

Mysticism And Its Cultural Expression: An Inquiry Into The Description Of Mystical Experience And Its Ontological And Epistemological Nature, Evgeny Torchinov

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

The purpose of this paper is to critically explore the nature and ontological and epistemological

significance of differences observed in how various cultural traditions describe and explain such

experiences. After an initial consideration of definitional issues, the article focuses on the arguments

supporting and challenging the idea of mystical experience being a universal phenomenon

and a vehicle for true knowledge. The article also examines the problem of the unity of the mystical

experience as a definite state of consciousness and the multiplicity of its sociocultural and

civilizational expressions and descriptions conditioned by different cultural and historical factors.