Transpersonal or Spiritual Psychotherapy
Open up to Deeper Meaning and Connectedness
Transpersonal or Spiritual Psychotherapy encompasses traditional Western psychotherapeutic models and extends them into those areas of the human psyche searching for higher meaning in life—moving beyond the ego and accessing an enhanced capacity for wisdom, creativity, unconditional love, compassion and connectedness. The term “Transpersonal” (meaning across or beyond the personal) was first introduced by the psychologist and physician, William James more than 100 years ago, evolved with the work of Carl Jung, and later Abraham Maslow’s Humanistic Psychology and the human potential movement of the 1960s, followed by the work of Stanislav Grof, Ken Wilber, Roger Walsh, Dr. Seymour Boorstein, Frances Vaughan, and others in subsequent decades.
This psychospiritual process helps one to gain access to immanent and transcendent dimensions of human experience, encouraging a blossoming of a broad spectrum of exceptional human functioning, including: greater access to flow states of high achievement, transformative mystical experiences, and nonduality that can foster the fulfillment of our highest potentials as human beings. Growth along these lines of higher human development cause a deepening sense of connectedness with self, community, nature and beyond. Opening beyond usual ego boundaries can be quite different from one's usual experience and can sometimes cause confusion, anxiety, and other psychospiritual problems. Transpersonal therapy offers unique avenues of help and integration for individuals who have had powerful spiritual experiences.
Transpersonal Psychology does not promote any particular belief system, but rather acknowledges that spiritual experiences and transcendent states are universal and widely reported across cultures throughout recorded history, and therefore merit rigorous scientific study and psychological application.
No matter what brings you to transpersonal psychology, this empirically-validated synthesis of Eastern and Western philosophy, mysticism, mindfulness and psychotherapy can be life-altering for those who seriously engage it.