For example, Doug Kalman, in Kalman's Kosmos, reviews Andrew Shorrock: The Transpersonal in Psychology, Psychotherapy and Counselling; Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Read the rest of this review.Andrew Shorrock offers us a brief—somewhat over 200 pages—yet informative canter through the highways and byways of transpersonal psychology, Ken Wilber’s intellectual home until he launched his own ‘Integral’ movement in the mid- to late-90s (though Ken backdates his actual exit from the transpersonal scene to 1983).
So we have major early figures, including William James, Richard Maurice Bucke— author of Cosmic Consciousness—and Everlyn Underhill, and even Buddha ‘as the original psychoanalyst’.
There’s plenty of discussion of everything from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), neurobiology and the ‘God spot’, to the growth of ‘integrative therapy’. It’s illuminating to read about connections the author draws to disparate fields, such as the ‘Psychology of Religion’, which apparently has at least 125 tools to ‘measure spirituality’!
As you might guess, the line between transpersonal psychology/therapy as practices and tools and as something more akin to a way of being can be blurry: “... ‘doing’ transpersonal psychology is in some ways a false or at least redundant statement ,” says Shorrock, “as the clinical application of transpersonal psychology may be less about ‘doing’ and more about ‘being’, with being meaning an expansive attitude that is open to the fullness of human experience.”
How does any of this relate to leadership? Well, Shorrock doesn’t mention leadership per se, or leadership-related figures such as Bill Torbert and Susanne Cook-Greuter, or the Transcendental Meditation-linked academics who’ve taken an interest in leadership. The NLP and transpersonal psychology section is relevant , though, with so many NLP-inspired leadership coaches now utilisting Spiral Dynamics, Integral, Clare Graves etc. (though this development is not mentioned).
Nevertheless it’s valuable to have a refresher on the state of transpersonal psychology, an overview—especially now it’s no longer such a focus in Wilber’s recent work. And—of course—many items drawn from the range of techniques and perspectives in transpersonal psychology—e.g., subpersonalities/voices, developmental levels—can be, and often are being, used to great effect in the leadership milieu.
Here it goes. Another application of NLP. Nice post.
ReplyDeleteReally an informative post. Thanks for this!
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