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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 study addresses the scientific tendency to misattribute the higher levels of belief in extrasensory perception (ESP) of adult survivors of childhood trauma to cognitive errors when they may be a result of actual experience with ESP. Dissociative tendencies may contribute to precognition, which would be an adaptive skill for children living in unpredictable and traumatic environments. This study investigated the correlation between self-reported childhood abuse and neglect and precognitive abilities in 227 adults. The participants completed the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, comprising subscales measuring emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, and physical and emotional neglect, and completed four online tasks measuring extra-sensory perception (ESP) developed by the Institute of Noetic Science’s IONS Discovery Lab. The ESP scores of participants who experienced severe childhood abuse/neglect were compared to those of participants who experienced little to no childhood abuse/neglect. The severely abused/neglected group performed significantly better on one precognitive task using a protocol for remote viewing (p < .05), but other tasks showed little efficacy or correlation with trauma severity. Post-hoc analysis indicated that ESP skill was related more closely to higher childhood neglect than abuse, but because the two types of abuse are often present concurrently, the difference in level of association was not significant.

Introduction: Virtually no studies have looked at psychopharmacological combinations as models of the near-death experience (NDE), which is inadequate given the evidently complex neurochemistry occurring near- or at death. An example of such a combination is "changa," a smoked mixture of the psychedelic N,N-DMT and monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI)-containing plants, and as such has been referred to as "smokable ayahuasca" (vine of the dead). Only very few studies, yet not systematically, have included experiencers of both NDEs and psychoactive substances. Methods: Two case studies are presented of individuals who have experienced both a near-death experience and a changa experience, making them invaluable in this comparative project. Interviews were conducted encompassing the content of both experience types, as well as the participants’ reflections on, including quantification of, perceived comparability. A detailed content analysis was performed and the presence or absence of each feature between the two experiences is tabulated. The near-death experience scale was also applied for both states as a quantitative measure. Results: Case SR (NDE from misaligned vertebra) reported high, while case DA (NDE, initially, from allergic reaction) reported medium perceived similarity between their NDE and changa experience, supported also by their NDE scale scoring. SR’s changa experience, however, shared only 36% of features with his NDE. Despite this, there were only a few notable differences in features with neardeath experiences at large (exhibiting 83% similarity with NDEs at large)—and the presence, and ordering, of other features is strikingly NDE-resembling. Although, the content by which these appeared was idiosyncratic of DMT. DA’s changa experience shared a comparably low-moderate 42% of features with his NDE, and did appear to entail more discrepancies with NDEs in general, which were classically DMT-like (but also exhibiting 83% similarity with NDEs generally). Despite this, several other features, though again DMT-like in content, appeared particularly NDE-resembling. Discussion: These similarities, to greater and lesser degrees, in both features and content, qualitatively and quantitatively, between the NDE and the DMT-MAOI admixture across the case studies are discussed in light of semantic analyses and physiological studies suggesting monoaminergic activity near-death, motivations for drug-induced re-experiencing of the NDE, and implications of state-dependent memory mechanisms.

Advaita Vedanta is seen as something of an authoritative source for nondual philosophies and theories of consciousness that postulate a pure featureless awareness at the base of mental experience. These approaches deviate from both the lineage-based teachings of Advaita Vedanta and the necessary standards of science, constructing compromises that fall short of traditional fidelity and psychological rigor. Dialogues between psychology and Advaita Vedanta need to delineate clearly between a sensate phenomenology of experience and spiritual interpretations that may be implicit within experiential descriptions.