EXPERIENTIAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE NATURE OF HUMAN IDENTITY
Vitor Jose F. Rodrigues (2024)
Consciousness is hard to bring to the laboratory as it confronts us with a classic dilemma: can a mind observe itself? However, who, then, is observing the observer? Without experiential awareness, culture, the arts, science, and philosophy would not make sense. Would it make sense if refrigerators were to produce a “refrigerator culture” without the experience of freezing food? Virtually all human culture is destined to provide conscious experiences. This volume provides a rich array of views on human nature and the way it shows up in the strange land of human identity.
https://www.cambridgescholars.com/product/978-1-5275-9169-1
PSYCHOTHERAPY OF THE FUTURE: 15 QUESTIONS ABOUT TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOTHERAPY
Pier Luigi Lattuada (2024)
Transpersonal psychotherapy speaks to us of a way of being in the world and doing things that goes beyond appearances. As such, it belongs to the heroic journey of anyone en route home, through valleys of passion and ignorance, peaks of insight and leaps of heart, nights of the soul and endless awakenings, deaths and rebirths, who simply recognises himself in the humble attempt to free himself from his personal history and drink from the source of being. As this book shows, it is a way that passes through awareness, synergy, sharing, resonance, interconnection, nature, respect, listening, contact, acceptance, responsibility, emotional mastery, and self-knowledge.
Through 15 questions, this text deals with the transpersonal psychotherapeutic approach in a thorough and detailed way.
https://www.cambridgescholars.com/product/978-1-5275-8389-4
TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENCE: AN EVALUATION OF ITS PRESENT STATUS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Douglas A. MacDonald, Manuel Almendro (2021)
Founded in the 1960s, transpersonal psychology is a subdiscipline of psychology that has been dedicated to the study of exceptional human experiences and functioning inclusive of ancient and indigenous spiritual and mystical traditions. While initially holding tremendous promise to expand psychological science and practice beyond the purview of conventional psychology, the field has encountered a variety of challenges that its advocates have recognized as compromising its progress. Among the most pervasive of these challenges has been controversy and disagreement regarding the place of science in transpersonal psychological inquiry and practice.
Even though some efforts have been made by scholars in the field to address the challenges, these efforts have been largely piecemeal in nature, involving articles or chapters in books that express the viewpoints of individual scholars without a fulsome consideration of multiple perspectives of people throughout the world who identify as members of the subdiscipline. This book is the first in the history of the field to bring together the voices of respected members of the transpersonal psychological community to specifically discuss the relation of transpersonal psychology to science in order to find ways of helping the subdiscipline move forward in a productive manner.
This volume includes invited chapters from a broad array of international experts in transpersonal psychology who proffer interesting and sometimes conflicting perspectives regarding how science fits within the subdiscipline. The book ends with a chapter written by the editors that summarizes and highlights the main points of issue shared by the expert contributors and offers concrete recommendations for how transpersonal psychology can improve itself as a field of inquiry and professional practice.
https://www.cambridgescholars.com/product/978-1-5275-7459-5
LOVE AND FREEDOM
Jorge N. Ferrer (2021)
In Love and Freedom, Jorge Ferrer proposes a paradigm shift in how romantic relationships are conceptualized, a step forward in the evolution of modern relationships. In the same way that the transgender movement surmounted the gender binary, Ferrer defines how a parallel step can—and should—be taken with the relational style binary. This book offers the first systematic discussion of relationship modes beyond monogamy and polyamory, as well as introduces the notion of “relational freedom” as the capability to choose one’s relational style free from biological, psychological, and sociocultural conditionings.
To achieve these goals, Ferrer first discusses a number of critical categories—specifically, monopride/polyphobia, and polypride/monophobia—that mediate the contemporary “mono–poly wars,” that is, the predicament of mutual competition among monogamists and polyamorists. The ideological nature of these “mono–poly wars” is demonstrated through a review of available empirical literature on the psychological health and relationship quality of monogamous and polyamorous individuals and couples. Then, after showing how monogamy and polyamory ultimately reinforce each other, Ferrer articulates three relational pathways to living in-between, through, and beyond the mono/poly binary: fluidity, hybridity…
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538156582/Love-and-Freedom-Transcending-Monogamy-and-Polyamory
PARTICIPATION AND THE MYSTERY
Jorge Ferrer (2017)
Participation and the Mystery is both an introduction to and expansion of Jorge N. Ferrer’s groundbreaking work on participatory spirituality, which holds that human beings are active cocreators of spiritual phenomena, worlds, and even ultimates. After examining the impact of his work since the publication of Revisioning Transpersonal Theory, Ferrer discusses the relationship between science and transpersonal psychology, the nature of a fully embodied spirituality, and the features of integral spiritual practice. The book also introduces a participatory philosophy of education and applies it to the academic teaching of mysticism and a novel approach to embodied spiritual inquiry. Critically engaging the influential work of Stanislav Grof, Ken Wilber, and A. H. Almaas, Ferrer concludes with an original solution to the problem of religious pluralism that affirms the ontological richness of religious worlds while avoiding the extremes of perennialism and contextualism, offering a hopeful vision for the future of world religion. Participation and the Mystery is an invaluable resource to anyone seeking to deepen their understanding of participatory approaches to transpersonal psychology, integral and contemplative education, contemporary spirituality, and religious studies.
http://www.sunypress.edu/p-6388-participation-and-the-mystery.aspx