The field of depression research and theory is a preparadigmatic potpourri of different orientations without a central, consensus definition of depression. This study attempted to address these issues by investigating the depression sub-literatures (cognitive–behavioral, psychoanalytic, evolutionary, biomedical, phenomenological, existential–humanistic, cybernetic, environmental, and religious–spiritual theories) using a comparative analytic methodology, which allows for comparing disparate fields that do not share a common definitional set by relating them to a third concept, in this study the construct of “ungrieved futility” (UF) as a dynamic model of depression. UF defines the objective and/or subjective experience of the permanent loss of an attachment object that initiates the normal grief process, but which is blocked by other factors. As such, UF is one entity with two components. The results showed that UF does describe the core definitional statement about depression of most of the literatures, with the exceptions being the biomedical, behavioral, as well as parts of the environmental and spiritual sub-literatures. It also distinguishes those literatures that frame depression as an entity possessing inherent structure and dynamics from those that see it as an epiphenomenon. Finally, the analysis points to an inherent dynamic in depression which has implications for transpersonal psychology. Thus, this study shows that even without overt integrative theorizing, the field itself already has a wide inherent agreement about the structural dynamics of depression that has not been clearly recognized in existing literature.

In Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, the material world is understood to contain access points to the transcendent. An icon may move the awestruck believer to emotional engagement and reflection on moral and religious themes. Personality dispositions potentiating the experience of being moved in religious aesthetic contexts have not been thoroughly studied. The present article describes the development and testing of a cross-sectional study into potential belief and personality-related predictors of being moved by sacred art in a lab environment evocative of a holy site. Ninety (90) Christians in Canada and Greece completed personality measures and viewed and rated thematically matched Latin and Byzantine icons. Findings suggest impacts of attachment, imaginativeness, and traditional vs. mystical dispositions in resonance with sacred art, and point to a secure, mystically oriented perceiver. Those who tended towards structured religious lives also presented with a personality profile favouring logical problemsolving. The paradigm applied the social psychological tradition of an evocative lab situation and use of psychometric tests to pressing questions in aesthetics and transpersonal psychology. This study offers a replicable methodology, inviting further empirical inquiry into the experiential texture of being moved and predictive relationships among individual differences at play in moving encounters.

This grounded theory study addressed the question What model explains the essential qualities, skills, and competencies of an effective supervisory relationship for transpersonal therapists in training? It emerged out of a recognition that current training models for supervisors were not inclusive of competencies to address the needs of therapist trainees who are oriented toward a transpersonal approach to psychotherapy. The results of 22 interviews with trainees and supervisors surfaced a fundamental tension within the supervisory relationship in the distinction among the primary responsibility of the supervisor for ensuring client welfare, and encouraging supervisees to develop their personal therapeutic orientation and the self of the therapist. Emergent themes describe the nature of a supervisory relationship that encourages development of all of the gifts of the therapist while training for competence.

This paper illustrates transpersonal psychoanalytic psychotherapy through a detailed clinical example. A creative synthesis of Voice Dialogue work and Dreamtending, applied through storytelling and active imagination, is presented with a patient who is about to be married. Areas such as the therapeutic relationship including skills, techniques, clinical decisions, goals, interventions and the therapeutic space and presence are explored and discussed throughout the paper as they relate to transpersonal psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

This paper is a summary of a study utilizing constructivist grounded theory to examine the process of accessing and applying clinical intuition in psychotherapy. Intensive interviews were conducted with 19 psychotherapists to explore their experiences with clinical intuition, including training on the topic, supportive conditions for accessing intuition, and decision making around its application in session. Engagement in an iterative process of data collection and analysis occurred to arrive at the constructed theory: integrating clinical intuition for a whole person approach to empowerment. The theory is comprised of the core categories (a) building trust and confidence to access and use intuition as a therapist, (b) practicing, and (c) empowering clients to connect with their own intuition.

This essay presents the dreams of a long-term patient over the course of treatment in order to explore the transpersonal potential of the relational unconscious—those open channels of unconscious communication between people. At a key moment, the patient brings in the therapist’s own childhood dream, serving to break a period of impasse and reset the therapy. Dreams and their interpretation reveal the essence of fractal consciousness, by which a sliver of experience can shed light on the whole of the psyche. A fractal model of understanding suggests open boundaries between self/other and self/world at multiple levels. The deep intimacy of ongoing therapy can capitalize on this openness by promoting shared states of physiological resonance between patient and therapist. Such conditions are ripe for facilitating and amplifying uncanny knowing, synchronicities, and other transpersonal experiences.

Colic, characterized by excessive, inconsolable crying in early infancy, has long puzzled researchers and clinicians. Traditional approaches have predominantly relied on medical models, yet they have failed to provide satisfactory explanations or effective treatments. This blinded comparative qualitative study took a novel approach by asking: What are the womb and birth experiences of colicky babies in relation to the prenatal relational trauma between mother and fetus or within the fetal environment? The sample comprised 23 mother-child dyads, 10 children with a history of colic and 13 without, whose histories and interactions unfolded through 10 videotaped sessions of Experiential Play Therapy. Children with a colic history engaged in far less traumatic reenactment than those without, and those born vaginally in both groups re-enacted less trauma than those born via caesarian section. These findings suggest that colic may be the natural release of accumulated pre- and peri-natal trauma rather than an illness or condition requiring treatment resulting in a healthier child than non colicky children whose trauma impacts have not been expressed or released.

This paper offers a conceptual framework and embodied practice of finding ones’ psychological roots through mythological re-emplacement. The author utilizes the lenses of depth psychology, terrapsychology, ritual and pilgrimage. The method also focuses on experiences of awe in nature as a catalyst for transpersonal experience. This deeply personal account offers a model for the reader’s own symbolic engagement with the physical, natural and historically rich world around them.