Transpersonal psychology

Transpersonal psychology is a school of psychology born in the early 1960s of the meeting between several therapists, including Abraham Maslow (co-founder of humanistic psychology) and Stanislav Grof (founder of holotropic breathing). It incorporates into the discoveries of the three classical psychological schools (CBT, psychoanalysis, humanistic-existential therapies), the philosophical and practical data of the great spiritual traditions (religions and shamanism), as well as a thorough study of modified states of consciousness.

Spirituality involves a special kind of relationship between the individual and the cosmos and is, in essence, a personal and private affair.

Transpersonal psychology, which was structured towards the end of the 1960s, seeks to register as a “fourth force” in psychology, the first being psychoanalysis, the second being behaviorism (with its offshoot cognitive-behavioral approach) and the third the humanistic approach. This approach, often perceived as marginal in psychology, seeks to deepen knowledge of an aspect of human development that can push the boundaries of the ego and the body. It proposes a vision of the development of the human being which wants to be more complete and more positive, notably by adding the spiritual dimension to the other dimensions generally admitted by the psychology that are the emotional, cognitive, physiological, relational and social dimensions. She does not hesitate to use different spiritual practices, such as meditation and prayer, to constantly push back the limits of the psychic development of the human being to experiences and states of consciousness that transcend the ego, the time, space and empirical reality. It is in this context that transpersonal psychology is openly interested in the Orient and that it values ​​the use of yoga for psychotherapeutic purposes. According to transpersonal psychology, man could progressively attain a level of consciousness that connects him to a divine reality, represented by the concept of the Self, whose gateway lies in every human being. ”

Stanislav Grof, M.D.