The Evolution of Transpersonal PsychologywithJorge Ferrer

Books Mentioned In This Interview

Jorge Ferrer, PhD, is former chair of the department of east-west psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He is currently a core faculty member there. He is author of Revisioning Transpersonal Theory: A Participatory Vision of Human Spirituality, and Participation and the Mystery: Transpersonal Essays in Psychology, Education, and Religion. He is the coeditor of an anthology titled, The Participatory Turn: Spirituality, Mysticism, and Religious Studies. He is known as a leading proponent of the “second wave” of transpersonal theorists.

Here he describes the origins of transpersonal psychology, focusing on the work of Abraham Maslow and Stanislav Grof. He notes that the “first wave” of thinkers in this field embraced the notion of a “perennial philosophy” or, in other words, an underlying unity to the world’s mystical and spiritual traditions. As a second wave theorist, he points out many of the problems associated with such a unity and argues, instead, that mystical traditions are pluralistic and not unitary. He then describes many other features of contemporary transpersonal thought.

(Recorded on September 19, 2018)

Published on September 24, 2018

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