By George A. Boyd ©2003
When we examine the skills of a psychotherapist or psychologist, we find
three core competencies, to which is added one or more modalities of psychotherapy.
We further make these initial distinctions between mainstream and transpersonal
therapies.
Mainstream branches of psychotherapy are widely disseminated and
taught in schools. There is a wide range of case studies supporting
the conclusions of these schools, and there is ongoing research into
the efficacy and validity of their theories and methods.
The three major mainstream psychotherapies are Cognitive/Behavioral,
Psychodynamic (which includes its derivative schools of Ego Psychology,
Object Relations and Self-Psychology), and Humanistic/Existential.
Transpersonal psychotherapies are less widely taught and have much
less supportive research to validate their methods and theories. There
are eight major varieties of transpersonal therapies. These include
Imagery therapy, Spiritual Therapy, Present Moment Process Therapy,
Past Life Therapy, Pastoral Counseling (Faith-Based Therapy), Psychosynthesis,
Yoga Therapy, and Attunement Therapy (Light Immersion).
A synopsis of these core competencies and interventions of mainstream
and transpersonal psychotherapies are presented below.
Type of Therapy/
Competency |
Name of Therapy/ Competency |
Keynote |
Intervention/Method |
Core Competencies
of Professional Therapists |
Administer tests and do assessment |
Gather data |
Administer tests. Evaluate these tests. Make reports
and present them. |
Establish empathy and rapport |
Trust and openness |
Ability to enter and reconstruct the client's experience
through empathy. Monitor client's body language, mood and affect
to sense what he/she may be experiencing. |
Make diagnosis |
Identification of key issues and symptoms |
Interview the client to determine what are his/her
key issues and symptoms. Gather data about the client's behavior,
mood and cognition. Based on the therapist's knowledge of classifications
of mental illness, the therapist decides what diagnosis to label
the client's symptoms and issues. |
Mainstream Psychotherapies |
Cognitive Behavioral |
Create adaptive and appropriate behavior and/or beliefs |
Interview client to obtain information about the presenting
problem. Note associations between belief and affect, belief and
behavior, situational cues that may trigger the unwanted behavior.
Use techniques to modify behavior and/or belief, to modify affect. |
<Psychodynamic |
Change ego functioning, overcome unhealthy patterns
of relating |
Have the client discuss current life issues, relate
dreams, or free associate to the content of the stream of consciousness.
Analyze defenses, transference to the therapist, blocking or resistance.
Interpret the meaning of the client's production in each session. |
Humanistic/Existential |
Authentic experience of the unique Self |
Listen with empathy to allow the client to become
fully known. Create an interpersonal space of unconditional positive
regard. Have the client share his/her feelings, experiences, and
meaning he/she has derived from those experiences. Guide the client
to explore feelings, issues, values, and meanings, and to be fully
present as the Self. |
Transpersonal Psychotherapies |
Imagery Therapies |
Guidance and understanding gained by reflection on
a symbol or archetype |
Have the client enter a hypnotic trance to encounter
and interact with an image [the image may be selected by the therapist
or one of the client's own production]. Listen with empathy to the
client's perceptions of and reactions to the image. Help the client
interpret and integrate the experience. |
Spiritual therapies |
Awakening as the spiritual heart |
Guide the client in processes to uncover the spirit.
Listen with empathy to the client's experience with selected processes,
and encourage the client to complete each process. |
Present Moment Process therapy |
Release of unconscious material, re-creation and re-choosing. |
Establish affinity, reality and communication in the
present time. Have the client do a selected process, acknowledging
the client's response. Continue until the process is completed.
[Certain groups may use a skin resistance-measuring device to identify
emotional release or process completion.] |
Past Life Therapy |
Re-experience and release past life issues impacting
the present life |
Have the client enter a hypnotic trance and go back
to a past life. Help the client explore the images and experiences
that emerge from this past life, and uncover any relationship between
them and issues or symptoms in this present life. Guide the client
forward or backwards on this time track to process issues. |
<Pastoral Counseling |
Establish communion with a loving and forgiving Creator,
give hope, comfort and strength to face the trails of life |
Have the client relate their problem or issue. Listen
with empathy, offer hope that the Lord can help. Seek to comfort
the client and strengthen the client's coping mechanisms. Give counsel
based on scripture. Pray with the client. Guide the client into
union with the Moon Soul. |
Psychosynthesis |
Integration with the Self, and ultimately, the Transpersonal
Self. |
Identify the client's issue. Use a variety of evocative
techniques to allow the client to interact with subpersonalities,
the Self, images of the higher unconscious and with the Transpersonal
Self. Guide the client to encounter and interact with the focus
of the technique. Help the client understand and integrate the experience
with the selected element. |
Yoga Therapy |
Union with Transcendent Ultimate Reality and overcoming
the karmic impediments to full realization and Enlightenment |
Coach client in meditation, facilitate movement through
issues and union with a transcendent state of consciousness. Have
client do hatha yoga, breathing exercises, and meditation to transcend
and move through issues. Modify stress through lifestyle and dietary
changes. Mirror a transcendent state of consciousness for the client
to help him/her gain union with it. |
Attunement Therapy |
Healing by Light Immersion |
Send the Light to minister to the client's needs beyond
words and symbols to the core of the client's pain. Make attunement
to the client's personality, spirit and Soul. Empower the client's
attentional principle to work on him/herself and send the Light
to others. |
Differences between Mainstream and Transpersonal Therapies
When we look at some of the key differences between the mainstream and
transpersonal therapies, we find seven salient factors in which they differ:
- depth of attentional immersion
- focal points used for therapeutic purposes
- empirical validation of their methods
- models of personality
- temporal depth
- role of the therapist
- purported agencies of healing and transformation
While both share the common ground of building rapport with the client,
gathering data about the client's presenting problem, and identifying
aspects of the client's problem that can be addressed by the therapist's
knowledge and skills, the approach to therapy varies significantly on
these seven factors. These are contrasted below.
Depth of Attentional Immersion
Meditation and prayer play a significant role in the transpersonal
therapies, as interventions in these therapies may extend into the
Superconscious mind.
The mainstream therapies, by contrast, do not normally move beyond
the confines of the Metaconscious mind, the domain of the Self and
the personality. While sustained focusing of the attention is required
in mainstream therapies to promote insight, and the processing of
issues, the client does not have to sound the same depths as is required
in the transpersonal therapies.
Focal Points Used for Therapeutic Purposes
The transpersonal therapies may seek to access focal points in the
Superconscious mind. These elements can include archetypes, the spirit,
the wave of present time awareness, the Transpersonal Self, or even
a higher octave of being.
Mainstream therapies, on the other hand, select focal points in the
Conscious, Subconscious, and Metaconscious mind. These focal points
in the Conscious mind may include sensations in the body tied to issues,
working with present time feelings or patterns of thoughts, and defensive
reactions of the ego. Memories of past experience drawn from the personal
unconscious may tap the Subconscious mind. Commitment (the desire
body), role play of social skills (persona), exploration of choices
(volition), or abiding in the Self may be seen in interventions that
utilize the Metaconscious mind.
Empirical Validation
Mainstream therapies seek empirical validation through research and
testing, so that their techniques and theories may be founded upon
the bedrock of scientific method.
Transpersonal therapies are innovative, intuitive and experimental,
with little or no scientific testing to support them.
Models of Personality
Mainstream models of personality are based on levels of the Conscious,
Subconscious, or Metaconscious mind, and target their interventions
within these zones.
Transpersonal therapies may invoke levels of the Collective Unconscious
or Superconscious mind to explain their therapeutic model and provide
a rationale for their interventions.
Temporal Depth
Mainstream therapies target their interventions within the confines
of post-natal experience.
Transpersonal therapies may accept and utilize experiences drawn
from the birth trauma and the intrauterine period, from in-between
lifetimes or past lives, or may even evoke mystical, timeless experiences
of eternity through union with the spirit or Soul.
Role of Therapist
In both forms of therapies, the therapist acts as guide, coach, and
evocator of inner process.
However, the level to which the client must descend in transpersonal
therapies requires that the guide be familiar with much deeper strata
of the Great Continuum of Consciousness.
Agencies of Healing and Transformation
For mainstream therapies, growth, healing and change are founded
upon known neurophysiological responses to release of stress, measurable
decreases in observable symptoms, and changes in cognition and perception.
Successful interventions may be seen to change behavior, alter aberrant
or dysfunctional patterns of belief or thinking, promote emotional
processing and release of painful issues, and guide new, more mature
and healthy choices.
In transpersonal therapies, transformational or alchemical processes
are purported to produce change. For example, intrapsychic transformation
of symbolic material, burning of karma, forgiveness of sins, opening
of chakras or clearing etheric channels of life force may be used
to explain what takes place as a result of transformational intervention.
Light Immersion
The eighth form of transpersonal therapy, attunement therapy or Light
Immersion, is purported to be the method by which Jesus and other great
Initiates healed the sick and mentally ill. This method directs the Inner
Light Fire in specific ways to bring about healing and transformation.
The Light Fire of the Spirit can
- provide deep emotional comfort by the infilling of the Holy Spirit
- purify the inner vehicles
- refine character
- unfold the spiritual evolutionary potentials of the Soul
- transmute and dissolve material stored in the unconscious mind
- guide the attention to directly encounter inner issues
- awaken intuitive and insightive states of mind
Disciples of great Initiates—Masters, Gurus, Sat Gurus—report
being filled by great Light and Power in the presence of these advanced
Souls.
The inner healing and transformation at the core of being produced by
this immersion has wide-ranging effects on the individual, including the
opening of new abilities, the emergence of new intuitive understanding,
and a growing love and compassion. Further, the individual may achieve
enhanced ability to concentrate the attention, to actively process personal
issues, and to commune with the spirit and the Soul. Those undergoing
this Light Immersion also report greater serenity, self-discipline, perceive
enhanced personal control over their lives, have a sense of deeper meaning
and purpose, and feel renewed altruistic impulses to help or serve others.
The personality, moreover, is gradually transformed to become an instrument
for the expression of the Soul's abilities and intuitive knowledge.
We suggest this healing Light Fire, called Spirit or Shakti, is ultimately
the real healer or transformer in all types of psychotherapy, however
it is invoked and directed. This intelligent, living force can change
behavior, relieve emotional distress, and sort out the tangles of a troubled
mind. Perhaps the therapist's essential activity is to evoke this power
within the client, which in turn does the healing and transformation.
Mainstream therapies and transpersonal therapies tap different levels
of the mind in their quest to help their client become more functional
and whole. But the efficacy of their methods may not simply consist of
their way of relating to the client and skillful use of techniques, but
to the degree they can act as a catalyst to spark the client's own inner
resources of growth, transformation and healing.
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