From Assagioli to Almaas
A Rough Guide to Transpersonal Psychology
Keith Hackwood
www.keithhackwood.com
The Transpersonal is the future of
Psychology
• Why?
• How?
• Culminating Crises in Positivist
Materialsm
• Present from the outset
• Wide Vision
Contextual Crises
Outer
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Climate Change
Resource Depletion
Limits to Growth
‘End of Progress’
‘Problem of Civilization’
Inner
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Anxiety
Depression
Loss of Meaning
Loss of identity
Alienation
Civilizations don’t just happen… the spiritual
impulse that originally gave rise to our Western
culture is still present
Peter Kinglsey
A Return to Essence
• How?
Art or Science
(Psycho)Synthesis
Education
‘Therapy’ is too small a word
The World Behind The World
DOING
HAVING
Psychosynthesis is the future of
Psychoanalysis
• Roberto Assagioli 1888 – 1974
Psychosynthesis in Print
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Doctoral Thesis 1909-1910
Psychosynthesis ‘Manual’ – 1965
The Act of Will – 1974
Transpersonal Development 1993
Principal Ideas
• Model of human being
• I-Self Axis
• The Will
• Disidentification
• Stages of Psychosynthesis
(personal/transpersonal)
“The only way out is the way
up”
The Egg Diagram
Assagioli’s Draft
Casa Assagioli
Florence
The Considerator
“The Will to Publish”
He was very early. Who was there to hear
such a large and balanced statement? Not
many.
From the Eulogy for Assagioli, by James Vargiu
The Transpersonal Field
Transpersonal Disciplines
Relates to:
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Psychology, Psychiatry, Psychotherapy
Neuroscience, Psychopharmacology
Sociology
Anthropology
Cultural Theory
Notable Peaks
• C G Jung (Especially the Red Book)
• Archetypal Psychology (Hillman)
• Spiritual Psychology (Sardello)
• Ecospychology & Ecophilosophy
• Stanislav Grof
• Integral Studies (Wilber)
Notable Peaks
• Washburn
• Naranjo (Gestalt & Enneagram)
• Influence of Buddhism (Watts, Suzuki,
Trungpa, Elias Capriles)
• Sufism
• Kabbalah
• Sri Aurobindo
Back to Basics
Back to Basics
• Freud the ‘godless Jew’
• From ‘hysterical misery’ to ‘common
unhappiness’
• Fear of the ‘black tide of mud of
occultism’
Therapy as Shamanic Operation
A H Almaas & The Diamond
Approach
The Structure of Reality
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Being / Soul / World
Personal Essence
Essential Aspects
The Theory of Holes
“Disidentification means the cessation of
identification, the cessation of taking
something to be you, or to belong to you, or
to define you.”
Method
• Inquiry
Socratic & Psychodynamic
• Presence
Embodied ‘felt-sense’ / limbs and hara
Love of Truth
• The soul is fundamentally faithful to
the truth, but she is ignorant
• The truth is now and your life is now
• Giving ourselves to truth means giving
up defences – the self cannot give itself
up
The Paradox
The Way of Silence & the Talking Cure
From Knowing to Being
Coming Soon…
Divine Rebel:
The Life & Work of Roberto Assagioli
By Mark Jones & Keith Hackwood
Publishing Date: September 2014
Diolch yn fawr
Thankyou