Revisioning Transpersonal Theory : A Participatory Vision of Human Spirituality (Suny Series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology) [Paperback]

Jorge N. Ferrer (Author), Richard Tarnas (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0791451682 | ISBN-13: 978-0791451687 | Publication Date: October 19, 2001

A participating alternative to the experimentalism and perennialism dominant in transpersonal psychology.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

In his striking debut, Jorge Noguera Ferrer deconstructs and reconstructs the entire transpersonal project, articulating a more sophisticated, pluralistic, and spiritually grounded transpersonal theory. He brings recent ideas in epistemology and the philosophy of science to bear upon core issues in the psychology and philosophy of religion. The book's first half (Deconstruction) describes the nature and origins of the experiential vision that has guided transpersonal scholarship so far, and identifies some of its main conceptual and practical limitations: intrasubjective reductionism, subtle Cartesianism, spiritual narcissism, and integrative arrestment. In the second half of the book (Reconstruction), Ferrer suggests an alternate way of reconceiving transpersonal ideas without these limitations-a participatory vision of human spirituality, one which not only overcomes the limitations of the experiential vision, but also places transpersonal studies in greater alignment with the values of the spiritual quest.

About the Author

Jorge Noguera Ferrer is Assistant Professor of East-West Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies.

Product Details

• Paperback: 273 pages
• Publisher: State University of New York Press (October 19, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0791451682
• ISBN-13: 978-0791451687
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #613,311 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Different Approach, December 15, 2003

By 

Daryl Paulson (Bozeman, Montana) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Revisioning Transpersonal Theory : A Participartory Vision of Human Spirituality (Suny Series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology) (Hardcover)

This was a difficult book for the first reading because I was not familiar with much of the information cited by Ferrer. It is not because the book is poorly written, just because it was new. There are many things to think about while reading the book. This is not a Washburn or Wilber spin off but something entirely different. Ferrer does a great job in presenting an original perspective in transpersonal theory. A must have book for the transpersonal theorist.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ponder on This, December 1, 2003

By 

Daryl S Paulson (Bozeman,, MT United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Revisioning Transpersonal Theory : A Participartory Vision of Human Spirituality (Suny Series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology) (Hardcover)

When I first read this book I hated it, but I have read and studied it for 2 years and find it one of the best books ever written on transpersonal psychology. Be sure that you get the reference book Ferrer references because his thesis will make much more sense. You may not agree with everything he states, but is a very significant book for those who question their own beliefs. A must read.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars What's going on here?, March 21, 2010

By 

Prokopton (London, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Revisioning Transpersonal Theory : A Participartory Vision of Human Spirituality (Suny Series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology) (Hardcover)

My readings in Transpersonal Psych seem really flat so far, even though I thought I was the target audience. This book appears to be an attempt to grab the helm of discourse and steer away from totalizing visions such as I found in my previous toe-dip into the field, Wilber's Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution, Second Edition. But it makes very little headway for my money.

Amongst Ferrer's biggest bogeymen, which he sees as leading T_Psych astray, are 'experientialism' (the idea of spirituality as experience which he wants to replace with the idea of 'participation'), and 'perennialism' (the idea that all religions worldwide are in some way examples of a common underlying truth.) I agree these valuable ideas have been overdone, but Ferrer offers little to replace them.

On 'experientialism', not only are we not about to lose it, we most certainly should not. I happened to open Greer's Monsters: An Investigator's Guide to Magical Beings today and was hit by: "Magical practitioners will not need convincing that supernatural forces and entities exist -- anyone who has done six months or more of systematic training with traditional magical disciplines knows that already, from direct personal experience...", which is right. There's nothing wrong with such a viewpoint. What is 'non-participatory' about encountering entities, working with energies, healing, shamanic journeying, visions of gaia or the cosmos as unified, etc.? Or the huge numbers of interesting states studied by Grof? Nothing is what. I hope and believe 'spiritual experience' is here to stay.

Ferrer seems to be saying 'experientialism' is an isolated and non-participatory viewpoint. Rubbish. Of course, he may well be correct within the field that 'inner experience' has been made to bear an empirical weight to which it's unsuited, and his remarks on the overuse of a scientific paradigm are good, but experientialism itself is hardly to blame. If it is the new idea he seems to think, it's one of the best ideas we've had as a species. (Most of what he says is, I think, aimed at defusing some of Wilber's egotistical theoretical dominance of the field -- fine, but trying to fight bad theory with more bad theory is hardly the answer.)

On 'perennialism', again, whilst Ferrer is certainly right that it has been taken way too far by authors like Wilber, not everyone overdoes similarities between paths that way. Procedural and technical similarities, in terms of meditation and energy techniques, underlying mystical _methods_, not just scholastic theories, interest every psychologist with transpersonal leanings. What about theories like Assagioli's which are so easy to fit into any tradition because they see something that usefully underlies human experience? This is not 'perennialism' as Ferrer argues against it; it ought to be part of the solution, but instead we go too far the other direction, into a relativism which strikes me as more or less a copout.

He is great at analyzing different types of perennialism (pp. 76-80); why make it into the bad guy? Surely the actual problem is simply that people are treating perennialism as an established fact rather than an interesting idea? As the latter, it has really been useful in Grof's work. Some like to jump from similarities amongst religions and spiritualities, noticing a trope here and a technique there, to suddenly making 'complete' models which already claim to know everything about all spiritual paths (!), when the actual work of real comparison has not even vaguely begun to be done, and I agree, that's silly. It is merely what happens when you lean on a hard, absolutist perennialism as an a priori theoretical fact, rather than investigating it (yes, empirically) as a theory.

What we need is a 'soft perennialism', less concerned with 'ultimate realities' and with endlessly ranking religions according to achievement ladders like some hopeless new labour league table (which Wilber does, I admit) and more concerned with _actually_ comparing paths and results, to one another and to our understandings of psychology. In other words, doing the actual practical work rather than endlessly making mental models from reading. I thought that was what T_Psych was supposed to be about! Ferrer's woolly notions of 'participatory spirituality' don't go much of the way towards it. He wants to make T_Psych into a kind of interfaith religious discussion manqué! I can imagine nothing less useful.

Yet again, as with other documents of the school, there's no understanding of Taoism (which appears only as a bit-part) and no mention of Hermetics, let alone something like Wicca. All the documents adduced are in Hindu, Buddhist and Christian traditions. There's a depressing sense of returning to these religious texts as paradigmatic, rather than foregrounding spiritual and psychological techniques, theories and experiences, thus ending the useful addressing of spontaneous spiritual phenomena that had been so welcome in the field.

I can't understand what has happened to the T_Psych school. Where's the discovering enterprise of a Grof, the universal depth of an Assagioli, the energetic genius of a Reich, the erudition of a Jung? Where is the psychology that can understand spiritual experiences, have techniques to generate them (without 'ranking' everything), making the transpersonal an intriguing option for the unreligious but also interfacing with and informing religion (without trying to one-up it) etc.? I really am so disappointed with what is being done. If this school needs to write such books as this in order to reject Wilber, well fine I guess, but could you wake me up when it's over? This is such dull stuff! It's a sort of tractatus philosophico-politicus whose job is more ecumenical than theoretical, let alone actually psychological. I plan to read more in Psychosynthesis, and more Grof for certain, but other than that, will hesitate at T-Psych from now on.

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EDIT: Having learned more, I now understand more 'what has happened to the T-Psych school'. I think it has lost the roots that supported it in the Humanistic Psychology tradition, and in actually treating patients.

The 'peak experience' was central in Maslow, central to individual healing and the worth of the world. If you throw away spiritual experience, you throw away the peak experience, and you throw away Maslow. You throw away that whole era and all its achievements in what Maslow called 'Taoistic Therapy', in other words, allowing people to become what it was in them to become. You throw away the genius of Milton Erickson in bringing out the unconscious and having it spontaneously show the way of growth. You throw away Carl Rogers. Etc.

Everything transpersonal has always depended, too, on being able to say, "I treated patients and this approach *worked*." That was what Jung did, or Assagioli. Erickson's cure record was phenomenal. This success with patients, from the mildly neurotic to the massively psychotic, validated everything these workers said about theory. When they said something was true about the human mind, you tended to listen as a result!

There seems so little of this here. In this book Ferrer tries to remove the over-prescriptiveness of Wilber, but little seems left of the inspiration from which T_Psych sprang. Very little about human beings being transformed by spiritual experiences, or being led to unfold in creative ways. Not much psychology, science, healing, human actualisation... and those were the foundations I believe. They are still what matter to me personally.

Grof has kept alive the spirit of the earlier workers. One other who did bring forward the Maslow spirit to the transpersonal was Glenn Morris. I strongly recommend a read of his Path Notes because the spirit is still alive and inspiring there.