From Assagioli to Almaas

A Rough Guide to Transpersonal Psychology

Keith Hackwood

www.keithhackwood.com

The Transpersonal is the future of Psychology

• Why?• How?

• Culminating Crises in Positivist Materialsm

• Present from the outset• Wide Vision

Contextual Crises

Outer

• Climate Change• Resource Depletion• Limits to Growth• ‘End of Progress’• ‘Problem of

Civilization’

Inner

• Anxiety• Depression• Loss of Meaning• Loss of identity• Alienation

Civilizations don’t just happen… the spiritual impulse that originally gave rise to our Western culture is still present

Peter Kinglsey

A Return to Essence

• How?

Art or Science(Psycho)SynthesisEducation

‘Therapy’ is too small a word

The World Behind The World

D O I N G

H A V I N G

Psychosynthesis is the future of Psychoanalysis

• Roberto Assagioli 1888 – 1974

Psychosynthesis in Print

• Doctoral Thesis 1909-1910• Psychosynthesis ‘Manual’ –

1965• The Act of Will – 1974• Transpersonal Development

- 1993

Principal Ideas

• Model of human being

• I-Self Axis

• The Will

• Disidentification

• Stages of Psychosynthesis (personal/transpersonal)

“The only way out is the way up”

The Egg Diagram Assagioli’s Draft

Casa Assagioli

Florence

The Considerator

“The Will to Publish”

He was very early. Who was there to hear such a large and balanced statement? Not many.From the Eulogy for Assagioli, by James Vargiu

The Transpersonal Field

Transpersonal Disciplines

Relates to:

• Psychology, Psychiatry, Psychotherapy

• Neuroscience, Psychopharmacology

• Sociology• Anthropology• Cultural Theory

Notable Peaks

• C G Jung (Especially the Red Book)

• Archetypal Psychology (Hillman)

• Spiritual Psychology (Sardello)

• Ecospychology & Ecophilosophy

• Stanislav Grof

• Integral Studies (Wilber)

Notable Peaks

• Washburn• Naranjo (Gestalt & Enneagram)• Influence of Buddhism (Watts,

Suzuki, Trungpa, Elias Capriles)• Sufism• Kabbalah• Sri Aurobindo

Back to Basics

Back to Basics

• Freud the ‘godless Jew’• From ‘hysterical misery’ to

‘common unhappiness’• Fear of the ‘black tide of mud of

occultism’

Therapy as Shamanic Operation

A H Almaas & The Diamond Approach

The Structure of Reality

• Being / Soul / World• Personal Essence• Essential Aspects• The Theory of Holes

“Disidentification means the cessation of identification, the cessation of taking something to be you, or to belong to you, or to define you.”

Method

• Inquiry

Socratic & Psychodynamic

• Presence

Embodied ‘felt-sense’ / limbs and hara

Love of Truth

• The soul is fundamentally faithful to the truth, but she is ignorant

• The truth is now and your life is now

• Giving ourselves to truth means giving up defences – the self cannot give itself up

The Paradox

The Way of Silence & the Talking Cure

From Knowing to Being

Coming Soon…

Divine Rebel:The Life & Work of Roberto

Assagioli

By Mark Jones & Keith Hackwood

Publishing Date: September 2014

Diolch yn fawr Thankyou