INTRODUCTION TO TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY Part One

John Davis, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Metropolitan State College of Denver

This page is part of a site developed for my Transpersonal Psychology course at The Metropolitan State College of Denver. It provides overviews and outlines of some aspects of Transpersonal Psychology. I hope it is helpful to you.

Go to the HOME PAGE for this site with access to other articles and links related to Transpersonal Psychology.

FOREWORD: AN EXAMPLE

The client is well-dressed and articulate but strangely disheveled. It is clear he has been under lots of stress recently. He seems calm but sits on the edge of his chair like a man on a mission. The psychologist listens attentively as she does her intake evaluation. "So you have been seeing and hearing some things you are not sure about?" she asks. "Well, they seemed real enough to me. Sometimes I think they weren't real, but now I just don't know. They were pretty strange, at least," answers the client, shaking his head. His voice rises a little with the emotional stress, and he adjusts himself in his seat. "Could you describe them to me?" "There was the bush I saw in the desert that looked like it was on fire, but there was no smoke. I felt the heat and saw the flames flickering, but it never burned up. And of course, there was the voice of God." "What did the voice say?" "It gave me commandments and told me that I should lead my people to the Promised Land." "I see," said the psychologist with a compassionate tone. She makes some quick notes: auditory and visual hallucinations, referential ideation, delusions of grandeur, magical thinking. "Could you tell me something about your childhood?" she continues. "Well, I never knew my mother or father. You see, I was left when I was an infant. From the story I heard, they put me in the reeds by the river. I was adopted by the Pharaoh's family . . ." As he continues his story, the psychologist makes more notes: early parental abandonment, severe disruption of attachment. "No wonder this poor fellow thinks he has been chosen by God to lead his people," she thinks to herself. "Since his break with reality was relatively acute, perhaps there is something we can do here for Mr. Moses." She notes to herself as he provides other details, Probable diagnosis: Paranoid schizophrenia, subchronic, DSM code: 295.31. But then, his functioning is not particularly impaired. Perhaps Atypical psychosis: 298.90. This story just as easily could be the story of Jesus, returning from forty days in the wilderness, starving and sleepless with visions of God and the Devil. It could be the story of Gautama, the young nobleman who went into a "catatonic trance" under a tree and came out of it claiming that nothing exists, reality is empty, and strangely peaceful. It could be Black Elk as a young boy returning from several days and nights alone without food and water, too scared to talk about his hallucinations. It could be any number of mystics and spiritual teachers throughout history. In the current climate of psychological thinking, these people would have a difficult time getting their mystical experiences accepted as such. No doubt, most of them would be in for psychiatric medication and extended outpatient therapy. Compare these accounts to a more recent example. Following a class discussion on peak experiences, a student came to me to talk about her near-death experience. She was nineteen and, following a bee sting, had gone into anaphylactic shock. She was rushed to the hospital emergency room in a coma. During the next 24 hours, she "died" and was revived several times by the hospital staff. During these episodes, she wrote, she left her body and floated above the room where she saw the doctors and nurses rush in administering to her body. She felt herself drawn toward a brilliant white light and described several other elements common in near-death experiences. She reported an out-of-body-experience in which she encountered God who showed her that the nature of the world is love. She felt a deep, profound, fundamental compassion for herself and for all of life. For several weeks she tried to talk to other about her experience. The feeling of unconditional love remained, but it was beginning to fade. She was beginning to question it herself. "If it was so beautiful, how come no one will listen to me?" Reactions ranged from shock and denial to condescension, but no one she talked to really listened. She became more distressed and confused. Finally, a month after her near-death experience, she was getting desperate for someone to talk to and her internal conflict &emdash; "was this real?, am I crazy?" &emdash; was mounting to crisis proportions. She went to a community mental health center in order to share her experience and her confusion. There she was diagnosed as having an acute psychotic episode triggered by her medical condition and given a prescription for Stelazine. After many months of treatment, she had learned not to talk about her experience. Yet, inside she knew it was real, more real than anything else in her life. Talking about her near-death experience and discovering she was not alone was profoundly healing for her.

This page was last updated March 31, 2000