TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOTHERAPY AND SPIRITUAL EMERGENCY

Part Three TRANSPERSONAL PROCESS

Process in psychotherapy is how the therapist and client work. It includes the techniques, practices, and strategies used to acheive the goals of the therapy. Transpersonal processes are derived from spiritual disciplines. Examples include:

  • meditation
  • ritual
  • prayer
  • practices for eliciting altered states of consciousness such as fasting, chanting, drumming, dance, and psychedelic drugs
  • open-ended, phenomenological inquiry
  • shamanic practices including trancework

Frances Vaughan (in Paths Beyond Ego) offers a longer list of processes which are important to and used by transpersonal therapists. These processes are also used by other therapies.

  • physical health
  • emotional catharsis
  • cognitive reattribution
  • existential questions
  • imagery and dreamwork
  • meditation
  • disidentification
  • confession
  • ASCs

And again, a transpersonal psychotherapist may use any of the psychotherapeutic processes, not only those which are specifically transpersonal.


This page was updated on December 18, 1998.
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