Approaches to Ego Dissolution in Transpersonal Psychology (Part 3)
In entry 3 in our series on ego dissolution (pulled from my graduate research on the phenomenon) we explore how the field of Transpersonal Psychology has attempted to explain and contextualize ego dissolution.
Transpersonal psychology has famously approached its research with concepts extracted from Eastern spirituality, especially Buddhism. Since transpersonal psychology’s handling of ego death will be explained in the following section, this section will briefly summarize a Buddhist explanation of ego death.
Buddhism is a broad religion with diverse schools of thought, and this literature review cannot do justice to all of them. Still, given the influence Buddhism has had on this field of research, it’s worth examining some of its foundational claims. Though it is an oversimplification of Buddhism’s competing branches, some basic concepts from the Sutta Pitaka (writings of the ancient Theravada school of Buddhism that are purported to convey the teachings of the Buddha) will be explained, as they are strongly related to the models that have been adopted in transpersonal psychology.
The Samyutta Nikaya within the Sutta Pitaka describes, among many other things, the requirements that must be met for someone to “enter the stream,” or begin the journey towards enlightenment (Amaro, 2019, p. 1953). Among the earliest of these requirements is that one lets go of attachment to the personality, or the “self-view” (Amaro, 2019, p. 1953). At a later stage, one must give up identification with mind states that convey a sense of “I,” “me,” or “mine” (Amaro, 2019, p.1954). Little explanation is needed to connect these ideas to the concept of ego death, if ego is taken to mean the felt sense of self, as it has been in psychedelic literature. The idea of letting go of, or transcending identification with one’s personality or self-view is essential to the beyond-ego models of development that are discussed in transpersonal psychology.
Explanations and definitions of ego dissolution have perhaps been offered most frequently in the field of transpersonal psychology. Transpersonal Psychology began in the early sixties and was formalized in the Journal of Transpersonal Studies with contributions from giants in the field such as Abraham Maslow, Stanislov Grof, and Anthony Sutich. The field developed steadily, and by the mid-seventies, at least three separate organizations had been founded to claim and organize the growing area of study. Maslow (1971) defined Transpersonal Psychology by its focus on the farther reaches of human nature, and this focus has included things such as altered states of consciousness, spirituality, psychedelics, and contemplative practices (Walsh & Vaughan, 2018). According to Wade (2019), the primary subject matter of the field is “beyond-ego phenomenon,” which stands in stark contrast to the framework entailed in Western psychology, which normalizes identification with a mature personality and pathologizes other experiences of identity.
Core transpersonal theorists like Heinz Kohut helped bridge the gap between psychoanalytic models of the ego with transpersonal theories by expanding the Jungian model in which the ego (the center of consciousness) sits in relationship to the Self (the whole of the psyche, conscious and unconscious) similarly to how the Earth sits in the relationship to the Sun – eternally bound to it, but not remotely synonymous with it (Schipke, 2017). Kohut’s model was largely concerned with narcissism, and he framed his ideas around this concept. In short, Kohut argues that individuals could transcend egoic narcissism in a normal developmental path, and that the “cosmic narcissism” that followed was akin to transcendent religious experience (Schipke, 2017). The idea that there were developmental milestones beyond ego-centered experience took off in Transpersonal Psychology through a number of theorists. Perhaps most notably, biologist-turned-author Ken Wilber proposed a “master template” of the full range of human consciousness (including a model of the self and ego) by comparing over a hundred developmental psychologies (Eastern and Western, ancient and modern) and synthesizing their claims and philosophies (Wilber, 2003). This strategy has roots in perennial philosophy, or the belief that world religious and spiritual traditions throughout time are expressions of the same metaphysical truths, merely expressed in different ways (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2018). Perennial philosophy is not without critics, as it has been widely criticized for oversimplifying complex systems of religious thought, riding on problematic philosophical foundations, and being an inadequate substitute for scholarly research (Taves, 2020; Ferrer, 2000; Hartelius, 2017).
Regardless, Wilber’s model has been extensively cited and used in Transpersonal Psychology, and it is worth understanding how he conceptualizes the ego and self. In short, Wilber identifies the ego as an integral part of the human psyche which can be transcended insofar as one withdraws identification from it (Wilber, 1998), but it remains the functional center of activity in our normal human experience. The self, on the other hand, is said to belong to a deeper reality, one that elicits ontological concepts such as “spirit” (Wilber, 2003). Transpersonal theories are unique for these higher stages of development, often referred to as “post-conventional” (Cook-Greuter, 2000), but not all require metaphysical claims like Wilber’s model.
In 2020, the field of Transpersonal Psychology has failed to integrate itself into mainstream psychology for a variety of reasons. First, there has been an underemphasis on producing empirical research, which has led to less interest from researchers and academics outside the field (Walsh & Vaughan, 2018). Rather, it has employed a form of independently derived perennialism to build a model of post-ego development (Wade, 2019). Second, there has not been enough material published in mainstream academic journals, so most new research was kept within the small community of interested researchers (Wade, 2019). Third, transpersonal theory has borrowed narrowly and selectively from fields such as Asian contemplative traditions, and thus conversations have been limited to the insular communities that accepts these philosophies (Wade, 2019). This information is not presented to criticize the field and the involved researchers, but to explain why the “beyond-ego” approach of Transpersonal Psychology has not been more thoroughly integrated into normal conversations about psychology or human development, and thus why new research needs to be done to make up for these gaps.
In the next entry, we will explore why mental health professionals should care about the phenomenon of ego dissolution.
