Reformulation of L2-7

Superscripts refer to Notes provided in the book, but not reproduced here. Note that formulae are represented slightly differently. Italics in the text are shown in maroon italic here.

At the second level, a person feels distinct from the environment because the body and its functioning become the dominant reality. A person’s identity is felt to be embedded in bodily structures and functions, that is to say in voluntary and visceral activities. This is the realm of instincts and reflexes. Control of these is therefore equivalent to self-control and mastery of reality. Focus on the body is associated with an identity drive for vitality without which endeavours are weakened, intentionality suffers and life itself is put at risk. Vitality manifests as health, vigour and intense physical activity. It is associated with the urge to stay alive, and hence safety and survival. Supplies of concentration are essential in this approach. Without deliberate focus and careful attention, exercise, for example, cannot be engaged in beneficially and safely.

Bodily functions and intentional physical activity (like sport) can be attended to and affected primarily through the use of image (L-II). Dieting, for example, is as much about body shape as physical health or fitness: indeed much dieting is unhealthy. Because experiential primacy lies in image, image-based thinking, perception and memory are used in therapies rather than words and ideas. The Alexander technique, for example, is a body-based form of psycho-therapy which uses posture and images of the body to heal disturbance; and so does dance therapy. Most forms of behaviour therapy, like desensitization, are also image-driven and body-based.⁶

Self-expression using the body demands muscular and mental tension to maintain position and readiness, and movement to allow for coordinated directed responsiveness. Intense, coordinated and rhythmic exercise is satisfying and leaves a person feeling relaxed and invigorated, even exhilarated. By contrast even minimal physical activity with which the person is not properly identified leads to exhaustion or enervation, and generates the potential for illness or accident. A failure to ground one’s self in one’s body leads to simple activities like talking, breathing or running becoming uncoordinated and dysfunctional. Modern methods of teaching sports like tennis and skiing frequently use image. Teachers seek to activate identity processes like commitment (e.g. to the ski edges) rather than focusing on the mechanics of bodily performance.

A person functioning well in this system is healthy, fit and energetic; whereas being unhealthy, unfit, or debilitated reveals dysfunction. Exhaustion is the signal of emerging dysfunction. The typical threat is prolonged exposure to perceptions of danger, generally called stress. Stress is associated with lapses in concentration, loss of energy and eventual physical illness. Stress-based fatigue, sometimes called depression, frequently leads to further misuse of the body, most seriously by overuse of alcohol and drugs (medicinal and addictive). The proper vital response is enthusiastic exercise, but people may allow themselves to lapse further into a state of lassitude.

The stress-reducing effect of exercise is recognized by popularizers of healthy living. Exercise in the Western tradition is primarily oriented to toning up the voluntary musculature, although effects on internal organs like the heart are recognized.7 In the Eastern traditions, exercises to enable control over internal organs are common. In Chinese Qi-gong, for example, physical exercise is primarily developed to benefit internal organs.

The characteristic identity disorder is probably the psychopathic- hysteric personality, with psychopathy appearing mainly in men and hysteria mainly in women. Such people seem to be fixed in vital being, cannot properly use emotion or value to link to others, and lack proper access to higher level identity development.⁸

People maximally identified here find their vocation in work which uses the body and requires concentration on its functioning. Sports professionals, physical education teachers, singers, musicians, dancers and physiotherapists must all concentrate on using their bodies well and helping others do so. Interpersonal relations depend upon engaging in joint physical activity: the obvious example is sexual activity, whose beneficial effect appears to be well-established at last. Bodily activation and interaction also occur in dancing, sport and brawls.

Just as the conventionalist approach to ethical choice submerged individuals in the group, vital being seems to do likewise in the sense that all bodies are similar. Sports, for example, can be promoted and adopted all over the world without people feeling their personal or cultural identity is being threatened. (This is not true of sensory-based things like decoration or cuisine.) When we later examine the institution that concerns itself with the use of bodies: popular morality with its strictures in regard to sex drugs and violence, we find again a tendency to suppress individual differences and preferences. (Note that the identity disorder at this level, the psychopathic-hysterical personality, reveals popular morality being dramatically violated.)

Another link to conventionalism is noticeable. The ethical aspiration of this approach is for continuity. This aspiration is paralleled in the vital realm by the psychological drive for safety and survival, wishes for immortality, and the perception of death as extinguishing identity.

The duality when using the body is between instinctual function (or activity) and symbolic function. This duality is again a source of controversy. Theorists argue, for example, about whether dream imagery is to be seen as purely reflex and biological or whether it is a symbolic production. Activity and receptivity, the previous duality, cannot easily be distinguished in bodily function because being receptive may be an active process and vice versa. Interestingly, Freud emphasized that instinctual functioning combined both active and passive components.⁹ Instinct is inescapable and vital being is necessarily built on and constrained by the body’s reflex and automatic tendencies. The use of bodily functions for identity development requires the deliberate application of images which are the simplest form of symbol. So symbolic activity, as found for example in professional dance, is growth-promoting.

At the next level, symbolic and instinctual activity cannot be differentiated and identity once more becomes externally located and diffusely defined.

Superscripts refer to Notes provided in the book, but not reproduced here. Note that formulae are represented slightly differently. Italics in the text are shown in maroon italic here.

At the third level, the dominant reality is emotional because identity development depends on emotion (L-III) having primacy. Existence is now embedded in an all-enveloping ground of feelings and emotion-laden imagery called ‘psychical reality’ by Freud, and the ‘inner world’ or ‘inner reality’ by modern psychoanalysts. There is an identity drive for attachment which leads people to value others. Whenever one person is valued intensely by another (or a group), each becomes significant, symbolically and practically, for the other. Feelings develop in the person and a sense of taking on an emotional role follows. The inner world is therefore contingent upon supplies of value and is pervaded by a good-bad polarity.

Emotions invariably produce symmetrical or complementary pairings: anger, for example, may engender anger or fear. The pair (anger-anger or anger-fear) is the whole over which identity is spread. Each person is, and acts as if he or she is, just one part of that whole — whether or not it consciously feels that way to them. Identity depends on being whole (by definition), and the drive to attach oneself flows from this part-status. Permanent or even temporary separation is the principal threat because it signifies loss of part of one’s identity — and hence loss of identity or psychic death.

Self-expression involves the use of feelings; and satisfaction is about emotional containment i.e. taking on an emotional role which maintains and holds certain feelings. One may use other people, animals, things or places, or even fantasies to contain emotions. The aim here is to activate or dispose of pleasant and unpleasant feelings by one of two means: either the feeling is modified by using a defence (like displacement or suppression); or it is relocated within oneself (introjective identification) or elsewhere (projective identification). The term identification is used to emphasize that feelings here are part of one’s identity (and not just a transient experience).

When things go wrong, feelings are not properly contained and a person feels bad. In this situation, emotions are dumped or evacuated unfairly on to the nearest available person or object — a common enough observation in family and organizational life. The handling and exchange of feelings and emotional roles is the focus of analysis in some forms of dynamic psychotherapy.¹⁰

Modification and relocation of feelings can generate confusion, particularly if the awareness of those feelings is suppressed. Even more serious is the temptation for a person to split good feelings from bad feelings. If this happens, things and relationships are perceived and created as entirely good (and so embraced), or entirely bad (and so avoided or attacked). Such poor functioning is destructive. In reality, there is a need to contain, express and cope with both positively- and negatively valued feelings in ourselves and in others. Such good functioning is constructive. Anxiety is the experiential signal that destructiveness is imminent or in process in reaction to a threat. As destructiveness increases, the individual searches for scapegoats and becomes progressively more paranoid.

Destructive people generate intense emotional states in those involved with them. People whose destructiveness is oriented towards being good, needed or loved are typically supported and exploited rather than confronted, and therefore receive little assistance. People whose destructiveness is oriented towards being bad, unwanted or hated are regarded as immature or disturbed and are confronted and rejected.

The identity disorder associated with an inability to handle this system is known as primitive, infantile or borderline personality. People with this disorder seem to be fixed in emotional being, cannot properly use ideas to maintain their equilibrium, and lack proper access to higher level identity development.¹¹

Interpersonal relations are built around the generation and exchange of emotions: a husband and wife may evoke feelings which create emotional roles in which (say) one is forever hurt and the other constantly irritated. Some people welcome and use emotion, find intense attachments congenial, and are prepared to live out roles based on emotional experiences. They take up vocations like social work and dynamic psychotherapy. People who resist taking on and changing emotional roles in response to others who are emotion-based tend to be described as hard or cold.

Although personal feelings and value preferences now enter identity, one person is not fully distinct from others. Continuing the above example, a woman may have repetitive relation ships with apparently different men, all of whom turn out to feel hurt and miserable with her. Her feelings are not dominating the relationship as it seems on the surface, but rather evoking their complement and completion in his feelings (and vice versa). This corresponds to the situation in the pragmatist approach to ethical choice where the chooser’s own values appear to dominate because they fit within an ideal emotionally invested by others.

Values activate emotional being, so we now have an explanation for the intensity of feeling that is mobilized in defence of values and value systems. Emotional being makes it easy and natural for people to feel critical and antagonistic toward rival value systems and their adherents. Only where their own value system insists on tolerance and respect are people likely to contain and master these feelings.

The duality here is that between mind-based experiences and body-based experiences; or more briefly, mind-body: perhaps the most notorious of philosophical controversies. The modern debate commenced over 300 years ago when Descartes proposed dualism in preference to mentalist (higher level) or materialist (lower level) solutions to the problem of existence. Psychologists have also puzzled over whether emotions are primarily perceptions of body changes (the James-Lange theory) or whether the body reacts in response to mental emotions (the Cannon critique). In the present way of thinking, bodily states of anxiety, fear, joy and so on provide the stabilizing core of identity, while mind-based states (similarly labelled) offer the potential for growth through the clarification of values (meanings) associated with the feelings.

The intangibility of mental states and the unambiguous nature of bodily states make these two seem irredeemably distinct. Yet by turning inwards again, it becomes possible to insist that man is a psychosomatic unity or a unique embodied mind with distinct boundaries.

Superscripts refer to Notes provided in the book, but not reproduced here. Note that formulae are represented slightly differently. Italics in the text are shown in maroon italic here.

At the fourth level, an identity implies existence as a separate being — and at last the notion of an enduring psychological self is apposite. The dominant reality may now be properly described as individual. Experiential primacy is accorded to ideas (L-IV) — because ‘the self’ is, in essence, an idea. The self is a stable abstraction which reflects and establishes continuity, psychic boundaries and internal structure, despite the flux of feelings and corresponding self-images, and despite varying sensory inputs and bodily changes.

A person feels embedded within a world of other similar people. So concern for privacy emerges in order to maintain self-boundaries and ensure uniqueness. The identity drive is for self-esteem and the essential supply to meet this need is respect. Respect covers affirmation and approval of both the positive and negative aspects of the individual. All aspects of the self are seen as contributing something essential to the unique whole. Respect for oneself is a correlate of receipt of respect from others, which itself depends on respecting others. Vocations which express the self abstractly and depend on approval from others include that of author and actor.

Satisfaction comes from acceptance by other people in the environment. Ventilation of feelings, for example, is therapeutic when this is met by no more than the listener’s acceptance. (By contrast, ventilation supporting emotional being requires certain feelings to be contained by the listener.) Because acceptance is the basis of all social life, rejection and contempt are direct threats to identity. Self-expression takes the form of establishing and articulating stable entitlements and developing dynamic adaptations to the entitlements of others. Many forms of therapy are based on such assumptions.¹² Interpersonal relations work best when participants’ entitlements are similar in key respects and not too much adaptation is demanded of either. Each person is then likely to be intuitively understood and respected by the other, and any conflicts may be resolved by negotiation and reciprocity.

In order to obtain a continuing supply of respect, people may adapt to such an extent that their feelings and actions are no longer consistent with their idea of themselves. This is the essence of dysfunction. Being false or artificial in this way is commonly associated with excessive, insufficient or inappropriate entitlement claims. Functioning well means being genuine and owning uniquely personal and private wishes, emotions, memories and thoughts, whether they are desirable or undesirable, honourable or dishonourable. These are used to maintain a sense of reality. Shame is the experiential signal generated by the urge to become false by hiding or covering up the true self.¹³

Persistent rejection by significant others and failure to assert oneself leads eventually to collapse. If this occurs in childhood, a characteristic persistent identity disorder known as narcissistic personality results. Such people seem to be fixed in individual being, cannot properly use intuition within relationships, and lack proper access to higher level identity development.¹⁴

The ethical dimension is now emerging ever more strongly because individual being is where the self becomes at last whole, stable, bounded and unique. Such a self is capable of being explicitly valued and socially protected. It is the assumption of distinct private individuals with their entitlements and their need to adapt that underpins notions of basic freedoms, personal duties, and positions in a social structure. There is an obvious direct link to the individualist approach to ethical choice because it is not possible to do what is advantageous to oneself without a clear conception of a distinct self. The need for respect from others to maintain self-esteem and the importance of acceptance mean that individualist choices do not neglect the social dimension entirely.

The new duality is that of the self and the other. The assumptions of this approach mean that an other is sought who resembles the self. This raises the possibility of confusion. Even ideas, the underpinning of individual identity, are not easily localized within just one person. Yet there must be a distinction between self and other if a person’s separateness and privacy are to mean anything. This difference is found in the logic of the dualities. The ‘self’ (i.e. self-concept or self-representation) is evidently the stabilizing core of any individual identity. The ‘other’ provides the growth-promoting potential because the other’s entitlements and provision of respect and acceptance put pressure on the person to adapt and grow.

The tension within the duality is resolved by the self becoming inconceivable without an other, and the other becoming inconceivable without a link to the self. In other words, the relation between self and other becomes the new dominant reality. It is immediately obvious that there are many ‘others’, each defined by relationships. So any identity dependent on a net of relationships has boundaries which are, once again, externally located and diffusely defined.

Superscripts refer to Notes provided in the book, but not reproduced here. Note that formulae are represented slightly differently. Italics in the text are shown in maroon italic here.

At the fifth level, identity is conceived largely in interpersonal terms, and the dominant reality is relational. A person is fully differentiated and autonomous but embedded in networks of relations. The identity drive in this system is the realization of a person’s full potential — self-development or self-actualization to use the term popularized by Maslow.¹⁵ The essential supplies are recognition within the relationship, especially of unrealized potentials within the self.

Interpersonal relations depend here on exchanging and sharing inner experiences in such a way that an intersubjective reality develops. This spontaneously evolves as the relationship deepens. Each person is regarded as autonomous and is expected to pursue their own interests and inclinations within ever-changing relationships, which they partly shape. So satisfaction in relationships takes the form of gratification of desires. Frustration indicates lack of satisfaction and threatens the relationship. Because people, hidden potentials, relationships, and even what is actually desired in a relationship, are complex and intangible, such matters can only be recognized, assessed and handled through intuition (L-V). Intuition is therefore accorded experiential primacy.

Self-expression and recognition take place through the establishment and evolution of relationships whose stability and quality depend on mutuality and dialogue. Mutuality implies the capacity to tolerate all varieties of experience and to relate experiences (the self’s or the other’s) to the circumstances. Mutuality is non-coercive, so alterations in the relationship require a process of dialogue to protect autonomy and to provide an intuitive way to resolve difficulties. Most humanistic psychotherapists work with the assumptions of this system.¹⁶

Successful mutual gratification of personal wishes means that relationships are felt to enable achievement. If any vocation can be assigned here, it is probably that of the entrepreneur who uses intuition, builds relationships, activates networks, and insists on personal autonomy to get things done. Natural leaders do much work in groups, form strong inter-personal bonds and depend on their intuition.

Identity development is equated with growing within relationships. So aggressive behaviour of a partner, for example, should not lead to distancing, retaliation or passive tolerance, but rather to an attempt to discover its source — possibly in misunderstanding or fear. Causing suffering to the other in a relationship must be accepted as inevitable at times. But it should be dealt with by open acknowledgement, attempts at reparation, and a determination to prevent a repetition.

Scapegoating or non-recognition are typical identity threats because they preclude effective and genuine relations. Functioning well within a relation generates a sense of liberation. Poor functioning is recognized by inhibition which blocks the flow of intuition, leads to frustration of wishes, and generates claustrophobic feelings in relationships. Psychotherapists regularly find inner conflicts underlying inhibitions. Guilt is the characteristic experiential signal of inhibition, because it is a form of internal punishment for non-actualized wishes that are reasonable and appropriate in a relation. Deterioration with increasing guilt and worsening inhibition ultimately produces a state of psychological paralysis.

Conflict, guilt and inhibition characterized those middle class neurotics treated by Freud, and on which his theory of the id, ego and superego is based.¹⁷ Neurotic personality is therefore the characteristic identity disorder. People who are neurotic seem to be fixed in relational being, cannot properly use identification, and lack proper access to higher level identity development.¹⁸

In the communalist approach to ethical choice, benevolence (the cardinal virtue) and altruism (the ethical aspiration) require people to operate autonomously and yet to view themselves as existing within relationships. In other words, communalism is linked to or based upon a relational approach to identity. Maintaining good relations is time-consuming and demanding, so institutions which support this effort are needed in society: the most important of these being ethical teachings.

The duality here is that of the group versus individuality. Relationships automatically create groups and the group provides the stabilizing core of identity within the approach. The growth-promoting potential which emerges is the individuality of each person in shaping the relationship and group reality. The degree to which one’s self-concept should be submerged and shaped by the group identity is never straightforward. It is not even clear, for example, whether a person’s apparently spontaneous actions and private intuitions are a property of the individual or whether social reality interferes so much that they are a product of the group. Psychoanalytic therapists and psychologists tend to see the individual as determining features of the group. Whereas group and family therapists and sociologists argue that the group has the primary reality and that individual experiences and actions are manifestations of the group process.

At the next level, groups are constituted and defined by individuals, while individuality and autonomy are simultaneously provided by the group. In short, existence becomes truly social.

Autonomy is now expected to operate responsibly. This results in an identity with boundaries which are, once more, experienced as internal and distinctly defined.

Superscripts refer to Notes provided in the book, but not reproduced here. Note that formulae are represented slightly differently. Italics in the text are shown in maroon italic here.

The notion that a person is a social being has been the identity assumption so far. Social being takes for granted that a person is inextricably and self-consciously part of — that is to say fully identified with — a range of social institutions, especially its moral institutions. In other words, experiential primacy is accorded to identification (L-VI). Because the form of identity is social, the dominant reality is also social. Social existence is embedded in a particular society at a point in history. Each person participates in society’s evolution and is moulded by its features.

Functioning well implies whole-hearted involvement in society: whether by supporting or by disputing its various institutions and aspirations. Conversely poor functioning is expressed by a detachment from societal life, aimlessness, and the neglect of social values and institutions. Dysfunction leads to a lack of concern for posterity and a parasitic attitude toward the community. The felt sign of such disturbance is the experience of alienation. Further deterioration leads to social isolation and ultimately to reclusion or vagrancy.

Each person has an identity drive for orderly participation in communal life. For this to be possible, an individual must be seen as inherently capable of carrying responsibility, and able to discharge it on behalf of other autonomous people. Without a supply of responsibility, there is no way to modify society and alter the course of history. So responsibility simultaneously aids the individual and develops the community. Through accepting responsibility, a person can be socially recognized, socially channelled, and socially valued.

Given responsibility, individuals can impact on the social environment only through being intentional: the inner ability and will to pursue purposes. Satisfaction for social beings is about operating with a sense of purpose, and this means working. Intentional activities, commonly (but not solely or necessarily) entrepreneurial or employment work, are also the basis for self-expression. Pursuing a purpose in society involves organizing and managing. Organization within a social body (also called an organization) provides for stable legitimated roles from which it becomes possible to influence society. Managing is the dynamic counterpart of organization whereby people and events are suitably orchestrated to produce desired results.

Interpersonal interaction within this approach is based on the joint pursuit of a shared purpose, with the parties to the interaction taking on different roles. Identification with the purpose and role activates and energizes participants. In so far as the social value of the end result sustains the participants, conflicts centre on details of emphasis and achievement rather than on personalities. Whether the group is a family, a business or a nation, proper matching of personal characteristics and potentials to management needs, purposes and roles is of the essence in ensuring both personal fulfilment and effective group functioning.

The nature of social being corresponds to the legitimist approach to ethical choice because responsible participation in society depends on rules being set. Without rules applicable to all, social life, with its demand for cooperation and the handling of differences between people, would be impossible. Rules would be useless if it were not inherent in our nature to follow them. It is the explicit recognition of oneself as a social being that allows us to accept the authority of rules and to view them as valuable tools. Social being also ensures that the legitimist aspiration for the common good is meaningful and urgent. This correspondence suggests that social being exists at the sixth level of a theoretical framework for identity development.

The typical vocation which requires this form of inter-personal relating is that of an official or bureaucrat in an organization or government department. Life-long campaigners and radicals are also rooted in social being.

In this way of thinking, there are two stages in resolving any difficult situation. The first is to recognize that it means asserting a social identity which is a complex of enduring values and current purposes; and the second is to gain clarity about the precise responsibility and purposes of those involved. A variety of existential and radical therapies have taken social reality as their starting point.¹⁹

Social isolation, loss of purpose and removal of responsibility are identity threats. These social conditions are simultaneously generated if there is a breakdown of the social environment on which each of us absolutely depends. The resulting identity disorder is the traumatized personality. People who are traumatized seem to be fixed in social being, cannot properly use imagination to heal themselves, and lack proper access to the transpersonal dimension.²⁰

The duality found here is that of role and situation. It is never entirely clear whether an identification or acceptance of responsibility is based on a current social role or whether it is taken on because it is called for by the social situation. Roles are the stabilizing core of any social identity, while evolving social situations provide the growth-promoting potential. Situations may enable roles to be modified, extended or abandoned. The urge to transform self, society and historical reality can only be realized by accepting roles and responsibilities. In other words, this duality appears to relate to the ‘social continuity — social change’ duality of the conventionalist approach to choice: but there continuity was the aspiration and change the constraint while here continuity in role is limiting and change according to the new situation offers hope of improvement.

To resolve the duality would mean creating an identity in which the identity core is relevant to any social role or social situation. Such an identity would have to transcend culture and time. So once again identity boundaries become external and diffuse, this time potentially encompassing the entire cosmos.

Superscripts refer to Notes provided in the book, but not reproduced here. Note that formulae are represented slightly differently. Italics in the text are shown in maroon italic here.

At the seventh level, identity transcends both the person and society by its emergence from a dominant reality referred to as transpersonal by psychologists, as transcendental by philosophers, and as mythic by historians of religion. Within this identity, a person experiences an inter-connectedness and commonality with all things going beyond the present time, place and culture. A person is now embedded in what is variously termed the cosmos, the All, the universe, the ground of Being, Absolute Reality, or God.

Transpersonal being is often recognized in the form of a soul, spirit, divine spark, higher self, overself, or superconscious. The identity drive within this system is spirituality, and the essential supply is faith. Without faith, the transpersonal realm where God is to be found cannot be recognized. Paradoxically, supplies of faith are replenished by recognizing the realm. Just as we become aware of participation once social reality is recognized, so we become aware of faith once transpersonal being is recognized. Awareness is the beginning of knowledge, so faith cannot possibly be opposed to know ledge. Nor is it equivalent to superstitious credulity as hard-headed people fear.

Both faith and the sense of the sacred are part of the structure of consciousness, as impartial religious scholar ship suggests and as every religion asserts. There have been many personal and social accounts of the experience of God as the ground and ultimate, and their uniformity is striking and undeniable. It seems that to live as a human being is to be divinely inspired — to have a soul — whether we understand and accept this or not. This idea is the perennial philosophy — a phrase coined by Leibniz and popularized by Aldous Huxley. It follows that doubt is the experiential signal of a failure to thrive in the transpersonal realm. Being utterly overwhelmed, deep despair and wilful cynicism are serious threats to spiritual functioning. Note that atheists and sceptics must draw on trans personal powers to gain their sense of conviction, even in the process of deriding spiritual notions.²¹

Experiential primacy is accorded to the creative imagination (L'-VII). So God is always approached imaginatively with the use of symbols, metaphors and analogies. Satisfaction comes from union with others, or anything and everything outside oneself. If God is defined as a being or a form of being and described using ultimate values, as in most Western religions, then union with God (or God’s love, will etc) is sought. The conscious realization of union depends on the imagination. It is assumed that the transpersonal realm is entered by the imagination, and that it is also created and sustained by it. We have already noted (in Ch. 5) that union involves establishing and maintaining a state of harmony through active attunement.

Union enables the perception of helpful meaning in personal and impersonal events. The absence of union leads to a form of blindness expressed as a denial of meaning or a felt sense of meaninglessness. The question of whether life or history has a meaning or purpose is a question about whether there is a further point of reference distinct from man. The answer, as provided by sages and spiritual movements within every culture throughout recorded time, is unequivocally in the affirmative. This reference point is the ground of all being: God. History, even cosmic evolution in this way of thinking, is essentially the slow but progressive unfolding of human consciousness towards an ultimate state.

Well-functioning creative people express themselves within the transpersonal system in a detached way. At the height of inspiration, they typically feel as if they are a vehicle for something beyond themselves. They often characterize their creativity in terms of an active pursuit of ultimate values; and in their attempt to reach the essence of something, perceive that essence in all things and all things in that essence. The person functioning well feels serene. When functioning poorly, a person is filled with anguish, and suffers a sickness of the soul. Further deterioration can provoke a state of torment and spiritual crisis: the dark night of the soul.

The various identity disorders mentioned so far are associated with a deficient use of transpersonal awareness. However, I have been unable to find any identity disorder specific to this system. I suspect that social disorder and loss of integrity is the consequence of severe failure. If so, man in the modern world needs to be in search of a soul.

Some schools of psychotherapy, like Jung’s analytical psychology and Assagioli’s psychosynthesis, have recognized the soul and see God as an irreducible experience of man. Their ideas are drawn from religious philosophies, esoteric traditions and mythology. Therapies like transcendental meditation, psychic healing, yoga, faith healing, and simple prayer all assume an inner source of healing which can be activated by deliberate attunement. Teachers like Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Aurobindo and Krishnamurti were really therapists of the soul. In their view, the soul is the source of all creativity, energy, harmony, and ultimate value.²²

Interpersonal relationships within this approach strive towards union, maintenance of faith and hope, and recognition and reconciling of differences. Attunement allows each person to understand what cannot be said by another, and to bridge deep personal or social gulfs. Religion is the social institution which is dedicated to defining and affirming the significance of transpersonal reality. It allows people to share an understanding of existence, and provides them with a mode of interaction with the intangible. The religious life is the characteristic vocation supported by transpersonal being. Poets too may be primarily identified here.

Transpersonal being naturally corresponds to the transcendentalist approach to ethical choice. To make choices within this approach requires activation of the self as a channel to absolute guidance — which is presumably and probably of divine origin. Opening this channel has been discussed already, but it is worth noting that spiritual paths exist which build on each of the approaches to identity development. For those identified with the sensory being there are techniques of heightened sensory stimulation, for example, using chants and incense; for those identified with bodily activity there are techniques like T’ai Chi Ch’uan, hatha yoga and ritual dance; for those identified with emotional reality, there are devotional methods; for those identified with ideas there are philosophical techniques; for those identified with intuition and relational being there is prayer and dialogue with God; for those identified with social being, there is the religious vocation and the way of service to others; for those identified with transpersonal being there is the mystical path.

The perennial theological controversy is whether God is utterly other and separated in essence from man (i.e. transcendent), or whether God is ultimately identical with man or within man if only this is realized (i.e. immanent). This dialectic of immanence-transcendence is a version of the duality of soul-God. The soul is the stabilizing core of transpersonal being, and God contains the growth-promoting potential seeking to draw the soul on upward to an ever-greater awareness and deeper experience of spirituality.

This final duality may be overcome by mystical techniques to generate an identification with the void, pure nothingness, which lies unthinkably outside of existence. This experience, typically fostered in Eastern traditions, has been described with a number of terms — enlightenment, liberation, samadhi, nirvana, satori, moksha, wu.

Spiritual enlightenment involves a sensation of an intense white light and dissolution of the self. It is a sustained experience of oneness, non-dual cognition of ultimate reality, and dissolution of the separate personality into the universal mind. But this is no longer a human identity, and it lies beyond our present concern with values and social life.