Rebellion

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebellion 

Revolution

Rebellion, uprising, or insurrection is a refusal of obedience or order. It refers to the open resistance against the orders of an established authority.

A rebellion originates from a sentiment of indignation and disapproval of a situation and then manifests itself by the refusal to submit or to obey the authority responsible for this situation.Rebellion can be individual or collective, peaceful (civil disobedience, civil resistance, and nonviolent resistance) or violent (terrorism, sabotage and guerrilla warfare.)

In political terms, rebellion and revolt are often distinguished by their different aims. If rebellion generally seeks to evade and/or gain concessions from an oppressive power, a revolt seeks to overthrow and destroy that power, as well as its accompanying laws. The goal of rebellion is resistance while a revolt seeks a revolution. As power shifts relative to the external adversary, or power shifts within a mixed coalition, or positions harden or soften on either side, an insurrection may seesaw between the two forms.

Classification

 

An armed but limited rebellion is an insurrection, and if the established government does not recognize the rebels as belligerents then they are insurgents and the revolt is an insurgency. In a larger conflict the rebels may be recognized as belligerents without their government being recognized by the established government, in which case the conflict becomes a civil war.

Civil resistance movements have often aimed at, and brought about, the fall of a government or head of state, and in these cases could be considered a form of rebellion. In many of these cases, the opposition movement saw itself not only as nonviolent but also as upholding their country's constitutional system against a government that was unlawful, for example, if it had refused to acknowledge its defeat in an election. Thus the term "rebel" does not always capture the element in some of these movements of acting as a defender of legality and constitutionalism.

There are a number of terms that are associated with rebel and rebellion. They range from those with positive connotations to those with pejorative connotations. Examples include:

• Boycott, similar to civil disobedience, but it simply means a separation, primarily financial, from the system that is being rebelled against. This entails refusing to participate in the monetary system, limiting consumption, or ignoring notions of property rights (AKA squatting, simple living).
• Civil resistance, civil disobedience, and nonviolent resistance which do not include violence or paramilitary force.
• Coup, an illegal overthrow of a leader, usually carried out by the military or other politicians.
• Mutiny, which is carried out by military or security forces against their commanders
• Armed resistance movement, which is carried out by freedom fighters, often against an occupying foreign power
• Revolt, a term that is sometimes used for more localized rebellions rather than a general uprising
• Revolution, which is mostly carried out by radicals and frustrated citizens, usually meant to overthrow the current government
• Riot, a form of civil disorder involving violent public disturbance
• Subversion, which are covert attempts at sabotaging a government, carried out by spies or other subversives
• Terrorism, which is carried out by different kinds of political, economic or religious militant individuals or groups

Causes

Macro approach

The following theories broadly build on the Marxist interpretation of rebellion. Rebellion is studied, in Theda Skocpol's words, by analyzing "objective relationships and conflicts among variously situated groups and nations, rather than the interests, outlooks, or ideologies of particular actors in revolutions".

Marxist view

Karl Marx's analysis of revolutions sees such expression of political violence not as anomic, episodic outbursts of discontents but rather the symptomatic expression of a particular set of objective but fundamentally contradicting class-based relations of power. The central tenet of Marxist philosophy, as expressed in Das Kapital, is the analysis of society's mode of production (technology and labor) concomitant with the ownership of productive institutions and the division of profit. Marx writes about "the hidden structure of society" that must be elucidated through an examination of "the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production to the direct producers". The mismatch, between one mode of production, between the social forces and the social ownership of the production, is at the origin of the revolution. The inner imbalance within these modes of production is derived from the conflicting modes of organization, such as capitalism within feudalism, or more appropriately socialism within capitalism. The dynamics engineered by these class frictions help class consciousness root itself in the collective imaginary. For example, the development of the bourgeoisie class went from an oppressed merchant class to urban independence, eventually gaining enough power to represent the state as a whole. Social movements, thus, are determined by an exogenous set of circumstances. The proletariat must also, according to Marx, go through the same process of self-determination which can only be achieved by friction against the bourgeoisie. In Marx's theory revolutions are the "locomotives of history", it is because rebellion has for the ultimate goal to overthrow the ruling class and its antiquated mode of production. Later, rebellion attempts to replace it with a new system of political economy, one that is better suited to the new ruling class, thus enabling societal progress. The cycle of rebellion, thus, replaces one mode of production with another through the constant class friction.

Ted Gurr: Roots of political violence

In his book Why Men Rebel, Ted Gurr looks at the roots of political violence itself applied to a rebellion framework. He defines political violence as: "all collective attacks within a political community against the political regime, its actors [...] or its policies. The concept represents a set of events, a common property of which is the actual or threatened use of violence". Gurr sees in violence a voice of anger that manifests itself against the established order. More precisely, individuals become angry when they feel what Gurr labels as relative deprivation, meaning the feeling of getting less than one is entitled to. He labels it formally as the "perceived discrepancy between value expectations and value capabilities". Gurr differentiates between three types of relative deprivation:

1. Decremental deprivation: one's capacities decrease when expectations remain high. One example of this is the proliferation and thus depreciation of the value of higher education.
2. Aspirational Deprivation: one's capacities stay the same when expectations rise. An example would be a first-generation college student lacking the contacts and network to obtain a higher paying job while watching her better-prepared colleagues bypass her.
3. Progressive deprivation: expectation and capabilities increase but the former cannot keep up. A good example would be an automotive worker being increasingly marginalized by the automatization of the assembly line.

Anger is thus comparative. One of his key insights is that "The potential for collective violence varies strongly with the intensity and scope of relative deprivation among members of a collectivity". This means that different individuals within society will have different propensities to rebel based on the particular internalization of their situation. As such, Gurr differentiates between three types of political violence:

1. Turmoil when only the mass population encounters relative deprivation;
2. Conspiracy when the population but especially the elite encounters relative deprivation;
3. Internal War, which includes revolution. In this case, the degree of organization is much higher than turmoil, and the revolution is intrinsically spread to all sections of society, unlike the conspiracy.

Charles Tilly: Centrality of collective action

In From Mobilization to Revolution, Charles Tilly argues that political violence is a normal and endogenous reaction to competition for power between different groups within society. "Collective violence", Tilly writes, "is the product of just normal processes of competition among groups in order to obtain the power and implicitly to fulfill their desires”. He proposes two models to analyze political violence:

1. The polity model takes into account government and groups jockeying for control over power. Thus, both the organizations holding power and the ones challenging them are included. Tilly labels those two groups "members" and "challengers".
2. The mobilization model aims to describe the behavior of one single party to the political struggle for power. Tilly further divides the model into two sub-categories, one that deals with the internal dynamics of the group, and the other that is concerned with the "external relations" of the entity with other organizations and/or the government. According to Tilly, the cohesiveness of a group mainly relies on the strength of common interests and the degree of organization. Thus, to answer Gurr, anger alone does not automatically create political violence. Political action is contingent on the capacity to organize and unite. It is far from irrational and spontaneous.

Revolutions are included in this theory, although they remain for Tilly particularly extreme since the challenger(s) aim for nothing less than full control over power. The "revolutionary moment occurs when the population needs to choose to obey either the government or an alternative body who is engaged with the government in a zero-sum game. This is what Tilly calls "multiple sovereignty". The success of a revolutionary movement hinges on "the formation of coalitions between members of the polity and the contenders advancing exclusive alternative claims to control over Government.".

Chalmers Johnson and societal values

For Chalmers Johnson, rebellions are not so much the product of political violence or collective action but in "the analysis of viable, functioning societies". In a quasi-biological manner, Johnson sees revolutions as symptoms of pathologies within the societal fabric. A healthy society, meaning a "value-coordinated social system" does not experience political violence. Johnson's equilibrium is at the intersection between the need for society to adapt to changes but at the same time firmly grounded in selective fundamental values. The legitimacy of political order, he posits, relies exclusively on its compliance with these societal values and in its capacity to integrate and adapt to any change. Rigidity is, in other words, inadmissible. Johnson writes "to make a revolution is to accept violence for the purpose of causing the system to change; more exactly, it is the purposive implementation of a strategy of violence in order to effect a change in social structure". The aim of a revolution is to re-align a political order on new societal values introduced by an externality that the system itself has not been able to process. Rebellions automatically must face a certain amount of coercion because by becoming "de-synchronized", the now illegitimate political order will have to use coercion to maintain its position. A simplified example would be the French Revolution when the Parisian Bourgeoisie did not recognize the core values and outlook of the King as synchronized with its own orientations. More than the King itself, what really sparked the violence was the uncompromising intransigence of the ruling class. Johnson emphasizes "the necessity of investigating a system's value structure and its problems in order to conceptualize the revolutionary situation in any meaningful way".

Theda Skocpol and the autonomy of the state

Skocpol introduces the concept of the social revolution, to be contrasted with a political revolution. While the latter aims to change the polity, the former is "rapid, basic transformations of a society's state and class structures; and they are accompanied and in part carried through by class-based revolts from below". Social revolutions are a grassroots movement by nature because they do more than change the modalities of power, they aim to transform the fundamental social structure of society. As a corollary, this means that some "revolutions" may cosmetically change the organization of the monopoly over power without engineering any true change in the social fabric of society. Her analysis is limited to studying the French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions. Skocpol identifies three stages of the revolution in these cases (which she believes can be extrapolated and generalized), each accordingly accompanied by specific structural factors which in turn influence the social results of the political action.

1. The Collapse of the Old-Regime State: this is an automatic consequence of certain structural conditions. She highlights the importance of international military and economic competition as well as the pressure of the misfunctioning of domestic affairs. More precisely, she sees the breakdown of the governing structures of society influenced by two theoretical actors, the "landed upper class" and the "imperial state". Both could be considered as "partners in exploitation" but in reality competed for resources: the state (monarchs) seek to build up military and economic power to ascertain their geopolitical influence. The upper class works in a logic of profit maximization, meaning preventing as much as possible the state to extract resources. All three revolutions occurred, Skocpol argues, because states failed to be able to "mobilize extraordinary resources from the society and implement in the process reforms requiring structural transformations". The apparently contradicting policies were mandated by a unique set of geopolitical competition and modernization. "Revolutionary political crises occurred because of the unsuccessful attempts of the Bourbon, Romanov, and Manchu regimes to cope with foreign pressures." Skocpol further concludes "the upshot was the disintegration of centralized administrative and military machinery that had theretofore provided the solely unified bulwark of social and political order".
2. Peasant Uprisings: more than simply a challenge by the landed upper class in a difficult context, the state needs to be challenged by mass peasant uprisings in order to fall. These uprisings must be aimed not at the political structures per se but at the upper class itself so that the political revolution becomes a social one as well. Skocpol quotes Barrington Moore who famously wrote: "peasants [...] provided the dynamite to bring down the old building". Peasant uprisings are more effective depending on two given structural socioeconomic conditions: the level of autonomy (from both an economic and political point of view) peasant communities enjoy, and the degree of direct control the upper class on local politics. In other words, peasants must be able to have some degree of agency in order to be able to rebel. If the coercive structures of the state and/or the landowners keep a very close check on peasant activity, then there is no space to foment dissent.
3. Societal Transformation: this is the third and decisive step after the state organization has been seriously weakened and peasant revolts become widespread against landlords. The paradox of the three revolutions Skocpol studies is that stronger centralized and bureaucratic states emerge after the revolts. The exact parameters depend, again, on structural factors as opposed to voluntarist factors: in Russia, the new state found most support in the industrial base, rooting itself in cities. In China, most of the support for the revolt had been in the countryside, thus the new polity was grounded in rural areas. In France, the peasantry was not organized enough, and the urban centers not potent enough so that the new state was not firmly grounded in anything, partially explaining its artificiality.

Here is a summary of the causes and consequences of social revolutions in these three countries, according to Skocpol:

Conditions for political crises (A)
	Power structure	State of agrarian economy	International pressures
France	Landed-commercial upper class has moderate influence on the absolutist monarchy via bureaucracy	Moderate growth	Moderate, pressure from England
Russia	Landed nobility has no influence in absolutist state	Extensive growth, geographically unbalanced	Extreme, string of defeats culminating with World War I
China	Landed-commercial upper class has moderate influence on absolutist state via bureaucracy	Slow growth	Strong, imperialist intrusions
Conditions for peasant insurrections (B)
	Organization of agrarian communities		Autonomy of agrarian communities
France	Peasants own 30–40% of the land own and must pay tribute to the feudal landlord		Relatively autonomous, distant control from royal officials
Russia	Peasants own 60% of the land, pay rent to landowners that are part of the community		Sovereign, supervised by the bureaucracy
China	Peasants own 50% of the land and pay rent to the landowners, work exclusively on small plots, no real peasant community		Landlords dominate local politics under the supervision of Imperial officials
	Societal transformations (A + B)
France	Breakdown of absolutist state, important peasant revolts against feudal system
Russia	Failure of top-down bureaucratic reforms, eventual dissolution of the state and widespread peasant revolts against all privately owned land
China	Breakdown of absolutist state, disorganized peasant upheavals but no autonomous revolts against landowners

Microfoundational evidence on causes

The following theories are all based on Mancur Olson's work in The Logic of Collective Action, a 1965 book that conceptualizes the inherent problem with an activity that has concentrated costs and diffuse benefits. In this case, the benefits of rebellion are seen as a public good, meaning one that is non-excludable and non-rivalrous. Indeed, the political benefits are generally shared by all in society if a rebellion is successful, not just the individuals that have partaken in the rebellion itself. Olson thus challenges the assumption that simple interests in common are all that is necessary for collective action. In fact, he argues the "free rider" possibility, a term that means to reap the benefits without paying the price, will deter rational individuals from collective action. That is, unless there is a clear benefit, a rebellion will not happen en masse. Thus, Olson shows that "selective incentives", only made accessible to individuals participating in the collective effort, can solve the free rider problem.

The Rational Peasant

Samuel L. Popkin builds on Olson's argument in The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam. His theory is based on the figure of a hyper rational peasant that bases his decision to join (or not) a rebellion uniquely on a cost-benefit analysis. This formalist view of the collective action problem stresses the importance of individual economic rationality and self-interest: a peasant, according to Popkin, will disregard the ideological dimension of a social movement and focus instead on whether or not it will bring any practical benefit to him. According to Popkin, peasant society is based on a precarious structure of economic instability. Social norms, he writes, are "malleable, renegotiated, and shifting in accord with considerations of power and strategic interaction among individuals" Indeed, the constant insecurity and inherent risk to the peasant condition, due to the peculiar nature of the patron-client relationship that binds the peasant to his landowner, forces the peasant to look inwards when he has a choice to make. Popkin argues that peasants rely on their "private, family investment for their long run security and that they will be interested in short term gain vis-à-vis the village. They will attempt to improve their long-run security by moving to a position with higher income and less variance". Popkin stresses this "investor logic" that one may not expect in agrarian societies, usually seen as pre-capitalist communities where traditional social and power structures prevent the accumulation of capital. Yet, the selfish determinants of collective action are, according to Popkin, a direct product of the inherent instability of peasant life. The goal of a laborer, for example, will be to move to a tenant position, then smallholder, then landlord; where there is less variance and more income. Voluntarism is thus non-existent in such communities.

Popkin singles out four variables that impact individual participation:

1. Contribution to the expenditure of resources: collective action has a cost in terms of contribution, and especially if it fails (an important consideration with regards to rebellion)
2. Rewards : the direct (more income) and indirect (less oppressive central state) rewards for collective action
3. Marginal impact of the peasant's contribution to the success of collective action
4. Leadership "viability and trust" : to what extent the resources pooled will be effectively used.

Without any moral commitment to the community, this situation will engineer free riders. Popkin argues that selective incentives are necessary to overcome this problem.

Opportunity cost of rebellion

Political Scientist Christopher Blattman and World Bank economist Laura Alston identify rebellious activity as an "occupational choice". They draw a parallel between criminal activity and rebellion, arguing that the risks and potential payoffs an individual must calculate when making the decision to join such a movement remains similar between the two activities. In both cases, only a selected few reap important benefits, while most of the members of the group do not receive similar payoffs. The choice to rebel is inherently linked with its opportunity cost, namely what an individual is ready to give up in order to rebel. Thus, the available options beside rebellious or criminal activity matter just as much as the rebellion itself when the individual makes the decision. Blattman and Alston, however, recognize that "a poor person's best strategy" might be both rebellion illicit and legitimate activities at the same time. Individuals, they argue, can often have a varied "portofolio" of activities, suggesting that they all operate on a rational, profit maximizing logic. The authors conclude that the best way to fight rebellion is to increase its opportunity cost, both by more enforcement but also by minimizing the potential material gains of a rebellion.

Selective incentives based on group membership

The decision to join a rebellion can be based on the prestige and social status associated with membership in the rebellious group. More than material incentives for the individual, rebellions offer their members club goods, public goods that are reserved only for the members inside that group. Economist Eli Berman and Political Scientist David D. Laitin's study of radical religious groups show that the appeal of club goods can help explain individual membership. Berman and Laitin discuss suicide operations, meaning acts that have the highest cost for an individual. They find that in such a framework, the real danger to an organization is not volunteering but preventing defection. Furthermore, the decision to enroll in such high stakes organization can be rationalized. Berman and Laitin show that religious organizations supplant the state when it fails to provide an acceptable quality of public goods such a public safety, basic infrastructure, access to utilities, or schooling. Suicide operations "can be explained as a costly signal of “commitment” to the community". They further note "Groups less adept at extracting signals of commitment (sacrifices) may not be able to consistently enforce incentive compatibility." Thus, rebellious groups can organize themselves to ask of members proof of commitment to the cause. Club goods serve not so much to coax individuals into joining but to prevent defection.

Greed vs grievance model

World Bank economists Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler compare two dimensions of incentives:

1. Greed rebellion: "motivated by predation of the rents from primary commodity exports, subject to an economic calculus of costs and a military survival constraint".
2. Grievance rebellion: "motivated by hatreds which might be intrinsic to ethnic and religious differences, or reflected objective resentments such as domination by an ethnic majority, political repression, or economic inequality". The two main sources of grievance are political exclusion and inequality.

Vollier and Hoeffler find that the model based on grievance variables systematically fails to predict past conflicts, while the model based on greed performs well. The authors posit that the high cost of risk to society is not taken into account seriously by the grievance model: individuals are fundamentally risk-averse. However, they allow that conflicts create grievances, which in turn can become risk factors. Contrary to established beliefs, they also find that a multiplicity of ethnic communities make society safer, since individuals will be automatically more cautious, at the opposite of the grievance model predictions. Finally, the authors also note that the grievances expressed by members of the diaspora of a community in turmoil has an important on the continuation of violence. Both greed and grievance thus need to be included in the reflection.

The Moral Economy of the Peasant

Spearheaded by political scientist and anthropologist James C. Scott in his book The Moral Economy of the Peasant, the moral economy school considers moral variables such as social norms, moral values, interpretation of justice, and conception of duty to the community as the prime influencers of the decision to rebel. This perspective still adheres to Olson's framework, but it considers different variables to enter the cost/benefit analysis: the individual is still believed to be rational, albeit not on material but moral grounds.

Early conceptualization: E. P. Thompson and bread riots in England

Before being fully conceptualized by Scott, British historian E.P. Thompson was the first to use the term "moral economy" in Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century. In this work, he discussed English bread riots, regular, localized form of rebellion by English peasants all through the 18th century. Such events, Thompson argues, have been routinely dismissed as "riotous", with the connotation of being disorganized, spontaneous, undirected, and undisciplined. In other words, anecdotal. The reality, he suggests, was otherwise: such riots involved a coordinated peasant action, from the pillaging of food convoys to the seizure of grain shops. Here, while a scholar such as Popkin would have argued that the peasants were trying to gain material benefits (crudely: more food), Thompson sees a legitimization factor, meaning "a belief that [the peasants] were defending traditional rights and customs". Thompson goes on to write: "[the riots were] legitimized by the assumptions of an older moral economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions by profiteering upon the necessities of the people". Later, reflecting on this work, Thompson would also write: "My object of analysis was the mentalité, or, as I would prefer, the political culture, the expectations, traditions, and indeed, superstitions of the working population most frequently involved in actions in the market". The opposition between a traditional, paternalist, and the communitarian set of values clashing with the inverse liberal, capitalist, and market-derived ethics is central to explain rebellion.

James C. Scott and the formalization of the moral economy argument

In The Moral Economy of Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia, James C. Scott looks at the impact of exogenous economic and political shocks on peasant communities in Southeast Asia. Scott finds that peasants are mostly in the business of surviving and producing enough to subsist. Therefore, any extractive regime needs to respect this careful equilibrium. He labels this phenomenon the "subsistence ethic". A landowner operating in such communities is seen to have the moral duty to prioritize the peasant's subsistence over his constant benefit. According to Scott, the powerful colonial state accompanied by market capitalism did not respect this fundamental hidden law in peasant societies. Rebellious movements occurred as the reaction to an emotional grief, a moral outrage.

Other non-material incentives

Blattman and Ralston recognize the importance of immaterial selective incentives, such as anger, outrage, and injustice ("grievance") in the roots of rebellions. These variables, they argue, are far from being irrational, as they are sometimes presented. They identify three main types of grievance arguments:

1. Intrinsic incentives holds that "injustice or perceived transgression generates an intrinsic willingness to punish or seek retribution". More than material rewards, individuals are naturally and automatically prompted to fight for justice if they feel they have been wronged. The ultimatum game is an excellent illustration: player one receives $10 and must split it with another player who doesn't get the chance to determine how much he receives, but only if the deal is made or not (if he refuses, everyone loses their money). Rationally, player 2 should take whatever the deal is because it is better in absolute term ($1 more remains $1 more). However, player 2 is most likely unwilling to accept less than 2 or 2 dollars, meaning that they are willing to pay a-$2 for justice to be respected. This game, according to Blattman and Ralston, represents "the expressive pleasure people gain from punishing an injustice".
2. Loss aversion holds that "people tend to evaluate their satisfaction relative to a reference point, and that they are 'loss adverse". Individuals prefer not losing over the risky strategy of making gains. There is a substantial subjective part to this, however, as some may realize alone and decide that they are comparatively less well off than a neighbor, for example. To "fix" this gap, individuals will in turn be ready to take great risks so as to not enshrine a loss.
3. Frustration-aggression: this model holds that the immediate emotional reactions to highly stressful environments do not obey to any "direct utility benefit but rather a more impulsive and emotional response to a threat". There are limits to this theory: violent action is to a large extent a product of goals by an individual which are in turn determined by a set of preferences. Yet, this approach shows that contextual elements like economic precarity have a non-negligible impact on the conditions of the decisions to rebel at minimum.

Recruitment

Stathis N. Kalyvas, a political science professor at Yale University, argues that political violence is heavily influenced by hyperlocal socio-economic factors, from the mundane traditional family rivalries to repressed grudges. Rebellion, or any sort of political violence, are not binary conflicts but must be understood as interactions between public and private identities and actions. The "convergence of local motives and supralocal imperatives" make studying and theorizing rebellion a very complex affair, at the intersection between the political and the private, the collective and the individual. Kalyvas argues that we often try to group political conflicts according to two structural paradigms:

1. The idea that political violence, and more specifically rebellion, is characterized by a complete breakdown of authority and an anarchic state. This is inspired by Thomas Hobbes' views. The approach sees rebellion as being motivated by greed and loot, using violence to break down the power structures of society.
2. The idea that all political violence is inherently motivated by an abstract group of loyalties and beliefs, "whereby the political enemy becomes a private adversary only by virtue of prior collective and impersonal enmity". Violence is thus not a "man to man" affair as much as a "state to state" struggle, if not an "idea vs idea" conflict.

Kalyvas' key insight is that the central vs periphery dynamic is fundamental in political conflicts. Any individual actor, Kalyvas posits, enters into a calculated alliance with the collective. Rebellions thus cannot be analyzed in molar categories, nor should we assume that individuals are automatically in line with the rest of the actors simply by virtue of ideological, religious, ethnic, or class cleavage. The agency is located both within the collective and in the individual, in the universal and the local. Kalyvas writes: "Alliance entails a transaction between supralocal and local actors, whereby the former supply the later with external muscle, thus allowing them to win decisive local advantage, in exchange the former rely on local conflicts to recruit and motivate supporters and obtain local control, resources, and information- even when their ideological agenda is opposed to localism". Individuals will thus aim to use the rebellion in order to gain some sort of local advantage, while the collective actors will aim to gain power. Violence is a mean as opposed to a goal, according to Kalyvas.

The greater takeaway from this central/local analytical lens is that violence is not an anarchic tactic or a manipulation by an ideology, but a conversation between the two. Rebellions are "concatenations of multiple and often disparate local cleavages, more or less loosely arranged around the master cleavage". Any pre-conceived explanation or theory of a conflict must not be placated on a situation, lest one will construct a reality that adapts itself to his pre-conceived idea. Kalyvas thus argues that political conflict is not always political in the sense that they cannot be reduced to a certain discourse, decisions, or ideologies from the "center" of collective action. Instead, the focus must be on "local cleavages and intracommunity dynamics". Furthermore, rebellion is not "a mere mechanism that opens up the floodgates to random and anarchical private violence". Rather, it is the result of a careful and precarious alliance between local motivations and collective vectors to help the individual cause.

American Enlightenment

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Enlightenment 

 

American Enlightenment

1732–1845
Thomas Paine
Including	American philosophy
Preceded by	European Enlightenment
Followed by	American Revolution
Leader(s)	Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington

The American Enlightenment was a period of intellectual ferment in the thirteen American colonies in the 18th to 19th century, which led to the American Revolution, and the creation of the United States of America. The American Enlightenment was influenced by the 17th-century European Enlightenment and its own native American philosophy. According to James MacGregor Burns, the spirit of the American Enlightenment was to give Enlightenment ideals a practical, useful form in the life of the nation and its people.

The American Enlightenment applied scientific reasoning to politics, science, and religion. It promoted religious tolerance and restored literature, arts, and music as important disciplines worthy of study in colleges. A non-denominational moral philosophy replaced theology in many college curricula. Some colleges reformed their curricula to include natural philosophy (science), modern astronomy, and mathematics, and "new-model" American style colleges were founded. Politically, the age is distinguished by an emphasis upon economic liberty, republicanism and religious tolerance, as clearly expressed in the United States Declaration of Independence. Attempts to reconcile science and religion resulted in a rejection of prophecy, miracle, and revealed religion, resulting in an inclination toward deism among some major political leaders of the age.

Among the foremost representatives of the American Enlightenment were presidents of colleges, including Puritan religious leaders Jonathan Edwards, Thomas Clap, and Ezra Stiles, and Anglican moral philosophers Samuel Johnson and William Smith. The leading political thinkers were John Adams, James Madison, Thomas Paine, George Mason, James Wilson, Ethan Allen, and Alexander Hamilton, and polymaths Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.

The term "American Enlightenment" was coined in the post-World War II era, and was not used in the eighteenth century when English speakers commonly referred to a process of becoming "enlightened."

Dates

Various dates for the American Enlightenment have been proposed, including 1750–1820, 1765–1815, and 1688–1815. One more precise start date proposed is 1714, when a collection of Enlightenment books by Jeremiah Dummer were donated to the library of the college of Yale in Connecticut. They were received by a post-graduate student Samuel Johnson, who studied them. He found that they contradicted his Puritan learning. He wrote that, "All this was like a flood of day to his low state of mind", and that he found himself as if "emerging out of the glimmer of twilight into the full sunshine of open day". Two years later in 1716 as a Yale Tutor, Johnson introduced a new curriculum into Yale using Dummer's donated Enlightenment books. Johnson offered what he called "The New Learning", which included the works and ideas of Francis Bacon, John Locke, Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, Copernicus, and literary works by Shakespeare, Milton, and Addison. Enlightenment ideas were introduced to the colonists and diffused through Puritan educational and religious networks especially through Yale College in 1718.

Religious tolerance

Enlightened Founding Fathers, especially Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and George Washington, fought for and eventually attained religious freedom for minority denominations. According to the founding fathers, the United States should be a country where peoples of all faiths could live in peace and mutual benefit. James Madison summed up this ideal in 1792 saying, "Conscience is the most sacred of all property."

A switch away from established religion to religious tolerance was one of the distinguishing features of the era from 1775 to 1818. The passage of the new Connecticut Constitution in 1818 has been proposed as a date for the triumph if not the end of the American Enlightenment. That new constitution overturned the 180-year-old "Standing Order" and The Connecticut Charter of 1662, whose provisions dated back to the founding of the state in 1638 and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut. The new constitution guaranteed freedom of religion and disestablished the Congregational church.

Intellectual currents

The American Enlightenment on the one hand grew from works of European political thinkers such as Montaigne, John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau who themselves derived ideas about democracy form from admiring accounts of American Indian governmental structures brought back from European travelers to the “new world” after 1500. Concepts of freedom and modern democratic ideals were born in "Native American wigwams” and found permanence in Voltaire’s Huron. While between 1714 and 1818, an intellectual change took place that seemed to change the British Colonies of America from a distant backwater into a leader in various fields — moral philosophy, educational reform, religious revival, industrial technology, science, and, most notably, political philosophy, the roots of this change were home grown. America saw a consensus on a "pursuit of happiness" based political structure based in large part on Native sources, however misunderstood.

A non-denominational moral philosophy replaced theology in many college curricula. Yale College and the College of William & Mary were reformed. Even Puritan colleges such as the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) and Harvard University reformed their curricula to include natural philosophy (science), modern astronomy, and mathematics. Additionally, "new-model" American style colleges were founded, such as King's College New York (now Columbia University), and the College of Philadelphia (now University of Pennsylvania).

European sources

Sources of the American Enlightenment are many and vary according to time and place. As a result of an extensive book trade with Great Britain, the colonies were well acquainted with European literature almost contemporaneously. Early influences were English writers, including James Harrington, Algernon Sidney, the Viscount Bolingbroke, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon (especially the two's Cato's Letters), and Joseph Addison (whose tragedy Cato was extremely popular). A particularly important English legal writer was Sir William Blackstone, whose Commentaries on the Laws of England served as a major influence on the American Founders and is a key source in the development Anglo-American common law. Although John Locke's Two Treatises of Government has long been cited as a major influence on American thinkers, historians David Lundberg and Henry F. May demonstrate that Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding was far more widely read than were his political Treatises.

The Scottish Enlightenment also influenced American thinkers. David Hume's Essays and his History of England were widely read in the colonies, and Hume's political thought had a particular influence on James Madison and the Constitution. Another important Scottish writer was Francis Hutcheson. Hutcheson's ideas of ethics, along with notions of civility and politeness developed by the Earl of Shaftesbury, and Addison and Richard Steele in their Spectator, were a major influence on upper-class American colonists who sought to emulate European manners and learning.

By far the most important French sources to the American Enlightenment were Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws and Emer de Vattel's Law of Nations. Both informed early American ideas of government and were major influences on the Constitution. Voltaire's histories were widely read but seldom cited. Rousseau's influence was marginal. Noah Webster used Rousseau's educational ideas of child development to structure his famous Speller. A German influence includes Samuel Pufendorf, whose writings were also commonly cited by American writers.

Science

Leading scientists during the American Enlightenment included Benjamin Franklin for his work on electricity, William Smith for his organization and observations of the Transit of Venus, Jared Eliot for his work in metallurgy and agriculture, the astronomer David Rittenhouse in astronomy, math, and instruments, Benjamin Rush in medical science, Charles Willson Peale in natural history, and Cadwallader Colden for his work in botany and town sanitation. Colden's daughter, Jane Colden, was the first female botanist working in America. Count Rumford was a leading scientist, especially in the field of heat.

Architecture, arts, and culture

After 1780, the Federal-style of American Architecture began to diverge from the Georgian style and became a uniquely American genre; in 1813, the American architect Ithiel Town designed and in 1814–1816 built the first Gothic Style church in North America, Trinity Church on the Green in New Haven, predating the English Gothic revival by a decade. In the fields of literature, poetry, music, and drama some nascent artistic attempts were made, particularly in pre-war Philadelphia, but American (non-popular) culture in these fields was largely imitative of British culture for most of the period.

Republicanism

American republicanism emphasized consent of the governed, riddance of the aristocracy, and fear of corruption. It represented the convergence of classical republicanism and English republicanism (of 17th century Commonwealthmen and 18th century English Country Whigs).

J.G.A. Pocock explained the intellectual sources in America:

The Whig canon and the neo-Harringtonians, John Milton, James Harrington and Sidney, Trenchard, Gordon and Bolingbroke, together with the Greek, Roman, and Renaissance masters of the tradition as far as Montesquieu, formed the authoritative literature of this culture; and its values and concepts were those with which we have grown familiar: a civic and patriot ideal in which the personality was founded on property, perfected in citizenship but perpetually threatened by corruption; government figuring paradoxically as the principal source of corruption and operating through such means as patronage, faction, standing armies (opposed to the ideal of the militia); established churches (opposed to the Puritan and deist modes of American religion); and the promotion of a monied interest—though the formulation of this last concept was somewhat hindered by the keen desire for readily available paper credit common in colonies of settlement.

Liberalism and republicanism

Since the 1960s, historians have debated the Enlightenment's role in the American Revolution. Before 1960 the consensus was that liberalism, especially that of John Locke, was paramount; republicanism was largely ignored. The new interpretations were pioneered by J.G.A. Pocock who argued in The Machiavellian Moment (1975) that, at least in the early eighteenth-century, republican ideas were just as important as liberal ones. Pocock's view is now widely accepted. Bernard Bailyn and Gordon Wood pioneered the argument that the Founding Fathers of the United States were more influenced by republicanism than they were by liberalism. Isaac Kramnick, on the other hand, argues that Americans have always been highly individualistic and therefore Lockean.

In the decades before the American Revolution (1776), the intellectual and political leaders of the colonies studied history intently, looking for guides or models for good (and bad) government. They especially followed the development of republican ideas in England. Pocock explained the intellectual sources in the United States:

The Whig canon and the neo-Harringtonians, John Milton, James Harrington and Sidney, Trenchard, Gordon and Bolingbroke, together with the Greek, Roman, and Renaissance masters of the tradition as far as Montesquieu, formed the authoritative literature of this culture; and its values and concepts were those with which we have grown familiar: a civic and patriot ideal in which the personality was founded on property, perfected in citizenship but perpetually threatened by corruption; government figuring paradoxically as the principal source of corruption and operating through such means as patronage, faction, standing armies (opposed to the ideal of the militia), established churches (opposed to the Puritan and deist modes of American religion) and the promotion of a monied interest—though the formulation of this last concept was somewhat hindered by the keen desire for readily available paper credit common in colonies of settlement. A neoclassical politics provided both the ethos of the elites and the rhetoric of the upwardly mobile, and accounts for the singular cultural and intellectual homogeneity of the Founding Fathers and their generation.

The commitment of most Americans to these republican values made inevitable the American Revolution, for Britain was increasingly seen as corrupt and hostile to republicanism, and a threat to the established liberties the Americans enjoyed.

Leopold von Ranke, a leading German historian, in 1848 claims that American republicanism played a crucial role in the development of European liberalism:

By abandoning English constitutionalism and creating a new republic based on the rights of the individual, the North Americans introduced a new force in the world. Ideas spread most rapidly when they have found adequate concrete expression. Thus republicanism entered our Romanic/Germanic world... Up to this point, the conviction had prevailed in Europe that monarchy best served the interests of the nation. Now the idea spread that the nation should govern itself. But only after a state had actually been formed on the basis of the theory of representation did the full significance of this idea become clear. All later revolutionary movements have this same goal... This was the complete reversal of a principle. Until then, a king who ruled by the grace of God had been the center around which everything turned. Now the idea emerged that power should come from below... These two principles are like two opposite poles, and it is the conflict between them that determines the course of the modern world. In Europe the conflict between them had not yet taken on concrete form; with the French Revolution it did.

"Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"

Many historians find that the origin of this famous phrase derives from Locke's position that "no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions." Others suggest that Jefferson took the phrase from Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England. Others note that William Wollaston's 1722 book The Religion of Nature Delineated describes the "truest definition" of "natural religion" as being "The pursuit of happiness by the practice of reason and truth."

The Virginia Declaration of Rights, which was written by George Mason and adopted by the Virginia Convention of Delegates on June 12, 1776, a few days before Jefferson's draft, in part, reads:

That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights ... namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

The United States Declaration of Independence, which was primarily written by Thomas Jefferson, was adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. The text of the second section of the Declaration of Independence reads:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Deism

Both the Moderate Enlightenment and a Radical or Revolutionary Enlightenment were reactions against the authoritarianism, irrationality, and obscurantism of the established churches. Philosophers such as Voltaire depicted organized religion as hostile to the development of reason and the progress of science and incapable of verification.

An alternative religion was deism, the philosophical belief in a deity based on reason, rather than religious revelation or dogma. It was a popular perception among the philosophes, who adopted deistic attitudes to varying degrees. Deism greatly influenced the thought of intellectuals and Founding Fathers, including John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, perhaps George Washington and, especially, Thomas Jefferson. The most articulate exponent was Thomas Paine, whose The Age of Reason was written in France in the early 1790s, and soon reached the United States. Paine was highly controversial; when Jefferson was attacked for his deism in the 1800 election, Democratic-Republican politicians took pains to distance their candidate from Paine. Unitarianism and Deism were strongly connected, the former being brought to America by Joseph Priestley. Doctor Samuel Johnson called Lord Edward Herbert the "father of English Deism".

Transpersonal psychology

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Transpersonal psychology, or spiritual psychology, is a sub-field or school of psychology that integrates the spiritual and transcendent aspects of the human experience with the framework of modern psychology. The transpersonal is defined as "experiences in which the sense of identity or self extends beyond (trans) the individual or personal to encompass wider aspects of humankind, life, psyche or cosmos". It has also been defined as "development beyond conventional, personal or individual levels".

Issues considered in transpersonal psychology include spiritual self-development, self beyond the ego, peak experiences, mystical experiences, systemic trance, spiritual crises, spiritual evolution, religious conversion, altered states of consciousness, spiritual practices, and other sublime and/or unusually expanded experiences of living. The discipline attempts to describe and integrate spiritual experience within modern psychological theory and to formulate new theory to encompass such experience.

Definition

Lajoie and Shapiro reviewed forty definitions of transpersonal psychology that had appeared in academic literature over the period from 1968 to 1991. They found that five key themes in particular featured prominently in these definitions: states of consciousness; higher or ultimate potential; beyond the ego or personal self; transcendence; and the spiritual. Based upon this study the authors proposed the following definition of transpersonal psychology: Transpersonal Psychology is concerned with the study of humanity's highest potential, and with the recognition, understanding, and realization of unitive, spiritual, and transcendent states of consciousness.

In a review of previous definitions Walsh and Vaughan suggested that transpersonal psychology is an area of psychology that focuses on the study of transpersonal experiences and related phenomena. These phenomena include the causes, effects and correlates of transpersonal experiences and development, as well as the disciplines and practices inspired by them. They have also criticised many definitions of transpersonal psychology for carrying implicit assumptions, or presuppositions, that may not necessarily define the field as a whole.

Hartelius, Caplan and Rardin conducted a retrospective analysis of definitions of transpersonal psychology. They found three dominant themes that define the field: beyond-ego psychology, integrative/holistic psychology, and psychology of transformation. Analysis suggested that the field has moved from an early emphasis on alternative states of consciousness to a more expanded view of human wholeness and transformation. This has moved the field into consideration of the impacts of states of consciousness and exceptional experiences on the psychology of the whole person.

Caplan (2009: p. 231) conveys the genesis of the discipline, states its mandate and ventures a definition:

Although transpersonal psychology is relatively new as a formal discipline, beginning with the publication of The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology in 1969 and the founding of the Association for Transpersonal Psychology in 1971, it draws upon ancient mystical knowledge that comes from multiple traditions. Transpersonal psychologists attempt to integrate timeless wisdom with modern Western psychology and translate spiritual principles into scientifically grounded, contemporary language. Transpersonal psychology addresses the full spectrum of human psychospiritual development – from our deepest wounds and needs, to the existential crisis of the human being, to the most transcendent capacities of our consciousness.

The perspectives of holism and unity are central to the worldview of transpersonal psychology.

Development of the field

Origins

The thinkers who have set the stage for transpersonal studies are William James, Carl Jung, Roberto Assagioli and Abraham Maslow. More recent attention has brought to light transpersonal aspects of Jean Piaget's untranslated French works, and argued that Piaget's transpersonal experiences and theoretical interests were a major motivation for Piaget's psychological research. A review by Vich suggests that the earliest usage of the term "transpersonal" can be found in lecture notes which William James had prepared for a semester at Harvard University in 1905-6. The meaning then, different from today's usage, was in the context of James' radical empiricism, in which there exists an intimate relation between a perceiving subject and a perceived object, recognizing that all objects are dependent on being perceived by someone. Commentators also mention the psychedelic movement, the psychological study of religion, parapsychology, and the interest in Eastern spiritual systems and practices, as influences that shaped the early field of transpersonal psychology.

Another important figure in the establishment of transpersonal psychology was Abraham Maslow, who had already published work regarding human peak experiences. Maslow is credited for having presented the outline of a fourth-force psychology, named transhumanistic psychology, in a lecture entitled "The Farther Reaches of Human Nature" in 1967. In 1968 Maslow was among the people who announced transpersonal psychology as a "fourth force" in psychology, in order to distinguish it from the three other forces of psychology: psychoanalysis, behaviorism and humanistic psychology. Early use of the term "transpersonal" can also be credited to Stanislav Grof and Anthony Sutich. At this time, in 1967–68, Maslow was also in close dialogue with Grof and Sutich regarding the name and orientation of the new field. According to Powers the term "transpersonal" starts to show up in academic journals from 1970 and onwards.

Both Humanistic and Transpersonal psychology have been associated with the Human Potential Movement, a growth center for alternative therapies and philosophies that grew out of the counter-culture of the 1960s at places like Esalen, California.

Formative period

Gradually, during the 1960s, the term "transpersonal" was associated with a distinct school of psychology within the humanistic psychology movement. In 1969, Abraham Maslow, Stanislav Grof and Anthony Sutich were among the initiators behind the publication of the first issue of the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, the leading academic journal in the field. During the next decade significant establishments took place under the banner of transpersonal psychology. The Association for Transpersonal Psychology was established in 1972. An international initiative, The International Transpersonal Psychology Association, was founded by Stanislav Grof, and held its first conference in Iceland in 1973. This was soon to be followed by the founding of the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, a graduate training center, in 1975 . The institute was founded by Robert Frager and James Fadiman in response to the academic climate of the 1970s, and included transpersonal and spiritual approaches to psychology. Soon other institutions, with transpersonal psychology programs, followed. Among these were Saybrook Graduate School, the California Institute of Asian Studies (now California Institute of Integral Studies), JFK University, and Naropa.

In the 1970s the field developed through the writings of such authors as Robert Frager, Alyce and Elmer Green, Daniel Goleman, Stanley Krippner, Charles Tart, Roger Walsh, John Welwood, and Ken Wilber. Wilber emerged as a leading figure and major theoretician of the field. Another important contributor to the field, Michael Washburn, was drawing on the insights of Jungian depth psychology. According to Smith, Wilber and Washburn presented the major guiding theories of transpersonal development. The 1980s were also characterized by the work of Stanislav and Christina Grof, and their concept of spiritual emergence and spiritual emergencies.

The period also reflected initiatives at the organizational level. In the early 1980s a group within APA division 32 (Humanistic Psychology) argued in favor of establishing transpersonal psychology as a separate division within the framework of the American Psychological Association. A petition was presented to the APA Council in 1984, but was turned down. A new initiative was made in 1985, but it failed to win the majority of votes in the council. In 1986 the petition was presented for a third and final time, but was withdrawn by the executive board of Division 32. The interest group later re-formed as the Transpersonal Psychology Interest Group (TPIG), and continued to promote transpersonal issues in collaboration with Division 32.

The 1990s introduced new profiles who contributed insights to the field. Among these authors we find Brant Cortright, Stuart Sovatsky, David Lukoff, Robert P. Turner and Francis Lu. Cortright and Sovatsky made contributions to transpersonal psychotherapy. Both authors published their primary work as part of the SUNY-series. Lukoff, Turner and Lu, writers in the clinical field, were the authors behind the proposal for a new diagnostic category to be included in the DSM-manual of the American Psychiatric Association. The category was called "Psychoreligious or psychospiritual problem" and was approved by the Task Force on DSM-IV in 1993, after changing its name to Religious or spiritual problem.

While Wilber has been considered an influential writer and theoretician in the field of transpersonal psychology, his departure from the field was becoming more obvious during the decade of the 1990s. Although the date of his departure is unclear, Freeman notes that Wilber had been distancing himself from the label of “transpersonal”, in favour of the label of “integral”, since the mid-1990s. In 1998 he formed Integral Institute.

On the organizational side the decade was marked by a steady increase in membership for the Association for Transpersonal Psychology, stabilizing at approximately 3000 members in the early nineties. In 1996 the British Psychological Society (the UK professional body equivalent to the APA) established a Transpersonal Psychology Section. It was co-founded by David Fontana, Ingrid Slack and Martin Treacy and was, according to Fontana, "the first Section of its kind in a Western scientific society". In the second half of the decade commentators remarked that the field of transpersonal psychology had grown steadily and rapidly.

Later developments

The beginning of the 2000s was marked by the revisionary project of Jorge Ferrer, which is considered to be an important contribution to the field. His main publication from this era, Revisioning Transpersonal Theory - A Participatory Vision of Human Spirituality (2001), was part of the SUNY Series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology.

In 2007, the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology and the International Journal of Transpersonal Studies were accepted for indexing in PsychINFO, the journal database of the American Psychological Association. In 2012 the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology announced that it was changing its name to Sofia University, a change that included a new profile in the academic landscape, with an expanded graduate program featuring computer science and business. In 2016, the California Institute of Integral Studies launched an online PhD degree in Integral and Transpersonal Psychology, founded and chaired by Glenn Hartelius, including Jorge Ferrer on its faculty, and sponsoring publication of the International Journal of Transpersonal Studies.

Branches and related fields

Several psychological schools, or branches, have influenced the field of transpersonal psychology. Among these schools we find the Analytical psychology of Carl Jung, the psychosynthesis of Roberto Assagioli, and the humanistic psychology of Abraham Maslow. The major transpersonal models of psychotherapy, as reviewed by Cortright, are the models of Ken Wilber, C.G Jung, Michael Washburn, Stanislav Grof, and Hameed Ali.

Dr. William J. Barry established transpersonal psychology as a valid action research method in the field of education through his Ph.D. thesis and development of Transformational Quality (TQ) Theory. Applications to the areas of business studies and management have been developed. Other transpersonal disciplines, such as transpersonal anthropology and transpersonal business studies, are listed in transpersonal disciplines.

Transpersonal art is one of the disciplines considered by Boucovolas, in listing how transpersonal psychology may relate to other areas of transpersonal study. In writing about transpersonal art, Boucovolas begins by noting how, according to Breccia and also to the definitions employed by the International Transpersonal Association in 1971, transpersonal art may be understood as art work which draws upon important themes beyond the individual self, such as the transpersonal consciousness. This makes transpersonal art criticism germane to mystical approaches to creativity. Transpersonal art criticism, as Boucovolas notes, can be considered that which claims conventional art criticism has been too committed to stressing rational dimensions of art and has subsequently said little on art's spiritual dimensions, or as that which holds art work has a meaning beyond the individual person. Certain aspects of the psychology of Carl Jung, as well as movements such as music therapy and art therapy, may also relate to the field. Boucovolas' paper cites Breccia (1971) as an early example of transpersonal art, and claims that at the time his article appeared, integral theorist Ken Wilber had made recent contributions to the field. More recently, the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, in 2005, Volume 37, launched a special edition devoted to the media, which contained articles on film criticism that can be related to this field.

Other fields of study, that are related to transpersonal psychology, include near-death studies, parapsychology and humanistic psychology. The major findings of near-death studies are represented in the Textbook of Transpersonal Psychiatry and Psychology, and in The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology. The near-death experience is also discussed in relation to other transpersonal and spiritual categories. The major findings of parapsychology are also represented in the Textbook of Transpersonal Psychiatry and Psychology, and in The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology.

There is also a strong connection between the transpersonal and the humanistic approaches to psychology, as indicated by the sourcebook of Donald Moss. Although transpersonal psychology is considered to have started off within, or developed from humanistic psychology, many of its interests, such as spirituality and modes of consciousness, extend beyond the areas of interest discussed by humanistic theory. According to writers in the field transpersonal psychology advocates for an expanded, spiritual, view of physical and mental health that is not necessarily addressed by humanistic psychology.

A few commentators have suggested that there is a difference between transpersonal psychology and a broader category of transpersonal theories, sometimes called transpersonal studies. According to Friedman this category might include several approaches to the transpersonal that lie outside the frames of science. However, according to Ferrer the field of transpersonal psychology is "situated within the wider umbrella of transpersonal studies".

Transpersonal psychology may also, sometimes, be associated with New Age beliefs and pop psychology. However, leading authors in the field, among those Sovatsky, Rowan, and Hartelius have criticized the nature of "New Age"-philosophy and discourse. Rowan even states that "The Transpersonal is not the New Age".

Although some consider that the distinction between transpersonal psychology and the psychology of religion, is fading (e.g. The Oxford Handbook of Psychology and Spirituality), there is still generally considered to be a clear distinction between the two. Much of the focus of psychology of religion is concerned with issues that wouldn't be considered 'transcendent' within transpersonal psychology, so the two disciplines do have quite a distinct focus.

Research, theory and clinical aspects

Research interests and methodology

The transpersonal perspective spans many research interests. The following list is adapted from the Textbook of Transpersonal Psychiatry and Psychology and includes: the contributions of spiritual traditions such as Taoism, Hinduism, Yoga, Buddhism, Kabbalah, Christian mysticism, Shamanism, and Native American healing to psychiatry and psychology; meditation research and clinical aspects of meditation; psychedelics; parapsychology; anthropology; diagnosis of religious and spiritual problem; offensive spirituality and spiritual defenses; phenomenology and treatment of Kundalini; psychotherapy; near-death experience; religious cults; psychopharmacology; guided imagery; breathwork; past life therapy; ecological survival and social change; aging and adult spiritual development.

The research of transpersonal psychology is based upon both quantitative and qualitative methods, but some commentators have suggested that the main contribution of transpersonal psychology has been to provide alternatives to the quantitative methods of mainstream psychology. Although the field has not been a significant contributor of empirical knowledge on clinical issues, it has contributed important quantitative research to areas such as the study of meditation.

Theories on human development

One of the demarcations in transpersonal theory is between authors who are associated with hierarchical/holarchical, sequential, or stage-like models of human development, such as Ken Wilber and John Battista, and authors who are associated with Jungian perspectives, or models that include the principle of regression, such as Michael Washburn and Stanislav Grof.

Ken Wilber and John Battista

The transpersonal psychology of Ken Wilber is often mentioned as an influential theoretical framework for the field. Wilber is often regarded as a leading theorist and pioneer of the transpersonal movement, but he has not been actively associated with the label for quite some time. Several commentators note that he has distanced himself from the transpersonal field in favour of a new model that he calls integral. However, his psychological model still remains influential to the practice and development of transpersonal psychology, and transpersonal themes remain a central part of his own work. Central to his theory of consciousness is a synthesis of eastern and western psychologies and models of human development.

Wilber's model of consciousness consists of three broad developmental categories: the prepersonal or pre-egoic, the personal or egoic, and the transpersonal or trans-egoic. A more detailed version of this model includes nine different levels of human development, in which levels 1-3 are pre-personal levels, levels 4-6 are personal levels and levels 7-9 are transpersonal levels. Later versions also include a tenth level. The transpersonal stages, or the upper levels of the model, are the home of spiritual events and developments. The framework proposed by Wilber suggests that human development is a progressive movement through these stages of consciousness. The theory implies that different schools of psychology are associated with different levels of the model, and that each level of organization, or self-development, includes a vulnerability to certain pathologies associated with that particular level. Each level also represents developmental tasks that must be properly met, or they might lead to developmental arrest. A basic tenet of Wilber's transpersonal psychology is a concept called the "pre/trans fallacy". That is, a confusion of transpersonal progression with prepersonal regression. According to writers in the field western schools of psychology have had a tendency to regard transpersonal levels as pathological, equating them with regressive pathological conditions belonging to a lower level on the model. The pre/trans fallacy describes a lack of differentiation between these two categories.

Wilber's understanding of the levels of consciousness, or reality, ranging from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, or from prepersonal to personal to transpersonal, is often referred to as the "Great Chain of Being". This overarching framework, that is adapted from the "perennial philosophy" of the worlds great spiritual traditions, is later reformulated by Wilber as the "Great Nest of Being". That is, not just a simple linear hierarchy, but a kind of nested hierarchy, or holarchy. Human development, and evolution, is considered to move up this holarchy.

The 1990s marked a move into the world of integral ideas for Wilber. According to commentators he stopped referring to his work as transpersonal, in favor of the term integral, by the mid-1990s. Literature now confirms that he has shifted from transpersonal psychology to integral psychology. According to Brys & Bokor Wilber presented major parts of his integral approach in the years 1997-2000. The integral theory included a four quadrant model of consciousness and its development, whose dimensions were said to unfold in a sequence of stages or levels. The combination of quadrants and levels resulting in an all-quadrant, all-level approach. The theory also included the concept of holon, "a whole that is simultaneously part of some other whole", and holarchy, "hierarchical holons within holons". According to reviewers, the spiritual dimension was central to Wilber's integral vision.

Similar to the model presented by Wilber is the information theory of consciousness presented by John Battista. Battista suggests that the development of the self-system, and of human psychology, consists of a series of transitions in the direction of enhanced maturity and psychological stability, and in the direction of transpersonal and spiritual categories. His model presents a series of developmental tasks with corresponding levels of consciousness and psychopathology, and discusses therapeutic interventions in relation to the different levels and transitions.

Michael Washburn and Stanislav Grof

Michael Washburn presents a model of human development that is informed by psychoanalysis, object-relations theory, and the depth psychology of the Jungian perspective. In the context of transpersonal psychotherapy Washburn's approach has been described as a «revision of Jung's analytical psychology».

According to Washburn transpersonal development follows the principles of a spiraling path. Central to his model is the understanding of a dynamic ground; a deep level of the unconscious, with spiritual qualities, that the person is in contact with in the prepersonal stage of development. According to commentators Washburn describes three stages of human development; the pre-personal, the personal and the transpersonal, also described as; pre-egoic, egoic and trans-egoic. In the pre-stage (up to age 5) the child is integrated with the dynamic ground. Later in life this contact is weakened, and the prepersonal stage is followed by a new stage of development where the ego is dissociated from the dynamic ground. This happens through the process of repression, and marks the stage of adulthood, and of the mental ego (egoic stage).

However, later in life there is the possibility of a re-integration with the dynamic ground, a trans-egoic stage. According to Washburn this transpersonal development requires a kind of U-turn, or going back to the dynamic ground, in order for the ego to become integrated with its unconscious dynamics. This aspect of Wasburn's model is described by commentators as «a going back before a higher going forth». A regression that paves the way for transcendence, and a fully embodied life. Washburn's approach to transpersonal development is often summed up as «regression in the service of transcendence»which, according to Lev, is a "twist of the phrase, regression in the service of the ego". Washburn has contrasted his own perspective, which he calls spiral-dynamic, to the developmental theory of Ken Wilber, which he calls structural-hierarchical. The differing views of Washburn and Wilber are mentioned by several commentators.

Stanislav Grof, on the other hand, operates with a cartography consisting of three kinds of territories: the realm of the sensory barrier and the personal unconscious (described by psychoanalysis), the perinatal or birth-related realm (organizing principles for the psyche), and the transpersonal realm. According to this view proper engagement with the first two realms sets the stage for an ascent to the third, transpersonal, realm. His early therapy, and research, was carried out with the aid of psychedelic substances such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), psilocybin, mescaline, dipropyl-tryptamine (DPT), and methylene-dioxy-amphetamine (MDA). Later, when LSD was prohibited, Grof developed other methods of therapy, such as holotropic breathwork.

His early findings, which were based on observations from LSD research, uncovered four major types of experiences that, according to Grof, correspond to levels in the human unconscious: (1) Abstract and aesthetic experiences; (2) Psychodynamic experiences; (3) Perinatal experiences; (4) Transpersonal experiences. Grof returns to many of these findings in later books. Psychodynamic levels, which correspond to the theory of Sigmund Freud, is the area of biographical memories, emotional problems, unresolved conflicts and fantasies. Perinatal levels, which correspond to the theories of Otto Rank, is the area of physical pain and agony, dying and death, biological birth, aging, disease and decrepitude. Transpersonal levels, corresponding to the theories of C.G. Jung, is the area of a number of spiritual, paranormal and transcendental experiences, including ESP phenomena, ego transcendence and other states of expanded consciousness. In order to bring structure to the psychodynamic and perinatal levels Grof introduces two governing systems, or organizing principles: The COEX-system, which is the governing system for the psychodynamic level, and the Basic Perinatal Matrices, which represent the birthing stages and is the governing system for the perinatal level.

Grof applies regressional modes of therapy (originally with the use of psychedelic substances, later with other methods) in order to seek greater psychological integration. This has led to the confrontation of constructive and deconstructive models of the process leading to genuine mental health: what Wilber sees as a pre/trans fallacy does not exist for Washburn and Grof, for pre-rational states may be genuinely transpersonal, and re-living them may be essential in the process of achieving genuine sanity.

Stuart Sovatsky

The idea of development is also featured in the spiritual psychotherapy and psychology of Stuart Sovatsky. His understanding of human development, which is largely informed by east/west psychology and the tradition and hermeneutics of Yoga, places the human being in the midst of spiritual energies and processes outlined in yogic philosophy. According to Sovatsky these are maturational processes, affecting body and soul. Sovatsky adapts the concept of Kundalini as the maturational force of human development. According to his model a number of advanced yogic processes are said to assist in "maturation of the ensouled body".

Transpersonal theory of Jorge Ferrer

The scholarship of Jorge Ferrer introduces a more pluralistic and participatory perspective on spiritual and ontological dimensions. In his revision of transpersonal theory Ferrer questions three major presuppositions, or frameworks for interpretation, that have been dominant in transpersonal studies. These are the frameworks of Experientalism (the transpersonal understood as an individual inner experience); Inner empiricism (the study of transpersonal phenomena according to the standards of empiricist science); and perennialism (the legacy of the perennial philosophy in transpersonal studies). Although representing important frames of reference for the initial study of transpersonal phenomena, Ferrer believes that these assumptions have become limiting and problematic for the development of the field.

As an alternative to these major epistemological and philosophical trends Ferrer focuses upon the great variety, or pluralism, of spiritual insights and spiritual worlds that can be disclosed by transpersonal inquiry. In contrast to the transpersonal models that are informed by the "perennial philosophy" he introduces the idea of a “dynamic and indeterminate spiritual power.” Along these lines he also introduces the metaphor of the "ocean of emancipation". According to Ferrer "the ocean of emancipation has many shores". That is, different spiritual truths can be reached by arriving at different spiritual shores.

The second aspect of his revision, "the participatory turn", introduces the idea that transpersonal phenomena are participatory and co-creative events. He defines these events as "emergences of transpersonal being that can occur not only in the locus of an individual, but also in a relationship, a community, a collective identity or a place." This participatory knowing is multidimensional, and includes all the powers of the human being (body/heart/soul), as understood from a transpersonal framework. According to Jaenke Ferrer's vision includes a spiritual reality that is plural and multiple, and a spiritual power that may produce a wide range of revelations and insights, which in turn may be overlapping, or even incompatible.

Ferrer's approach to participatory thinking has been taken-up in the context of psychoanalysis. Drawing from Ferrer's criticisms of perennialism, Robin S. Brown adopts the participatory paradigm as a means to fostering clinical pluralism.

Transpersonal psychotherapy

Early contributions to the field of transpersonal psychotherapy includes the approach of Walsh & Vaughan. In their outline of transpersonal therapy they emphasize that the goals of therapy includes both traditional outcomes, such as symptom relief and behaviour change, as well as work at the transpersonal level, which may transcend psychodynamic issues. Both Karma Yoga and altered states of consciousness are part of the transpersonal approach to therapy. According to Walsh & Vaughan the context of karma yoga, and service, should also facilitate a process whereby the psychological growth of the therapist could provide supporting environment for the growth of the client.

Several authors in the field have presented an integration of western psychotherapy with spiritual psychology, among these Stuart Sovatsky and Brant Cortright. In his reformulation of western psychotherapy Sovatsky addresses the questions of time, temporality and soteriology from the perspectives of east/west psychology and spirituality. Besides drawing on the insights of post-freudians, such as D.W. Winnicott, Sovatsky integrates his approach to psychotherapy with an expanded understanding of body and mind, informed by the philosophy of Yoga.

Cortright, on the other hand, has reviewed the field of transpersonal psychotherapy and the major transpersonal models of psychotherapy, including Wilber, Jung, Washburn, Grof and Ali, as well as existential, psychoanalytic, and body-centered approaches. He also presents a unifying theoretical framework for the field of transpersonal psychotherapy, and identifies the dimension of human consciousness as central to the transpersonal realm. He also addresses clinical issues related to meditation, spiritual emergency, and altered states of consciousness. According to commentators Cortright challenges the traditional view of transpersonal psychology that a working through of psychological issues is necessary for progression on the spiritual path. Instead he suggests that these two lines of development are intertwined, and that they come to the foreground with shifting emphasis.

A transpersonal approach to clinical practice has been outlined by psychoanalyst Robin S. Brown who draws from relational psychoanalysis, analytical psychology, and participatory theory. Within contemporary psychoanalysis it has been suggested that, from a clinical point of view, postulating a transcendent dimension to human experience is theoretically necessary in promoting non-reductive approaches to therapy.

The first book to survey the field of spiritually oriented psychotherapy, published by the American Psychological Association in 2005, included a chapter on the Transpersonal–Integrative Approach to therapy.

Clinical and diagnostic issues

Transpersonal psychology has also brought clinical attention to the topic of spiritual crisis, a category that is not ordinarily recognized by mainstream psychology. Among the clinical problems associated with this category, according to transpersonal theory, are: psychiatric complications related to mystical experience; near-death experience; Kundalini awakening; shamanic crisis (also called shamanic illness); psychic opening; intensive meditation; separation from a spiritual teacher; medical or terminal illness; addiction. The terms "spiritual emergence" and "spiritual emergency" were coined by Stanislav and Christina Grof in order to describe the appearance of spiritual phenomena, and spiritual processes, in a persons life. The term "spiritual emergence" describes a gradual unfoldment of spiritual potential with little disruption in psychological, social and occupational functioning. In cases where the emergence of spiritual phenomena is intensified beyond the control of the individual it may lead to a state of "spiritual emergency". A spiritual emergency may cause significant disruption in psychological, social and occupational functioning. Many of the psychological difficulties described above can, according to Transpersonal theory, lead to episodes of spiritual emergency.

At the beginning of the 1990s a group of psychologists and psychiatrist, affiliated with the field of transpersonal psychology, saw the need for a new psychiatric category involving religious and spiritual problems. Their concern was the possibility of misdiagnosis of these problems. Based on an extensive literature review, and networking with the American Psychiatric Association Committee on Religion and Psychiatry, the group made a proposal for a new diagnostic category entitled "Psychoreligious or Psychospiritual Problem". The proposal was submitted to the Task Force on DSM-IV in 1991. The category was approved by the Task Force in 1993, after changing the title to "Religious or Spiritual Problem". It is included in the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), as a minor category.  The text of the new category did not mention the particular spiritual problems, or psychiatric complications, listed above.

According to the authors of the proposal the new category "addressed problems of a religious or spiritual nature that are the focus of clinical attention and not attributable to a mental disorder". In their view there exist criteria for differentiating between spiritual problems and mental disorders such as psychosis. This concern is also addressed in the DSM-IV Sourcebook. According to Lukoff and Lu, co-authors of the category, religious or spiritual problems are not classified as mental disorders. Foulks also notes that the new diagnosis is included in the DSM-IV-TR nonillness category (Other Conditions That May Be a Focus of Clinical Attention).

Addition of the new category to the DSM-system was noticed by a few psychiatric publications, and the New York Times. Several commentators have also offered their viewpoints. Chinen notes that the inclusion marks "increasing professional acceptance of transpersonal issues", while Sovatsky sees the addition as an admittance of spiritually oriented narratives into mainstream clinical practice. Smart and Smart recognizes the addition of the category, and similar improvements in the fourth version, as a step forward for the cultural sensitivity of the DSM manual. Greyson, representing the field of Near-death studies, concludes that the diagnostic category of Religious or spiritual problem "permits differentiation of near-death experiences and similar experiences from mental disorders". In a study from 2000 Milstein and colleagues discussed the construct validity of the new DSM-IV category religious or spiritual problem (V62.89).

According to commentators transpersonal psychology recognizes that transcendent psychological states, and spirituality, might have both negative and positive effects on human functioning. Health-promoting expressions of spirituality include development and growth, but there also exist health-compromising expressions of spirituality.

Organizations, publications and locations

A leading institution within the field of transpersonal psychology is the Association for Transpersonal Psychology, which was founded in 1972. Past presidents of the association include Alyce Green, James Fadiman, Frances Vaughan, Arthur Hastings, Daniel Goleman, Robert Frager, Ronald Jue, Jeanne Achterberg and Dwight Judy. An international organization, The International Transpersonal Psychology Association, was founded in the 1970s, and has more recently been revived by Harris Friedman. Also, a European counterpart to the American institution, the European Transpersonal Psychology Association (ETPA), was founded much later. The leading graduate school is Sofia University, formerly the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. According to sources the university is private, non-sectarian, and accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.

Leading academic publications within the field include the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology and the International Journal of Transpersonal Studies. Smaller publications include the Transpersonal Psychology Review, the journal of the Transpersonal Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society. In 1996 Basic Books published the Textbook of Transpersonal Psychiatry and Psychology, a standard text that included a thorough overview of the field. In 1999 Greenwood Press published a title called Humanistic and transpersonal psychology: A historical and biographical sourcebook, which includes biographical and critical essays on central figures in humanistic and transpersonal psychology. A recent publication, The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology, is one of the latest and most updated introductions to the field of transpersonal psychology.

Although the perspectives of transpersonal psychology has spread to a number of interest groups across the US and Europe, its origins were in California, and the field has always been strongly associated with institutions on the west coast of the US. Both the Association for Transpersonal Psychology and the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology were founded in the state of California, and a number of the fields leading theorists come from this area of the US.

Reception, recognition and criticism

Reception

Reception of Transpersonal psychology, in the surrounding culture, reflects a wide range of views and opinions, including both recognition and skepticism. Transpersonal psychology has been the topic of a few academic articles and book reviews in other academic fields, including Psychiatry, Behavioral Science, Psychology, Social Work, Consciousness Studies, Religious Studies, Pastoral psychology, and Library Science.

Several commentators have expressed their views on the field of transpersonal psychology and its contribution to the academic landscape. Hilgard, representing the contemporary psychology of the early 1980s, regarded transpersonal psychology as a fringe-movement that attracted the more extreme followers of Humanistic psychology. He did however remark that such movements might enrich the topics that psychologists study, even though most psychologists choose not to join the movement. Adams also observed the fringe-status of transpersonal psychology, but noted that the work of Wilber had provided the field with some amount of legitimacy. Cowley and Derezotes, representing the Social Work theory of the 1990s, regarded transpersonal psychology as relevant for the development of spiritual sensitivity in the helping disciplines. Bidwell, representing the field of pastoral psychology, saw transpersonal psychology as a developing field that had largely been ignored by his own profession. He did however believe that transpersonal psychology could contribute to the areas of pastoral theology and pastoral counseling. Elkins, writing for the field of spiritually oriented psychotherapy, considered that transpersonal psychology had grown away from its roots in the humanistic movement and that it had established its own theories and perspectives.

Taylor, representing the field of Humanistic Psychology, presented a balanced review of transpersonal psychology in the early nineties. On the negative side he mentioned transpersonal Psychology's tendency toward being philosophically naive, poorly financed, almost anti-intellectual, and somewhat overrated as far as its influences. On the positive side he noted the fields integrated approach to understanding the phenomenology of scientific method; the centrality of qualitative research; and the importance of interdisciplinary communication. In conclusion he suggested that the virtues of transpersonal psychology may, in the end, outweigh its defects. In a later article Taylor regarded transpersonal psychology as a visionary American folk-psychology with little historical relation to American academic psychology, except through its association with Humanistic psychology and the categories of transcendence and consciousness.

Ruzek, who interviewed founders of transpersonal psychology, as well as historians of American psychology, found that the field had made little impact on the larger field of psychology in America. Among the factors that contributed to this situation was mainstream psychology's resistance to spiritual and philosophical ideas, and the tendency of Transpersonal psychologists to isolate themselves from the larger context.

A few small attempts have been made to introduce Transpersonal psychology to the classroom setting. Perspectives from transpersonal psychology are represented in a widely used college textbook on personality theories, marking the entrance of transpersonal themes into mainstream academic settings. In this book author Barbara Engler asks the question, "Is spirituality an appropriate topic for psychological study?" She offers a brief account of the history of transpersonal psychology and a peek into its possible future. The classroom dimension is also present in a book on personality theories by authors Robert Frager and James Fadiman. In this publication they provide an account of the contributions of many of the key historic figures who have shaped and developed transpersonal psychology (in addition to discussing and explaining important concepts and theories germane to it), which serves to promote an understanding of the discipline in classroom settings.

Noting that the majority of mainstream psychology departments rarely offer training programs in transpersonal issues and practices as part of their curriculum, graduate programs in humanistic and transpersonal psychology have been made available at a few North-American Universities. Among these we find John F. Kennedy University in Orinda, which included transpersonal psychology in its holistic studies program, and Burlington College in Vermont. In 2012 Columbia University announced that they were integrating spiritual psychology, similar to the perspectives taught at Sofia University (California), into their clinical psychology program.

However, although transpersonal psychology has experienced some minor recognition from the surrounding culture, it has also faced a fair amount of skepticism and criticism from the same surroundings. Freeman mentions that the early field of transpersonal psychology was aware of the possibility that it would be rejected by the scientific community. The method of inner empiricism, based on disciplined introspection, was to be a target of skepticism from outsiders in the years to come. Several commentators have mentioned the controversial aspects of transpersonal psychology. Zdenek, representing a moderate criticism from the 1980s, noted that the field was regarded as controversial since its inception. Other commentators, such as Friedman, and Adams, also mention the controversial status of the field. In 1998 the San Francisco Chronicle reported on the holistic studies program at the John F. Kennedy University in Orinda, which included a transpersonal psychology department. The program was considered to be unique at the time, but also controversial. Commentators presented their skepticism towards the program. Another controversial aspect concerns the topic of psychedelic substances. Commenting upon the controversial status of psychedelic and entheogenic substances in contemporary culture, authors Elmer, MacDonald & Friedman observe that these drugs have been used for therapeutic effect in the transpersonal movement. The authors do however note that this is not the most common form of transpersonal intervention in contemporary therapy.

According to Lukoff and Lu the American Psychological Association expressed some concerns about the "unscientific" nature of transpersonal psychology at the time of the petition (see above) to the APA. Rowan notes that the Association had serious reservations about opening up a Transpersonal Psychology Division. The petitions for divisional status failed to win the majority of votes in the APA council, and the division was never established. Commentators also mention that transpersonal psychology's association with the ideas of religion was one of the concerns that prohibited it from becoming a separate division of the APA at the time of the petition in 1984.

Commenting on the state of the field in the mid-nineties Chinen noted that professional publications, until then, had been hesitant to publish articles that dealt with transpersonal subjects. Adams noted that the field has struggled for recognition as a legitimate field of study in the academic community, while Parsons noted that Transpersonal psychologys naive perennialism, misreading of religious texts, lack of methodological sophistication, and weak epistemology had not been well received by most in academia.

Criticism, skepticism and response

Criticism and skepticism towards the field of transpersonal psychology has been presented by a wide assortment of commentators, and includes both writers from within its own ranks, as well as writers representing other fields of psychology or philosophy.

Critical remarks from within the field include the observations of Lukoff and Lu, and the criticism of Walach. In their contribution to the field of spiritually oriented psychotherapy Lukoff and Lu discuss the strengths and weaknesses of transpersonal psychotherapy and transpersonal psychology. Among the strengths is its basis of theory and practice that allows for communication and dialogue with other cultures, and native healers. Among the weaknesses is a lack of theoretical agreement, which has led to internal debates, and attention from critics who question the validity of the transpersonal approach. Another source, close to the field, is The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology. In a chapter from this book Walach brings attention to unsolved problems within the field. According to the editors the criticism represents "the sort of self-criticism that is mandatory within a responsible discipline".

Criticism from other profiles, close to the field, also include the observations of Ken Wilber and Jorge Ferrer. Wilber, one of the early profiles within the transpersonal field, has repeatedly announced the demise of transpersonal psychology. However, the early transpersonal theory of Wilber was itself subject to criticism, most notably from humanistic psychologists Rollo May and Kirk Schneider. Even though Wilber has distanced himself from transpersonal psychology in favour of integral philosophy, his transpersonal model has continued to attract both recognition and criticism.

Among the critics of Wilber we also find Ferrer, who in 2001 published a revision of transpersonal theory. In this revision he criticized transpersonal psychology for being too loyal to the perennial philosophy, for introducing a subtle Cartesianism, and for being too preoccupied with intrasubjective spiritual states (inner empiricism). As an alternative to these trends he suggests a participatory vision of human spirituality that honors a wide assortment of spiritual insights, spiritual worlds and places.

Criticism from humanistic psychology

One of the earliest criticisms of the field was issued by the humanistic psychologist Rollo May, who disputed the conceptual foundations of transpersonal psychology. According to commentators May also criticized the field for neglecting the personal dimension of the psyche by elevating the pursuit of the transcendental, and for neglecting the "dark side of human nature". Commentators note that these reservations, expressed by May, might reflect what later theorists have referred to as "spiritual bypassing". Other commentators have suggested that May only focused on "New Age popularizations of transpersonal approaches". However, criticism has also come from other profiles in the field of humanistic psychology. Eugene Taylor and Kirk Schneider have raised objections to several aspects of transpersonal psychology.

Relationship to science and scientific criteria

The field of transpersonal psychology has also been criticized for lacking conceptual, evidentiary, and scientific rigor. In a review of criticisms of the field, Cunningham writes, "philosophers have criticized transpersonal psychology because its metaphysics is naive and epistemology is undeveloped. Multiplicity of definitions and lack of operationalization of many of its concepts has led to a conceptual confusion about the nature of transpersonal psychology itself (i.e., the concept is used differently by different theorists and means different things to different people). Biologists have criticized transpersonal psychology for its lack of attention to biological foundations of behavior and experience. Physicists have criticized transpersonal psychology for inappropriately accommodating physic concepts as explanations of consciousness."

Others, such as Friedmans suggested that the field is underdeveloped as a field of science and that it has, consequently, not produced a good scientific understanding of transpersonal phenomena. In his proposal for a new division of labour within the transpersonal field he suggests a distinction between transpersonal studies, a broad category that might include non-scientific approaches, and transpersonal psychology, a more narrow discipline that should align itself more closely with the principles of scientific psychology. However, this criticism has been answered by Ferrer who argues that Friedmans proposal attaches transpersonal psychology to a naturalistic metaphysical worldview that is unsuitable for the domain of spirituality.

Albert Ellis, a cognitive psychologist and humanist, has questioned the results of transpersonal psychotherapy, the scientific status of transpersonal psychology, and its relationship to religion, mysticism and authoritarian belief systems. This criticism has been answered by Wilber who questioned Ellis' understanding of the domain of religion, and the field of Transpersonal Psychology; and Walsh who questioned Ellis' critique of nonrational-emotive therapies.

Other commentators, such as Matthews, are more supportive of the field, but remarks that a weakness of transpersonal psychology, and transpersonal psychotherapy, has been its reliance on anecdotal clinical experiences rather than research. Adams, writing from the perspective of Consciousness Studies, has problematized the concept of introspective 'data' that appears to make up the "database" of transpersonal psychology. Walach and Runehov have responded to this issue.

Transpersonal psychology has been noted for undervaluing quantitative methods as a tool for improving our knowledge of spiritual and transpersonal categories. This is, according to commentators, a consequence of a general orientation within the field that regards spiritual and transpersonal experience to be categories that defy conceptualization and quantification, and thereby not well suited for conventional scientific inquiry.

Other Criticism

From the standpoint of Dzogchen, the teachings from Tibetan Buddhism, and Buddhism generally, Elías Capriles has objected that transpersonal psychology fails to distinguish between the transpersonal condition of nirvana, which is inherently liberating, those transpersonal conditions which are within samsara In the process of elaborating what he calls a meta-transpersonal psychology, Capriles has carried out refutations of Wilber, Grof and Washburn.

Although the ideas of William James are considered central to the transpersonal field, Gary Alexander thought that transpersonal psychology did not have a clear understanding of the negative dimensions of consciousness (such as evil) expressed in James' philosophy. This criticism has been absorbed by later transpersonal theory, which has been more willing to reflect on these important dimensions of human existence.

Skepticism towards the concept of spiritual emergencies, and the transpersonal dimension in psychiatry, has been expressed by Alison J.Gray.

According to Cunningham, transpersonal psychology has been criticized by some Christian authors as being "a mishmash of 'New Age' ideas that offer an alternative faith system to vulnerable youths who turn their backs on organized religion (Adeney, 1988)".

According to John V. Davis Transpersonal psychology has been criticized for emphasizing oneness and holism at the expense of diversity.