Christ as Archetype

<p>This article aims to introduce transpersonal psychology approach, especially its meeting point with the world of Sufism in Islam. The article tries to answer the following questions, are: 1) what is the difference between transpersonal psychology and other psycho-logical theories, and; 2) in what aspect transpersonal psychology shares a common ground with Sufism? The writer finds that there is a significant difference between transpersonal psychology and other psychological theories, especially psychoanalysis and behaviorism. Psychoanalysis emphasizes the deepest meaning of human behavior with a tendency to override the meaning of physical aspect. Behaviorism has been strongly influenced by pure science. In fact, research on the human psyche aspect cannot be done simply by applying pure science. Meanwhile, transpersonal psychology tries to fundamentally reinforce and develop human potential, both physical and mental aspects. Moreover, this approach reaches supernatural and spiritual aspects of human beings. The writer tends to argue that the common ground shared by the mystical aspects of the Western world, in the perspective of transpersonal psychology, and Sufism in Islam lays in the fact that each entity puts great emphasis on managing and increasing the spiritual aspect of human.</p><p class="Standard"><strong>Keywords</strong>: transpersonal psychology, tasawuf, common ground.</p>

Beauty, a Path to Christ:A Psychological and Neuroscientific Perspective Samantha Mattheiss (bio) and Joseph R. Laracy (bio) Catholic philosophers and theologians, ancient and modern, have described the attractiveness of beauty for centuries, explaining that beauty attracts because it flows from truth; and vice versa—beauty attracts to truth.1 In the patristic era, perhaps no one put it as powerfully as St. Augustine when he wrote, Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had not existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.2 [End Page 149] In the twenty-first century, Pope Benedict XVI, in his homily at the Mass for the Inauguration of his Pontificate stated, "There is nothing more beautiful than to know Him and to speak to others of our friendship with Him. The task of the shepherd, the task of the fisher of men, can often seem wearisome. But it is beautiful and wonderful, because it is truly a service to joy, to God's joy which longs to break into the world."3 Christian writers have further discussed the effects of beauty on the beholder, positing that beauty elicits overall well-being, points to the infinite,4 invites one to engage in the objective experience of beauty,5 and evokes selfless acts of love.6 Given the attractiveness of beauty and its influence in inviting further acts of love, it seems fitting to explore the role of beauty in evangelization. In fact, the Pontifical Council for Culture has proposed that beauty is integral to evangelization: Beginning with the simple experience of the marvel-arousing meeting with beauty, the via pulchritudinis can open the pathway for the search for God, and disposes the heart and spirit to meet Christ, who is the Beauty of Holiness Incarnate, offered by God to men for their salvation. It invites contemporary Augustines, unquenchable seekers of love, truth and beauty, to see through perceptible beauty to eternal Beauty, and with fervor discover Holy God, the author of all beauty.7 As suggested by the Pontifical Council for Culture, beauty can be instrumental in inviting others upon a search for God. Moreover, in consideration of the intersection of faith and science—where truth lies evident not only in ancient Church traditions but also in modern sciences—we might look further at the psychological and physiological reactions elicited by beauty. From a psychological perspective, does beauty truly elicit marvel, pro-social and selfless acts of love, as well as [End Page 150] interest and motivation? Notably so, the field of psychology offers extant evidence of the countless positive effects of beauty. Psychologists have characterized aesthetics across multiple domains, including beautiful landscapes and mathematical theories. They have also noted its effects on physiological human processes. In the following sections of this paper, we discuss physiological evidence for the role of beauty in evangelization. Beauty Defined by Psychologists and Theologians Both theologians and psychologists have wrestled with the essential question: What is beauty? Scholars from both fields have sought to describe the objective features of aesthetic stimuli. Theologians have identified both the objective and subjective properties of beauty: "Two elements would enter into an account of the beautiful—the form of some object, and the splendor with which it strikes the beholder."8 Hans Urs von Balthasar names these two elements, like St. Thomas Aquinas, species (or forma) and lumen (or splendor).9 Theologians, in sum, often refer to the experience of the beauty of Christ...

Sometimes more is less, even within scholarly writing, known for its all too frequent verbosity. This paper follows approaches that sparingly used words, even to the point of using no words at all. One example of this strategy is a renowned psychology article describing its author’s unsuccessful self-treatment of his own writer’s block, which led to a blank paper (Upper, 1974). Another, in the area of interventions, which are commonly seen as demanding empirical support to evaluate risk-benefit analyses, involved a meta-analysis of the effectiveness of parachutes in preventing deaths. This research was presented, but never conducted—as no controlled trials containing a non-parachute condition could be identified, which again led to a blank paper (Gordon & Pell, 2003). Both of these papers, which used fewer than the minimum number possible for a word count, illustrate the value of research that went less-far than presenting results about null hypotheses to being themselves completely null. Throughout a long career in transpersonal psychology, this paper’s author has similarly called for silence as the only proper response as a scientist toward considering anything labeled as non-dual—and has characterized all attempts to articulate conceptualizations directly about this topic as futile (e.g., Author, 1983, 2002, 2015). This does not mean that all transpersonal notions within psychology are incoherent or worthless, but those that attempt to pontificate directly about ultimate states, such as alleged states (or non-states) of the non-dual (or similar supernatural conjectures that defy empirical efforts required for falsification), reside outside of science’s limits. However, speculations about such notions continue unabashedly within transpersonal psychology. Consequently, in this paper the author painstakingly exhausts every possible good scientific conceptualization about the non-dual from a psychological perspective, but finds none to explicate. This does not discount the value of speculation from non-scientific vantages, such as the legitimate uses of poetry and art to describe and depict the non-dual in imaginative ways not to be taken literally and concretely. It also does not limit psychology as a science from pointing to the possibility of the non-dual, including studying people’s claims—and their concomitants about such a possibility, but psychology as a science has not yet meaningfully engaged directly in exploring this topic, and it appears thoroughly outside of any cogent scientific framework to entertain. Although this paper is written as succinctly as possible, readers are encouraged to take in the vast scope of this inquiry’s unstated implications in order to arrive at their own conclusions, and to consider deeply whether there might be any value in continuing efforts within transpersonal psychology, as Watts (1972) proudly proclaimed, “to say what cannot be said, to eff the ineffable, and to unscrew the inscrutable” (p. xiii). Perhaps it would be desirable to conclude that this paper constitutes the last word on this troubled subject, but not a word is offered, as even one word would be too much—so there is no last word. Alas, only silence suffices for conceptualizing the non-dual from the limited framework of science.

Despite major scientific and technological developments and a growing environmental awareness the magnitude of the environmental decline continues to grow and no consensus on the most adequate responses has been achieved. To understanding this complex scenario, the study of human behaviour and the social and psychological factors influencing the relationship between people and the environment is paramount. A view supported by studies that have shown that the omission of these factors limits the impact of environmental strategies. In the case of climate change, this was acknowledged by the IPCC (2013) in its last report where the need of more psychological, social and cultural research was highlighted. I commenced this study with the strong belief that the failure to develop more effective pro-environmental approaches reflects the lack of understanding or consideration of such psychological and social processes from the scientific community and those who seek to communicate the problem to society. In such a context, I decided to explore how the inclusion of psychological and social considerations can improve people’s responses to controversial environmental problems. Firstly, exploring how people interact with the natural environment, for instance through analyzing the importance attributed to environmental issues and the type of responses favored when addressing these challenges. Secondly, testing strategies that might increase support for pro-environmental actions integrating psychological and social considerations in the particular context where the research is conducted. This dissertation reports a study aimed at exploring the complex interaction between people and the environment from a psychological perspective, considering the social influences and the need for integration between disciplines. Using mixed methods I studied how people perceive and respond to environmental problems, how important they are deemed, the type of actions favoured and the critical factors influencing those processes, including the role of science as driver of pro-environmental changes. People’s perceptions and responses to climate change were the starting point for this analysis, which was then extended to the place attributed to the environment in society. Accordingly, the main goal of this research was exploring psychological processes and social factors involve in the development of pro environmental behaviours, considering individual and social facilitators and constraints, in a frame of growing global environmental awareness in the specific context of Queensland, Australia, in order to improve pro-environmental strategies. This thesis is submitted partly by publications. It includes a review and new analyses of the survey “Attitudes to Climate Change” conducted in Australia, showing strong associations between climate change beliefs and people’s perceptions (levels of concern, importance, experienced effects, harm perceived) and responses to the problem (as demonstrated by pro-environmental behaviour scores), and the strong ideological component involved in the climate change debate in this context. The qualitative research that followed the survey re-analysis is presented through four papers. They identify and characterize the main narratives associated with the climate change debate in this context, clarifying conflicting positions, their internal tensions and the behavioural implications. New psychological insights were produced to understand the internal tension between maintaining non-sustainable practices and expressing environmental concern. The psychological mechanism of dissociation was used to evaluate its heuristic value in the contemporary Australian context not only explaining the type of responses to environmental problems but also how people internally deal with such a conflict. The findings demonstrated an adaptive mechanism that allows people to justify a non-sustainable lifestyle through low impact actions that reduce internal tension, mitigating the impact of cultural contradictory messages (e.g. overconsumption and sustainability) with generally poor environmental outcomes. At the same time this prevalence of low impact, isolated and individual responses were interpreted as an expression of the psychologization of environmental problems, reflecting the rejection or the minimum consideration of the social and especially political component of climate change or any other environmental problem. People’s discourses showed the perception of pro-environmental actions as optional, non-integrated to lifestyle changes, and not associated with community participation or political action. Overall, people perceived minor and individual responsibility rather than a social or cultural change in progress or a collective environmental commitment. The final experiment integrated those findings in the design of alternative frames to overcome the limitations associated with traditional climate change communication. Results showed the influence of place identity in increasing the support for climate change-related actions. The integration of the environment as part of people’s social identity overcomes in-group/out-group separations that are critical in the polarised climate change debate. Moreover, the frame seems to evoke self-transcendent and non-materialistic values that reflect the importance of the environment for people’s wellbeing avoiding the separation environmental-social issues described when explaining the dissociation phenomenon. The place identity frame had a positive impact despite belief type. Using the findings from the previous sections, these psychological and social factors are integrated into a communication model that favors people’s participation in environmental problem-solving using a psychological learning perspective.

Bu çalışma, N. Mustafa Merter'in transpersonel psikoloji perspekti-finden yazdığı "Psikolojinin Üçüncü Boyutu: Nefs Psikolojisi ve Rüyaların Dili" adlı eserinin analizini sunmaktadır. Bu eser, modern psikoloji tarihine henüz yeni adım atan transpersonel psikolojiye İs-lam sufizmi bağlamında bir giriş yapmakla kalmayıp, aynı zamanda ben-ötesi psikolojinin bireyi anlama ve tanıma açısından taşıdığı ye-rel önemi vurgulamaktadır

Spirituality, ethics, and morality have increasingly gained prominence as interpretative keys for understanding human development and rethinking integral education in educational contexts. This chapter aims to examine, from a psychological perspective, how spirituality, morality, and ethics are articulated and how they can underpin projects of integral education oriented toward humanization, the critical exercise of consciousness, and openness to transcendence. It begins with a conceptual clarification in which spirituality is understood as the search for meaning and self-transcendence, morality as a system of sociocultural norms and practices, and ethics as critical reflection on human action, highlighting its structuring role in the constitution of subjectivity. Subsequently, a theoretical-reflective literature review with a qualitative approach is developed, encompassing different psychological traditions: Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy; contributions from Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology; existential and phenomenological approaches; the Psychology of Religion; psychoanalytic contributions; cultural and systemic perspectives; Positive Psychology and neuroscientific investigations of spirituality; studies in moral and developmental psychology; Historical-Cultural Psychology; and Liberation Psychology. The analysis indicates that, despite being grounded in diverse epistemological matrices, these approaches converge in recognizing spirituality as a dimension that organizes the experience of meaning, guides moral judgment, and qualifies ethical action, transcending the confessional sphere and assuming psychological, pedagogical, and social relevance. Finally, it is argued that integrating spirituality, ethics, and morality into integral education— in dialogue with Ken Wilber’s Integral Psychology and with proposals that incorporate spiritual resources and practices—fosters self-knowledge, the cultivation of values, and the capacity to attribute meaning to existence, contributing to the formation of more critical, responsible, and internally integrated subjects.

This article demonstrates the connectedness of members of the human family with each other and all of creation; discusses the nature of injury, sin, and woundedness; and offers examples of how cultivating countercultural appreciation for silence and self-knowledge is the basis for reconciliation and justice. the article also draws significantly on a number of spiritual traditions and contemporary psychology to flesh out the teachings of jesus, "love your enemies, bless them that curse you, and pray for those who persecute you." although many traditions are cited, the primary lens used for viewing this teaching is midrash, or reflection, on the aramaic language and culture--the language and culture of jesus. with these various spiritual and psychological perspectives, connections are drawn between our community of inner voices, our exterior community, whether family, intentional, activist, or faith community, and the global/cosmic community.

Journal Article Pluralistic Ignorance Across Issues and Over Time: Information Cues and Biases Get access JACOB SHAMIR, JACOB SHAMIR Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar MICHAEL SHAMIR MICHAEL SHAMIR Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Public Opinion Quarterly, Volume 61, Issue 2, August 1997, Pages 227–260, https://doi.org/10.1086/297794 Published: 01 August 1997

In this chapter we reflect on ways in which scientists’ social positions and subjectivities afford opportunities or obstacles to knowledge. Starting from the observation that psychology has until now rarely been used to contribute to feminist science and technology studies, we ask how epistemological concepts developed by feminist and critical race theorists may be further developed by considering psychological processes. Focusing on feminist standpoint theory and analyses of epistemological ignorance we first discuss the relations between social position, experience, and knowledge or lack thereof. Drawing on social psychological and psychoanalytic reflections and studies we then illustrate how social position is translated into lack of knowledge about systems of oppression and privilege and we ask how this process may be disrupted by “affective shifts.” We conclude with some preliminary ideas on how scientists may use reflexivity and affective dissonance in order to identify and tackle their own psychological mechanisms of not knowing or ignorance in their relation to social positions of oppression or privilege.

Chronic alcoholism can profoundly influence marital relationships, but the nature of the effect of alcohol abuse on sexual interactions is not clear. This article critically reviews information on the prevalence of sexual disorders and possible endocrine, neurologic, and psychologic processes that may mediate the effects of chronic alcoholism on male sexual functioning. Emphasis is placed on a conceptual model that integrates biologic and psychologic perspectives, moving away from simplistic unidimensional approaches to the study of the behavioral effects of this serious medical and social problem.

At first glance, there are certain similarities between performance in surgery and that in competitive sports. Clearly, both require exceptional gross and fine motor ability and effective concentration skills, and both are routinely performed in dynamic environments, often under time constraints. On closer inspection, however, crucial differences emerge between these skilled domains. For example, surgery does not involve directly antagonistic opponents competing for victory. Nevertheless, analogies between surgery and sport have contributed to an upsurge of research interest in the psychological processes that underlie expertise in surgical performance. Of these processes, perhaps the most frequently investigated in recent years is that of motor imagery (MI) or the cognitive simulation skill that enables us to rehearse actions in our imagination without engaging in the physical movements involved. Research on motor imagery training (MIT; also called motor imagery practice, MIP) has important theoretical and practical implications. Specifically, at a theoretical level, hundreds of experimental studies in psychology have demonstrated the efficacy of MIT/MIP in improving skill learning and skilled performance in a variety of fields such as sport and music. The most widely accepted explanation of these effects comes from “simulation theory,” which postulates that executed and imagined actions share some common neural circuits and cognitive mechanisms. Put simply, imagining a skill activates some of the brain areas and neural circuits that are involved in its actual execution. Accordingly, systematic engagement in MI appears to “prime” the brain for optimal skilled performance. At the practical level, as surgical instruction has moved largely from an apprenticeship model (the so-called see one, do one, teach one approach) to one based on simulation technology and practice (e.g., the use of virtual reality equipment), there has been a corresponding growth of interest in the potential of cognitive training techniques (e.g., MIT/MIP) to improve and augment surgical skills and performance. Although these cognitive training techniques suffer both from certain conceptual confusion (e.g., with regard to the clarity of key terms) and inadequate empirical validation, they offer considerable promise in the quest for a cost-effective supplementary training tool in surgical education. Against this background, it is important for researchers and practitioners alike to explore the cognitive psychological factors (such as motor imagery) that underlie surgical skill learning and performance.

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.

Religion in the Twenty-First Century

The paper introduces the "Founder Mode Entrepreneurial Experience" (FMEE), a novel therapeutic framework rooted in transpersonal psychology that reimagines entrepreneurial engagement as exposure therapy for individuals with Moral Scrupulosity Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). FMEE emphasizes confronting ethical dilemmas, embracing imperfection, and navigating moral ambiguities through mission-driven entrepreneurial activities. This approach not only facilitates desensitization to scrupulosity-related triggers but also fosters resilience, self-efficacy, and a purpose-driven mindset. Integrating transpersonal practices such as mindfulness, altruism, and intuitive decision-making, FMEE bridges personal healing with meaningful social impact. The manuscript underscores FMEE's transformative potential as a practical and spiritually grounded intervention for reducing moral rigidity and fostering holistic well-being. Implications for OCD therapy, transpersonal psychology, and social entrepreneurship are discussed, along with future research directions at the intersection of psychology and mission-driven innovation.

Overtourism is a problem of social and psychological perspective which is aggravated by the mismanagement of the destination. It can also be understood as an umbrella term which incorporates the unfavourable conditions created by means of several tourism activities. The present scenario of overcrowding by tourists, displacement of local population and loss of authenticity can be assumed that overtourism is a consequence of increasing volume of tourism industry in the twenty-first century. There are strong uncorroborated beliefs around overtourism formed by media and literature which are not concrete and need to be busted. Several impressions have been generated around the phenomenon of overtourism and overcrowding which has hampered the administration of a destination. This chapter identifies 11 myths of overtourism with the help of literature review and supporting examples have been given with each myth. The authors attempt to decipher the underlying stereotypes of overtourism in context of it being a recent phenomenon, its existence in the popular part of the cities and the realities of the solutions and perceptions of the concept.