This book maps the course of human development from the earliest stages of ego development to the highest stages of ego transcendence. "I find it a psychologically more pertinent synthesis of the claims, experiences, and insights in transpersonal development than Wilber's paradigm. It is neater, more parsimonious, and more powerful." -- James N. Mosel This new edition is a thorough revision of the first edition. Drawing on both psychoanalysis and analytical psychology and on both Eastern and Western spiritual sources, the book maps the course of human development from the earliest stages of ego development to the highest stages of ego transcendence. Washburn formulates an important paradigm for transpersonal psychology and clearly distinguishes it from the other major paradigm in the field, the structural-hierarchical paradigm of Ken Wilber. In Washburn's view, human development is a spiral movement played out between the ego and its ultimate source: the Dynamic Ground. Ego development in the first half of life moves in a direction away from the Dynamic Ground; ego transcendence in the second half of life spirals back to the Ground on the way to a higher union with the Ground--whole-psyche integration. Washburn's spiral paradigm helps explain why human development has the character of a journey of departure and higher return, of setting out into the world and then finding one's way "home." This new edition more effectively integrates key psychoanalytic and Jungian ideas by placing them within a developmental framework that resolves their contradictions. Washburn's paradigm stresses both the biological roots and the spiritual potentialities of the psyche and is sensitive to the ambivalences, dualisms, transvaluations, and higher syntheses of life. "Washburn brings together many insights from psychotherapy and from meditation in an incomparably illuminating map of emotional-spiritual processes of transformation." -- Donald Evans Table Of Contents Preface to First Edition Preface to Second Edition Introduction 1. Transpersonal Theory: Two Basic Paradigms The Dynamic-Dialectical Paradigm The Structural-Hierarchical Paradigm Choosing Between the Paradigms Conclusion 2. The Body Ego Original Embedment The Emergence of the Ego from the Dynamic Ground and the Initial Appearance of the Great Mother The Splitting of the Great Mother Conflict with the Great Mother and Primal Repression The Body Project, the Oedipus Complex, and Primal Repression Conclusion 3. The Body Ego: Cognitive and Affective Development The Presymbolic Stage The Referential-Protosymbolic Stage The Symbolic-Protoconceptual Stage Conclusion 4. The Mental Ego The Mental Ego's Crisis of Awakening in Adolescence Earning Being and Value in Early Adulthood The Mental Ego and Cognition The Mental Ego's Difficulties at Midlife Conclusion 5. The Unconscious The Dynamic Ground The Instinctual-Archetypal Unconscious The Body Unconscious Primal Repression The Personal Unconscious Conclusion 6. Meditation: The Royal Road to the Unconscious A Definition of Meditation Meditation and Prayer Meditation and the Unconscious Meditation Before and After Crossing the Threshold of Primal Repression Beyond Meditation Conclusion 7. Regression in the Service of Transcendence Stage One: Withdrawal from the World Stage Two: Encounter with the Prepersonal Unconscious Conclusion 8. Regeneration in Spirit General Features of the Regeneration Process Specific Features of the Regeneration Process Conclusion 9. Integration Dualism Transcended: The Coincidentia Oppositorum The Horizons of Integrated Life Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index line to separate header from information |