Transpersonal psychology

Transpersonal psychology is an approach to the study of man distinct from the three major approaches - behaviourism, psychoanalysis and humanistic psychology - which are viewed as limited in their ability to comprehend human capacities and potentialities. Transpersonal psychology offers a more inclusive vision of human potential, suggesting both a new image of man and a new world view. An underlying assumption of transpersonal psychology is that physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual growth are interrelated; and that optimal educational environment stimulates and nurtures the intuitive as well as the rational, the imaginative as well as the practical, and the creative as well as the receptive functions of each individual. It focuses attention on the human capacity for self-transcendence as well as self-realization, and is concerned with the optimum development of consciousness.

No specific course of action is recommended, there being many ways towards self-fulfilment; but the concept of a centre or essence, the core of a person's being (whatever term may be used to refer to this), is fundamental. Such a centre, the "Self", is seen as distinct from, and deeper than, the personality.

Most topics being investigated by transpersonal psychologists include aspects of at least one of the following: altered states of consciousness (including meditation, dreams, etc); self-realization and self-transcendence; impulses toward higher states (such as peak experiences); spiritual growth; parapsychology and psychic phenomena; voluntary control of internal states (biofeedback); and the sacralization of everyday life. It further assumes that these are biologically rooted and positive experiences, namely healthy and good. All of them are seen to be related to the ultimate development of man, both as an individual and as a species, and not simply as a return from unhealthiness to normality.