What is Spiritual Psychology?
Spiritual psychology is an umbrella term for approaches that treat spiritual, mystical, and self-transcendent experience as legitimate subject matter for psychological theory, research, and therapy. It asks how experiences such as meditative absorption, awe, a sense of unity, or a crisis of meaning arise. It also asks how they change a person over time and how they can be supported or understood in clinical and educational settings.
The term has no single regulatory definition. In academic usage it is frequently treated as a synonym for transpersonal psychology, the field that emerged in the United States in the late 1960s. In other settings it names training programs, counseling orientations, or frameworks drawn from specific contemplative traditions. It should be distinguished from the psychology of religion, which studies religious belief and behavior from the outside and does not necessarily adopt a spiritual orientation.
Origins & lineage
The lineage is usually traced through several figures. William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), delivered as the Gifford Lectures, argued that religious experience could be examined empirically. Carl Jung’s analytical psychology treated religious imagery and the search for meaning as central to psychological life.
Roberto Assagioli (1888–1974), an Italian psychiatrist, began developing psychosynthesis around 1906. He introduced the term publicly in a 1927 pamphlet. He had been an early Italian advocate of psychoanalysis. By 1911 he was distancing himself from Freudian theory, and he formed a friendship with Jung that lasted about fifty years. His Rome institute was founded in 1926, renamed the Institute of Psychosynthesis in 1933, and closed by the Fascist government in 1938. His later books include Psychosynthesis: A Manual of Principles and Techniques (1965) and The Act of Will (1973).
The modern field took shape in 1967–68, when Abraham Maslow, Stanislav Grof, and Anthony Sutich discussed a name and orientation for a new “fourth force” beyond behaviorism, psychoanalysis, and humanistic psychology. The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology published its first issue in 1969. The Association for Transpersonal Psychology followed in 1972, and the International Transpersonal Association in 1973. The Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (later Sofia University) was founded in 1975 by Robert Frager and James Fadiman.
How it’s practiced
Practice varies by orientation. In a clinical or counseling setting, a practitioner may take a client’s spiritual experiences seriously as data instead of reading them as symptoms. Typical methods include guided imagery, meditation and mindfulness, dream work, breathwork, journaling, and dialogue about meaning and values. Psychosynthesis adds exercises on disidentification and on strengthening the will. In research settings, investigators use phenomenological interviews, questionnaires on mystical experience, and studies of meditators.
In session it usually sounds like conversation and reflective inquiry, with periods of silence or guided attention. Practitioners generally stress that the work sits alongside, and does not replace, ordinary psychological care.
Spiritual Psychology today
Seekers meet the field in several ways. Graduate programs in transpersonal and integral psychology exist at institutions including Sofia University, the California Institute of Integral Studies, Saybrook University, and Naropa. The British Psychological Society created a Transpersonal Psychology Section in 1996. The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology and the International Journal of Transpersonal Studies were accepted for indexing in PsycINFO in 2007. Outside the academy, the term appears in retreats, workshops, certificate programs, podcasts, and recorded talks. The quality and rigor of these offerings vary widely, and they are not accredited as a group. In clinical practice, the DSM-IV added a “Religious or Spiritual Problem” category in 1993, which gave clinicians a formal way to recognize this territory.
Common misconceptions
- It is not a religion. Most academic programs present it as an inquiry open to people of any belief or none, although critics note that its content often draws on Asian and esoteric traditions.
- It is not a replacement for psychotherapy or medicine. Mystical experience and psychiatric crisis can resemble each other, and distinguishing them requires clinical training.
- It is not scientifically settled. Critics including Ernest Hilgard called it a fringe movement. Paul Cunningham argued that its metaphysics is naive and that many of its concepts are poorly operationalized. Rollo May criticized an overemphasis on transcendence at the expense of the personal and the darker side of human nature.
- It is not the same as New Age thought. Several scholars have worked to separate the two, though others argue the association persists.
- It is not one school. Models such as Ken Wilber’s developmental spectrum (1977) and Michael Washburn’s account of the ego and the dynamic ground (1988) disagree with each other on basic questions.
How to begin
A reader can start with Assagioli’s Psychosynthesis: A Manual of Principles and Techniques (1965) for a clinician’s account, or with James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience for the foundational argument. For the contemporary field, the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology and the International Journal of Transpersonal Studies publish peer-reviewed work. Anyone considering a class or retreat should check the instructor’s credentials, whether the program is accredited, and how it handles participants who have a history of psychiatric difficulty.