​​Some Psychological Implications of Process Philosophy
 
By John H. Buchanan, Ph.D.


 
Abstract: The field of psychology has suffered from the lack of an overarching theory capable of providing coherent connections and effective communication between its diverse areas of interest. In this article, I present some thoughts on how a process approach can furnish psychology with a meta-theory that offers basic concepts widely applicable throughout the psychological field. First, I describe several metaphysical innovations found in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead that prove particularly useful in this regard. Then, as an illustration, I apply them to the field of neuroscience. Finally, we turn an eye to the field of psychological counseling or psychotherapy to further explore what a process-informed psychology might look like.
 
I.  Whiteheadian Keys for Psychology
 
            While still quite young, I developed two areas of interest that have remained throughout my life: a fascination with the natural sciences and a deep curiosity about psychological phenomena, particularly extraordinary experiences such as dreams, parapsychology, meditation, and mystical states. By the time I entered college, I had these general goals in mind: to find an integrative way of thinking through the issues and problems concerning the entire field of psychology, and to coherently connect psychology to the other sciences. After twelve years of investigation, I was led to Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy of organism, his “process philosophy,” and discovered that it has the necessary metaphysical foundations to accomplish both of these objectives, and much more.

            Whitehead’s thought is too complex to be fully addressed in one short article (or even a very long one!). In this paper, I want only to highlight several of his key ideas that are especially important for psychology: namely, prehension, actual occasion, and causal efficacy. Whitehead conceives of all actualities in terms of momentary experiential events (actual occasions) that create themselves from feelings of other past events (prehensions) and synthesizing these feelings into new integrated wholes. Of crucial importance, is that influences from the immediate past flow directly into each new event (causal efficacy), much like the way quantum-level events take account of all other past actualities, or how our immediate past experience feels internally present to, and directly informs, each new moment of awareness.

            This understanding of reality bears striking similarities to classical Asian thought. Whitehead’s philosophy shares Buddhism’s notion that reality is to be sought in the processes found in momentary experiences, versus seeing the world in terms of objects or enduring things. Like Confucianism, Whiteheadian philosophy portrays the world functioning via relationships and social organization. And like Taoism, it emphasizes harmony through contrast, and sees change and flow as the essential nature of the universe.

            In order to demonstrate the wide applicability of Whitehead’s system for the field of psychology, we now turn to two areas from opposite ends of the spectrum of psychological phenomena: neuroscience and psychotherapeutic counseling.
 
II.  Process Perspective on Neuroscience
 
            A major, if not the major, problem for neuroscience has been finding a coherent way of accounting for how subjective human experience arises out of the activities of the brain; and reciprocally, how human subjective experience can bring about changes in the brain and body. A promising solution to this seemly intractable problem—how something “mental” can interact with something “physical”—is made possible by two of Alfred North Whitehead’s most revolutionary ideas: the “actual occasion” and “prehension.” Whitehead’s notion of the actual occasion theorizes that all actuality arises out of momentary subjective events, largely nonconscious in nature; the second idea is that these moments of experiences are closely interconnected by direct feelings, or prehensions, of each other’s experience. In short: actuality, as the interconnected flow of momentary events, arises out of “feeling the feelings of others.” For example, in Whitehead’s process philosophy, each of the brain’s neurons is understood to be a complex organic society composed of interacting atomic and molecular events, which are unified moment to moment by the (presumably nonconscious) experience of the neural-cellular occasions. In addition, there is a constant flow of data-laden feeling between the brain’s neural events as well as within each neuron.

            One may well ask: Is it accurate to call this process “experiential” or “subjective”? Whitehead argues in the affirmative: all levels of momentary occasions or events share essential features resembling human subjectivity as we know it (even though in most simpler occasions the experiential mode will be completely nonconscious). Whether the events in question be atomic, molecular, cellular, or human, this process of self-creation always involves an initial responsiveness to feelings of the past, integration of the data received from these past events, and an active synthesis of these influences, culminating in the occurrence of a new bit of actuality. This momentary event in turn acts as an influence on the future. Whitehead argues that events that can sympathetically respond, synthesize, and exert influence are best understood as being “experiential” in nature, since those are the features that also characterize human subjective activity.

            These two metaphysical innovations, actual occasion and prehension, provide a new way to understand the psyche, the brain, and how they can interact with each other and with the world at large. By understanding the brain’s neural events and the occasions constituting the psyche as being made up of the same kind of “stuff”—that is, as flows of momentary experiential events—“mind-brain” interaction can be conceived as a rapid back and forth sharing of data-laden feeling between the brain’s neural network and the human-level experiential pulsations that make up our psychic life. Through this process, the effects of neural activity are felt by each new event of the human psyche. In return, the experiential feeling-tone of the psyche floods back into the brain. The former constitutes the generally assumed causal influence of the body-brain on human experience. The latter provides a coherent model for how the human “mind” can influence the brain and body, via so-called top-down causation. In other words, the brain’s neural events are in rapid interaction with another stream or series of more complex events that constitute the human psyche—or “soul.” Furthermore, Whitehead’s conception of the human psyche, as a series of subjective events forming wholistic experiential integrations, provides a straightforward explanation of why conscious experience unfolds as a unified phenomenon, rather than manifesting in a fragmented manner more reflective of the highly disparate matrix found in the brain.
 
            Of course, many questions remain: Do the psyche’s occasions draw data directly from the neurons themselves, or might the electro-magnetic fields produced by neural activity mediate this interaction in some way? Do the brain’s integrative centers generate higher-order events that preprocess the individual neural activity, thus simplifying the human-level event’s integrative work? On a related note, do the human psyche’s occasions enfold the entire brain in gathering their preliminary data—perhaps at times extending their reach into the body or even beyond—or do they, as Whitehead once suggested, flit about the brain’s interstices drawing on different areas and brain formations for their “nourishment” of neural feelings? (see Whitehead 1929, 107-9) In this way, a postmodern process approach to neuroscience could foster both a new foundational understanding for psychology, as well as open up new avenues of research and theory construction.

            I might add that Whitehead’s metaphysics offers a novel way of conceptualizing the unconscious in terms of dynamic processes. Since, according to Whitehead, every momentary occasion is in at least some vague contact with all past events, the human depth unconscious can most broadly be depicted as the entire past universe. From this perspective, the unconscious would have a transpersonal dimension reaching out to all other actualities, providing a basis for phenomena such as telepathy and mystical experience, as well as collective human experiences. It is important to note that, according to Whitehead, the unconscious activity of each new psychic event feels its own past series of occasions with a particular completeness and thereby dynamically recreates moment to moment its habitual sense of self along with related unconscious fears, preferences, attachments, and defense mechanisms that accompany all of us on our life journeys.

            Since data from the brain’s neural activity as well as the body’s feelings enter directly into the early unconscious phases of every human-level psychic occasion, the brain/body play an integral role in the psyche’s unconscious processes. Thus the brain’s neural activity might be considered part of the psyche’s unconscious, since this is one of the primary sources of feeling and data for each new human-level moment of experience. However, if we consider the unconscious in a more psychodynamic sense—as the unconscious phases of the psyche’s own actual occasions—then it might be more consistent to limit the human unconscious to the psyche’s personal series of past occasions, with the caveat noted above that in some limited way the psyche’s reach extends into all past events, which would obviously include the brain. In any case, from a process philosophy perspective, the three primary contributors to the psyche’s own occasions, and thus to the unconscious phases of those events, would be the brain’s neural activity, the body’s feelings and sensations, and the psyche’s own past moments of experience.

            As we have already wandered into topics of a psychodynamic nature, perhaps now is the time to discuss some implications that a Whiteheadian approach holds for the theory and practice of interpersonal counseling.
 
III.  Brief History of Psychotherapy
 
            A quick survey of the history of psychotherapy in the West will help set the stage for our discussion of a process approach to counseling.[1] Although the idea of the “unconscious” goes back much further than its appearance in psychoanalysis (see Ellenberger), Freud’s work initiated a new era in this field of psychology and thus provides a reasonable point of departure.

            Starting from a medical model, Sigmund Freud discovered that some patients’ physical and mental symptoms were tied to past experiences that had been blocked from memory. By recovering these memories and the associated emotions and ideas through dream analysis, and other methods designed to reveal unconscious processes and conflicts, Freud was able to secure psychologically-based cures. In this way, Freud opened the door to counseling based on the idea of bringing past unconscious material into conscious awareness through the therapeutic relationship.[2]

            In the United States, a powerful counter force appeared in the guise of the scientific behaviorism of B. F. Skinner. Skinner argued that observable behavior is our only reliable source of objective data about the “inner life” of the individual, which itself must remain unknowable, a “black box.” Subjectivity is to be ignored by psychology since experience is not accessible to scientific study. His stimulus-response model for explaining human actions and behavior effectively eliminated human experience from consideration, both experimentally and clinically.

            Related to both Freud’s original medical model and behaviorism’s emphasis on the objective aspects of human existence, a neurological model of mental illness became prevalent in the 1940s and 1950s, spawning physiological methodologies for treating psychological disorders. Lobotomies were employed to affect mood disorders by direct manipulation of brain matter; insulin therapy was used to produce a shock to the system in order to break ingrained mental patterns; electroshock therapy created an even more direct shock to the brain, disordering the neural processes in the hope that they would rebuild in a way that escaped some of the past associations and mental pathways that had been causing psychological problems. While in some cases these extreme measures were helpful, these sledge hammer methods of dealing with the psyche fell out of favor with the advent of psychopharmaceutic interventions. Thus Valium for treating anxiety, Thorazine for schizophrenia, Prosac for depression, all found their way into the medical model of treating the psyche by changing brain chemistry.

            In the 1960s, Abraham Maslow responded to what he perceived as deficiencies or neglects in these approaches by hailing the advent of a “third force” in psychology, with psychoanalysis constituting the first force and behaviorism the second force. In contrast to psychoanalysis’s concentration on psychological disorders and deficits, or behaviorism’s focus on objective actions and scientific study of observables, Maslow’s human potential movement was interested in the psychology of healthy individuals, their positive potentials, and traits such as creativity, altruism, and spirituality. Out of these studies, a “fourth force” of transpersonal psychology quickly emerged with a focus on even higher levels of human functioning, studying phenomena such as meditation, parapsychology, psychedelic experiences, and mystical states.

            I want to suggest here a new framework for understanding these various strands and directions of thought that have been guiding psychological therapeutic interventions in particular and the field of psychology more generally. These approaches seem to be distinguished by their emphasis on certain aspects of the functioning of the body, the brain, and the memory/psyche—and as we shall see, for good reason.
 
IV.  Process Perspective on Psychotherapy
 
            A general theory of counseling is a complicated matter, due especially to the complex nature of the human psyche. Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy offers an overarching perspective on the human being and its relation to the world that offers important insights into various psychological methods and how to employ these approaches for maximum effectiveness.

            A key aspect of Whitehead’s thought in this regard is his novel understanding of how things influence one another. His notion of perception in the mode of causal efficacy describes a more primitive and fundamental mode of interaction between events. According to this theory, all momentary events begin their formation via a direct reception of data from past events. Events create themselves by feeling the feelings of other events. In this way, there is a direct flow of feeling into each new event, which then integrates and synthesizes these feelings into a new occasion of experience, a new moment of actuality.

            By this same process, the unconscious phases of human-level events receive input from the brain’s neural events, the body’s cellular events, and the past events of the psyche itself. Thus, Whitehead provides psychology with a metaphysical grounding for the primal importance of feelings flowing in from the body, brain, and memory or past psyche. These sources are the human subject’s primary avenues of direct contact with actuality and depth of feeling. Since feelings from the body, the brain, and one’s past experiences are all important for creating new of moments of experience, they must all be taken into consideration during counseling and influenced wisely, as these feelings from the depths are reality: “Freud uncovered the psychological reasons for staying with the feelings of the client. Process thought has uncovered the ontological reason for staying with them: the structure of actuality is a feeling-structure.” (Jackson 87)[3]

            These three primary areas of unconscious feeling—the body, the brain, and the past psyche—also suggest three generic approaches to addressing psychiatric problems. Most generally speaking, long-term pharmaceutical alteration of the neural matrix is indicated when dealing with psychological issues directly caused by chemical imbalances and structural anomalies in the brain. Therapies focusing on the body are especially helpful when deep muscular holding patterns figure predominantly in the presenting symptoms, as well as when there is a wide-spread lack of vitality or other structural impairments. When the client’s problems appear to be most deeply rooted in emotional issues from the past, then working with memories and past feelings, as well as heightened awareness in the present, would suggest itself as the proper psychological technique.

            Let me now go into more detail on each of these areas, as well as suggest other aspects of Whitehead’s thought that have important implications for psychotherapy and counseling. I should note that these three general areas of attack are in practice often intermingled and used to supplement one another. But for didactic purposes, I will treat them as separate entities.
 
The Brain

            In the United States, psychology, and psychiatry in particular, have tended to rely heavily on treating mental disorders by directly influencing the neural processes of the brain through the use of pharmaceutical drugs, which can significantly alter experience and override symptomatic feelings in a helpful, or problematic, way. These psychiatric drugs are especially useful for short-term relief of dangerous or debilitating states of mind, as well as for disorders most deeply rooted in definite imbalances in brain chemistry.

            While effective for changing functioning at the neural matrix level, pharmaceutical approaches for mental problems face definite limitations when used as a long-term solution, such as drug side effects, tolerance, and the question of merely masking symptoms versus promoting real growth and change. One might bear in mind here Stanislav Grof’s belief that psychological symptoms should be seen as clues for healing and growth, rather than isolated as the problem that needs to be addressed. (see Grof 1988, 241-43 and Grof 1985, 341-43)

            Psychedelic substances represent a significant exception to these aforementioned limitations and caveats concerning the use of psychoactive drugs. Recent studies with substances such as MDMA, psilocybin, LSD, and Ketamine have demonstrated an impressive ability to access and heal memories and emotional blocks from deep unconscious processes, thereby promoting real symptom relief along with psychological change and growth. Furthermore, psychedelics usually require relatively few administrations, apparently operating more by way of sustainable psychic shifts, rather than by affecting the psyche indirectly through longer-term alterations in brain chemistry—as is usually found in standard psychiatric drug therapy.
 
The Body

            Another important factor, frequently minimized by some theories of counseling, is the client’s relationship with their own body. Body-oriented therapies can help get the client in touch with reality, that is, with the world as revealed by perceptions from the mode of causal efficacy, which are often obscured by chronic blockages in the body’s proper flow of feeling. While the client’s conscious and unconscious attitudes and feelings about their body are significant (especially in body dysmorphic disorder or gender dysphoria), of more fundamental importance in most cases is how the body acts as an unconscious reservoir of repressed and blocked emotions and memories. These are frequently “stored” in chronic tensions in the musculature, especially those associated with breathing. Thus techniques designed to release these holding patterns can also free up previously unavailable depths of emotion, sensation, and repressed traumatic memories. (see Lowen) As long as these emotions and memories are lodged or blocked deep within the bodily unconscious, these associated feelings will continue to influence the quality of the client’s current state of awareness through what Whitehead calls “conformal” feelings: that is, the psyche tends to unconsciously recreate and repeat past experiences unless those underlying patterns can be altered.

            Gordon Jackson writes: “It appears that there is a ‘compulsion to repeat’ on the part of all of us as we respond conformally to immediately past data. . . . But with some this repetition becomes a powerful pattern, a fixation, which binds us neurotically to the past.” (Jackson 29) He also makes this more significant claim: “conformal feelings are . . . at the root of neuroses and psychoses generically.” (29) Since chronic holding patterns rooted deeply in the body armoring are a major factor reinforcing the static repetition of character structure and emotional patterns, loosening and freeing these chronic bodily holding patterns plays a central role for a process psychological approach to psychotherapeutic intervention. (see Reich)[4]
 
The Psyche

            This group of counseling styles might be characterized as “talk therapy,” though this would be an oversimplification as these approaches involve much more than mere conversation. This phrase is helpful nonetheless since these counseling methods use verbal interaction as their principal psychological tool. More generally, their primary focus is working directly with the psyche. These approaches vary widely. For example, cognitive behavioral therapy tries to alleviate emotional problems by changing self-defeating and unproductive thought patterns, while positive psychology, a modern update on humanistic psychology, focuses on developing personality traits that strengthen and empower the client in order to help them aim at a better future.

            More traditional psychotherapeutic methods tend to concentrate on unconscious dynamics; they seek to help the client connect to repressed memories, blocked emotions, and obscured aims via various techniques designed to heighten awareness of feelings in the mode of causal efficacy. Accessing these deep feelings is key to restoring the client to psychological health and vitality. As Jackson says: “What is vital to life is that we be in touch with the depths of our feelings, for this gives to life a necessary intensity.” (Jackson 102) Although the full power and liveliness conveyed by causal feeling usually remains below the threshold of conscious awareness, having some sense of real connection to these vital feelings is crucial. Let me quote Jackson further: “For the most part our feelings do not emerge into consciousness. Nevertheless, they leave their tone and that tone is pervasive of the total organism.” (Jackson 86) So even if the impact of these direct, but vaguely felt, contacts with reality do not register clearly in conscious experience, these feelings nonetheless are what provide the background reality for our felt sense of value and meaning. “What the carer should be helping the client to do is to try to become more aware of the reality of feeling, the basic stuff of life. Feelings are the foundational structure of our reality.” (Jackson 86)

            Perhaps the major reason to highlight “talk therapy” is that this relationship itself, the evolving connection between therapist and client, provides the crucial impetus for the possibility of deep healing and transformation.[5] “The dominant therapeutic insight in psychology is that therapy comes through inter-personal relations.” (Jackson 37) An important feature of this interpersonal relationship is the phenomenon of transference. Transference occurs when aspects of important connections from the client’s history are “projected” on or attributed to the therapist.[6] From a Whiteheadian perspective, the client’s psyche is caught up in repeating certain patterns of emotional attachment that arose in childhood and are still looking for suitable objects in the present to prehend (feel) through the lens of these old, usually disfunctional, patterns. By working through these projections that have been coloring and distorting the client’s attempts to form adult relationships, the client becomes more able to make direct contact with other people and be in more authentic touch with their own emotional reactions, now freed from compulsive repetition of the past (that is, from what Whitehead calls “conformal feelings.”) Or perhaps I should say, strong emotions from childhood are freed up and become available to form realistic attachments in the present.

            The emphasis that process thought puts on deep feelings reminds us not to be too quickly satisfied with verbal recognitions and acknowledgements of new revelations. Once again, Jackson’s comments on are the mark: “A related temptation is to equate consciousness with reality when it is essentially but a simplified edition of reality. It is as though the carer thinks the client has gotten a hold on things and can move on when the client has attached a verbal symbol to his feelings.” (Jackson 87-88) Simply acknowledging something is not enough; underlying emotions and processes need to be brought clearly into the client’s awareness. A deep exploration of the feelings and emotions and sensations at an organic level is important for full integration. On the other hand, feeling these feelings is not an end in itself. “The purpose of concentrating on feelings, however, is for the sake of insight. Catharsis is not enough.” (Jackson 89) Understanding and transformation are the goal. “The purpose of the explanation is to help the patient to ‘see’ what is going on so that, given insight, he will use his new knowledge to give up old patterns and to seize hold of life in new ways.” (Jackson 89)

            As with Gestalt Therapy and Buddhist theory, all change must happen in the present, where all life occurs.[7] But unlike some interpretations of Gestalt and Buddhism, a process approach emphasizes that the present moment is deeply informed both by past experiences and future anticipations, that is, by its history and its aims: “process thought is quite aware that the past informs the present while Gestalt tends to dismiss the past lest it get in the way of present awareness.” (Jackson 14) Focusing on a present (a “Now”) understood as arising out of influences from the past and subtly guided by future aims—as set out by process philosophy—“would put the Gestalt emphasis on awareness in a richer field of operation than mere environmental contact.” (Jackson 15)

            The therapeutic process must subtly negotiate ways of freeing the client from rigid, habitual past modes of feeling and thinking, while exposing any hidden agendas or self-defeating aims. This is accomplished by drawing attention to these influences from the past as they manifest in the client’s present experience, while highlighting the shift in aims and purposes that emerge naturally in the client’s ongoing process. It is important to keep in mind that each new occasion of the psyche feels and integrates its own past moments of experience in an especially insistent manner. Thus ingrained character traits, habitual patterns of repression, and unconscious aims and purposes are recreated moment to moment, shaping each new occasion according to one’s unique personality template. Here we have the psyche, and therapy, understood as a process. “Whitehead enables us to view fixation in temporal duration within the experiencing subject. There is no single overarching moment or event that locks the future in the grip of the past. . . . The fixation comes through the process of the subject’s tenth-of-a-second by tenth-of-a-second responses which form into a routing of life with a definite pattern. . . . The problem lies not ‘back there’ but ‘in here’, in the person who is prehending conformally.” (Jackson 34) A process theory of psychotherapy calls for the transformation of these habitual patterns of psychic integration through the interruption of this repetition of form, and by the introduction of novel understandings and possibilities, thereby opening up the client to richer feeling and more intrepid aims.

            Whitehead describes these higher aims as seeking intensity of experience and the Adventure of life. Since Whitehead suggests that these universal aims are constantly informing all actuality, the counselor’s role becomes one of facilitating this innate inner drive towards wholeness, trusting that the client’s own process will point them in the proper direction if allowed to emerge organically. Whitehead argues that in every moment the Universe provides an “initial aim” to help guide us to these new possibilities. We are given freedom not as a “general capacity built into human nature, but a specific freedom in each new situation. To exercise that freedom is to choose . . . the possibility that makes us free.” (Cobb 49-50) A major task of the spiritual path is learning to discern the direction being offered by the universe, by the Tao, one might say, amidst all the other impulses, thoughts, and feelings that arise moment to moment.

            Process thinking would strongly support the widely accepted idea that the therapeutic relationship is the key to successful counseling. But there is a difference in how process thought conceives of the client-counselor relationship. The therapist role is cast more in terms of a “midwife,” as someone who assists a natural process that is guided from deep within the client’s unconscious. The therapist “will know they are at most midwifes . . . They do not cause the growth. It is not up to them to predetermine where the growth will lead.” (Cobb 52) Although we cannot completely “trust the process,”—a phrase sometimes heard when the counselor doesn’t know what else to say!—we can trust the patient’s “inner healer,” the force operative in the universe always aiming for growth and health, or for intensity and beauty as Whitehead would have it. (see Jackson 165) This understanding resembles Stanislav Grof’s characterization of how therapy is conducted when working with nonordinary states of consciousness: “The task of the facilitator or therapist (the term is used here in the original Greek sense of assisting to heal) is then to support the experiential process with trust in its healing nature, without trying to change it.” (Grof ASD 167)
 
V. Transpersonal Psychology
 
            When we add on those subtle feelings flowing into unconscious experience from beyond the body-brain-psyche matrix, we move into the transpersonal dimensions and open up a broader and deeper notion of spirituality. Maslow’s later theories on peak experiences and Grof’s research into psychedelic states represent the transition from humanistic psychology into transpersonal psychology, the fourth force, with its emphasis on extraordinary experience, ultimate values, and spirituality. Assagioli’s “Psychosynthesis” and Jung’s later psychology also fit into this school of thought. However, all of them struggle to find adequate interpretive tools to ground their explorations in the “farther reaches of human nature.” (see Maslow 1976) Whitehead’s philosophy is especially helpful for conceptualizing a coherent way of thinking through these radical notions (a least for traditional psychology) of higher values, a collective unconscious, peak experiences, and the superconscious. “Jung, Frankl, Maslow, and Assagioli are struggling for a break-through in psychology that will embrace the realm of values. . . . They can be enriched, however, by the ontological vision of process thought which carefully locates values within its metaphysical system. Their intuitions toward spiritual values would thus be secured beyond instinctoid needs, innate trajectories, free-floating values, and an abstract superconsciousness.” (Jackson 216)

            Grof’s Holotropic Breathwork technique beautifully displays how the various dimensions of a process understanding of feeling and counseling come together. In Grof’s pioneering methodology (also applied for guiding psychedelic therapy sessions), the client uses bodily relaxation and heightened breathing to help free up material from the unconscious. Through this process, depth of feeling from the body, normally repressed by chronic muscle tension and breath restriction, starts to flow into conscious awareness. Furthermore, the alterations in blood chemistry brought about by more rapid breathing induce an altered state by its effect on the brain’s neural activity (feelings). Loud, evocative music is used to directly influence the psyche’s experiential patterns.[8] The facilitator plays a strictly supportive role, a “midwife” to the process, trusting the client’s inner guide (the client’s “initial aim,” for Whitehead). Grof’s method for guiding Breathwork and psychedelic sessions thus relies on activating depth of feeling from the body, the brain, and the psyche’s unconscious processes, providing emotional catharsis accompanied by transformative psychological insights and often powerful revelations about the nature of self and reality. Through this method, and other transpersonal techniques, we find a basis for addressing patients’ wider concerns and feelings about the nature of the world, the meaning of existence, and the purpose of the universe—the same questions explored for thousands of years in Asia by Confucians, Taoists, and Buddhists.
                       
            Let me conclude by considering three levels of wholeness as described by John Cobb. Regarding individual spirituality, Cobbs says that we need more than to be centered in a body fully open to its feelings and impulses—we cannot go back to Eden. “A wholeness centering in spirit is far more difficult to attain than a wholeness centering in body; it must include all the aspects of the psychophysical life, whereas wholeness centering in body or emotions is necessarily attained by destroying reason, will, and spirit or preventing their emergence.” (Cobb 27) The second level involves finding wholeness within a community: that is, wholeness as a personal wholeness in a whole community. (see Cobb 34) However, the individual must not be absorbed or lost in communal feeling, rather, the ideal is community created and shared by spiritually aware individuals. “A mutually participating community of self-transcending selves will be very different from a tribal community. The appropriation from others will not be mere conformation to dominant emotions, attitudes, and opinions. It will instead be selective integration of what is most original and creative in the potential contribution of these others.” (Cobb 37) Finally, there is the wholeness expressed in a global awareness of the world community, of the yearnings and purposes that we have in common with all humanity. “Global consciousness will not take adequate root in us until we sense the depths of our actual unity with all other people and even with the whole biosphere. Only as we feel that the suffering of other persons and the destruction of other species diminishes us will we be able to bring our actions into line with what is required by our self-transcending spirit.” (Cobb 37)
 
 
References
 
Assagioli, Roberto. [1965] 1976. Psychosynthesis. Hobbs, Dorman and Co.; New York: Penguin Books.
 
Cobb, John B., Jr. 1977. Theology and Pastoral Care. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
 
Ellenberger, Henri, F. 1970. The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry. New York: Basic Books.
 
Grof, Stanislav. 1985. Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death and Transcendence in Psychotherapy. Albany: State University of New York Press.
 
Grof, Stanislav. 1988. The Adventure of Self-Discovery: Dimensions of Consciousness and New Perspectives in Psychotherapy and Inner Exploration. Albany: State University of New York Press.
 
Jackson, Gordon E. 1981. Pastoral Care and Process Theology. Landon, MD: University Press of America.
 
Lowen, Alexander. [1975] 1976. Bioenergetics. Coward, McCann and Geoghegan; New York: Penguin Books.
Maslow, Abraham. [1971] (1976). The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. The Viking Press; New York: Penguin Books.
 
Pearls, Fritz. 1969. Ego, Hunger, Aggression. New York: Random House/Vintage Books.
 
Progoff, Ira. [1956] 1973. The Death and Rebirth of Psychology: An Integrative Evaluation of Freud, Adler, Jung and Rank and the Impact of Their Insights on Modern Man. The Julian Press; New York: Magraw-Hill paperback edition.
 
Reich, Wilhelm. [1931] 1972. Character Analysis (3rd enlarged edition). New York: Simon and Schuster.
 
Schultz, Duane. 1975 A History of Modern Psychology (second edition). New York: Academic Press.
 
Whitehead, Alfred North. [1927] 1985. Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect. The Macmillan Co.; New York: Fordham University Press.
 
Whitehead, Alfred North. [1929] 1979. Process and Reality; An Essay in Cosmology. Corrected edition: David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne, eds. Macmillan Publishing Co.; New York: Free Press paperback edition.
 
 
 
                       
 
 
 


[1] Although a bit out of date now, Duane Schultz’s A History of Modern Psychology offers an excellent introduction to this subject.

[2] Ira Progoff’s insights are helpful for understanding the legacy of psychoanalysis.

[3] Although Whitehead often uses the term “feeling” in a broad metaphysical sense, these deeper feelings (or prehensions) are also the source of our conscious emotional experience, as well as sensation, perception, and thought.

[4] In this article, I am drawing heavily from Gordon Jackson’s book: Pastoral Care and Process Theology. Although the book’s title properly suggests his religious orientation, most of his observations concerning psychotherapy apply equally well to secular or scientific outlooks.

[5] The Family Institute at Northwestern University; Lynne Knobloch-Fedders, Ph.D., January 31, 2008; “The Importance of the Relationship with the Therapist.”  https://www.family-institute.org/behavioral-health-resources/importance-relationship-therapist

[6] “Transference is the projection of feelings, out of the past onto a contemporary.” (Jackson 130)

[7] Gestalt Therapy is a psychotherapeutic technique developed by Fritz Peals.

[8] Whitehead points out that music is one of the most significant ways to induce emotional reactions. “Music is particularly adapted for this symbolic transfer of emotions, by reason of the strong emotions which it generates on its own account.” (Whitehead 1927, 84)
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