Transpersonal psychology is the only psychological school that studies processes that transcend one’s identity and states of consciousness, transpersonal consciousness is studied from a model of three categories: the pre-selfish, selfish and transpersonal or trans-selfish state, the latter is considered to be the greatest potential of the human being.
Transpersonal psychologist Ken Wilber developed this model of the spectrum of consciousness. It proposes it as a process of internal development that awakens a transpersonal consciousness. This is fundamentally defined in a state that allows human beings to relate to their environment and form a unity with it.
- Taking Wilber’s work as reference.
- Many transpersonal psychologists have devoted the study of certain psychopathies in relation to the patient’s condition with their level of transpersonal consciousness.
- Pre-selfish or selfish.
- That conventional psychiatry does not take into account in treatments.
This psychological school considers that our normal consciousness, the one we have in the state of wakefulness, is only a type of human consciousness, according to this approach, there are more states of consciousness that are very subtly separated from each other.
Is it as if our usual perception of reality is nothing more than an insignificant island, surrounded by a vast ocean of consciousness, unsused and unknown, whose waves continually strike the reefs that erected our daily perception as barriers?Until, spontaneously, the waves break and flood this island with the knowledge of a new world of consciousness, as vast as it is unexplored, but intensely real. -Wilber, 1984-
This awareness and understanding is what Wilber calls Unitary Consciousness, in fact, it has been known since ancient times by many different names: Enlightenment, Nirvana or Satori, is a state in which subjects live beyond rational (transpersonal identity), as a whole. , with the universe The consciousness of unity.
The evolutionary model of consciousness developed by Wilber is a hierarchical model, each of the three initial categories is, in turn, composed of several levels.
The pre-selfish level, or lower levels, is characterized by somatic instincts and processes, emotional and sexual impulses based on simple perceptions and emotions, this level of pre-egoism is also known as pre-personal and has three levels or steps:
The selfish level is achieved by transcending the pre-selfish level, mainly by the level of internalization. This is what Piaget called “decreasing self-centering. ” In other words, achieving greater development implies the ability to transcend one’s own point of view and find a superior.
This level, also known as a personal level, has three hierarchical sublevels, which are:
The trans-selfish state also takes place in three stages
In general, this knowledge of transpersonal psychology does not apply to conventional psychiatric treatments for patients with very different psychopathologies.
From this point of view, pathologies occurring at the prepersonal level would not be of the same type as those occurring at the transpersonal level, nor would the problem associated with each state of consciousness be the same.
Transpersonal psychology emerged in the late 1960s, although it has a much older history of many Eastern philosophical traditions.
This psychology was part of graduate programs and numerous research projects at the most prestigious universities in the world, but still, today, this interesting approach remains largely unknown to professionals in the field of psychology.