Psychology Of Transformation Research Articles

Selfobject Psychology for a Troubled World

ABSTRACT The role of self-psychology in establishing a transformational humanity and even in saving the continued existence of our world—is a very modest one, yet, at the same time, a uniquely crucial opportunity. We, as a community committed to psychoanalytic self-psychology, are being required to respond to the summons of a serving leadership. The task ahead of us all is not less than that of creating a supra-contextual web of empathy that will embrace the personal and the general, the similar and the different, the multiplicity and the oneness. Only such an ethical matrix of universalism will constitute a total solidarity. Such an immeasurable task calls upon us to uplift the Kohutian legacy to its final destination, to the shores of selfobject psychology. This proposal aims at refining self-psychology into a psychology of transformation, defining the humane narcissistic journey from self-cherishing attitude to other-cherishing attitude, and, perhaps even beyond, to a stance of all-embracing ethical commitment to the realization of awakened awareness. Selfobject psychology thus opens up for psychoanalysis a spiritual horizon that will buttress the unceasing quest for the tremendous goal of withstanding our troubled times and of securing a future for humankind and its cosmic habitat.

“We just want to break the stereotype”: Tensions in Black boys’ critical social analysis of their suburban school experiences.

This study used a youth participatory action research (YPAR) approach to explore the meaning five Black boys make of race, identity, and oppression through their school experiences in a suburban high school. The first author developed, cofacilitated, and assumed the role of participant observer in a YPAR afterschool program aimed at promoting sociopolitical development. The participants completed photovoice projects identifying problems in and solutions for their school community. In their initial framing of the projects, they espoused a deficit narrative of Black student achievement, rooted in low public and private racial regard: Black students are not achieving. At the end of the program year, with the help of individual and group meaning-making in the YPAR program, some participant narratives shifted away from a deficit narrative, and two participants presented a counternarrative that emphasized the ways in which Black students are trying and achieving. These findings contribute to our understanding of how YPAR programs, as situated in liberation and transformative psychology, facilitate critical social analysis for Black boys. Furthermore, these findings contribute to the literature on the experiences of Black boys in suburban schools, through the voices and perspectives of the boys themselves. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)

An Hermeneutic Analysis of Transpersonal Education: Policies, Principles and Practices

Maslow was instrumental to the development of humanistic and transpersonal psychology advocating that humanistic psychology should be subsumed by transpersonal psychology. However the transpersonal has remained a lucid term with over-simplified definitions relating to spirituality, although three encompassing themes have been identified: beyond-ego psychology, integrative psychology and transformative psychology. Although transpersonal psychology has been applied to a number of fields, (e.g. counselling, coaching, psychotherapy), there has been a paucity of research in relation to mainstream education. This paper initially introduces and discusses transpersonal psychology and how it differs to humanistic and positive psychology, before hermeneutically analysing previous research on transpersonal education, to propose a transpersonal education for the twenty-first century.

Transpersonal psychology: Defining the past, divining the future.

Retrospective analysis of definitions published 35 years suggests the major subject areas of the field can be summed up in three themes: beyond-ego psychology, integrative/holistic psychology, and psychology of transformation. Theme frequency analysis reveals that early emphasis on alternative states of consciousness has moderated into a broader approach to human transcendence, wholeness, and transformation. This expanded definition of transpersonal psychology suggests the field has much in common with integral psychology. As a comprehensive, historically based content summary, this tripartite definition contributes a small but vital piece to the foundation of a transpersonal vision that is spreading across the globe. While transpersonal psychology still needs to embody the inclusiveness and diversity that it represents, its vision is one of great relevance to the contemporary human condition. Artistic inspiration is best expressed by creating art rather than by making explanations. It is in this sense that transpersonal psychology, with its uplifting vision, has had difficulty defining itself. Yet, just as the soul of an artist’s muse can be divined from a body of work, a clearer picture of transpersonal psychology can be drawn from looking at how it has expressed itself through its approximately first 35 years (i.e., all but one of the definitions in the corpus date from the period 1969–2003). We inquire not only into the definition of the field, but also into its character: what are the themes that make it up, how have these themes unfolded, and as we follow its arc through time, what can we imagine for the future of transpersonal psychology? Where is the field spreading? How well does it embody what it represents? This article summarizes the findings from four related studies: a thematic analysis of a corpus of definitions of transpersonal psychology published over a 35-year period, a thematic analysis of relevant portions of Boucouvalas’ (1980) in-depth