Download as pdf or txt
Download as pdf or txt
You are on page 1of 191

Transpersonal Studies

he

International Journal of

Volume 29(2), 2010


Editors IntroductionGlenn Hartelius

Altered States During Shamanic Drumming: A Phenomenological Study


Anette Kjellgren & Anders Eriksson
A Chakra System Model of Lifespan DevelopmentK. Candis Best
SPECIAL TOPIC:

Transpersonal Feminism

Introduction to Special Topic SectionChristine Brooks & Courtenay Crouch

Unidentified Allies: Intersections of Feminist and Transpersonal Thought


and Potential Contributions to Social ChangeChristine Brooks

Ecology of the Erotic in a Myth of InannaJudy Grahn

Mothering Fundamentalism:
The Transformation of Modern Women into FundamentalistsSophia Korb

Psychospiritual Development of Female Adoptees


Raised Within a Closed Adoption System:
A Theoretical Model Within a Feminist and Jungian PerspectiveApril E. Topfer

The Word, the Body, and the Kinfolk: The Intersection of Transpersonal Thought
with Womanist Approaches to PsychologyJuko Martina Holiday

A Transpersonal Feminist Approach to Family SystemsIrene Sheiner Lazarus


The Wheel of the Year as a Spiritual Psychology for WomenValeire Kim Duckett

Eclipse (Poem)Judy Schavrien

War and Nature in Classical Athens and Today: Demoting and Restoring

the Underground GoddessesJudy Schavrien
A Reply to CaprilesJohn Abramson

Transpersonal Studies
he International Journal of

Volume 29(2), 2010

Table of Contents
Editors IntroductionGlenn Hartelius

iii

Altered States During Shamanic Drumming: A Phenomenological Study


Anette Kjellgren & Anders Eriksson

A Chakra System Model of Lifespan DevelopmentK. Candis Best

11

SPECIAL TOPIC:

Transpersonal Feminism

Introduction to Special Topic SectionChristine Brooks & Courtenay Crouch

28

Unidentified Allies: Intersections of Feminist and Transpersonal Thought


and Potential Contributions to Social ChangeChristine Brooks

33

Ecology of the Erotic in a Myth of InannaJudy Grahn

58

Mothering Fundamentalism:
The Transformation of Modern Women into FundamentalistsSophia Korb

68

Psychospiritual Development of Female Adoptees


Raised Within a Closed Adoption System:
A Theoretical Model Within a Feminist and Jungian PerspectiveApril E. Topfer

87

The Word, the Body, and the Kinfolk: The Intersection of Transpersonal Thought
with Womanist Approaches to PsychologyJuko Martina Holiday

103

A Transpersonal Feminist Approach to Family SystemsIrene Sheiner Lazarus

121

The Wheel of the Year as a Spiritual Psychology for WomenValeire Kim Duckett

137

Eclipse (Poem)Judy Schavrien

152

War and Nature in Classical Athens and Today: Demoting and Restoring
the Underground GoddessesJudy Schavrien

153

A Reply to CaprilesJohn Abramson

180

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies


Volume 29, Issue 2, 2010
Editor
Glenn Hartelius

Manuel Almendro (Spain)

Senior Editor
Harris Friedman

Rosemarie Anderson (USA)

Coordinating Editor
Les Lancaster

Laura Boggio Gilot (Italy)

Assistant Editor
Maureen Harrahy

Sren Brier (Denmark)

Liora Birnbaum (Israel)


Jacek Brewczynski (USA)

Honorary Editor
Stanley Krippner

Elias Capriles (Venezuela)

Editors Emeriti
Don Diespecker
Philippe Gross
Douglas A. MacDonald
Sam Shapiro

John Davis (USA)

Special Topic Editors


Christine Brooks
Courtenay Crouch
Associate Managing Editors
Jessica Bockler
Charles Flores
Cheryl Fracasso
Adam Rock
Rochelle Suri
Associate Circulation Editor
Adrian Andreescu
Editorial Assistant
Lila Hartelius

ii

Board of Editors

Michael Daniels (UK)


Wlodzislaw Duch (Poland)
James Fadiman (USA)
Jorge N. Ferrer (Spain/USA)
Joachim Galuska (Germany)
David Y. F. Ho (Hong Kong, China)
Daniel Holland (USA)
Chad Johnson (USA)
Bruno G. Just (Australia)
Sean Kelly (USA)
Jeffrey Kuentzel (USA)
S. K. Kiran Kumar (India)
Charles Laughlin (Canada/USA)
Olga Louchakova (USA)
Vladimir Maykov (Russia)

Publisher
Floraglades Foundation, Incorporated
1270 Tom Coker Road
LaBelle, FL 33935

Axel A. Randrup (Denmark)

2010 by Floraglades Foundation, Inc.


All Rights Reserved

Mario Simes (Portugal)

ISSN (Print) 1321-0122


ISSN (Electronic) 1942-3241

Rosanna Vitale (Canada)

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Vitor Rodriguez (Portugal)


Brent Dean Robbins (USA)
Charles Tart (USA)
John Welwood (USA)

Editors Introduction

he International Journal of Transpersonal Studies


(IJTS) has a three-fold mission: to build and enrich
the literature of transpersonal psychology and
related fields, to encourage the publication of empirical
research in these fields, and to expand transpersonal
studies by cultivating the use of a transpersonal approach
to other areas of scholarship. The current issue advances
all three of these goals.

Early in the transpersonal fields history it was
recognized that other disciplines of study contributed
to transpersonal psychology (Boucouvalas, 1980). Later
it became clear that transpersonal approaches might
also develop in non-psychology areas such as sociology,
education, anthropology (Walsh, 1993), medicine
(Achterberg, 1992), and business (Schott, 1992). Some
fields not carrying the transpersonal name have also been
seen as closely related, such as ecopsychology (Davis,
1998) and somatics (Walsh, 1993). These disciplines
arguably belong under the umbrella of transpersonal
studies, to which this journal is devoted.

In addition to cultivating transpersonal disci
plines, IJTS also supports the development of transper
sonal approaches within fields with which there are
significant points of overlap. Contemporary feminism is
one of these fields, and the Special Topic in this issue
offers papers that explore a transpersonal approach to
feminist thought and research. These are previewed by
Special Topic editors Christine Brooks and Courtenay
Crouch in the editoral introduction to that section.
In this way, a major portion of the issue is devoted to
pursuing the third of the journals goals.

The second goal, promotion of empirical work in
transpersonal psychology, is furthered by one of the two
general articles also presented here: a phenomenological
study by Anette Kjellgren and Anders Eriksson on altered

states experienced during shamanic-like drumming.


The result is a clear description of the experience of
shamanic-like journeying, richly studded with the
personal language of the participants. While shamanic
experiences have been of great interest to transpersonal
psychologists, this study is one of a small number that
investigate the processes associated with shamanic
journeying in a systematic way.

The importance of empirical work within
transpersonal studies cannot be overemphasized.
Transpersonal fields are rich with theory and philosophy,
and while there is some evidence that the trend is toward
more research within tranperonal psychology (G. Rothe,
personal communication, June 6, 2011), there is much
low-hanging fruit in terms of opportunities to test
transpersonal ideas empirically. For this reason, IJTS
gives precedence to empirical submissions.

A second paper, by Candace Best, offers a
lifespan development model based on the traditional
Indian chakra system. In this view, the fetal stage and
approximately the first 16 months after birth correspond
to the root chakra, which sits at the base of the spine.
This chakra is associated with the rudimentary processes
of existence. From here the average individual passes
through stages associated with another three of the
seven chakras: the sacral, navel, and heart chakras.
The heart chakra corresponds to the stages of middle
adulthood through old age. For individuals with
exceptional spiritual development, the throat, brow,
and crown chakras may also open, bringing with them
higher human capacities. This paper represents an area
not yet well developed within transpersonal psychology,
and thus particularly noteworthy.

Additionally, the issue contains a response by
John Abramson to the extensive work of Elias Capriles

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 29(2), 2010,


pp. iii-iv Journal of Transpersonal Studies
International

iii

presented in Volume 28(2) of this journal. Capriles paper


offered a detailed critique of three major transpersonal
theoristsWilber, Grof, and Washburnfrom the
perspective of Dzogchen Buddhism. Abramsons
comments acknowledged much of Capriles critiques of
Wilber, but offered several correctives, mainly along the
line that Capriles work did not take into consideration
Wilbers most recent theoretical advances. This is a
familiar theme in such rebuttals of Wilbers critics, due
in part to the fact that Wilber shifts his views frequently
(MacDonald, 2007). In this case the point is accurate, as
Capriles was re-stating critiques written some years prior
(also published in IJTS; see Capriles, 2000); Wilbers work
was not the major focus of this paper. Abramsons points of
correction are thus fair-minded and specific, and a helpful
clarification.

IJTS is committed to advancing dialogue and
scholarship within transpersonal studies, and the volunteer
staff that helps to produce the journal is growing in both
size and skill. Without them, the many authors who have
shared the fruits of their work, and the reviewers who
have helped to strengthen those efforts, the journals
contributions would be impossible. My sincere thanks to
each and every one.

Glenn Hartelius, Editor


Institute of Transpersonal Psychology
Achterberg, J. (1992). Transpersonal medicineA
proposed system of healing. ReVision: A Journal of
Consciousness and Transformation, 14(3), 140-148.
Boucouvalas, M. (1980). Transpersonal psychology: A
working outline of the field. Journal of Transpersonal
Psychology, 12(1), 37-46.
Davis, J. (1998). The transpersonal dimensions of
ecopsychology: Nature, nonduality, and spiritual
practice. Humanist Psychologist, 26(1-3), 60-100.
MacDonald, D. A. (2007). Wheres that wascally
wilber? The challenges of hitting a moving target.
PsychCritiques, 52(13).
Schott, R. L. (1992). Abraham Maslow, humanistic
psychology and organization leadership: A Jungian
perspective. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 32(1),
106-120.
Walsh, R. (1993). The transpersonal movement: A
history and state of the art. Journal of Transpersonal
Psychology, 25(2), 123-139.

iv

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Altered States During Shamanic Drumming:


A Phenomenological Study
Anette Kjellgren & Anders Eriksson
University of Karlstad
Karlstad, Sweden

This study investigated the experiences gained from a 20-minute shamanic-like drumming
session. Twenty-two persons participated and made written descriptions afterwards about
their experiences. A phenomenological analysis was applied which generated 31 categories,
that were organized into six themes: 1) The undertaking of the drumming journey, 2)
Perceptual phenomena: visual, auditory and somatic, 3) Encounters, 4) Active vs. Passive role,
5) Inner wisdom and guidance, and 6) Reflections on the drumming journey. A multitude
of detailed experiences were described such as visual imagery, hearing sounds, encountering
animals, as well as gaining insights. Participants generally appreciated the drumming session
and few negative effects were noted. The conclusion made is that shamanic-like drumming
can be a valuable supplement to other psychotherapeutic techniques.

he drum is an important tool in indigenous


cultures for achieving shamanic visionary
trance states (often described as journeys).
Drumming can be used alone or in combination with
singing or dancing. The main rhythm used in drumming
for shamanic purposes is typically a steady rhythm of
about 4 to 5 beats per second (Neher, 1962; Symmons &
Morris, 1997). These frequencies correspond to the theta
dominated activity in the brain (Neher, 1962), which
also seems to facilitate visionary experiences with vivid
imagery, altered states of consciousness and perhaps also
experiences of paranormal occurrences (Symmons &
Morris, 1997). During this journey the shaman is awake
and alert, and is able to move at will between ordinary
and non-ordinary reality (Maxfield, 1994). In the
worldview of a shaman, the purpose of such a journey
could be for example contacting the spirit world to gain
information about which medical plant to be used or how
to find food. This is done for an individual, a family, or
a community that seeks his or her help (Metzner, 2009).
Some features of altered states of consciousness
(ASCs) are perceptual changes, body image changes,
disturbed time sense, alterations in cognitive functions,
but also experiences best described as mystical or
ineffable (cf. Kjellgren, 2003). ASCs can be induced by
a variety of techniques such as sensory isolation (e.g.,
prayer, meditation, flotation tank), sensory overload (e.g.,
rhythmic drumming), physiological methods (e.g., long

distance running, hyperventilation) or by psychoactive


substances (e.g., LSD, ayahuasca, MDMA).
However, different opinions on the concept
altered states of consciousness exist, and the term is
subject to several definitions. A classic definition by Tart
(1972) is a qualitative alteration in the overall pattern and
mental functioning, such that the experiencer feels his
consciousness is radically different from the way it functions
ordinarily (p. 1203). Another definition by Krippner (1972)
is a mental state which can be subjectively recognised by
an individual (or by an objective observer of the individual)
as representing a difference in psychological functioning
from the individuals normal alert state (p. 1). In these
definitions, ASC is described as a recognised deviation in
psychological functioning compared to the ordinary baseline
normal state. Rock and Krippner (2007) have pointed
out a possible confusion in the discussion of altered states
of consciousness, where consciousness per se is confused with
the content of consciousness. They emphasize that the term
altered pattern of phenomenological properties should
be used instead of ASC, to minimize this confusion. This
is an important distinction, which needs to be discussed
further. Also, whether or not shamanic journeying states
are really altered states is, in fact, a contentious issue in the
literature (see, e.g., Krippner, 2002). For the present study,
we are using the term ASC as a way of describing subjective
alterations in psychological functions, as compared to the
experienced normal state.

International
Transpersonal
Studies, 29(2), 2010,
pp. 1-10 Journal of Transpersonal Studies
Altered
StatesJournal
DuringofShamanic
Drumming
International

In a historical perspective ASC might be


considered the worlds oldest healing method
(cf. Eliade, 1972). Ancient cultures and native
shamanistic societies have used consciousness
altering techniques for the purpose of healing and
wellbeing for persons suffering from diverse ailments.
Several scientific studies indicate positive and
healing effects for methods known to induce ASCs,
such as meditation (cf. Kjellgren & Taylor, 2008),
sensory isolation in flotation tanks (Bood et al.,
2006; Kjellgren, Sundequist, Norlander, & Archer,
2001), yoga (Kjellgren, Bood, Axelsson, Norlander,
& Saatcioglu, 2007) and psychedelic drugs in a
spiritual or clinical setting (Johansen & Krebs, 2009;
Kjellgren, Eriksson, & Norlander, 2009; McKenna,
2004; Morris, 2008).
Drumming as a method for achieving ASCs or
spiritual experiences also became popular in the New
Age or neo-shamanic movement in the Western world
(Bittman et al., 2001; Lindquist, 1997). The book,
The Way of the Shaman, by Michael Harner (1990)
has likely been one of the factors contributing to this
interest. Since the participants in the present study
were not shamans, we have used the term shamaniclike drumming instead of shamanic drumming, as
suggested by Rock, Abbot, Childargushi, and Kiehne
(2008):
Techniques may be conceptualized as shamaniclike insofar as they bear some relation to shamanic
techniques and yet depart from what may properly
be called shamanism. For example, listening to
monotonous drumming to facilitate soul flight on
behalf of ones community may be considered a
shamanic technique, while recreationally listening to
monotonous drumming to facilitate purported shifts
in consciousness is merely shamanic-like. (p. 80)
It was early pointed out by Walsh (1989) that
scientific research on drumming was rather neglected and
that such studies were needed. Since then several studies
have been performed, evaluating the phenomenological
effects and different aspects of monotonous drumming
such as change in mood and visual imagery, as well
as comparisons with other induction techniques or
instructions (Rock, 2006; Rock, Abbott, Childargushi,
& Kiehne, 2008; Rock, Abbott, & Kambouropoulos;
2008; Rock, Baynes, & Casey, 2005; Rock, Casey, &
Baynes, 2006; Rock, Wilson, Johnson, & Levesque,

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

2008; Woodside, Kumar, & Pekala, 1997). In the study


by Rock (2006) a thorough analysis of phenomenological
contents during rhythmic drumming (as well as for
other induction techniques and control condition)
was performed. As an extra manipulation control, this
study investigated the effects of a shamanic journeying
instruction (as proposed by Harner, 1990) about
how to perform the journey and also if an additional
religious information affected the outcome. Another
aim with this study was also to explore the origin of
the mental imagery. Several themes emerged in the
phenomenological analysis of participants experiences
such as predatory creatures, whirlpools, helping spirits,
obstacles, and religious mental imagery. Shamanic
journeying instruction coupled with religious instruction
were associated with the highest religious imagery, and
it was concluded taht most of the visual images were
primarily from autobiographical memories.
All techniques involving ASCs (both non-drug
as well as drug induced) are heavily influenced by a
persons set (expectancies) and the setting (environment
and circumstances) where the technique or method
is performed (Gustafson, 1991). We are interested in
analyzing the psychological experiences obtained during
shamanic-like monotonous drumming and how such
experiences are interpreted. Since we realized that the set
and setting are of great importance we deliberately chose
participants with an interest in transpersonal psychology
in the hope that their ability and enthusiasm to engage
in a task like this are superior to persons without these
interests. We also expect this sampling to generate rich
and elaborated descriptions.
Method
he aim of the present study was to make a
phenomenological analysis of the experiences gained
from a shamanic-like drumming journey in a group
of Swedish students of transpersonal psychology. Our
research questions were: a) What kind of experiences/
themes might emerge? b) Do participants experience
some kind of healing or beneficial effects of the
drumming journey?, and c) Are there any occurrences of
concurrent negative or disturbing experiences?
Participants
A total of 22 persons (3 males, 19 females),
mean age 48.45 years (SD = 12.62), participated in
a shamanic-like journeying drumming session. All
participants were students in a course on transpersonal
psychology at Karlstad University, Sweden. They had

Kjellgren & Eriksson

on average participated in similar drumming session


2.68 times before (SD = 3.75, range 0 15 times). For six
of the participants it was the first time.
Design
A shamanic-like drumming session was
performed (rhythmic live drumming) in a dimly-lit
room for 20 minutes. All participants were lying down
on mattresses on the floor. Instructions on how to
perform this imaginary journey were given before the
drumming started. Afterwards data was collected using
written reports.
Data collection
Data was collected on participants estimation
of the time duration of the session, the subjective
experience of the process, and the degree to which the
phenomenology of the event deviated from normal.
Duration estimation. Immediately after the
drumming stopped, participants were asked to write
down their estimation of the duration (in minutes) of
the drumming journey. The actual length (20 minutes)
was not known to the participants. They were not
informed beforehand that they were going to be asked
this question.
Drumming experiences. A questionnaire with
three questions was constructed for use in this study.
The questions were: 1) Please describe your experiences
during the drumming, 2) Was the drumming a positive or a
negative event? Please describe, and finally 3) Were there any
experiences during the drumming that you believe can have
any importance for your everyday life? The questionnaire
also included questions about age, gender, and number
of earlier experiences with drumming journeys. Each
participant filled in this in silence after the drumming
journey was completed. The questionnaires were already
distributed (upside down) before the drumming began,
in order to minimize distraction and movement in
the room. There was no time limit for filling in this
questionnaire. The data gathered here was used for the
phenomenological analysis.
Degree of experienced deviation from normal
state. As a supplement to the phenomenological
research, a set of quantitative data were also gathered
using the EDN (Experienced Deviation from Normal
state) questionnaire. This questionnaire consists of 29
statements (items), each responded to on a VAS-scale 0100 mm (endpoints 0 = No, not more than usually; 100
= Yes, much more than usually). Here are some examples
of the items: I saw scenes rolling by like in a film; I could

hear sounds without knowing where they came from;


Perception of time and space was like in a dream. All the
points obtained from these 29 items were averaged to
provide an index of experience (0 100). These values
reflect the total experience of deviation from normal
states. The scale reliability measurement Cronbachs
alpha for EDN was 0.94 in the present study. The EDN
scale has been used in several earlier studies (e.g., Bood
et al., 2006; Kjellgren et al., 2007; Kjellgren & Taylor,
2008; Kjellgren, Lindahl, & Norlander, 2009-2010;
Kjellgren & Buhrkall, 2010) with Cronbachs alpha
ranging between 0.91 0.97, which indicates very high
reliability for this scale. The validity of the scale has
been confirmed in studies where comparisons between
treatments such as relaxation in a flotation tank or yoga
with control conditions (relaxation in armchair and/or
resting on a bed) have been done (Kjellgren, Sundequist,
Sundholm, Norlander, & Archer, 2004; Kjellgren et
al., 2007). The EDN-scale has generated consistent
measurement across different conditions.
The EDN tests have been extensively used in
connection with flotation-tank research (e.g., Kjellgren
et al., 2001; Kjellgren, 2003). Typical EDN values after
an individuals first experience of sensory isolation in a
flotation-tank are about 30 EDN points and about 40
points on subsequent occasions. By comparison, the
experience of resting on a bed in a dark, quiet room
scores 15 EDN points (Kjellgren et al., 2004). There was
no time limit for response to this questionnaire. When
the questionnaire was completed participants tiptoed
out of the room in order to minimize disturbance and
interactions.
Procedure
Before the drumming started all participants
were informed that their participation was voluntary
and were assured of total confidentiality. They were
also informed that all the data reporting was to be done
independently. The participants were all gathered in a
room with mattresses on the floor. Before the drumming
began, all were instructed to perform a Lower world
journey as described by Harner (1990). The instruction
involved visualizing (closed eyes) a hole in the ground
as an entrance for the journey, then going through
a tunnel, and finally trying to find what was at the
end of this tunnel. They were instructed to search for
an answer or solution to a personally pre-formulated
question or problem area. They were also instructed to
visualize going the same way back to ordinary reality

Altered States During Shamanic Drumming

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

when the drumming journey ended (indicated by a


notable different drumming rhythm). All participants
laid down on the mattresses, the lights were turned off,
curtains were drawn to produce semi-darkness, and
then the live drumming (about 4 beat per second) was
performed by the first author. Twenty minutes later the
drumming was terminated by four sharp beats repeated
three times; thereafter the drum was beaten very rapidly
for 30 seconds. The light was then turned on. The first
author then asked the participants to write down their
estimation of the duration of the journey and then to fill
in the questionnaires. When all completed questionnaires
had been handed in, participants were invited to gather
again in order to talk freely and share their experiences.
They were all thanked for their participation.
Analysis
The participants written descriptions were
transferred to a Word file. Then, the Empirical Pheno
menological Psychological Method (EPP-method)
devised by Gunnar Karlsson (1995) was used in analyzing
the data. The EPP-method comprises an analysis in five
steps and was performed by the first and second author.
Step 1. This stage involved reading participants
descriptions carefully until a substantial understanding,
overview, and sense of the material was obtained.
The aim of this reading was to distinguish relevant
psychological phenomena. In this study, the descriptions
were read three times in no particular order. The reading
excluded the aim of testing validity or any specific
hypothesis.
Step 2. In the second step of the analysis, the
text was divided into smaller so-called meaning units
(MUs). This division is not based upon any rules of
grammar, but entirely upon the content the researcher
discovers and at places where a suitable shift in meaning
occurs. Here is a short example yielding two different
MUs: 1/ It felt dreamlike, exciting, and primitive but
2/ afterwards I was not able to remember everything that
happened. A total of 542 MUs were identified in the
written descriptions.
Step 3. During the third step, each MU was
transformed from the language of the participant to the
language of the researcher. This was the first abstraction
of the material. This transformation follows no specific
rules; however, everyday language is preferred to
psychological terminology. The purpose is to make the
implicit and underlying meaning of a phenomenon visible
and explicit. Two examples of transformed MUs (from

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

the examples above): 1) The participant described feelings


of an unusual state, and 2) The participant described
amnesia for some of the drumming experiences. All 542
MUs were transformed, so 542 transformed MUs were
transferred to step 4.
Step 4. In the fourth step, the 542 transformed
MUs were synthesized into categories. An attempt to
describe and answer the question how the phenomenon
expresses itself (noesis) and what the phenomenon
is (noema), were focused on in the categorization.
The categories vary in content depending upon the
phenomenon from which they originate. The categories
or situated structures were developed during processing
whereby repeated consultations of raw data continued in
a hermeneutic manner. This was the second abstraction
of the material. A total of 31 different categories emerged.
Three examples of categories that emerged were: visual
imagery, loss of memories, and encounters with animals.
All 542 MUs were used when these categories were
constructed.
Step 5. In this final step, the categories were
moved into more general themes or typological structures.
This is the third and last abstraction of the material. The
level of abstraction was decided according to the principle
that clarity should be attained without excessive detail.
The purpose was to reflect at a more abstract level. The
themes included categories that denoted various aspects
of the experience of participating in the shamanic-like
drumming: for example the theme Encounters was
composed by the following five categories: Encounters
with animals, Encounters with plants, Encounters with
insects, Encounters with humans, and Landscapes.
Reliability and validity
A trustworthiness test, the Norlander Credi
bility Test (NCT), was used for the phenomenological
analysis (Edebol, Bood, & Norlander, 2008; Norlander,
Grd, Lindholm, & Archer, 2003; Pramling, Norlander,
& Archer, 2003) in order to ensure reliability. It
was conducted by random selection of five of the 31
categories. Four of the transformed MUs were then
randomly selected from each of these five categories.
The material was given to two independent assessors.
Their assignment was to put the twenty MUs into the
five different categories. One of the tests yielded an 84 %
agreement, and the other test yielded an 80% agreement.
The overall agreement was thus 82%. According to
Karlsson (1995), high validity is ensured by following
the stages of the EPP method.

Kjellgren & Eriksson

Results
he Empirical Phenomenological Psychological
method (EPP; Karlsson, 1995) was used to analyze
the material. The analysis yielded 542 MUs from which
31 categories emerged. Each category illustrated a
special perspective on the phenomena studied and, when
considered as a whole, the categories can illuminate and
provide insight into experiences and meanings derived
from the drumming experience. The categories are
presented below (Table 1) in the approximate sequence
in which they emerged in the analysis. Each of the 31
categories provides interesting information, and even
more so if they are interrelated in a general structure. In
the last step of the analysis, the categories were further
abstracted and combined into six themes and will be
further discussed as such. The six themes are:

1. The undertaking of the drumming journey


(categories: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 27)
2. Perceptual phenomena: visual, auditory and
somatic (categories: 8, 9, 11, and 13)
3. Encounters (categories: 14, 16, 18, 20, and 22)
4. Active vs. Passive role (categories: 7, 10, 12, and
17)
5. Inner wisdom and guidance (categories: 19, 21,
25, and 26)
6. Reflections on the drumming journey (categories:
15, 23, 24, 28, 29, 30, and 31)
Supplementary quantitative data
Degree of experienced deviation from normal
state (EDN). The mean value derived from the group
was 34.88 (SD = 18.34, range 0.52-66.20).
Time perception. Participants estimated the
duration of the drumming journey in average as 15.5
minutes (SD = 5.40, range 6 30 min). The actual time
was 20 minutes.
Discussion
he aim of the present study was to make a
phenomenological analysis of the experiences gained
from a shamanic-like drumming journey. A multitude
of detailed and elaborated experiences were described by
the participants, including rich visual imagery, hearing
inner sounds, and gaining psychological insights. The
participants liked the drumming journey and stated
that it was a valuable and interesting method. Very few
negative experiences were documented. In the light of
both the written reports and the quantitative measuring,
it seems reasonable to conclude that the participants

Altered States During Shamanic Drumming

No.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

Category (Meaning Units [MUs])


The setting (10 MUs)
Aim (12 MUs)
Entry hole (17 MUs)
The tunnel (32 MUs)
Influence of the drumming sound (13 MUs)
Movements in different levels (8 MUs)
Alterations initiated by the free will of the
participants (8 MUs)
8
Bodily sensations during the drumming journey (8 MUs)
9
Visual imagery (8 MUs)
10 Experiences of being active with their bodies
(17 MUs)
11 Events are passively experienced or seen (33
MUs)
12 Sudden transformations (10 MUs)
13 Inner sounds (8 MUs)
14 Encounters with animals (32 MUs)
15 Reflections about power-animals (12 MUs)
16 Encounters with insects (5 MUs)
17 To be an animal (10 MUs)
18 Encounters with plants (17 MUs)
19 Emergence of memories (12 MUs)
20 Encouters with humans (13 MUs)
21 Emotions during the drumming journey (25
MUs)
22 Landscapes (29 MUs)
23 Problems during the drumming journey (36
MUs)
24 Loss of memory (7 MUs)
25 Processing of personal issues (26 MUs)
26 Insights (33 MUs)
27 Return to everyday consciousness (10 MUs)
28 Feelings after the drumming journey (7 MUs)
29 Descriptions about performance of the drumming journey (22 MUs)
30 Comparison with other similar experiences (35
MUs)
31 Evaluation of the drumming journey as a
method (27 MUs)
Table 1. Results of Analysis of Phenomenological
Categories

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

were induced into a mild altered state of consciousness by


the drumming, since their experiences to a great extent
seemed to differ from their normal state of being.
The six themes are discussed below. A few
illustrative citations from participants are presented (in
italics).
The undertaking of the drumming journey
This first theme refers to the descriptions given
about the experiences of participating in the drumming
journey concerning preparation and technical details
(e.g., the drum, entry hole, the tunnel) during the
drumming (categories: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 27). All participants
formulated an aim to themselves before the drumming
journey started. Common aims were questions about
health issues and personal relations. They pointed out
that they felt secure and comfortable in the group, and
that this factor was of great importance. When the
drumming began, participants visualized some kind of
entrance into the ground (a well; tree-root; pond) as a
starting point for the inner journey. After the entrance
they visualized/experienced passing through a tunnel.
Many different descriptions of what it looked like were
given (smooth; straight; dark; narrow) and the passage
through it were experienced in different ways such as
walking, flying, or crawling. For some it was easy, others
found it harder. Sooner or later all participants found an
exit from the tunnel and experienced entering into an
inner landscape (lower world). In this inner landscape
(many detailed descriptions of what it looked like
were given) participants experienced moving through
different levels of worlds or realms. In the worldview of
indigenous shamanistic cultures the concept of multiple
levels of reality is central (Metzner, 2009). Participants
also appreciated the rhythm of the drum and experienced
the sound as a healing source. They pointed out that
the drumming was felt as physical sensations in their
bodies and how these sensations facilitated the feeling of
actually undertaking the journeying. The drum was also
central in signalling the re-entry into normal reality; a
task the participants experienced as easy.
Perceptual phenomena: visual, auditory, and somatic
The second theme summarizes different
experiences of perceptual changes (categories: 8, 9, 11, 13)
that occurred during the drumming, phenomena usually
described as characteristics of altered state of consciousness.
The most common perceptual alterations described
were lively visual imagery. Encountering sceneries such
as kaleidoscope patterns, spirals, or different colors

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

were common, but also descriptions of more detailed


sceneries involving gardens, animals, humans, plants or
mushrooms. All things perceived were organic forms like
landscapes or living beings; nobody reported having seen
technological or man-made products or forms. Several
acoustic impressions were noted such as hearing flutes,
running water, songs or even the song of the mountain or of
the earth. An altered perception of the body was pointed
out, and described as either an increased sensitivity to
normal bodily functions (could hear my heartbeats; I felt
my aorta) or as physical alterations of functions (tears
were running from my eyes; my body changed form; I felt
light as a feather).
The participants reported on how the lucidity
and clearness of these experiences fluctuated during
the course of the drumming journey. The sensation was
described as fluctuating between a dreamlike irrational
and a clear focused state, maybe indicative of moving
in and out of an ASC. The perceptual alterations that
occurred might suggest that an ASC was achieved during
the journey. The supplementary quantitative measure
(EDN-scale) with a mean value of M = 35 strengthens the
assumption that an unusual non-ordinary mental state
was achieved, approximately equivalent to 45 minutes
of sensory isolation in a flotation tank (Kjellgren et al.,
2004). Another measure aimed at documenting possible
occurrence of ASC was the time-estimation measure.
Participants in general underestimated the duration
(about 25%) of the journey. Disturbed time perception is
one of the hallmarks of ASCs.
Apparently the intensity of the drumming
state could vary from a very mild experienced deviation
from normal state, such as meditative daydreaming
with just some perceptual alterations, to more powerful
experiences where convincingly detailed scenes pass by
similar to the experience being immersed in a film. The
state induced during the drumming includes several
of the important characteristics of ASCs. Despite the
discussion in literature regarding the question whether
shamanic-like drumming induces an ASC or not (cf.
Krippner, 2002), we would like to suggest that the state
during the monotonous drumming is best described as
an ASC.
Encounters
This theme comprises different kinds of encounters
(categories: 14, 16, 18, 20, 22) experienced during the
drumming journey. Close encounters with landscapes
and natural sceneries were commonly described.

Kjellgren & Eriksson

Sometimes the landscape was perceived from a birds eye


view, but mostly from the perspective of walking around
in it. In these inner landscapes different kinds of beings
were encountered, such as humans, animals, plants, and
mushrooms. The humans encountered often seemed to
be of native ancestry or from the past, generating an
exotic impression (the man with the leopard fur talked
to me, advised against going down the slope; the native
American presented some twigs to me). Several different
animals were seen, ranging from amphibians, reptiles,
insects, birds, and mammals. These meetings often had
a stark emotional charge (when I met the brown eagle,
waves of excitement flew through my body; The elephant and
I put our foreheads together and it warmed my heart, the
moment was full of grace) and were regarded as precious
moments. Participants wondered whether such highly
emotional moments might be an indication of a meeting
with their power animal, as described in shamanic
traditions. It might be speculated whether the characters
or attributes of the encountered animals in some way
could be recognized as symbolic metaphors for hitherto
unknown or unconscious dimensions of participants
own mode of being or acting. The encounters with
plants were described as highly rewarding; old trees with
flowers or fruits were common features. The experience of
meeting insects, which was less common, was described
as generating feelings of discomfort, and was regarded as
a kind of intrusion.
Active vs. Passive Role
This theme describes participants experience
of taking an active or a passive role during the journey
(categories: 7, 10, 12, 17). Participants reported that they
were able to make conscious choices during the journey,
such as to change or move into a specific direction, to
create things needed, or to intervene when they sensed
that their help was needed. They mostly experienced
having a physical body and were able to voluntary talk,
swim, and walk or do some other activity. But sometimes
things changed without their conscious intent; a sudden
unexpected movement might occur or they felt thrown
into a totally different scenery and course of events. The
environment would quickly change from familiar into
unfamiliar sceneries during the journey; sometimes this
transit was instantaneous. Even their own bodies were
suddenly transformed into something else (my mouth
was changed into a beak, and my hands were transformed
into claws). There were many descriptions given of
being transformed into animals, mostly referred to as

becoming a bird and being able to fly or get a birds eye


view (it was a fantastic feeling being a flying sharp-eyed
hawk). Such events are common shamanic features. If
these experiences occurred because the participants were
acquainted with or interested in shamanism could not
be ascertained.
Inner wisdom and guidance
The fifth theme deals with issues that are best
categorized as psychotherapeutic processes (categories:
19, 21, 25, 26). Participants gained insights into specific
problem areas or issues in their lives. Thought processes
involving personal problem-solving were initiated,
mainly involving three areas: relations, physical health
and psychological health. The insights that arose were
experienced as coming from an inner source of wisdom,
the emergence of which were said to be facilitated by the
drumming. Several persons reported how memories from
their childhood emerged which were considered important
and of great significance. Needs for working/dealing with
these memories were expressed. Sometimes such processes
or their hidden meaning were revealed later during the
journey. The experiences as such were seen as defining
metaphors of their lives (I could see how I tried to harvest
the crop before it was ripe, thats exactly how I live my usual
life). Many different emotions were experienced, mostly
as peaceful or harmonious, involving some solution to a
problem or life situation (a fantastic euphoric feeling when
the eggs hatched, this reassured me everything is going to be
fine; I realized I can re-create this feeling of peace and harmony
in my daily life). Sometimes the solutions appeared as
indirect metaphors, but also as direct recommendations.
The most prominent feature of the insights concerned the
importance of taking responsibility for their own lives and
not await for others to help them. The experiences of such
deep and valuable insights suggest that the method could
serve as a valuable complement to other psychotherapeutic
interventions. A therapeutic session subsequent to the
drumming journey (as part of a therapeutic treatment
programme), would probably have yielded more benefits.
Reflections on the drumming journey
The last theme summarizes descriptions about
participants reflections on the drumming journey and
sense of awe (categories: 15, 23, 24, 28, 29, 30, 31).
Reflecting on what was happening while the drumming
journey was still going on was regarded as a disturbing
problem since it restrained the possibilities of relaxing
and going deeper into the experience (I lost focus when I
tried to analyze what was happening). Some participants

Altered States During Shamanic Drumming

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

reported having problems finding a suitable starting place


(entry hole) or to be able to move forward at all; these
problems were encountered during the first minutes but
all of them finally managed to perform the session.
In general, reflections in retrospect arose regard
ing the validity and relevance of the experience and its
possible applications. Many wondered if the encountered
animals constituted a real power animal or not, or if
such exists, and if there was a hidden possible meaning.
The drumming session was considered a pleasant method
for achieving stress reduction and relaxation. A few stated
that they had problems recalling or recapitulating the
content of the session. Others reflected on the strange
or exotic feeling when the body was experienced as still
remaining on the floor but the mind wandered and took
part in an alternative reality or process independent of
the body. Finally, some effects of the drumming session
reported were positive feelings of rest and relaxation and
that it was an interesting and worthwhile experience
(I felt very alert afterwards; I had never done this before
but it felt good and was very interesting). It is interesting
that the participants reported feeling relaxed despite all
the emotional and intense experiences. This might be
an indication of the healing and beneficial potential of
temporarily entering a state of mind quite different from
the daily normal. Some persons also reflected upon the
fact that there were some similarities but also differences
between the drumming state and other techniques (e.g.,
dreams, earlier psychedelic experiences, hypnosis, and
flotation tank).
Suggestions for future research
Many psychologically interesting experiences
during a shamanic-like drumming session were
documented in the present study. Healing and beneficial
effects were reported by the participants. Very few
negative experiences were encountered. This might be
one of the reasonsalong with motivations such as
pure curiosity or an urge for spiritual explorationwhy
the technique of shamanic-like drumming has gained
popularity in the Western world in recent years.
The conclusion is that shamanic-like drumming
as a technique can be an interesting and fruitful domain
for future research. Its value as a supplement to other
psychotherapeutic techniques needs to be investigated
and further evaluated, and to establish, for instance,
whether there are also negative effects if the method
is applied to unprepared or psychologically vulnerable
individuals. As far as we know, there have been no studies

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

to date investigating possible risks or adverse effects.


Also many different physiological studies, investigating
changes in factors such as EEG-patterns or hormonal- or
immunological functioning could be performed.
Possible methodological limitations of the present
study
Since it is well known that set and setting heavily
influence the experiences during a consciousness-altering
technique, it can be argued that the experience of seeing
tunnels, meeting animals, and other shamanic elements
might simply be the result of instructions given or the
expectations of the participants and not by the drumming
per se. An experimental study by Rock et. al (2006)
suggested that many experiences during shamanic-like
journeying involve recall of autobiographical memories.
The experiences recounted in the present study
were considered real and genuine by the participants and
in a phenomenological study the inner life world is of
particular interest. The intention of this study was not
specifically to prove any particular effects induced by
shamanic-like drumming (such a claim would require
several randomized controlled trials) but to increase the
body of knowledge about what might happen during
monotonous drumming. A study with other types of
drumming, other instructions or other participants,
could have yielded very different results. Also, the validity
and reliability of a phenomenological analysis can always
be questioned. In the present study the NCT with two
independent assessors were used (see Method section) in
order to increase reliability, and strict adherence to the
stages of an EPP-analysis (Karlsson, 1995) ensures high
validity.
Final remarks
In a speculative sense, it may be argued that
the drumming journey can be seen as a metaphor for
a persons life. Birth happens through the birth canal
(symbolized as the tunnel), and one enters into a still
unknown world (as in the drumming journey) where
many things happen to us as humans. Some of these
just happen, others are under our control (theme:
active vs. passive role), we encounter and interact with
other beings (theme: encounters) and we learn and
evolve during our lifetime (theme: inner wisdom and
guidance). The theme reflections on the drumming
journey is analogous to our reflections on our own life.
The beat of the heart make our lives possible, just as the
rhythmic pulse of the drum sustains a journey through
an alternative perception of life.

Kjellgren & Eriksson

Bittman, B. B., Berk, L. S., Felten, D. L., Westengard,


J., Simonton, O. C., Pappas, J., & Ninehouser, M.
(2001). Composite effects of group drumming music
therapy on modulation of neuroendocrine-immune
parameters in normal subjects. Alternative Therapies
in Health and Medicine, 7, 38-47.
Bood, S. ., Sundequist, U., Norlander, T., Nordstrm,
L., Nordenstrm, K., Kjellgren, A., & Nordstrm,
G. (2006). Eliciting the relaxation response with
help of flotation-REST (Restricted environmental
stimulation technique) in patients with stress related
ailments: The direct effects and effects four months
after treatment. International Journal of Stress
Management, 13, 154-175.
Edebol, H., Bood, S. ., & Norlander, T. (2008). Case
studies on chronic whiplash associated disorders and
their treatment using flotation-REST (Restricted
Environmental Stimulation technique). Qualitative
Health Research, 18, 480-488.
Eliade, M. (1972). Shamanism: Archaic techniques of
ecstasy. Princeton, NJ: University Press.
Gustafson, R. (1991). Sambandet mellan alcohol och
aggression [The connection between alcohol and
aggression]. Lund, Sweden: BTJ Tryck.
Harner, M. (1990). The way of the shaman. New York,
NY: Harper Collins.
Johansen, P. O., & Krebs, T. S., (2009). How could
MDMA (ecstasy) help anxiety disorders? A neuro
biological rationale, Journal of Psychopharmacology, 1-3.
DOI: 10.1177/0269881109102787
Karlsson, G. (1995). Psychological qualitative research from
a phenomenological perspective. Stockholm, Sweden:
Almqvist & Wiksell International.
Kjellgren, A. (2003). The Experience of flotation-REST.
Restricted Environmental Stimulation Technique
Consciousness, Creativity, Subjective Stress and Pain.
Gteborg, Sweden: University Press.
Kjellgren, A., Bood, S. ., Axelsson, K., Norlander,
T., & Saatcioglu, F. (2007). Wellness through
a comprehensive Yogic Breathing ProgramA
controlled pilot trial. BMC Complementary and
Alternative Medicine, 7:4. DOI: 10.1186/1472-7-43.
Kjellgren, A., & Buhrkall, H. (2010). A comparison of
the restorative effect of a natural environment with
a simulated environment. Journal of Environmental
Psychology. DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2010.01.011.

Kjellgren, A., Eriksson, A., & Norlander, T. (2009).


Experiences of encounters with Ayahuascathe vine
of the soul. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 4, 309-315.
Kjellgren, A., Lindahl, A., & Norlander, T. (20092010). Altered states of consciousness and mystical
experiences during sensory isolation in flotation
tank: Is the highly sensitive personality variable of
importance? Imagination, Cognition & Personality,
29, 135-146.
Kjellgren, A., Sundequist, U., Norlander, T., & Archer, T.
(2001). Effects of floatation-REST on muscle tension
pain. Pain Research & Management, 6, 181-189.
Kjellgren, A., Sundequist, U., Sundholm, U., Norlander,
T., & Sundholm, U. (2004). Altered Consciousness
in flotation-REST and chamber-REST: Experience
of Experimental Pain and Subjective Stress. Social
Behaviour and Personality, 32, 103-116.
Kjellgren, A., & Taylor, S. (2008). Mapping Zazen Meditation as a developmental process: Exploring the exper
iences of experienced and inexperienced meditators.
Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 2, 224-250.
Krippner, S. (1972). Altered states of consciousness. In
J. White (Ed.). The highest state of consciousness (pp.
1-5). Garden City, NJ: Doubleday.
Krippner, S. (2002). Conflicting perspectives on shamans
and shamanism: Points an counterpoints. American
Psychologist, 57, 962-977.
Lindquist, G. (1997). Shamanic Performances on the
Urban Scene: Neo-Shamanism in Contemporary
Sweden. Stockholm Studies in Social Anthropology,
39. Stockholm, Sweden: Almqvist & Wiksell.
Maxfield, M. (1994). The journey of the drum. ReVision,
16, 157-162.
McKenna, D. (2004). Clinical investigations of the
therapeutic potential of ayahuasca: Rationale and
regulatory challenges. Pharmacology & Therapeutics,
102, 111-129.
Metzner, R. (2009). Alchemical divination. Berkeley, CA:
Regent Press.
Morris, K. (2008). Research on psychedelics moves into
the mainstream. The Lancet, 371, 1491-1492.
Neher, A. (1962). A physiological examination of unusual
behaviour in ceremonies involving drums. Human
Biology, 34, 151-161.
Norlander, T., Grd, L., Lindholm, L., & Archer, T.
(2003). New age: Exploration of outlook-on-life
frameworks from a phenomenological perspective.
Mental Health, Religion and Culture, 5, 1-20.

Altered States During Shamanic Drumming

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

References

Pramling, N., Norlander, T., & Archer, T. (2003).


Conceptualization of the unknown by 6-, 9- and
14-year-old children in a story telling context. In
search of a heffalump. Childhood, 10, 379-392.
Rock, A. J. (2006). Phenomenological analysis of
experimentally induced visual mental imagery
associated with shamanic journeying to the lower
world. International Journal of Transpersonal studies,
25, 45-55.
Rock, A. J., Abbott, G., Childargushi, H., & Kiehne,
M. (2008). The effect of shamanic-like stimulus
conditions and the cognitive-perceptual factor of
schizotypy on phenomenology. North American
Journal of Psychology, 10, 79-98.
Rock, A. J., Abbott, G. R., & Kambouropoulos, N.
(2008). Altered experience mediates the relationship
between schizotypy and mood disturbance during
shamanic-like journeying. Journal of Scientific
Exploration. 22(3), 371-384.
Rock, A. J., Baynes, P. B., & Casey, P. J. (2005).
Experimental study of ostensibly shamanic
journeying imagery in naive participants I:
Antecedents. Anthropology of Consciousness, 16, 7292.
Rock, A. J., Casey, P. J., & Baynes, P. B. (2006).
Experimental study of ostensibly shamanic journeying
imagery in naive participants II: Phenomenological
mapping and modified affect bridge. Anthropology of
Consciousness, 17, 65-83.
Rock, A. J., & Krippner, S. (2007). Does the concept of
Altered states of consciousness rest on a mistake?
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 26,
33-40.
Rock, A. J., Wilson, J. M., Johnston, L. J., & Levesque, J.
V. (2008). Ego boundaries, shamanic-like techniques
and subjective experience: An experimental study.
Anthropology of Consciousness, 19(1), 60-83.
Symmons, C., & Morris, R. L. (1997). Drumming at
seven Hz and automated Ganzfeld performance.
In The Parapsychological Association 40th Annual
Convention: Proceedings of Presented Papers (pp. 441454). Durham, NC: Parapsychological Association.
Tart, C. T. (1972). States of consciousness and statespecific sciences. Science, 176, 1203-1210.
Walsh, R. (1989). The shamanic journey: Experiences,
origins, and analogues. ReVision, 12, 25-32.
Woodside, L. N., Kumar, V. K., & Pekala, R. J. (1997).
Monotonous percussion drumming and trance

10

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

postures: A controlled evaluation of phenomeno


logical effects. Anthropology of Consciousness, 8, 6987.
About the Authors
Anette Kjellgren, PhD, is working as an Associate
Professor in the Department of Psychology at Karlstad
University, Sweden. She has performed studies
about sensory isolation in flotation tanks, yoga,
meditation, relaxation outdoors in nature, as well as
about psychoactive substances. She has an interest for
transpersonal psychology and teaches in courses in this
field for students in psychology and psychotherapy.
Anders Eriksson, MSc, is a teacher in biology, chemistry
and psychology and is currently a psychotherapist
student. He is practising yoga, zen meditation and
qi-gong on a regular basis, and also has an interest in
shamanism.
About the Journal
The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies is a
peer-reviewed academic journal in print since 1981. It is
published by Floraglades Foundation, and serves as the
official publication of the International Transpersonal
Association. The journal is available online at www.
transpersonalstudies.org, and in print through www.
lulu.com (search for IJTS).

Kjellgren & Eriksson

A Chakra System Model of Lifespan Development


K. Candis Best
St. Josephs College

Brooklyn, New York, USA


This article presents a model of lifespan development based upon the tantric chakra system.
It begins with a survey of the evolution of transpersonal psychology and its alignment with
eastern philosophies as previously espoused by William James, Carl Jung and others. The
chakras are defined in relation to their potential influence on psychological functioning with
a focus on development beyond the level of ego stability and functioning. Building upon
prior work integrating the chakra system with developmental processes, this article presents
an interpretation of the chakras as a model that defines a pathway for growth-oriented
development.

ll humans follow a developmental sequence as


they mature from infancy through adulthood.
Barring significant trauma, this sequence can be
expected to follow a predictable pattern and to be relatively
consistent across cultures (see Broderick & Blewitt, 2006).
Over the course of several decades, volumes of research
have been conducted on human development resulting
in the emergence of discrete categories that organize
these theories according to specific schools of thought.
They include behavioral, cognitive, interpersonal, objectrelations, and evolutionist paradigms among others. Each
ontological model has provided a unique perspective
on what it means to develop as a person. Among the
more recent paradigms to be explored among Western
psychologists is the transpersonal, which evolved from
the humanistic tradition (Scotton, Chinen, & Battista,
1996).
William James has been credited with being the
first Western psychologist to use the term transpersonal
in relation to the field of psychology (Ryan, 2008). From
James to Jung, and up through the late 1960s when an
actual field of transpersonal psychology was ostensibly
chartered with the publication of the first issue of the
Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, a dynamic tension
has existed concerning the extent to which the field of
psychology is an appropriate venue for exploring matters
that are essentially spiritual (Cunningham, 2007;
Scotton & Hiatt, 1996). This tension can also be viewed
as what Walsh and Vaughan (1996) termed a paradigm
clash wherein adherents with extensive knowledge
of or an epistemological preference for one school of
thought are unable to objectively critique theories from

other related yet distinct schools (e.g., existentialism vs.


transpersonalism).
Nonetheless, as the body of literature and research in transpersonal psychology has grown over the past
several decades, the relationship between transpersonal
philosophy and the psychological discipline has defined
itself more clearly. Transpersonal psychology is based
upon the premise that human function potentiates along
a continuum that can be divided into three sections:
pre-personal (prior to the formation of a separate ego),
personal (ego formation), and transpersonal (superseding
a fully functional ego; Nelson, 1994; Rama, Ballentine,
& Ajaya, 1976; Scotton & Hiatt, 1996; Wilber, Engler,
& Brown, 1986). As a consequence, transpersonal
psychology has firmly rooted itself as an anchor on the
continuum of human development.
Just as the cognitive, evolutionary, and
behavioral schools have produced their own theories
and perspectives on development, the transpersonal
school has also reached a point where discrete theories of
development can be proffered for critique and analysis.
This article presents a theory and model of development
that is drawn from one of the transpersonal movements
earliest sources of inspirationHindu (or yoga)
psychology.
Western Psychology/Eastern Influences
hile William James is generally regarded as the
father of transpersonal psychology, Carl Jung is
credited with being the first Western psychologist of note
to embrace a cross-cultural perspective in the development
of his theories (Scotton, Chinen, & Battista, 1996). He
is known to have solicited opportunities for his students

Chakra
ModelJournal
of Development
International
International
of Transpersonal Studies, 29(2), 2010,
pp. 11-27 Journal of Transpersonal Studies 11

to learn about Kundalini Yoga albeit with cautionary


caveats due to his belief that Western perspectives were
ill-suited for assimilation of tantric approaches (Coward,
1985). Nonetheless, Jung to his credit allowed Eastern
philosophies reflective of both Hindu and Buddhist belief
systems, to emboss some of his most popular theories.

Jungs interest in Indian psychology was not
an isolated example of the nexus between Eastern and
Western views on human psychology. In 1946, noted
psychologist and member of the Harvard University
Department of Psychology, Gordon Allport, wrote the
introduction to a book on Hindu psychology that had
as a stated aim the identification of synergies between
these two seemingly disparate approaches to evaluating
the human psyche (Akhilananda, 1946).

Traditional views of psychological development
are predicated upon the construction of stable
psychological structures that can support a healthy ego.
Transpersonally oriented developmental theory follows
the two great arcs premise advanced by Wilber, Engler,
and Brown (1986) in which the first major phase of
development leads to the personality and the second
major phase leads beyond it. It is this notion that healthy
human functioning requires development beyond the
formation and stability of the ego that most clearly has
its origins in Eastern philosophy.

Neumanns (1954) exhaustive review of the
origins and evolution of consciousness on both the
individual and collective level made repeated references
to Indian and Egyptian mythological scripts. Neumann
referred to these scripts to illustrate how the concept of an
unfolding collective unconscious manifested itself in the
literature and art of antiquity. Both Hindu and Buddhist
precepts identify attachment to ego-philic pursuits as
the source of misery and discontent. According to the
Hindu tradition, this is referred to as samsara. Yoga,
which is a word most appropriately used to describe a
spiritual course of development, is pursued as a path to
the only source of lasting contentment because it has as
its goal the transcending of egoic concerns in pursuit of
reunion with divine consciousness. However, it cannot
be overstated that one must have an ego before it can be
transcended.

The unanimity of agreement on this issue is
what made it possible for transpersonal psychology
to move beyond merely asserting the existence of a
tripartite developmental structure to actually describing
developmental frameworks that might exist within

12

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

it. Ken Wilber, as perhaps one of the most prolific


theorists in the field, has offered and refined a theory
of development based upon the pre-personal, personal,
and transpersonal structure (Wilber, 1977, 1980, 2001;
Wilber, Engler, & Brown, 1986). Aurobindos (1993)
theories are more directly linked to Hindu yoga practice
than psychology, but have also influenced developmental
models based on the tripartite structure.

The chakra system model described in this
article builds upon this and other related bodies of work
by presenting this ancient system in the tantric tradition
of Hinduism as a self-contained framework of ontogenic
markers indicative of healthy development through to
the transpersonal level. One of the enduring strengths
of Eastern philosophies is their accommodating stance,
which acknowledges that there are multiple paths to the
same, or related, destinations.
The Chakras
hakra is the Sanskrit word for wheel. Within the
Indian tradition, the chakras represent centers of
energy located vertically along the spine. These centers of
energy are also believed to serve as seats of consciousness.
Rama, Ballentine, and Ajaya (1976) refer to the chakras
as an inner playroom where the individual explores
experiences with consciousness during the course of
growth and development. This conceptualization is a
perfect starting point for considering the chakra system
as a developmental model. However, first a summary
description of the chakra system is in order.
The concept of a chakra system of energy or
consciousness centers exists in many forms in different
indigenous systems including Egyptian, Chinese, Native
American, Sufi, and Kabbalah (Williams, 2008). In
addition, even according to the Hindu tradition upon
which the present model is based, there are by some
estimates more than twenty major and minor chakras
(Brennen, 1988). However, most discussions of the
chakra system center on the seven major chakras and
this is the view upon which the chakra system model is
based.
The first is the Muladhara (root) chakra which
is located at the base of the spine. It is identified with
basic survival and self-preservation. The second is the
Svadisthana (sacral) chakra which is located in the genital
area. It is identified with sensuality and procreation. The
third is the Manipura (navel) chakra. It is located in
the abdominal or gut area of the solar plexus and is
identified with the assertion of will. The fourth is the

Best

Anahata (heart) chakra located in the upper chest. It


is associated with the expression of unconditional love.
The fifth is the Visuddha (throat) chakra. Located in the
throat, it is associated with creativity and expression.
The sixth is the Ajna (brow) chakra and is located in
the center of the head behind the eyes. This chakra is
associated with intuition and wisdom. Finally, the
Sahasrara (crown) chakra is located just above the crown
of the head and symbolizes not only the highest state
of consciousness but complete and total union with
the source of all creation (Rama, Ballentine, & Ajaya,
1976; Scotton & Hiatt, 1996). Much more will be said
about each of these centers of consciousness as this
model is described in more detail. However, it would
first be prudent to establish how and why this system
is appropriate for use as a self-contained developmental
framework.
Gilchrist and Mikulas (1993) used the chakra
system as the basis for a model of group development by
aligning the seven chakras with other recognized stages
of group development. In the course of establishing the
synchronicity of the chakra system with developmental
progression, the authors noted that individual
development progressed along a sequential path within
the chakra system as well. Prior to Gilchrist and Mikaulis,
Wilber (1986) described a similar alignment between the
chakra system and other theories of human development
that included his own, as well as the theories of Sri
Aurobindo, Albert Maslow and Jane Loevinger. Finally,
Judith (2009, 2004) has written extensively about the
chakra system and provided a detailed synthesis of how
the chakra system maps to the developmental sequence of
the individual according to Western systems of lifespan
psychology. However, it is Nelsons (1994) interpretation
of the chakra system as a diagnostic tool for personality
disorders that is most similar to and has been most
influential on the present model.
In Healing the Split and a related journal
article published the same year, Nelsons (1994),
primary objective was to present the chakra system
as a transpersonal diagnostic system. The properties
of each chakra were presented first with attention to
their correlations to recognized patterns of individual
development, followed by a detailed explication of how
regressions in each chakra might present as conditions
of psychological maladaptation. The richness in detail
offered by Nelson concerning the connection between
psychotic, neurotic, and borderline levels of personality

disorder and their corresponding chakra centers is made


plausible by first outlining how the chakra system aligns
with individual development as it is currently appraised
within the field. For the purposes of this article, this
nexus will be demonstrated by discussing each chakra
in relationship to its corresponding phase of human
development as well as related developmental theories
(see Table 1).
The Root Chakra and the Infant
(Unborn Fetus to First 16 Months of Life)
s mentioned earlier, the root chakra governs security
and survival. In this way it is similar to the first
motivational need of Maslows hierarchy (1968) as well
as the sensoriphysical stages identified by a variety of
theorists including Piaget, Aurobindo, and Wilber
(Wilber, 1986). From a developmental perspective, the
root chakra represents those most rudimentary needs
that must be confronted and satisfied before attention
can be turned to other developmental tasks. For this
reason, the status of a newborn infant is an ideal starting
point both, literally and metaphorically, for evaluating
the position and purpose of the root chakra in a chakra
based system of development.

From a purely physiological perspective, a
healthy infant is a self-contained but not yet selfsufficient organism. While it possesses all of the
functional capacities that it will require to mature, it is
completely dependent on its environment in order for
these capacities to be activated in a manner that will
enable it to thrive. From a psychological perspective,
its introduction into this new and foreign environment
is jarring and potentially debilitating. Here again, it is
dependent on external support in the form of its primary
caregiver to create a sense of order and orientation. In
this way, this level also conforms with Eriksons (1968)
first stage of development which is characterized by basic
trust versus mistrust. Trust or mistrust will be established
based upon how well needs for safety, security, and stable
orientation are met by others. The root chakra also aligns
with Kegans (1982) Stage 0/Incorporative stage, where
the infant functions purely at the subjective level, and
has not yet achieved a level of individuation that allows
for the perception of objects outside of him or herself.

Nelson (1994) added that the birth experience
serves as an initiation into individualized consciousness.
This necessitates the development of psychic membranes,
the veiled partition separating the corporeal reality into
which infants are born from the pre-sensate state out

Chakra Model of Development

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 13

of which they emerged. The root chakra represents the


initial stage of formation for these membranes and, as
would be expected at the beginning of any developmental
process, they are relatively undifferentiated. According
to Nelson, their role at this stage is to create a stable base
of consciousness that will support human emotions,
reason and the consensual reality of society (p. 173).
Thus, the root chakra establishes a line of demarcation
between the collective consciousnesses (perceived as
unconsciousness at this stage) and the nascent stages
of an individual and personal consciousness. It also
initiates the construction of a framework that will house
the self-system which will be defined in greater detail
shortly. By virtue of the narrowly defined parameters of
its functionality, however, the root chakra represents a
crucial but nonetheless transitional stage of development.
By virtue of its relentless focus on the survival instinct,
its defining feature can be described as the challenge to
move from fear to fearlessness.
The Sacral Chakra and Early Childhood
(12 to 24 Months)
uring the first stage of development as represented
by the chakra system, the fledgling individual is
consumed with its own survival. While theorists debate
the extent to which this stage is aptly characterized by
primary narcissism as proposed by Margaret Mahler
(Mahler, Pine, & Bergman, 1975) or reflects a greater
awareness and receptivity to interpersonal response
(Reddy, 2008), there is little doubt that one of the
distinguishing features of an infants transition to early
childhood is the emergence of a separate identity. In
the chakra system, the sacral stage marks the point
of embarkation for this individuation process as
well. According to Nelson (1994) among the eight
characteristics of the sacral stage resides the emergence
of self-boundaries that, while still shared to a certain
extent with parents, will nonetheless come to delineate
a sense of I-ness. However, this stage involves more
than a period of experimentation with separateness in
relationship to caregivers. Here, individual consciousness
is also beginning to differentiate itself from the collective
consciousness; what Nelson referred to as the Spiritual
Ground. The significance of this pre-egoic level of
consciousness for transpersonal psychology as well as the
model proposed here is crucial.

Jung was the first Western psychologist to
identify this level of consciousness in relation to the
development of the individual psyche (Scotton, 1996).

14

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

His use of the term collective unconscious was


intended to represent a source of psychic influence
that did not originate within the individual but rather
was shared with all human beings. However, for Jung
this consciousness was inherited and he refrained, at
least in his earlier writings, from ascribing a spiritual
component to it. Nonetheless, Jung did allow his views
to be influenced by indigenous spiritual beliefs and
practices. Hindu philosophy was most certainly among
them (Coward, 1985). Accordingly, Jungian psychology
can be seen as establishing one of the earliest bridges
between Western psychology and Hindu psychology in
two important respects. First, it introduced the concept
of a shared consciousness that is pre-extant to an
individuated identity. Second, through the dichotomous
orientations of introversion and extroversionwhich
would later evolve into personality types (Briggs Myers,
McCaulley, Quenk, & Hammer, 2003)it explored
energy as a psychosocial dynamic rather than a purely
biophysical phenomenon.

As it pertains to the chakra system model
of development, the individuals relationship to this
collective consciousness (which for the sake of clarity
will be referred to hereafter as universal consciousness)
functions as a navigational marker throughout the
life cycle. For the remainder of this article, the term
universal consciousness will be used to distinguish it
from Jungs collective consciousness which, while similar,
should not be considered parallel to the model presented
here. During the first three chakra stages, ego formation
emerges in direct proportion to the minimization and
ultimate cessation (albeit temporarily) of contact with
universal consciousness. Nelson (1994) described this
process as a choice between the external world of material
reality with the attendant forfeiture of access to the fount
of creativity and intuition that universal consciousness
provides, and regression to that consciousness. However,
regression to universal consciousness can only result
in the arrest of the developing ego because of how
overwhelming a constant stream of energies would be at
such a fragile stage of development. As a result, healthy
psychological development must direct Nelsons choice
toward the external world.

For Kegan (1982) whose developmental theory
also refers to orders of consciousness (but from an objectrelations rather than a transpersonal theory perspective),
this next stage which he called Impulsive, marks the
beginning of decentration. Decentration refers to the

Best

evolutionary process of meaning-construction that


is central to the process of development. It causes the
individual to move from embeddedness in her subjective
reality to relationship with a more objective view of
reality. Kegans subject-object theory of development will
provide heuristic insights into this model at later stages
of this discussion as well. For purposes of describing
the transition from root to sacral chakra, the individual
moves from being fully consumed by the reflexes
experienced primarily as alternations of fear and relief, to
having perceptions by virtue of his first opportunity to
practice disembedding from these experiences.
One of the consequences of this first
disembeddedment as reflected in Nelsons depiction of
this transition is that the subtle energies of universal
consciousness increasingly become unavailable as a
mechanism for processing experiences. As a result,
the senses take over this function. Not surprisingly,
a preoccupation with sensual pleasures at this stage of
development is precisely what Freudian psychology
predicts. As it happens, the sacral chakra is identified
primarily with sensuality, sexuality, and the genital area
(Rama, Ballentine, & Ajaya, 1976). So simultaneous
with a childs experimentation with autonomy and a
stable sense of self in relation to others, he or she is also
learning to rely on sensual responses to stimuli to make
meaning of the external world.

This shift in focus brings with it both a
redirection and intensification of energy that, for both
Western and Hindu psychology, is localized in the genital
area. However, Hindu psychology as expressed through
the chakra system, views the developmental process as
facilitating the redirection of this energy upward. In
this way, development involves the introduction to and
mastery of energies that have specific functions but are
expected to eventually be integrated into a stable self. At
the sacral stage, however, the individual is tasked with
consolidating a flood of sensations while learning to do
so with increasing independence from caregivers. With
no prior experience to draw upon, and now with rapidly
diminishing input from universal consciousness, the
individual must increase its reliance on cues from the
external world, which during the earliest stages takes the
form of imitation.

Children begin to imitate what they see during
infancy (Reddy, 2008). However, imitation cannot
be regarded as a scaffolding strategy for purposes
of personality formation until a child possesses the

capacity for object constancy and the ability to form


representational models of self and others. There is little
disagreement that this process begins in early childhood.
Therefore, the sacral stage can be regarded as the period
where identity formation is concerned with refining
the boundaries of self, but is also heavily influenced by
external referents in determining how to construct those
boundaries. Sensual experiences provide feedback that
is internalized to determine which external referents to
adopt or adapt and which to discard. However, the self
is ultimately expected to be experienced as unique and
independent. Thus the defining feature of the sacral stage
can be viewed as the challenge of moving from imitation
to independence.
The Navel Chakra and
Early Childhood Through Adulthood
(18 Months to 4 Years and Beyond)
very bit of knowledge and experience that has
been acquired through the transitions to and through
the first two stages is consolidated and then purposefully
directed during the navel chakra stage. The third chakra
is identified with the will or personal power. Several
important developmental markers are characteristic
of this stage. First, the individual is firmly committed
to the task of individuation. Chiefly concerned with
defining a self-concept that supports healthy self-esteem,
she or he will become preoccupied with this task if its
accomplishment is perceived to be unsuccessful in any
respect. Here the hallmarks of the first two stages are not
only evident but instrumental to the task of creating and
maintaining a positive self-concept.

Second, during adolescence peer groups replace
caregivers as the primary reference sources and imitation
as a vehicle for acceptance is at its zenith. Exploration
of sensuality and sexuality is also intensified as a result
of a rapid surge in hormones. As the individual moves
from adolescence to adulthood, vocational choices,
mate selection and the acquisition of symbols of success
become an integral part of the self-concept. A functional
will is central to the achievement of all of these tasks.
Furthermore, all other developmental resources
previously acquired and the extent to which they are
successfully mastered, influence how the individual
exercises his or her will.

For example, the man who has emerged from
the first chakra stage fearful and unsure of whether
his security concerns will be met and who proceeds
through the second stage by over-identifying with the

Chakra Model of Development

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 15

power of sexuality and sensual experiences, may elect to


exercise his will in adulthood through the acquisition
of material wealth by dominating others and viewing
them as objects for exploitation. There are many possible
permutations of how personality develops up to and
through the third chakra stage. Nonetheless, the exercise
of the will (aggressively or passively) is the focus. If the
energies of this stage are not directed upward toward
further evolution, this focus becomes a preoccupation
with maintaining the symbols of status that support the
individuals self-concept.
This is at the heart of the Hindu and Buddhist
admonitions about the ultimate sources of suffering. The
first three stages provide ever increasing and complex
sources of attachment that the will becomes preoccupied
with either adding to or maintaining. Therefore, the
defining feature of the third chakra stage is the challenge
of moving from a preoccupation with current ego-based
attachments to the surrender of subjective attachments
so that the process of ego transcendence can begin.
The navel chakra stage is a uniquely pivotal
one in the chakra system model of development for this
reason. Barring any major life trauma, it is the last stage
that one is presumed to be able to reach automatically.
In fact, Hindu psychology and many complementary
Eastern philosophies assert that, for most people in
the West, this is the highest stage of development that
they will ever reach (Akhilananda, 1946; Aurobindo,
1993).
This also marks an important point of departure
between this model (Nelsons [1994] model) and Judiths
(2004) schema. Judiths chakra based developmental
framework aligns each chakra with Western equivalents
of stage development across the lifespan. Judiths view
suggests that all individuals evolve through all seven
chakras during their lifetime, which facilitates alignment
with Eriksons (1997) widely accepted lifespan model as
well. Under the chakra system model this is not assumed
to be the case. To the contrary, this model asserts that for
most individuals, after reaching the navel chakra stage
for the first time by the age of 4, they recycle (for many,
indefinitely) through the first three chakra domains. The
primary challenges of fear, imitation, and preoccupation
are worked through as these challenges re-present
themselves with ever-increasing complexity in the form
of life experiences that correspond with successive phases
of biopsychosocial maturity (e.g., adolescence, young
adulthood, etc.).

16

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Heart Chakra and Middle Adulthood


Through Old Age
he heart chakra stage represents a pivotal transition
point. It is the gateway to the second of the two
great arcs. The heart chakra represents a selfless form
of love and compassion for others. Its place within the
chakra system model of development, however, reveals a
shift in how love is regarded and experienced. As Nelson
(1994) noted, ascending to the heart chakra stage means
that love is no longer manifested as a need or craving
that involves the acquisition or control of the affection
of others. In this sense, it becomes a proving ground
for the individual in establishing whether one is really
prepared to transcend the ego-oriented preoccupations
of the first three stages. Therefore, it should be viewed
as no coincidence that this stage spans the period of life
when most adults are navigating the myriad challenges
of parenthood.

For most new parents, the birth of a child is
likely the first true experience of selfless love. In his
seminal work on attachment theory, Bowlby (1988)
described patterns of mother-child interactions that
ensue immediately after birth with specific attention
to the manner in which a mothers selfless nature of
responsiveness to the child leads invariably to the
development of secure attachment patterns and healthy
development for that child later on. More recent studies
on the disruptive effects of maternal intrusiveness during
early childhood and the potentially moderating effects
of maternal warmth (Ispa et al., 2004) lend credence to
the notion that parenthood offers orienting glimpses of
the heart chakra stage.

On the other hand, becoming a parent also
provides a whole new set of preoccupations, security
concerns, and imitative triggers. A childs safety is the
exclusive province of its parents for the first decade of life
and beyond. During that time and through adolescence,
parents will tend to gauge their success or failure by
measuring their childs progress against the children of
other parents. A childs perceived success or failure on
any number of measures from academic achievement, to
athletic prowess to physical attractiveness and popularity
can become their parents nearly obsessive concern until
the child becomes adult.

Thus, middle adulthood becomes the earliest
opportunity for most adults to reflect upon their own
lifes activities and to decide on the kind of meaning
they will attach to what they see. The heart chakra stage

Best

will be entered and subsequently mastered only by those


adults who upon reflection, see their lives as stable yet
incomplete, being thereby motivated to seek completion
not through the acquisition of more external objects but
by turning within. Hindu psychology regards this as
the last of the five primary urges and credits this urge
with being the reason why the overwhelming majority of
individuals seek out religion at some point during their
adult lives (Akhilananda, 1946). However, from a purely
developmental perspective an interest in religion is one
possible indication, among several, of engagement with
the heart chakra stage.

Kegans (1982) Stage 2 Imperial and Stage
3 Interpersonal phases bear many of the hallmarks of
the navel to heart chakra transition. In fact, Kegan
encapsulated the primary challenge of moving from
Stage 2 Imperial to Stage 3 Interpersonal as relating
to the individuals inability at Stage 2 to step outside
of his or her subjective attachments. Such attachments
represent precisely the type of anchors that can impede
progress from the Navel to (and ultimately through) the
Heart stage. This constriction limits the individuals
ability to take the kind of broad, objective view of both
the world and all of the diverse concerns within it, that
can accommodate the possibility of a shared reality
within which personal needs and demands give way to a
mutuality of concerns.

The key difference between Western views of
psychological development and those espoused by the
chakra system, is that from the Western point of view
healthy development is seen as complete upon attainment
of a fully functioning ego, even when the ego is still
bound by subject-object attachments. This, however,
neither suggests nor explains an internal drive to find
meaning in ones life and work, a drive that remains
unsated for many at precisely this stage of adulthood. The
heart chakra explains this as the impetus to continue to
develop and only transpersonally oriented developmental
models such as the chakra system model offer additional
stages to pursue that align with this purpose. The chakra
system model positions this stage as one in which egobased pursuits will either be relinquished in favor of
higher chakra stage attainment or result in stagnating
behavior in which no further development is possible.
If, as Rama, Ballantine, and Ajaya (1979)
suggested, the chakras represent a playroom or
laboratory in which life experiences are used as tests
and experiments in the service of self development, the

heart chakra is the capstone exercise. Most individuals


will continue to confront and revisit their self-concept in
relationship to the impulses, desires, and preoccupations
of earlier chakras. If they are unable to transcend them,
they will find themselves bobbing up and down between
this stage and the navel stage as the currents of their lives
dictate.
The Throat Chakra Stage
table ascent through the Heart chakra stage is
achieved only by those whose self-concept and broader
worldview is steeped in the embrace of the underlying
unity of all things (cf. Wilber, 2000, 2001). . Here again,
the selfless love and compassion which is attributed to
the heart chakra and the openness to experience which
accompanies it has one other important consequence. It
reintroduces the individual to universal consciousness in
a way that allows the individual to experience it as an
intrinsic part of the self. A byproduct of this reunion
is an increase in creativity and the need to express that
creativity in ways that benefit others.
Nelson (1994) stated that there is a call to
service as the self prepares to ascend to the fifth chakra
(p. 275). He further defined the throat chakra stage as
a fine balance of reason and intuition, self-control and
surrender, discipline and freedom, individuality and
unity (p. 284). These descriptors are often used to depict
those who have approached their later years with grace
and dignity. However, the chakra system does not view
ascendancy to this stage as an automatic inheritance of
aging nor is it the exclusive province of the elderly.

Eriksons (1997) stages of development offer
many parallels to the chakra system, including his
description of the concerns that correspond to the
transition to higher order chakra stages of development.
Specifically, according to Erikson, mid-adulthood marks
a stage where the individual will either remain selfabsorbed or turn his focus outward toward society and an
interest in leaving a legacy of creativity and productivity.
His corresponding stage to the throat chakra is described
as a challenge of intimacy versus isolation.

For most, middle adulthood represents a decade
or more of experiences upon which to reflect and act.
The consequences of the life choices accumulated during
that time highlight opportunities for intimacy in the
form of a growing extended family (e.g., marriage, child
birth, inlaws, granchildren). At the same time ones social
and professional network will likely have grown during
this time span. By contrast, if these opportunities were

Chakra Model of Development

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 17

missed or avoided, it will be at this period in life that the


absence may be felt most keenly, leading to feelings of
isolation.

This depiction may initially appear to align
itself more appropriately with the heart chakra than the
throat chakra stage. However, Rama, Ballantine, and
Ajaya (1979) helped to clarify this discrepancy by noting
that the throat chakra is aligned with nurturance as
well as creativity. It moderates the other-directed focus
of the heart chakra by teaching the individual to accept
and receive love as well as guidance from the universal
consciousness with which it has now been reacquainted.
Thus it redefines intimacy as a psychospiritual rather
than a sensual construct. Notably, it is at this stage that
it becomes possible to refer to the Self with a capital
S because it is no longer the self that has heretofore
been exclusively identified with the ego.
The Brow Chakra
iberated from the obsessions of the ego and
experiencing free communication with universal
consciousness, the Self is now the embodiment of wisdom.
The interesting corollary for this discussion is that just as
Erikson labelled his corresponding stage as the choice
between stagnation and generativity, the chakra system
model positions this stage as one in which access to the
higher order chakras liberates an unprecedented level of
intuition that would likely manifest itself as a wisdom
that has a beneficent influence on others.
In their article on wisdom, Baltes and Staudinger
(2000) grouped the then-existing theories on wisdom
into three categories: personal dispositions, expositions of
post-formal thought, and expert systems concerning the
meaning of life. The approach of that article, and others
like it, attempts to empirically validate the correlates of
wisdom, something that might appear to be folly to the
intuitive aspects of wisdom as experienced at this level.
Nonetheless, they do provide objective measures by
which to consider how a person who has ascended to the
brow stage would appear to others, although it should
be noted that the Baltes and Staudinger model was not
designed to validate transpersonally oriented stages of
development.

Wisdom has been broadly classified as
demonstrated expertise in and a capacity to successfully
navigate what Baltes and Staudinger (2000) referred to
as the fundamental pragmatics of life (p. 125). These
pragmatics are translated into a model of personal
wisdom by Mickler and Staudinger (2008) in which its

18

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

constructs are purported to include personal maturity, self


mastery in the form of subjective well-being, functional
levels of fluid and crystallized intelligences (i.e., both
cognitive capacity for problem solving and knowledge
acquired through past experience), and demonstrated
self-reflection based upon life events. The results of their
study revealed several patterns that align with the brow
chakra stage.

First, personal wisdom was positively correlated
with an intermediate number of life events that
stimulated reflective thinking. Second, the relation
ship between personal wisdom and intelligence was
curvilinear suggesting that individuals of higher
intelligence and presumably higher status have a harder
time incorporating non-intellect related facets of wisdom
(Mickler & Staudinger, 2008). In particular, the authors
noted that lower scores on the domain of universalism
suggested a more ego-oriented value system which may
tend to devalue issues of social concern that are an
intrinsic element of wisdom. It should be noted that
wisdom was also found to be correlated with high levels
of moral reasoning (Pasupathi & Staudinger, 2001).
It should go without saying that by the time a person
ascends to this chakra stage, they would evidence among
other virtues a discernable and unimpeachable moral
perspective.

These observations illustrate a central feature of
the brow chakra, which refines the intellect in a way that
integrates the emotions, relational concerns, and drives
of the lower order chakras into a more intuitive form of
interaction with the external world (Rama, Ballentine,
& Ajaya, 1976). It involves a mastery of detachment
from the objects that serve as barriers to growth because
they operate as tethers to egoic concerns. By rising above
these concerns, individuals who have ascended to the
brow chakra stage not only evidence the hallmarks of
wisdom, but they have balanced their feminine and
masculine aspects and enlarged the opening to universal
consciousness which prepares their ascent to the seventh
and final chakra stage.
The Crown Chakra
ith the ascent to the Crown chakra, the boundaries
of the psychic membranes that were fortified
during the transition through the first three chakras
and then gradually deconstructed during the next three
chakras are finally and completely dissolved. Having
first fully experienced and stabilized an ego structure,
the transpersonal or post-egoic self can relinquish these

Best

structures because they are no longer needed for support


or reference. The unity with all things that is concomitant
with universal consciousness no longer threatens the selfconcept because the concept of Self has been enlarged
and integrated through the developmental process.
Here again, Eriksons lifecycle provides insight
by analogy. His final stage of integrity versus despair
forecasts the psychological and emotional state that
ensues when individuals fail to progress to this stage by
later life. The use of the term integrity is consistent
with ascent to the highest chakra stage which affirms
ones true Self identity.

Nelson (1994) referred to this stage as sage
consciousness. Because this stage contains all of the prior
stages, it also possesses access to all of the knowledge
gained through them. The sage is free of attachments
and is thus fearless, independent, and unfettered by
preoccupations of any sort. She or he has mastered what
Hindu scholars referred to as affectionate detachment,
which mimics the activating agent of the Agape form of
love. But most notably, it symbolizes direct communion
with universal consciousness and thus completes the
cycle of development by returning the Self to its source.
The Model
he significance of any developmental model can be
evaluated by how well it explains human functioning
relative to three criteria: progress, productivity, and
positivity. The central feature of all developmental models,
regardless of their ontological underpinnings, is that they
purport to delineate human progress. Life span models
such as Ericksons predict human progress over time;
cognitively oriented models such as those of Piaget and
Chomsky describe progress relative to the mechanisms of
the intellect or the development of language; biologically
oriented models focus on the progress made or not made
along physiologic lines; Kohlbergs model charts progress
relative to moral development. That they are termed
developmental makes the progress element of these
models self-evident.

However, to qualify as developmental models
from a psychological perspective, these theories must
also be anchored both subjectively and objectively.
The subjective anchors can be found in the particular
paradigms through which they are crafted. The objective
anchor is the standard they all have in common which,
in the field of psychology, is linked to the degree of
individual functionality demonstrated. In other words, as
individuals develop are they able to be productive within

the settings and according to the expectations of their


stage of developmental attainment? Finally, progress and
productivity are both measured against a scale that seeks
to determine what is developmentally positive. This may
be defined by using terms such as healthy, normal, or
functional.

Proceeding from this rubric, the chakra system
model, to be classified as a developmental model, must
also address progress, productivity, and positivity in its
depiction of human functioning. As previously identified,
the seven chakras have already been presented in a stage
sequence by other authors (Judith, 2004; Nelson,1994).
However, viewing the chakras purely from a stage
perspective only avails of the more superficial elements
of its architecture because it bypasses the most central
tenets of the system. It bears restating that the chakras
also represent centers of energy. The field of energy
medicine, proceeds on the premise that energy is a life
promoting and sustaining force (Srinivasan, 2010). Thus,
the chakras are not and cannot be conceived of only as
stages to be reached, but must also be viewed as domains
through which their corresponding energy fields operate
to engage and influence individuals as they move from
stage to stage.
The Self-System
ilber (1986) described the self as a self-system
with six constituent functions: identification,
organization, will, defense, metabolism, and navigation.
Identification is the source of the self-concept;
organization unifies the mind to frame experiences with
the outside world; will is the exercise of agency and
choice; defense consists of mechanisms of self protection
from perceived threats; metabolism is the assimilation
of past experiences; and navigation is movement from
one developmental stage to another. For purposes of
the chakra system model, the self-system is perhaps
best visualized as a sphere that is constructed by the
individual as he or she proceeds through life (Figure 1).
The chakra stages represent the layers of the sphere which
are constructed from the bottom up. However, as with
any structure, the building process has many phases.
First a foundation must be laid, then a skeletal structure
is erected, followed by the external surfaces and finally
the internal structures and components.

This order is crucial for several reasons. The
foundation must be laid first because its stability
determines how high the skeletal form can reach while
still maintaining its structural soundness. As previously

Chakra Model of Development

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 19

stated, an individual must have a fully formed and stable


ego before it can be transcended. This begins with a
secure transition from from the root chakra, without
which the individual may question their very existence
(Nelson, 1994). The skeletal form must precede the
application of the external surfaces for these surfaces to
have anchoring points. This is the function of the sacral
stage during which the individual begins to explore both
their individuation and the definition of the self-concept
that they will project to others. Finally, the external
surfaces must be afixed before significant work is done
to the interior so that the internal fixtures are adequately
protected from the corrosive effects of the external
environment. The assertion of personal will characteristic
of the navel stage serves among other functions, to
protect the developing psyche and ego based attachments
through the deployment of defense mechanisms. Each of
these steps must be taken in this order and with attention
to detail. Otherwise, deviations will emerge as tectonic
defects once the structure is subjected to uses such as
the daily life activities each individual experiences and
the concomitant variations of excitement and stress that
accompany them.

As Eastern views of human development meet
West, the former might depict the latters conceptualization
of the self-sphere as half complete. According to the
chakra system model the skeletal structure of the sphere
is constructed in two hemispheres. Individuals construct

Figure 1. The Self-Sphere with Chakra Stages

Crown
Brow Upper
Throat Hemisphere
Heart
Navel
Lower
Sacral
Hemisphere

Root
20

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

the bottom half up to a point that would support the


first three chakra stagesroot, sacral and navelwhich
typically takes until middle adulthood to achieve. Then
and only then, depending upon the life of the individual,
is one capable of constructing the skeletal structure that
will support the second hemisphere that will complete
the Self and contain the four remaining chakra stages.
As with any hierarchical structure, the skeletal form of
this spherical model of the Self is erected vertically, thus
creating latitude and longitude effects. The latitudes
mark the chakra stages. The longitudes represent
developmental paths as the individual moves up through
the potential influences of the chakra domains.

Recall that each chakra is distinguished from
the others by several defining characteristics: the root
chakra by its focus on security and survival, sacral by
sensations and individuation, navel by will and initiative,
heart by love and affection, throat by creativity and
nurturance, brow by intuition and wisdom, and crown
by oneness with creation. Each of these characteristics
also manifests as energies that influence perception and
behavior. When functioning as domains (as opposed
to stages), the chakras signal the individual energies or
schematic frames that predominate in an individual as
he or she engages in the tasks and requirements of life.

It is at this point that a return to the six
functions of Wilbers (1986) self-system is particularly
illuminating. The metabolism function refers to the
self-system function of ingesting experiences and
converting that material into components that will be
accepted, internalized, and manifested as the building
blocks of the self. Alternatively, the self will sometimes
reject some of the experiences it tastes, by exercising its
defense function. These defenses serve as the outer wall
that protects the self from the elements that appear as
a threat to the evolving self-concept. Under the chakra
system model, the chakra domains serve as metabolizing
agents as well as agents of defense that filter experiences
based upon the characteristics identified with that
specific chakra (e.g., fear, survival, sensual pleasure, will,
etc.). This model accommodates the biological, social
and environmental factors deemed influential by other
developmental models and rubricizes them.
As Wilber (1986) noted, development involves
attaining and identifying with a stage until it is mastered
and then transitioning to the next stage. This transition,
however, can be difficult as it involves detaching from
the stage that has just been mastered and engaging in

Best

the uncertainty of a stage not yet experienced. It is not


uncommon for individuals to become rooted or stuck at
a stage of development for any number of reasons. The
chakra system model affords an alternate nomenclature
that permits evaluation of how arrested stages become
operationalized. However, its utility lies in the fact that
it extends the developmental paradigm in ways that
afford a therapeutic pathway even for those who would
be deemed healthy according to Western psychology.

In making the case for a spiritually-oriented
branch of personality psychology, Emmons (1999) noted
that spirituality facilitates adaptive functioning because
it supports goal attainment, self-congruence, and selfregulation. He went on to argue for the existence of a
spiritual intelligence and supports this hypothesis
by arguing that spiritually-influenced behavior meets
Fords (1994) pre-requisites for effective functioning
motivation, skills, biological architecture, and supportive
environment. In other words, spiritually-influenced
lives involve goal directed activity (motivation), deliberate
action requiring the application of skillful conduct, and
the biological capacity to support motivated action along
with an environment that will not hinder its progress.

The chakra system model puts this spiritual
intelligence in context. Specifically, it provides a
developmental sequence for the individual such that goal
directed activity is evaluated in light of both chakra stage
attainment and the chakra domains which predominate
an individuals perceptions at a given time. For example,
chakra stage attainment would place the typical 25 year
old male at the navel stage. However, if he were still overly
focused on materialism to define his self-concept, the
sacral domain would suggest that the energies of the sacral
domain were still a dominant influence over his choices.
Additionally, this framework serves as a reference point
for measuring both the skillfulness of the conduct and
the adequacy of the supporting environment. However,
on a more practical level, chakra domains offer guidance
for investigating all levels of development in both healthy
individuals and those experiencing varying levels of
psychological dysfunction. Even the most narcissistic or
aggressive individual can be found to demonstrate isolated
gestures of selfless compassion, while the popular press
is replete with examples of pious figures succumbing to
their sensual urgings. The mediating influences of the
chakra domains offer an explanation for these patterns
of seemingly incongruent behavior, because the chakra
stages and domains interact independently. Universal

consciousness is comprised of the energy represented by


all seven chakra domains. Its existence is constant as is
its availability. What varies is the individuals ability to
control the lower order domains and access higher order
domains without being overwhelmed by them. Grof
and Grof (1989) suggested that behaviors sometimes
diagnosed as psychiatric disorders actually represent the
premature accessing of higher order psychic functions
that correspond with the higher order chakra domains,
something they called spiritual emergencies.

The chakra system model explains development
as a process by which the individual begins life
experience navigating upward from the root chakra with
a primary focus on security and survival. Accordingly,
all experiences are also metabolized through the prism
of the root chakra domain. The remaining six chakras,
while present, are undifferentiated and thus unavailable
for use (Figure 2). As the individual matures, however,
if safety and security needs are met adequately through
appropriate interactions with caregivers, additional
chakra domains become accessible (Figure 3) and assist
the nascent being with the transition to the sacral chakra
stage followed by higher chakra stages that will rest
on the secure foundation of the chakra stages already
mastered.
What is most important to note, however, is
that the construction of the bottom hemisphere of the
self-sphere reflects an autonomic progression through

Chakra Model of Development

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 21

Figure 2. Chakra Domains (Unbalanced



Root-Dominant)

Root
Crown
Brow
Sacral
Throat
Navel

Heart

the first three stages. That is, progression through


infancy, childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood
(corresponding to the root, sacral, and navel chakra
stages respectively) is generally dictated by physiological,
cognitive, and behavioral markers that assume stage
attainment unless major structural deficits are noted.
Therefore, the chakra system model does not
determine positive, productive progress to be achieved
based upon attainment of the third stage, as this is
presumed. To the contrary, progress is determined by
how well these stages have been supported as indicated
by unobstructed access to all seven chakra domains
(Figure 4), so that experiences can be metabolized in an
appropriately balanced manner. In this way, access to fully
balanced chakra domains helps the individual produce
the building material that forms the skeletal supports
and internal fixtures of the self-sphere. The quality of
the interior, particularly in the lower hemisphere of
the self-sphere, is thus determinative of whether and to
what extent development will continue into the upper
hemisphere. Premature access to higher order chakras
before an individual has become sufficiently grounded
by full and stable access to the lower order chakras can
lead to a destabilization of the ego structures (Grof &
Grof, 1989; Nelson, 1994). Alternatively, fixation on the
lower order chakra domains without progression to the
moderating effects of the higher order chakra domains
leads to stagnation.

Figure 3. Chakra Domains (Unbalanced



Multiple-Dominant)

Root

Thus, what has heretofore been described as


regressions under other paradigms (Washburn, 1990)
is regarded here as a continual reliance on the influence
of the root, sacral and/or navel chakra domains. Access
to higher domains as a result, is either sporadic or not
experienced at all depending upon the extent to which
reliance upon lower order chakra domains inhibits the
individuals ability to differentiate higher order chakra
domains. This differentiation of higher order chakras
is a necessary precursor to their exploration, use and
ultimately to higher order chakra stage attainment.
Chakra System Theory
ll models must be supported by an underlying
theory. The chakras have been discussed both from
religious and psycho-spiritual perspectives for several
thousand years (Akhilananda, 1946). Neither is their
relationship to the psychological discipline within the
Western worldview a novel concept. However, it is
necessary nonetheless, to frame the chakra system as
an independent theory if it is to support a model as is
intended in this article.

Feist and Feist (2009) identified three
characteristics of a theory that can serve as a useful
framework for presenting a chakra system theory. The
theory must present (1) a set of related assumptions; (2)
that can support logical deductive reasoning; (3) from
which testable hypotheses can emerge. Thus to qualify
as a legitimate theory, the assumptions supporting the

Figure 4. Chakra Domains (Balanced)


Crown
Root

Brow

Crown

Sacral
Brow
Navel

Throat
Heart

Sacral

Throat
Navel

22

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Heart
Best

chakra system model, must be readily identifiable and


able to support a variety of hypotheses in the form of not
only the model itself, but also for example, diagnostic
strategies, measurement instruments, and therapeutic
interventions as well.

Earlier in this article, one set of assumptions
advanced was that under this theory, developmental
progression from infancy to adulthood was characterized
as the challenge to move from a state of fear, imitation, and
preoccupation to a state of fearlessness, independence, and
surrender of subjective attachments. These assumptions
were based upon the presumed existence of lower order
chakras that must be mastered before higher order
chakras can be realized. To master the selfless affection,
creativity, intuitiveness, and wisdom that serve as the
defining characteristics of higher order chakra stages, it
is reasonable to deduce that one would have to overcome
worries about having security needs met, possessing the
affections of others, or preoccupations with the egoic
concerns that can characterize adulthood, a period when
the lower order chakra domains predominate.

Maslow (1968) described this transition in
terms of a dichotomy comparing deficiency motivations
to growth motivations. Deficiency motivations are
directly linked to the individuals dependence on the
environment. For Maslow, these motivations could be
linked to the first four levels of his hierarchy of needs
(safety, security, belongingness, and esteem); however,
they map just as effectively to the first three chakra
stages. Just as Maslow identified ego transcendence as
representing the transition from the dependency stage
created by deficiency motivations to the independence
attendant with growth, the line of demarcation for the
two hemispheres of the self-sphere divide the dependency
that characterizes the fear, imitation and preoccupation
of the lower order chakras from all that the higher order
chakras represent.
Moreover, it is only through how one uses the
filters of the chakra domains to interpret life experiences
that growth is possible. This is illustrated in the wisdom
research done by Mickler and Staudinger (2008) which
identified how one manages life events as a defining
characteristic of personal wisdom. Therefore, in returning
to the self-sphere, the individual capable of transition to
and through the heart chakra to the higher order chakras
will be the individual who has fully metabolized life
experiences through the first three chakras in a manner
that leaves little to no undigested bits such as residual

neuroses, complexes, or ego-based preoccupations.


Following Guntrip (1971), Wilber (1986) described
psychopathology as failed metabolismthe self fails
to digest and assimilate significant past experiences and
these remain lodged, like a bit of undigested meat, in the
self-system, generating psychological indigestion (p. 79).
Security concerns no longer serve as a motivation
to operate out of fear. Mastery of sensual impulses and
the need to imitate others free the individual from
the overwhelming influence of desire and ego-based
concerns. Otherwise, the individual interprets the will
as a tool for dominating or being dominated by others
as insurance that dependency needs will be met. This
process facilitates navigation through the chakra stages,
defines the organization function of the self-system and
activates the identification function in a manner that
either releases the individual from external dependencies
and ultimately from the ego itself or keeps the individual
perpetually bound to ego-based concerns. In this way,
the chakra domains function as heuristic devices through
which higher level stage attainment is made possible.
Implications for Future Research
hat does the chakra system model add to the
developmental literature that is not already
addressed by other models? In proposing a grand
theory of development based upon dynamic systems
theory, Spencer et al. (2006) identified four central
tenets of development: behavior is both of the moment
and consequential; it is softly assembled from varied
causes and subsystems deriving from and merging with
nonlinear interactions; perception, cognition, and action
are embodied in behavior as an integrated component;
and these experiences combine in idiosyncratic and
personalized ways.

Such a view would suggest a chaotic view of
development that should defy attempts to predict the
emergence of coherent stages. Yet such a coherence
does exist. The chakra system model asserts that an
unlimited variety of individual experiences are softly
assembledthrough a finite number of prismsthe
chakra domains. The domains encase these nonlinear
interactions of living in ways that explain why progress
can appear to be regression (e.g., struggling with
sacral domain impulses while working to master heart
chakra stage attainment; intuitive creativity appearing
spontaneously in the midst of self-indulgent and
destructive behavior). Additionally, the concept of
chakra domains explains how perceptions, cognitions

Chakra Model of Development

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 23

and actions are filtered and ultimately influenced such


that observed behavior can be explained in a systematic
way while still accommodating the idiosyncratic nature
of individual development.

More importantly, however, this model
provides a therapeutic course for those who have met
the requirements and expectations of a satisfactory and
well-functioning adulthood, yet still feel unfulfilled. The
chakra system model explains that what has heretofore
been viewed as complete is only the first half of ones
developmental journey, as has also been advanced
by Erikson (1997), Washburn (1990), and Wilber
(1986, 2000, 2001). It can also provide support for
developmentally focused psychotherapy, which has been
argued for as a necessary alternative to problem focused
approaches (Sperry, 2002).

The disciplines of counseling, education,
leadership, and even divinity all posit theories aimed at
aiding individuals toward the development of improved
functionality within their respective purviews. Yet,
each struggles to find a definitive approach upon which
universally accepted and invariably successful models
can be based. The limitation more often than not can be
traced to the individual as the unit of analysis. Therapeutic
interventions, educational strategies, leadership styles
and religious inspiration are all predicated upon stability
in the mode of delivery, which in every instance is traced
back to the individual. Transcendent individuals will
become more intuitive counselors, provide more effective
instruction, function more consistently as holistic leaders
and inspire the spiritual development of more people
through the examples they set.

The chakra system model presents a paradigm to
support these and other discipline-specific approaches. In
keeping with other transpersonal theories, it extends the
range of human development and adds depth and context
to the upper strata of stages to which the healthy psyche
aspires. By regarding this model as a developmental
model, it like other developmental models, offers a
scaffolding structure upon which to build growthoriented strategies both for neurotic and pathologic levels
of human functioning in need of therapeutic invention
as well as healthy individuals looking to continue the
development of their potential in all areas of life.

Specifically, further areas of research that would
test the efficacy of this model could include the creation
of validated instruments to identify both chakra stage
attainment and the over or underutilization of specific

24

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

chakra domains; the development of counseling strategies


and coaching techniques based upon a differentiation
of lower versus upper hemisphere stage attainment;
implications for the refinement of differential diagnoses
of neurotic and pathologic behaviors that may in the
alternative represent the premature accessing of higher
order chakra domains (Cortright, 2000); and leader and
leadership development models based upon the chakra
system model stage descriptions. That said, this list is just
a first step toward many potential uses and applications
for this model. Limitations include constraints on
identifying measurable constructs related to higher order
chakras (e.g., Brow & Crown). However, research based
on this theory could build upon the research designs used
for wisdom-related studies as well as those previously
conducted to validated theories of transcendence
(Thomas, Brewer, Kraus, & Rosen, 1993).
Conclusion
eturning to Kegan (1982), evolution from lower
to higher order chakras (viewed as moving
from subject to object according to his orders of
consciousness model), represents a recursive process of
meaning making applied to our personalized view of
reality. He wrote:

Subject-object relations emerge out of a lifelong


process of development: a succession of qualitative
differentiations of the self from the world, with a
qualitatively more extensive object with which to
be in relation created each time; a natural history
of qualitatively better guarantees to the world of its
distinctness; successive triumphs of relationship to
rather than embeddedness in....What is taken as
fundamental is the activity of meaning-constitutive
evolution. It is true that infancy marks the beginning
in the history of this activity. As such, infancy
initiates themes that can be traced through the
lifespan and inaugurates a disposition on the part of
the person toward the activity of evolution. The first
years of life do indeed have great salience. But it is a
not a salience sui generis; the distinctive features of
infancy, it is suggested, are to be understood in the
context of that same activity which is the persons
fate throughout his or her life. The recurrence
of these distinctive features in new forms later
on in development are not understood as later
manifestations of infancy issues, but contemporary
manifestations of meaning-making. (pp. 77-78)

Best


In the foregoing quote, Kegan (1982) articulated
the core function and purpose of the chakra domains and
their relationship to chakra stage transitions. It is through
the defining characteristics of each chakra domain that
individuals work through the process of shifting from
subject to object relative to that corresponding stage.
That is, the developmental process of the chakra system
model finds the individual working from a position
of being so immersed in the tasks, challenges, and
identifying features of a stage so as to be embedded in
and thus unable to distinguish him or herself from the
those featuresto objectifying and thus transcending
that stage such that she is able to relate to, learn from
and incorporate these features into a newly evolved self
that begins the process anew at the next stage.
However, Kegans orders of consciousness model
offers even more insight relative to the crucial transition
from the lower to the upper hemispheres of the Self-sphere.
As the heart chakra is defined as a proving ground for the
surrender of subjective attachments, this stage transition also
represents the very mastery of the subject-object transition
itself. Beyond the heart chakra, the Self emerges as a form
that no longer needs to create objects to make meaning but
internalizes experiences as a reflection of the undifferentiated
whole to which all individuals belonguniversal
consciousness. When viewed in this fashion, the line of
demarcation between the lower and upper hemispheres
of the Self can be visualized as delineating the epic battle
between defining our experiences of self by our knowledge
of the world and defining our experiences of the world by
our knowledge of Self. In so doing, the perspective offered by
the chakra system model extends the accepted sequence of
lifespan development by augmenting the present conceptual
understanding of when, how, and under what circum
stances healthy adult development can truly be achieved,
and complements them with a model organized around the
chakra system.

Akhilananda, S. (1946). Hindu psychology: Its meaning


for the West. New York, NY: Harper.
Aurobindo, S. (1993). The integral yoga: Sri aurobindos
teaching and method of practice. Twin Lakes, WI:
Lotus Press.
Baltes, P. B., & Staudinger, U. M. (2000). Wisdom: A
metaheuristic (pragmatic) to orchestrate mind and vir
tue toward excellence. American Psychologist, 55(1), 122-136.

Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base. New York, NY: Basic


Books.
Brennan, B. A. (1988). Hands of light: A guide to healing
through the human energy field. New York, NY:
Bantam Books.
Briggs Myers, L., McCaulley, M. H., Quenk, N.
L., & Hammer, A. L. (2003). MBTI Manual: A
guide to the development and use of the MyersBriggs Type Indicator (3rd ed.). Mountain View,
CA: CPP.
Broderick, P. C., & Blewitt, P. (2006). The life span:
Human development for helping professionals (2nd
ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall.
Cortright, B. (2000) An integral approach to spiritual
emergency. Guidance and Counseling, 15, 12-18.
Coward, H. G. (1985). Jung and kundalini. Journal of
Analytical Psychology, 30, 379-392.
Cunningham, P. F. (2007). The challenges, prospects and
promise of transpersonal psychology. International
Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 26, 41-55.
Emmons, R. A. (1999). The psychology of ultimate concerns:
Motivation and spirituality in personality.New York,
NY: Guilford Press.
Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity: Youth and crisis. New
York, NY: W. W. Norton.
Erikson, E. H. (1997). The life cycle completed. New York,
NY: W. W. Norton.
Feist, J., & Feist, G. J. (2009). Theories of personality (7th
ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
Ford, M. E. (1994). A living systems approach to the
intergration of personality and intelligence. In R.
J. Sternberg, & P. Ruzgis (Eds.), Personality and
intelligence (pp. 188-217). New York, NY: Cambridge
University Press.
Gilchrist, R., & Mikulas, W. L. (1993). A chakrabased model of group development. The Journal for
Specialists in Group Work, 18, 141-150.
Grof, C. & Grof, S. (1989). Spiritual emergency. Los
Angeles, CA: Tarcher.
Guntrip, H. (1971). Psychoanalytic theory, therapy, and
the self. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Ispa, J. M., Fine, M. A., Halgunseth, L. C., Harper, S.,
Robinson, J., Boyce, L.,...Brady-Smith, C. (2004).
Maternal intrusiveness, maternal warmth, and
mother-toddler relationship outcomes: Variations
across low-income ethnic and acculturation groups.
Child Development, 75(6), 1613-1631. doi:10.1111/
j.1467-8624.2004.00806.x

Chakra Model of Development

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 25

References

Judith, A. (2009) Wheels of life: A users guide to the chakra


system. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn.
Judith, A. (2004) Eastern body, western mind: Psychology
and the chakra system as a path to self. New York, NY:
Celestial Arts
Kegan, R. (1982). The evolving self: Problem and process
in human development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Mahler, M., Pine, F., & Bergman, A. (1975). The
psychological birth of the human infant. London, UK:
Hutchinson.
Maslow, A. H. (1968). Toward a psychology of being (2nd
ed.). New York, NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
Mickler, C., & Staudinger, U. M. (2008). Personal
wisdom: Validation and age-related differ
ences of a performance measure. Psycholog y
and Aging, 23(4), 787-799. doi:10.1037/a0013
928
Nelson, J. E. (1994). Healing the split: Integrating spirit
into our understanding of the mentally ill. Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press.
Neumann, E. (1954). The origins and history of
consciousness. New York, NY: Pantheon Books.
Pasupathi, M., & Staudinger, U. M. (2001). Do
advanced moral reasoners also show wisdom? linking
moral reasing and wisdom-related knowledge
and judgment. International Journal of Behavioral
Development, 25(5), 401-415.
Rama, S., Ballentine, R., & Ajaya, S. (1976). Yoga
and psychotherapy: The evolution of consciousness.
Honesdale, PA: Himalayan Institute Press.
Reddy, V. (2008). How infants know minds. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Ryan, M. B. (2008). The transpersonal William James.
Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 40(1), 20-40.
Scotton, B. W. (1996). The contribution of C.G. jung
to transpersonal psychiatry. In B. W. Scotton,
A. B. Chinen & J. R. Battista (Eds.), Textbook of
transpersonal psychiatry and psychology (pp. 39-51).
New York, NY: Basic Books.
Scotton, B. W., Chinen, A. B., & Battista, J. R. (Eds.).
(1996). Textbook of transpersonal psychiatry and
psychology. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Scotton, B. W., & Hiatt, J. F. (1996). The contribution
of hinduism and yoga to transpersonal psychiatry. In
B. W. Scotton, A. B. Chinen & J. R. Battista (Eds.),
Textbook of transpersonal psychiatry and psychology
(pp. 104-113). New York, NY: Basic Books.

26

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Spencer, J. P., Clearfield, M., Corbetta, D., Ulrich,


B., Buchanan, P., & Schoner, G. (2006). Moving
toward a grand theory of development: In memory
of Esther Thelen. Child Development, 77(6), 15211538.
Sperry, L. (2002). From psychopathology to
transformation: Retrieving the developmental focus
in psychotherapy. Journal of Individual Psychology,
58(4), 398-421.
Srinivasan, T. M. (2010) Energy medicine. International
Journal of Yoga, 3(1), 1.
Thomas, L. E., Brewer, S. J., Kraus, P. A. & Rosen, B. L.
(1993) Two patterns of transcendence: An empirical
examination of Wilbers and Washburns Theories.
Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 33, 66-81. doi:
10.1177/00221678930333007.
Walsh, R., & Vaughan, F. (1996). The worldview of ken
Wilber. In B. W. Scotton, A. B. Chinen & J. R.
Battista (Eds.), Textbook of transpersonal psychiatry
and psychology (pp. 62-74). New York, NY: Basic
Books.
Washburn, M. (1990). Two patterns of transcendence.
Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 30, 84-112.
Wilber, K. (1977). The spectrum of consciousness. Wheaton,
IL: Quest.
Wilber, K. (1980). The atman project. Wheaton, IL:
Quest.
Wilber, K. (1986). The spectrum of consciousness.
In K. Wilber, J. Engler, & D. P. Brown (Eds.),
Transformations of consciousness (pp. 67-97). Boston,
MA: Shambhala.
Wilber, K. (2000) Integral psychology: Consciousness, spirit,
psychology, therapy. Boston, MA: Shambhala.
Wilber, K. (2001). A brief history of everything (2nd ed.).
Boston: Shambhala.
Wilber, K., Engler, J., & Brown, D. P. (Eds.). (1986).
Transformations of consciousness: Conventional and
contemplative perspectives on development. Boston,
MA: Shambhala Publications.
Williams, P. D. (2008) The chakra systems and ancient
wisdom traditions worldwide. Patricia Day
Williams. Retreived from www.patriciadaywilliams.
com/chakrasystem.pdf
About the Author
K. Candis Best, JD, PhD, is an educator, consultant,
speaker, and author. She is licensed to practice law in

Best

the States of New York and New Jersey as well as before


the federal courts of the Eastern District of New York.
In addition to a law degree from Villanova University,
she possesses a Masters in Business Administration from
Adelphi University, a Masters in Psychology from Capella
University, and a PhD in Social Welfare Research and
Policy Development from Stony Brook University on Long
Island, where she enjoyed the distinction of being a W.
Burghardt Turner Fellow. She holds board certifications
in Healthcare Management and as a Human Services
Practitioner and is a fellow of the American College of
Healthcare Executives.
About the Journal
The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies is a
peer-reviewed academic journal in print since 1981. It is
published by Floraglades Foundation, and serves as the
official publication of the International Transpersonal
Association. The journal is available online at www.
transpersonalstudies.org, and in print through www.
lulu.com (search for IJTS).

Chakra Model of Development

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 27

Editorial Introduction to Special Topic Section:


Transpersonal Feminism

any women who have passed through the


halls of the Institute of Transpersonal
Psychology, where both Special Topic editors
are currently located, have asked, Why are there so
few women published in this field? Women of note
have published well-received books on a variety of
topics such as psycho-spiritual development (Ruumet,
2005; Vaughan, 1995/2005), as well as developing
research methods influential within the field of
qualitative research (Anderson, 2011; Clements, 2004).
While women authors in the Journal of Transpersonal
Psychology have increased as a percentage since the
1980s, women have been consistently under-represented
in the professional literature of the transpersonal fields
(Daniels, 2005; Hartelius, Caplan, & Rardin, 2007).
To date, no scholarship has adequately addressed the
reasons for this historical situation or examined the
motivations and support necessary for women to achieve
more publication in the transpersonal field (G. Rothe,
personal communication, April 20, 2011). Whatever the
roots of this dynamic, the current special issue addresses
this gender imbalance with an offering of womens voices
to the transpersonal audience, with a specific focus on
feminist perspectives.

28

Along with women-centeredness, feminist


perspectives offer rhetorical and analytical tools for
examining issues of social and personal rights and the
mechanisms through which such rights are constricted
based upon gender. For example, feminist scholarship
in fields such as psychology over the past four decades
have revealed the imbalance in gender representation
in the vast majority of research upon which these
disciplines were built (Yoder & Kahn, 1993; Enns,
2004). Additionally, feminist critiques of foundational
psychological forefathers such as Freud (Flax, 1990;
Thurer, 2005) and Jung (Wehr, 1987; Young-Eisendrath,
2004) have expanded some of the culturally-bounded
and, at times, sexist classical concepts of early psychology
with the explicit goal of creating schools of thought that
are more inclusive and less pathologizing of diverse
perspectives.
As a field of study, feminism, in its many
forms, centers scholarship around the experiences of
women and issues of vital importance to womens lives
and well-being, such as economic justice, reproductive
freedom, and freedom from harm and discrimination.
With regard to areas of focus in much transpersonal
scholarship, including states of consciousness, psycho-

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies


Studies, 29(2), 2010, pp. 28-32

Brooks & Crouch

spiritual development, extraordinary human experiences,


and psychological well-being, considerations of the
differences men and women may experience are vastly
underrepresented in the literature. Socio-cultural location
and the influence of gendered identities on the daily lived
experience of both individuals and groups are real factors
in the differing ways women and men are treated as both
subjects of research as well as authors of transpersonallyoriented scholarship. Consideration of and research
on the variety and richness of womens psychospiritual
experiences will help to broaden understanding in the
field of the various ways in which the transpersonal can
be viewed and interpreted.
However, the voices of women cannot be
represented by any single author: it is a confluence of voices
that will bring forward the dynamic, multidimensional
ways in which womens experiences can inform a
deepening understanding of transpersonal phenomena.
The goal of this Special Topic is to invite conversation
and exploration of diverse feminist viewpoints within
transpersonal studies in order to further develop
transpersonal theory that is inclusive of the individuals it
aims to describe.
In this issue, Christine Brooks and Martina Juko
Holiday suggest intersections or possible relationships
between feminism/womanism and transpersonalism.
These meeting points create possibilities for novel
approaches to spirituality, critical theory building,
clinical practice, education, research, and activism,
endeavors that ultimately aim to heal the psychospiritual
wounds of those who may have suffered from noninclusive conventions. A discussion of feminism
within the transpersonal field has been sorely needed;
Brooks piece fills that gap and posits why and how the
transpersonal field omitted considerations of gender in
transpersonalists early universalizing theories. Brooks
delivers a broad overview of feminist psychological
theory and feminist spirituality in order to give a tangible
characterization of the intersection between feminism
and transpersonalism, noting that beyond scholarly
discourse and research, praxis and education may
serve as potent locations of social action; transpersonal
scholarship may benefit from reaching out to mine the
wealth of subjective experience that exists outside the
formal bounds of the academy, bringing the people and
their experiences front and center in the integration of
feminist and transpersonal scholarship. Indeed, Brooks
notes that both transpersonal and feminist thought

focus on the role of individual agency in personal and


social transformation, emphasizing the acceptance of
subjective experience as the starting point of inquiry
that aims to elucidate the experience of many within
larger collective contexts. Within this epistemological
vein, Ferrers (2002, 2009) participatory philosophy is
presented as a possible theoretical starting point for the
envisioned feminist and transpersonal worldview, as
the participatory turn values and takes account of the
multiple perspectives on spirituality that are recognized
today by those sensitive to feminist views and diverse
transpersonal experiences.
Holiday describes the womanist perspective
in all of its historical, cultural, political, and spiritual
richness, giving credit to the liberationist work of women
of color seeking to communicate their own subjectivity
as a personal form of self-articulation, communion with
spirit, connection with community, and individual and
collective healing. Holiday points out transpersonal
psychologys own early ethnocentricity, but carves
out a space in the transpersonal discourse for the
womanist perspective, which has from its inception been
embedded within an explicitly spiritual context. Holiday
uses the metaphor of the self-created mirror to convey
how womanists must express their real lived experience
authentically, sounding the call for more scholarship
from within the transpersonally-oriented womanist
community. According to Holliday, the healing of deep
wounds and traumas of women of color may be supported
through inquiry that embraces the womanist-influenced
concepts of the word, expressed through narrative and
testimony; the body, trusted as a viable source of data
and an authoritative embodied voice of experience;
and the kinfolk, recognized as the relationship between
the individual and her community. Here, as in other
articles within this issue, scholarship is not removed
from the object of its study, but rather is conducted by
those who come from within the studied context, by
those whose participation in that reality grants them a
subjective authority that is valued in both womanist and
transpersonal discourse.
The other six womens voices included in this
special issue demonstrate the depth and breadth of
feminist thought as it is currently expressing itself in
the transpersonal community. This collection of articles
brims with the lived experience of women and the issues
that have meaning and importance to them in their
personal, academic, and spiritual lives.

Editorial Introduction to Special Topic Section

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 29

Judy Grahn interprets an ancient Mesopotamian


myth about the great goddess Inanna to reappraise how
the personal integrity of women is vital to the urgent
need to save the natural world. Grahn here considers
the myth of Innana and Shukaletuda, in which Innana
is subjected to a sexual transgression, and proposes that
such an image stand for general disrespect of natures
order, represented not only by the transgression of
Inannas feminine power and aesthetics, but also by the
transgressors unthinking pillaging of the land. Grahn
suggests that this transgression is not what other modern
cultural critics might consider as a rape, for the crime
done to Innana is not personal and psychological, but
rather a societal and collective wound inflicted upon the
earth to which the community is bound. The powerful
imagery of Innanas menstruation and menstrual
blood and its power to cleanse the land reinforces the
transformative role of the feminine, which Grahn asserts
was and still is denigrated under the reign of patriarchy.
Grahn gives us a look into how females may choose to
interpret old stories along postmodern feminist lines,
and how this can be ecologically, psychologically, and
spiritually healing.
Sophia Korb proposes an area of potential
research that has been overlooked to date in transpersonal
studies: the lived experience of Jewish and Christian
fundamentalist mothering. Korb points out that
conservative religious movements in the West have
often been derided or rejected in transpersonal circles;
she suggests that the motivations and complexities of
the lives of fundamentalist women must be understood,
as raising children constitutes a vital culture-making
process. Korb illuminates why some modern women
choose to identify with a more restrictive fundamentalist
path instead of a more liberal feminist one, emphasizing
self-agency, religious identification, cultural and social
discourse, tradition, and community. Korb presents this
discussion within the sequential framework of a social
and cultural process of identity formation, described as
the influences of early environment, identity formation,
religious transformation, and finally the molding of the
early environments of womens children, concluding
that identity, as a whole, is comprised of the intersecting
identities of both the mother and the religious
practitioner.
April Topfer discusses the embodied experience
of female adoptees within a closed adoption system,
weaving in personal narrative as a cogent example of

30

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

the authors own hermeneutical process of biological


identification and the reclamation of her embodied
female voice. Topfer combines elements from Jungian
and feminist theory to propose a theoretical model of
psychological and spiritual growth that highlights the
role of the embodied female voice as a transformational
component of a female adoptees journey toward selfunderstanding. Furthermore, Topfer includes narratives
from birth mothers who relinquished their children,
providing a counterbalance to the discussion of the lived
experience of female adoptees.
Irene Lazarus reports on the efficacy of
incorporating feminism and a family systems view
into a model of psycho-spiritual development as a
healing modality appropriate for personal work as
well as therapeutic practice. Lazarus discusses her own
experience of teaching the course, A Transpersonal
Feminist Approach to Family Systems, at the Institute
of Transpersonal Psychology from the years 19952002, and includes an organic inquiry into the personal
narratives of some of her students, who used transpersonal
modalities such as genealogy, dream work, journaling,
and other forms of creative expression to assist in selfunderstanding and self-acceptance. Considering how
family history is tightly bound to a particular sociocultural framework, Lazarus feminist revision to Murray
Bowens original family systems theory is a much-needed
update to a transpersonal theoretical system that could
be more inclusive and broadly descriptive by honoring
perspectives grounded in complex and varied contexts.
Lazarus thus sets an example of how transpersonal theory
can be updated according to current feminist discourse.
The personal, academic, and spiritual lives
of women cannot be considered as separate within a
feminist paradigm, as demonstrated by Kim Ducketts
proposition of the transformational power of using the
Wheel of the Year (WOTY) as a psycho-spiritual healing
process for women. Ducketts teachings and programs
for the WOTY are modeled on ancient European earthbased systems of psychospiritual development, which
follow the temporal patterns of the changing seasons, and
are also reflected in the modern teachings of womens
spirituality, Pagan, goddess spirituality, and Wiccan
traditions, and draw parallels with the transpersonal
developmental model of psychosynthesis. For Duckett, a
womans lived experience and her processes of healing
including the reconstructing and deconstructing of
integral parts of the selfcan be compared symbolically

Brooks & Crouch

to the mythology of the Greek goddess Persephone,


whose story of spiritual and psychological development
is entwined with the change of the seasons. Ducketts
model recognizes the necessity of and encourages selfreflection and identification with other women going
through individual processes of biological development
and psycho-spiritual growth, and thus presents a healing
modality for more than just the individual female, but
for the whole of the community of women.
Judy Schavrien examines two sets of ancient
Greek trilogies as allegories to current environmental
catastrophes. Setting the stage for her analysis, Schavrien
takes note of the reciprocal dynamic between the
sociopolitical world and the religious beliefs and practices
of the ancient Greeks; she then locates the intersection
between society and societys religion in the gendered
attitudes and beliefs of Athenian males, as witnessed
through the influential discourse of the theater, which
crafted specific visions of female deities and thus informed
and was informed by the social roles of Athenian women.
In the first trilogy of plays examined, Aeschylus The
Oresteia, Schavrien suggests that the defamation,
demonization, and distortion of the female deities, linked
to the maternal, to nature, and to natures way of both
creating and destroying, fit the purposes of a growing
democratic male-dominated city-state. In the second
example, Sophocles Oedipus trilogy, Schavrien shows
how the playright might have written a tale that aligned
with the sociopolitical context of the time, with the hopes
of restoring the balance between family and body politic,
female and male, and ultimately between humans, nature,
and the gods. Schavriens study, informed by Gross (1993)
feminist hermeneutics of suspicion, exhibits a broad
vision by first attempting to uncover the androcentric and
misogynistic bias within the earlier trilogy that correlated
with hypermasculinity and hubris, and thus imbalance,
and then finding some resolution within the later trilogys
foregrounding of the feminine, thus potentially restoring
balance. Schavrien contends that the second triology
served as a critique of not only the sociopolitical scene,
but also of the psychospiritual and psychoecological
characterization of the collective. Schavrien then suggests
parallels between ancient Athens and contemporary
America and modern corporations; then, in consonance
with Sophocles late vision, Schavrien proposes an act
of rebalancing centered on the sustenance of the Earth,
with implications for critical reinterpretations of history,
politics, and psychology.

The editors of this section are not attempting to


set out a rigid definition of what feminist transpersonal
scholarship should look like, or set an agenda for
the kinds of topics feminist transpersonalists and
transpersonal feminists should contribute to the growing
body of literature. If any viewpoint stands out within the
feminist movement, it is that contemporary feminists
seek to utilize the most comprehensive and sophisticated
interdisciplinary methods to study and elucidate the
complexity of womens experiences, from illustrations
gleaned from personal, self-reflective processes and
development to examination of social and collective
roles, relationships, and identities.
Many of the articles in this issue describe or
employ qualitative methods of research and review
of extant literature; such approaches aim to privilege
subjective accounts of womens experience, drawing
from the psychological, the experiential, the embodied,
and the actual lived reality of women. Interestingly, a
number of authors chose to discuss their own personal
experiences as these relate to their research endeavors.
Qualitative methods are gaining increased visibility and
credence within the social scientific fields, and feminist
researchers and scholars have employed qualitative
approaches to gathering and analyzing subjective
experience, both formally and informally, for decades.
Additionally, transpersonal psychology has from its
inception developed qualitative approaches for research,
since many of the experiences that transpersonalists have
studied cannot be fully elucidated through quantitative
description. Those working within both feminist and
transpersonal terrains have learned the benefits of
qualitative approaches to inquiry and can take strong
positions in favor of these methods with decades of
meaningful data to support them.
The transpersonal field is a progressive academic
discipline and it is imperative to engage in scholarly
discourse that promotes forward-thinking, flexible, and
adaptive methods of inquiry to support the constant
changes within intellectual discourse. The editors are
honored to bring this special section of the International
Journal of Transpersonal Studies to life. Christine began
to vision such a project as a student at the Institute of
Transpersonal Psychology almost a decade ago. Eight
years later, through collaboration with passionate
women scholars in the transpersonal community, this
issue offers eight articles representing diverse viewpoints
from within a feminist-transpersonal perspective. The

Editorial Introduction to Special Topic Section

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 31

editors hope that this issue will help to bridge feminist


and transpersonal research and scholarship that fosters
interdisciplinary intellectual thought, and that it will
explicitly support academic work by transpersonallyoriented women. Each new and diverse perspective
that is given voice adds to the whole picture of human
experience, complex though it may be; if the inclusive
vision of transpersonalism cannot be achieved through
universalisms, then it must be pursued through a rich
plurality of diverse voices.
Christine Brooks
Institute of Transpersonal Psychology
Courtenay Crouch
Institute of Transpersonal Psychology
References

Gross, R. (1993). Buddhism after patriarchy: A feminist


history, analysis, and reconstruction of Buddhism.
Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Hartelius, G. Caplan, M., & Rardin, M. A. (2007).
Transpersonal psychology: Defining the past,
divining the future. Humanist Psychologist, 35(2),
1-26. Retrieved from <http://www.informaworld.
com/smpp/title~content=t775653705>
Thurer, S. L. (2005). The end of gender: A psychological
autopsy. New York, NY: Routledge.
Wehr, D. S. (1987). Jung & feminism: Liberating
archetypes. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Yoder, J. D., & Kahn, A. S. (1993). Working toward an
inclusive psychology of women. American Psychologist,
48, 846-850. doi:10.1037//0003-066X.48.7.846
Young-Eisendrath, P. (2004). Subject to change: Jung,
gender, and subjectivity in psychoanalysis. New York,
NY: Brunner-Routledge.

Anderson, R. (2011). Intuitive inquiry: Exploring the


mirroring discourse of disease. In F. J. Wertz, K.
Charmaz, L. M. McMullen, R. Josselson, & R.
Anderson (Eds.), Five ways of doing qualitative
analysis: Phenomenological psychology, grounded
theory, discourse analysis, narrative research, and
intuitive inquiry (pp. 243-278). New York, NY:
Guilford Press.
Clements, J. (2004). Organic inquiry: Toward research
in partnership with spirit. Journal of Transpersonal
Psychology, 36(1), 26-49. Retrieved from <http://
atpweb.org/journal.aspx>
Daniels, M. (2005). Shadow, self, spirit: Essays in
transpersonal psychology. Charlottesville, VA: Imprint
Academic.
Enns, C. Z. (2004). Feminist theories and feminist
psychotherapies: Origins, themes, and variations (2nd
ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.
Ferrer, J. (2002). Revisioning transpersonal theory: A
participatory vision of human spirituality. Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press.
Ferrer, J. (2009). The plurality of religions and the spirit
of pluralism: A participatory vision of the future
of religion. International Journal of Transpersonal
Studies, 28, 139-151. Retrieved from <http://www.
transpersonalstudies.org>
Flax, J. (1990). Thinking fragments: Psychoanalysis,
feminism, and postmodern theory in the contemporary
West. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

32

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Brooks & Crouch

Unidentified Allies:
Intersections of Feminist and Transpersonal Thought
and Potential Contributions to Social Change
Christine Brooks

Institute of Transpersonal Psychology


Palo Alto, CA, USA
Contemporary Western feminism and transpersonalism are kaleidoscopic, consisting of
interlocking influences, yet the fields have developed in parallel rather than in tandem.
Both schools of praxis developed during the climate of activism and social experimentation
of the 1960s in the United States, and both share a non-pathological view of the human
experience. This discussion suggests loci of synthesized theoretical constructs between the
two disciplines as well as distinct concepts and practices in both disciplines that may serve
the other. Ways in which a feminist-transpersonal perspective may catalyze social change on
personal, regional, and global levels are proposed.
Keywords: feminism, feminist psychology, transpersonalism, transpersonal psychology,
social justice, spiritual development, spirituality, interdisciplinarity.

ontemporary Western feminism (which will be


defined below) and the transpersonal movement
both came of age in the climate of activism
and experimentation in the United States during the
late 1960s, and both movements continue to evolve
today. As with many schools of thought that blossomed
during the height of modernism and then transformed
during the postmodern turn, both feminism and
transpersonal studies1 are kaleidoscopic disciplines made
up of interlocking yet distinct influences and sources.
However, as evidenced in the literature of both fields and
demonstrated herein, feminism and transpersonalism
have moved in parallel rather than in tandem over the
course of their development. Feminist thought, and even
the voices of women scholars, are woefully lacking in
transpersonal literature. Hartelius, Caplan, and Rardin
(2007) devoted an entire section of their discussion of
a contemporary working definition of the transpersonal
field to evaluating gender diversity in the literature; it
is interesting to note that they found that only 25% of
the 182 articles published in 30 years in the key journal
of the field, the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, were
attributed to women. This led the authors to conclude
that, if transpersonal psychology is to stand for human
wholeness and transformation, it needs to embody what
it teaches; there can be no lasting human transformation
without inclusiveness, nor holism without diversity (p.

19). The absence of womens voices in the professional


literature takes on political and social significance
in relation to such burning questions: who among
transpersonalists is publishing in the professional
literature, and what barriers continue to exist in
transpersonal circles that maintain the invisibility and
silence of many women? The ongoing diversity work at
the core of feminist movements, described below, may
serve as a rich resource as transpersonalism moves, as
Rothberg (1999) and Hunt (2010) urged, into a more
socially-engaged phase.
Michael Daniels (2005) suggested that the
field of transpersonal psychology has relied heavily on
aspects of theory and practice historically related to
an ascending (transcendent) model of psychospiritual
development rather than a descending (immanent) model.
Daniels went on to argue that ascending models value
the masculine while descending models are often related
to aspects traditionally related to feminine qualities. The
problematics of gendering psychospiritual qualities (i.e.,
using terms such as masculine and feminine to describe
psychological or spiritual qualities) is a topic worthy of
scholarly inquiry in its own right; though it will be a
running question throughout this piece, the full attention
that this burning issue deserves within the field is put
off for a future inquiry. It must suffice here to note that
the frequent utilization of binary gendered language (i.e.,

International
of Transpersonal
pp. 33-57 Journal of Transpersonal Studies 33
Feminist
and Journal
Transpersonal
Thought Studies, 29(2), 2010,
International

masculine and feminine qualities)notably common in


transpersonal psychologyis an area ripe for additional
critique, research, and theory in the future of the field.
As a researcher and educator who straddles the
two disciplines in my own work, I began my exploration
of the relationships between feminist and transpersonal
thought with a series of questions: What are the
intersections between feminism(s) and transpersonal
studies? Where do these progressive movements align?
How do they differ? What does it mean to identify as
both feminist and transpersonal? It is not my intention
herein to trace the entirety of the complex and compelling
histories of both transpersonal and feminist thought,
although excellent sources for both are noted below.
My goal is to highlight a few locations of synthesized
theoretical constructs and practice between the two
disciplines. Additionally, initial proposals of how a
feminist-transpersonal perspective may catalyze social
change will be addressed.
The Transpersonal Terrain
s the field of transpersonal psychology matures,
histories of its origins and continuing research
seeking to define the boundaries of this field of inquiry
and practice have become more prevalent (Daniels, 2005;
Hartelius et al., 2007; Hastings, 1999; Lajoie & Shapiro,
1992; Lukoff, Lu, & Turner, 1996; Shapiro, Lee, &
Gross, 2002; Walsh & Vaughan, 1993). Hastings (1999)2
placed the birth of the field of transpersonal psychology
in the late 1960s with the publication of Maslows
(1968/1999) second edition of Toward a Psychology of
Being. Originally published in 1962, Maslows work
explored peak experiences and how such experiences
promote a transcendence from a doing level of self to
the level of being (Hastings, 1999, p. 193). Additional
influences in the development of the discipline include
the work of Anthony Sutich and the Palo Alto Group
who associated transpersonal theory with the field of
psychology to establish what Maslow viewed as the
Fourth Force of psychology. However, many concepts at
the core of transpersonal psychology pre-date this era and
reflect ancient wisdom traditions such as Buddhism and
Sufism as well as theories about spirituality developed by
earlier psychologists such as William James (1902/1997)
and Carl Jung (1934/1954).
Citing William James approach to the
psychology of religious experience, transpersonal scholar
William Braud (2006) referred to James concept of
becoming conscious of and in touch with a More (p.

34

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

135) in the human experience. In short, in transpersonal


psychology there is an explicit acknowledgement of the
spiritual nature in human consciousness and recognition
that the study and understanding of the spiritual
experiences in peoples lives deepen a psychologists
comprehension of the human condition. Building upon
the work of humanists such as Abraham Maslow and
Carl Rogers, the field has devoted much of its theory
building and scholarship to understanding concepts
such as exceptional human experience, higher states of
consciousness, and altruistic behaviors and attitudes
such as compassion, mindfulness, and forgiveness.
Transpersonal psychology additionally chal
lenges the rigid, materialist epistemology of traditional
schools of psychology in favor of a system that is flexible
enough to hold many perspectives at once (Mack, 1993,
p. xi). As Mack noted: Psychology in this [materialist]
paradigm, has limited its healing potential by following a
therapeutic model in which one person treats the illness or
problems of another, separate, individual, whose relevant
world is confined to a few principle relationships (p.
xii). The burgeoning transpersonal field has offered an
alternative view:
In the transpersonal universe or universes, we seek
to know our worlds close up, relying on feeling and
contemplation, as well as observation and reason, to
gain information about a range of possible realities.
In this universe we take subjectivity for granted
and depend on direct experience, intuition, and
imagination for discoveries about the inner and outer
worlds. A transpersonal epistemology appreciates
the necessity of ordinary states of consciousness
for mapping the terrain of the physical universe,
but nonordinary states are seen as powerful means
of extending our knowledge beyond the four
dimensions of the Newtonian/Eisensteinian [sic]
universe. (p. xii)

This epistemology values multiple ways of
knowing, moving beyond scientism and embracing
the complex and diverse voices comprising the
transpersonal field to date. Additionally, Macks (1993)
view of transpersonal psychology suggested the validity
of the subjective experience. As will be noted below,
the primacy of the subjective voice is a major locus of
intersection between transpersonal psychology and
feminism. However, it is important to note, albeit briefly,
that a distinction is to be made between individualism

Brooks

and subjectivity. For the present purposes, individualism


considers the individual as a discrete whole, an entity aware
of and intentionally participating in its own growth and
development, a process that is decontextualized and not
dependent upon others. Subjectivity is rather the state of
awareness of inner and outer events as ones own experience,
the experience of a contextualized, bodily-located self.
Such a distinction is important to consider with regard
to the evolution of both the feminist and transpersonal
fields over the course of the past four decades.

As noted above, the field of transpersonal
psychology (much like the social movement of feminism
and the field of feminist psychology) has multiple faces.
Over the more than 40-year course of the development
of the field, definitions of transpersonal psychology have
evolved from Maslows early focus on peak experiences.
In 1992, Lajoie and Shapiro published a synthesized
definition from more than 40 definitions of transpersonal
psychology: Transpersonal psychology is concerned with
the study of humanitys highest potential and with the
recognition, understanding, and realization of unitive,
spiritual, and transcendent states of consciousness (p. 91).
As I examine this definition almost two decades after its
publication through my own feminist lens, two elements
stand out: 1) a privileging of transcendence and higher
states of human potential and consciousness rather than
an acknowledgement of the complexity and depths of all
lived experience (cf. Daniels 2005); and 2) a seemingly
exclusive focus on the decontextualized individual.
So much has changed in the intervening years
since this definition was developed: the internet alone has
expanded the capacity to network, connect, and interact
with one another at levels never dreamed possible, while
also highlighting the increasing isolation felt by many in a
world too fast and demanding to encourage actual personto-person interaction. Increasing globalization of the
marketplace has created opportunities for extreme levels
of wealth for a very few while simultaneously threatening
ecological and economic disaster as human and material
resources continue to be consumed at unsustainable
levels. The frenzy of capitalism and consumption has led
to the explosion of the sustainability movement that seeks
to restore a healthy relationship to the planet and replace
entitlement with respect for the relationships needed to
fulfill the most basic levels in Maslows (1943) hierarchy
of needs: food, water, shelter, and love.
In this climate, transpersonal psychology has
needed to evolve in order to stay relevant. Mainstream

psychology is beginning to embrace its own roots in


spirituality, re-engaging with both psyche and spirit in
both practice and research.3 In the United States positive
psychology (e.g., Snyder & Lopez, 2007) and health
psychology (e.g., Sheridan & Radmacher, 1991) are now
established fields of research and clinical intervention,
and spiritual practices such as mindfulness meditation
are studied and taught as mainstream psychological
treatment to minimize stress and promote healing
(e.g., Kabat-Zinn, Lipworth, & Burney, 1985; Stahl &
Goldstein, 2010).4
A contemporary definition of the transpersonal
field addresses these cultural changes and the evolution
of the field. Following the example of Lajoie and
Shapiro (1992), Hartelius et al. (2007) conducted a
thematic analysis of 160 definitions and concluded
that transpersonal psychology is comprised of three
interacting themes: Beyond-Ego Psychology; Integrative/
Holistic Psychology; and Transformative Psychology.
Hartelius et al. wove the themes into a new definition
of the transpersonal field: An approach to psychology
that 1) studies phenomena beyond the ego as context
for 2) an integrative/holistic psychology; this provides a
framework for 3) understanding and cultivating human
transformation (p. 11). While this definition may be
viewed as individualistic in scope, the authors stressed
that the transformation of the individual is but one
important aspect of creating change in the world:

Feminist and Transpersonal Thought

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 35

The three aspects of the field complete rather


than compete. As beyond-ego aspects of human
experience become understood, a view emerges
in which human individuals are integrally
interconnected with much larger contexts. This larger
vision, in turn, allows glimpses of how to become a
greater, deeper humanity. As humanity transforms,
individually and collectively, it cultivates more
beyond-ego development worthy of study. Together,
the three themes of transpersonal psychology form
an interdependent, mutually supportive cycle of
inquiry. (p. 11)

This statement seems to mirror the oftenparaphrased quote by Gandhi: Be the change you want
to see in the world. Such a comparison is not meant
to diminish either the nuanced complexity of the above
definition, nor to frame Gandhis quote in a reductivist
manner. Rather, it is to point out that both concepts focus
on the vital importance of individual agency and action

as catalysts for personal as well as social transformation:


moving from rigid individualism to the embracement
of unique subjective experiences within intersubjective
milieus. As will be discussed later, it is important to
highlight that transformation begins with the individual
in this frame, and thus subjectivity is reaffirmed as the
locus or starting point of the process. The self is the place
where transformation begins, though not its full and
final purpose.
The Feminist Terrain(s): A Brief History of Western
Academic and Activist Feminism
estern (or Euro-American) feminism,5 generally
understood to include the movements developed
in the late 60s through early 80s in the United States,
Western Europe (notably the United Kingdom), and
Australia, has contemporary roots, as well as a deeper
lineage reaching back to the first wave of womencentered activism focused primarily on suffrage (womens
right to vote) that took place in the late 19th and early
20th centuries in the United States and United Kingdom
(Freedman, 2002). What is generally understood as
Western feminism is one faction among many in the
broader global womens rights movements that focus
on issues such as human trafficking, reproductive
and family planning rights, violence against women,
women impacted by war, womens representation in
government and the workplace, and povertyto name
but a few of the crucial areas of concern (Morgan, 1996).
Consideration of the complexities, nuances, and rich
history of the myriad womens movements that now
span the globe and interlock in multiple ways through
scholarship (e.g., Bhavnani & Phoenix, 1994), activist
endeavors (e.g., Women in Black and Code Pink, two
international war protest groups), social media (e.g.,
websites such as Facebook and GlobalSister that seek
to connect and inform women) and non-government
organizations (e.g., Sisterhood is Global Institute and the
Global Fund for Women) are beyond the scope of this
work; thus, it is not possible to provide a comprehensive
overview of feminism here. Major concepts describing
key schools of thought and evolutions of the Western
feminist movement that have influenced my perspectives
on feminisms will be briefly noted to provide context
for the considerations at hand (but see Freedman, 2002;
LeGates, 2001).
The Western feminist movement of the 1960s
to 1980s, now referred to in many feminist academic
circles as second wave feminism and understood as the

36

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

modern origin of contemporary Western feminism(s),


was greatly influenced by the civil rights, anti-war, and
youth activism movements in the United States during
the 1960s (LeGates, 2001); its development paralleled
the counter-cultural inception of contemporary
transpersonalism. The movement was driven by
a wide variety of womens concerns, including sex
discrimination; limited opportunities in employment;
restraints on reproductive freedom; and concerns about
domestic violence, sexual victimization, and womens
unpaid labor (Biaggio, 2000, p. 3). Early activism and
political action focused on women as a distinct class
(differentiated from men) who shared the common
experience of dominance and oppression simply
by being women (Lerner, 1986; Spivak, 1988). The
construct of a monolithic class of women has become
increasingly complexified as the rise of diverse voices
in the movement(s) has demonstrated the problems
that come with conceptualizing women as a class.
Nonetheless, early feminist thought demonstrated the
need to delineate a starting point for the movement that
starkly highlighted the extreme inequity and disparity
of privilege that women have experienced due to gender
and/or sex roles associated with biological sex (Jehlen,
1990; Kessler & McKenna, 1985).
This early activism began to dismantle
assumptions about womens position in society as well
as what had traditionally been assumed as fixed gender
roles. The feminist movement grew through grassroots
efforts, notably the formation of consciousness-raising
(CR) groups. These groups were collectives of women
gathered together, focused on facilitating personal
awareness of a central tenet of the movement: the
personal is political (Biaggio, 2000, p. 6)6:
All across the [U.S.], as if by spontaneous
combustion, women were meeting to discuss
their personal plights and arriving at the same
conclusion: that their problems were not unique
or isolated phenomena, but rather reflections of a
political environment that devalued and subjugated
women.This is how the movement caught fire;
women bonded around the new insight that they
were being treated like second-class citizens. They
realized that they had grown so accustomed to this
status that they had been blind to its very existence.
This awareness and the fervent sense of sisterhood it
gave rise to fueled the movement. (p. 6)

Brooks

Acts of consciousness-raising often also led to personal


and public confrontations of long-held views on race,
class, and social injustice, along with protests of gender
inequality. Women began to write personal narratives of
their own experiences as subjective accounts of such issues
(Friedan, 1963/2001; Pratt, 1984; Rich, 1979/1995). This
early work became the heuristic ground of qualitative
information that coalesced into feminist theory through
various manifestos and anthologies (e.g., Morgan, 1970;
Redstockings, 1969/2010).
The Spectrum of Feminism
Feminism is, and has been from its inception,
a collection of many movements. What is generally
referred to as second wave feminism developed out of
four major sub-categories: liberal feminism (or equality
feminism), radical feminism, socialist feminism (or material
feminism), and cultural feminism. Radical feminism
and cultural feminism have been greatly influential in
contemporary feminist psychology and warrant brief
explication herein.
Radical feminism. Radical feminists believe
that the patriarchal structure of society oppresses
women. Radical feminists have conducted research and
created theory demonstrating how some of the most
sacred cultural institutions, including marriage and
child-bearing/care, operate as mechanisms of control and
domination over women (Rich, 1979/1995; Firestone,
1970). Psychologist Laura Brown (1994) is dedicated
to dismantling and restructuring theory, practice, and
even the patriarchy inside ourselves in an effort to
create a vision of the just society in which oppression
and domination are no longer the norm (pp. 233-234).
Browns voice displays the intermingling of theory and
politics that most often characterizes the radical feminist
perspective. The prominent social and political work of
radical feminism pursues the elimination of violence
against women and highlights issues of sexualitymost
notably the issues of rape and pornographyand the
effects these two elements have on women (Dworkin,
1981; MacKinnon 1982/1993). Amid the criticism of
unrealistic separatism leveled at some of their political
stances, radical feminists nonetheless have been at the
forefront of antiviolence legislation and were among the
first to develop rape crisis centers and battered womens
shelters (Echols, 1989) and have had a lasting impact in
feminist psychology.
Cultural feminism. Cultural feminists are
generally credited with seeking to resurrect, reconsider,

and re-vision the cultural meanings of female qualities


such as the concept of the feminine as it is used in areas
such as Jungian analytic work (e.g., Woodman, 1990,
1997; see also Downing, 1992/2003) and feminist
spirituality (e.g., Christ, 1992, 1997). A core assertion
of many cultural feminists is that women have been
oppressed due to inherent unique qualities such as
intuition, emotionality, and relationality (Alpert, 1973;
Donovan, 1992; Noddings, 1984; Wilshire, 1989).

Feminist and Transpersonal Thought

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 37

Cultural feministshave tended to embrace the


biological and psychological understandings of the
differences between men and women. From their
perspective, the social problem women encounter is
not the differences per se, but rather the differential
value placed on those differences. (Whalen, 1996,
p. 23)
Or, as Wilshire (1989) noted in her explication of how
ancient philosophers laid the groundwork for ongoing
oppression of women qua women:
One sees that the more things change, the more
they stay the same, for philosophic tradition
continues to extol things culturally perceived as male
(e.g., knowledge in the mind) and suppress things
culturally perceived as female (e.g., knowledge in the
body). Note here, briefly but pointedly, that maleness
and femaleness in this context often have nothing to do
with being a woman or a man. (pp. 94-95)
Three major contributions of cultural feminism are:
(a) the celebration and honoring of motherhood; (b)
a resurgence of womens spirituality, including the
resurrection of goddess traditions; and (c) re-evaluations
and reformations of traditional philosophies of
knowledge such as strict empiricism, materialism, and
logical positivism (Alpert, 1973; Starhawk, 1979/1999;
Wilshire, 1989; Lips, 1999).
A Third Wave in Feminist Thought and Action

As in political parties, each branch of feminism
has a particular platform and mandate upon which the
members of the group operate. However, the boundaries
between these ideologies are fluid, and many feminists
hold beliefs from more than one group and/or create
hybrid platforms such as ecofeminism, a fusion of ecology
and feminism (e.g., Daly, 1978; Griffin, 1978/2000;
Shiva, 1988), womanism, an African-American feminist
movement highlighting the strengths of women of color
(e.g., Higgenbotham, 1992; Walker, 1983), and post-

colonial and critical race theories, schools of thought critical


of mainstream American feminism for universalizing the
experience of women and thus flattening the complexity
of identity (e.g., Ahmed, 2006; McClintock, 1995;
Sandoval, 2000; Spivak, 1988). Additionally, the voices
of lesbian, queer, and transgender women continue to
impact feminist endeavors through the exploration of how
sexuality (including sexual orientation and affectional
orientation), gender orientation, and biological sex
interplay in multivalent ways and further complexify
and differentiate the experiences of women (Ahmed,
2006; Bornstein, 1995; Butler, 1990, 1993, 1997; Rich,
1979/1995).
Contemporary U.S. political, social, and
academic feminism of the late 20th and early 21st
centuries has come to be called the third wave (Findlen,
1995; Gillis, Howie, & Munford, 2007; Heywood &
Drake, 1997; Walker, 1995). This movement is a pastiche
of history, politics, and pop culture (Baumgardner
& Richards, 2000) and embraces the contradictions
of identity and the subjective voices of a variety of
perspectives to demonstrate the diversity and complexity
of womens experience in response to perceived earlier
essentialist stances taken in some feminist activism.
Essentialism is understood here as adhering to the belief
that there are unique attributes that women possess that
are different from men; thus, this perspective is also
referred to as difference feminism. While third wave
voices are prevalent in the fields of womens studies and
philosophy, many of the rhetorical and conceptual devices
employed in this school of thought have yet to penetrate
into the institutional structures of psychologyand are
notably absent in transpersonal psychology. These offer
promise for future theory and research.
The Evolving Voices of Feminism:
Considerations of Diversity
heorizing and research in feminist work continues
to evolve the field, notably in relation to continued
efforts to understand the complexity of identity. Some
third wave feminists have viewed the stance of cultural
feminists as essentialist. Much work in third wave
feminism argues for the varying utility of this stance,
and questions whether the essentialist view contributes
importantly to the feminist goal of liberating women
from oppression grounded in devaluation (Bohan,
1993, p. 6). However, the point remains that these
[essentialist] theories have been criticized for presuming
universality and ignoring diversity in human experience

38

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

(DeLamater & Hyde, 1998, p. 13; for additional critique


of such essentialism in feminism, see also Bohan 1993;
Lorber & Farrell, 1991; Stone, 2007).7 The ongoing
dialectic around the concept of essentialism underscores
the challenging work of exploring the socio-cultural
nature of identity and demonstrates the vital need to
keep issues of diversity at the fore of research and theorybuilding.
The critique against essentialism arose within
feminist camps because early theory and research in
the second wave years was primarily conducted by and
generally included an overwhelming majority of white,
middle-class women (Yoder & Kahn, 1993). As feminism
has continued to evolve in the past three decades,
scholars such as Patricia Hill Collins (1990), bell hooks
(1981, 1989, 2000), and Johnnetta B. Cole (1986) have
highlighted the absence of the voices of women of color
in second wave feminist theory and research. Cole noted
the chauvinism among white women, that takes the
form of attitudes and behaviors which ignore or dismiss
as insignificant differences in class, race, age, sexuality,
ethnicity, and physical ability (p. xiii). Peggy McIntosh
(2002) wrote about white chauvinism, the weightless
knapsack (p. 358) of white privilege that is, as McIntosh
wrote of her own racial awakening to whiteness, the
invisible package of unearned assets which I can count
on cashing in each day, but about which I was meant to
remain oblivious (p. 10):
[This privilege] leads white women to make the
assumption that their experiences are universal,
normative, and representative of others experiences,
although well-motivated, white, middle-class
feminist scholars have fallen into the trap of
presenting the experiences of mainstream women
as the yardsticks of womens experiences. Therefore
the impacts of racial, cultural, and class-based
factors are ignored, not only for women of color, but
also for white women. (Espin & Gawalek, 1992, p.
91)
Over the past three decades, feminist
psychological theory has begun to move beyond a
consideration of gender in a vacuum, recognizing that
the intersections and interplay of gender, race, class,
physical ability, sexual orientation, other socio-cultural
factors, and personal identity create matrices through
which people experience their lives (Ballou, Matsumoto,
& Wagner, 2002; Brown, 1994; Crenshaw, 1991;

Brooks

Espin & Gawelek, 1992; hooks, 1989). A contextual


consideration of identity is especially urgent in the field
of transpersonal psychology, which has sidestepped the
mundane self in much of the literature, relegating that
discussion to traditional forms of personality psychology
(see Daniels, 2005). However, new work is beginning
to appear that addresses the concept of a transpersonal
self (see MacDonald, 2009), and further theoretical and
empirical work will need to continue to flesh out such a
concept, as described further in sections below.
The ongoing revelations of the complexity of
female experienceon national and global levelshave
led to continuing, lively debates in feminist camps. Spivak
(1988) suggested early on that at times it is necessary to
rely on strategic essentialism in order to focus directly on
realities that impact the lives of women. She suggested
that one must not lose sight of harm against women in
the process of creating philosophy or theory, and that
alliances must be created across ideological differences
in order to achieve social justice. Since Spivaks early
statements, others have suggested more sophisticated
models of coalition-building (Anzaldua, 2007; Anzaldua
& Keating, 2002), bridge identities (Ferguson, 1997), and
complex models that better represent the intersectionality
(Crenshaw, 1991)8 of identity. The intention is to create
feminist theory and practice that embraces contradiction,
multiplicity, and difference (Gillis et al., 2007, p. xxiv) so
that activism on behalf of womens rights and safety may
continue without relying on an exclusively essentialist
understanding of women as a monolithic class.
I see parallels in this critique of essentialism
to questions Ferrer (2000, 2002) has raised in
transpersonalism with regard to the perennial
philosophy. Ferrer argued against the universalization of
understanding concerning religious/spiritual experience.
In the context of feminist discourse, if universalizing
constructs are relied upon, then which classes or
categories of (female) experience become foregrounded,
and which experiences are erased or backgrounded?
Questions related to who has the right or power to name
and legitimize their own experiences are at the heart of
much feminist work and also at the core of Ferrers work
through the past decade.
Who Speaks for Women?

While the rhetorical and philosophical stance
of postmodernism is at risk of being dismissed by some
as a futile, nihilistic project,9 the core understanding of
the power of language (and other forms of signification)

is nonetheless valuable in a consideration of pluralistic


movements such as transpersonalism and feminism.
Postmodern theory, a term conflated and interchanged
with social constructionism in the field of psychology,
seeks to deconstruct the very categories (e.g., sex, gender,
masculine/feminine, disorder) that have achieved truth
status within psychology (Cosgrove & McHugh, 2002,
p. 22). Some scholars argue for a distinct difference
between strict postmodern theory and the principles of
social constructionism (Butler, 1990). However, the two
schools of thought hold fast to a common understanding
that we have no way of knowing with certainty the
nature of reality (Bohan, 1993). Bohan defined the
basic structure of this theory and how it may ameliorate
the assumptions promoted by essentialism:

Feminist and Transpersonal Thought

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 39

So-called knowledge does not reflect the discovery of


a free-standing reality, existing apart from the knower
and revealed by careful application of procedures.
Rather, what we purport to know, what we see as
truth, is a construction, a best understanding, based
upon and inextricably intertwined with the contexts
in which it is created. Among the most forceful
factors that shape our constructions of knowledge
are the modes of discourse by which we exchange
our perceptions and descriptions of reality. Thus,
knowledge is a product of social interchange; what
we call knowledge is simply what we agree to call
truth. (pp. 12-13)
In a detailed account of potential intersections
and understood contradictions of postmodern and
feminist schools of thought, Cosgrove and McHugh
(2002) underscored the tension between wanting
to explore the subjective expressions of research
participants while adhering to postmodern tenets.
Language thus becomes a primary tool of a combined
feminist/postmodern method in that language (the
term discourse is frequently used because of its inclusive
connotation) is seen as constituting rather than revealing
reality. Language affects what we do (and dont) notice,
what we do (and dont) experience (p. 24). Holding
the tension between feminist identity politics and a
postmodern perspective as described above allows a
theorist, researcher, or practitioner to examine the
relationship between ontology (being) and epistemology
(knowing) (p. 25).
While language is of central importance to
postmodern thought, scholars such as Butler (1990,

1997) and Barvosa-Carter (2001) have been careful to


move toward a poststructuralist stance in which language
is but one aspect of the discourse that constructs reality
and subjectivity. The importance of this differentiation
rests in these theorists insistence on constant reflexivity
in order to uncover the power structures through which
reality is socially constructed. In an overview of Butlers
contributions to both postmodern and feminist schools
of thought, Barvosa-Carter (2001) summarized the
central tenet of their collective thinking:
Poststructuralist theories (including Butlers)
describe the social world in large part in terms of
the production of norms and veiled attempts to
deem those norms natural or universal. Butlers
strident anti-normativity is born out of her attempt
to unmask the pretense, falsehood, and will to power
behind attempts to declare socially constructed
norms universal across space and time. To reveal the
contours of normative precepts and the activities of
those who advance them is neither to dispense with
the need for norms within political practice nor to
eliminate their complex role in the formation and
transformation of social relations and practices.
Hence, from a poststructuralist perspective, acknow
ledging the subordinating misrepresentations by
which some social norms are created, advanced,
and maintained will not banish norm generative
activities from feminist political practice. (p. 133)
Thus, the inclusion in feminist discourse of
schools of thought such as postmodernism, social
constructionism, and poststructuralism, each focused
squarely upon the political act of delimiting the source(s)
of power and influence upon which norms are created,
has broadened feminist perspectives toward a new school
of thought which can and must attend to both symbolic
and material politics (Barvosa-Carter, 2001, p. 135). In
relation to psychology, and notably and specifically to
transpersonal psychology, a field in which the symbolic
is often deemed as vital to subjective experience as
material reality (Campbell, 1974; Hillman, 1997; Jung,
1976; Woodman, 1997), the above perspectives may
contribute new and nuanced frames of reference from
which to explore how power and reified gender roles are
replicated in classical transpersonal work. This occurs,
for example, through tactics such as using terms such
as masculine and feminine to describe psycho-spiritual
constructs and states.10

40

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Applied Feminism:
Psychology and Spirituality
eminist psychology, as a field, has been dedicated to
centering women and womens issues in psychological
research, theory, and treatment modalities. Utilizing
the strong analytical tools developed in academic and
activist strands of the movement, feminist psychologists
have served key roles in addressing gender as a crucial
locus of psychological health and development.
Accounts of the many feminist threads that inform
feminist psychology and psychotherapy are prevalent
in the literature, including Enns (2004) comprehensive
overview, Feminist Theories and Feminist Psychotherapies.
A core concept that informs many of the scholars
and researchers in feminist psychology is relationality, or
the theory that we, as human beings, grow and develop
through relationship and not in individual vacuums of
experience.Relational-CulturalTheoryisafeministconstruct
that has posited the need for and value of interpersonal
relationship in healthy psychological development; as a
theoretical model, it has become a keystone of efficacy
in the therapeutic process (Baker Miller, 1978; Jordan &
Hartling, 2002). Additionally, feminist psychologists have
highlighted the necessity of focusing on subjectivity, or the
actual lived experience of women in order to create valid,
verifiable data upon which to build theory and practice
that will serve diverse populations of women (Lerman,
1986), since the need remains to continually build diverse
theory that no longer speaks only to narrowly-defined
populations (Brown, 1994).11
In the past decade, Suyemoto (2002), for
example, has proposed a model of socially-constructed
self and identity as perpetually shifting and developing
rather than relying on rigid, step-wise, hierarchal concepts
of personality development that have defined personality
psychology as a field. Suyemoto asked of traditional
theorists and researchers: Who determines what
my...personality is or is not...what is or is not healthy or
pathological in personality? (p. 74) Additionally, Ballou
et al. (2002) created an ecological model of human
nature that includes community, ecology, and cosmos as
influences that shape the self and ones understanding of
identity. Similar to the earlier work of Bronfenbrenner
(1979; see also Bronfenbrenner & Ceci, 1994), the
Ballou et al. model extends a holistic model of identity
to include consideration of the sociopolitical realities of
intersectional identity as understood and interpreted
through a feminist lens (Crenshaw, 1991).

Brooks

Feminist work has been primarily focused


on identity politics and conceptualizations of what it
means to be a socially-constructed self, differentiating
these models from the psychospiritual models generally
utilized in the field of transpersonal psychology,
which have historically placed primacy upon spiritual
experience and the importance of ego-transcendence
as a move toward wholeness (Wilber,12 1973, 2000; see
also Washburn, 1995, 2003; Ruumet, 2006). In overlysimplified terms, the political orientation of much
feminist theory has served well the motto noted above,
the personal is political (Hanisch, 1969/2006). Just as
it was suggested above that Gandhis exhortation to be
the change might signify the gestalt of contemporary
transpersonalism, this simplification of a classic feminist
slogan is not meant to be reductive; rather it is to
suggest that the core focal strength of feminism(s) is
that it values subjectivity while acknowledging that the
socio-political reality of such lived experience impacts
the lives of actual individuals. In my own work as an
educator, theorist, and researcher, I find that feminism
informs the transpersonal, and vice versa, to create new
synergistic lived spiritual activism. It may be that this
sort of mutually-inspiring relationship can also evolve
between the fields themselves.
Feminism and Spirituality
Throughout the varied and voluminous
anthologies of academic feminist theory,13 research
literature,14 and textbooks on feminism and psychology,15
issues of spirituality or religion are often noticeably
absent. Womens studies and political science professor
Leela Fernandes (2003) devoted an entire work to
highlighting the lack of focus onarguably even
avoidance ofthe issue of spirituality in mainstream
Western academic feminism and womens studies
programs. In her work, Transforming Feminist Practice:
Non-Violence, Social Justice, and the Possibilities of a
Spiritualized Feminism, Fernandes posited that academic
feminists have been wary of religious institutions that
have sought to control womens bodies and sexualities
and that this wariness had inadvertently allowed
conservative religious and political organizations
and movements to colonize spirituality (p. 9). She
further suggested that secular, urban, middle-class
feminists (p. 9) would benefit from an exploration of
the possibility of social transformation through a
spiritual revolution, one which transforms conventional
understanding of power, identity, and justice (p. 11).

The author recounted that the students in her womens


studies courses are loath to discuss spirituality in the
context of feminism, and her work is offered as a bridge
between these academic circles and the lived spiritual
reality of most women.16
While Fernandes makes the case that spiritu
ality has often been missing from mainstream
feminist academic discourse, she has not addressed the
interdisciplinary feminist scholars who focus attention
on aspects of spirituality, most specifically issues related
to womens religious and spiritual experience. Her work
circumvented the fact that the relationship between
feminism and spirituality is not absent, but ambivalent;
while her point may be valid in the feminist circles in
which she resides, it does not take into consideration
the richly complex vista of feminist spirituality that
affords interesting locations of intersection between
transpersonal and feminist schools of thought.
The field of feminist spirituality developed
alongside the activist and academic camps of the
movement since the inception of the second wave
and also has deep roots in the religious motivations
espoused by first-wave feminists such as Elizabeth
Cady Stanton (1895/2003). Accounts of the history
of feminist spirituality are available, including an
overview of feminist influence in monotheistic religion
and goddess worship by Stuckey (2010) and the
history of womens spirituality as researched by Eller
(1995). Much scholarship has been written concerning
institutional religions, especially, in the United States,
Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism; notable works
include Plaskow (1979/1992, 1991), Gross (1979/1992),
Schssler-Fiorenza (1983, 1984), Reuther (1983, 1985),
and Daly (1978, 1968/1985). Some of these works
(including Schssler-Fiorenza) seek to re-establish
women as active participants in the living traditions
of religion, while some scholars seek to re-vision the
sacred scripture, liturgy, and ritual of religion to make
it more inclusive for practicing women (as in the work
of Reuther, Gross, and Plaskow). Dalys work argued
for women to abandon patriarchal religious institutions
altogether due to the inability of such religions to truly
value and honor women and womens experiences.
Goddess traditions, Wicca, paganism, shamanism,
earth-based spiritual traditions, and womens circles are
also present in prominent literature in the field (Christ,
1979/1992, 1997; Noble, 2001; Starhawk, 1979/1999;
Teish, 1988). Activist and emancipatory spirituality

Feminist and Transpersonal Thought

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 41

are continuing to evolve and diversify, and one such


example among many is the work of Lillian ComasDiaz (2008) on Spirita, a spiritual perspective focused
on collective liberation and social justice, grounded
in mujerista, or Latin womens spiritual and liberatory
work.
Several core constructs are central to feminist
spirituality theory and practice: women-centeredness,
processes of reclaiming or renaming, praxis, and educating
other feminists. Prime examples of these constructs can be
found in the Womens Spirituality masters program at
the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto,
California.17 The program is explicitly woman-centered:18
placing womens experience as the central focus of study
and research (D. Jenett, personal communication,
April 6, 2009). The program is interdisciplinary and
focuses on the archeological and mythological roots
of matrifocal culture and goddess worship, as well as
contemporary social and political issues affecting how
and whom women worship (thus, reclaiming and
renaming). Courses in the program include the use of
ritual, and women enrolled are required to engage in
an applied learning practicum in a community setting
(praxis). Finally, the program is an excellent resource
for feminists who have not encountered spirituallyoriented feminism before (educating other feminists).
Similar accounts of parallels to these core concepts
can also be found throughout the feminist spirituality
literature (e.g., Christ & Plaskow, 1979/1992; Plaskow
& Christ, 1989; Powers, 1995). The concepts noted from
the feminist spirituality research and literature above,
grounded primarily in the fields of womens studies,
history, archeology, mythology, religious studies, and
social and political activism, have recently begun to
contribute to the field of psychology.
Feminist Spirituality
and Psychotherapeutic Practice

The academic journal Women & Therapy has
devoted two full issues to the topic of women and spirituality
in the past two decades (Kaschak, 2001; Ochshorn &
Cole, 1995). Both of these volumes explored the multiple
ways in which spirituality affects the therapeutic process,
including the use of spiritual elements such as ritual in
therapy, and the place spirituality holds within the realm
of mainstream feminist psychology. The 1995 issue
had three articles of note: Ballous Women and Spirit:
Two Nonfits in Psychology, Bewleys Re-membering
Spirituality: Use of Sacred Ritual in Psychotherapy, and

42

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Hunts Psychological Implications of Womens Spiritual


Health. The articles in the 2001 issue had a similar
theme, building upon the platform established in the
former issue: namely, the vital importance of spirituality
in the development of a holistic understanding of the
self (Funderburk & Fukuyama, 2001; Perlstein, 2001;
Weiner, 2001). While none of the articles in either issue
mentioned transpersonal theory specifically, Noble
(2001) utilized alternative nonrational knowledge
techniques (p. 193) and ancient healing techniques
(p. 193) in her conception of bringing spirituality into
the therapeutic setting. Such techniques included
ritual, dreams, oracles, hands-on healing, and other
forms of shamanistic technique that are applied in hopes
of disrupting the entrenched pathological patter and
simultaneously stimulating a rebalancing to take place on
its own (pp. 194-195). Transpersonal psychotherapeutic
literature is thick with analogous sentiments as evidenced
in the works of authors such as Fox (1990) and Vaughn
(1993).
The language used to introduce the later issue
(Kaschak, 2001) also demonstrated compatibility with
much transpersonal thought:
Spiritual practice contributes to a dimension of
consciousness untouched by psychodynamic and
other approaches that emphasize awareness. It
also demands a profound level of responsibility for
oneself, to oneself, to others, and, finally, to all beings
and to the earth herself, thereby acknowledging and
making visible the inevitability of our mutuality
and connectedness. We need not create connection;
we need simply to awaken to it. (p. xxii)
The absence of specific transpersonal voices indicates a
place for exploration and potential research and theorybuilding that may further illuminate intersections of
feminist and transpersonal perspectives and generate
transformative professional conversations.

Contributions that transpersonal psychotherapy
could make to feminist therapists work include expertise
in techniques that assist in the discernment between
pathology and spiritual emergency (Grof & Grof, 1989;
Lukoff et al., 1996), the integration of spiritual techniques
such as meditation in clinical practice (Vaughan, 1993)
and personal wellness (Stahl & Goldstein, 2010), nonpathological language to better understand exceptional
human experiences (Palmer & Braud, 2002), and
applications of forgiveness in therapeutic practice or work

Brooks

with groups in conflict (Luskin, 2002; Lewis, 2005).


Additionally, the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology
has developed excellent models of whole-person clinical
training programs that illustrate the importance of the
integration of personal and professional development
as forms of transformational learning (Braud, 2006;
Frager, 1974; see also Ferrer, Romero, & Albareda, 2006;
Meizrow, 1997).

Therapists, scholars, researchers, and educators
in both feminism and transpersonalism tend to be
eclectic and interdisciplinary. Thus, the fact that these
fields may already share some common vernacular,
as tentatively illustrated above, may serve as a bridge
between them. Additionally, of course, there are
already feminist-oriented transpersonal practitioners
and transpersonally-oriented feminist practitioners, as
evidenced by the other transpersonal/feminist works
included in this special issue of IJTS, as well as a litany of
excellent dissertations produced by doctoral students in
schools such as ITP, the California Institute of Integral
Studies, Saybrook University, the Pacifica Graduate
Instutite, and other similar schools globally.19 These
works serve as a tentative beginning to the mapping of
such intersections.
Feminism and Transpersonal Psychology:
Intersections
imilar to many feminist psychologists, including
the work of Ballou and Brown (2002), Hare-Mustin
and Maraceck (1990), Maraceck, (2001) and others, the
pioneers in the field of transpersonal psychology found
the emphasis on pathology and malady in mid-20th
century psychology only representative of a fraction of
human experience and sought to create a field of study
that would honor the fullness of humanitys multiple
ways of being, knowing, and experiencing the world
around us. While self-proclaimed feminists are active
clinicians, researchers, theory-builders, educators,
and spiritual guides within the transpersonal milieu,
the relative absence of feminist voice is problematic
with regard to theory-building and models of effective
clinical interventions. This lack threatens to perpetuate
sexism in the field of transpersonal psychology through
silence.

It is possible that some of this gender gap may
be attributable to what Ferrer (2002) has pointed to as
an over-reliance on the perennial philosophy during the
first quarter century of the fields development. Ferrer
described perennialism as:

As Ferrer observed, despite their professed inclusivist


stance, most universalist visions distort the essential
message of the various religious traditions, covertly favor
certain spiritual paths over others, and raise obstacles for
spiritual dialogue and inquiry (p. 71). Just as perennialist
views homogenize the topography of human spiritual
experience, they may flatten the plurality of lived experience
that results from inhabiting a gendered body, and overlook
the need for participation by women scholars.

As noted earlier, feminist postmodern scholars
employ dialectics that continually question the validity
of universal truths or monolithic theories claiming to
represent all human experience. The inclusion of womens
voices generally, and feminist voices in particular, can
support the fields efforts to overcome unexamined
presuppositions and, through embracing diversity,
achieve a greater degree of plurality in the philosophical
foundations of the discipline.

Louchakova and Lucas (2007) have recently
written a critique that also suggests that the avoidance of
the examination of the self in transpersonal psychology
is linked to the roots of the field in the personal growth
endeavors of the 1960s, which sought to differentiate from
other mainstream schools of thought and relied heavily on
Eastern conceptions of no-self as a template for enlighten
ment. As ego-transcendence was and still is a core value of
the field, the question of self (as identity or contextualized
subjectivity, which includes the ego) has been a problematic
conundrum that has only recently been addressed in
transpersonal circles (see also MacDonald, 2009). The
deep and skillful socio-cultural analytic tools developed in
feminist psychology may be essential to help transpersonal
theorists and clinicians ground solid definitions of growth
and transformation beyond (or through) ego, but in situ,
in cultural context. While spiritual experiences are often
described as ineffable, decontexualizing the individuals
experiencing such ineffability risks creating essentialist
models that may not fit diverse experience, as Ferrer
(2002, 2009) has suggested.

Feminist and Transpersonal Thought

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 43

the idea that a philosophical current exists that


has endured through centuries, and that is able to
integrate harmoniously all traditions in terms of a
single Truth which underlies the apparent plurality
of world views....this unity in human knowledge
stems from the existence of a single ultimate reality
which can be apprehended by the human intellect
under certain conditions. (p. 73)

Epistemologies and Research Methods:


Explicit Intersections
Feminist perspectives have greatly influenced a
body of scholarship exploring alternative epistemologies
that challenge the positivist position held in science for
more than a century (Lips, 1999). Feminist theorists
have explored and critiqued the ways in which
knowledge is collected, interpreted, and transmitted
(Chelser, 1972; Chodorow, 1978; Gilligan, 1982; Jaggar
& Bordo, 1989). As Ballou and Brown (2002) pointed
out, epistemologies deriving from psychologies such
as postmodern, multicultural, and ecological are more
commonly utilized and more broadly understood (p.
xiii) to be more inclusive and flexible, and thus better
tools for the study of models such as Relational-Cultural
Theory (Jordan, Kaplan, Miller, Stiver, & Surrey, 1991)
or the feminist ecological model of the self (Ballou et al.,
2002).
The above epistemological frames complement
and, in some instances, intersect with some of the core
constructs that have been developed in transpersonallygrounded research methods (Anderson, 2004; Braud,
2004; Braud & Anderson, 1998, 2011; Clements,
2004). Both feminist research methods (grounded
often in the perspective of social constructionism) and
transpersonal research methods seek to move beyond
exclusive reliance on experimentally or objectively
gathered data, demonstrating an early valuing of and
confidence in qualitative research methods, including
the use of heuristics, hermeneutics, and phenomenology
(Anderson, 2004; Ballou, 1992; Braud & Anderson,
1998). As noted, neither field seeks to do away with
empirical methods of data gathering (Bohan, 1993),
but rather to select a method that best fits the research
questions at hand (Braud, 1998). However, in the case
of a social constructionist stance one is reminded of
the differentials of power in all research endeavors, and
is urged to remain skeptical of received truths and
taken-for-granted frames of reference...knowledge is
never innocent, but always value-laden and predicated
on specific sociopolitical conditions that it serves to
legitimize (Maraceck, 2002, p. 6).
In the case of a transpersonal stance toward
research, the transformative and liberating potential of
doing research is highlighted, while close care is paid
to the integrity and reflexivity of the researcher (Braud,
2004; see also Anderson, 2000; Clements, 2004).
Research is not to be taken lightly and attention is to

44

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

be paid to vigilant self-development in order to create


as clear a vision in data analysis as possible. A researcher
with a feminist orientation may be influenced by the
values of egalitarianism, mutuality, multiple viewpoints,
and a respect for subjective experience (Reinharz, 1992).
Additionally, emphasis may be placed on lived experience
and the subjective voice of research participantsoften
referred to as co-researchers in both feminist- and
transpersonally-oriented models.

Within the transpersonal field, two research
methods embrace explicitly feminist epistemologies:
intuitive inquiry and organic inquiry. Intuitive inquiry is
a process through which objective and subjective data is
analyzed through successive hermeneutic cycles of data
collection and reflection (Anderson, 2000). According
to Anderson (2004), this method is rooted in both
feminist and transpersonal concepts; she identified the
process of intuition as a transpersonal act that may take
several forms and is admittedly difficult to quantify. In
one moment, intuition seems vibrant and breathtaking
to beholdand then it disappears (p. 4), yet Anderson
nonetheless purported that intuition is a viable form of
knowingan argument also made in feminist work
(Wilshire, 1989). Symbolic processes, sensory modes of
intuition, and empathetic identification are all forms of
knowing that are valuedindeed, encouragedwithin
the method. Anderson (2001) also encouraged embodied
writing as a technique that:
brings the finely textured experience of the body to
the art of writing. Relaying human experience from
the inside out and entwining in words our senses
with the senses of the world, embodied writing
affirms human life as embedded in the sensual world
in which we live our lives. As a style of writing,
embodied writing is itself an act of embodiment.
Nature feels close and dear. Writers attune to the
movements of water, earth, air, and fire, which
coax our bodily senses to explore. When embodied
writing is attuned to the physical senses, it becomes
not only a skill appropriate to research, but a path of
transformation that nourishes an enlivened sense of
presence in and of the world. (p. 83)
In intuitive inquiry, the subjectivity of the researcher is
valued equally to the voices of the co-researchers. These
research methods and techniques demonstrate models of
conducting research that value transformation, personal
responsibility, and a researchers capability, and are

Brooks

useful for understanding human experience through a


transpersonal lens.
Another method valued in transpersonal research
is organic inquiry, which:
stands at the intersection of feminine spirituality
and transpersonal psychology. Organic studies to
date seem to be motivated by a desire on the part of
the researcher to investigate and share the meaning
of her or his own deeply-held experience in order to
improve the life of another, by a desire for social and
individual transformation, a goal which mirrors the
high ideals of both the feminist and transpersonal
movements. (Clements, Ettling, Jenett, & Shields,
1999, p. 5)
Like intuitive inquiry, the organic method
seeks to understand and legitimize ways of knowing
traditionally dismissed in mainstream psychological
research (Clements, 2004). This method utilizes nature
metaphor such as the cycle of planting, growth, and
harvest to highlight non-rational processes available
to the researcher as well as synchronistic experiences
that may arise while the research is being conducted
and reported. Additionally, there is an explicit social
justice mandate for research conducted in this manner:
not only should the research transform the researcher,
it should also positively impact the co-researchers and
the readers of the research, and should lead toward
social transformation for all exposed to the material
(Clements, 2004). Additionally, the method encourages
the reporting of findings through the actual voices of
the co-researchers: the researcher uses as much of each
participants story as possible to flesh out the findings.
Thus, organic inquiry is a technique that values the
subjective nature in qualitative research and feminist
theory in general.

The explicit ways in which feminist theory
is utilized in the aforementioned transpersonallyoriented methods may serve as an excellent template
for additional ways in which feminist perspectives
may support and enhance continued development in
transpersonal methods. Ongoing development may
include considerations of the unique nature of power,
relationship, and identity, and how socio-political and
personal factors impact the generation and production of
research findings. Such feminist critique could contribute
to the already-existing gifts of the spiritual focus of
transpersonal research methods and techniques.

Feminist and Transpersonal Thought

A Rare Published Example


of Feminist Critique in Transpersonal Psychology
In the areas of transpersonal developmental
theory, an early (and solitary) example of a deconstruction,
based upon gender, of one widely-accepted model of
transpersonal development was produced by Peggy
Wright in the mid-1990s.20 Wright (1995, 1998) sought
to explore, critique, and engage with Ken Wilbers pre/
trans fallacy model, which privileges transcendence of
the ego as the ultimate goal of spiritual development.
Wrights critique and reevaluation of Wilbers model
is of note because she, like Karen Suyemoto (2002),
raised questions and alternate perspectives in order to
bring to the fore the supposition of universal human
experiencea task central to the feminist model of
theory-building (Lerman, 1986) and, as noted, not often
seen in transpersonal psychology.
Wrights (1995, 1998) primary assertion was
that much of Wilbers theoretical framework hinged on
an understanding of the self in which the development
of higher states of consciousness are universal across not
only culture, but also gender. Wright made the argument,
based upon the work of Chodorow (1978) and Jordan
(1984), that womens ego development and conception
of the self differ from the developmental experience
of men. Referring to the relational aspects of womens
development, Wright (1995) relies on permeable
boundaries to allow the simultaneous experience of self
and other. The self-boundaries are permeable in the
sense that they are open to the flow between self and
other (p. 6). Due to this experiential difference, Wright
postulated the following:
Because womens prepersonal development differs
from mens, it is not much of a stretch to postulate
that womens transpersonal development may also
differ. I propose that the connected self, with its
permeable boundaries, cuts across developmental
lines in the prepersonal, personal, and transpersonal
stages. Permeability affects all levels of experience.
In terms of how it affects transpersonal development,
it may subtly change the developmental path.
I speculate that because of permeable selfboundaries, womens experience of an isolated,
unitary self already may be diminished. Awareness
may naturally focus on the holographic, interwoven
nature of reality. In this awareness, the hierarchical
structures that the mind uses to reduce experience

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 45

into comprehensible packets of reality can be more


easily dissolved, and formlessness and ambiguity are
better tolerated.
Boundary permeability may ease the path
to union with a spiritual self. The merging and
embedding of the self into God or Self may not
always be experienced as a loss of self. Instead it may
reflect a coming to self/Self. (p. 7)



Building upon her theoretical constructs, Wright
(1998) further suggested alternative visions to Wilbers
assessment of how contemporary Western culture must
undertake its own healing. Drawing upon the self-inrelation models of female development, Wright (1998)
suggested that we, as people, must heal the splits between
mind/body and culture/nature not as individuals only,
but also in community. In addition, she disagreed
with Wilbers conception of the differences between
transcendence and regression, insisting that, at times, one
must regress in order to heal. Wright posited:
A diagnosis of what needs to be healed in our
culture and the process of healing can be clarified
through theoretical models, but the healing itself
requires lived experience. This healing is sometimes
an exceedingly difficult and unpleasant process.
Coming back into the individual and collective
bodies to heal trauma often means reliving our
suffering. Without healing, we may ascend, but
we cannot be whole. Healing the split at times
requires messy, emotive, and nonrational regressive
experiences. In addition, it requires developing
personal, empathic relationships with the elements
of the biosphere and with each other, as well as with
Spirit. Ultimately, individual and social healings
facilitate our spiritual development. (p. 225)
Wrights theoretical stance (1995) called for multiple
approaches to transpersonal development that may
be needed to keep a balanced perspective (p. 10). Like
Ferrer (2002), Wright (1995, 1998) brought into question
the rigid adherence to perennialist models that may not
adequately represent the experience of non-dominant
groupsin Wrights case, the category of women.

However, Wright did not address issues of
essentialism, and her work is now more than a decade old.
A contemporary development of her critique into theory
would be of value in order to explore how a feminist
critique of essentialism, as well as of other developmental

46

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

models (e.g., Washburn, 1995; Ruumet, 2006), would


enhance transpersonal psychology as a field by exploring
assumptions in models that tend towards generalization
across gender or other aspects of identity. Such a critique
might demonstrate ways in which some models fail
to represent non-dominant experience, which in turn
might highlight the need for expanding and revising
those models in ways that increase inclusivity. This
might enhance the potential relevance and applicability
of the models.
A Contemporary Opportunity for Dialogue:
The Work of Jorge Ferrer
s noted throughout this exploration, intersections
in the ways feminists and transpersonalists view
common psychological and spiritual phenomenon
have yet to be explicitly formulated. The work of Jorge
Ferrer (2002, 2009) may be a ripe place to begin formal
conversation on the richly complex matrix of potential
agreement and contradiction that can be found
in exploring transpersonal studies relationship to
feminism. A specific place to initiate this inquiry may
be the tension between a postmodern skepticism for the
acceptance of universals and the pursuit of for universal
human experience found in some transpersonal theory.
Most notably, such universalization relies on works
such as Huxleys (1945) and Schuons (1953/1984)
explication of perennial philosophy, which, at its most
basic level, holds belief in an ultimate reality or
Truth.21 Debate on this issue can be found in Ferrers
(2002) work, who put forth a concept of a participatory
nature of spiritual knowing; this perspective seeks to
re-vision and broaden transpersonal theory beyond
either postmodernism or perennialism. Ferrer critiques
transpersonal psychologys roots in a perennialist
paradigm in which specificity and diversity are
eschewed in favor of a search for common spiritual
ground. As an alternative view, Ferrer suggested it is
time to deconstruct transpersonal models that adhere
to the validity of monolithic Truth in search of a more
flexible theoretical model able to hold a participatory
spiritual pluralism (p. 189).

Ferrer (2002) believed that transpersonal
phenomena are not solely individual inner experiences,
but are rather multilocal participatory events (p. 117).
Thus, transpersonal phenomena are:

(1) events, in contrast to intrasubjective experiences;


(2) multilocal, in that they can arise in different loci,

Brooks

such as an individual, a relationship, a community,


a collective identity, or a place; and (3) participatory,
in that they can invite the generative power and
dynamism of all dimensions of human nature to
interact with a spiritual power in the cocreation of
spiritual worlds. (p. 117)
Ferrer criticized the field of transpersonal psychology
for reifying the inner experience of spiritual and
transpersonal phenomena, which leads to intrasubjective
reductionism (p. 23). Such reification, Ferrer suggested,
holds back the evolution of the field:
The task of emancipation of spirituality set forth
by the transpersonal project will be incomplete as
long as transpersonalists remain committed to the
experiential vision. We need to free transpersonal
theory from its modern experiential prejudices and
expand the reach of spirituality out of its confinement
to the subjective space to the other two worlds, that
is, the objective and the intersubjective. (p. 23)
In his vision of transpersonal psychology,
grounded in participatory, pluralistic perspectives,
Ferrer (2002) sought to move transpersonal thought
and practice into a stance of active engagement and
embracement of the wide variety and expressions of
spiritual experience. This participatory turn does not do
away with the individual or with individual experience,
but rather honors contextualized experience and
subjective reality; the participatory turn aims to foster
our spiritual individuation in the context of a common
human spiritual family, but also turns the problem of
religious plurialism into a celebration of the critical spirit
of pluralism (Ferrer, 2009, p. 140). From this starting
place, it may be interesting to inquire how Ferrers (2002,
2009) participatory concepts could create an important
dialectic of theory and praxis with a feminist construct
such as the Relational-Cultural concept of growth-inrelation (Jordan & Hartling, 2002; Jordan et al., 1991;
Miller, 1987). Judith Jordan (2001) succinctly summed
up the clinical application and utility of this model:
Therapy based on the relational-cultural model
suggests that the primary work is to bring people
back into healing connection, where they begin to
reconnect with themselves and bring themselves
more fully into relationship with others. We posit that
growth occurs in connection and that we grow, learn,

Feminist and Transpersonal Thought

expand, and gain a sense of meaning in relationship.


This does not mean that we are in actual physical
relationship with people at all times, but that there is
an attitude of relatedness, of mutuality, of openness,
of participating in experience. This can occur in
solitude, in nature, when we feel connected and in
relationship with our surroundings. In isolation, we
are not in relationship, we are cut off, we are not in
mutual responsiveness. (p. 97)
The emancipatory and relational/participatory
sentiments of the above constructs (both the work of
Ferrer and Jordan et al.) suggest a place of opening for
conversation about how socio-cultural realities such
as gender and other intersectional identities impact
participatory events. Ferrer (2000) sought to break
through the long-held perennialist viewpoint in the
hope that the exposition and airing of the presuppositions
of perennialism will help create an open space in which
transpersonal theory need not subordinate alternative
perspectives but can enter into a genuine engagement
and a fertile dialogue with them (p. 25). Ferrers (2002)
vision of transpersonal psychology, firmly grounded
in participatory, pluralistic perspectives, seems closely
aligned to feminist principles and suggests several
intersections in theory and practice that may contribute
to a feminist transpersonal perspective.
Conclusion:
Toward a Socially-Engaged
Spiritual Future
o what might this all mean for a socially-engaged,
spiritually-focused psychological paradigm of human
experience? Both the feminist and transpersonal fields
are concerned with the concept of consciousness-raising,
which is clearly an elemental aspect of their shared
counter-cultural roots, as noted above. However, the
forms of this consciousness-raising seem to have taken
somewhat divergent paths over time, with feminism
and feminist therapy doing an exceptional job with
socio-cultural analysis and political action in support of
groups and individuals who traditionally have not had
voice in dominant cultures. Concurrently, transpersonal
psychology has fostered forms of consciousness-raising
with regard to altered states, alternative ways of knowing,
self-knowledge, and personal growth: concepts related to
Jungs models of psychological health, which includes the
process of individuation, or moving toward wholeness
and integration.

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 47


In the transpersonal camp, Elgin (1993) wrote
that the evolution of our consciousness (and supportive
social forms) is not a peripheral concern; rather, it is
of central importance to our human agenda (p. 249).
Rothberg (1999) spoke of the need for a socially-engaged
spirituality that is concerned with ethics and action
(p. 41). Thus, in the transpersonal world there exists a
call for social engagement and the recognition that one
cannot stop change at the personal growth stage, and also
that one must use that change to transform the world
(thus, back to Gandhis exhortation be the change).
However, feminist expertise in social organizing and the
long history in feminism of critique, analysis, and personal
reflection as social action (e.g., Hanischs (1969/2006)
the personal is political) would serve as a rich model for
the applied ethics and action Rothberg (1999) sought.
Conversely, transpersonal studies may offer new
insights into conceptualizations of spiritual development,
novel approaches to integrating spiritual interventions
into clinical practice, and reminders that psychology
encompasses the beauty and richness of the full range
of human experience in each client seen and each
student educatednot to mention in ones own lived
experience. As early as 1994, Laura S. Brown saw feminist
psychological theory moving toward considerations of the
spiritual or existential realms (p. 233). Leela Fernandes
(2003) and others (Flinders, 1999; Klassen, 2009) have
demonstrated the deep hunger in academic feminist
circles for a more spiritually-infused form of activism. The
conversation between the two fields has barely begun.
Readers who seek to integrate the sacred, the mundane, the
social, the personal, and the righteous into a holographic
understanding of psychology and human consciousness,
are invited to contribute their efforts in forging paths
that lead to further intersections of thought and practice
between transpersonal studies and feminism.
References
Ahmed, S. (2006). Queer phenomenology: Orientations,
objects, others. Durham, NC: Duke University
Press.
Alpert, J. (1973) Mother right: A new feminist theory.
Ms., 2(2), 52-55, 88-94.
Anderson, R. (2000). Intuitive inquiry: Interpreting
objective and subjective data. ReVsision, 22(4), 31-39.
Retrieved from: <http://www.revisionpublishing.
org>

48

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Anderson, R. (2001). Embodied writing and reflections


on embodiment. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology,
33(2), 83-96. Retrieved from: http://atpweb.org/
journal.aspx
Anderson, R. (2004). Intuitive inquiry: An epistemology
of the heart for scientific inquiry. The Humanistic
Psychologist, 32(4), 307-34. Retrieved from: <http://
www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t775
653705>
Anzaldua, G. (2007). Borderlands/La Frontera: The new
Mestiza (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute
Books.
Anzaldua, G., & Keating, A. (Eds.). (2002). This bridge
we call home: Radical visions for transformation. New
York: NY: Routledge.
Azar, B. (2010). A reason to believe. Monitor on
Psychology, 41(11). Retrieved from <http://apa.org/
monitor/2010/12/believe.aspx>
Baker Miller, J. (1978). Toward a new psychology of
women. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Ballou, M. (1995). Women and spirit: Two nonfits in
psychology. Women & Therapy, 24(3-4), 9-20.
Retrieved from: <http://www.informaworld.com/
smpp/title~content=t792306984~db=all>
Ballou, M., & Brown, L.S. (Eds.) (2002). Rethinking
mental health and disorder: Feminist perspectives.
New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Ballou, M., Matsumoto, A., & Wagner, M. (2002).
Toward a feminist ecological theory of human nature:
Theory building in response to real-world dynamics.
In M. Ballou & L. S. Brown (Eds.), Rethinking
mental health and disorder: Feminist perspectives (pp.
99-141). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Barvosa-Carter, E. (2001). Strange tempest: Agency,
poststructuralism, and the shape of feminist politics
to come. International Journal of Sexuality and
Gender Studies, 6(1-2), 123-137.
Baumgardner, J. & Richards, A. (2000). Manifesta:
Young women, feminism, and the future. New York,
NY: Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux.
Bewley, A. R. (1995). Re-membering spirituality: Use of
sacred ritual in psychotherapy. Women & Therapy,
24(3-4), 201-213. Retrieved from: <http://www.
informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t79230698
4~db=all>
Bhavnani, K., & Phoenix, A. (Eds.). (1994). Shifting
identities shifting racisms: A feminism and psychology
reader. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Brooks

Biaggio, M. (2000). History of the contemporary


womens movement. In M. Biaggio & M. Hersen
(Eds.), Issues in the psychology of women (pp. 3-14).
New York, NY: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
Biaggio, M., & Hersen, M. (Eds.). Issues in the psychology of
women. New York, NY: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
Bohan, J. S. (1993). Regarding gender: Essentialism,
constructionism, and feminist psychology. Psychology
of Women Quarterly, 17, 5-21. Retrieved from:
<http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?
ref=0361-6843>
Bornstein, K. (1995). Gender outlaw: On men, women,
and the rest of us. New York, NY: Vintage.
Braud, W. (1998). Integral inquiry. In W. Braud, & R.
Anderson (Eds.), Transpersonal research methods for
the social sciences (pp. 35-68 ). Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage.
Braud, W. (2004). An introduction to organic inquiry:
Honoring the transpersonal and spiritual in research
praxis. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 36, 18-25.
Retrieved from: <http://atpweb.org/journal.aspx>
Braud, W. (2006). Educating the more in holistic
transpersonal higher education: A 30+ year
perspective on the approach of the Institute of
Transpersonal Psychology. Journal of Transpersonal
Psychology, 38(2), 133-158. Retrieved from: <http://
atpweb.org/journal.aspx>
Braud, W., & Anderson, R. (Eds.). (1998). Transpersonal
research methods for the social sciences. Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage.
Braud, W. & Anderson, R. (2011). Transforming self and
others through research: Transpersonal research methods
and skills for the human sciences and humanities.
Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human
development: Experiments by nature and design.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bronfenbrenner, U., & Ceci, S. J. (1994). Nature-nurture
reconceptualized in developmental perspective: A
bioecological model. Psychological Review, 101(4),
568-586. Retrieved from: <http://www.apa.org/
pubs/journals/rev/index.aspx>
Brown, L. S. (1994). Subversive dialogues: Theory in
feminist therapy. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the
subversion of identity. New York, NY: Routledge.
Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that matter: On the discursive
limits of sex. New York, NY: Routledge.

Butler, J. (1997). Excitable speech: A politics of the


performative. New York, NY: Routledge.
Campbell, J. (1974). The mythic image. Princeton, NJ:
University Press.
Campbell, J. (2008). The hero with a thousand faces.
New York, NY: New World Library. (Original work
published 1949)
Chesler, P. (1972). Women and madness. New York, NY:
Doubleday.
Chodorow, N. J. (1978). The reproduction of mothering.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Christ, C. P. (1992). Spiritual quest and womens
experience. In C. P. Christ & J. Plaskow (Eds.),
Womanspirit rising: A feminist reader in religion (pp.
228-245). San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco.
(Original work published 1979)
Christ, C. P. (1997). Rebirth of the goddess: Finding
meaning in feminist spirituality. Reading, MA:
Addison-Wesley.
Christ, C. P., & Plaskow, J. (1992). Womanspirit rising: A
feminist reader in religion. New York, NY: Harper &
Row. (Original work published 1979)
Clements, J. (2004). Organic inquiry: Toward research
in partnership with spirit. Journal of Transpersonal
Psychology, 36(1), 26-49. Retrieved from: <http://
atpweb.org/journal.aspx>
Clements, J., Ettling, D., Jenett, D., & Shields, L. (1999).
Organic inquiry: If research were sacred. Unpublished
manuscript.
Cole, J. B. (Ed.). (1986). All American women: Lines that
divide, ties that bind. New York, NY: Free Press.
Collins, P. H. (1990). Black feminist thought: Knowledge,
consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. Boston,
MA: Unwin Hyman.
Comas-Diaz, L. (2008). Spirita: Reclaiming womanist
sacredness into feminism. Psychology of Women
Quarterly, 32(2008), 13-21. doi:10.1111/j.14716402. 2007.00403.x
Cosgrove, L., & McHugh, M. C. (2002). Deconstructing
difference: Conceptualizing feminist research from
within the postmodern. In L. H. Collins, M. R.
Dunlap, & J. C. Chrisler (Eds.), Charting a new
course for feminist psychology (pp. 20-36). Westport,
CT: Praeger/Greenwood.
Crenshaw, K. W. (1991). Mapping the margins: Inter
sectionality, identity politics, and violence against
women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 12411299. doi: 10.2307/1229039

Feminist and Transpersonal Thought

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 49

Daly, M. (1978). Gyn/ecology: The metaethics of radical


feminism. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Daly, M. (1985). The church and the second sex. Boston,
MA: Beacon Press. (Original work published 1968)
Daniels, M. (2005). Shadow, self, spirit: Essays in
transpersonal psychology. Charlottesville, VA: Imprint
Academic.
DeCiccio, T. L., & Stroink, M. L. (2007). A third model
of self-construal: The metapersonal self. International
Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 26, 82-104.
DeLamater, J. D., & Hyde, J. S. (1998). Essentialism
versus social constructionism in the study of
human sexuality. The Journal of Sex Research,
35(1), 10-18. Retrieved from: http://www.
informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t7756536
67~db=all
Donovan, J. (1992). Feminist theory. New York, NY:
Continuum.
Downing, C. (2003). Womens mysteries: Towards a
poetics of gender. New Orleans, LA: Spring Journal
& Books. (Original work published 1992)
Dworkin, A. (1981). Pornography: Men possessing women.
New York, NY: Perigee.
Echols, A. (1989). Daring to be bad: Radical feminism in
America. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota
Press.
Elgin, D. (1993). The Tao of personal and social
transformation. In R. Walsh, and F. Vaughan (Eds.),
Paths beyond ego: The transpersonal vision (pp. 246250). New York, NY: Jeremy P. Tarcher.
Eller, C. (1995). Living in the lap of the goddess. Boston,
MA: Beacon Press.
Enns, C. Z. (2004). Feminist theories and feminist
psychotherapies: Origins, themes, and variations (2nd
ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.
Espin, O. M., & Gawelek, M. A. (1992). Womens
diversity: Ethnicity, race, class, and gender in
theories of feminist psychology. In L. S. Brown &
M. Ballou (Eds.), Personality and psychopathology:
Feminist reappraisals (pp. 88-107). New York, NY:
Guilford Press.
Ferguson, A. (1997). Moral responsibility and social
change: A new theory of self. Hypatia, 12(3), 116141. doi: 10.2979/HYP.1997.12.3.116
Fernandes, L. (2003). Transforming feminist practice:
Non-violence, social justice, and the possibilities of a
spiritualized feminism. San Francisco, CA: Aunt
Lute Books.

50

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Ferrer, J. N. (2000). The perennial philosophy


revisited. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology,
32(1), 7-30. Retrieved from: http://atpweb.org/
journal.aspx
Ferrer, J. N. (2002). Revisioning transpersonal theory: A
participatory vision of human spirituality. Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press.
Ferrer, J. N. (2009). The plurality of religions and the
spirit of pluralism: A participatory vision of the future
of religion. International Journal of Transpersonal
Studies, 28, 139-151. Retrieved from: <http://www.
transpersonalstudies.org>
Ferrer, J. N., Romero, M., & Albareda, R. (2006). The
four seasons of integral education: A participatory
proposal. ReVision, 29(2), 11-26. Retrieved from:
<http://www.revisionpublishing.org>
Findlen, B. (Ed.). (1995). Listen up: Voices from the next
feminist generation. Seattle, WA: Seal.
Firestone, S. (1970). The dialectic of sex. New York, NY:
Morrow.
Flinders, C. L. (1999). At the root of this longing:
Reconciling a spiritual hunger and a feminist thirst.
New York, NY: HarperOne.
Foucault, M. (1970). The order of things (A. Sheridan,
Trans.). London, UK: Tavistock.
Foucault, M. (1980). The history of sexuality. Vol. 1 (R.
Hurley, Trans.). New York, NY: Vintage.
Fox, W. (1990). Toward a transpersonal ecology. Boston,
MA: Shambhala.
Frager, R. (1974). A proposed model for a graduate
program in Transpersonal Psychology. Journal of
Transpersonal Psychology, 6(2), 163-166. Retrieved
from: <http://atpweb.org/journal.aspx>
Freedman, E. B. (2002). No turning back: The history of
feminism and the future of women. New York, NY:
Ballantine Books.
Friedan, B. (2001). The feminine mystique. New York,
NY: W. W. Norton & Company. (Original work
published 1963)
Friedman, H. (2002). Transpersonal psychology as a
scientific field. International Journal of Transpersonal
Studies, 21, 175-187.
Funderburk, J. R., & Fukuyama, M. A. (2001).
Feminism, multiculturalism, and spirituality:
Convergent and divergent forces in psychotherapy.
Women & Therapy, 24(3-4), 1-18. Retrieved from:
<http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~conten
t=t792306984~db=all>

Brooks

Gergen, M. M. (2001). Feminist reconstructions in psych


ology: Narrative, gender and performance. Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage.
Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Gillis, S., Howie, G., & Munford, R. (Eds.). (2007).
Third wave feminism (2nd ed.). New York, NY:
Palgrave.
Griffin, S. (2000). Woman and nature: The roaring inside
her. San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books. (Original
work published 1978)
Grof, C., & Grof, S. (1989). Spiritual emergency: When
personal transformation becomes a crisis. Los Angeles,
CA: Tarcher.
Gross, R. (1992). Female God language in a Jewish
context. In C. P. Christ & J. Plaskow (Eds.),
Womanspirit rising: A feminist reader in religion, (pp.
167-173). San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco.
(Original work published 1979)
Habermas, J. (1981). Modernity versus postmodernity.
New German Critique, 22, 3-14. Retrieved from:
<http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0094-033X%281981
24%290%3A22%3C3%3AMVP%3E2.0.CO%3B
2-J>
Hanisch, C. (2006). The personal is political: The womens
liberation movement. (Original work published
1969) Retrieved from: <http://www.carolhanisch.
org/CHwritings/PIP.html>
Hare-Mustin, R. T., & Maracek, J. (1990). On making
a difference. In R. T Hare-Mustin, & J. Marecek
(Eds.), Making a difference: Psychology and the
construction of gender (pp. 1-22). New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press.
Hartelius, G., Caplan, M., & Rardin, M. A. (2007).
Transpersonal psychology: Defining the past,
divining the future. Humanistic Psychologist, 35(2),
1-26. Retrieved from: <http://www.informaworld.
com/smpp/title~content=t775653705>
Hastings, A. (1999). Transpersonal psychology: The
fourth force. In D. Moss (Ed.), Humanistic and
transpersonal psychology (pp. 192208). Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press.
Hayes, C. J. (1997). Anti-essentialism in practice: Carol
Gilligan and feminist philosophy. Hypatia, 12(3),
142-163. doi: 10.2979/HYP.1997.12.3.142
Heywood, L., & Drake, J. (Eds.). (1997). Third wave
agenda: Being feminist, doing feminism. Minneapolis,
MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Higgenbotham, E. B. (1992). African-American womens


history and the metalanguage of race. Signs: Journal
of Women in Culture and Society, 17, 251-274.
Hillman, J. (1997). The souls code. New York, NY:
Grand Central.
hooks, b. (1981). Aint I a woman. Boston, MA: South
End Press.
hooks, b. (1989). Talking back: Thinking feminist, thinking
black. Boston, MA: South End Press.
hooks, b. (2000). Feminism is for everybody: Passionate
politics. Boston, MA: South End Press.
Hunt, H. T. (2010). Consciousness and society: Societal
aspects and implications of transpersonal psychology.
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 29(1),
20-30.
Hunt, M. E. (1995). Psychological implications of
womens spiritual health. Women & Therapy, 24(3-4),
21-32. Retrieved from: <http://www.informaworld.
com/smpp/title~content=t792306984~db=all>
Huxley, A. (1945). The perennial philosophy. New York,
NY: Harper.
Jaggar, A. M., & Bordo, S. R. (Eds.). (1989). Gender/
body/knowledge: Feminist reconstructions of being and
knowing. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University
Press.
James, W. (1997). The varieties of religious experience.
New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. (Original work
published 1902)
Jehlen, M. (1990). Gender. In F. Lentricchia & T.
McLaughlin (Eds.), Critical terms for literary study
(pp. 263-273). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press.
Jordan, J. V. (1984). Empathy and self-boundaries.
Wellesley, MA: Wellesley College.
Jordan, J. V. (2001). A relational-cultural model:
Healing through mutual empathy. Bulletin of
the Menninger Clinic, 65 (Treatment approaches
in the new millennium), 92-103. doi: 10.1521/
bumc.65.1.92.18707
Jordan, J. V., & Hartling, L. M. (2002). New
developments in relational-cultural theory. In M.
Ballou & L. S. Brown (Eds.), Rethinking mental
health and disorder: Feminist perspectives (pp. 48-70).
New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Jordan, J. V., Kaplan, A. G., Miller, J. B., Stiver, I. P., &
Surrey, J. L. (1991). Womens growth in connection:
Writings from the Stone Center. New York, NY:
Guilford Press.

Feminist and Transpersonal Thought

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 51

Jung, C. G. (1954). The practical use of dream analysis


(R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read et al. (Series
Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (vol. 16,
pp. 139-161). New York, Pantheon. (Original work
published 1934)
Jung, C. G. (1976). The symbolic life (R. F. C. Hull,
Trans.). In H. Read et al. (Series Eds.), The collected
works of C. G. Jung (vol. 18 pt. 3, pp. 267-292).
New York: Pantheon. (Original work published
1939)
Kabat-Zinn, J., Lipworth, L., & Burney, R. (1985).
The clinical use of mindfulness meditation for
the self-regulation of chronic pain. Journal of
Behavioral Medicine, 8(2), 163-190. doi: 10.1007/
BF00845519
Kaschak, E. (2001). Preface: The invisible alliance:
Spiritual and psychological practice reunited. Women
& Therapy, 24(3-4). Retrieved from: <http://www.
informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t792306984
~db=all>
Kessler, S. J., & McKenna, W. (1985). Introduction. In
Gender: An ethnomethodological approach (pp. 1-20).
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Klassen, C. (Ed.). (2009). Feminist spirituality: The next
generation. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Lajoie, D. H. & Shapiro, S. I. (1992). Definitions of
transpersonal psychology. Journal of Transpersonal
Psychology, 24(1), 79-98. Retrieved from: <http://
atpweb.org/journal.aspx>
LeGates, M. (2001). In their time: a history of feminism in
Western society. New York, NY: Routledge.
Lerman, H. (1986). A mote in Freuds eye. New York,
NY: Springer.
Lerner, G. (1986). The creation of patriarchy. New York,
NY: Oxford University Press.
Lewis, J. L. (2005). Forgiveness and psychotherapy: The
prepersonal, the personal, and the transpersonal.
Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 37(2), 124-142.
Retrieved from: <http://atpweb.org/journal.aspx>
Lips, H. M. (1999). A new psychology of women: Gender,
culture and ethnicity. Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield.
Lorber, J., & Farrell, S. (Eds.). (1991). The social construc
tion of gender. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Louchakova, O., & Lucas, M. (2007). Transpersonal
self as a clinical category: Reflections on culture,
gender, and phenomenology. Journal of Transpersonal
Psychology, 39(2), 111-136. Retrieved from: <http://
atpweb.org/journal.aspx>

52

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Lukoff, D., Lu, F. G., & Turner, R. (1996). Diagnosis:


A transpersonal clinical approach to religious and
spiritual problems. In B. W. Scotten, A. B. Chinen,
& J. R. Battista (Eds.), Textbook of transpersonal
psychiatry and psychology (pp. 231-249). New York,
NY: Basic Books.
Luskin, F. (2002). Forgive for good: A proven prescription
for health and happiness. San Francisco, CA:
HarperSanFrancisco.
MacDonald, D. A. (2009). Identity and spirituality:
Conventional and transpersonal perspectives.
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies,
28, 86-106. Retrieved from: <http://www.
transpersonalstudies.org>
Mack, J. (1993). Foreward. In R. Walsh & F. Vaughn
(Eds.), Paths beyond ego: The transpersonal vision (pp.
xi-xiii). New York, NY: Jeremy P. Tarcher.
MacKinnon, C. A. (1993). Feminism, Marxism, method,
and the state: Toward a feminist jurisprudence. In
P. B. Bart & E. G. Moran (Eds.), Violence against
women: The bloody footprints (pp. 201-227). Newbury
Park, CA: Sage. (Original work published 1982)
Mara, C., DeCiccio, T. L., & Stroink, M. L. (2010).
An investigation of the relationships among selfconstrual, emotional intelligence, and well-being.
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 29(1),
1-11.
Maracek, J. (2001). After the facts: Psychology and the
study of gender. Canadian Psychology, 42, 254-267.
doi: 10.1037/h0086894
Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation.
Psychological Review, 50(4), 370-396. Retrieved from:
<http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/rev/index.aspx>
Maslow, A. H. (1998). Toward a psychology of being
(3rd ed.). New York, NY: Wiley. (Original work
published 1962).
McClintock, A. (1995). Imperial leather: Race, gender,
and sexuality in the colonial contest. New York, NY:
Routeledge.
McIntosh, P. (2002) White privilege: Unpacking the
invisible knapsack. In A. Kesselman, L. McNair,
& N. Schneidewind (Eds.), Women: Images, and
realities (3rd ed.; pp. 358-361). New York, NY:
McGraw Hill.
Mezirow, J. (1997). Transformative learning: Theory
to practice. In P. Cranton (Ed.), Transformative
learning in action: Insights from practice (pp. 5-19).
San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Brooks

Miller, J. B. (1987). Toward a new psychology of women


(2nd ed.) Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Morgan, R. (1996) Sisterhood is global. New York, NY:
Feminist Press. (Original work published 1984)
Morgan, R. (Ed.). (1970). Sisterhood is powerful: An
anthology of writings from the womens liberation
movement. New York, NY: Vintage.
Noble, V. (2001). Letting nature take its course. Women
& Therapy, 24(3-4), 193-208. Retrieved from:
<http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content
=t792306984~db=all>
Noddings, N. (1984). Caring: A feminine approach to
ethics and moral education. Berkeley, CA: University
of California Press.
Ochshorn, J., & Cole, E. (Eds.). (1995). Womens
spirituality; Womens lives [special issue]. Women &
Therapy, 16(2-3). Retrieved from: <http://www.infor
maworld.com/smpp/title~content=t792306984~db=
all>
Palmer. G., & Braud, W. (2002). Exceptional human
experience, disclosure, and a more inclusive view
of physical, psychological, and spiritual well-being.
Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 34(1), 29-61.
Retrieved from: <http://atpweb.org/journal.aspx>
Perlstein, M. (2001). A spiritual coming out: The use
of ritual in a psychotherapy practice. Women &
Therapy, 24(3-4), 175-192. Retrieved from: <http://
www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t7923
06984~db=all>
Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. (2009, February
26). The strong sexspiritually speaking. Retrieved
from: <http://pewforum.org/The-Stronger-Sex---Spiritually-Speaking.aspx>
Plaskow, J. (1991). Standing again at Sinai: Judaism
from a feminist perspective. San Francisco, CA:
HarperSanFrancisco.
Plaskow, J. (1992). Bringing a daughter into the covenant.
In C. P. Christ & J. Plaskow (Eds.), Womanspirit
rising: A feminist reader in religion (pp. 179-184). San
Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco. (Original work
published 1979).
Plaskow, J., & Christ, C. P. (1989). Weaving the visions:
New patterns in feminist spirituality. New York, NY:
HarperOne.
Powers, R. (1995). A class that changes lives. Women &
Therapy, 16(2), 175-183. Retrieved from: <http://
www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t7923
06984~db=all>

Pratt, M. B. (1984). Identity: Skin blood heart. In E.


Bullkin, M. B. Pratt, & B. Smith (Eds.), Yours in
struggle: Three feminist perspectives on anti-Semitism and
racism (pp. 11-63). Brooklyn, NY: Long Haul Press.
Redstockings. (2010). Redstockings manifesto. Retrieved
from: <http://www.redstockings.org/index.php?op
tion=com_content&view=article&id=76> (Original
work published 1969)
Reinharz, S. (1992). Feminist methods in social research.
New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Reuther, R. R. (1983). Sexism and God-talk: toward a
feminist theology. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Reuther, R. R. (1985). Women-church: Theology and
practice of feminist liturgical communities. San
Francisco, CA: Harper & Row.
Rich, A. (1995). On lies, secrets, and silence: Selected
prose 1966-1978. New York, NY: W. W. Norton &
Company. (Original work published 1979)
Rothberg, D. (1999). Transpersonal issues at the
millennium. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology,
31(1), 41-67. Retrieved from: <http://atpweb.org/
journal.aspx>
Ruumet, H. (2006). Pathways of the soul: Exploring the
human journey. Bloomington, IN: Trafford.
Sandoval, C. (2000). Methodology of the oppressed.
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Schavrien, J. (1989). The rage, healing and daemonic
death of Oedipus: A self-in-relation theory. Journal
of Transpersonal Psychology, 21(2), 149-176.
Schavrien, J. (2008). Shakespeares late style and renewal
through the feminine: A full spectrum, all quadrant
approach. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 40(2),
199-222.
Schuon, F. (1984). The transcendent unity of religions.
Wheaton, IL: Quest Books. (Original work
published 1953)
Schssler Fiorenza, E. (1983). In memory of her: A feminist
theological reconstruction of Christian origins. New
York, NY: Crossroad.
Schssler Fiorenza, E. (1984). Bread not stone: The
challenge of feminist biblical interpretation. Boston,
MA: Beacon Press.
Shapiro, S. I., Lee, G. W., & Gross, P. L. (2002). The essence
of transpersonal psychology: Contemporary views.
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 21, 19-32.
Sheridan, C. L., & Radmacher, S. A. (1991). Health
psychology: Challenging the biomedical model. New
York, NY: Wiley.

Feminist and Transpersonal Thought

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 53

Shiva, V. (1988). Staying alive: Women, ecology and


survival in India. New Delhi, India: Zed Press.
Snyder, C. R., & Lopez, S.J . (2007). Positive psychology:
The scientific and practical explorations of human
strengths. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In C.
Nelson & L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the
interpretation of culture (pp. 271-313). Oxford, UK:
Macmillan Education.
Stahl, B., & Goldstein, E. (2010). A mindfulness-based
stress reduction workbook. Oakland, CA: New
Harbinger.
Starhawk (1999). Spiral dance: A rebirth of the ancient
religion of the goddess (20th anniversary edition). San
Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco. (Original work
published 1979)
Stanton, E. C. (2003). The womens bible. Mineola,
NY: Dover Publications. (Original work published
1895)
Stone, A. (2007). On the genealogy of women: A defense
of anti-essentialism. In S. Gillis, G. Howie, & R.
Munford (Eds.), Third wave feminism: A critical
exploration (2nd ed.; pp. 16-29). New York, NY:
Palgrave.
Stuckey, J. H. (2010). Womens spirituality: Contemporary
feminist approaches to Judaism, Christianity,
Islam, and goddess worship (2nd ed.). Berkeley, CA:
Inanna.
Suyemoto, K. L. (2002). Constructing identities: A
feminist, culturally contextualized alternative to
personality. In M. Ballou & L. S. Brown (Eds.),
Rethinking mental health and disorder: Feminist
perspectives (pp. 71-98). New York, NY: Guilford
Press.
Tarnas, R. (2002). Foreword. In J. N. Ferrer, Revisioning
transpersonal theory: A participatory vision of human
spirituality. Albany, NY: State University of New
York Press.
Teish, L. (1988). Jambalaya: The natural womans book of
personal charms and practical rituals. New York, NY:
HarperOne.
Vaughan, F. (1993). Healing and wholeness: Transpersonal
psychotherapy. In R. Walsh & F. Vaughan (Eds.),
Paths beyond ego: The transpersonal vision (pp. 160165). New York, NY: Jeremy P. Tarcher.
Walker, A. (1983). In search of our mothers gardens:
Womanist prose. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich.

54

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Walker, R. (Ed.). (1995). To be real: Telling the truth


and changing the face of feminism. New York, NY:
Doubleday.
Walsh, R., & Vaughan, F. (1993). Paths beyond ego:
The transpersonal vision. New York, NY: Jeremy P.
Tarcher.
Washburn, M. (1995). The ego and the dynamic ground
(Rev. ed.). Albany, NY: State University of New
York Press.
Washburn, M. (2003). Transpersonal dialogue: A new
direction. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 35(1),
1-19. Retrieved from: <http://atpweb.org/journal.
aspx>
Weiner, K. M. (2001). Spirituality in the therapy process.
Women & Therapy, 24(3-4), 149-159.
Whalen, M. (1996). Counseling to end violence against
women: A subversive model. Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage.
Wilber, K. (1973). The spectrum of consciousness. Wheaton,
IL: Quest Books.
Wilber, K. (1995) Sex, ecology, spirituality: The spirit
of evolution (1st ed.) Boston, MA: Shambhala
Publications.
Wilber, K. (2000). A theory of everything: An integral
vision for business, politics, science, and spirituality.
Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications.
Wilshire, D. (1989). The uses of myth, image, and the
female body in re-visioning knowledge. In A. M.
Jaggar & S. R. Bordo (Eds.), Gender/body/knowledge:
Feminist reconstructions of being and knowing (pp. 92114). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Woodman, M. (1990). Ravaged bridegroom: Masculinity
in women. Toronto, Canada: Inner City Books.
Woodman, M. (1997). The pregnant virgin: A process of
psychological transformation. Toronto, Canada: Inner
City Books.
Wright, P. A. (1995). Bringing womens voices to
transpersonal theory. ReVision, 17(3), 3-10. Retrieved
from: <http://www.revisionpublishing.org>
Wright, P. A. (1998). Gender issues in Ken Wilbers
transpersonal theory. In D. Rothberg & S. Kelly
(Eds.), Ken Wilber in dialogue: Conversations
with leading transpersonal thinkers (pp. 207-236).
Wheaton, IL: Quest Books.
Yoder, J. D., & Kahn, A. S. (1993). Working toward
an inclusive psychology of women. American
Psychologist, 48, 846-850. doi:10.1037//0003066X.48.7.846

Brooks

1. See Friedman (2002) and Daniels (2005, p. 265) for


the argument that transpersonal studies encompasses
a wider scope of what is truly taking place among
transpersonally-oriented scholars and that this term,
rather than transpersonal psychology, is utilitarian
as the field of transpersonal psychology continues to
develop and grow.
2. Another excellent overview of the field and the core
theoretical constructs that inform transpersonal
psychology is Michael Daniels (2005) Approaching
Transpersonal Psychology.
3. A report was recently published in the professional
magazine of the American Psychological Association
(Monitor on Psychology) on neuroscientific research
demonstrating that religious belief in humans
fosters stronger social bonds as well as staves off
existential angst (Azar, 2010). This report took a
distinctly non-pathological view of the religious
impulsea relatively new stance for a mainstream
psychological publication. Weve had this long
history of believing that the things of the spirit are
in one camp and that science and technology are in
another camp, says [Thomas] Plante, professor and
director of the Spirituality and Health Institute at
Santa Clara University and president of APAs Div.
36 (Psychology of Religion). If anything, this work
reiterates that we are whole people; the biological,
psychological, social, cultural and spiritual are all
connected (para. 16).
4. All three fields, positive psychology, health psych
ology, and mindfulness studies and applications
are commonplace in the U.S. market today, with
specialized professional journals and conferences in
each fieldand all three disciplines are core areas
of consideration at the Institute of Transpersonal
Psychology and other like-minded schools in the
field.
5. Western feminism is generally understood to include
the movements developed in the late 60s through
early 80s in the United States, Western Europe
(notably the United Kingdom), and Australia.
6. This phrase was originally coined as a title for a
treatise written by Carol Hanisch in 1969. For a
detailed history by Hanisch and the original article
of this title, go to <http://www.carolhanisch.org/
CHwritings/PIP.html>

7. For a differing perspective that seeks to reaffirm


the value of second wave feminist research while
simultaneously critiquing some of the flaws and
assumptions of earlier feminist research, see Hayes
(1997).
8. A n intersectional perspective is the ability to view
the lived human experience through multiple lenses
of identity which influence how one walks in the
world. Examples of these multiple lenses are class,
race/ethnicity, socio-economic status, region, physi
cal ability, religion or spiritual orientation, sexual or
affectional orientation, or gender.
9. Philosophers from within and outside of postmodern
circles continue to debate the value of deconstruction
as a process (see Habermas, 1981). Nonetheless,
understandings of the power structure of language
and the social construction of the self have been
invaluable projects in feminist and queer theory
building with the goal of de-centering assumed
and implicit identity and power structures (e.g.,
Foucault, 1970, 1980; Butler, 1990, 1993, 1997;
Gergen, 2001).
10.Transpersonal psychology is rife with examples
of gendered language that have gone unexamined
with regard to how such usage reinforces gendered
roles based upon psychospiritual developmental
expectations. Examination of how and to what
purpose such language is used may expose
problematic, rigid gender roles that do not represent
or symbolize the lived experience of individuals who
do not easily fit into categories such as masculine
and/or feminine. It is the hope of the author to
address these very issues in a future essay.
11.Feminist psychotherapist Laura S. Brown has
written for decades on the complexity of the feminist
endeavor to create flexible, non-pathologizing,
and holistic theory and practice in order to
address the experiences of women. Nontheless,
Brown (1994) has continued to hold strong to the
perspective that the feminist project must include
novel approaches to psychological theory-building
rather than an additive approach to broadening
what already exists in mainstream psychology. She
stated: I believe that we can continue to borrow
from mainstream developmental theories only at
our peril. The feminist clinical psychologist and
theoretician Rachel Hare-Mustin has aptly noted
that feminist personality theorists continue to stand

Feminist and Transpersonal Thought

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 55

Notes

on the bellies of dead white men in building our


theories (personal communication, July, 1993)A
feminist theory of personality requires starting
afresh, departing from the patriarchal universe of
knowledge, standing on our own feminist feet, and
allowing our politically oriented way of knowing
to represent good personality theorizing (pp.
231-232). Her perspective may be controversial
to some, but her stance is one that suggests that a
careful examination of unspoken oppression and
tacit acceptance of gendered stereotyping in much
psychological research and theory may continue to
maintain patriarchal power dynamics unless care
is taken to make such unidentified discrimination
plain throughout the research and theory building
processes.
12.Wilber would, most likely, disagree with the
supposition that there is a lack of consideration for
socio-political issues in integral theory, even though
it is clear that this area has not received significant
development or emphasis in comparison with topics
of personal transcendence. It is also clear that
significant gaps remain within transpersonal studies,
including critiques of the socio-political implications
of spiritual development.
13.The three major third-wave theory anthologies do
not address religion or spirituality in any substantive
form. If mentioned at all, spirituality is eschewed
for activist work (see Baumgardner & Richards,
2000) or addressed so peripherally as to have no
substantive presence in feminist theory-building in
these contexts (see Gillis et al., 2007; Heywood &
Drake, 1997).
14. A search conducted in the Psychology of Women
Quarterly archives (dating from 1997 to the present)
yielded a total of three articles in response to the
the keyword spirituality (Retrieved from EBSCO
Host database, December 23, 2010). This is the
flagship journal of Division 35 of the American
Psychological Association, the Society for Women
in Psychology.
15.Examples include Biaggio and Hersen (2000) and
Lips (1999).
16.The Pew Forum for Religious and Public Life
conducted the U.S. Religious Landscape survey
in 2009 and reported that 86% of women in the
U.S. were religiously affiliated and in many factors
score higher on religious measures than men (http://

56

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

pewforum.org/The-Stronger-Sex----SpirituallySpeaking.aspx).
17. This is one of two programs in the San Francisco
Bay Area of California dedicated specifically to
the study and practice of womens spirituality. The
other program is housed at the California Institute
of Integral Studies in San Francisco.
18.Woman-centeredness does not denote gender or
sex exclusivity with regard to those invited to study
the field. Rather this perspective is grounded in
transformative teaching practices and feminist
theory: through de-centering norms (such as malecenteredness, or the primacy of male experience, in
patriarchal religious structures), new vantage points
of understanding and shifts in frames of reference
may create opportunities for profound personal,
social, and intellectual change through viewing ones
self or experience as centered rather than othered or
non-normative.
19. With the comprehensive indexing of dissertations
and theses on databases such as ProQuest, access
to this rarely considered literature is now widely
possible. As noted elsewhere in this piece, the politics
of why these dissertations have not been published to
date as articles or books in the professional literature
continues to go unexamined.
20. A nother early self-identified feminist author in the
field who utilized gender as a locus of psychospiritual
exploration (notably through the lens of selfpsychology) is Judy Schavrien (1989; 2008). Her use
of classical Western drama as a tool to explore the
rise of (her term) The Feminine in the development
of a mature psyche is further explored in an article
in this special issue.
21.Tarnas (2002) encapsulated the unfolding of trans
personal theory based upon inherited principles that
revealed themselves to be acutely problematic
(p. viii). He continued:
With modernitys focus on the individual
Cartesian subject as the starting point and
foundation of any understanding of reality, with
its pervasive assertion of the knowing subjects
epistemic separation from an independent
objective reality, and finally with the modern
disenchantment of the external world of nature
and the cosmos, it was virtually inevitable that
transpersonal psychology would emerge in the

Brooks

form that it did: namely, with an overriding com


mitment to legitimate the spiritual dimension of
existence by defending the empirical status of
private, individual intrasubjective experiences
of an independent universal spiritual reality.
And since experience of the ultimate spiritual
reality was regarded as one shared by mystics of
all ages, it was, like scientific truth, independent
of human interpretations and projections,
and empirically replicable by anyone properly
prepared to engage in the appropriate practices.
In turn, this consensually validated supreme
reality was seen as constituting a single absolute
Truth which subsumed the diverse plurality of
all possible cultural and spiritual perspectives
within its ultimate unity. This was the essential
transcendent Truth in which all religions at their
mystical core ultimately converged. (p. ix)
About the Author
Christine Brooks, PhD, is Assistant Professor and
Chair of the Residential PhD and Masters programs in
Transpersonal Psychology at the Institute of Transpersonal
Psychology. She is a member of the Advisory Board of
the Center for the Sacred Feminine and the Chair of
the Diversity Action Team at ITP. Her scholarship is
focused on issues of diversity in transpersonal psychology
and related fields and exploring the potential for social
transformation and social justice from a transpersonal
perspective. Additional areas of interest include womens
adult psychospiritual development, the use of gendered
language and imagery in psychospiritual theory and
models, and transformational education and leadership.
Correspondence regarding this article should be directed
to the author at cbrooks@itp.edu.

About the Journal


The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies
is a peer-reviewed academic journal in print since
1981. It is published by Floraglades Foundation, and
serves as the official publication of the International
Transpersonal Association. The journal is available
online at www.transpersonalstudies.org, and in print
through www.lulu.com (search for IJTS).

Feminist and Transpersonal Thought

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 57

Ecology of the Erotic in a Myth of Inanna


Judy Grahn

Institute of Transpersonal Psychology


Palo Alto, CA, USA
Myths of Mesopotamian Goddess Inanna, planet Venus in the ancient Sumerian pantheon, have
been useful in psychological processes of contemporary women. A lesser-known myth, Inanna and
Shukaletuda, includes sexual transgression against the deity and ties the deified erotic feminine
with fecundity and sacredness of fields and trees. Interpretation of Inannas love poems and poems of
natures justice contextualizes ecofeminist relevance to psychological issues. Deconstruction of rich
imagery illustrates menstrual power as female authority, erotic as a female aesthetic bringing order,
and transgender as sacred office of transformation. Meadors (2000) interpretation of three Inanna
poems by a high priestess of ancient Ur provides four new archetypes for women that situate an axis
for further understanding of Inanna and Shukaletuda.
Keywords: ecofeminism, Inanna, archetype, erotic, menstruation, rape, mythology, transgender, embodied spirituality, Sumerian, ecology, spirituality.

ithout question, the literature of the goddess


Inanna of ancient Sumer has been valuable
in the teaching of both transpersonal
psychology and spirituality to contemporary women, and
men. The Mesopotamian poets of the second millennium
BCE were not only the first to capture in lasting written
form their peoples sacred stories, but they also left much
material that is remarkably accessible and applicable to
our current world.
We have benefitted as section after section of
the lyrical poetry and myths of the Sumerian goddess
Inanna has been excavated, translated, and published.
Such psychologically relevant treasures as Inanna Meets
the God of Wisdom (Wolkstein & Kramer, 1983), and
The Descent of Inanna into the Underworld (Wolkstein
& Kramer, 1983; Meador, 1992) enable both women
and men to delve deeply into their own psyches, and,
for example, to understand some forms of depression as
possibly creative journeys that not only achieve resolution,
but are also beneficial. Earlier in the 20th century the
surfacing of the Gilgamesh myth with its flood story, and
Inannas courtship tale of choosing the shepherds gifts
over the farmers, brought attention to the antiquity of
stories that later became retained in biblical texts, long
after the great Sumerian civilization had faded. By the
first millennium BCE, if not earlier, Inannas name had
become replaced by her more recent and familiar names
of Ishtar and Astarte. Meadors (2000) interpretations

58

of translations of the long poems and temple hymns


of Enheduanna, the great poet-priestess of Ur, have
contributed to the knowledge of Inanna as a vehicle
for a pro-nature philosophy that is pressingly needed in
current times. Psychologists, activists, and artists have
used the mythology to further contemporary methods
and worldviews (Grahn, 1993, 1999; Meador, 1993,
2000; Perera, 1981; Starhawk, 1988; Wolkstein &
Kramer, 1983). Some examples: Inannas Descent to
the Underworld has been used to re-describe depression
as a creative journey endowing the eye of truth as its
outcome. Inanna attains laws of the cosmos in the myth,
Inanna Meets the God of Wisdom, a story that helps
teach women that power is paradoxical, belongs to them,
and involves struggle. And, Inannas richly sensual love
poetry attaches sexuality to the sacred in ways seldom
seen in other literature. Now, interpreting yet another
and less known myth, Inanna and u-kale-tuda, about
Inanna seeking justice for a sexual transgression of
her body, I would like to suggest that once again her
fine Sumerian poets can teach us something of her
contemporary as well as ancient, psychological and
ecofeminist value. The myth does not, and I do not, use
the term rape, something I will discuss at length later.
As a mythologized personification of the planet
Venus, among other natural features, Inanna was queen
of the night sky where she flared as a living torch, and
she ruled the day as well, coming down to walk about

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies


Studies, 29(2), 2010, pp. 58-67

Grahn

in human form among her people, the black-headed


(as they called themselves) of the Mesopotamian river
valley (Simo Parpola, as cited in Meador, 2000, pp.
17-18; Wolkstein & Kramer, 1983). As long ago as six
thousand years, temples were built to her, and her signs
were left stamped in baked clay and on carved seals. The
earliest cuneiform tablets were found at her temple site at
Kulaba, the place that would become old town as the
great city of Uruk grew (Schmandt-Besserat, 1992).
Fifty-five hundred years ago, the clay tablet lists
and accountings of Sumerian scribes began to yield a
new art, written literature (Schmandt-Besserat, 1992).
Much was written in praise of powerful Sumerian gods
who preceded Inanna in the lineage of the pantheon, the
sky god An, the wind god Enlil, the stony earth goddess
Ninhursaga, the moon couple Nanna and Ningal
(Inannas parents), and the god of wisdom and sweet
water, Enki, her grandfather. But by about 2300 BCE,
Inannas own literature would exalt her to the highest
position in the complex pantheon of Sumerian deities
(Jacobsen 1978; Meador, 2000; Wolkstein & Kramer,
1983).
As a prototype of active female power, Inannas
range is unique, her love poetry some of the most lushly
sensuous ever written, her combination of authority and
emotional intelligence unparalleled among the other
Sumerian deities (Black, Cunningham, Robson, &
Zlyomi, 2004; Wolkstein & Kramer, 1983). Lady of
largest heart one of her poets called her (Meador, 2000,
p. xxx). She is a protective warrior in that fighting is
her play (p. 118), yet she also tenderly kisses babies and
cares for her Sumerian people in their complex economic
lives as they balanced both urban and rural activities.
She is a complex, paradoxical goddess of both nature and
culture.
Dated from the late third millennium BCE,
the extensive poetry of high priestess Enheduanna
so expanded the character of the goddess Inanna that
Jungian analyst and writer Meador (2000) deciphered
from its stirring lines four new archetypes for women:
lover, priestess, warrior, and androgyne. While warrior is
one aspect of this complex deity, another is her far-ranging
rule of her people, after she receives the paradoxical
cosmic powers of tenderness and care, drought and flood,
wealth and ruin, health and illness (Meador, 2000), and
of all things related to the peoples occupations of metal,
wood, and stone crafts, trading, herding, and horticulture
(Wolkstein & Kramer, 1983). Yet another aspect of her

character is her sexuality, expressed in fine love poetry,


in which she chooses among suitors, celebrates her own
vulva, and spells out in detail how her lover is to approach
her (Wolkstein & Kramer, 1983; Jacobsen, 1987).
Inanna, though merged with the planet Venus
as her identity, takes other forms in the imagery of her
poets: torch, dragon, snake, lion, bird; she also creates
permeable boundaries of gender for her people. She is
sometimes titled the Woman as though she represents
a collectivity of Sumerian womankind, with the same
physical body and experiences. She is very much an
elaborate social construct of both Sumerian culture and
nature. Meador (2000) summarized something of her
meaning:

Ecology of the Erotic in a Myth of Inanna

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 59

On the cosmic level, Inanna pulls the rug out from


under our belief in order and principle. She is the
element of chaos that hangs over every situation, the
reminder that cultures and rules and traditions and
order are constructs of humanity. Society congeals
possibility into laws and mores so that we can live
together. Inanna reminds us these are but products
of the mind. At bottom all is possible. (p. 11)
As this is a myth of ecofeminism, the four
qualities I am tracking through this article all have to do
with the power of womens bodies magnified as powers of
nature, and embodied in Inannas mythology: Inannas
sexuality as eros that feeds the Land; her capacity to stop
the peoples economic life with the power of her menses;
her ability to deprive her transgressor of rebirth; and her
control of gender androgyny that implies transformation
of relationship or situation. A valuable correspondence to
these powers is provided by Meadors (2000) articulation
of the four archetypes, as named above.
Note that the translators of this myth spell the
goddess name with one n; I am following the usual
spelling of Inanna except in quotes from the text, but
also capitalizing Land as do they.
The Myth:
Inanna and u-kale-tuda
he myth tells of a confrontation between the goddess
and a young man, a callow youth, u-kale-tuda. The
story begins by extolling Inannas righteous authority, as
she stands in her temple, which was called E-ana, and
how she set out one day on a quest for justice:

The mistress who, having all the great divine powers,


deserves the throne dais; Inana who stands in E-ana

as a source of wonderonce, the young woman


went up into the mountains, holy Inana went up
into the mountains. To detect falsehood and justice,
to inspect the Land closely, to identify the criminal
against the just, she went up into the mountains.
(Black et al., 2004, p. 197)

She mounted on a cloud, took (?) her seat there...The


south wind and a fearsome storm flood went before
her. The pilipili (one of the [temple] personnel in
Inannas entourage) and a dust storm followed
her...Seven times seven helpers (?) stood beside her
in the high desert. (para. 185-193)

The scene then shifts to Enki, god of wisdom


and sweet (fresh) waters, who is teaching a raven the arts
of gardening. The raven closely follows the instructions
of the wisdom god; he chews up the kohl plant, he pulls
up a shoot that is a palm tree and plants it; he even
properly works the shadouf, the long thin pole with a
counter weight that makes the water bucket rise up and
down drawing priceless liquid from the river (Black et
al., 2004).
Meanwhile on her mission of inspection,
goddess Inanna went into the mountains and began
flying around. From one border of the territory to the
other, she flew round and round. She flew around the
Tree whose roots intertwine with the horizon of heaven,
by now so tired that she lay down beside its boundary
roots. She had for her loincloth a weaving of the seven
cosmic powers, across her thighs. Her thoughts were
with her shepherd lover, Dumuzid. On the same plot of
land a youth, u-kale-tuda, was working, and saw her;
he approached, untied the loincloth of divine powers
across her holy vulva. He had intercourse with her as she
slept, kissed her, and returned to his place at the edge
of the garden plot. By the light of the risen sun, the
woman inspected herself closely, holy Inana inspected
herself closely (Black, Cunningham, Fluckiger-Hawker,
Robson, & Zlyomi, 1998-2001a, para. 112-128).
She was immediately outraged, asking, what
should be done (Black et al., 1998-2001a, para. 129138) on account of her vulva? Specifically, what should
be destroyed (para. 129-138) because of her vulva? She
instantly acts. First, she fills all the water wells of the
Land with her own blood, so that blood is irrigating
the orchard crops, and they are producing blood. The
adult slave who goes out to gather firewood is drinking
blood; the girl slave who is drawing water from the well is
drawing up blood. All the Sumerian people are drinking
blood. The people are asking, how long will this last? No
one knew when this would end (para. 129-138). Inanna
declared that she would search all through the Lands for
the man who had done this. She began to search, taking
with her an entourage of assistants:

She searched everywhere, but she could not find the


man who had had intercourse with her.
u-kale-tuda went to see his father, and told
him some of the story, that he was worried as the
woman had vowed to find him. His father told him to
go into the city and hide among the other black-headed
youth. Once again Inanna flooded the Sumerian water
supply with her own blood, and once again she went
looking for the man who had had intercourse with her.
Again, she could not find him. Again, the boy went in
fear to his father, and was given the same advice. Yet
a third time she went looking for him, taking another
offensive measure. She took an implement in her hand
and blocked off all the roads; no one in the Land could
now travel. And still, she could not find him.
Now, Inanna went to the elder wisdom god,
Enki, who had been helpful to her in other of her life
events. Enki was in charge of the elemental creation
place, the apsu (watery abyss from which reality arises).
Who will compensate me? (Black et al., 1998-2001a,
para. 239-255) for this, Inanna asked him. I shall only
re-enter my shrine E-ana satisfied after you have handed
over that man to me, (para. 239-255), she declared.
Enki, whose province was provision of fresh water in the
Land, responded, All right!...[and]...So be it! (para.
239-255). He opened the apsu; immediately u-kaletuda had no place to hide. He went running into the
mountains. There, Inanna arched her body across the
sky in the form of a rainbow, from one end of the Land
to the other. And, although in his frightened and solitary
situation he made himself very small, she saw him.
She questioned him, and while the text is unclear
here, it seems she compared his behavior to that of a
dog, a donkey, and a pig. Addressing her as my lady
(Black et al., 1998-2001a, para. 262-281), he told his
complete story to holy Inanna. He explained that his job
was to water the garden plots and build an installation
that would be a watering well for the plants, but not a
single plant remained there, not even one, I had pulled
them all out by their roots and destroyed them (para.
262-281). Then, a stormwind from the mountains blew

60

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Grahn

dust into his eyes; he could not wipe it all out; he had
sand in his eyes. He looked and saw the exalted gods
of the plains and of the mountains, the wind and the
sky. And then he saw flying toward him a single god,
I saw someone who possesses fully the divine powers
(para. 262-281). He saw her divinity. In the middle of
the plot stood the Tree whose roots entangle with the
horizon, a Euphrates poplar, so large its shade remains
the same all through the day. Under this tree the lady
had laid down to rest after she had flown around heaven
and around earth, from Elam to Subir, and she was very
tired. He noticed her; he approached, had intercourse
with her, and kissed her. Afterwards, he went back to
the edge of his plot. Having heard his testimony, she
then determined his destiny (para. 290-310). Holy
Inanna said to u-kale-tuda: So! You shall die! What is
that to me? (para. 290-310).
But his name, she continued, would be
remembered; his name would exist in songs and make
the songs sweet (Black et al., 1998-2001a, para. 290310). The songs would be pleasingly sung in the palace
of the king; shepherds would sing them in their work of
churning butter, and in the meadow where they grazed
their sheep. As for u-kale-tuda himself, the palace of
the desert shall be your home (para. 290-310). Such was
his destiny. The myth ends with praise to holy Inanna,
who decides fates.
An Interpretation
with an Ecofeminist Perspective
hat is that blood? This myth has elements
that are mysteriousat first reading. What is
this about her blood? Why are the cosmic powers in
a loincloth across her thighs? Why doesnt the myth
tell us his motivation? And why, if she has the power
to declare the criminals death as her retribution, does
she then say that his name will be remembered, sweetly
sung even in the kings palace? And what, exactly, was
his transgression, given that she is a divine shape-shifter
and he a mortal callow youth? The myth doesnt call it
a rape; should we?
An appropriate place to search for answers is
Inannas favorite site: her sexuality. The seven cosmic
powersin some myths she wears them in her cloak,
however in this myth the image is of a girdle or loincloth
with the powers woven into it, that lies protectively and
provocatively across her vulva, drawing a connection
between the cosmic laws and her place of eros. What
is it about her vulva that has anything to do with the

correct functioning of the cosmos? The myth shows this


in the series of actions of the criminal.
As learned from his confession to the goddess,
prior to approaching her, the young gardener was really
no gardener, he had already transgressed the Landhe
was to make a well for the garden plot but as he complains,
there were no plants to water, for he had pulled them
all up. He was a criminal of a person already. Though
recognizing her as divine, he disrespected her need for
rest and also the sacred place, the tree she had chosen,
where the roots of the horizon entangle, a Tree of Life
as it were, under which she lay sleeping. A Euphrates
poplar, a huge, long-lived, spreading, riverbank tree,
turns brilliantly golden in FallInannas gold color of
the planet Venus shining in the evening sky. That this
tree is explicitly named, described as having its roots
tangled at the place intertwined [at the] horizon of
heaven, (Black et al., 1998-2001a, para. 112-128) and
is visited by a goddess, designates it a Tree of Life
(Haynes, 2009, p. 68), and therefore a sacred site. When
the water of the Euphrates is still, a mirror image of the
tree reflects in such a way that the river bank looks like
an island floating between two blue seas, the Land held
together by the roots of both treesthe one real, the
other reflected and imagined. And then, at that sacred
site, before he committed his sexual transgression on
the body of the goddess, he first disrespected the seven
powers of her girdle, pulling them aside. Finally, he
sneaks upon her as she sleeps, and obviously, leaves her
will out of his act, which is for himself alone.
By knitting the imagery together, the poet ties
together the two transgressions, sexual and ecological
a man who would carelessly transgress the Land would
carelessly transgress the person of the Woman as well.
The belt across Inannas loins contains the laws or orders
of nature; the implication is that her vulva holds things
together for the world of Sumer. Besides her identity as
nature itself, how does her vulva hold things together?
For one thing, her benevolent sexuality, which is
fulsome in her literature, manifests her vivacious force
of eros, aesthetic sexuality that gives abundance to the
people. But her first action after inspecting her vulva
and realizing she has been transgressed is to reverse her
vulvas benevolent power, spewing venomous, showstopping blood instead.
That she filled all the wells of the Land with her
own blood is the clue that this is a major transformation
with a menstrual component. In her guise as a maiden

Ecology of the Erotic in a Myth of Inanna

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 61

lying under a tree, Inanna produces blood as her first act


of correcting the sexual transgressionsignifying that
the gardener has broken a nearly universal menstrual
taboo that prohibits sexual intercourse (and another
that prohibits economic activity) while the woman
is bleeding (Grahn, 1993, 1999; Jacobsen, 1987). She
sends a signal that his act is on the order such that the
blood law of the Goddess has been transgressed, and
consequently all the Land is brought to a startled halt
by the substance, which she deliberately pours into the
water sources.
This is a deity for whom menstruation, sexuality,
and other functions of her vulva are at the heart of her
sacrality (Meador, 1992; Wolkstein & Kramer, 1983).
This surely explains why the laws of the cosmos are
woven into a holy loincloth that binds her loins. One of
her other names, Ishtar, contains the syllables indicating
menses (Meador, 2000, p. 56). The inner sanctum of her
temple, the giparu, is the womens secluded section. The
Sumerians were people who celebrated Inanna at the
new moon by holding a parade for her, and who reveled
in sacred blood: they sprinkled drops of blood when
they walked in procession to her, and they poured the
red liquid of blood onto the dais where she would stand,
or seat herself (Black et al., 1998-2001a; Wolkstein &
Kramer, 1983). So now this blood of her outrage that
she floods into the wells has brought local life to a
standstill. She has taken away the water of life from her
horticultural people. When will this end, they ask.
A second indication that menstrual taboo is
being invoked in the poem occurs the third time she
could not find u-kale-tuda, though she looked over
all the territory. She then blocked all the roads, so the
people were prevented from traveling. Once again we
sense we are in menstrual taboo territory, suggesting
that this refers to a prohibition against traveling (a
restriction which could apply to the men in the family as
well as to the women) whenever the women are in their
bleeding rituals (Grahn, 1999). The goddess is in her
stormy period, she has changed all the water in the land
to her own blood, and now no one is to travel. No one
is to work. No one puts lips to the water from the wells.
With her paradoxical and elemental feminine powers,
she has altered her usual bounty to a state of suspended
tension that impacts all economic and social activity.
All this because a puny gardener lifted her skirt?
Through my reading I had the uneasy feeling that rape
is not an appropriate term of description here. Uneasy

62

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

because does one dare let go of the protective properties


of using this term, even for a moments reflection? Rape
has undergone a change of definition within my lifetime.
The patriarchal view of rape is that it is a transgression
of one male upon the property of another male, to the
shame of the female, who may be blamed and punished
rather than the perpetrator. A feminist view of rape is
that it is an act of aggression against her (or him if the
victim is a male) person, with grave psychological and
perhaps social consequences to the victim; it may lead to
pregnancy, disease, social stigma and punishment, posttraumatic stress disorder, and an inner sense of shame
that may last a lifetime. The victim is an individual with
personal rights; the rapist is seen as having great powers
of destruction.
But in this myth from the era of still potent
goddesses, on the cusp of the patriarchy with its
emphasis on kingship, militarism, slavery, and empire,
Inanna is still an active, paradoxical, and extremely
powerful Feminine Principle. She is nature as a living
participant and culture as a protective agent. In this
myth, as I interpret it, the crime is against a goddess who
embodies simultaneously woman, society, and nature.
The transgression against her vulva is hardly describable
as rape in our modern sense given that Inannas quest
for justice has such an expanded, complex implication
in this story. This myth takes rape out of the realm
of the personal, and extends the transgression to that
which impacts all society and how society intersects
with nature.
Inanna sets out consciously to identify the
criminal against the just (Black et al., 1998-2001a,
para. 1-10). The goddess is outraged, but she is not
psychologically damaged. She does not complain of
personal pain, or nurse her wounds. She does not flee
or hide out; she is very public. Shame does not enter in.
She is the one who does damage in order to locate the
culprit. Her blood is her first force of expression. She
brings economic activity to a standstill; she effectively
shuts the water wells; she blocks off the roads; and she
tells the god Enki, her ally in other myths as well as
in this one, that she will not sit down again on her
throne until he hands over to her the culprit. She will
not stop her restless and counter-productive activity. He
immediately agrees to her terms, and to reveal the culprit
he opens the apsuthe place of originationand again
there is an implication of transformation, starting over
from the beginning, re-orienting.

Grahn

Inannas Sexuality Is Life Force


nanna is most commonly understood as a goddess of
love, including sexual love. Her poets celebrated this
about her, from what has been recovered, more than
any of her many attributes. For Inanna sex is openly
enjoyed, a public and holy joy. In the oldest part of her
city, Uruk, is her original precinct, Kulaba, of which
a Sumerian poet wrote, Inanna the mistress, the lady
of the great powers who allows sexual intercourse in
the open squares of Kulaba (Black, Cunningham,
Fluckiger-Hawker, Robson, & Zlyomi, 1998-2001b,
para. 358-367).
For Inanna sex is joyful lovemaking, with
elaborate rites that precede and accompany the
intercourse itself. First she prepares her holy body; she
bathes and adorns herself; she paints her eyes; her bed
is made up especially for the sexual encounter with her
lover. Cedar and other sweet smelling balms are spread
among the sheets. She describes her preparations:

tenderly. But he must prove himself. Her genitals are


holy, they must be approached in a holy manner. For
Inanna the sex act itself is so much about the upwelling
of joy that the high sexual arousal and orgasmic climax
is called rejoicing:
After the lady has made him rejoice with her holy
thighs on the bed, after holy Inanna has made
him rejoice with her holy thighs on the bed, she
relaxes (?) with him on her bed: Iddin-Dagan,
you are indeed my beloved! (Black, Cunningham,
Fluckiger-Hawker, Robson, & Zlyomi, 19982001d, para. 187-194)

The lover is called holy, and spouse; she calls him My


honey-man (Wolkstein & Kramer, 1983, p. 38). He too
meticulously prepares himself and approaches her in the
appointed place, not just anywhere. The time and the
place are under her specification; the acts are regulated.
His behavior includes play that is foreplay, carefully
spelled out by the poets, when he ruffles my pubic
hair for me, when he plays with the hair of my head,
when he lays his hands on my holy genitals (Black et
al., 1998-2001c, para. 14-35). Her pleasure is part of
the act, and part of the troth between them, when he
treats me tenderly on the bed, then I too will treat my
lord tenderly (para. 14-35). The texts about Inannas
sexuality imply that her sexuality is for the benefit of
everyone, and the words also seem to be instructions
to the populace from the priestesses and priests, of how
lovemaking should proceed through the aesthetics of
beauty and tenderness, in order to induce the maximum
joy.
Inanna is the one holding the power position:
her lover must treat her tenderly, then she will treat him

As though her attractiveness and sexuality keep the


whole economy reciprocal, Inannas lovers must bring
her, through her temple personnel, offerings in their
courtship: Dumuzid, her favorite, brings the best
milk and cheese; the farmer brings cakes and wine;
the fowler brings the finest birds; the fisherman brings
her his catch (Black, Cunningham, Fluckiger-Hawker,
Robson, & Zlyomi, 1998-2001e).
Inanna is the unpredictable tumult of natures
cycles, and she is also the cultivated Land and its
abundance: Oh mistress, let your breasts be your fields!
Inana, let your breasts be your fields, your wide fields
which pour down flax, your wide fields which pour
forth grain (Black, Cunningham, Fluckiger-Hawker,
Robson, & Zlyomi, 1998-2005, para. 70-77). The
priests ask the goddess to flow forth water from her
breasts, and they give her a libation in exchange.
For Inanna, sexuality is joy that leads to
abundance and wellbeing, and therefore it is part of
celebrative public ritual. The solitary nighttime act of
the gardener is thus an act of his personal will exerted
on her body as an isolated psychological release, not a
ritual or sacred act, having no relation to the formal rites
of erotic arousal, love, and tenderness that her temple
poets so carefully prescribe. The errant youth could not
think much of himself, as he has already wrecked the
meaning of his own task to provide water to nurture
seedlings by inexplicably pulling up all the plants by
the roots and killing them. As with those mindless acts,
his transgression on the body of the sleeping goddess
is a stupid crime of opportunity, done impulsively. He
is a creature driven by irrationality, inability to control
his impulses. The story calls him a boy (Black et al.,
1998-2001a, para. 139-159). He knows he is in trouble
for what he has done, and goes to his father for advice;

Ecology of the Erotic in a Myth of Inanna

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 63

When I have bathed for the king, for the lord, when
I have bathed for the shepherd, Dumuzid, when I
have adorned my flanks (?) with ointment (?), when
I have anointed my mouth with balsamic oil (?),
when I have painted my eyes with kohl...(Black,
Cunningham, Fluckiger-Hawker, Robson, &
Zlyomi, 1998-2001c, para. 14-35)

his father tells him only to go to the city to be among the


other black-headed young men who are your brothers
(para. 177-184) so she cannot find him.
Inanna solves this crime, though not by herself.
Inanna is an integral part of the Sumerian pantheon
in which none of the gods is hegemonic; together they
constitute a powerful community. Though some of her
powers and attributes will later contribute to Yahwehs
characteristics, unlike his more separated portrayal, she
is immanent in nature, she flies around in the form of a
hawk as she circles the earth; she rides a cloud, becomes
a rainbow; she is the planet Venus on its courses. She
is intricately involved with the other gods, who are also
elements of nature, and she is a child of the moon couple
with their cycles.
The Eyes of Life, Death, and Rebirth
he role of priestess is to create rituals of
transformation, and with the goddess acting as
priestess, these would be amplified. Within the religion
of Inanna, as seen through her mythology, at least some
of the Sumerians would have believed in cycles of rebirth.
The theme of life, death, and rebirth in the myth, The
Descent of Inanna into the Underworld, belonged
both to Inanna and to the queen of the netherworld
Ereshkigal, who is Inannas elder sister. She is the agent
of Inannas three days of death, and she also gave her
over to the forces of resurrection. That the underworld
is a place of rebirth is reinforced by the characterization
of Ereshkigals daughter Nungal as the midwife of life
and death. The midwifes temple dais was set up at the
edge of the netherworld, just as the human midwife is
stationed at the gateway to the womb. Nungal speaks
for herself: My own mother has allotted to me her
divine powers (Black et al., 2004, p. 341). Among these
powers, in addition to cutting the umbilical cord and
speaking benevolent destinies, Nungal has the power of
judgment over who among the people shall live and who
shall die. Ereshkigals role makes it clear that she has the
power of restoring life to at least some who have died;
Dumuzid and his sister, for instance, die and are reborn
every six months, respectively (Wolkstein & Kramer,
1983). Inanna acquires from her underworld death and
rebirth the Eye of Death to balance her eye of life, and
therefore she has this power as well. Though some writers
have interpreted the two powerful sisters as enemies, I
see them as a family: Inanna, her sister Ereshkigal, and
Nungal, Inannas niece, who is the joy of her heart.
For us, Inannas journey through her elder

64

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

sisters fierce domain models life, death, and rebirth


as a psychological passage, whatever else it might have
meant for the Sumerians. She did not go through this
transformation alone; she received shamanic assistance
and the agency of the god Enki, who in the genealogy of
Sumerian gods is her maternal grandfather (Wolkstein
& Kramer, 1983). As the quintessential fertile male
principle, Enki is sweet water, and semen, and the
construction of irrigation systems so crucial to these
alluvial plain river horticulturalists, craftspeople, and
herders. Enki is part of the creation cycle, and he affects
Inannas return from the Underworld.
Now, in this story of the gardeners criminal
transgression on the body of the goddess of love, Enki
is again the source of a solution for her. When Inanna
cannot find the man who had intercourse with her,
not even after flooding the water with blood twice,
and trying thrice to find him, she turns to Enki. She
supplicates, but she also threatens, and he capitulates.
u-kale-tudas misuse of the goddess begins with misuse
of the plants of the Land, then of the Tree of Life, then
of the cloth with cosmic powers, then her holy vulva.
Finally, he kisses her. In Sumer, this might have had a
particularly transgressive quality, as the kiss was perhaps
more than a sign of affection or a method of sexual
arousal: one Sumerian poem suggests that the kiss on the
lips was part of a troth, a promise of loyalty in love, and
acknowledgment of Inanna as a fruiting tree, a garden
(Jacobsen, 1987, p. 98). Inanna, hearing the youths
confession, compares his behavior to that of animals who
do no courtship rituals: dog, donkey, pig. From the text,
Enki had taught even a raven to plant and irrigate, two
things this failure of a gardener cannot manage to do.
Inannas punishment is swift and terrible; she
decides u-kale-tudas destinythat he will have no
destiny. The first thing she does is to take away from
him not only his life but perhaps more importantly,
the goddess gift of rebirth. So! You shall die! (Black
et al., 1998-2001a, para. 290-310) she says. The So
rings out with its meanings: therefore, consequently,
because of your actions, or perhaps meant more in the
sense of so be it! (para. 239-255) as she declares his
destiny. Emphasizing how thoroughly she is turning all
her considerable benevolence away from him, she adds,
What is that to me? (para. 239-255). She will not
mourn, there will be no lamentation over his loss. She,
and by implication, the cosmos itself, the Land itself, does
not care that he will not return. He is dead forever. Then

Grahn

she adds what for him must have been a bitter, ironic
twist. His name alone will live on, she will make sure of
this. But not as a great or crazy criminal, or a contrite
sinner, or a thief in the night, rather his name will be
used to sweeten a song, and the song will be sung by a
shepherd, not by a farmer. The song, in other words, will
further the goddess, and her enterprise of sexuality as
joy and celebration. Since in the myth of her courtship,
the goddess had rejected the farmer as a suitor while
accepting the shepherd, she is condemning Su-kale-tuda
to be misrepresented by his rival, and not celebrated as
antihero by his own farmer people. The song will be sung
even in the palace of the King. As for u-kale-tuda, his
palace will be the desertthe lifeless place, infertile and
dry, from which he will never return.
Reconstructing Gender and Sexuality
eadors (2000) archetypes are effectively guiding
the way through this myth. As a warrior, Inanna
halts all activity and demands redress; as a lover, her
sexuality brings joy and abundance to all; and as priestess,
she affects life, death, and afterlife. Yet what of the
archetype, androgyne? As noted, the blood that Inanna
sends through the waters of her lands indicates that this is
a myth of transformation, a recipe for handling a certain
form of insanitymisuse of the Land, and misuse of
the Lady of Heaven and Earth, whose holy sexuality
must be held sacred in order to maintain joy, and the
abundance of life that accompanies joy. In addition to
the menstrual blood signs, another indication that this
myth is a transformative object lesson is the presence not
only of the dust storm following the goddess and a flood
proceeding her as she searches for her transgressor: she is
also accompanied on her justice quest by a pilipili. This
temple office is held by lamenters, mourners, singers,
and those who go into ecstatic trance in behalf of the
goddess. The office is highly shamanic, artful, and
emotional, unlike a more staid temple function such as
scribe, libation-pourer, or lamp-lighter.
The pilipili drum and dance while going into
deep states of ecstasy or grief, and they are transformative
in character. At least some of them are the headoverturned (Meador, 2000, p. 124) men and women
whose gender has been changed by the goddess. In
the section of a longer poem describing her process of
switching the genders of a particular woman and man,
Inanna names them reed marsh woman [and] reed
marsh man (p. 124). Thus they are, metaphorically,
geographically positioned as a combination of sweet water

and bitter (salty) water, they mix within themselves those


firmly gendered elements, as well as the female earth. The
oldest Sumerian creation myth is of Nammu, goddess of
the womb of primeval seas, and Enki who as noted is the
seminal god of sweet waters. Out of Nammu also came
An, god of the sky and Ki, the first earth goddess. This
all happened, the myth says, before anyone recognized
the marshlands and their intermediary character as
boundaries between river and sea.
One of Inannas symbols is thought to consist
of two bundles of reeds from the marshlands that may
have held the doorposts of her granary. Again, a gateway
or borderland is implied, as well as a guardianship.
That Inanna is accompanied by a pilipili in her
successful exertion of justice and rebalancing suggests
she undertook a transformative justice ritual with not
only artful blood rites but also shamanic and gender
fluidity to help produce the outcome: setting boundaries
of gendered behavior. This characteristic can be seen as
part of the archetype of androgyny, giving the goddess
(and the individual psyche) more tools, more aspects
of the marshland, the in-between place, this estuary
teeming with life forms from both sea and earth, where
evolutionpsychic and materialcontinues its roiling
and beautiful creativity.
Such a transformation appears to happen
in Inannas bestowing of her transgressors destiny.
The narrative ties the crime of sexual transgression
against the Sacred Female Principle to a second equally
serious ecological crime against the same Principle,
transgression against the Land, and the precious cosmic
powers that rule it. He has set aside the laws of being,
of reciprocity. Through the mindless disconnection of
his transgressions, he has placed himself outside of both
culture and nature, as he has broken the bond between
them. There is no place for him, he has transgressed
place itself; he is to be deprived of his life and more, his
afterlife, his rebirth, and his history; he is to be deprived
of everything about himself, including his crimes. Yet she
thwarts his alienated disconnection, and turns his name
back toward her sweetness of life force and sexuality;
she converts his very name toward the positivity of her
endeavors, and reabsorbs him into her vast being.
As a warrior, the goddess seeks justice, a
balancing that keeps the Land protected just as surely as
it keeps the people protected, and it keeps the Feminine
Principle of reciprocity. As a lover, she uses her sexuality,
and by extension everyones sexuality, in rituals with

Ecology of the Erotic in a Myth of Inanna

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 65

an aesthetic of eros for the benefit of all, including the


plants. Her poets are priestesses mediating emotional
intelligence; they tell stories that maintain connections
between humans and the rest of creation; they co-create
reality.
Inanna can be vulnerable, fierce, just, and
tender. Through her diversity of forms, her people
can more easily identify themselves with not only the
goddess but also other creatures and beings. Her quest
for justice however is from her warrior self: what should
be destroyed? (Black et al., 1998-2001a, para. 221-230)
and who will compensate me? (para. 239-255), both
meanings balanced, because of the transgression against
her vulva, that site of social and natural order. The
myth implies that as modern women living in a world
ruled to a large extent by the same kind of unconscious,
mindless refusal to connect cause and effect of behaviors,
we too could use a different approach to issues of sexual
transgression. Were we to understand the inheritance of
our sexuality as a power for positive social grace, allied so
closely to the prosperity of the earth toward us and our
being, we could effortlessly see a transgression of one as
a transgression of the other, a diminishing of the joy that
keeps all life revolving. We too can reconstruct gender to
include reciprocity and justice.
The act of the gardener is a mindless transgression
against civil order, against natures order, and against the
joy inherent in sexuality that is, in the carefully proscribed
rituals of the goddess, life enhancing. His act against the
plants, pulling them up by the roots, he seems only to
partially understand. His explanation, which seemed to
be, what was the use of making the well when the plants
were gone? (Black et al., 1998-2001a), reveals his utter
incapacity to comprehend his own place in both culture
and nature, and the consequences of his actions; his sense
of cause and effect are warped. He has sand in his eyes.
He has no allies in nature. In his psychology he lives in
a desert of the heart. He sounds eerily like many leaders
of our culture today.
Inanna had no sympathy for his lack of
consciousness and heart connection; why should we
tolerate this lack in our national and corporate leaders, or
for that matter, in ourselves? The myth also implies that
as mindless destroyers (consumers) of natures bounty, as
people who casually set aside cosmic and natural order
for our own impulses, we as a culture have sand in our
eyes. Our culture is allowed to completely mis-define
economy, omitting both the labor of women and the

66

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

necessities of the natural world. We are slow or even


unable to see the connections between our actions and
the consequences, or seeing them, to act. But we can
change, we can relearn ourselves as land, as sea, as river,
and as tree.
The myth tells us through the character of
Inanna that when nature is not approached with love
and respect, with mindfulness, and with consciousness
of self, the result is chaos for us, and not just death,
but also disappearance, and disconnection. The love
carried by the goddess is not only maternal, though it
is certainly that. The love is explicitly eros; the hearts
joining in joy, in the ecstatic artful aesthetic of the bodys
communication, of self and nature, of love. Eros is what
a peach, a fig, or a honey-cake gives. If we could give to
nature what a peach gives to us, we would have made the
initial step.
The myth says that in order to live with natures
bounty we must pay close and heart-filled attention to
how we interact with her, which also means how we
interact with each other and ourselves. To co-create with
her, we must cultivate her joy, and accept at times her
caprice, even her patterns that are or seem destructive or
limiting to us. We must be wise to the places in her we
must not touch; we must know when we are touching
her inappropriately, inviting disaster upon ourselves and
other living beings. The parts of us that use her heedlessly
and heartlessly, we must killwe must turn from
them utterly, not glorify them in any way, and not give
them a hiding place within ourselves.
References
Black, J. A., Cunningham, G., Fluckiger-Hawker,
E, Robson, E., & Zlyomi, G. (1998-2001a). The
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature.
Retrieved from http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/
section1/tr133 .htm
Black, J. A., Cunningham, G., Fluckiger-Hawker,
E, Robson, E., & Zlyomi, G. (1998-2001b).
The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature.
Retrieved from http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/
section1/tr113 .htm
Black, J. A., Cunningham, G., Fluckiger-Hawker,
E, Robson, E., & Zlyomi, G. (1998-2001c). The
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature. Retrieved
from http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/section2/tr242
24.htm

Grahn

Black, J. A., Cunningham, G., Fluckiger-Hawker,


E, Robson, E., & Zlyomi, G. (1998-2001d).
The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature.
Retrieved from http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/
section2/tr25 31.htm
Black, J. A., Cunningham, G., Fluckiger-Hawker,
E, Robson, E., & Zlyomi, G. (1998-2001e). The
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature. Retrieved
from http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/section4/tr408
29.htm
Black, J. A., Cunningham, G., Fluckiger-Hawker,
E, Robson, E., & Zlyomi, G. (1998-2005). The
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature.
Retrieved from http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/
section4/tr40 77.htm
Black, J., Cunningham, G., Robson, E., & Zlyomi, G.
(Trans.). (2004). The literature of ancient Sumer. New
York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Grahn, J. (1993). Blood, bread, and roses: How menstruation
created the world. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Grahn, J. (1999). Are goddesses metaformic constructs? An
application of metaformic theory to menarche celebrations
and goddess rituals of Kerala and contiguous states in
South India. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation).
California Institute of Integral Studies, San Fransisco,
CA.
Haynes, G. (2009). Tree of life, mythical archetype:
Revelations from the symbols of ancient Troy. San
Francisco, CA: Symbolon Press.
Jacobsen, T. (1978). The treasures of darkness: A history
of Mesopotamian religion. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.
Jacobsen, T. (1987). The harps that once: Sumerian
poetry in translation. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press.
Meador, B. (1992). Uncursing the dark: Treasures from the
underworld. Wilmette, IL: Chiron Press.
Meador, B. (2000). Lady of largest heart. Austin, TX:
University of Texas Press.
Perera, S. B. (1981). Descent to the goddess: A way of
initiation for women. Toronto, Canada: Inner City
Books.
Schmandt-Besserat, D. (1992). When writing met art:
From symbol to story. Austin, TX: University of Texas
Press.
Starhawk (1988). Truth or dare: Encounters with
power, authority, and mystery. San Francisco, CA:
HarperSanFranciso.

Wolkstein, D., & Kramer, S. N. (1983). Inanna queen of


heaven and earth: Stories and hymns from Sumer. New
York, NY: Harper & Rowe.

Ecology of the Erotic in a Myth of Inanna

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 67

About the Author


Judy Grahn, Ph.D., is a poet, cultural theorist, and teacher.
She is co-director of the Womens Spirituality Masters
program at The Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in
Palo Alto, California. She has written two book-length
poems on the archetypal figures of Helen of Troy and
Inanna of Sumer. Both long poems have been produced
as full-length plays, one of which toured Europe. In
turn, these and others of her poetical works have been
the subject of critical writing in Joe Moffets (2007) The
Search for Origins in the Twentieth Century Long Poem:
Sumerian, Homeric, Anglo-Saxon; Linda Garbers (2001)
Lesbian Identity Poetics: Class, Race and the Roots of Queer
Theory; and Johanna Dehlers (1998) Fragments of Desire:
Sapphic Fictions in the Work of HD, Judy Grahn, and
Monique Wittig. Dr. Grahn has published over a dozen
books, and edits Metaformia Journal (www.metaformia.
org). Her most recent collection is The Judy Grahn
Reader (Grahn, 2010). Correspondence concerning this
article should be addressed to Judy Grahn: judygrahn@
gmail.com
About the Journal
The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies is a
peer-reviewed academic journal in print since 1981. It is
published by Floraglades Foundation, and serves as the
official publication of the International Transpersonal
Association. The journal is available online at www.
transpersonalstudies.org, and in print through www.
lulu.com (search for IJTS).

Mothering Fundamentalism: The Transformation of


Modern Women into Fundamentalists
Sophia Korb

The Institute of Transpersonal Psychology


Palo Alto, CA, USA
Despite upbringings influenced by modern feminism, many women choose to identify
with new communities in the modern religious revivalist movement in the United States
who claim to represent and embrace the patriarchal values against which their mothers
and grandmothers fought. Because womens mothering is determinative to the family, it is
therefore central to transforming larger social structures. This literature review is taken from
a study which employed a qualitative design incorporating thematic analysis of interviews
to explore how womens attitudes about being a mother and mothering change when they
change religious communities from liberal paradigms to fundamentalist, enclavist belief
systems. This has implicit relevance to the field of transpersonal psychology, which could
incorporate the spiritual experiences of an often-ignored group.
Keywords: religion, mothering, motherhood, conversion, feminism, spirituality, qualitative.

ranspersonal psychology has been criticized


for focusing too much on the positive aspects
of religious or spiritual experience, bypassing
suffering in favor of an optimistic worldview (Alexander,
1980), and lacking a clear enough understanding of the
negative dimensions of human consciousness. In that
regard, transpersonal psychology often takes a reductive
approach to religionseeing religion either as simply the
vehicle for spiritual experience, or as a calcified obstacle
to genuine spiritual experience. This framework fails to
incorporate a full view of the pros and cons of religious
community, discipline, and practice that may be present
in many fundamentalist communities. However, Walsh
and Vaughn (1993) proposed a different definition of
transpersonal psychology, one that incorporates religion.
These authors defined transpersonal psychology as the
branch of psychology that is concerned with transpersonal
experiences and related phenomena, noting, these
phenomena include the causes, effects and correlates of
transpersonal experiences, as well as the disciplines and
practices inspired by them (p. 203). The topic of this
article, women who mother in religious communities in
which they were not raised, confronts new-age-influenced
transpersonal psychology (Sovatsky, 1998) by exploring
and reclaiming as an object of respectful study an oftenexiled character: religious fundamentalism.
The modern religious revivalist movement
arose in the 1970s as a backlash to the decadent 60s

68

in the United States. It was characterized by a rise in


affiliation in both Christianity and Judaism (Aviad,
1983; Pew, 2010). These numbers continue to swell
(Pew, 2010). This was not the first religious revival for
either faith tradition, but is the most recent in America
and was accompanied by growing political action and
cultural shifting to the right, as well as reaffirmation
of fundamental religious and social beliefs. Religious
revivals accompanied a massive backlash against
feminism and asserted a return to traditional gender
roles (Almond & Appleby, 2006; Faludi, 1991). Men
and women chose to engage in patriarchal constructions
of identity and community.

Contemporary American culture is overwhelm
ingly pronatalist (Daniluck, 1996; Hird & Abshoff, 2000;
Lisle, 1996; Meyers, 2001; Morell, 2000), valorizing
mothers and procreation, yet modern motherhood is
characterized by guilt and ambivalence (Guendouzi,
2006). Motherhood is one of the most important identities
for women in both modern and fundamentalist religious
communities. The work of mothering, not simply
physically bearing a child, but the care and nurturing
that mothers are expected to do, is integral to society.
Mothers socialize children, instilling attitudes and ideas
about the sexual division of labor and sexual inequality
both inside and outside the family and the non-familial
world (Chodorow, 1989, p. 3). Because womens
mothering is of profound importance to the family, it

Studies, 29(2), 2010, pp. 68-86


International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Korb

is also central to transforming larger social structures


and society (p. 3). Motherhood is a time for values to be
transmitted, and is thus a crucial developmental period
to study psychological change in women who have
moved from modern to religious communities.
Women transitioning from modern to
fundamentalist communities may experience a profound
shift in perspective on motherhood and family. Studying
that shift elucidates several issues. First, understanding
the reasons modern women embrace an outwardly
pro-patriarchal lifestyle and raise their children in that
society can inform the psychological community about
what attributes within the modern communities women
are choosing to leave, as well as seeing what attributes
they value within the communities they join. Second,
understanding the development of womens faith and
mothering in fundamentalist women, and how this
process interacts with personal identity, may add to
understandings of religious practice, discipline, and
community. This understanding is sorely needed, as
feminist spiritual literature has tended to concentrate on
goddess imagery (Spitler, 1992) or feminist critiques of
traditional religions (Christ & Plaskow, 1979; Reuther,
1979) rather than the experience of women in traditional
religious groups.

First, in order to create a background from
which specific groups can be discussed, this article will
define religious fundamentalism. Then it will address
the historical backgrounds of Christianity and Judaisms
fundamentalist movements and describe each briefly.
Next, the connections between the two communities
will be addressed. Different motherhood ideologies will
be described and analyzed, first in the fundamentalist
community, and then with regard to modern American
society in general. Finally, the approaches taken so far
to the study of women in these communities will be
critiqued, and a new one will be suggested, affirming
fundamentalist womens ability and agency. This is
a preliminary consideration, a review of the terrain
of fundamentalist mothering from a transpersonal/
feminist perspective into an ongoing piece of research
that the author is conducting. In that research the
author recruited and interviewed women for whom this
experience is their lived reality.
Cross-cultural Fundamentalism
or the purposes of this article, religious
fundamentalism is defined as:

A system of absolute values and practiced faith in


God that firmly relies on sacred canonical texts,
a significant level of affinity among its members,
seclusion from the world that surrounds it, strict
communal discipline and a patriarchal hierarchy.
(Barzilai & Barzilai, 2004, para. 3)

This definition has the advantage of including


commonalities found by extensive research and also the
understanding of how the fundamentalists understand
themselves as a religious community based on a theology
dependent on fundamental methods of textual analysis.
This definition is intended to be inclusive of both
fundamentalist Jews and Christians without denigrating
either.
Fundamentalism has been explained as both
a pathological retreat from reality and a rational
reaction against modernity (Monroe & Kreidie, 1997).
However, a broader definition of fundamentalism, as
seen from inside the movement, is a religious reaction
to modernism. In that view, fundamentalism seeks to
recover the lost force of religion and its institutions
that has been hidden, or repair the chain that has been
broken, by modernity (Castells, 1996).

In 1987, Marty and Appleby (1994) began an
international scholarly investigation of conservative
religious movements throughout the world called The
Fundamentalism Project. The project, which collected
empirical data from all over the world, concluded in 1995.
The project understood fundamentalism as a militant
opposition to modernity, which is a controversially
inclusive definition. The authors for the capstone project,
Strong Religion (Almond, Appleby, & Sivan, 2003),
wrote that it is improper in most contexts to use the term
fundamentalist with regard to Jews. However, they also
wrote that the danger of restricting that word because of
inappropriate use is that it can restrict the conversation
and reduce the ability to discuss fundamentalism as a
global phenomenon.
The Fundamentalism Project found several
similarities between fundamentalist groups in their
global study. First, the groups are founded on a profound
embedded patriarchy; men lead and women and children
follow. Second, the rules of their religion are complex
and rigid and must be followed. Third, fundamentalist
groups do not accept a relative pluralism. The rules of
their group apply to everyone everywhere. Fourth, they
see discrete groups of insiders, and all others as outsiders.

Mothering Fundamentalism

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 69

Fifth, although they claim to pine for an older age and


yearn for a past time when their religion was pure, they
engage in selective historical revisionism to reinforce
their nostalgic view of a utopian past. Sixth, they see
their religious views as weapons against a hostile world
(Marty & Appleby, 1994).
History of Christian Fundamentalism
in the United States
odern Christian Fundamentalisms rise is
connected with the rise of the Christian Right,
also called the Religious Right, a political movement
characterized by their strong support of conservative
social and political values and causes. This rise is often selfattributed to political action against Roe v. Wade (Joyce,
2009), a US Supreme court case decided on January 22,
1973, that upheld the legal right to a womans termination
of pregnancy for any reason, until the time when the
fetus becomes viable, or able to live outside the mothers
body. This understanding of their own history reinforces
the Christian Rights current political agenda, which
concentrates on a triad of sexually related agenda items:
abortion, homosexual marriage, and abstinence only
sexual education (Deutchman, 2008).1 Regardless of the
historical origin of the movement, American Christian
Fundamentalists are politically conservative, are against
abortion rights for women, resist governments intrusion
into family life, and tend to be politically involved.
Within the US population, 26.3% identify
themselves as as evangelical Protestants (Pew, 2010).
Distinguishing between evangelical Protestants in
general and fundamentalist evangelical Protestants can
be difficult because they share many traits and beliefs
and are part of the same overarching category. Also,
fundamentalists exert political and social control over
more than their small group. Evangelical Protestants share
a belief in the need to be born again, some expression of
the gospel in effort, a high regard for Biblical authority,
and an emphasis on teachings that proclaim the life
and death of Jesus Christ. The more specific group of
fundamentalist evangelical Protestants have a more
specific belief defined below.
Though over 50% of Americans are Protestant
Christians, the makeup of that group includes
an increasing number of evangelicals, as Liberal
Protestantism is in demographic decline. Southern
Baptist is the largest group within evangelicalism, and
included within the category of fundamentalism. For
the last 20 years, Southern Baptists have been growing

70

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

at 12% a year outside the South and 2% a year inside


the South. They have gone from being an intentionally
white denominationas late as 1970to being a
denomination that is currently 20% ethnic. There are
750,000 African-American Southern Baptists, and about
a half-million Hispanic American Southern Baptists.
History of Jewish Fundamentalism
in the United States
udaism has had a similar fundamentalist2 revival,
attributed to both a backlash against the liberal 1960s
as well as a surge of Jewish pride and identification after
Israels victory in the 1967 Six-Day War (Aviad, 1983).3
In the 1970s, religious affiliation in Jews increased
across the board, in the US, internationally, and in every
denomination (Heilman, 2006). Many Jews who were
once unaffiliated with any movement within Judaism
became Reform, the most liberal Jewish movement, and
those already affiliated with a particular denomination
of Judaism moved to the right. In the Orthodox
world, the influx of once liberal or secular Jews joining
Orthodox communities and adopting Orthodox ways of
life and thinking became known as the Baal Teshuva
Movement (Heilman, 1992, 2006). These new adherents
to Orthodoxy are known as baalei teshuva (masters of
return or repentance), in the singular baal teshuva for a
man or baalat teshuva for a woman. The total number of
baalei teshuva is unknown but is estimated to be in the
hundreds of thousands (Heilman, 2006).
In broad strokes, one can divide Orthodox
Jewish society into two major groups: the Modern
Orthodox, who explicitly engage with the outside world
ideologically, and the Hareidim, or Ultra-Orthodox, who
engage with the outside world not for its own sake, but
rather because of pragmatism (Heilman, 1992, 2006;
Yehuda, Friedman, Rosenbaum, Labinsky, & Schmeidler,
2007). Estimates place the number of Hareidi Jews in
America at around 250,000 (Wattenberg, 2005), but
statistics about the Hareidi population are scarce, not
only because of difficulties in counting the members of
the community but also because of a Hareidi taboo on
counting people at all.
One third of the Orthodox Jewish community
is comprised of 18-25 year olds, many of whom have
chosen to join the community as young adults (Ringel,
2008). These adherents continue to join. According
to the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, synagogue
affiliation in the Orthodox community grew from 10%
to 20% of the general Jewish population from 1990 to

Korb

2001, but stayed about the same or declined in other


Jewish denominations (Heilman, 2006).

The Baal Teshuva Movement is associated with a
general cultural shift to the right towards more enclavist,
conservative forms of Judaism opposed to modernity.
Rabbi Yosef Blau (2004), the spiritual director of Yeshiva
University (one of the cornerstone institutions of Modern
Orthodoxy) has noted the Orthodox communitys
difficulty in integrating the not particularly modernist
baalei teshuva:
A baal teshuva movement has emerged with a
significant number of Jews from non-traditional
homes returning to the observance of grandparents
and great grandparents. In fact one of the challenges
facing modern Orthodoxy is that many of these
returnees are attracted to a European Orthodoxy.
(para. 6)
Rabbi Blau pointed out a discontinuity of culture and
purpose between the traditional Modern Orthodox
and the newly joined Orthodox. A baal teshuva may
be interested in learning Yiddish, wearing garments
from Eastern Europe, and escaping from the perceived
excesses of modern culture, whereas non-baalei teshuva
may be more likely to engage in Modern Orthodoxy.
Though baalei teshuva may be interested in
engaging in the old European style, the way that Orthodox
Jews learn to be part of their community has changed in
the last hundred years. Traditional Jewish communities
were based primarily on behavioral mimesis of the
religious way of life, but today, with increasing literacy,
both Modern Orthodox and Hareidi Jewry emphasize
the value of the religious texts as the basic source of
increasingly strict norms, as a key cultural symbol, and
as the organizer of the social order (Soloveitchik, 1994).
Baalei teshuva are often very concerned about their full
integration into their chosen community, and some see
their status as a baal teshuva not just as a transitional
status but also as an identity (Sands, 2009). The Baal
Teshuva Movement is itself one sign of the difference
between American and European Judaism. How an
individual practices Judaism has changed from fate to
choice (Davidman, 1991).
Womens Lives in Christian Fundamentalism
he Christian fundamentalism movement, also
known as Fundamentalist Christianity or
fundamentalist evangelicalism, is characterized by
affirming a fundamental set of Christian beliefs: (1) the

Mothering Fundamentalism

inerrancy of the Bible, (2) sola scriptura, the belief that


the Bible is the only authority for the Christian Church,
(3) the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, (4) the doctrine of
substitutionary atonement, the idea that Jesus died on
the cross to atone for the sins of others, (5) the bodily
resurrection of Jesus, and (6) the imminent personal
return of Jesus Christ (Colaner & Giles, 2008; Wagner,
2003).
Other doctrines of individual congregations
vary, but members of the movement still recognize
one another. Some fundamentalists embrace the term,
despite or because of the fact that it is sometimes used
as a pejorative. Some fundamentalist leaders enjoy the
separatism and group cohesion inherent in rejection
from the greater society (Wagner, 2003). Many
conservative fundamentalist groups view the other
congregations as co-belligerents, allied people fighting
against a common cause (Joyce, 2009). The churches pit
themselves against abortion rights for women, and more
broadly, see themselves fighting against the influence
of modern day feminism writ large, which they see as
responsible for the breakdown of the family as well as
the increased pressure in modern society for women to
look sexy and attractive (Brasher, 1998; Joyce, 2009;
Luker, 1984).

Though fundamentalist groups differ in their
details, several themes are typically true of fundamentalist
communities. First, there is an emphasis on individual
salvation; each individual needs to come to redemption
of their own accord and be born again. Another main
theological feature of fundamentalist Christianity is the
headship of men, based on the Biblical verse,
Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.
For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is
the head of the church, his body, of which he is the
Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also
wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
(Ephesians 5:22, New International Version)
This theology has evolved into a spiritual practice for
women based on submission to their husbands. Some
Fundamentalist Christians see this as natural and a
due right for men because of womens punishment and
culpability in the Fall from Grace (Joyce, 2009), but
the main thrust of the theology emphasizes that the
submission is not about the man himself, but rather
that one is submitting to Christ through submitting
to ones husband. The man is the spiritual head of the

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 71

family and the submission has metaphysical properties:


it reorders the family as a microcosm of the universe,
reordering humans with respect to God. These practices
of spiritual submission reinforce a society that embraces
traditional, homebound roles for women. Submissive
wives and mothers have an extensive social network
within their particular religious communities, but also
across communities, including very active online fora.
The Patriarchs Wives group on Yahoo is an excellent
example, where women send each other support in the
spirit of Titus 2:3-5,
Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in
the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted
to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they
can train the younger women to love their husbands
and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be
busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their
husbands, so that no one will malign the word of
God. (New International Version)
Thus, there is textual support for the practice of women
mentoring each other in wifely submission and being a
housewife.
Brenda Brasher (1998) performed an ethno
graphic study in which she spent six months as an
active participant in two Christian fundamentalist
congregations. Brasher went to womens ministries and
Bible study groups, openly as a researcher, and listened
to conversion narratives to explore how and why women
become involved in these groups. Her writing brought
to light the apparent paradox that fundamentalist
women can be powerful people in a religious sphere
organized around their submission. Gender functions
as a sacred partition (p. 5), which literally divides
the congregation in two, establishing parallel religious
worlds. One world is led by men and encompasses
public congregational life; the second is a more private,
domestic world, composed of and led entirely by
women. The women-only activities both create and
sustain a parallel world within and among the different
fundamentalist congregations. This enables the women
to direct the course of their lives and empowers them
in their relationships with others. The women develop
intimate social networks that serve as a resource for those
in distress and provide for coalition when women wish
to alter the patterns of more public congregational life,
despite the fact that they are ostensibly not empowered
in that realm. Some authors have explained womens

72

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

involvement in these groups by pointing to the fact that


the prescription of a home-based life for women releases
men from the macho individualism of secular culture,
in turn creating devoted family men (Davidman, 1991;
Luker, 1984).
Kristin Luker (1984) interviewed pro-life
and pro-choice activists and very carefully traced
the worldviews of the two sides in her seminal work,
Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood. Luker suggested
that essentially the two sides are characterized by
different values and ideas about womens roles and the
family. Although not all fundamentalists are pro-life
activists, Lukers data offered an interesting window into
a world of the more politically active, and those who feel
they can represent at least the political interests of the
community. As evidenced above, abortion remains one
of the Religious Rights primary political campaigns.

In 1984, 80% of Lukers study participants
were Catholic activists; nonetheless Lukers work
remains important in studying todays mostly Protestant
fundamentalist Christians. Though the demographic
has changed, Lukers 1984 analysis still articulately
explains a worldview consistent with this political action,
now mostly carried out by members of fundamentalist
Christian groups. Her analyses of the activists
philosophies are consistent with more recent research
done exclusively on Protestant fundamentalist groups,
detailed more precisely below (see Joyce, 2009; Brasher,
1998). This may reflect a shift to the Right in general, a
sign that the worldview of activists in 1984 is now the
commonly held perspectives of many religious groups.
Second, 60% of those pro-life activists inter
viewed in Lukers (1984) study were religious converts,
people who grew up in other religious communities.
According to conventional wisdom about the zeal of
the converted, religious converts are often those who
most vehemently espouse the ideologies of their adopted
group. This folk saying has been backed up recently by
a quantitative Pew Research study, which demonstrated
that people who have switched religions consistently
exhibit higher levels of religious commitment than those
who still belong to their childhood faith (Pond, 2009,
para. 6). Also, research indicates that some adult converts
play out, and sometimes resolve, their psychodynamic
issues, dysfunctional patterns learned in childhood and
brought forward into adulthood, in their newfound
religion (Mirsky, 1992; Mirsky & Kaushinksy, 1989).
Some might speculate about patterns of psychodynamic

Korb

wounding in the secular community that may lead


people both to join fundamentalist groups and serve as
activists against abortion rights for women and against
feminism in general.
Some of the following ideas about social
reality are characteristic of both Christian and Jewish
fundamentalists, and relevant to their relationship to
motherhood, so will be explicated in more detail below
in sections about fundamentalist motherhood. Here,
though, they serve to explain Christian fundamentalist
involvement in anti-abortion politics. Fundamentalists
believe that men and women are intrinsically different
(Joyce, 2009; Brasher, 1998; Heilman, 2006). This both
leads to and explains the different social roles assigned
to men and women in fundamentalist society, which
fundamentalists view as proscriptively and descriptively
positive. Fundamentalists believe that motherhood is the
most fulfilling role that women can have (Joyce, 2009).
They believe that mothering is a full-time job, which
deserves complete time commitment (Joyce, 2009;
Brasher, 1998). Because they see it as so encompassing,
they tend to disbelieve that one can be in the work world
and still do as good a job with ones home and family.
Fundamentalists see the sets of tasks required in the
public mens world and the domestic womens world as
requiring a different set of emotional skills; they imagine
that the working mother must shift modes to transition
between her working and mothering skills. They argue
that doing so is difficult and damaging to her mothering
and to her work.
According to Luker (1984), these views support
the belief that abortion is wrong in three ways, all
of which are relevant to fundamentalist models of
motherhood. First, abortion is taking a human life, and
what makes women special is their ability to nourish life,
so all abortions are degrading to all women. Second, by
giving women control over their fertility, it breaks up
an intricate set of social relationships between men and
women that has traditionally surrounded (and in the
ideal case protected) women and children (Luker, 1984,
p. 162). This applies to birth control in general, not just
abortion, and may explain and predict negative views of
fundamentalists towards birth control. In both cases,
the fundamentalists see themselves not as taking rights
away from women, but rather as maintaining womens
power. Fundamentalists continue to see themselves as
protecting women from abortion (Shaw, 2008). Third,
fundamentalists in the anti-abortion movement see

abortion as wrong because it supports a worldview that


diminishes the traditional roles of men and women.
Fundamentalists in general see those roles as natural and
good; the roles are natural extensions of the two separate
male and female spheres described abovewomen who
are tender, moral, emotional, and self-sacrificing are the
exclusive holders of those feminine qualities and occupy
the female sphere. There is a conflation of the idea of
the feminine and actual physical females. When women
cease to be traditional, fundamentalists see a loss of
those qualities. Fundamentalists believe society on the
whole benefits from the division of male and female
qualities and attributes into separate spheres, where those
qualities can more fully express themselves and are not
compromised by their combination in one individual.
Womens Lives in Jewish Fundamentalism
rthodox Jewish society is family-centered, tends
to cluster in urban areas, and valorizes the study
of ancient texts. There are strict gender divisions from
a young age and socialization is generally same-sex.
Members of the Orthodox community follow legalistic
interpretations of ancient texts as interpreted by the
Talmud and later scholars in almost every area of their
individual lives. From what thoughts to think about
other people, to how to pour tea on the Jewish Sabbath,
to what shoe to put on first, Orthodox Judaism is
integrated into almost every action one might take.
Hareidi Judaism, what many consider to be
fundamentalist Judaism, advocates segregation from
non-Jewish culture, although not from non-Jewish
society entirely. Though Hareidi Orthodoxys differences
with Modern Orthodoxy ostensibly lie in interpretation
of the nature of traditional Jewish legal concepts and in
understanding what constitutes acceptable application of
these concepts, the major division is one of culture. The
enclavist Hareidim eschew engagement with modernity
and the influence of the outside world, including the
influence of modern ideas of culture and sexuality.
Hareidi men occupy all the public religious leadership
roles in their community. Hareidi Judaism is divided
strictly between male and female spheres. Because
Hareidi Judaism emphasizes that Jewish men have a
constant, unending obligation to learn Torah, Jewish
women take on responsibilities for many communal
functions outside of the parameters of ritual observance.
Hareidi women run charities, educational foundations,
and orphanages with minimal input or help from men,
aside from figureheads.

Mothering Fundamentalism

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 73

Tznius (Yiddish), or modesty, is a prominant


ideology of fundamentalist Jewish women. Though the
Biblical dictate of hatznea leches or walk humbly with
your God (Micah 6:8, New International Version) is
enjoined upon both men and women, traditionally the
law has been interpreted to restrict womens actions
much more than mens. In fact, the dictate of tznius has
been said to be the womens equivalent of Torah study
for men, the paramount obligation in the Jewish world
(Falk, 1998).

In other words, the same reward that a man
accrues for his fulfillment of the most important stricture
within Judaism, studying the tradition, a woman
accrues for wearing modest clothing and not attracting
attention to herself. There are strict restrictions on
womens dress and action, ranging from dictates about
not boasting about oneself to skirt lengths toat its
most extremeadmonitions that young girls should not
laugh and dance in the streets lest they draw attention
to themselves (Yafeh, 2007; Falk, 1998). This concept
of modesty extends beyond restrictions of dress into an
ideology of both physical and emotional humility and
modesty. While both Modern Orthodoxy and Hareidi
Judaism acknowledge the legal and spiritual importance
of modesty, the emphasis on particular details and the
central importance of this ideology for women is one of
the major departures of the two communities. Feminist
critiques of this construction point out the asymmetrical
emphasis on womens dress and action as opposed to
mens, as well as placing responsibility for male sexual
behavior on women (Yafeh, 2007). Men and women
will not speak to members of the opposite sex that they
are not related to, let alone shake hands. Dating only
takes place through a matchmaking process leading to
courtship and marriage.
Jewish fundamentalist ideology tends to
emphasize the concept that womens private role is an
elevated one (Sands, Spero, & Danzig 2007; Shai, 2002).
Though women are firmly placed in the domestic realm,
Jewish fundamentalist society differs from most other
fundamentalist societies in that women are responsible
for both domestic life and for economically supporting
the family, especially in the early years of the marriage
(Shai, 2002). At that stage, Jewish women work outside
the home, and Jewish men are often encouraged to
maintain a lifestyle exclusively devoted to Torah study
(Stadler, 2002). However, this isolationist and singular
focus towards Torah study for fundamentalist Jewish

74

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

males leads to the irony that women are more connected


to the outside world, despite an ideology that actively
promotes modesty and separation for women.
In 2007, Sands, Spero, and Danzig authored a
study comparing what male and female baalei teshuva
appreciate most about the culture that they have joined.
Baalot teshuva women like the community and familycentered society and appreciate that aspect more than
their male counterparts, who tend to appreciate structure
and learning. As such, the parts of the adopted culture
of the baalei teshuva that they most enjoy are those parts
that are emphasized for their gender. This could be due
to a number of factors, one of the most obvious being
that those women who choose to become baalot teshuva
are those who appreciate womens roles in their chosen
culture. In Ringels 2007 study, baalot teshuva reported
that they perceived Jewish fundamentalist society as
understanding women better than secular society.
Fundamentalist Motherhood
espite their basic similarities, different fundamen
talist groups have different cultures, traditions, and
expressions of their beliefs. In Bergers (1969) The Sacred
Canopy, the author theorized that religious adherence
and practice in modern societies is increasingly a matter
of individual choice. He claimed that this heightened
ability to choose would inevitably and inexorably weaken
traditional religious commitments. Warners (1993)
Work in Progress Toward a New Paradigm for the
Sociological Study of Religion in the United States article
asserted the future of American religious choice, arguing
that religion need not represent something in which
people are primordially rooted. Religious affiliation in the
United States is not tribal (p. 1078). Warners point of
view is challenged by authors who have stated that despite
the existence of choice, choosing does not make the
commitment of an adherent weaker (Davidman, 1991).
Additionally, many religious traditions in modern America
incorporate an ascriptive element in their understandings
of the boundaries around their community. Ascriptive
religious traditions claim that religious identity adheres
to a person upon their birth: for example, Jewish law
states that a Jew is a convert or the child born to a Jewish
mother. However, in Avishais 2008 study of women
observing the laws of niddah (menstrual separation),
she concluded that religiosity is a status that is learned,
negotiated, and achieved by adhering to or performing
prescribed practices that distinguish the religious from
the nonreligious (p. 429). Religions of ascription are

Korb

contrasted with religions of achievement, in which


personal belief is the determinant of the boundaries
of religious identity (Cadge & Davidman, 2006). An
example of this is the Protestant Christian belief that
personal salvation is the only path to heaven; each person
must independently come to his or her belief in God.
Though ascription and achievement are
conceptually distinct ways of constructing religious
identities, in a study conducted by Cadge and Davidman
(2006) in which they surveyed Jewish and Buddhist
Americans, both from groups with strong inherited
religious identities, they found that the respondents
combined the two ideas when talking about their religious
life. Rather than being treated as a dichotomy, the
concepts of ascription and achievement were integrated
in nuanced ways in the narratives of religious identity
told by these Americans.

These differences are relevant when comparing
fundamentalist mothers, the main focus of this article.
Mothers from these different traditions may have
different goals and measures of success for their children
and different priorities in educating them. Because the
religious identity of the child comes from the mother
in traditional Judaism, and from the childs faith in
fundamentalist Christianity, motherhood in those
traditions may be conceptually and experientially
different.
Due to their restricted public roles, the primary
valued role for Hareidi women is as wife, mother, and
housekeeper (Longman, 2000). A fundamentalist Jewish
womans worth is defined according to her relational
capacitieshow she relates to her husband, children,
family, and the community at large (Longman, 2008).
In studies of fundamentalist Jewish womens spirituality,
the women have reported experiencing personal
fulfillment by putting their children and husbands
before themselves (Ringel, 2008). Jewish women see
motherhood as a religious responsibility (Burt &
Rudolph, 2000; Yehuda et al., 2007) and connected
to their experience of spirituality and relationship with
God (Burt & Rudolph, 2000). Family is seen as a means
for self-actualization (Ringel, 2008). Motherhood is an
extremely important goal for fundamentalist Jewish
women, such that their schooling is primarily geared
toward it (Longman, 2008).
Jewish motherhood is particularly stereotyped
in America. The stereotype of Jewish mothers is an
emasculating, controlling, materially-focused, pushy

woman who evokes the Oedepus complex in her children


(Antler, 2007). This stereotype emerged in the 1950s as
immigrant Jews made their way to the suburbs. Antler
posited that it was a way to locate stereotypes about Jews
in just one group of Jewish society, allowing for Jews to
gain greater acceptance in a secular world by blaming
their difference on mothering practices.
One recent qualitative study (Hamama-Raz,
2010) studied spontaneous abortions in Hareidi women.
The women found the loss far more devastating than their
partners. The experience brought up issues of self-esteem
concerning their value as women. The self-judgment of
the women made their sense of isolation much worse.
The women brought up issues of faith, belief in God,
and a sense of loss of Divine Providence. This finding
speaks to the religious importance of motherhood to
Hareidi women.
In 2006, Fader performed a discourse analysis on
how Hareidi women speak to their children. The author
noted that childrens queries regarding gender categories
are an important time for caregivers to essentialize
gender differences as markers of Jewish morality. Fader
wrote that Hareidi women implicitly teach children that
their relationships to those around them are parallel to
the hierarchy between them and God. To their children,
Hasidic (a subset of the Hareidi) women caregivers present
communal hierarchies of authority as rehearsal for and
parallel to obeying divine authority. Local hierarchies of
authority (gender, age, and religious practice) gain their
legitimacy because parents and older siblings, teachers,
and religious leaders all consistently share authority as
the transmitters of sacred beliefs and practices.
In response to childrens disobedience or
challenges, caregivers respond in a wide variety of ways,
from least severe to most severe: reminding them of
responsibility, warning of a boundary that may not be
crossed, and, as a last resort, publicly shaming them
(Fader, 2006). In the most severe cases, the childs
behavior might even be compared with that of Gentile
children or animals. Fader took note of the ideology that
Hareidi Jewish children must always care about what
they do and say because of the belief that God is always
watching. Von Hirsch Erikson (1995) similarly noted
that the phrase I dont care is a particularly loaded
one and elicits very strong reactions from mothers and
teachers.
Fundamentalist Christian mothers also see
motherhood as an incredibly important part of their

Mothering Fundamentalism

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 75

identity. Motherhood is promoted as part and parcel of


a fundamentalist womans Christian religious identity
that is, as a unifying identity. In Fundamentalist
Christian ideology, the sin of Eve is redeemed through
the act of childbirth using the following quote from the
New Testament:
Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I
permit no woman to teach or to have authority over
a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed
first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the
woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet
she will be saved through childbearing. (I Timothy
2:11-15a)
Because mothering inculcates children with the culture
of their society, the role of the mother is the link between
the general society and the womans body (El-Or, 2002).
According to the point of view expressed in I Timothy,
the actual act of childbirth is what is redemptive, not the
mothering that comes afterwards. It is a point of view that
emphasizes the physical rather than the experiential.
A quantitative study by Colaner (2008) of
134 college-aged, evangelical women pointed to an
interesting intersection of role ideologies and aspirations.
The young women surveyed did not jointly hold career
and mothering aspirations. The young women saw
those two goals as separate. They were less conflicted
about motherhood than modern women who hold more
egalitarian points of view. In these women, the desire to
adhere to the traditional female role preceded the actual
realization of the goal of motherhood. Women in the
Evangelical subculture do not seem to experience the
same tensions of having it all as women at large.
Modern American and fundamentalist mother
hood may be different in some respects. Women in
modern religious or secular culture must contend with
competing values: simultaneously women should stay
home and tend to children, as well as create and maintain
an image of a high-powered, beautiful professional. These
conflicts will be addressed at length below. However,
fundamentalist women do not necessarily contend with
the same competing values. They are part of a society
that actively supports the choices that they make and
rejects the modern demands of a career for women. In
the research on baalot teshuva, many women report
that they joined their group in order to join a society
that is more encouraging toward traditional femininity
(Kaufman, 1991; Longman, 2007) and a nuclear family

76

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

(Danzger, 1989). Religion affects parent-child relations


as well as the other way around (Pearce, 1998). Pearce
pointed to three ways in which religion impacts parentchild relations: religions disseminate the idea that
families are important, religious communities provide
formal support for families, and religious groups add to
the familys social ties.
Education is an important responsibility for
fundamentalists, who often see their parenting as better
than that of the secular people around them (Heilman,
2006, p. 259) and define their observance largely in
terms of their difference from others (Avishai, 2008;
Heilman, 2006). In religious enclave communities
that engage in explicit cultural critiques of the society
surrounding them, appeals to moral superiority are one
of the key means for retaining members and building
boundaries (Sivan, 1995, p.17). Both Jewish and
Christian fundamentalist communities have developed
extensive online homeschooling resources and private
school systems (Kunzman, 2009).

As mentioned before, Shai (2002) studied
Orthodox women using a family development approach,
with the hypothesis that the asynchronous pattern of
Orthodox Jewish womens lives as compared to the rest
of society would negatively impact them. The Orthodox
womens lives are out of step in that for young Jewish
families, the highest priority of the young family is that
the man learns Torah full time, so Jewish women work as
much as they can and have children, supported by either
or both sets of parents, during the time when modern
American families are developing their professional
identities and stockpiling money toward the future.
Despite being out of step with how the rest of the society
does family, finances, and motherhood, fundamentalist
women are not showing ill effects. Shai explained this by
pointing to the strong insular community that supports
fundamentalist women. Individual women who are
differing from outside society are not doing it alone, they
are doing it as a community with particular values and a
specific timeline.
Barrenness is a major theological issue in cultures
in which the ability to bear children is exalted, impacting
both Jewish and Christian fundamentalist societies. Two
books by Christian authors illustrate popular opinions of
fundamentalist Christians with regard to the situation of
infertile couples. Vicky Love (1984) in Childless is Not Less
provided the perspective that childlessness is a tragedy to
be overcome, never a conscious choice. Kristen Johnson

Korb

Ingram, (1988) in Childless but Not Barren, wrote a number


of fictionalized Bible stories about childless women.
Ingram offered stories of nine childless women from the
Bible and nine women from real life and showed how their
faith in God led them to live fulfilled and valuable lives. In
her perspective, all nurturing skills are those of mothering.
Not having children challenges a woman to perceive
Gods grace in another way; her recommendation was to
transform the mothering skills a woman has to care for
others in ways other than in biological motherhood and to
spread Gods light in different ways. To some members of
the evangelical Christian community, fertility treatments
are also discouraged. They see barrenness as something
to be accepted from God if that is His choice, while
recommending prayer to change Gods decree (Ingram,
1988).

In Tamar El-Ors (1994) anthropological study
of Hareidi women, Educated and Ignorant, one of the
women in her study, Nava, is childless. Though she is
from an important lineage within her religious group,
and thus is part of the social elite, she is threatened
with a potential loss of status because she is three years
married and not pregnant. El-Or interpreted the other
womens preoccupation with Navas attempts to get
pregnant as a desire to see her infertility as punishment.
Infertility would cause an incredible loss of status, even
for a successful young woman from an elite family.
In general, conservative religious beliefs predict
more disapproval for chosen childlessness (KoropeckyjCox & Pendell, 2007). Christian and Jewish funda
mentalists also have a range of different attitudes toward
sexual activity and birth control within their own and
others communities. The major launching points for the
Christian evangelical rights political action have been
fighting against three issues: abortion, birth control, and
gay marriage (Deutchman, 2008). The fact that these are
all related to sexuality is not a coincidence. The Christian
Rights perception is that sexuality is a major axis around
which their values differ from the modern society around
them. As Luker (1984) noted:
Rosalind Petchesky argued as early as 1983 that
issues over sexuality could well serve as the glue to
bind a new generation of conservatives together,
with opposition to changes in sexual and gender
roles taking on the role that anti-communism once
played in binding diverse conservative constituencies
together. (p. 223)

Mothering Fundamentalism

Furthermore, the Christian movement is the


main driving force behind abstinence-only education,
and different Christian Fundamentalist groups have
different interpretations and opinions about the
permissibility of birth control. One common opinion in
the Christian Right is natalism: promoting procreation,
and eschewing all forms of birth control. For example,
Charles D. Provan (1989) argued,
Be fruitful and multiply ... is a command of God,
indeed the first command to a married couple.
Birth control obviously involves disobedience to
this command, for birth control attempts to prevent
being fruitful and multiplying. Therefore birth
control is wrong, because it involves disobedience
to the Word of God. Nowhere is this command
done away with in the entire Bible; therefore it still
remains valid for us today. (p. xxx)
Different fundamentalist Jewish communities have
different attitudes toward the legal or social acceptability
of birth control (Nishmat, 2010). These legal restrictions
arise from the interpretation of the commandment
to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28) and the
commandment In the morning sow your seed, and
in the evening do not desist (Ecclesiastes 11:6), which
obligates Fundamentalist Jews to do more than the
simple letter of the law as stated in the Book of Genesis
(i.e., to have big families). In most Jewish communities,
there are few injunctive rules against all forms of birth
control; many rabbis will give women dispensation to
use family planning methods for a variety of reasons
(Nishmat, 2010).
Despite the technicalities allowing women to
use birth control, the social system creates descriptive
rules against the use of birth control: it is considered
taboo to ask for birth control. In a sample of 1751
married urban Israeli Jewish women, contraceptive use
was reported by 73% of secular subjects, 54% of Modern
Orthodox women, and 15% of ultra-Orthodox women
(Haimon-Kuchmon & Hochner-Celinkier, 2007). With
in the fundamentalist community, contraception is
employed mainly for birth spacing, contrasted to secular
women who use contraception to prevent pregnancy
altogether or postpone even their first pregnancy. In
many fundamentalist communities, families of more
than 14 children are the norm as well as the expectation
for women to be considered successful members of their
society. The average birth rate of Israeli Hareidi Jews is

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 77

7.7 children per family (Remmenick, 2008), one of the


highest birth rates of any nation. Many Hareidi women
invoke Jewish traumas such as the Holocaust when
questioned about their large family size (Wattenberg,
2005).
Additionally, the taboo against birth control is
accompanied by a strong fundamentalist Jewish legal and
social taboo against premarital sexuality. All touching
is forbidden between members of the opposite sex who
are not related to each other. Fundamentalist Jewish
groups have not been major players in the American
politics of abstinence education or birth control, the
political issues which affect people both in and out of
their own communities. One reason for this may simply
be a more liberal stance on abortion in Judaism than in
Christianity (Feldman, 1995). In both communities, a
perception that outside society cares less for children and
family values than their community reinforces a sense
of their own community identity and the danger of the
outside world (Davidman, 1992; Joyce, 1996).
Modern American Motherhood
othering is a social construct found in every
contemporary society (Arendell, 2000). It
encompasses more than simply bearing, nursing,
and caring for a child, functions that can be done by
someone who is not mothering and by someone who is
not a mother. Mothering is largely determined by social
circumstances; mothers do not nurture or care for their
children the same way across cultures, and what it means
to be a mother is reinforced and supported by cultures in
different ways. How one cares for a child, and how one
conceives of that caring, is culturally organized.
The feminist movement in the United States
affected more than simply the rise of fundamentalism that
fostered change in the American religious communities.
In addition, motherhood as a modern institution among
women not in these religious communities also drastically
changed. Though feminist action led to great strides in
what women can accomplish in their careers, this was
simultaneously accompanied by increased expectations of
motherhood. On one hand, the mothers who stayed home
needed to justify that decision by making motherhood
into a full-time job that required all of their energy,
while mothers who went out to work applied the same
standards of competitive work to their home life. Those
rising expectations led to a new style of mothering named
intensive mothering by Sharon Hays, who has researched
the social construction of motherhood since the 1980s.

78

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Hays explained, This motherhood mandate declares


that mothering is exclusive, wholly child centered,
emotionally involving, and time-consuming (as cited in
Arendell, 2000, p. 1194). This is the dominant ideology
among North Americans in general. There is extensive
research on the intensive mothering ideology and how
it has increased the amount of conflict and guilt that
mothers are feeling (Arendell, 2000; Guendouzi, 2006).
Yet, this is not the only current modern Western model
of motherhood. Researchers Elvin-Novak and Thomsson
(2001) reported that in general, Swedish mothers are
rewarded for being more happy and fulfilled, from
expression of their individualism in their own careers to
promoting well-being in their children. The American
intensive mothering mandate is not the only possible
one.
Access to ideology and fulfillment of the
hegemonic American model described above are highly
class-based (Arendell, 2000; Daniluck, 1996). While
in the 1970s and 1980s, middle class and poor mothers
were taught that the attachment with their child was
the most important priority, more important than their
individual or personal fulfillment, external pressures
dictated different outcomes for the two groups. The
federal welfare-to-work programs of the 1990s required
poor mothers to seek employment outside the home as
a condition of their welfare benefit, ostensibly to the
detriment of their children. The rhetoric positioned them
as selfish for staying home.
At the same time, middle class mothers were
required to decide whether to self-sacrifice by staying
home with their children or to selfishly sacrifice their
childrens welfare by going to work. It is no wonder that
modern motherhood is characterized by considerable
ambivalence and guilt among women (e.g., Colaner, 2008;
Giele, 2008; Guendouzi, 2006). Thus, American social
policy reinforces the dominant ideas of a good mother as
one who is married and supported by her partner, and
as such, reifies a particular view of appropriate womens
roles (Arendell, 2000).
Motherhood, as the cultural construction
through which children are educated for society, presents
the opportunity for the society as well as the family to
judge the mother. Mothers are held accountable for the
deeds of their children (Hartman-Halbertal, 2002) and
are blamed when things go wrong. The psychological
literature points to different psychopathologies and
names the characteristics of the mothers of individuals

Korb

who suffer from those conditions. For example, in the


1950s, it was proposed by Bateson, Jackson, Haley, and
Weakland (1956) that children develop schizophrenia
when their mothers face them with double-bind scenarios.
This was debunked later, when it was discovered that
mothers instead give double-bind statements when faced
with difficult children who exhibit prodromal symptoms
of schizophrenia (Koopmans, 1997). Mothers find
themselves constantly negotiating with the oughts of
motherhood (Hartman-Halbertal, 2002). Additionally,
mothers expect themselves to mother in ways other
than how they were mothered because they recognize
the change in culture and new psychological oughts.
However, many mothers find themselves, to their horror,
saying exactly what their mothers said (Fraiberg, Adelson,
& Shapiro, 1980). Motherhood is often characterized by
self-doubt on the part of women, rather than questioning
the social pressures around them (Hartman-Halbertal,
2002). As a counterpoint, critics of the contemporary
culture often point to the deinstitutionalization of the
private domain, characterized by changing family norms,
as a cause of discomfort, leading to the rise of religious
movements (Kaufman, 1991).

Motherhood is socially entwined with notions
of femininity (Medina & Magnuson, 2009). The specific
kind of intensive motherhood conceived of today is a
modern social construct, but mythologized as natural
and immutable. Social deconstruction of the maternal
instinct concept was pioneered by Badinter (1981) in her
work, Motherlove, which traced the development of the
myth of maternal love and sacrifice.
Badinter (1981) argued that many early French
feminists, fired by Jean Jacques Rousseaus Emile, were
encouraged to view child rearing as a liberating and
empowering appropriation of their husbands former
sphere of influence. It became the role of women to
transmit their educational and moral values to their
children, and as such, the education of women became
more highly valued. This was motivated by the changing
French economys experience of the Industrial Revolution,
which required men to work long hours outside the
home. This forced women into what had traditionally
been the mens role of running the home, and also put
a growing importance on individual children as French
citizens and workers. In order to stem the loss represented
by childhood mortality, French women were persuaded
that their new kingdom was in their home, raising
their children (p. 179).

Badinter (1981) argued that maternal instinct


is a relatively recent social construct. It was designed
to confine women to a very limited conception of
their identity and to convince them of their daunting,
perhaps unfulfillable, obligations. Badinter asserted
that Maternal love is a human feeling. And, like any
feeling, it is uncertain, fragile, and imperfect. Contrary
to many assumptions, it is not deeply rooted in womens
natures (xxiii). Badinter argued that perceptions of
mother love are culturally constructed and that the
concept of motherhood was yet another manipulation of
women and their conception of their place in the world.
In her cultural analysis of the evolution of the ideals of
motherhood in the United States, Diane Eyer (1996)
made a similar point:

Mothering Fundamentalism

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 79

Motherhood, as most people think of it, was really


fashioned in the 1830s as a response to the labor
dilemma posed by the Industrial Revolution, which
threatened to draw work out of the home and into
the factory. Women should stay at home, it was
decided, and become hearth angels, exemplars of
moral virtue to inspire the children who were mere
clay in their hands. (p. xiv)
Similar to Badinters specific historical point above, many
authors have argued that motherhood is constructed
not only for individual children but also for the larger
social group in which they are situated (Arendell,
2000; Guendouzi, 2006; Hartman-Halbertal, 2002).
Mothering is the main vehicle for identity formation of
children (Arendell, 2000). In motherhood, childrens
gender identities are reinforced and society, through its
influence on the mother, creates its future citizens.
Arendell (2000) wrote that mothering is more
important to womens identity than either marital
status or occupation. Living in an overwhelmingly
family-focused society, in which being a mother is more
important to ones identity than being a lawyer, it is no
wonder that women feel guilty about their motherhood
(Arendell, 2000; Guendouzi, 2006). This maternal ambi
valence is sourced in the paradoxical nature of mothering
experience; not every minute with another individual
can be close and happy, let alone one that is completely
dependent upon you and with whom you are expected
to spend every moment.
Motherhood can be an incredibly powerful
identity for women, but Anna Snitow (1990) wondered if
the patriarchal construction of motherhood inevitably

placed women outside the realm of the social, the


changing, the active (p. 21). In other words, does
placing motherhood on a pedestal isolate mothers from
the experience of being people? If mothers gain power
by being connected to the patriarchally-constructed,
powerful spiritual identity of motherhood writ large,
which is greater than themselves and defines them and
their interests, it may also serve to silence them. Their
inclusion in this archetypal class may detract from their
individual voices. Despite the fact that all mothering
is necessarily done by someone other than the child,
psychological research generally only speaks from the
childs perspective (Hartman-Halbertal, 2002). When
the mother is named in the conversation, she is brought
in through the childs experienceas powerfully good,
bad, or silent. A mother reading these theories cannot
find her own experience by reading the perspective of the
child looking to the mother as a mirror.
Andrea Dworkin (1977), the controversial
American feminist, saw women as trying to create power
by positioning motherhood as the most important act
that women could do. She warned of the pitfalls of what
she called womb worship, valorizing women simply
for their reproductive capacity while romanticizing the
womb. On the one hand, this allows mothers to avoid
the discomfort of modern-day expectations of doing it
all by making their mothering into something that can
seem all-encompassing and that can only be fulfilled
by women. On the other hand, it locks women into the
idea that the body is the source of destiny and identity,
an idea that Dworkin saw as contributing to the history
of womens oppression over time, used to justify mens
domination over women because men are physically
stronger.
Modern American society is hugely pronatalist,
or valuing of motherhood, childbearing, children, and
defined social roles for women (Brooks, 2007, p. 17).
This pronatalist trend is often traced to a backlash
from the Womens Liberation movement of the 1970s
(Daniluck, 1996; Hird & Abshoff, 2000; Lisle, 1996;
Meyers, 2001; Morell, 2000). Parallel to the pronatalist
agenda, childlessness is regarded as an affliction in
modern America (Spitler, 1992). The concept that some
women never want to have children seems to be drowned
out in the debate about reproductive rightswhich
centers around the question of when women will have
the children they are assumed eventually to have. Even
though these attitudes are commonly thought to be a

80

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

response to the rise of feminism, some authors have


suggested that feminism may have contributed to the
pronatalist agenda by valorizing mothers experiences
over those of non-mothers and suggesting that wars and
human violence were due to male control and power.
The notion that women naturally have a more nurturing
instinct than men, and thus should be at home with
children, is an example of biological determinism, the
idea that biology is destiny.
Conclusion
xtensive research exists on the cultural and political
phenomenon of the Christian Right, and research
on fundamentalist women has begun to take hold, with
several Christian groups opening themselves up to schol
ars and the mainstream media. Some research has been
done on baalot teshuva, and so far it has concentrated
on the process of identity transformation (Aviad, 1983;
Glanz & Harrison, 1978), the recruitment process (Shaffir,
1983), gender issues (Davidman, 1991), and comparisons
between different groups of returnees (Davidman, 1991;
Davidman & Greil, 1994). While considerable effort
has gone into studying the experiences of women in
fundamentalist groups amid a recent resurgence in
interest in traditional religion (Avishai, 2008), including
conversion and transition experiences, a gap looms in
the research as far as comparing the lived experience of
changing between models of motherhood.
In a 2008 article, Avishai argued that women
who participated in her study are neither passive targets
of religious discourses (doormats), nor strategic agents
whose observance serves extra-religious ends. Instead,
she argued that their observance is best explained by
the notion of religious conduct as a mode of being, a
performance of religious identity, or a path to achieving
orthodox subjecthood in the context of threatened
symbolic boundaries between [their religious and secular]
identities (p. 410). Avishai analyzed the extant academic
literature about women in conservative fundamentalist
religion and presented three main responses to the
problem of women giving up agency by participating
in such religious groups. The first response is that
while women may experience conservative religions as
restricting, they are also empowered or liberated by their
religion. The second is that women subvert and resist
official dogma through partial compliance, and lastly,
that religious women strategize and appropriate religion to
further extra-religious ends. These theoretical frames are
all flawed: for example, such theories create a dichotomy

Korb

of subordination versus subversion, empowerment, or


accommodation, which equates agency with resistance.
These flawed theoretical frames reinscribe modern liberal
valuesresearchers valuesas being the only expression
of true self, rather than allowing people to consciously
choose which actions reflect their higher selves, or seeing
the womens current state as an expression of their true
self.
These frameworks do not acknowledge that
women may participate in a religion for a religious end,
rather than an extra-religious one, or that compliance
is not a strategy, but rather something that the women
are choosing to do, a mode of conduct and being.
Lastly, the focus on the women as individuals ignores
the structural and cultural contexts that organize their
lives and religious observance. Looking at religion
as something that women do, parallel to gender as
performance (Butler, 1990), or modes of behavior and
comportment that are shaped by social rules, assumes
that they are actively making religious choices. Agency
is thus grounded in the very construction of gender.
Butler in Gender Trouble located agency not only in
acts of transgression, but also in the internal work one
does to be able to receive a particular cultural discourse.
Gender is understood as an unconscious performance,
whereas Avishai (2008) proposed looking at doing
religion as a semiconscious, self-authorship project
(p. 411). This is particularly poignant in the case of
adults who change religious communities, who exert
agency and engage in self-reconstruction by choosing
different cultural discourses to be subject to. They are
engaging in the project of self-authorship by moving
their protagonist, themselves, to a new location with
new rules. This is a new, compelling paradigm that can
examine fundamentalist womens choices and affirm
these choices through respectful research.
Models of motherhood remain important
to study as they reflect cultural oughts (HartmanHalbertal, 2002), and because of the unconscious way
that ones own childhood comes out in ones parenting
(Fraiberg et al., 1980). This is especially poignant in the
case of people who change religious communities, as
they deliberately choose to raise children with a different
social group than that in which they were raised. They
must navigate the oughts of their new society with their
own psychodynamic issues arising through parenting.
Though transpersonal psychology tends to pathologize
fundamentalist religion, and the news histrionically

Almond, G. A., Appleby, R. S. & Sivan, E. (2003).


Strong religion. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press.
Antler, J. (2007). You never call! You never write! A history
of the Jewish mother. Oxford, UK: Oxford University
Press.
Alexander, G. T. (1980). William James, the sick soul,
and the negative dimensions of consciousness: A
partial critique of transpersonal psychology. Journal
of the American Academy of Religion, XLVIII(2), 191206. doi:10.1093/jaarel/XLVIII.2.191
Arendell, T. (2000). Conceiving and investigating
motherhood: The decades scholarship. Journal of
Marriage and the Family, 62, 1192-1207. doi:10.1111/
j.1741-3737.2000.01192.x
Aronson, J. (1994). A pragmatic view of thematic
analysis. The Qualitative Report, 2(1). Retrieved
from: <http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/BackIssues/
QR2-1/aronson.html>

Mothering Fundamentalism

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 81

reports about the rise of fundamentalism in America as


a source of terrorism, analysis is called for to deconstruct
and analyze the fear expressed in research about the
threat of fundamentalism. New research is also called
for that re-examines what has often been seen as a
regressive choice of modern women (Avishai, 2008;
Longman, 2007), thus affirming the agency of women
to choose a new cultural discourse. Such research may
help create a fuller, more relatable understanding of
fundamentalist womens experiences of their identity,
and particularly their experience of themselves as
mothers, an identity that they, and society, see as most
important.
The relationship of motherhood and religious
experience are complicated mechanisms of intersecting
identities, both important to transpersonal psychology.
As cited in Fausto-Sterling (2000), Grosz pointed out
that the inner and outer self co-construct themselves
and each other, thus rejecting a nature or nurture
model of development. While different disciplines
study the outside and the inside of the Mbius strip,
identities are one whole. In this case, the interaction
of early environment to identity formation to religious
transformation to creation of another persons early
environment (the womens children, thus creating
another identity) is all one whole.
References

Aviad, J. (1983). Return to Judaism: Religious renewal in


Israel. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Avishai, O. (2008). Doing religion in a secular world:
Women in conservative religions and the question
of agency, Gender & Society, 22(4), 409-433. doi:
10.1177/0891243208321019
Badinter, E. (1981). Motherlove: Myth and reality. New
York, NY: Macmillan.
Bateson, G., Jackson, D. D., Haley, J., & Weakland, J.
(1956). Toward a theory of schizophrenia. Behavioral
Science, 1(4), 251264. doi:10.1002/bs.3830010402
Barzilai, K., & Barzilai, G. (2004) Cultured technology:
Internet and religious fundamentalism. The
Information Society, 21(1). Retrieved from: <http://
www.indiana.edu/~tisj>
Blau, Y. (2004, October 26). American Orthodoxy in
the twenty first century. The Commentator. Retrieved
from: <http://www.yucommentator.com/2.2843/
american-orthodoxy-in-the-twenty-first-century1.299499>
Boyarin, D. (1997). Unheroic conduct: The rise of
heterosexuality and the invention of the Jewish man.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Brasher, B. (1998). Godly women: Fundamentalism
and female power. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press.
Brooks, C. (2007). Being true to myself : A grounded
theory exploration of the process and meaning of the early
articulation of intentional childlessness (Institute of
Transpersonal Psychology). ProQuest Dissertations
and Theses, Retrieved from <http://search.proquest.
com/docview/304744568?accountid=25304>
Burt, V., & Rudolph, M. (2000). Treating an Orthodox
Jewish woman with obsessive compulsive disorder:
Maintaining reproductive and psychological stability
in the context of normative religious rituals. The
American Journal of Psychiatry, 157(4), 620-624. doi:
doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.157.4.620
Cadge, W., & Davidman, L. (2006). Ascription, choice,
and the construction of religious identities in the
contemporary United States. Journal for the Scientic
Study of Religion, 45(1), 2338. doi:10.1111/j.14685906.2006.00003.x
Castells, M. (1996). Rise of the network society. New York,
NY: Wiley.
Cavaglion, G. (2008). Bad, mad or sad? Mothers who kill
and press coverage in Israel. Crime Media Culture, 4,
271-289. doi: 10.1177/1741659008092332

82

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Chodorow, N. (1989). Feminism and psychoanalytic


theory. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Chodorow, N. (1999). The reproduction of mothering:
Psychoanalysis and the sociology of gender. Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press. (Original work
published 1978)
Colaner, C., & Giles, S. (2008). The baby blanket or
the briefcase: The impact of evangelical gender role
ideologies on career and mother aspirations of female
evangelical college students. Sex Roles, 58, 526-534.
doi: 10.1007/s11199-007-9352-8
Dally, A. (1982). Inventing motherhood: The consequences
of an ideal. New York, NY: Schocken.
Daly, M. (1984). Pure lust: Elemental feminist philosophy.
Boston, MA: Beacon.
Daniluck, J. C. (1996). When biology isnt destiny:
Implication for the sexuality of women without child
ren. Canadian Journal of Counseling, 33(2), 79-94.
Danzger, H. (1989). Returning to tradition: The
contemporary revival of Orthodox Judaism. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Davidman, L. (1991). Tradition in a rootless world: Women
turn to Orthodox Judaism. Berkeley, CA: University
of California Press.
Davidman, L., & Greil, A. (1994). Gender and the
experience of conversion: The case of returnees
in modern Orthodox Judaism. In W. H. Swatos,
Jr. (Ed.), Gender and religion (pp. 95-112). New
Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (1994). Entering the field of
qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln
(Eds.), The landscape of qualitative research: Theories
and issues (pp. 1-17). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Deutchman, I. (2008). Fundamentalist Christians,
raunch culture, and post-industrial capitalism.
Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, XIX.
Retrieved from: <http://www.usask.ca/relst/jrpc/
art19-raunchsex.html>
Dierenfield, B. (2007). The battle over school prayer.
Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.
Dworkin, A. (1977). Biological superiority: The worlds
most dangerous and deadly idea. Heresies, 6, 47-51.
Dworkin, A. (1983). Right-wing women. New York,
NY: Coward-McCann. (Original work published
1978)
El-Or, T. (1994). Educated and ignorant: Ultraorthodox
Jewish women and their world. Boulder, CO: Lynne
Rienner.

Korb

El-Or, T. (2002). Next year I will know more: Identity


and literacy among young Orthodox women in Israel.
Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.
Elvin-Novak, Y. & Thomsson, H. (2001) Motherhood
as idea and practice: A Discursive understanding of
employed mothers in Sweden. Gender and Society,
15, 407-428.
Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962).
Eyer, D. (1996). Motherguilt: How our culture blames
women for whats wrong with society. New York, NY:
Random House.
Fader, A. (2006). Learning faith: Language sociali
zation in a community of Hasidic Jews. Language
in Society, 35, 205-229. doi:10.1017/S004740
450606009X
Faludi, S. (1991). Backlash: The undeclared war against
American women. New York, NY: Doubleday.
Falk, P. (1998). Oz vehadar levusha: Modesty: An
adornment for life: Halachos and attitudes concerning
tznius of dress and conduct. New York, NY:
Feldheim.
Fausto-Sterling, A. (2000). Sexing the body. New York,
NY: Basic Books.
Feldman, D. (1995). Birth control in Jewish law: Marital
relations, contraception, and abortion as set forth in the
classic texts of Jewish law. New York, NY: New York
University Press.
Forcey, L. R. (1994). Feminist perspectives on mothering
and peace. In E. N. Glenn, G. Chang, & L. R.
Forcey (Eds.), Mothering: Ideology, experience, and
agency (pp. 355-375). New York, NY: Routledge.
Fraiberg, S., Adelson, E., & Shapiro, V. (1980). Ghosts
in the nursery: A psychoanalytic approach to the
problem of impaired infant-mother relationships.
In S. Fraiberg (Ed.), Clinical studies in infant mental
health: The first year of life (pp. 164-196). New York,
NY: Basic.
Giele, J. (2008). Homemaker or career woman: Life
course factors and racial influences among middle
class Americans. Journal of Comparative Family
Studies, 39(3), 393-411.
Glanz, D., & Harrison, M. (1978). Varieties of identity
transformation: The case of newly Orthodox Jews.
Jewish Journal of Sociology, 20, 129-141.
Guendouzi, J. (2006). The guilt thing: Balancing
domestic and professional roles. Journal of Marriage
and Family, 68(4), 901-909. doi: 10.1111/j.17413737.2006.00303.x

Haimov-Kochman, R., & Hochner-Celinkier, D.


(2007). Contraceptive counseling for Orthodox
Jewish women. European Journal of Contraception &
Reproductive Health Care, 12(1), 13-18. doi: 10.1080
/13625180601092578
Harris, J. (1994). Fun dam en talism: Objections from
a modern Jewish historian. In J. Hawley (Ed.),
Fundamentalism and Gender (pp. 137-174). Oxford,
UK: Oxford University Press.
Hamama-Raz, Y., Hemmindinger, S., & Buchbinder,
E. (2010). The unifying difference: Dyadic coping
with spontaneous abortion among religious Jewish
Couples. Qualitative Health Research, 20(2), 251261. doi: 10.1177/1049732309357054
Hartman-Halbertal, T. (2002). Appropriately subversive:
Modern mothers in traditional religions. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Heilman, S. C. (1992). Defenders of the faith: Inside
orthodox Jewry. New York, NY: Schocken.
Heilman, S. (2006). Sliding to the right: The contest for
the future of American Jewish Orthodoxy. Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press.
Hird, M. J., & Abshoff, K. (2000). Women without
children: A contradiction in terms? Journal of
Comparative Family Studies, 31(3), 347-366.
Retrieved from: <http://www.highbeam.com/doc/
1G1-68535835.html>
Ingram, K. (1988). Childless but not barren. Houston,
TX: Magnificat Press.
Institute for American Values. (2005). The motherhood
study: Fresh insights on mothers attitudes and concerns.
New York, NY: M. F. Erickson & E. G. Aird.
Jaffe, A. (1989). From the life and work of C. G. Jung.
Einsiedeln, Switzerland: Daimon Verlag.
Joyce, K. (2009). Quiverfull: Inside the Christian
patriarchy movement. Boston, MA: Beacon.
Jung, C. G., & Hull, R. F. C. (1977). C. G. Jung speaking.
Princeton, NJ: University Press.
Kaufman, D. (1991). Rachels daughters: Newly Orthodox Jewish
women. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Koopmans, M. (1997). Schizophrenia and the family:
Double bind theory revisited. Dynamical Psychology,
n.p. Retrieved from http://www.goertzel.org/
dynapsyc/1997/Koopmans.html
Koropeckyj-Cox, T., & Pendell, G. (2007). The gender
gap in attitudes about childlessness in the United
States. Journal of Marriage and Family, 69(4), 899915. ). doi: 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2007.00420.x

Mothering Fundamentalism

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 83

Kunzman, R. (2009). Write these laws upon your


children: Inside the world of conservative Christian
homeschooling. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Longman, C. (2008). Sacrificing the career or the family?
Orthodox Jewish women between secular work and
the sacred home. European Journal of Womens Studies,
15(3), 233-239. doi: 10.1177/ 1350506808091505
Longman, C. (2007). Not us, but you have changed!
Discourses of difference and belonging among
Haredi women. Social Compass, 54, 77-95. doi:10.11
77/0037768607074154
Love, V. (1984). Childless is not less. Ada, MI: Bethany
House.
Luker, K. (1984). Abortion and the politics of motherhood.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Marty, M., & Appleby, S. (Eds.). (1994). Fundamentalisms
observed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
McMahon, M. (1995). Engendering motherhood: Identity
and self-transformation in womens lives. New York,
NY: Guilford Press.
Medina, S., & Magnuson, S. (2009). Motherhood in the
21st century: Implications for counselors. Journal of
Counseling & Development, 87, 90-96. Retrieved from
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-191263037.html
Meyers, D. T. (2001). The rush to motherhood:
Pronatalist discourse and womens autonomy. Signs,
26(3), 735-935. Retrieved from: <http://www.jstor.
org/pss/3175538>
Michaels, M. (2004). The mommy myth: The idealization
of motherhood and how it has undermined women.
New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Mirsky, J. (1992). Individuation through immigration to
Israel: Psychotherapy with immigrant adolescents.
Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, 20, 47-57.
doi:10.1007/BF00946019
Mirsky, J., & Kaushinksy, F. (1989). Immigration and
growth: Separation-individuation processes in immi
grant students in Israel. Adolescence, 24, 725-740.
Monroe, K., & Kreidie, L. (1997). The perspective of
Islamic fundamentalists and the limits of rational
choice theory. Political Psychology, 18(1), 19-43.
doi:10.1111/0162-895X.00043
Morell, C. (2000). Saying no: Womens experiences with
reproductive refusal. Feminism & Psychology, 10(3),
313-322. doi:10.1177/0959353500010003002
Nishmat: The Jerusalem Center for Advanced Torah
Study for Women. (2008). Permissability. Retrieved
from: <http://www.yoatzot.org/topic.php?id=66>

84

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

OReilly, A. (2004). From motherhood to mothering: The


legacy of Adrienne Richs Of woman born. Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press.
Pearce, L., & Axinn, W. G. (1998). The impact of
family religious life on the quality of mother-child
relations. American Sociological Review, 63(6), 810828. doi:10.2307/2657503
Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. (2010). Church
statistics and religious affiliations. Retrieved from:
<http://religions.pewforum.org/affiliations>
Pond, A. (2009). The zeal of the convert: Is it the real
deal? The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
Retrieved from http://pewforum.org/The-Zeal-ofthe-Convert-Is-It-the-Real-Deal.aspx
Provan, C. D. (1989). The Bible and birth control.
Monongahela, PA: Zimmer.
Remennick, L. (2008). Contested motherhood in the
ethnic state: Voices from an Israeli postpartum
ward. Ethnicities, 8, 199-226. doi:10.1177/1468796
808088923
Remennick, L. (2001). Public attitudes toward abortion
in Israel: A research note. Social Science Quarterly,
82(2), 420-431. doi: 10.1111/0038-4941.00033
Rich, A. (1976). Of woman born: Motherhood as experience
and institution. New York, NY: Norton.
Ringel, S. (2008). Formative experiences of Orthodox
Jewish women: Attachment patterns and spiritual
development. Journal of Clinical Social Work, 36,
73-82. doi:10.1007/s10615-007-0112-6
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113,93 S. Ct. 705,35 L. Ed. 2d
147 (1973).
Salganik, M. J., & Heckathorn, D. D. (2004).
Sampling and estimation in hidden populations
using respondent-driven sampling. Sociological
Methodology, 34, 193239. doi: 10.1111/j.00811750.2004.00152.x.
Sands, R. (2007). Gender differences in the construction
of spirituality, work, learning, and community by
baalei teshuva. Sex Roles, 57, 527-541. doi:10.1007/
s11199-007-9286-1
Sands, R. (2009). The social integration of baalei
teshuvah. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion,
48(1), 86-102.
Sands, R., & Strier, D. (2003). Divided families:
Impact of religious difference and geographic
difference on intergenerational family continuity.
Family Relations, 53, 102-110. doi: 10.1111/j.17413729.2004.00014.x

Korb

Sands, R., Spero, R., & Danzig, R. (2007). Gender


differences in the construction of spirituality: Work,
learning and community by baalei teshuva. Sex Roles,
57, 527-541. doi: 10.1007/s11199-007-9286-1
Shaffir, W. (1983). The recruitment of baalei teshuva in
a Jerusalem yeshiva. Jewish Journal of Sociology, 25,
33-46.
Shai, D. (2002). Working women/cloistered men:
A family development approach to marriage
arrangements among Ultra-Orthodox Jews.
Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 33(1), 97114. Retrieved from: <http://proquest.umi.com.
ezproxy.itp.edu:2048/pqdweb?did=115633786&si
d=2&Fmt=3&clientId=45836&RQT=309&VNa
me=PQD>
Shaw, S. (2008). Gracious submission: Southern Baptist
fundamentalists and women. National Women
Studies Association Journal, 20(1), 51-77. Retrieved
from http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/nwsa_
journal/v020/20.1.shaw.html
Sivan, E. (1995). The enclave culture. In M. Marty & R.
Scott Appleby (Eds.), Fundamentalism comprehended
(pp. 1168). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press.
Soloveitchik, H. (1994). Rupture and reconstruction:
The transformation of contemporary Orthodoxy.
Tradition, 28(4), 64-130. Retrieved from: <http://
www.lookstein.org/links/orthodoxy.htm>
Sovatsky, S. (1998) Words from the soul: Time, East/West
spirituality, and psychotherapeutic narrative. New
York, NY: State University of New York Press.
Snitow, A. (1990). Gender diary. In M. Hirsch & E.
Keller (Eds.), Conflicts in feminism (pp. 8-43). New
York, NY: Routledge.
Spitler, P. (1992). Reproductive religion. The Humanist, 52(3).
Retrieved from: <http://proquest.umi.com.ezproxy.
itp.edu:2048/pqdweb?did=1829956&sid=3&Fmt=3
&clientId=45836&RQT=309&VName=PQD>
Stadler, N. (2002) Is profane work an obstacle to
salvation? The case of Ultra Orthodox (Haredi) Jews
in contemporary Israel. Sociology of Religion, 63(4),
455-474. doi:10.2307/3712302
Topel, M. (2002). Brazilian baalot teshuva and the
paradoxes of their religious conversion. Judaism,
51(3), 329-345.
Von Hirsch Erikson, E. (1995). The Jews of Gateshead,
England. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation).
Durham University, Durham, UK.

Wagner, D. (2003, June 28). Marching to Zion: The


evangelical-Jewish alliance. The Christian century.
Retrieved from: <http://www.christiancentury.org/
article/2003-06/marching-zion>
Wald, K., & Siegelman, L. (1997). Romancing the Jews:
the Christian Right in search of strange bedfellows.
In J. Penning (Ed.), Sojourners in the wilderness (pp.
139-170). New York, NY: Rowman & Littlefield.
Walsh, R., & Vaughan, F. (1993). On transpersonal
definitions. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology,
25(2), 125-182. Retrieved from: <http://atpweb.org.
ezproxy.itp.edu:2048/jtparchive/trps-25-93-02-199.
pdf>
Warner, R. S. (1993) Work in progress toward a new
paradigm for the sociological study of religion in
the United States. American Journal of Sociology, 98,
1044-93. Retrieved from: <http://www.jstor.org/
pss/2781583>
Watt, J. (2008). Jews, fundamentalism and superses
sionism. Fides et Historia, 40, 1-23. Retrieved from:
<http://proquest.umi.com.ezproxy.itp.edu:2048/pqd
link?did=1490089481&sid=1&Fmt=1&clientId=458
36&RQT=309&VName=PQD>
Wattenberg, B., & Kadden, J. (2005). Jewish babies.
Retrieved from: <http://www.aei.org/article/23547>
Yafeh, O. (2007). The time in the body: Cultural
construction of feminity in Ultraorthodox
kindergartens for girls. Ethos, 35(4), 516-533.
doi:10.1525/eth.2007.35.4.516
Yehuda, R., Friedman, M., Rosenbaum, T., Labinsky,
E., & Schmeidler, J. (2007). History of past sexual
abuse in married observant Jewish women. The
American Journal of Psychiatry, 164(11), 1700-1706.
doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.2007.06122030

Mothering Fundamentalism

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 85

Notes
1. Some non-fundamentalist scholars have suggested
that the movements true beginnings lay with the
Engel v. Vitale (June 25, 1962) Supreme Court
case, which addressed prayer in public schools
(Dierenfield, 2007). Still others, including
Jerry Falwell, a televangelist and conservative
commentator and founder of the Moral Majority,
an evangelical Christian-oriented political lobbying
organization, have pointed to a history beginning
with Bob Jones University v. US (May 24, 1983),
which addressed the tax-exempt status of a private,

nonprofit religious university that prescribed and


enforced racially discriminatory admission standards
on the basis of religious doctrine (Wagner, 2003;
Wald & Siegelman, 1997).
2.The term fundamentalism is more highly
controversial in application to Jews and is highly
contested in academia (Longman, 2007). Watt
(2008) wrote that the term fundamental as applied
to Jews invokes supersessionism, the belief that Jesus
death superseded the law of the Hebrew Bible, and
re-inscribes that meaning when used today. He
also contended that the term fundamentalism is
simply used to describe someone seen as extreme or
dangerous. Harris (1994) wrote extensively about the
term, arguing that the type of textual reading that
traditional Jewish culture engages in is considerably
different from Christian fundamentalists. Addition
ally, the use of the word fundamentalist can be
problematic when it includes Jews who are only
politically and not religiously conservative, such as
settlers in the Israeli occupied territories, who may
not be considered fundamentalists simply based on
their religious beliefs.
3. In the Six-Day War, Israel was attacked by the
neighboring states of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria with
the help of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia,
Morocco, and Algeria. The conflict lasted 6 days,
between June 5 and June 10, 1967, and by the time
it was over, Israel had gained control of the Sinai
Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East
Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.

About the Journal


The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies is a
peer-reviewed academic journal in print since 1981. It is
published by Floraglades Foundation, and serves as the
official publication of the International Transpersonal
Association. The journal is available online at www.
transpersonalstudies.org, and in print through www.
lulu.com (search for IJTS).

About the Author


Sophia Korb is a 5th year Clinical Psychology Ph.D.
student at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in
Palo Alto, California. She is working on her pre-doctoral
clinical hours while employed as a Harm Reduction
Specialist for Community Access, a person-centered
social service agency in New York City that assists people
with psychiatric disabilities to transition from shelters
and institutions to independent living. She is writing
two books for Whole Person Associates in the next year.
Continuing work she began in graduate school, she
researches and writes on the social and spiritual meanings
of substance use with Jim Fadiman, as well as the efficacy
of innovative housing programs in San Mateo County
with Shelter Network.

86

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Korb

Psychospiritual Development of Female Adoptees


Raised Within a Closed Adoption System:
A Theoretical Model Within a Feminist and Jungian Perspective
April E. Topfer

The Institute of Transpersonal Psychology


Palo Alto, CA, USA
This article proposes a transpersonal theoretical model suggesting that the embodiment of
the voice of the feminine is a significant catalyst for awakening the psychological and spiritual
growth and development of female adoptees. Existing Jungian and feminist theoretical
models regarding the psychological and spiritual implications for a female adoptee raised
within a closed adoption system will be discussed. The author will share her adopted voice
about her spiritual and psychological process toward finding wholeness using a hermeneutical
process of inquiry. The voices of birth mothers who relinquished their children will also be
included. Voice is then explored to be an essential component of the embodied feminine,
in turn becoming a catalyst of psychospiritual growth and developmental awakening for
female adoptees.
Keywords: hermeneutical, birth mothers, female adoptees, embodied feminine voice.

bout 64% of Americans know someone who has


adopted, been adopted, or relinquished a child
for adoption (Evan B. Donaldson Adoption
Institute, 2002). With this large of a percentage, and
considering the large percentage affected and the lifelong
effects of adoption for all members within the adoption
triad,1 there is a great opportunity to bring a new and
fresh transpersonal perspective into the existing adoption
literature. For an adoptee, a transpersonal perspective
is important because adoptees pay a high psychic,
psychological, and spiritual price when they grow up
feeling like anonymous people cut off from the genetic
and social heritage that gives everyone else roots (Lifton,
1994, p. 8). The disconnection they feel is so deeply
rooted in the psyche and spiritual in nature (Jaggard,
2001) that the primal wound (Verrier, 1993, p. 1)
they suffer is not only from the genealogical loss of their
biological origins but also from a bodily incompleteness
that remains with them into adulthood (Lifton, 1994;
Verrier, 1993, 2003). Hence, there is a significant need to
fill in the gap in the transpersonal theoretical literature
with a psychospiritual developmental model, which will
help transpersonal clinicians, and clinicians in general
(especially those who are not familiar with the issues of
adoption),2 gain a better understanding of an adoptees
quest of an authentic identity (Lifton, 1994, p. 10).

Ultimately, a psychospiritual developmental model can


help adoptees transform and integrate what adoption
and Jungian writer Axness (1998) described as the
pervasive shadows of an abstract burden that have woven
themselves around their lives.
Several terms regarding adoption need to be
clarified. Although adoption can take many different
forms in the United States,3 the primary focus in this
article will be on adoptions within an independent or
private agency, domestically, and within a closed system.
An independent or private agency adoption involves the
official legal transfer of parental rights and responsibilities
to adults who are not a childs biological parents (Miller,
Fan, & Grotevant, 2005). A domestic adoption occurs
when the child is adopted within the country of origin.
A closed system of adoption is when an adopted childs
biological identity remains unknown to him or her and
to the adoptive parents. Adoptive parents names replace
the childs biological parents names on a new legally
amended birth certificate that is issued to the child upon
his or her entry into the adoptive family. The adopted
child is thought to be reborn (Baran & Pannor, 1990,
p. 321) into a new family with a new identity and
identification. The adoption proceedings, including
the original birth certificate and any other information
concerning the identity of the childs birth parents, are

International Journal
of Transpersonal
Studies,
29(2), 2010,
pp. 87-102
Psychospiritual
Development
of Female
Adoptees
International
Journal of Transpersonal Studies 87

sealed depending upon state court order and supported


by statutory law and regulations.

Although closed adoptions were the standard
procedure for adopting a child throughout the United
States by the end of the 1930s and still are commonly
practiced today, current research conducted by the Evan
B. Donaldson Adoption Institute (2009) concluded that
contact with birth relatives is the most important factor in
achieving a positive adoptive identity in white adoptees.4
While contact with birth relatives may have a positive effect
upon adoptees development,5 this paper is not concerned
with matters of adoption reform. The discussion will focus
solely upon Jungian and feminist theoretical considerations
and literature relevant to the psychological and spiritual
implications for female adoptees raised within a closed
adoption system. Throughout, I share my experience of
being adopted and the impact of this experience on my
spiritual and psychological development and my growth
toward finding wholeness. Additionally, the known effects
of the closed adoption system upon birthmothers who
surrendered their children will be illustrated utilizing a
feminist perspective. Finally, I propose a transpersonal,
theoretical model suggesting that the embodiment of
voice of the feminine becomes a significant catalyst for
awakening the psychological and spiritual growth and
development of female adoptees.
Authors Personal Voice
chose to focus solely on female adoptees psychospiritual
development within this article because of my own
personal experience as a female adoptee raised within a
closed adoption system. My focus is further congruent with
the beginning stages of engagement with my dissertation
and research in which I will use a hermeneutical process
of inquiry as well as my spiritual practices of meditation
and yoga.
I am curious to know whether other female adoptees
have experienced similar somatic, phenomenological, and
psychospiritual experiences as I have while embarking
upon their spiritual paths. As I began to engage in the
hermeneutical research method of intuitive inquiry by
reading the adoption literature and listening to the feminine
and feminist voices of adoption from female writers such
as Axness (1998), Fessler (2006), Jaggard (2001), Lifton
(1994), Solinger (2001), and Verrier (1993, 2003), I found
they all held a deep feminine embodied wisdom, truth,
and voice regarding the issues and ramifications of being
adopted. Their voices deeply resonated on a bodily level
within me, causing psychospiritual shifts and deepening

88

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

my embodied awareness regarding my adoption identity


and body.

This process fostered more curiosity about the
development of voice and how other female adoptees
develop and cultivate their own embodied feminine
voice through an embodied spiritual practice, such as
meditation, or other mindful awareness practices. In
my experience, growing up within a closed adoption
system had a severe impact on my ability to find and
cultivate my authentic and embodied feminine voice.
However, as I began to undertake the hermeneutical
journey of my adoption and deepened my mindfulness
practice of meditation, my embodied voice grew stronger
and continues to demonstrate a wisdom that I never
experienced growing up. Additionally, I noticed that each
of these practices, including the inquiry into my adoption,
which became a practice unto itself in my journal writing
and Jungian analysis, became inseparable from one
another. Ultimately, these practices helped to sustain a
process of transformation and integration of my adoption
experience and identity in my life.
My Adoption Story

The loss, grief, and the closed adoption systems
ideologies of secrecy and shame that had been bestowed
upon my birthmother became the legacy passed to me.
Given the paradigm of silence in the closed system and
a lack of information or knowledge about my biological
identity, I experienced what adoptee and feminist writer
Leighton (2005) stated was an erasure of details that
might contradict what could be read or seen about the
body (p. 163). Due to this erasure, my family upheld the
silence in our home by never discussing my adoption or
the adoptive status of my older sister. This strict denial of
my adoption rendered my adoption identity invisible and
my embodied authentic feminine was lost as a result of
my hidden biological origins. As a result, it constricted
my ability to speak from a known and trusted embodied
feminine source, which was especially evident as a teenager
and in early adulthood when the conspiracy of silence
(Lifton, 1994, p. 10) felt like a smothering unspoken
force.

Lifton (1994) wrote that an adoptee knows
something is amiss, missing, not acknowledged, something
that is the ramification of her society, and perhaps her
adoptive family, who has informed her that discovery
of her true biological identity is forbidden and must be
kept in a secrecy of silence. Ultimately, the underpinning
force of the unspoken was the not knowing womanhood

Topfer

and the unknowns of biological motherhood. As feminist


Cornell (2005) stated, the struggle of every woman to
become who she is demands a confrontation with the
connection between femininity and motherhood (p.
26). For my birth mother who relinquished me and for
my adoptive mother who could not bear a child, the
connection had been lost within the development of my
embodied feminine.

My birth mothers story is one that adoption
feminist writers Fessler (2006) and Solinger (2001)
candidly wrote about. My birth mother was a sixteen-yearold unwed mother who became pregnant in conservative
Youngstown, Ohio, lived in a Florence Crittenton home
for unwed mothers, and then relinquished me upon my
birth in October of 1973. Despite the Roe v. Wade (1973)
decision that gave women the right to choose to terminate
their pregnancies or not during the month I was conceived,
my fate would have it that my birth mothers Catholic
upbringing most likely prevented even the thought of an
abortion within her mind or the minds of her parents. The
only conceivable option would have been to relinquish
me for adoption, or so I am left to assume. She does not
deny nor admit she is my birthmother; I take her denial
as evidence that she is indeed my birth mother. Given the
circumstance, I am forced to weave my own self-narrative
of the details concerning my relinquishment from other
stories of courageous birth mothers who have come forth
to recall their relinquishment experiences. It is from the
shared voices of these birth mothers that I am able to
reconstruct and claim their story as my birth mothers,
thus unveiling the unspoken unknown of my adoption
and biological identity that has been trapped and confined
within the walls of the closed adoption system.

In this psychospiritual process, I am also forced to
unweave the unconscious projections and fantasies that
my birth mother and I were ever a dyad in order to awaken
myself from the limiting confines of my double identity.
Cornell (2005) stated:

systems patriarchal paradigm is continually reinforced


in my life due to not being in a successful reunion with
my biological family. Even after having undergone the
process of reconstructing my relinquishment story from
the embodied voices of birth mothers while consciously
deconstructing my unconscious fantasies and projections,
time is eerily suspended in my hometown in the year
1973. It is as if the attitudes and the secrecy of the closed
adoption system still deeply permeate throughout my
identity and voice when I am there, and my biological
identity begins to form a force of its own in its strong
desire to search and connect with my biological origins
and roots. However, my adoptive identity still feels
trapped and helpless in doing so due to Ohios laws that
deny me access to my original birth certificate.6
My Conscious Journey Into and Apart from
the Closed Adoption Circle

I manage the two psychic forces of my split identity
and the unconscious fantasy and projection that my birth
mother and I are still merged together within the closed
adoption systems confining space by experiencing the felt
sensations of tension and ambiguity in my bodily aware
ness while engaging in a hermeneutical process of inquiry.
The realization that I am separate from but not valuefree and independent from my adoption experience arises
in my consciousness. Lifton (1994), herself an adoptee,
wrote about adoptees mythic return to their true selves:
Adoptees must weave a new self-narrative out of the
fragments of what was, what might have been, and
what is. This means they must integrate their two
selves: the regressed baby who was abandoned and
the adult that baby has become. They must make
the Artificial Self real, and allow the Forbidden Self
to come out of hiding. They must integrate what is
authentic in these two selves, and balance the power
between them. (p. 259)

This process of recognizing my projections and fantasies


becomes especially difficult when I visit my hometown
of Youngstown, Ohio, where my adoption and the closed

In my experience, the balancing of powers becomes a


possibility for psychological integration and healing with
embodied mindful awareness practices of meditation
and yoga. Both mindfulness and yoga help me to draw
attention and awareness to the present moment without
judgment or criticism. This helps support me to call
back my authentic power and feminine body from the
overwhelming adoption force. A more creative and
transformative power naturally occurs with the greater
spaciousness in my mind, psyche, and body to permit me
to further explore what further felt sensations, thoughts,

Psychospiritual Development of Female Adoptees

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 89

The beginning of a relationship between mother and


daughter, and the celebration of a symbolic distance
that makes recognition possible, can occur only once
the fantasy that we ever were a dyad is dissolved.
Trying to simply reenact the dyadic fantasy gets us
nowhere new. (p. 35)

images, and feelings arise from my adoption experience,


body, and identity.

Similar to my process, adoptee and feminist
Leighton (2005) wrote that the adoption experience is
not about identification with an unknown lost family
but rather as an identity of possibility (p. 147). For
her, it is a way to make sense of the tensions produced
by being both at once the product of ones environment
and someone whose meaning always exceeds that
environment (p. 147). She stated,being adopted
opens up a space of non-identity between the self as a
subject and the self as an object such that one cares about
the processes (social, historical, cultural, political, and
relational) through which one has come to be (p. 147).
Leightons experience closely resembles a hermeneutical
process of interpretation.

Five levels of interpretation are found in intuitive
inquiry (Anderson, 2004), the research method I have
chosen for my dissertation project. I chose intuitive
inquiry for my dissertation research because of its
personal exploration and transformative potentials. The
researcher is deemed a co-participant. The first cycle
of interpretation that I have completed has led me to
learn about the preconceived lenses through which I
view the social, familial, and psychological interaction
of my adoption within the closed system. Interpretative
researcher Addison (1989) wrote that a hermeneutic
cycle begins when the researcher identifies and names
her lenses, perspective, and beliefs about the subject
matter she is investigating. This is called the forward
arc. After each area of exploration is complete, such as
the literature review and data collection, the researcher
evaluates her old lenses and decides whether to discard
them or establish new ones. This is the reverse arc of
the hermeneutical circle. Overall, the process of a
hermeneutical cycle encourages the completion or
continuation of the researchers own self-reflective
narrative and truth through the lenses she possesses.
Alas, truth is seen as an ongoing and unfolding process,
where each successive interpretation has the possibility
of uncovering or opening up new possibilities (p. 56).

As I began to engage in the first hermeneutical
cycle of interpretation, I recognized that the embodied
expression of my voice was left paralyzed and my
projections, which interpretative researcher Addison
(1990) considered part of the persons existential
structure, were unevaluated and unbeknownst to me.
The possibility of moving my arc forward within a

90

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

hermeneutical cycle remained stuck because of my


lived-felt experience of being psychically drowned in the
unconscious mothering attitude of the closed adoption
system. It was also the unconscious bonds I shared with
my two mothers within the closed adoption circle that
stunted the arcs forward process.

The weight I felt describes what Jungian writer and
analyst Woodman (1990) wrote is an unconscious bond
that can create an insurmountable block if the daughter
feels guilty when the time comes for her to outstrip her
mother, to go beyond the level of consciousness her
mother achieved. The adoptee not only has one mother
with whom to face this challenge but twoher adoptive
mother and her biological mother. I faced guilt with
both of my mothers by breaking the silence about my
adoption experience to my adoptive mother, making
contact with my birth mother, and speaking my truth
about the closed adoption system to fellow adoptees.
However, as I had the opportunity to listen to the
various conscious embodied voices from other adoptees,
as well as from birth mothers and feminists, my inner
sense of freedom and creativity about my adoption
experience was being restored, resulting in feeling less
and less guilt about examining and expressing my
adoption experience. As I see it now, I was engaging in
the reverse arc of the hermeneutical circle by evaluating
other womens adoption experiences against my own
neglected and unexamined psychological projections
and fantasies. Thus, the conscious process of embodying
my adoptive identity and voice completed the first full
hermeneutical cycle in my research method of intuitive
inquiry, resulting in feminine growth, awareness, and
development. Ultimately, my lived felt experience of my
adoption story was transforming itself.
An Adoptees
Conscious Mother and Crone

My Jungian analyst has told me that I am working
through the bi-valent nature of the mother archetype
the terrible mother and the good mother. This has
been demonstrated with my unconscious fantasy and
splitting that my adoptive mother is the good mother
who loved me so much that she rescued me from my
birth mother who is the terrible mother who could not
raise me. There was another story, however, that was
never voiced yet continuously felt, held, and reenacted in
my unconsciousness: my adoptive mother is the terrible
mother who took me away from my birth mother who is
the good mother that can save me from my deep longing

Topfer

for connection. This latter fantasy reflects Jaggards (2001),


Liftons (1994), and Verriers (1993) accounts of adoptees
unconsciousness experiences. Similar to my experience,
these authors accounts reported that many adoptees
feel a bodily experience of disconnection. Unwittingly,
these authors accounts invoke what Jungian scholar and
adoption writer Severson (1994) described as the Mother/
Child archetype, especially Verriers concept of the
primal wound (p. 1). The primal wound is the trauma
that many adoptees experience due to relinquishment
in infancy. The primal wound can be experienced as a
split off baby part of ones self and can have long-lasting
effects upon an adoptees psychological, emotional, and
spiritual life.

In my own personal process toward healing and
wholeness, Liftons (1994) and Verriers (1993) accounts
began to form an invocation of the Mother/Child
archetype for me through the power of reading adoptees
voices. My primal wound was being put into words
and the process of the hermeneutical circles forward
arc began. Although reading adoptees voices played an
important role in my process of healing, I still experienced
a disempowerment in my adoption story and voice. This
shifted, however, when a fellow adoptee invited me
to attend the Alliance for the Study of Adoption and
Culture conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At
this conference, I discovered a new level of my feminist
identity as I listened to the voices of birth mothers who
relinquished their infants. As a result, my unconscious
fantasy and projections about the archetypal mother
that society has constructed about birth mothers were
deconstructed, ultimately leading to a more realistic
representation of my own personal birth mother and
consequently, my adoptive mother.

In addition, my conscious mother began to fully
emerge as I listened and took in various birth mothers
experiences. I was greatly impacted by feminist writer,
researcher, and documentary filmmaker Fesslers
(2010) seminar. I viewed her documentary based on
her courageous and landmark book The Girls Who
Went Away (Fessler, 2006). The book and documentary
present the voices of birth mothers who relinquished
their children in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. Another
powerful seminar presented a discussion by birth mother
Lynn Lauber (2010), who held the voice of the conscious
crone. Woodman (1990) stated that the conscious crone
can afford to be honest, for she is not interested in
playing games. This was the case with Lauber. She was

not interested in perpetuating the games of the closed


adoption system. She spoke from an embodied place
about her pregnancy experience, the relinquishment
of her child, and of her pain, loss, confusion, and
devastation. Her voice held the unwavering truth that
was silent and steady. It held great somberness, grief,
loss, and sadness. Her steady eyes, her gaze, and her
unwavering lips conveyed a lost part of herself that she
had determined to reclaim and resolve again and again.

As I am able to see it now, up until the time I
listened to birth mothers experiences of relinquishing
their children, my ego was not ready nor able to hold the
tension generated by the opposites of the Great Mother,
one who is nourishing and containing and one who is
also devouring and restrictive (Woodman, 1990). What
made this so difficult was the dualistic projections of the
opposites of the Great Mother upon both mothers
my adoptive mother and my biological mother. My
embodied voice and sense of identity had been devoured,
smothered, swallowed up, and drowned. It is the closed
adoption systems web of silence and secrecy that created
this constant felt experience.
A Feminist Perspective on
the Closed Adoption System
doption is a social construction (Lifton, 1994) and
is deeply embedded and cannot be separated from
feminism. Adoption practices reflect sociopolitical,
economic, and moral attitudes and changes in history
that pertain to the second-wave feminist movement.
The attitudes pertaining to adoption and the closed
adoption system prevailed until unwed mothers became
politically active in the 1970s, speaking out about the
ramifications of relinquishing their children,7 and until
abortion was legalized in 1973.8 Before this time (after
World War II and during the 1950s and 60s), childless
married couples, who desired to parent and conform to
the social and familial expectations of the time, turned
to adoption in record numbers. Approximately one and
a half million babies were relinquished for nonfamily or
unrelated adoptions between 1945 and 1973 (Fessler,
2006).9 In turn, the rising demand for adoptable children
intensified the pressure for young unmarried pregnant
women to surrender their children within the closed
adoption system. Despite popular opinion, feminist
writer Solinger (2001) explained It is very rare in this
country to think about relinquishment as a coerced act,
forced on a mother who wanted to keep her child (p.
74). However, that was often just the case.

Psychospiritual Development of Female Adoptees

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 91


In her landmark interviews with women
who surrendered their children between the end of
World War II and 1973, Fessler (2006) illustrated how
these women were not ultimately given a choice and
consequently denied their right to keep their children.
Many of these women did not make a decision to
surrender but instead were rendered powerless10 in their
ability to choose what was best for them and for their
children. The only choice presented was the one that was
available to them: living in an unwed mothers home,
immediately surrendering their child, and legally signing
away their right as a parent. It was the only option
prescribed within the patriarchys11 definition of what
it meant to be a mother. According to authorities and
those who enforced the closed adoption systems extreme
polices, such as social workers and parents, these nonmarital pregnancies were treated as evidence that young
women were unfit to be mothers. It marked them as
bad choice makers and poor prospects for becoming or
raising good citizens (Solinger, 2001).12 Motherhood was
not determined by biology or by giving birth. Rather, it
was determined by marriage and the commodification
of their babies (p. 78). Solinger explained that adoption
is rarely about mothers choices; it is, instead, about the
abject choicelessness of some resourceless women (p.
67) and about the economic resources of other women.

It is typically overlooked that economic and
cultural degradation can cancel a womans ability to assert
the biological claim to motherhood (Solinger, 2001,
p. 75). Young pregnant girls were not given a realistic
picture of the responsibilities and costs of raising a child.
They were denied information that could have saved
them and their motherhood, thus preventing them from
participating in making an informed choice. Despite
the fog of their despair and helplessness, some women
recognized that when adults denied them motherhood
and their babies, it was about power over one who is
less socioeconomically and sociopolitically influential
in society. As a result of their lack of status power, the
only choice was to conform to the enormous societal
pressures of the middle-class values of the time. Middleclass parents were quick to agree that the only choice for
their young daughters problem was relinquishment and
adoption. Solinger added:

When daughters became objects of their own parents
terror in the era of family togetherness, they felt
absolutely resourceless. Mothers and fathers worked

92

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

quickly to erase these girls as social actors; what the


daughters wanted for themselves was completely
irrelevant. (p. 72)
Hence, there was no other acceptable solution than for
pregnant girls to go along with family wishes or risk
being permanently ostracized from family members and
their communities.13
Consequences of Birth Mothers
Lack of Choice

The legacy cast upon birthmothers in the
closed adoption system left deep scars in their lives,
especially considering the common societal myth and
psychological split cast upon a young girls psyche after
she surrendered her child:

Following this course, their daughter would be
given a second chance. Her pregnancy would
effectively be erased from her history and she could
expect to go back to a normal life, as if it had never
happened. Without her child she would be able to
marry a decent man and have other children. She
would not have to live with her mistake. (Fessler,
2006, p. 148)
Unraveling this myth forty years later from accounts
of women who tell stories that force us to gauge the
relevance of biology when biology is denied (Solinger,
2001, p. 75), Fessler (2006) found that surrendering a
child for adoption was described by many of the women
she interviewed as the event that defined their identities
and shaped their entire adult lives. Despite the ideal
hope for a better future, their experience felt like a
lifelong, psychologically wrenching burden to them. In
a study by Winkler and Van Keppel (1984), birthparents
regarded the surrender of a child to adoption as the
most stressful experience of their lives. Young unwed
mothers were made to carry the full emotional weight
of circumstances that were the inevitable consequence
of a society that denied teenage sexuality, failed to hold
young men equally responsible, withheld sex education
and birth control from unmarried women, allowed
few options if pregnancy occurred, and considered
unmarried women unfit to be mothers (Fessler, 2006).
Many women who went through this experience have
said that when women lack such fundamental controls,
their lives can be ruined (Solinger, 2001).

Studies have concluded that relinquishing
mothers are at risk for long-term physical, psychological,

Topfer

and social repercussions (Askren & Bloom, 1999).


The pain of the surrender remains as intense as if the
adoption just happened yesterday and intensifies over
time (Winkler & Van Keppel, 1984). Relinquishing ones
infant can become such as intense experience that the
loss has been likened as a form of trauma (Fessler, 2006)
and PTSD (Verrier, 2003). Cornell (2005) wrote that the
closed adoption system unfortunately blocks any hope
for the recovery from this trauma (p. 21) due to the legally
enforced, absolute cut of a birthmother from her child.
Not only is the closed adoption system to blame for these
womens trauma but also many of the younger women
who were sent to a maternity home, such as the Florence
Crittenton home for unwed mothers,14 confirmed that
it was a traumatic experience for them (Fessler, 2006).
Solinger (2001) depicted one birthmothers experience:


Due to this lack of privilege, a birthmothers
grief becomes exacerbated, and sometimes chronic.
In her qualitative study, Davis (1994) found that all

15 birthmothers she interviewed experienced a lack of


support and encouragement from others for the need
to grieve following the relinquishment of their infants.
The loss they face continued to intensify over time and
had similarities to the loss experienced after a death.
However, with death there is closure, but with adoption
there is no end to the loss, and thus, no closure to the
loss experience (Silverstein & Kaplan, 1982). As a result
of having no closure for the loss of their children, many
of the women faced depression, lost their jobs, and had
difficulties in their relationships because, as Solinger
(2001) candidly wrote, dignity and independence are,
in fact, the life enhancing ingredients that tend to be
incompatible with relinquishing a child (p. 23).
Ramifications of the Closed System
upon Adoptees

Despite the intention to erase the stigma of
adoptees pasts to insure their equal status and treatment
among their nonadopted legitimate offspring (Brodzinsky,
1990), some of the psychological problems observed in
adult adoptees appear to be directly related to the secrecy,
anonymity, and sealed records of a closed adoption system
(Baran & Pannor, 1990; Lifton, 1994). Ultimately, the
closed system diminishes what leading adoption expert
and adoptee Lifton (1994) wrote are the civil rights of
adult adoptees. She stated that adoptees are second class
citizens (Lifton, 2010, n.p.) due to a large majority of
adult adoptees in the United States who are denied access
to their original birth certificates.15 Additionally, adult
adoptees who are denied access to information related to
their births and adoptions experience potentially serious
negative consequences to their physical and mental health
(Baran & Pannor, 1990; Evan B. Donaldson Adoption
Institute, 2007; Lifton, 1994).

Aside from denying adoptees full access to
information regarding their biological origins,16 the
message cast upon birthmothers was that they should
feel grateful that other women could mother their
children better, which was translated into the message to
adoptees that they were chosen, picked, or special
for being adopted and that their adoptions were no big
deal (Brodzinsky, Schecter, & Henig, 1992). Another
message sent to adoptees was that speaking about their
biological origins was forbidden territory (Hartman &
Laird, 1990, p. 236).

These attitudes imparted within the closed
adoption system encourage a more secretive and avoidant
communication style among adoptive parents. It was, and

Psychospiritual Development of Female Adoptees

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 93

I left my heart and soul, as well as my baby, in that drab


little institution. I left my youth, my innocence...my
trust, my laughter, and my love....Pieces of that girl
who entered the Home in August, 1962 are still
missing today....I have not been and never will be
whole again. (p. 79)
Another birthmothers words capture the experience that
many of the women identify with deeply: I was a singing
teacher, but I lost my voice after the relinquishment.
Losing my voice was the result of almost dying of a
broken heart (p. 79).

Because surrendering a child is not commonly
recognized as a loss by society (Silverstein & Kaplan,
1982), birthmothers were not permitted to talk about or
properly grieve the loss of their child. From a feminist
perspective, this protection from public exposure of the
adopting mothers failure to be a woman because she
has failed to meet the symbolic meaning of womanhood
demands erasure of the birth mother (Cornell, 2005,
p. 24) as well as erasure of her voice. Regardless of the
reason for the underlying societal motive:

When a young woman surrenders an infant for
adoption we set her apart from us. Sworn to secrecy
and admonished to return to school or work as
though she had been on holiday or helping with an
unfortunate relative, the privilege of grief is denied.
(Brodzinsky, 1990, p. 311)

sometimes currently is, common for adoptive parents to


treat their adoptive children as if they were their own
biological kin (Brodzinsky, 2005). Given fictitious and
nonexplicit narratives of adopted childrens stories, many
adoptees experience a ruptured (Hartman & Laird,
1990, p. 236) continuity of personhood and identity.
Consequently, adoptees must weave a new self-narrative
out of the fragments of what was, what might have
been, and what is (Lifton, 1994, p. 259). They are on
a quest to search for the missing parts of their narrative,
for their origins, for meaning, and for a coherent sense
of self (Lifton, 2007). This usually manifests in an
adoptees search to reunite with her biological origins.
The meaning of the word search is important to adoptees,
whether they have made contact, have had reunion with
their biological family, or have no desire to search for
their biological family. Schooler (1995) stated:
The word search for an adopted person carries with
it multiple layers of meaning. The word search for
many is not limited to its literal meaning of a physical
effort to make a connection. The meaning expands
to include all that is part of the adoptees quest, for
it is an emotional, psychological, and spiritual quest.
(p. 24)

The quest for an authentic identity among
adoptees can reinforce feelings of disconnectedness
(Bertocci & Schecter, 1991; Jaggard, 2001; Lifton, 1994;
Nickman, 1985; Verrier, 1993). Schecter and Bertocci
(1990) wrote that the lack of connection can become so
intense that it can be equivalent to starvation (p. 85).
Adoptee and adoption researcher Jaggard (2001) made
a similar conclusion in her qualitative study with 14
midlife female adoptees. Jaggard suggested that female
adoptees disconnection was deeply rooted (p. 158)
and contained spiritual components. In addition, she
concluded that connectedness is not solely due to the
adoptive family relationship but that it comes from a
physical, emotional, and psychological genetic core or
template (p. 159). This conclusion is also highlighted
by adoptive mother and clinician Verrier (1993), who
stated that a deep identification with the adoptees
ancestors genes are stamped into every cell (p. 102) of
an adoptees body.
A Proposed Psychospiritual Developmental Model
for Female Adoptees
ased upon the narratives of other adoptees and my
own experience, I propose that a developmental

94

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

model is relevant for understanding the psychospiritual


journey of female adoptees. The psychospiritual process
of development and integration for female adoptees
involves what transpersonal theorist Levin (1985)
described as a retrieval of ones body.17 For women, it
becomes a retrieval and awakening of ones feminine
body, thus leading to the embodiment of the conscious
feminine (Zweig, 1990); this entails the embodiment
of the conscious virgin, mother, and crone. Female
Buddhist writer Feldman (1990/2005) echoed that
awakened women are embodied women and that the
very first step toward ending estrangement from their
true selves is reclaiming their bodies. She stated, We do
not begin on a spiritual path divorced from our sexuality,
or lives: all of this we bring with us (p. 5).
A female adoptee searching for wholeness
brings all aspects of her adoption experience and story
with her on the journey of awakening her feminine
body: an extreme longing for connection (Jaggard,
2001), cumulative losses (Axness, 1998), and broken
narratives (Lifton, 1994). She courageously begins to
inquire and examine these areas, which is the forward
arc of the hermeneutical circle, thus transforming her
lenses and perspective, representing the returning arc of
the hermeneutical circle. Analysis, conscious embodied
spiritual practices such as meditation and yoga, and
journaling can all activate the process of transformation
and growth. Eventually, her mother projections are deeply
revealed and the most painful feelings of abandonment
and rejection can be dealt with. Then, a female adoptees
feminine wisdom, including her conscious crone, mother,
and virgin, can be born from her conscious suffering
(Woodman, 1990, p. 99), and she can discover and
retrieve her forbidden feminine body amidst her primal
wound and the smothering conspiracy of silence built
into the closed system (Lifton, 1994, p. 10). The process
becomes a lifelong journey for adoptees.

As a female adoptee walks into what fellow
female adoptee and child expert Axness (1998) described
as the emptiness inside an adoptees self, she can feel
her suffering from the separation from her biological
and feminine origins deeply and then grieve her loss.
Feldman (1990/2005) added that any spiritual journey
asks a woman to cultivate a deep, inner aloneness as the
first step in reclaiming inner wholeness. The journey for
inner wholeness happens when a female adoptee can sit
in her inner aloneness, listen, and be with the deep inner
voices of her adoption experience. Her hidden Forbidden

Topfer

Self can be retrieved, and a coherence of her experience


and story can be integrated.

Transpersonal theorist Washburn (1995) wrote
about this process of human awakening and development
using a transpersonal perspective. In his view, development
begins in an original dynamic, creative, spontaneous
source out of which the ego emerges, from which the
ego then becomes estranged, to which, during the stages
of ego transcendence, the ego returns, and with which,
ultimately, the ego is integrated (p. 4). This process
highlights what Zweig (1990) called the life-enhancing
potential for more transpersonal values in a persons life
versus the destructiveness of egocentric values (p. 5). She
wrote:

For women, whose source of ego identity is our
mothers, this developmental process unfolds in one
way. We identify with our mothers as our origin,
both biologically and psychologically. So, to be a
woman, we need to face the paradox of breaking the
personal identification yet remaining grounded in
the Feminine. (p. 5)

and flexible enough to receive the masculine spirit.


She is the consciousness that radiates through matter
and lives after matter returns to dust. (p. 105)

Only then can a woman provide her adult self with the
essential qualities that she may have missed as a child.
Those qualities will nourish and sustain her feminine
embodied growth and development.

A female adoptees process of retrieving an authentic
relationship with her feminine body or what Woodman
(1990) called a womans embodied spirituality (p. 98)
can unfold as a female adoptee makes her own identity
distinct from her birth mother, from her adoptive mother,
and from the closed adoption system that holds the
virgin, crone, and mother unconscious. It is essential that
a female adoptee re-mother herself (Zweig, 1990) and
develop the mature feminine and the conscious virgin
(Woodman, 1990, p. 105). Part of this re-mothering is
consciously working through and owning responsibility
for her mother projections and fantasies in order to arrive
at what Woodman referred to as a females embodied
conscious virgin. Woodman described the conscious
virgin:

The virgin lives her own essence. Like the virgin
forest, she contains the seeds of countless possibilities.
She reflects the Divine Feminine that resides in and
resonates through all the senses of our body so long
as we live on earth. She is the maturing and mature
soul child, the feminine container, strong enough


Woodman (1990) stated that a womans journey
to find her embodied spirituality and to bring the
birth of the virgin in her life entails finding those lost
parts, standing to their truth, and living them in our
everyday life (p. 99). Upon the adoptees realization of
her biological heritage, also named by Lifton (1994) as
her Forbidden Self (p. 56),18 the conscious mother and
virgin can embark upon a more authentic relationship.
The conscious crones voice is thus heard, understood,
and embodied.

A female adoptee can differentiate her feminine
nature from the closed adoption legacies of secrecy
and silence when she discovers, listens, celebrates, and
connects to the internal rhythms of her forbidden
body. She had not grown up connected with the bodies
of her biological mother, and any other biological
feminine family members such as her sisters, aunts, and
grandmothers. Thus, how can a female adoptee begin
her psychospiritual journey that is necessary to retrieve
her conscious feminine body when her biological body
and its rhythms were not reflected and mirrored back
to her by her biological feminine ancestry? Feminist
writer Thanas (1997) claimed that women in general do
not know how to listen to their own natural bodies. An
adoptees task of deeply listening to her biological body
and aligning with its natural rhythms is challenged with
her Forbidden Self trapped within the closed adoption
system. Considering this, what are the tasks that a female
adoptee needs to accomplish in order for her to be able to
deeply listen and connect with her biological body when
she never had it reflected back to her?

Lifton (1994) wrote that the task for adoptees
is to retrieve their Forbidden Self versus succumbing to
the Artificial Self (p. 50), who was created out of the
false messages and myths within the closed adoption
system. The retrieval of the Forbidden Self happens
when a female adoptee can distinguish, identify, and
pursue inquiry into her adoptive identity distinct from
her biological and Forbidden Self. From this practice
of deeply listening and being mindful of her Forbidden
Self and body, she creates more openness and receptivity
to the conscious feminine. The possibility of more
connection to her own internal rhythms arises when
she relates to her birth mother and adoptive mother

Psychospiritual Development of Female Adoptees

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 95

without unconscious projections and fantasies of them.


If a practice of mindfulness and deeply listening is not
sustained, her projections and fantasies will succumb
to the closed adoption systems psychic split and loyalty
binds that created her Artificial Self. Her lifelong work
of finding wholeness is both psychological and spiritual.

Another way for a female adoptee to retrieve her
Forbidden Self and biological body is by listening to the
authentic stories of birthmothers who surrendered their
children for adoption. Deeply listening and connecting
with their stories creates a new perspective and deepens
her feminine bodily receptacle for the female adoptees
voice to be expressed and heard.

In my personal experience, my feminism was
deeply illuminated as birth mothers shared their authentic
stories. My deeper feminist perspective became apparent
as my adoption experience was intimately connected with
birth mothers experiences. At last, my adoption identity
became more fully embodied and integrated, allowing
open expression and inquiry into my adoption experience.
Jungian feminist writer Young-Eisendrath (1990) stated
that the adoption of a feminist perspective awakens an
appreciation for the fact that beliefs influence perception,
and that whatever one takes to be realwhat one assumes
to be really true (p. 160) of ones self and of others
is true from ones vantage point at that moment. This
feminist awakening and its appreciative stance reflect
the forward arc of a hermeneutical cycle; one begins
to own and take responsibility for ones projections. As
previously stated, for a female adoptee it is her projections
upon her birthmother and adoptive mother. She can
begin to dissect her known lenses as they currently reveal
themselves. A practice of mindfulness with meditation,
journaling, and/or analysis helps support the process of
establishing ones current lenses.

The returning arc of the hermeneutical cycle
is when one compares fresh and new information with
ones established lenses. In my hermeneutical process, I
was given the choice of either rejecting the new feminist
perspective that saw how my birthmother was given little
to no choice about relinquishing me, or accepting this
perspective. I noticed that when I tried on and was
open to this new perspective, it provided me tremendous
relief from my suffering and guilt. Integration quickly
happened as I felt held and supported by other feminists
and adoptees. My familiar and unconscious lenses from
the closed adoption system that I had been carrying
around and felt chained to for my entire life had been

96

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

challenged and thus a deeper feminine receptacle was


created to allow my forbidden voice and body to feel
stronger and more alive.

As I reflect upon my experience, this particular
cycle of the larger hermeneutical process toward finding
wholeness liberated part of my Forbidden Self from the
unconscious and oppressive bonds of the closed system,
within which my birthmother is still confined. I gained
an embodied felt sense and connection of autonomy and
strength from my newly expanded conscious feminine
container. Young-Eisendrath (1990) stated:

Until a woman is offered a feminist explanation
of her felt condition of personal inadequacy, from
a theory that accounts for the function of gender
stereotypes and the reality of female experiences,
she is necessarily in a double bind about her own
strengths and authority. (p. 160)
This conscious feminine strength and authority is in
radical opposition to the unconscious mother that is
created in the closed adoption system. The unconscious
mother alienates and disconnects the Forbidden part
of the Self from the biological and adoptive mother,
and from the female adoptees feminine and feminist
expression of voice and body. Thus, a feminist perspective
helps support the adoptees psychospiritual development
and growth.
Voice as a Path to an Adoptees
Psychospiritual Development and Awakening
Woodman (1990) explained a womans path
of self-realization is the heros journey out of the
unconscious, like the dragon slayer on the way to finding
personal power. For a female adoptee, her dragons are
the ghosts (Lifton, 1994, p. 11) of the closed adoption
system that continue to haunt not only her feminine
body and voice but also those of her birth mother and
adoptive mother. When she develops a new perspective
and voice that is aligned with other adoptees and
feminists, one which connects the cultural movement
with a personal meaning system, a female adoptee can
consciously discovery the hidden ghosts that have caused
her great suffering. She then has more internal room to
allow her Forbidden Self to exist. The conscious virgin,
mother, and crone can be awakened.

As stated, a female adoptees psychospiritual
journey provides an opportunity for her to reclaim what
was lost and forgotten in the closed adoption systems
belittling attitudes by consciously embracing her feminist

Topfer

expression of voice. In female writer Gilligans (1993)


study on womens psychological descriptions of identity
and moral development, voice takes on an embodied and
lived experience quality in the women she interviewed.
Voice describes when people speak about the core of the
self. Gilligan wrote: Voice is natural and also cultural.
It is composed of breath and sound, words, rhythm,
and language. And voice is a powerful psychological
instrument and channel, connecting inner and outer
worlds (p. xvi). Whether it is a womans own voice or
the voice of other feminists, the instrument of voice is
always there to access more development and growth
toward finding wholeness.

For female adoptees, the catalyst of discovering
their feminist voice, thus expanding and deepening their
embodied feminine container, begins as a deep inner
longing to find a sense of belonging and connection with
something outside of themselves; predominantly, the
longing manifests in the search for their biological family.
Despite the many successes or failures that can be involved
in reunion with her biological family, a female adoptees
feelings of inner disconnection can continue because
she searches for love and acceptance from relationships
outside of herself. She has not begun the conscious
journey of unraveling, disengaging, and distinguishing
her own sense of self from the Great Mother archetype
and its gripping unconscious projections and fantasies
regarding her birth mother and adoptive mother that are
held in her psyche. The adoptee feels a groundlessness
and lack of security due to the primal wound and due to
the false messages in the closed adoption system. Neither
sustain nor nourish a conscious feminine container, body,
and voice.

Spiritually, the adoptee cannot connect with the
voice of her inner mystic (Feldman, 1990/2005, p.
34). Buddhist writer Feldman stated that the awaited
inner mystic voice for women is discovered when a
woman asks questions that are crucial to her growth and
freedom. Because the unconscious gripping forces of the
unchallenged Great Mother have smothered her feminine
voice, the adoptees feminine growth and freedom is lost.
With a practice that cultivates mindfulness, however, the
adoptees inner mystic can be discovered and can begin
to examine, question, and discard the various social and
spiritual values that undermine and limit her sense of
worthiness, acceptance, and sense of self. A feminist
lense and perspective held in mindful awareness can
cultivate deeper questions about the closed systems

patriarchal motivations and the ramifications it has


upon the adoptees psyche and spirit. Hence, the female
adoptees inner mystic is the wise conscious crone that
questions and is courageous enough to speak out and
be heard. Her new awareness can cast light upon her
invisible loyalty binds between her adoptive parents, her
biological parents, and the closed adoption system, thus
freeing her of them.

Moreover, Gilligan (1993) found that in
womens psychological development, a womans identity
becomes a lie when girls and women alter their voices to
fit themselves into images of relationship and goodness
carried by false feminine voices. The closed adoption
system carries this false lie with the adoptees identity of
the Artificial Self and the image that the adoptee is the
natural child of her adoptive parents. The legislature and
laws reinforce this lie by endorsing shame and secrecy
with the concealment of her original birth certificate.
This creates massive confusion and doubt within
the adoptee, and furthers self-defeat when she is not
granted access to her identifying birth information. The
closed adoption systems voice conveys she is a secondclass citizen and not an embodied woman who can
know, embrace, and connect to her biological heritage.
Despite these false messages, she can disengage with
nonjudgmental awareness the psychic and spiritual lies
of the closed adoption system when she engages in her
embodied spiritual practice, such as in yoga, meditation,
analysis, and journaling. The conscious crones voice
replaces the lies of the closed adoption system and helps
support the female adoptees deep attunement to her
embodied biological rhythms.

Once the adoptee cultivates an attunement
to her feminine biological rhythms, this can deepen
psychospiritual awakening and embodied feminine
growth within her. She is listening to the voice of her
authentic and conscious feminine inner mystic. Shuttle
and Redgrove (1978) reflected this by writing that if
mental experiences reflect, as they often seem to, bodily
ones, then there are many possibilities of experience
if one opens up to ones own bodily rhythms. Due to
the psychological reflecting the somatic, when a female
adoptee aligns herself with her feminine inner mystic and
voice, an authentic and conscious narrative regarding
the impact of the closed adoption system can take form.
Her mental ability can make more sense of her adoptive
experience as deeper and deeper recesses of the psyche
and spirit unfold. Through this process, a female adoptee

Psychospiritual Development of Female Adoptees

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 97

can connect to her feminine container and body and


nonjudgmentally acknowledge the difficulties that her
adoptive status has had in her life.

With her new found freedom, awareness, and
voice, a female adoptees adoption story can become more
fully integrated with compassion because she has been
able to gather up the missing pieces of her Forbidden Self
with her own fecundity. Thus, her adoptive identity is no
longer hanging in the shadows of the closed adoption
systems outdated patriarchal framework. Her voice can
tell her full adoption story without the weight of shame
and secrecy. Her adoption story and its effects upon her
can be one of coherence, curiosity, and inquiry. She is
now on the conscious path of awareness. Jungian writer
Hancock (1990) wrote about a woman arriving home to
her feminine consciousness. In her words:

When a woman carries her conscious virginal girl
across the threshold into womanhood, when she
speaks in her own idiom as naturally as she mouths
the language of the patriarchy, when she hits on the
deepest truth about who she is and tells her story of
becoming whole, she gains access to a world that is
as fertile and abundant as the most verdant gardens.
(p. 63)

For a female adoptee, her practice of mindfulness
and a hermeneutical circle of inquiry help her gain access
to the world of her authentic biological self, and feminine
body, container, and voice, all of which are fertile and
abundant in her search for wholeness.
References
Addison, R. D. (1989). Grounded interpretative research:
An investigation of physician socialization. In M. J.
Packer & R. B. Addison (Eds.), Entering the circle:
Hermeneutical investigation in psychology (pp. 39-57).
Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Anderson, R. (2004). Intuitive inquiry: An epistemology
of the heart for scientific inquiry. The Humanistic
Psychologist, 32, 307-341.
Askren, H. A. & Bloom, K. C. (1999). Postadoptive
reactions of the relinquishing mother: A review.
Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic, and Neonatal
Nursing, 28(4), 395-400.
Axness, M. W. (1998). What is written on the heart:
Primal issues in adoption. Los Angeles, CA: Adoption
Insight.

98

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Baran, A., & Pannor, R. (1990). Open adoption. In


D. M. Brodzinsky & M. D. Schechter (Eds.), The
psychology of adoption (pp. 316-331). New York, NY:
Oxford University Press.
Bertocci, D., & Schechter, M. D. (1991). Adopted adults
perception of their need to search: Implications for
clinical practice. Smith College Social Studies, 52,
179-186.
Brodzinsky, A. B. (1990). Surrendering an infant for
adoption: The birthmother experience. In D. M.
Brodzinsky & M. D. Schechter (Eds.), The psychology
of adoption (pp. 295-315). New York, NY: Oxford
University Press.
Brodzinsky, D. M. (2005). Reconceptualizing
openness in adoption: Implications for theory,
research, and practice. In D. M. Brodzinsky &
J. Palacios (Eds.), Psychological issues in adoption:
Research and practice (pp. 145-166). Westport,
CT: Praeger.
Brodzinsky, D. M., Schechter, M. D., & Henig, R. M.
(1992). Being adopted: The lifelong search for self. New
York, NY: Doubleday.
Cornell, D. (2005). Adoption and its progeny: Rethink
ing family law, gender, and sexual difference. In
S. Haslanger & C. Witt (Eds.), Adoption matters:
Philosophical and feminist essays (pp. 19-46). Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press.
Davis, C. E. (1994). Separation loss in relinquishing
birthmothers. The International Journal of Psychiatric
Nursing Research, 1(2), 63-70.
Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute. (2002).
2002 national adoption attitudes survey highlights.
Retrieved from http://www.adoptioninstitute.org/
survey/surveysummary.htm
Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute. (2007). For the
records: Restoring a legal right for adult adoptees. New
York, NY: Author.
Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute. (2009). Beyond
culture camp: Promoting healthy identity formation in
adoption. New York, NY: Author
Feldman, C. (2005). Woman awake: Women practicing
Buddhism. Berkeley, CA: Rodmell Press. (Original
work published 1990 as Woman awake: Celebrating
Womens Wisdom)
Fessler, A. (2006). The girls who went away: The hidden
history of women who surrendered children for adoption
in the decades before Roe v. Wade. New York, NY:
Penguin Press.

Topfer

Fessler, A. (2010, April). Screening of A Girl Like Her (in


production) and discussion with filmmaker Ann Fessler.
In M. Novy (Chair), Keynote Address. Symposium
conducted at the meeting of the Alliance for the Study
of Adoption and Culture, Cambridge, MA.
Gilligan, C. (1993). In a different voice: Psychological
theory and womens development. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Hancock, E. (1990). The girl within: Touchstone for
womens identity. In C. Zweig (Ed.), To be a woman:
The birth of the conscious feminine (pp. 55-63). New
York, NY: Putnam.
Hartman, A., & Laird, J. (1990). Family treatment after
adoption: Common themes. In D. M. Brodzinsky &
M. D. Schechter (Eds.), The psychology of adoption (pp.
221-239). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Howard, J. A., Smith, S. L., & Deuodes, G. (2010). For
the records II: An examination of the history and impact
of adult adoptee access to original birth certificates. New
York, NY: Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute.
Jaggard, S. I. (2001). The adoption puzzle: Bringing
pieces together at mid-life (Doctoral dissertation).
Dissertation Abstracts International, No. 9999045).
Lauber, L. (2010, April). A love diverted: A birth
mother speaks. In M. Homans (Chair), Keynote
Address. Symposium conducted at the meeting of
the Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture,
Cambridge, MA.
Leighton, K. (2005). Being adopted and being a
philosopher: Exploring identity and the desire to
know differently. In S. Haslanger & C. Witt (Eds.),
Adoption matters: Philosophical and feminist essays
(pp. 146-170). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University.
Levin, D. M. (1985). The bodys recollection of being:
Phenomenological psychology and the deconstruction of
nihilism. London, UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Lifton, B. J. (1994). Journey of the adopted self: A quest for
wholeness. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Lifton, B. J. (2007). The inner life of the adopted child:
Adoption, trauma, loss, fantasy, search, and reunion.
In D. Brodzinsky & J. Palacios (Eds.), Handbook of
adoption: Implications for researchers, practitioners, and
families (pp. 418-424). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Lifton, B. J. (2010, April). The age of search and reunion.
In J. Deans (Chair), Complications of search, reunion,
& aftermath. Symposium conducted at the meeting
of the Alliance for the Study of Adoption and
Culture, Cambridge, MA.

Miller, B. C., Fan, X., & Grotevant, H. D. (2005).


Methodological issues in using large scale survey
data for adoption research. In D. M. Brodzinsky
& J. Palacios (Eds.), Psychological issues in adoption:
Research and practice (pp. 233-255). Westport, CT:
Praeger.
Nickman, S. L. (1985). Losses in adoption: The need for
dialogue. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 40,
365-398.
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113,93 S. Ct. 705,35 L. Ed. 2d
147 (1973).
Sass, D. A., & Henderson, D. B. (2000). Adoption issues:
Preparation of psychologists and an evaluation of
the need for continuing education. Journal of Social
Distress and the Homeless, 9(4), 349-359.
Schechter, M. D., & Bertocci, D. (1990). The meaning of
the search. In D. M. Brodzinsky & M. D. Schechter
(Eds.), The psychology of adoption (pp. 62-90). New
York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Schooler, J. (1995). Searching for a past: The adopted
adults unique process of finding identity. Colorado
Springs, CO: Pinon Press.
Severson, R. (1994). Adoption: Philosophy and experience.
Dallas, TX: House of Tomorrow.
Silverstein, D. N. & Kaplan, S. (1982). Lifelong issues in
adoption. Retrieved from <http://www.adopting.org/
silveroze/html/lifelong_issues_in_adoption.html>
Shuttle, P., & Redgrove, P. (1978). The wise wound: The
myths, realities, and meanings of menstruation. New
York, NY: Grove Press.
Solinger, R. (2001). Beggars and choosers: How the politics
of choice shapes adoption, abortion, and welfare in the
United States. New York, NY: Hill & Wang.
Thanas, K. (1997). Hearing the voice of the body. In L.
Friedman & S. Moon (Eds.), Being bodies: Buddhist
women on the paradox of embodiment (pp. 43-47).
Boston, MA: Shambhala.
Verrier, N. N. (1993). The primal wound: Understanding
the adopted child. Baltimore, MD: Gateway Press.
Verrier, N. N. (2003). The adopted child grows up:
Coming home to self. Baltimore, MD: Gateway
Press.
Washburn, M. (1995). The ego and the dynamic ground: A
transpersonal theory of human development. Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press.
Winkler, R., & Van Keppel, M. (1984) Relinquishing
mothers in adoption: Their long term adjustment.
Melbourne, Australia: Institute of Family Studies.

Psychospiritual Development of Female Adoptees

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 99

Woodman, M. (1990). Conscious femininity: Mother,


virgin, crone. In C. Zweig (Ed.), To be a woman:
The birth of the conscious feminine (pp. 98-110). New
York, NY: Putnam.
Young-Eisendrath, P. (1990). Rethinking feminism, the
animus, and the feminine. In C. Zweig (Ed.), To be
a woman: The birth of the conscious feminine (pp. 158168). New York, NY: Putnam.
Zweig, C. (Ed.) (1990). To be a woman: The birth of the
conscious feminine. New York, NY: Putnam.

1. The adoption triad members include adoptee,


adoptive parents, and biological parents. Each one
experiences loss at the hub of the adoption wheel,
then rejection, guilt/shame, grief, identity, intimacy,
and control (Silverstein & Kaplan, 1982).
2. The psychodynamics of an adoptive family life are
often overlooked by professionals (Lifton, 1994). How
ever, Sass and Henderson (2000) conducted research
with over two hundred practicing psychologists,
asking them to assess their preparedness in treating
members of the adoption triad. Only 22% responded
as well prepared or very well prepared to work
with adoption issues, while 23% responded they
were not very prepared (p. 355). The researchers
concluded that psychologists need more education
concerning adoption triad members, considering
that a large proportion of adoption members seek
psychological services and are affected by the
dynamics of adoption.
3. One major distinction falls between domestic and
international adoption. Shortly after World War II,
a large number of Americans began to adopt from
abroad, reaching out to war orphans, those in poverty,
and others facing unmanageable social conditions.
To date, South Koreans comprise the largest group
of internationally adopted persons in the U.S., and
adoption from South Korea into this country has a
longer history than from any other nation (Evan B.
Donaldson Adoption Institute, 2009). Adoptions
from Russia have increased over the years.
Within the category of domestic adoptions,
there are several different kinds: stepparent,
second-parent, foster care, private and
independent. Stepparent is the most common
form. Second-parent adoptions provide a way, at

least in some states, for same-sex couples to adopt.


With private and independent adoptions, there
is the choice of closed or open adoption systems.
While this article focuses on the psychospiritual
ramifications of the closed adoption system, it
is worth mentioning briefly the open system of
adoption because contemporary adoptions often
occur within an open system, with varying degrees
of openness. An open adoption system is a process
in which the two parties meet, exchange identifying
information, and the birth parents have some degree
of contact with their expected adopted child. In
some states, openness arrangements are legally
binding, in other states they are not. Openness of
communication between the parties can be a fluid
process and system, leaving greater and lesser degrees
of contact between the parties (D. M. Brodzinsky,
personal communication, February 16, 2010).
4. Despite public and scholarly opinion, there still
remains considerable controversy regarding the
impact of open adoptions on the various members
of an adoption triad (Brodzinsky, 2005).
5. It has long been accepted that adoptees live with a
dual identity, yet if they have knowledge about their
biological origins, it positively contributes to their
emotional and psychological well-being (Baran &
Pannor, 1990).
6. In an updated report by Howard, Smith, and
Deuodes (2010), the authors wrote that barring
adopted adults from access to their original birth
certificates wrongly denies them a right enjoyed by
all others in our country and is not in their best
interests for personal and medical reasons.
7. A small group of unwed mothers who relinquished
their children formed the organization called
Concerned United Birthparents (CUB) in 1976
in order to reconstruct themselves and claim
their personal strength. They gathered together to
provide mutual support for birthparents. Today,
CUB members include birthparents, adoptees,
adoptive parents, and others affected by adoption.
Their ongoing work includes supporting adoption
reform, preventing unnecessary family separations,
and assisting adoption-separated individuals in
search of family members.
8. Roe v. Wade was announced on January 22, 1973.
The ruling was a landmark for changes in adoption
attitudes. The legalization of abortion had a lot to

100 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Topfer

Notes

do with the rise of single mother families (Solinger,


2001). As Baran and Pannor (1990) explained,

9. Solinger (2001) wrote that no one really knows how


many women gave their babies away in adoption before
Roe v. Wade (1973). Estimates suggest numbers in
the neighborhood of a couple of hundred thousand a
year in the 1950s and in much of the 1960s.
10.Cornell (2005) wrote that a birth mother who
was forced to give up her child obviously was not
granted the protection of her right to represent
her own sexuate being (p. 30). Her decision was
thrust upon her either by economic circumstances or
because of the sexual hypocrisy that dominated the
United States in the 1950s and 1960s.
11.Borrowing from Cornells (2005) definition of
patriarchy, the current usage indicates the manner in
which a womans legal identity remains bound with
her duties to the state as wife and mother within the
traditional heterosexual family. Relinquishment has
historically been enforced and felt by many to be
necessary in the protection of these family values
(p. 21). Cornell demanded a full release of women
from this legal identity that defines and limits what
it means to be a woman.
12.This was true for both black and white unwed
mothers, yet black and white unwed mothers were
treated very differently from each other by their
families and communities, by social agencies, and by
the government. After the war, a black single mother
typically stayed within her family and community
and kept her child to raise herself, often with the
help of her family.
13.The intense social pressures that families felt during the
1950s and 1960s and the stigma associated with unwed
pregnancy have waned dramatically over the last forty
years. The same language used today, such as selfish
and incomprehensible, to describe the women who

initiate adoption of their own child is the same


language used forty years ago against young mothers
who did not want to surrender their children.
14.W hen the maternity-home movement began, the
nurses and staff of the homes helped encourage a
mother to bond with her baby with breast-feeding
and would help find mothers employment. However,
after the end of World War II, maternity homes
became a place to sequester pregnant girls until they
could give birth and surrender their children. By the
1950s, the message they sent was one in which an
unwed mothers interests were best served in giving
her child up for adoption. Solinger (2001) stated
that the homes developed a raft of strategies, some
quite coercive, to press white, unwed mothers to
relinquish their babies to deserving (p. 70) couples.
The strategies were astoundingly successful.
15. W hile many states still keep these records sealed, other
states such as Alaska, Kansas, Alabama, Delaware,
Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon, and Tennessee
allow adoptees unconditional access to their original
birth certificates and records when they reach the
age of 18 or 21. An additional 11 states allow adult
adoptees access to their identifying birth certificate
under certain conditions, such as if their adoptions
took place before or after a certain date, or if a birth
parent signed permission for her relinquished child
to have access to his or her identifying information.
16. In the 1970s, through the impact of the Adoptees
Liberty Movement Association (ALMA) and other
organizations, adoptees claimed the right to own
the truth about their origins. They explicitly tied
their causetheir right to search for their biological
parentsto the civil rights movement. By the mid1970s, adoptee liberation (Solinger, 2001, p. 82)
was referred to as a civil right.
17.Levin (1985) also wrote that the retrieval is a
hermeneutical process. He stated, It is no mere
return to bodily life as it was experienced during
early childhood but is rather a regathering of this life
at a higher transpersonal level, a level that integrates
bodily life with our cultural and personal histories
(p. 4).
18.Lifton (1994) coined the terms Forbidden Self
(p. 56) and Artificial Self (p. 50) in the adoption
literature to describe the psychological phenomenon
of an adoptees divided self. She stated the Forbidden
Self is the adoptees self that might have been, had

Psychospiritual Development of Female Adoptees

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 101

Unmarried, pregnant women expressed the


feeling that if they completed the pregnancy,
it was because they planned to keep the baby.
Otherwise, they would terminate the pregnancy.
They began to express the thought that having
a baby and giving it up left lifelong scars. There
was no way, they said, that a woman could truly
resolve relinquishing her child. Keeping a baby
and raising a child as a single parent had become
much more acceptable. (p. 323)

it not been separated from its mother and forced to


split off from the rest of the self. It goes underground
and keeps itself hidden; whereas, the Artificial Self is
artificially created, compliant, and desires to please.
Lifton stated, It is a social construct, an as if self
living as if in a natural family (p. 52). It tries to
structure its psychic reality to match the reality of
the family in which it finds itself. Some adoptees
are so successful at splitting off a part of themselves
that they stop asking questions about the birth
mother early and do not fantasize or dream about
her (p. 53).
About the Author
April E. Topfer is a doctoral student at the Institute of
Transpersonal Psychology. Her dissertation and research
focus on the effects of mindful awareness practices
upon adult female adoptees sense of self, identity, and
relationships. April is on the board of directors for PACER
(Post Adoption Center for Education and Research) and
facilitates a support group for adoptees. She currently
lives in Fairfax, CA and has made successful contact
with her birth aunt.
About the Journal
The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies is a
peer-reviewed academic journal in print since 1981. It is
published by Floraglades Foundation, and serves as the
official publication of the International Transpersonal
Association. The journal is available online at www.
transpersonalstudies.org, and in print through www.
lulu.com (search for IJTS).

102 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Topfer

The Word, the Body, and the Kinfolk:


The Intersection of Transpersonal Thought with Womanist
Approaches to Psychology
Juko Martina Holiday

Institute of Transpersonal Psychology


Palo Alto, CA, USA
Since Alice Walker coined the term womanist in the early 1980s, black feminists and
feminists of color have created a rich, soulful body of scholarly work. Contributions to
womanist thought have emerged primarily in the fields of theology and ethics. The aim
of this article is to put womanism in historical context, examine transpersonal expression
in womanist scholarship, and to articulate the values that inform emotional healing in a
womanist context. Womanism is spiritualized due to its original definition and subsequent
development, making transpersonal thought a resonant fit for unearthing paths to authentic
cultural competency in psychology and other disciplines.
Keywords: womanist, feminist, mujerista, transpersonal thought, depression, African
Americans, somatic experiences, testimony, kinfolk, liberation psychology, engaged spirituality, narrative therapy.

ver three decades ago, Alice Walker (1979/2006)


planted a seed that has blossomed into a
spirited academic movement. She accomplished
this by observing a character in a short story: the wife
never considered herself a feministthough she is, of
course, a womanist. A womanist is a feminist, only
more common (p. 7). Four years later, Walker (1983)
published In Search of our Mothers Gardens: Womanist
Prose, in which she prefaced her work with a more
complete definition:
Womanist:
1. From womanish (opp. of girlish). A black
feminist or feminist of color. From the black folk
expression of mothers to female children You acting
womanish, i.e. like a woman. Usually referring
to outrageous, audacious, courageous or willful
behavior. Wanting to know more and in greater
depth than is considered good for one. Interested
in grown-up doings. Acting grown-up. Being grownup. Responsible, in charge, serious.
2. A woman who loves other women, sexually and/
or non-sexually. Appreciates and prefers womens
culture, womens emotional flexibility (values tears
as natural counterbalance of laughter), and womans

strength. Sometimes loves individual men, sexually


and/or non-sexually. Committed to the survival and
wholeness of the entire people, male and female.
Not a separatist, except periodically for her health.
Traditionally universalist, traditionally capable.
3. Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves
the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves
struggle. Loves the folk. Loves herself. Regardless.
4. Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.
(p. xi)
Walkers (1983) articulation of transpersonal
presence by her inclusion loves the Spirit (p. xi) in her
definition has touched the hearts of several Christian
women theologians, who, in turn, have inspired
scholars in other disciplines. Since the seed was planted,
womanist scholars have been defining and articulating
core principles in their work within the disciplines of
theology (Baker-Fletcher, 2006; Grant, 1989; Riggs,
1994; Williams, 1986/2006), ethics (Floyd-Thomas,
2006b), pedagogy (Lynne, 2006; Sheared, 1994/2006),
nursing science (Banks-Wallace, 2000; Taylor, 1998,
2000), and literary criticism (April, 2003). In psychology,
Lillian Comas-Daz (2007) has worked to clearly
express the active and liberating role spirituality plays

The
Word, theJournal
Body, and
the Kinfolk Studies, 29(2), 2010,
International
Journal of Transpersonal Studies 103
International
of Transpersonal
pp. 103-120

in the lives of women of color, framing it as essential


to the development of womanist psychological theory.
This approach to psychology resists the idea that the
emotional needs of women of color can be met without
foregrounding our values and investigating our lived
experiences for ignored and discounted wisdom.
While most of the early work articulating
this perspective has been done by black women, there
is a mujerista movement (from mujer, Spanish for
woman), which also has roots in the field of theology
(Isasi-Diaz, 1992, 1994). The aim is to articulate a
Latina feminist epistemology, taking into account the
impact of colonization and economic exploitation on
its development. Mujerismo is infused with ideas from
liberation psychology and theology, the work of Gloria
Anzalda (2000, 2002, 1987/2007), and the lived
experience of Latina women.
Womanism has been spiritualized and oriented
toward healing and wholeness from its inception, making
the intersection between womanist and transpersonal
thought particularly interesting to me as a transpersonalist,
a psychotherapist, and a woman of color. By placing
womanism in an historical context, articulating the
values that inform emotional healing from a womanist
perspective, and examining transpersonal expression in
womanist scholarship, it is my hope that the fields of both
transpersonal and womanist studies will be enriched.
This article is divided into three parts. In the
first, I define womanism, explore points of resonance
between womanist and transpersonal thought, and
discuss unique gifts and perspectives derived from
embracing woman of color consciousness. In the second
part, I explore three ideological principles that have
emerged from womanist scholarship. Taken together, they
inform the development of womanist mind, the capacity
to authentically appreciate the complex intersection of
ethnicity, culture, and gender. While a womanist is a
black feminist or feminist of color, the development of
woman of color consciousness, or womanist mind, is
not limited to any particular ethnicity. These principles
may serve as guides for those interested in cultivating
this perspective. The principles are: (a) conscientizaton,
a process of sociospiritual awakening; (b) redemptive
subjectivity; and (c) engaged and liberated spirituality
(Comas-Daz, 2007; Floyd-Thomas, 2006b; Phillips,
2006).

In the third part, I examine the role of word,
body, and kinfolk in womanist approaches to emotional

his poet so truthfully expressed what it means to hold


on to Divine vision in the presence of oppression.
Later in the poem, she described the beauty she finds
in her face, despite the distorted reflection. Womanists
are quite adamant about the reality and importance of
the spiritual world, with less concern for the diversity of
ways that it is conceptualized (Phillips, 2006, p. xxvi).
It is this acknowledgment of the existence, significance,
and influence of that which dwells beyond ourselves that

104 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Holiday

healing. These values represent themes that emerge from


womanist literature and the lived experiences of women
of color in the United States and are in resonance with the
work of womanist scholars in psychology (Comas-Daz,
2007; Comas-Daz & Greene, 1994; Vaz, 2006). While
proposing specific psychotherapeutic interventions is not
within the scope of this paper, word, body, and kinfolk
provide strong theoretical roots for the development of
therapeutic practices that incorporate (a) recognition of
the importance of narrative and testimony as recognized
paths to emotional healing, (b) re-possessing and
using the body as an ally for the end of suffering, and
(c) understanding the importance of community and
context in the process of restoration (Asante, 1984;
Nelson & Prilleltensky, 2005; Young-Minor, 1997).

As these womanist thoughts about healing
surface from the literature onto these pages, my heart
dances; I begin to reframe my experience in a context
of my own creation, one that values my culture, deeply
appreciates my constraints and opportunities, and
celebrates woman in me. My framework for studying
and understanding psychology broadens to include a
context of my own creation, one that values my culture,
deeply appreciates my constraints and opportunities, and
celebrates woman in me. I acknowledge the limitations
of mainstream paradigms, becoming mindful of how
omitting spirituality and neglecting deeper inclusivity
limits the capacity of traditional psychology to fully
address my needs as a woman of color. This is the process
of conscientizaton in action. I gently tend to the ground
of my womanist heart, this piece of earth all my own.
Seeds are sown, blossoms grow; my bent back straightens,
I slowly turn to face the sun.
Womanist and Transpersonal Intersections
The first time I saw my own reflection
Was in the buckle of the boot
That was stepping on my neck...
(Westfield, 2006, p. 209)

separates womanism from other ideological perspectives


and methodological approaches. This focus also serves as
a point of connection to transpersonal thinking. Walker
(1983) included a love of Spirit in her original definition,
and subsequent womanist writing has been infused with
that presence. In the section that follows, I highlight the
early history of womanist scholarship while underscoring
ways in which womanist and transpersonal perspectives
overlap. Despite points of natural resonance, African
American womens perspectives and examination of
racism are widely absent from transpersonal literature.
One of the first scholars to use Walkers (1983)
definition to describe the work she was doing was
Jacquelyn Grant (1989) in her book White Womans Christ
and Black Womans Jesus. Her work was like sunlight for
womanist ground, and a body of womanist theological
scholarship began to emerge after her work was published.
Early womanist scholars were engaged in acts of spiritual
liberation, informed by their experience at the crossroads
between gender and ethnic discrimination. Theology
from this point of view claimed that their experiences
as black women constituted valid data for theological
reflection (Copeland, 2006).
Early womanist scholars re-visioned Biblical
stories (e.g., Hagar in the Old Testament) and theological
constructs (e.g., emphasis on Jesus as Lord and master)
in a context specific to the conditions of African
American women throughout the history of the United
States. Their work was important in that it extroverted
themes and connections between Christian practice and
African American womens lived reality, a perspective not
previously included in the academic canon or considered
a topic of scholarly importance. Williams (1986/2006)
documented the connection African American women
felt to Hagar, an exiled single mother who modeled faith
and survival in the face of oppression. Grant (1989)
examined the tradition among black women to frame
Jesus as divine co-sufferer (p. 212) as opposed to master
or Lord, particularly given the historical usage of Biblical
text by advocates of slavery to justify the institution
and preach unquestioning obedience from their slaves.
Ultimately, the intention of their work was to articulate
and emphasize the connection between faith, the unique
aspects of black womens painful experiences, and their
struggle to manage, rather than be managed by their
suffering (Copeland, 2006, p. 228). This intention
inspired womanist scholars to expand notions of what
constituted a legitimate source of knowledge in a way

that has parallels with methodological innovations in


transpersonal research (Braud, 1998; Braud & Anderson,
1998; Copeland, 2006; Ferrer, 2000).
Both womanist and transpersonal approaches
(a) value lived experience as a valid source of data,
(b) challenge paradigms that privilege mainstream
assumptions (e.g., regarding the validity of including
spirituality in psychology or the study of entheogens),
and (c) offer empowering contexts for experiences
that are often pathologized. Grof (2008) pointed out
that the creation of transpersonal psychology was, in
part, a response to the observation that the practice of
psychology was hampered by its ethnocentricity. It was
formulated and promoted by Western materialistic
scientists, who consider their own perspective to be
superior to that of any other human groups at any time
of history (p. 47). It was clear to early transpersonalists
such as Grof, Marguiles, and Sutitch that this stance led
to a bias that automatically pathologized, devalued, or
ignored a valuable range of human experience, easily
dismissing entire bodies of religious practices and cultural
norms in psychopathological terms (p. 48). While
transpersonalists and womanists might differ in areas of
focus and content, both work to redeem sacred human
experiences from narrow paradigms that cut off valuable
opportunities for expanding human knowledge.

Womanist and transpersonal approaches to
scholarship have several noteworthy points of inter
section. Each field honors transcendent and spiritual
experience. Walsh (1994) outlined the importance of
Maslows (1968/1999) study of peak experiences to the
origination of transpersonal studies. Phillips (2006) and
Keating (2006) observed that while traditional academic
disciplines avoid being spiritualized, womanism openly
acknowledges the transcendent realm.

In addition to an inclusion of the realm of the
spiritual in their work, scholars in both disciplines
often find themselves countering traditional, Western
psychological perspectives that are dismissive of the
narrative of the lived experience. Transpersonal pioneers
were not satisfied with the nature and meaning of
non-ordinary experiences as interpreted by traditional,
Western psychological scholarshipparticularly as
this perspective quite often characterized these states as
possible evidence of delusion or psychosis.

Many transpersonalists engaged with Asian
philosophies, which contained detailed accounts, not
just of peak experiences, but of whole families of peak

The Word, the Body, and the Kinfolk

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 105

experiences and systematic techniques to induce and


sustain them (Walsh, 1994, p. 115). By moving beyond
traditional frameworks, these transpersonal scholars
were rediscovering and reclaiming their own lived
transcendent encounters from a dominant narrative that
had dismissed or pathologized this aspect of human
experience. Eastern spiritual philosophies, meditations,
and practices provided structured containers for
processing and learning about this realm.

For reasons beyond the scope of this paper,
transpersonal scholars have focused heavily on Eastern
practices and philosophies (Myers, 1985), though
Bynum (1992) correctly observed that transcendent
experiences, by different names, are present in all
societies, and in particular, African ones. Because of
the important cultural role organized spiritual practice
has among people in the African Diaspora, black
womens consciousness and ways of knowing have been
heavily informed by encounters with Spirit (Lincoln
& Mamiya, 2003). Many of us have experienced quite
normalized contexts for transcendent experiences in
contrast to Western scholars who pioneered the field of
transpersonal studies. Whether through participation
in the Black Church in the United States or exploration
of other African-influenced traditions such as the Afro
Cuban practice of Santera, transcendent experiences
are often sanctioned by spiritual authority and not
stigmatized by the community. In my own culture,
up close and personal experiences with Spirit were far
from non-ordinary. Transcendence (in the form of being
filled with the Holy Spirit) was part of a normal Sunday
service; it happened every week and was expressed in a
variety of ways.

While the development of both disciplines has
been influenced by embodied transcendent experience, I
am not suggesting that womanists and transpersonalists
translate those experiences into their respective episte
mologies in the same way. Womanist synthesis of the
transcendent has informed an activist stance that
connects political and spiritual liberation, supporting
the liberation of all humankind from all forms of
oppression (Phillips, 2006, p. xxiv). Transpersonal
psychology has moved from an early focus on individual,
beyond-ego experience to wider explorations of human
transformation, consideration of spiritual experience in
social and cultural contexts, the articulation of models of
spiritual development, and the inclusion of transpersonal
perspectives from other disciplines (Ferrer, 2000; Grof,

2008; Walsh, 1994). The transpersonal field, however,


has not remained vigilant about addressing its own
ethnocentricity. Published transpersonal literature has
been heavily skewed toward male authorship. While
there has been minor participation from non-Western
scholars, those voices that do emerge are often overlooked
(Hartelius, Caplan, & Rardin, 2007).

Transpersonalists have the tools to address this
blind spot. A respect in the field for the lived experience
and personal truth can facilitate authentic dialogue about
gender and culturean admittedly complex subject
that can hold a lot of emotional charge. Connection to
a more expansive understanding of human development
provides space to move beyond bias, prejudice, and
passive racism. At the same time, operating from the
assumption of interdependent spiritual connection
can lead to bypassing the difficult work of confronting
that bias. It can be quite tempting to frame serious
consideration of ethnicity and culture as issues that are
irrelevant to the transcendent focus of transpersonalists
work.

The expansive nature of transpersonal thought
has space for the unique sociospiritual work womanists
do, transforming constraint by giving it both political
and psychospiritual meaning. Womanists teach each
other the alchemists secret, or how to turn dirt into
gold; this spiritual transformation enables them to
alchemize their oppression into liberation (ComasDaz & Greene, 1996, p. 17). The result is healing and
increased possibility for well-being. Womanist mind is
informed by transpersonal consciousness, and there is an
undeniable spiritual presence in womanist philosophy.
From inception, womanism has been intertwined with
an acknowledgment of a transpersonal dimension of
experience. The two are bound together by inclusion
of Spirit, the work of early theologians who dared call
themselves womanist, and the prayer I hold in my heart
as I write these words. I engage this connection directly
in the next section by offering a womanist perspective of
the term transpersonal.
A Transpersonal View of Womanist Identity
When I consider the term transpersonal from a womanistoriented perspective, the meaning (a) is understood to
represent a worldview that existed in different forms
before the term was coined in mid-twentieth century
California, (b) expands to include consideration of
the beyond-self here on Earth(Schavrien & Holiday,
2010), and (c) is both vernacular and academic. First, a

106 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Holiday

womanist understands that the transpersonal dimension


of human experience existed and was expressed long
before it was named by scholars. The serious study of
transegoic states, with and without the aid of entheogens,
was not a discovery made by Western scholars (Bynum,
1992; Tedlock, 2005). So a womanist conception
of transpersonal considers the unacknowledged,
unpublished, unconscious body of knowledge that existed
before it grew into the current published canon, which
has mostly been achieved by borrowing heavily from the
forms and customs of Western psychology. I am grateful
for and acknowledge the transformative impact of this
work while remaining aware of its limitations. While
black womens transpersonal experiences have not been
widely published, it does not mean those experiences
do not exist. A womanist engages in the task of filling
in these gaps, working in ways to make sure that the
astonishing omission of her presence in the literature
does not translate into continued bias.
A womanist perspective is mindful that the trans
of transpersonal also means across, not only beyond, and
that reaching across to otherto serve and to learnis
part of our work. This is integrating our beyond self
wisdom with service that is beyond-selfish here on
Earth (Schavrien & Holiday, 2010). Transpersonal
knowing is irrelevant if limited to discourse, so a
womanist stance encourages useful applications in everyday living and curiosity about how the transpersonal
affects the vernacular experiences of common people. The
transpersonal becomes a worldview that is not limited to a
formal, disciplined study of transcendent experience, but
one that is useful for personal and social transformation.
To be clear, these thoughts are not limited or unique
to a womanist perspective. They are dimensions that
have been addressed by other scholars (Bynum, 1992;
Ferrer, 2000; Hartelius, Caplan, & Rardin, 2007). The
intention is to continue to uncover points of resonance
and connection. This is particularly important when
discussing complex and emotional topics, such as race
and power.
My grandmother fought courageous battles
every day, none of which were studied by academics or
written down in a book. Helen Brooks could visually
pass for a white woman and could get work in places
darker-skinned black women could not. Determined to
be truthful, she never lied when she was confronted with
suspicions about her ethnicity. Once, co-workers chided
her about the style of hosiery she was wearing, asking her

why she was wearing Colored womens stockings. Fully


aware that the truth would cost her the job, she stopped
working and put on her coat. I wear Colored womens
stockings because Im Colored, she said, before walking
out the door (H. Brooks, personal communication, 1989).
Helen did not call herself feminist; she never heard the
word womanist. At the same time, she certainly moved
through life with a courageous and audacious heart. She
was a womanist before the word was spoken.
This womanist way of being in the world did not
begin when Walker (1979/2006) finished her final draft
of Coming Apart. One hundred years separate the activism
of Sojourner Truth and that of Fannie Lou Hamer.
Imagine the scores of anonymous women who qualified
as serious, grown-up, and in charge while navigating the
busy intersection of race, gender, and lack of privilege.
Most of these womens stories died with them, excluded
from shaping history, much less psychology.
It is a particularly cruel tool of patriarchy to
rob women of color of our access to historic and mythic
foremothers by acts of erasure and distortion. Yet examples
of audacity and courage survived such as with Alice
Dunbar, Anna J. Cooper, Zora Neale Hurston, and Lydia
Cabrera (hooks, 1981). Their work and the stories of their
lives deepen my understanding of what it means to be
responsible and in charge. These women cleared space for
other Black and Latina feminists who followed, including
author Audre Lorde (1984/2007), politician Shirley
Chisholm (1970/2010), theologian Patricia Hill Collins
(2000), culture theorist bell hooks (1981, 1989, 2003),
political activist Angela Davis (1983), Chicana and queer
theorist Gloria Anzalda (2000, 2002, 2007), and Pulitzer
Prize-winning novelist Alice Walker (1983, 2006).
Anzalda (2000) embodied mujerista spirit
in her work, writing about the unique conditions of
women living at the crossroads of racism, sexism, and
faith. I recall with clarity the first time I heard someone
mention This Bridge Called my Back: Radical Writings
by Women of Color, an anthology Anzalda edited with
Cherrie Moraga (1981/1983). Just hearing the name of
the book evoked a sense of recognition in my soul. The
title she penned summed up some unnamed tension in
mean anger, isolation and confusion I was feeling as
an undergraduate at an Ivy League university in the early
1990s as well as the first person in my immediate family
to go to college. Her articulation of the internal struggle
that paralleled my external ones spoke to some deep
place in me. Her experience as a Tejana woman, stuck

The Word, the Body, and the Kinfolk

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 107

between worlds, touched what I was feeling as a poor,


black-identified woman at an Ivy League school. She
wrote: The struggle is inner: Chicano, indio, American
Indian, mojado, Mexicano, immigrant Latino, Anglo in
power, working class Anglo, Black, Asianour psyches
resemble the border towns and are populated by the same
people (Anzalda, 1987/2007, p. 109). The border towns
she wrote of in this passage are those between Texas and
Mexico, but she purposefully relates that literal space to
the psychic and spiritual borderlands in which women
of color find themselves. In my case, it was the frontera
(border) between my growing identity as a feminist, my
connection to the African American community, and
my position as a woman from a poor family living and
studying among people of privilege.
Near the end of Anzaldas (2000) life, she was
working to expose the concept of race as a social construct
and a tool of patriarchy. Labeling all humans with dark
skin of African descent Black implies a universality
that does not exist. African American experience is
different from African experience, which is different
from a person of African descent living in Jamaica or
Brazil. Her writing challenged racial divisions that are
very deeply embedded in the North American psyche.
Witness, for example, the struggle to apply the correct
racial label to Barack Obama. I am a light-skinned
black-identified woman of mixed parentage and have
been routinely questioned about my racial identity, very
often by strangers. Anzalda (2002) wrote: Of all the
categories we today employ, race is the most destructive.
Race is for sure one of the masters tools, one of the
most insidious tools of all (p. 2). So many terms have
been devised to categorize people: black, white, Hispanic,
Latina, Asian, indigenous, Third World women, women
of color. There are the hyphenations, and there is the
supreme frustration with the seeming need of dominant
culture to ignore or deny the diversity that exists within
these categories. Along with several other scholars in the
African Diaspora (Asante, 1984; Collins, 2000), I do not
capitalize these terms. I use them instead as adjectives,
to describe consciousness and connection to culture as
opposed to literal skin color or actual ethnicity.

I liken the degree of race consciousness in the
United States to a sea of fish who have no idea they are
wet. We are trained to classify a person based on racial
appearance. This leads to an array of assumptions,
generalizations, and openings for distortion. What we
miss in this process is the true richness of culture and

the opportunity to approach ethnicity as only one facet


of identity (Anzalda, 2002). Anzalda and Keating
(2002) framed race as an historical creation by European
men to categorize, define, and control those they viewed
as other. Keating wrote: [Our] approach questions
the terms white, and women of color by showing that
whiteness may not be applied to all whites, as some
possess women-of-color consciousness, just as some women
of color bear white consciousness (p. 2, emphasis
added). I connect this consciousness to Anzaldas
(2007) liminal borderlands by acknowledging the
many sources of suffering that can keep a woman on
the sidelines of power and discourse. Border women are
those who thrive and grow from in-between forgotten
cracks; they are women of multiple identities and live
with varied sources of social constraint.
Grounding in the transpersonal makes it possible to look past the literal and consider that women
who inhabit these borders are not exclusively women of
color. Being a bi-sexual or lesbian woman, an immigrant
woman, a women living with disability, or a women facing
economic or social constraint are all reasons a person (of
any ethnicity) may find herself marginalized. Border
women know who they are. They do not need academics
to tell them about life spent reaching for sun from dry,
narrow growing grounds. There is healing to be found in
continuing to thoughtfully and carefully unmask race as
a social construction. By rejecting rigid categories used to
oppress us, we can find more accurate ways of reflecting
the fullness and complexity of who we are.

Some of the original womanist scholars might not
feel comfortable with the expansions I make here. Karen
Baker-Fletcher (2006) wrote:

108 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Holiday

The definition of womanist is broad and deep,


intentionally left open for interpretation within
certain limits. For example, a womanist is never a
white woman or a white feminist...most simply,
a womanist is a black woman or woman of color
committed to freedom from gender, racial and
economic, planetary and sexual oppression. (p.
221)


Naming and having ownership over what we have created
is important in the African American community, and
I have deep respect for the black women who are the
roots that ground my work. I am not suggesting any
radical shift in the way anyone chooses to identify
herself. However, I am suggesting womanist values are

traditionally universal (Walker, 1983, p. xi). Looking


at this potential conflict through a transpersonal lens
opens up possibility for expansion, not so much about
who calls herself womanist, but in the cultivation of
womanist mind, irrespective of ethnicity. Developing
womanist mind is thinking seriously about the suffering
of those who usually matter least in our society, as
symbolized by poverty-stricken black women (KirkDuggan, 2006, p. 142). Comas-Daz (2007) presented
it as the development of a multicultural brain (p. 16),
one engaged in the promotion of critical consciousness
regarding sociopolitical context and works to transcend
a colonized mentality (p. 16). Cultivating womanist
mind can allow for fuller appreciation of the complex
intersection of culture, ethnicity, and gender. It offers a
path to be fully aware of ones own privilege in relation
to others, locally and globally, and it can create space to
swap stereotypes for deep understanding.
A common criticism of womanist thought is the
focus on Christianity, which has dominated womanist
spiritual writing. Smith (1998) and Harris (2006) have
both pointed out that Walker no longer defines herself as
Christian; she professes an ecospirituality that encompasses
both Pagan and Buddhist practices. Some foremothers
in this field have taken great pains to note that the first
womanists were black and Christian (Riggs, 1994). The
scholarship of these Christian black women shaped this
epistemology, and I have profound respect for their work.
At the same time, I resist any implication that one must
be a Christian woman of African descent to engage in
womanist scholarship, as this would silence the multiplicity
of marginalized womens voices, narratives, and wisdom.
Feminism and womanism have been contrasted
by scholars (Collins, 2000; Comas-Daz, 2007; Williams
1986/2006), a discussion I frame as a continuation of
the challenge feminism has had to be meaningful for
and inclusive of common women. My hope is that
the development of what I call womanist mind can be
useful for transpersonal feminists interested in engaging
in a process of more authentically understanding
what Kimberl Crenshaw (1991) referred to as the
intersectionality of ethnicity, class, and gender. I prefer
the term womanist to black feminist because it connotes
for me a connection to and concern for the state of
women globally, whether they are of African descent or
not. At the same time, there are black feminists who do
not find it necessary to identify as womanist or have not
seen the need for another term (Coleman, 2006).

Walker (1983) has clarified that her intent was


never to frame womanism as better than feminism.
She offered society a new term because the other, black
feminist, did not convey the organic fullness of the spirit
of black women she wanted to describe. She also sought to
find a term that adequately acknowledged a fundamental
difference between the patronizing patriarchal narratives
white women were confronting, as African descended
women in the United States were not historically
stereotyped as weak, incapable of hard labor, or in need
of male protection. She began her definition by calling a
womanist a black feminist or feminist of color (p. xi). As
such, I do not place them in conflict. They are concentric
circles with respect for womanhood at the center, spreading
out an infinite number of times, each encompassing,
embracing, challenging, and informing the other.
Gifts of the Nepantlera
t is from my unique position as an inhabitant of the
borderlands between black and white, loving women
and loving men, between the Friend I have in Jesus and
the peace I find in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the
Sangha that I articulate ways marginalized women can
engage in the process of emotional healing. Living along
these borders is a source of great richness in my life. I also
know dwelling in such busy intersections puts a woman
at risk for being run down. Anzalda (2000) called this
in-between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place-space the nepantla,
a word from Nahuatl she adapted to mean a psychic and
spiritual in-between space that aids in our development
and transformation. The nepantla is a narrow opening,
where life takes root against probability. It represents
the liminal spaces where change occurs (Anzalda,
2002, p. 571). Nature provides a meaningful example
of this concept via the ability of trees and plants to grow
through narrow cracks and crevices. Imagine an acorn,
hidden in the crevice of a rock by a bird, that manages
to take root. As it grows, it pushes against stone instead
of earth, and its struggle changes both the nature of the
rock and the oak tree it eventually grows into.
This oak holds a wisdom other trees do not
possess. To survive it must seek liberation, which it
finds as it discovers pliable places among the hardness
of the stone. Women who live in spaces like these are
nepantleras: in-betweeners, those who facilitate passages
between worlds (Keating, 2006, p. 9). Nepantleras are
borderlands women who do visionary work by acting as
cultural intermediaries between the different worlds they
inhabit. They are threshold people: they move within

The Word, the Body, and the Kinfolk

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 109

and among multiple, often conflicting cultures and refuse


to align themselves exclusively with any single individual,
group, or belief system (Anzalda, 2002, p. 1).
In a womanist frame, skills born of difficulty
are celebrated to the same extent trauma is identified
and processed. Comas-Daz (2007) identified traumaderived vicarious empathy (p. 18) as one of the gifts
womanists might find in the rubble of oppression.
Resilience is another quality that can grow from a life
spent pushing against rock. At the same time, survival
at the meeting point of multiple streams of constraint
is not a matter of exhausting ourselves by incessantly
hammering at the rocks that oppress us; it is about wisely
finding and moving toward the sun, getting succor and
nurturance where possible, and sending the tap root
down as far as it will go, to whatever depth is necessary to
survive. It is sensing the presence of light despite having
ones face pressed toward the ground.
Womanist Mind
xamination of womanist scholarship, prose, and
the lived experience of women of color provide us
with a theoretical ground for womanist thought. In the
following section, I consider three processes that emerge
from the literature that further clarify the womanist
paradigm: conscientizaton (critical consciousness),
redemptive subjectivity, and engaged spirituality. While
I present them in this order, the intention is not to imply
a linear progression (i.e., being finished with one process
before beginning another). Each informs and fosters
development of the other, and as a whole they provide a
starting point for engaging womanist mind.
Conscientizaton

The struggle has always been inner, and is played


out in the outer terrains. Awareness of our situation
must come before inner changes, which in turn must
come before changes in society. Nothing happens in
the real world unless it first happens in the images
in our heads. (Anzalda, 2007, p. 109)

paradigms to meet the needs of people affected by


multiple layers of oppression and trauma. He proposed
that sociospiritual awakening was a process that involved
breaking the chains of personal oppression as much as
the chains of social oppression (p. 27), and he saw the
connection between the liberation of each individual
and the liberation of all people.
Stacey Floyd-Thomas (2006b) believed conscien
tizaton began when a black woman experiences
cognitive dissonance in light of what is considered
normative in society....while cognitive dissonance
may be fleeting, conscientizaton is a salient experience
in which black women realize that what is considered
normal negates all that they embody (p. 83). This is the
beginning of the process of identifying the damaging
distortions we see when looking in flawed mirrors, then
setting out to find reflections that are more attuned with
who we know we are.
Anzalda (2002) wrote about the related process of
conocimiento, or deep awareness. It begins with a similar
moment of dissonance, which she called el arrebato, or
rupture. From this fragmentation, one realizes what it
means to inhabit the nepantla, then experience liberation
through resistance and faith. This deep awareness inspires
new personal and collective stories of transformation,
which embolden one to act out transpersonal vision,
resulting in engaged spiritual activism. Conscientizaton
wakes one up to the realm of the sociospiritual, allowing
consideration of life with one foot in older discourses
and another at a growing, opening edge, that of the not
yet voiced (Keating, 2002, p. 19).
When a woman follows the path of conscien
tizaton from being shook by cultural dissonance through
to the development of a kind of emotional flexibility that
allows her to dance out our liberated dreams, she performs
alchemy between suffering and healing and between
spiritual vision and social activism. The faith of womanists
is not without works, it is infused with movement. It is
not static; it is active, connected, and engaged.

A womanist approach for addressing societal


suffering recognizes that resistance begins when change
is envisioned. Conscientizaton, a process of awakening
to sociospiritual and critical consciousness, helps to
develop the focus and scope of this vision. The roots
of conscientizaton are found in the writings of Latin
American liberation psychologists. Ignacio MartnBar (1994), drawing upon the work of Paulo Freire,
challenged the ability of mainstream psychological

Viewed from within the Souls presences, theres


no me or you. There is just us. And yet this
us has been shattered and fragmentedsplit into
a multiplicity of pieces marked by the many forms
our identities take. I believe, with all my heart, that
spiritual activism can assist us in creating new ways
to move through these boundaries. (Keating, 2002,
p. 19)

110 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Holiday

Awakening to the extent to which border womens


lives are distorted by cultural relativism and patriarchy
begins with an experience of cultural dissonance that
can lead to Anzaldas (2002) vision of spiritual activism.
However the process of conscientizaton unfolds, inviting
deeper sociospiritual awareness is critical to cultivating
womanist mind.
No Margin, No Center

What Lorde (1997) suggested in her poem is that


one confront the glassmaker who turns out new mirrors
that lie (p. 67) and is thus responsible for perpetuating
limited and inaccurate reflections of oneself. I grew up
knowing women could write, be heard, speak the truth
with hand-on-hip and head-held-high. My identity as a
black woman was fortified by my grandmothers, the one
who taught me how to make peach cobbler and the other
who put Maya Angelous (1971) poetry in my hands as
soon as I could read. When Arzlene gave me those books,
it was as if the three of us were colluding in blatantly
willful womanist behaviorme by reading them, my
grandmother by giving them to me, and Angelou by
writing them in the first place. These early reflections by
such willful, profound, and honest voices have protected
me from many of the faults in the mainstream mirror.
When Grant (1989) called upon black theologians
who were challenging sexism in African American spiritual
traditions to call their work womanist theology (p. 205),
she proposed it as a means to release in totality the need to
choose between racism and sexism, to identify as feminist
or black liberationist, and to demand the right to think
theologically and independently of black men and white
women (p. 209). This is the type of radical subjectivity
(p. 7) described as a tenet of womanist epistemology by
Floyd-Thomas (2006a). This principle practice, which
encourages borderlands women to centralize our experience
and hold it as a valid reference for understanding ourselves,
also emerges from the work of Layli Phillips (2006), who
emphasized the power of redemptive self-love. We redeem
pieces of ourselves lost, subtly, each time we have been
excluded due to an absence of conscientizaton. We create
our own standards for what constitutes an accurate reflection
of our values, challenging the grinning glassmaker Lorde
(1997) invoked in the end of her poem, who is constantly
turning out new mirrors that lie (p. 67).

The practice of subjectivity also serves to reframe


our day-to-day experience, what Phillips (2006) called the
vernacular (p. xxiv) part of the lives of border women.
Womanist thought honors the process of shunning
theoretical norms in favor of the lived experiences of
women of color. As a result, womanist thought is nonideological at heart. This point of subjectivity is meant
to aid us in our redemption and healing, not to create
rigidity around what womanism is or is not. We place
ourselves at the center as an act of inclusion and in hope
of connection. There are no demarcations, no lines in
the sand, as womanists understand how damaging rigid
demarcations can be (Phillips, 2006).
This non-ideological stance resonates with
liberation psychology. Martn-Bar (1994) identified
the conscious process of de-ideologizing vernacular
experience as critical to the formation of a distinctly
Latin American psychology liberated from distorted
Western knowledge claims. Going beyond a stance that
resists rigid ideology, this process counters dominant,
inaccurate narratives, especially those that discount the
reality of common people by rejecting their validity. To
de-ideologize means to retrieve the original experiences
of groups and persons and return it to them as objective
data which they can use to articulate a consciousness
of their own reality (p. 31). It is a process of redemption
via the construction of more accurate reflections of socalled marginal experiences, questioning judgments,
assessments, and diagnoses that come from psychological
perspectives that were created in a way that assumes
dominant culture is normal.
By re-evaluating our emotional health from a
place of redemptive subjectivity, border women reclaim
pieces of our psyches lost to scholars who described but
did not understand us. This lack of being interpreted in
light of our own values created myths and stereotypes
that keep us bent over to this day. Engaging in the process
of rejecting and countering oppressive ideologies is a way
to experience the relief of standing up, stretching out,
and moving toward healing.
Womanists do not theorize without evidence
but work to expand concepts about what that evidence
may consist of. Building on Grants (1989) original
womanist theology that emphasized personal connection
to the divine, it makes sense that womanists encourage
information that comes from personal experience.
Womanists act as our own foundations; when black
women critically inquire, probe, reflect, judge, decide,

The Word, the Body, and the Kinfolk

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 111

It is a waste of time hating a mirror


Or its reflection...

(Lorde, 1997, p. 67)

challenge and act in service of truth, they constitute


themselves as critical knowers and doers (Copeland,
2006, p. 229).
It is acting in service of truth that we create
a psychology that accurately reflects us. Black women
have been so long un-mirrored, we may have forgotten
how we look (OGrady, 2003, p. 176). Through the
practice of audacious subjectivity, we can reject reflections
that mine our struggles for evidence of pathology and
disorder; we take a stand against the patriarchy that
negates our wisdom and ways of knowing.
Engaged Spirituality
Walker (1983) very purposefully included refer
ence to faith when she crafted her definition of womanism.
Comas-Daz (2007), a pioneer in psychology aimed at
women of color, introduced the term Spirita (engaged
and liberated spirituality) as essential to womanist
psychological thought. One of a handful of scholars using
womanist and mujerista perspectives in psychology, she
also draws upon the tradition of liberation psychology
advanced by writers such as Martin-Bar (1994).
Comas-Daz (2007) defined Spirita as a spirit
uality defined by protest, resistance, and r/evolution
(p. 13). It is rooted in the idea that the transpersonal is
not divorced from the psychological if women of color
are writing the psychology. Spirita is a way of life that
celebrates love and spirit and reclaims the sacredness in
all (p. 16). It is a means of connection to generativity
and promotes the gestation of people who liberate
themselves and others (p. 16). By connecting to Spirita,
women have permission to let their experience stand and
not feel the need to repress or revise it in order to fit in
with frames that do not resonate or that deny the validity
of their lives.
Political action informed by spiritual belief
undergirds the work of other feminists of color. Phillips
(2006) pointed out that spiritual intercession and
consideration of the transcendental or metaphysical
dimension of life enhance and even undergird political
action (p. xxvi). Anzalda (2000) believed spirituality
was a powerful tool for women in the borderlands, the
only weapon and means of protection oppressed people
have (p. 72). She exemplified the connection between
the transpersonal and the political by highlighting the
importance of spiritual and ideological flexibility to
complement the kind of emotional flexibility Walker
(1983) wrote of in her original definition. Anzalda
(2000) exposed the danger of clinging so closely to

an institution or ideology that one loses enlivened


spirituality, audacious faith, and practice of transpersonal
resistanceall important to living an engaged spiritual
life. She saw activism as a natural extension of imaginal
experience and spiritual vision.
Placing an engaged, liberated spirituality at
the heart of womanist psychology honors the part of
the woman that feels and senses the sun despite having
her face cast downward. It stresses the importance of
allowing and making room for the transpersonal in
transcultural work. Christian womanists frame God in
an equally engaged role as healer, provider, liberator,
redeemer, and most often as the way-maker. Black
womens negative life experiences can be transformed
by seeing that their relationship with God trumps
social conditions (Townes, 2005, p. 97). Critical
consciousness, subjectivity necessary for redemption
of womanist soul, and a socially-engaged intention for
spiritual practice are three values that can help develop
womanist mind, and from there vision womanist
psychology.
The Word, the Body, and the Kinfolk
n this section, I look at three conduits to emotional
healing that resonate with womanist values: the word,
the body, and the kinfolk. These paths acknowledge the
importance of using narrative and testimony, engaging
the body as an ally, and remembering the individual
in the context of her community in the development
of more culturally competent therapeutic tools. By
looking at how these themes are woven into womanist
scholarship and experience, it is possible to move toward
a more fully articulated approach to the development of
womanist psychological practice.
The Word
My early experiences with worship were in a
traditional African American church. I have danced
in the Holy Ghost and cried on the mourners bench.
I have experienced the particularly African spiritual
phenomenon of call and response, a practice meant to
join and encourage the person who is speaking or giving
testimony. It is an expected part of the service for the
congregation to provide immediate feedback about how
that message is resonating with them. The sanctuary
whether it be a soaring building complete with stained
glass windows or a storefront with folding chairs instead
of padded pewsis filled with voices of the congregants:
Amen! Say that, preacher! Tell it! and Testify!
One of my favorite parts of the service was at

112 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Holiday

the end, when the preacher would open the doors of


the church. A weeping member of the congregation
in need of prayer or a recently converted sinner would
stand, walk to the front of the sanctuary, then turn to
the assembly to give her testimony. Testimony might
include references to how bad things were (or how bad
things are), how she was sitting and wondering how she
was going to get the light bill or the car note paid. She
might speak of some trouble at home or of her struggle
with illness or disease. As she shares her burdens, she is
encouraged and supported by the voices and the presence
of those listening.
From here, the story flows to her direct personal
experience of Gods grace and providing. She may quote
from scripture, from the book of Matthew, reminding
herself and all those who listen that God is aware of
every sparrow that falls from the sky. She speaks to the
power of a God who makes a way out of no way, has
blessed her before, and always brought her through. The
purpose of testimony is to risk baring it all and having
it witnessed. It provides a personal account of faith that
is superior to circumstance. The testimony is a path to
healing, a soul-witness account of what is possible. The
audible response of those listening is a means of building
an alliance with the person sharing the story, inviting
catharsis, connection, and healing for the church
community. Redeeming painful experience through
testimony transforms those events into something
valuable, algo para compartir [something to]...share
with others so they may also be empowered (Anzalda,
2002, p. 540).
Contrast this with what I was taught as a
clinician. There is no such thing as testimony in
psychotherapy, it is called self-disclosure, and is
discouraged in some therapeutic theoretical orientations
(Gehart & Tuttle, 2003; Moursand & Kenny, 2002). In
traditional psychoanalysis, there is the extreme of the
therapist as blank screen, purposed to invite a patients
transference (Fall, Holden, & Marquis, 2004). A clini
cian I know shared that he was advised to stand in front
of a mirror and practice holding his face in a blank,
non-reactive way during his early training as a therapist.
For nepantleras, used to being invisible and unseen, I
often wonder about the ways these approaches may do
unintended harm. While many mainstream clinicians
resonate with Rogerian ideas about the importance of
creating a warm and healthy alliance with patients,
there is little room for anything akin to testimony. From

womanist consciousness, narrative and testimony are


rich sources of healing, employing nommo, defined as
the generative quality of the spoken word (Asante,
1984, p. 171). Clearly, there are many other orientations
that value this principle, and I am in no way suggesting
that the value placed on vocalized healing narrative
is exclusive to a womanist perspective; the intent is to
underscore the importance of narrative and testimony to
womanist work and to place it in a context specific to our
history and spirituality.
Pinkla Ests (1995) stands in the space
between formal psychoanalytic training, the language of
archetypal psychology, and the world of the cantadora
(sacred singer), the griot (West African oral historian),
and the cuentista (story-keeper and teller). She speaks to
the fluidity with which women engage in the process
of story-telling and narrative. Holding and passing
knowledge through stories and oral tradition has deep
roots in indigenous culture. These stories have helped
women learn to honor our processes, in particular when
it comes to emotional and mental well-being. She wrote
that the psyches and souls of women have their own
cycles and seasons of doing and solitude, running and
staying, being involved and being removed, questing and
resting, creating and incubating, being of the world, and
returning to the soul place (p. 256). We learn about
these cycles through stories, testimony of other women,
and through dreams and meditation; it is these cycles
that keep us balanced and are essential to our emotional
and spiritual health.
A person who witnesses the testimony and
narratives of others comes closer to finding their own
guiding myths, which in turn provides what is needed
for personal healing and development (Ests, 1995). The
process of weaving ones own story is a way of reclaiming
oneself and releasing internal burdens; the process of
telling stories is a way of experiencing union with those
who witness them. Hooks (1989) framed it as a longing
to connect with the past and deconstruct it at the same
time, using the wisdom of ones older self to heal the
wounds of the younger one.
Testimonio is a witnessing narrative in Latin
American literature that is socially and politically con
scious. Maier and Dulfano (2004) called it resistance
literature (p. 5). These narratives are highly personal
accounts of oppression by narrators who identify as
excluded or disempowered. Testimonios are often
written in the third person, with the intention to give

The Word, the Body, and the Kinfolk

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 113

voice to marginalized peoples. These narratives are not


written to be received passively. In a parallel to the
tradition of testimony in African American Christian
contexts, testimonios intend to inspire action and aid in
the process of conscientizaton (Nance, 2002). They are
not disinterested, nor are they objective. They contain
los desconociminetos, knowledge that has been ignored
(Anzalda, 2000). It is a fluid form of anti-oppression
storytelling, which sometimes includes connecting the
narrator with mythical or historical figures.
Lorde (1984/2007) called a similar mixture of
autobiographical fact and myth autobiomythography. By
weaving a narrative this way, one un-weaves oppressive
or harmful narratives at the same time. Floyd-Thomas
(2006b) wrote that:
[Autobiomythography] allows for the transformation
of something that is initially crippling to become
something empowering...the biomythographical
narrative is a purposeful form of call and response
from one unique black womans voice to a larger
community of women who are invited to resonate
with her voice and become a part of it. These
women, when coming together into this new
mythic community, become transformed. (p. 22)
The Body

The broken mirror she used to decorate her face


made her forehead tilt backwards
her cheeks appear sunken
her sassy chin only large enuf
to keep her full lower lip
from growin into her neck
Sechita
had learned to make allowances
for the distortions


(Shange, 1977, p. 24)

Womanist writers have made a place for the


body in academic discourse, so I make a place for
reclaiming the body in identifying womanist pathways
to emotional healing. Again, I do not claim this stance
is unique to womanists. Using the body as an ally in
emotional healing appears across many cultures. My aim
is to underscore the importance and put that importance
in historical context. In this section, my focus is on the
black womans body in particulara terrain that has
been heavily dominated by patriarchy, and at the same
time holds the means to heal that domination (Razak,

114 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

2008). Womanists position the body as a hermeneutic,


as a modality of interpretation useful in deconstructing
(and re-constructing) life in the Americas (Pinn, 2007,
p. 404).
There is a grief I feel about the abuse of black
womens bodies that is in my DNA. Among my
ancestors is an unnamed slave woman who bore a girl
child by her owner. When this girl was still in her early
teens, this same owner, her father, started raping her.
He impregnated her twice before she turned eighteen. I
take the time to root the need for somatic redemption in
historical context in order to give some idea of the depth
and scope of healing work to be done.
Womens bodies are often battlegrounds for
great political and cultural wars, from the fight for
reproductive rights to the untold number of African
women who have experienced mutilation of their genitals
(Roberts, 1997). There is hardly any quarter on this globe
where one would not find womens ownership of their
bodies being challenged, whether it is by over sexualized
objectification or total denial that our sexuality exists.
Given the extent to which it has historically been under
scrutiny, attack, and objectification, making space for
any woman to reclaim her body is an act of courageous
mujerismo. By writing through and in the presence of
grief in my own body at this moment, I turn my heart
toward and acknowledge the robbery and lack of control
women, and, in particular, poor female children of color,
have over their bodies.
During the era of legal slavery in the United
States, the abuse of African American womens bodies
was particularly atrocious. Sojourner Truth delivered the
following speech in 1853. When she finished, she bared her
breasts to prove to the audience she was, indeed, a woman,
after being challenged by a member of the audience:
Dat man ober dar say dat women needs to be helped
into carriages, and lifted ober ditches, and to have de
best places...and aint I a woman? Look at me! Look
at my arm! I have plowed and planted and gathered
into barns and no man could head meand aint I
a woman? I could work as much as any man (when
I could get it), and bear de lash as welland aint I
a woman? I have borne five children and I seen em
mos all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with
a mothers grief, none but Jesus hearand aint I a
woman? (Stanton, Anthony, Gage, & Harper, 1889,
p. 116).

Holiday

Truths famous speech barely hints at what slave


womens bodies endured: an unimaginable amount of
work; routine infliction of emotional trauma; lack of
access to education, medical care, or proper food; and the
recurrent, horrific physical abuse and sexual exploitation
of their bodies. Slave women were often stripped naked
when they were being physically beaten by owners or
overseers, creating an objectified, sexual layer on top
of horrible physical pain. Black women were bred like
animals to bear offspring for their owners, many times
seeing those children sold away from them. Their bodies
existed for the profit and pleasure of the men who owned
them (hooks, 1981).
Another example of the extent to which black
womens bodies were made objects is found in the life of
Saartjie Baartmann. She was a woman from what is now
South Africa who was put on display in Europe in the
early nineteenth century. Her features were considered
exotic, in particular her breasts and buttocks. Patrons
could pay extra to touch and examine these parts of
her body. When she died, her remains, including her
genitalia, were put on display in a museum in Paris until
the mid 1970s. Known as the Hottentot Venus, these
remains were eventually returned at the request of Nelson
Mandela (Collins, 2000).
One of the outcomes of the stereotype of the
strong black woman has been to dismiss or diminish the
traumatic nature of the abuse our bodies have endured
(hooks, 2003). While a womanist approach to healing
draws upon the power of nommo and faith, it is not with
the intention to invite spiritual bypass. A. Elaine Brown
Crawford (2002) addressed this in Hope in the Holler,
noting that many black women move immediately to
demonstrating strength as the primary response to
trauma. Part of reclaiming our bodies is creating safe
spaces for us to grieve the historic lack of control, abuse,
and objectification of them. Engaging the grief is a means
to finding wholeness.
Consider that the spiritual practices of
communities of color are often physical, engaged, kinetic,
and active. If womanist spiritual practice is infused
with movement, so then are womanist approaches to
reclaiming and healing the body. Anzalda (2000)
stated: to reclaim body consciousness tienes que moverte
[you must move your body] go for walks, salir a conocer
mundo, engage with the world (p. 97).
Liturgical dance and other ways of honoring
the body as a vessel of Spirit and a tool for worship hold

This sermon unlocks the most essential


element of any intervention designed to rectify somatic
damagethat is to move and love our flesh. To reclaim
the body is to love the body, to fill it up with ourselves, to
invite entry of the Spirit, to be real about the feelings we
have about it, to know the history of it, and to confront
the ways in which it is used, claimed, controlled, and
shamed by others.
The Kinfolk
The therapist encouraged me to take eight to ten
deep breaths. I was feeling agitated, anxious, and sad. The
clinician was sensitive and attuned. Yet something still
felt missing from our work. I closed my eyes. Before I had
taken ten breaths, the image of a woman holding a child
in her arms came into my awareness, and I immediately
identified her as my aforementioned ancestor, who bore

The Word, the Body, and the Kinfolk

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 115

great potency for releasing women from oppression that


has come from religious repression. Hooks (2003) noted
that Christian scriptures were often put in a context that
perpetuated the notion that the body was inherently
unclean, evil, corrupt, that sexuality was bad (p. 110).
A womanist liberation from those doctrines could offer
African Americans a way of thinking of their bodies that
resists these ideas and offers healing from messages that
hold the body with disdain.
Womanist writers such as Walker (1983), Can
non (2007), and Williams (2005) have a tenacious regard
for the dynamics of the black womans body (Pinn,
2007, p. 404), especially in the context of reclaiming it
from oppressive theology. Consider this passage from
Beloved. Baby Suggs, holy, shared this message with
those assembled to hear her preach:
She did not tell them they were the blessed of the
earth, its inheriting meek or its glory bound pure....
Here, in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps,
laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love
it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh.
They despise it. They dont love your eyes; theyd just
as soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin
on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people
they do not love your hands. Those they only use,
tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands!
Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch
others with them, pat them together, stroke them on
your face cause they dont love that either....This is
flesh Im talking about here. Flesh that needs to be
loved. (Morrison, 1987, p. 88)

two children by her owner-father. It was in that moment


I was more at ease about the time and resources I was
putting into healing myself because I became aware it
was also in service of healing my ancestors, both the
slave and the man who raped her.
The work became more meaningful to me
culturally and spiritually, taking on a depth and import
ance it had not had before. The therapy was about more
than just my healing, my growing up, the ways in which
I was or was not nurtured. By putting my journey into a
transpersonal communal context, therapy was no longer
confined to traditional psychodynamic theories about
family of origin. In that moment, it became connected to
my family of Origin, with a capital O, my kinfolk. The
importance of our kinfolk, a term I use here to signify
both the immediate and extended circle of family and
community to which a woman belongs, emerges as an
important consideration in womanist paradigms, which
make room for an expanded notion of community to
include the ancestors, both literal and mythical.
What happened in this experience was a shift
from work that was oriented toward what Roland (1988)
called the individualized self (p. 8) to a connection
with my communal self. His work, which has made
distinctions between the concept of self in Japan and
the concept of self in India, clearly demonstrates that
not all cultures view the healing of emotional pain as
an individual endeavor. Womanists pluralize their
concept of self (Comas-Daz, 2007, p. 18), holding
and honoring the connection between communal
healing and individual healing. Following frameworks
in community psychology, womanists understand it
is not a matter of privileging the communal over the
individual, but seeking balance between the two. If
all we do is therapy while neglecting poor peoples
circumstances, our practice is out of balance. If all we do
is try to restructure communities without attending to
peoples inner struggles and feelings, we are equally off
balance (Nelson & Prilleltensky, 2005, p. 213). This
pathway to emotional healing seeks balance between
the individual and her community and is informed
by African American spirituality, the secret of which
is the recognition of the need for individuals to take
responsibility for themselves while at the same time
recognizing this is impossible without other people
(Asante, 1984).
In a womanist paradigm, emotional healing is a
process that involves both individuation and development

of a communal self. Tending to this communal self is


not always a pathology (sometimes mistakenly framed as
enmeshment). It is a necessary component of emotional
balance. There is an understanding of the connection
between individuals and their communal contexts. As
my wounds heal, so can those of my family and my
kinfolk. As my community is liberated, my possibility
for freedom from suffering increases.
The presence of the word, the body, and the kin
folk are themes that run through womanist scholarship,
lived experiences, and literature. Foregrounding them
here is a step toward making connections to how
they might be enlisted in the practice of womanist
psychotherapy. Points of resonance between these
frameworks and postmodern/narrative therapy, somatic
psychotherapy, modalities that include dance or
movement, group therapy, and community psychology
provide exciting possibility for bringing womanist
ideology to praxis.
Conclusion
hen feminists of color create frameworks anchored
in their unique values and experiences, we reclaim
parts of ourselves lost to distortions and objectifications.
Sociospiritual awareness and redemptive subjectivity
give us tools to shape mirrors that truly reflect who we
are. This frees us to reinterpret theoretical canons in
ways that uncover what has been buried, the voice that
is deep speaking into deep (Cannon, 2007, p. 133), el
ro abajo ro [the river beneath the river] (Ests, 1995,
p. 29), which contains lost wisdom we need to reclaim
ourselves. Embracing Spirita, the active and engaged
spirituality articulated by Comas-Daz (2007), clears
up any dissonance from dominant narratives about the
practice of linking our spiritual struggles to our political
ones. The scale of our engagement is unimportant. It is
the continual, determined resistance to being silenced
that leads to freedom and wholeness. This spiritual
empowerment gives us insight into the ways our trials in
the borderlands can create a quickening space (FloydThomas, 2006b, p. 97), a courageous embracing of the
gifts inherent to life in the nepantla. When Spirit enters
these rituals of restoration, a kind of cultural alchemy
can temporarily cook whats raw, unite whats divided,
give meaning to whats chaotic, and thereby enchant,
refresh, and reanimate all participants (Lorenz, 2002,
p. 497).
The reflective surfaces I have invoked in the
poems of Lorde (1997), Shange (1977), and Westfield

116 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Holiday

(2006) demonstrate the most basic reason for the need


to continue to develop womanist thought: to offer
undistorted, accurate reflections of the experiences of
women of color. Lorde (1984/2007) famously stated the
masters tools will never dismantle the masters house
(p. 112). Liberated by a transpersonal womanist point
of view, broad and deep enough to contain redemption,
forgiveness, and all manner of contradiction, my focus
shifts beyond the masters house to a dwelling of my own
design.

Angelou, M. (1971). Just give me a cool drink of water


fore I diiie. New York, NY: Random House.
Anzalda, G. E. (2000). In A. L. Keating (Ed.), Interviews:
Entrevistas. New York, NY: Routledge.
Anzalda, G. E. (2002). Now let us shift...the path
of conocimineto...inner work, public acts. In G.
Anzalda & A. Keating (Eds.), This bridge we call
home: Radical visions for transformation (pp. 540578). New York, NY: Routledge.
Anzalda, G. E. (2007). Borderlands: La frontera (3rd
ed.). San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books. (Original
work published 1987)
Anzalda, G. E., & Keating, A. L. (Eds.). (2002). This
bridge we call home: Radical visions for transformation.
New York, NY: Routledge.
Asante, K. M. (1984). The African-American mode of
transcendence. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology,
16(2), 167-177.
April, C. E. L. (2003). Africana womanist literary theory.
Western Journal of Black Studies, 27(4), 275.
Baker-Fletcher, K. (2006). Dancing with God: The trinity from
a womanist perspective. St. Louis, MI: Chalice Press.
Baker-Fletcher, K. (2006). A womanist journey. In S.
M. Floyd-Thomas (Ed.), Deeper shade of purple:
Womanism in religion and society (pp. 158-175). New
York, NY: New York University Press.
Banks-Wallace, J. (2000). Womanist ways of knowing:
Theoretical considerations for research with African
American women. The Journal of Advanced Nursing
Science, 22(3), 33-45.
Braud, W. (1998). An expanded view of validity. In W.
Braud & R. Anderson (Eds.), Transpersonal research
methods for the social sciences: Honoring human
experience (pp. 213-237). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications.

Braud, W., & Anderson, R. (1998). Transpersonal research


methods for the social sciences: Honoring human
experience. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Bynum, E. B. (1992). A brief overview of transpersonal
psychology. The Humanistic Psychologist, 20(2-3),
301-306.
Cannon, K. G. (2007). Katies cannon: Womanism and
the soul of the black community. New York, NY:
Continuum.
Chisholm, S. (2010). Unbought and unbossed. Boston, MA:
Houghton Mifflin. (Original work published 1970)
Coleman, M. (2006). Must I be a womanist? Journal
of Feminist Studies in Religion, 22(1), 85-96.
doi:10.1353/jfs.2006.0001
Collins, P. H. (2000). Black feminist thought: Knowledge,
consciousness, and the politics of empowerment (2nd
ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.
Comas-Diaz, L. (2007). Spirita: Reclaiming womanist
sacredness into feminism. Psychology of Women
Quarterly, 32, 13-21.
Comas-Daz, L., & Greene, B. (Eds.). (1994). Women
of color: Integrating ethnic and gender identities in
psychotherapy. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Copeland, M. S. (2006). A thinking margin: The
womanist movement as critical cognitive praxis. In
S. M. Floyd-Thomas (Ed.), Deeper shades of purple:
Womanism in religion and society (pp. 226-235). New
York, NY: New York University Press.
Crawford, A. E. B. (2002). Hope in the holler: A womanist
theology. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.
Crenshaw, K. W. (1991). Mapping the margins:
Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence
against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6),
1241-1299.
Davis, A. Y. (1983). Women, race, and class. New York,
NY: Vintage Books.
Ests, G. P. (1995). Women who run with the wolves: Myths
and stories of the wild woman archetype. New York, NY:
Ballantine Books. (Original work published 1992)
Fall, K. A., Holden, J. M., & Marquis, A. (2004).
Theoretical models of counseling and psychotherapy.
New York, NY: Brunner-Routledge.
Ferrer, J. (2000). Transpersonal knowledge: A participa
tory approach to transpersonal phenomenon.
In T. Hart, P. L. Nelson, & K. Puhakka (Eds.),
Transpersonal knowing: Exploring the horizon of
consciousness (pp. 213-252). New York, NY: State
University of New York Press.

The Word, the Body, and the Kinfolk

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 117

References

Floyd-Thomas, S. M. (Ed.). (2006a). Deeper shades of


purple: Womanism in religion and society. New York,
NY: New York University Press.
Floyd-Thomas, S. M. (2006b). Mining the motherlode:
Methods in womanist ethics. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press.
Gehart, D. R., & Tuttle, A. R. (2003). Theory-based
treatment planning for marriage and family therapists.
Pacific Grove, CA: Thomson Brooks/Cole.
Grant, J. (1989). White womens Christ and black womens
Jesus: Feminist Christology and womanist response.
Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press.
Grof, S. (2008). Brief history of transpersonal psychology.
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 27, 46-54.
Hartelius, G., Caplan, M., & Rardin, M. A. (2007).
Transpersonal psychology: Defining the past,
divining the future. The Humanistic Psychologist,
35(2), 1-26.
Harris, M. L. (2006). Womanist humanism: A new
hermeneutic. In S. M. Floyd-Thomas (Ed.), Deeper
Shades of purple: Womanism in religion and society (pp.
211-225). New York, NY: New York University Press.
hooks, b. (1981). Aint I a woman: Black women and
feminism. Boston, MA: South End Press.
hooks, b. (1989). Talking back: Thinking feminist, thinking
black. Boston, MA: South End Press.
hooks, b. (2003). Rock my soul: Black people and selfesteem. New York, NY: Washington Square Press.
Isasi-Diaz, A. M. (1992). Mujerista theologys method: A
liberative praxis, a way of life. Listening, 27, 4154.
Isasi-Diaz, A. M. (1994). Mujeristas: A name of our
own: Sisters struggling in the spirit. In N. B. Lewis
(Ed.), A women of color theological anthology (pp. 26
138). Louisville, KY: Womens Ministries Program,
Presbyterian Church (USA).
Keating, A. L. (2002). Charting pathways, marking
thresholds...a warning, an introduction. In G.
Anzalda & A. Keating (Eds.), This bridge we call
home: Radical visions for transformation (pp. 6-20).
New York, NY: Routledge.
Keating, A. L. (2006). From borderlands and new
mestizas to nepantlas and nepantleras. Human
Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge,
4(Special Issue), 5-16.
Kirk-Duggan, C. (2006). Quilting relations with
creation: Overcoming, going through, and not being
stuck. In S. M. Floyd-Thomas (Ed.), Deeper shades of
purple: Womanism in religion and society (pp. 176190). Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press.

Lincoln, C. E., & Mamiya, L. H. (2003). The black church in


the African-American experience. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press. (Original work published 1990)
Lorde, A. (1997). The collected poems of Audre Lorde.
New York, NY: W. W. Norton.
Lorde, A. (2007). Sister outsider: Essays and speeches by
Audre Lorde. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press. (Original
work published 1984).
Lorenz, H. S. (2002). Thawing hearts, opening a path in
the woods, finding a new lineage. In G. Anzalda &
A. Keating (Eds.), This bridge we call home: Radical
visions for transformation (pp. 496-506). New York,
NY: Routledge.
Lynne, N. W. (2006). Researching womanist pedagogy
to heal. Religious Education, 101(2), 170.
Nance, K. (2002). Disarming testimony: Speakers
resistance to readers defenses in Latin American
testimonio. Biography, 24(3), 570.
Maier, L., & Dulfano, I. (2004). Woman as witness:
Essays on testimonial literature by Latin American
women. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Martn-Bar, I. (1994). In A. Aron & S. Corne (Eds.),
Writings for a liberation psychology. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Maslow, A. H. (1999). Toward a psychology of being (3rd
ed.). New York, NY: J. Wiley & Sons. (Original
work published 1968)
Moraga, C., & Anzalda, G. (Eds.). (1983). This bridge
called my back: Writings by radical women of color.
New York, NY: Kitchen Table, Women of Color
Press. (Original work published 1981)
Morrison, T. (1987). Beloved. New York, NY: Alfred A.
Knopf.
Moursand, J., & Kenny, M. C. (2002). The process
of counseling and therapy (4th ed.). Upper Saddle
River, NJ: Prentice Hall. (Original work published
1985)
Myers, L. J. (1985). Transpersonal psychology: The
role of the Afrocentric paradigm. Journal of Black
Psychology, 12(1), 31-42. doi:10.1177/00957984850
1200103
Nelson, G., & Prilleltensky, I. (2005). Community
psychology: In pursuit of liberation and well-being.
New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
OGrady, L. (2003). Olympias maid: Reclaiming black
female subjectivity. In A. Jones (Ed.), The feminism
and visual culture reader (pp. 174-186). New York,
NY: Routledge.

118 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Holiday

Phillips, L. (Ed.). (2006). The womanist reader. New


York, NY: Routledge.
Pinn, A. B. (2007). Watch the body with new eyes:
Womanist thoughts contribution to a humanist
notion of ritual. Cross Currents, 57, 404.
Riggs, M. Y. (1994). Awake, arise and act: A womanist call
for black liberation. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press.
Razak, A. (2008). Sacred images of African and
African American women. In A. L. Williams, K.
N. Villanueva, & L. C. Birnbaum (Eds.), She is
everywhere: An anthology of writing in womanist/
feminist spirituality (Vol. 2, pp. 21-39). New York,
NY: iUniverse.
Roberts, D. (1997). Killing the black body: Race,
reproduction and the meaning of liberty. New York,
NY: Pantheon Books.
Roland, A. (1988). In search of self in India and Japan:
Toward a cross-cultural psychology. Princeton, NJ:
University Press.
Schavrien, J. & Holiday, J. M. (2010). Integrating
Eastern, feminine, and African influenced spirituality
into the transpersonal contribution: The beyond-self
here on Earth. Paper presented at the Association
for Transpersonal Psychology conference on
Spirituality in Action: Bringing Transpersonal
Psychology to a World in Crisis. Atherton, CA
(February).
Settles, S. (2006). The sweet fire of honey: Womanist
visions of Osun as a methodology of emancipation
(Doctoral dissertation). Available from ProQuest
Dissertations and Theses Database. (UMI No.
9820930)
Shange, N. (1977). For colored girls who have considered
suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf. New York, NY:
Macmillan.
Sheared, V. (2006). Giving voice: An inclusive model of
instructiona womanist perspective. In L. Phillips
(Ed.), The womanist reader (pp. 269-279). New York,
NY: Routledge. (Original work published 1994)
Smith, P. A. (1998). Green lap, brown embrace, blue
body: The ecospirituality of Alice Walker. Cross
Currents, 48, 471.
Stanton, E. C., Anthony, S. B., Gage, M. J., & Harper,
I. H. (1889). History of woman suffrage. Rochester,
NY: Charles Mann.
Taylor, J. Y. (1998). Womanism: A methodological
framework for African American women. The Journal
of Advanced Nursing Science, 21(1), 53-64.

Juko Martina Holiday is a doctoral student at the


Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto,
California and works as a psychotherapy intern in a
community clinic that serves working poor and unin
sured women in Los Angeles. She completed her clinical
studies at Antioch University Los Angeles in a program
that emphasized cultural competence and social justice.
Her undergraduate degree is from Brown University
in Providence, Rhode Island, with a concentration in
International Relations.

The Word, the Body, and the Kinfolk

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 119

Taylor, J. Y. (2000). Sisters of the Yam: African American


womens healing and self-recovery from intimate
male partner violence. Issues in Mental Health
Nursing, 21(5), 515-531. doi:10.1080/01612840050
044267
Tedlock, B. (2005). The woman in the shamans body:
Reclaiming the feminine in religion and medicine.
New York, NY: Bantam Books.
Townes, E. M. (2005). A troubling in my soul: Womanist perspec
tives on evil and suffering. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
Vaz, K. M. (2006). Womanist archetypal psychology: A
model of counseling for black women and couples based
on Yoruba mythology. In L. Phillips (Ed.), The womanist
reader (pp. 233-246). New York, NY: Routledge.
Walker, A. (1983). In search of our mothers gardens: Woman
ist prose. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Walker, A. (2006). Coming apart. In L. Phillips (Ed.),
The womanist reader (pp. 3-18). New York, NY:
Routledge. (Original work published 1979)
Walsh, R. (1994). The transpersonal movement: A history
and state of the art. Re-vision, 16(3), 115-123.
Westfield, N. L. (2006). Nevertheless, in stark
contradiction. In S. M. Floyd-Thomas (Ed.), Deeper
shades of purple (p. 209). New York, NY: New York
University Press.
Williams, C. B. (2005). Counseling African American
women: Multiple identities, multiple constraints.
Journal of Counseling and Development, 83(3), 278.
Williams, D. (2006). Womanist theology: Black womens
voices. In L. Phillips (Ed.), The womanist reader (pp.
117-134). New York, NY: Routledge. (Original work
published 1986)
Young-Minor, E. A. (1997). To redeem her body:
Performing
womanist
liberation.
(Doctoral
dissertation). Available from ProQuest Dissertations
and Theses Database. (UMI No. 9820930)
About the Author

About the Journal


The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies is a peerreviewed academic journal in print since 1981. It is published
by Floraglades Foundation, and serves as the official
publication of the International Transpersonal Association.
The journal is available online at www.transpersonalstudies.
org, and in print through www.lulu.com (search for IJTS).

120 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Holiday

A Transpersonal Feminist Approach to Family Systems


Irene Sheiner Lazarus 1
Chapel Hill, NC, USA

This paper presents a preliminary description of A Transpersonal Feminist Approach to Family


Systems (ATFAFS) as taught at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (ITP) between 1995
and 2002. In this approach, students studied the principles of Murray Bowens family systems
theory with attention to feminist revisions of the theory while simultaneously investigating
their own multigenerational family histories. Additionally, students kept a journal, recorded
and worked with their dreams, and worked with a chosen creative expressive modality. They
may also have worked with other transpersonal modalities. Student narratives, informed by
organic inquiry, illustrate aspects of the approach. The paper concludes with a detailed look
at students perceived benefits and drawbacks of the approach.

Keywords: multigenerational family systems, transpersonal, feminist, dreamwork, journaling, organic inquiry, creative expression.

his paper presents a preliminary description of


A Transpersonal Feminist Approach to Family
Systems (ATFAFS) as taught at the Institute
of Transpersonal Psychology (ITP) between 1995
and 2002. It is my hope that this description, based
in rich student narratives, will provide a sense of the
multifaceted, instructive, and healing experiences that
we, teacher and students, shared together. The paper aims
to contribute to the emerging transpersonal-humanistic
family-systems perspective (Lukoff, 2005/2006, p. 4)
and to the ongoing discussion concerning the training of
transpersonal psychotherapists (Boorstein, 1986; Braud,
2006; Hastings, 1983; Hutchins, 2002; Hutton, 1994;
Kennett, Radha, & Frager, 1975; Lazarus, 1999; Ram
Dass, 1975; Vaughan, 1979, 1982, 1991; Speeth, 1982).
A single course in this topic was developed and
taught to graduate students at ITP between 1995 and
1999 as a method for inner transformational work and
for the training of clinical graduate students. Since 1999,
a curriculum based on this approach has been available
for Global distance-learning students at ITP. In 1998, I
initiated an exploratory organic qualitative study with
interested students of this course and approach to elicit
a more detailed description from those who had used
it and to ascertain benefits, drawbacks, and avenues for
further study.
Beginning with a Dream
t seems fitting to begin with a dream of March 24,
2006. I knew that I had allotted this day and the rest

of the weekend to prepare for a poster presentation for


the North Carolina Association of Marriage and Family
conference on the portion of this study focusing on the use
of dreams as a complement to family study. My dream:
I realize that I have put my son Ben to sleep in the
freezer. I become worried about him and go to take
him out of the freezer. In the dream, he is a baby,
maybe 6 months old, and I am very relieved to see
that he is breathing easily and his skin looks pink
and healthy, though there is much ice forming in
the freezer. I take him out of the freezer. He says,
Mom, I did not want you to put me here. As I
watch, he suddenly begins to transform and grow
rapidly until he becomes the handsome 19 year old
he currently is.

At first, I am perplexed and a bit alarmed
about this dream. Why would I be putting my son into
a freezer? I wonder if there is some unconscious way I
have been harming my son, which this dream is trying
to bring to consciousness. My husband reminds me how
much I miss my son who is now finishing his sophomore
year at Georgetown and has plans to stay in Georgetown
all summer. My husband suggests I may have a wish to
freeze Ben back in time. Then I remember that this is the
weekend I have set aside to finish my preparations for a
poster presentation on dreams and family study. I recall
Marie-Louise von Franzs reminder that young boys in
womens dreams can represent important work projects

Transpersonal
Approach
to Family Systems
International
Journal of Transpersonal Studies 121
International Journal
of Transpersonal
Studies, 29(2), 2010,
pp. 121-136

(Boa & von Franz, 1994). The teaching and developing


of ATFAFS is a work project very close to my heart, so
close that it is not surprising that my dreammaker would
choose my son Ben to represent it. I have been working
on this particular project for almost as many years as
my son has been alive. I suppose I did put this beloved
project in the freezer when I left California and my
teaching in the Residential program of ITP in 1999 to
move to Chapel Hill, North Carolina with my family. It
is delightful and reassuring to see that Ben in my dream
is healthy and unharmed, though not very happy about
spending time in the freezer. It is my hope that, as Ben
has matured in the dream, so has the work presented
here.
What Is A Transpersonal Feminist Approach
to Family Systems?
TFAFS is a method of working on the self, used
in the training of transpersonal psychologists and
psychotherapists at ITP. In this approach, students study
principles of Murray Bowens family system theory
(Bowen, 1985/1990; Kerr & Bowen, 1988; Papero,
1990) with attention to feminist revisions of the theory
(Knudsen-Martin, 1994, 1996; Lerner, 1985, 1989;
McGoldrick, 1998), while simultaneously investigating
their own multigenerational family histories using tools
of the genogram and family chronology (McGoldrick,
Gerson, & Shellenberger, 1999). Additionally, students
keep a journal (Goldberg, 1986; Pennebaker, 1991, 1996;
Progoff, 1992), record and work with their dreams (Boa
& Von Franz, 1994; Mellick, 1996, 2001; Taylor, 1992)
and work with a chosen creative expressive modality
(Cassout & Cubley, 1995; Mellick, 1996, 2001).2 They
may also choose to work with other transpersonal
modalities, such as prayer (Dossey, 1993, 1996) or
meditation (Hanh, 2003; LeShan, 1974). Students may
choose to present their work in a final project submitted
privately to the instructor, or they may elect to prepare
a family presentation to be shared with their classmates.
Students are encouraged to make sense of their family
history in their own terms and are encouraged to use
whichever transpersonal modalities they deem useful.
Family Systems Aspects

The approach is built on the foundation of
Murray Bowens (1985/1990) brilliant contribution
to family systems theory, particularly his formulation
of the multi-generational transmission process (the
notion that individual differences in functioning and
multigenerational trends in functioning reflect an orderly

and predictable relationship process that connects the


function of family members across generations (Kerr &
Bowen, 1988, p. 224), his encouragement of the study
of ones family of origin to become aware of family
history and patterns both for patients and as a method of
psychotherapeutic training (Bowen, 1985/1990), and his
coaching to move in ones family in a differentiated
(pp. 140-141) way. Bowen spoke favorably about the
value of working on ones family of origin in a clinical
training program:

122 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Lazarus

Later in 1967 and 1968 I noted that this group of


residents were doing better clinical work as family
therapists than any previous residents. At first I
simply considered this an unusually good group of
residents. As time passed I became aware that the
difference between these and previous residents
was too great for such a simple explanation. The
difference appeared to be related to something I was
doing and I began to ask questions. Then it became
clear that it was precisely those residents who had
done best in the effort with their parental families
who were also doing best in their clinical work. (p.
531)
Feminist Aspects

In the 1970s, in psychology and elsewhere,
feminists mounted a challenge to traditional institutions
and disciplines, encouraging them to be more inclusive,
transparent, and honoring of feminine ways of being. In
this approach, Bowens work is presented with a feminist
revision (Lerner, 1985, 1989; McGoldrick, 1998). First,
the approach emphasizes sensitivity to issues of gender,
race, and power (Ault-Riche, 1994; Belenky, Clinchy,
Goldberger, & Tarule, 1997; Brown & Gilligan,
1992; Knudson-Martin, 1994; Lerner, 1985, 1989;
McGoldrick, 1998; Miller, 1986). Second, it encourages
the empowerment of the individual (Lerner, 1985,
1989). Rather than going to outside experts, students are
encouraged to study their own families and make sense
of their histories in their own terms. They are encouraged
to become their own experts on themselves. They are
encouraged to develop and strengthen their own voice.
Third, the use of story and narrative is important in this
approach. Fourth, the value of feeling is acknowledged
alongside the value of thinking.
Transpersonal Aspects

This approach incorporates various transper
sonal elements. It is holistic, encouraging integration of

body, mind, spirit, emotions, creative expression, family,


and community. It is transpersonal, encouraging aspects
that go beyond the personal ego level of development.
The approach uses transpersonal modalities such as
dreamwork, ritual, journaling, prayer, and meditation.
It focuses on health as well as pathology and aims to
cultivate transpersonal values such as love, wisdom,
compassion, and mindfulness.

A vibrant, contemplative atmosphere was devel
oped in the class in several ways. Confidentiality is
established early on. Students are instructed that they
may discuss their own family work any time they feel it is
appropriate to do so, but they may not discuss any other
students family work without express permission. They
are instructed to bring compassionate, non-judging, and
mindful attention both to themselves and to others who
are presenting family histories or are reading portions of
their journals. A contemplative atmosphere is fostered in
the class through time spent in silence, journaling, and
meditating together, as well as through compassionate
listening to presentations of the multigenerational
journeys of their classmates.
The Emerging Transpersonal Humanistic
Family Systems Perspective
innbauer and Camerota (2004) pointed out
that although the discipline of transpersonal
psychology has been working with the integration of
spirituality and psychology for over 30 years, it is only
recently that the mental health field is turning attention
to this matter. This trend has been seen in the discipline
of family therapy as well. Walshs chapter, Beliefs,
Spirituality, and Transcendence: Keys to Family
Resilience, appeared in McGoldricks (1998) important
book, Re-Visioning Family Therapy: Race, Culture, and
Gender in Clinical Practice. Walsh discussed how core
beliefs and spiritual connections are important sources
of resilience that support clients in transcending
adversity. More recently, Caldwell, Winek, and Becvar
(2006), citing the growing acknowledgement of the
mind/body connection both within and outside of
medical settings, studied the extent to which marriage
and family therapists were affected by and/or had an
impact on this shift. The authors, after conducting a
survey of a random sample of 1000 clinical members
of The American Association of Marriage and Family
Therapy (AAMFT) regarding their relationship with
Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM)
practices, found that most of the respondents indicated

knowledge of a variety of CAM practices (p. 110)


and recommended CAM. Interestingly, a relatively
small number of respondents indicated that they
were qualified to practice, supervise or teach relative
to a specific CAM modality. Such practices include
relaxation techniques, guided imagery, meditation,
diet/lifestyle changes, hypnosis, and prayer therapies
(p. 110). The authors concluded:

Transpersonal Approach to Family Systems

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 123

The findings of this study certainly are comparable


to the results reported by Barnes et al. (2004)
regarding the high percentage of use of CAM
services in this country. In the professional arena,
it appears that MFTs and psychologists (Bassman
& Uellendahl, 2003) also are experiencing a
similar increase in awareness and utilization of
CAM practices. (p. 110)
Becvar, Caldwell, and Winek (2006) reported on a
qualitative aspect of this study in which 54 respondents
were interviewed. Notably, the respondents described
a sense of a fit between CAM and marriage and
family therapy:
There is frequent agreement regarding the logical
fit between the assumptions underlying family
therapy and those on which complementary
alternative medicine is premised. It therefore
is not surprising that many MFTs seem to have
established a comfortable working relationship
with a variety of CAM approaches and thus are
open to and desirous of learning more. (p. 123)
I have certainly sensed this fit in my own work as an
instructor and as a marriage and family therapist.

Outside the mainstream of family therapy
discourse, there have been some important
contributions regarding the integration of
transpersonal modalities in healing work with
families. For example, Kenneth McAll (1982), a
British psychiatrist, in his book entitled Healing the
Family Tree, reported on his success curing psychiatric
disease through the Eucharist prayer for troubled
members of the patients family tree.

Edward Bruce Bynum (1993) has been
conducting The Family Dreams Research Project,
an ongoing national and cross cultural study in the
relationship between dream life and family processes
(p. 227). Bynum (2000) described a fascinating
concept called the family unconscious:

What we discovered was a field of shared images,


ideas and feelings in each individual within the
family. This shared family emotional field, which
we call the family unconscious, is a shifting,
interconnected field of energy that does not obey the
conventional rules of space and time in the waking
state. This field of interconnected energy, influence,
and information in many ways parallels some of the
developments in sub-atomic physics. (para. 12)

Psychotherapist Les Rhodes (2000), in her
autobiographical account of dealing with Parkinsons
disease, was very influenced by both family systems work
(she worked and studied with Virginia Satir for many
years) and Jungian work (she was involved with Jungian
analysis). The book is an extraordinary account of her
deep blending of the two traditions, including many of
her own dreams, and the part they played in her journey
toward wholeness. The integration of dreamwork and
family systems is an important aspect of the transpersonal
approach to family systems described in this paper.
Research Approach for this Preliminary Study of
A Transpersonal Feminist Approach
to Family Systems
rganic inquiry (Clements, Ettling, Jenett, &
Shields, 1998; Braud, 2004; Clements, 2004)
was developing at the ITP at the same time I was
teaching there and working to develop what I now call
A Transpersonal Feminist Approach to Family Systems
(ATFAFS). According to Clements,

causing a separation into leader and followers.


Feminist research suggested the importance of
balancing objectivity with subjectivity, in process as
well as content. (p. 28)

I developed the first version of an interview
protocol during a practice session in a class on organic
inquiry taught by Clements in 1998. Organic inquiry
seemed quite suitable to this preliminary investigation
of ATFAFS as taught at ITP. ATFAFS aims to support
psycho-spiritual growth. Students are invited to work
subjectively in partnership with liminal and spiritual
sources through their journaling, dreamwork, and
meditative work in class. Prayer, meditative practice,
meditative journaling, and dreamwork supported me
all along in the development of this approach and in
this investigation. The feminist and transpersonal roots
of organic inquiry suited the transpersonal, feminist
aspects of ATFAFS.

Organic inquiries are born out of ones deep
personal experience. Alongside developing, teaching,
and investigating ATFAFS, I have been immersed in
my own process of healing and transformation within
my own family. On August 11, 2006, I reflected in my
journal:

In the spring of 1993, Dorothy Ettling (1994),


Diane Jenett (1999), Lisa Shields (1995), Nora
Taylor (1996), and I found ourselves searching for
avenues of research where the sacred feminine might
be included and in which the positive values of
cooperation and interdependency were appreciated,
where diversity would make us equals rather than

I am struck by how important my mother is to


this study. I recall that I wrote the first rough outline
of this study proposal in the Spring of 1998. I lived
then in Menlo Park, California, and had come
down to Los Angeles to visit my mother. I took her
to Palm Springs, which offered a climate that was
soothing to her lungs (she has suffered from severe
asthma since she was 5 years old). I wrote ideas for
this study proposal while sitting by the pool at our
hotel.
Then came my familys move to Chapel Hill.
I thought I would have so much free time to
write and work on this research project, but the
work of transplanting myself, my family and my
practice was consuming for many years. I slowly
transcribed interviews and pored over data. I used
this transpersonal approach to family systems in my
work with clients.
I began working more steadily on this
article, however, when life brought me closer
to my mother. A scary car accident in January,
2006, convinced my mother it was time to sell
the house she had lived in for almost 50 years

124 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Lazarus

Organic Inquiry is an emerging approach to


qualitative research that is especially meaningful for
people and topics related to psycho-spiritual growth.
Ones own psyche becomes the instrument as one
works subjectively in partnership with liminal and
spiritual sources, as well as with participants who
are able to relate their stories of the experience being
studied. (p. 27)
In discussing the origins and influences of organic
inquiry, Clements noted:

and move closer to family. Between December,


2005 and May, 2006, I made 5 week-long trips
back to Los Angeles to help my mother heal from
her car accident, prepare to sell her house, and
then pack things up and move when the house
sold. On the plane flights between North Carolina
and California, and in the early morning hours
at my mothers house when I was still on North
Carolina time, I began working quite seriously on
this article. As the days got closer to the move, all
my extra energy went into assisting my mother, and
the article waited.
It is now almost 3 months since my mothers
move. She has chosen to live in Chapel Hill and
is now living with my husband and me while she
gets her bearings and decides her next steps. I am
on a two-week vacation from seeing clients, and I
am devoting time to this article again. It is a labor
of love. I wonder if I will finish the article while my
mom is living in our house with us.
My relationship with my mother has not always
been an easy one, but has of course, been a very
important relationship in my work and in my life.
These days together, while challenging, have been
very healing days.
In 1998, I began to work with a group of interested
students to create an interview protocol with the aim of
developing a preliminary description of ATFAFS. Over
several weeks, we developed the protocol, refined it, and
practiced by interviewing each other. Questions included
the following:
Please tell your stories of healing and
transformation in your family in your own
words. Include places of struggle and release,
victories and defeats, light and dark.
Were there any important dream images that
potentiated your family work?
Were there any important synchronicities?
Were there any particular transpersonal modal
ities that supported or helped you in your family
work?
Were there any particular transpersonal
experiences that supported or helped you in
your family work?

Transpersonal Approach to Family Systems

Please share any thoughts you have about


drawbacks to the Transpersonal Feminist
Approach to Family Systems you were exposed
to in your Innerwork Practicum/Clinical
Practicum class at ITP.
Please share any thoughts you have about
benefits of this approach.
Is there anything you would like to add?
How has this process been for you?
As a part of the protocol, participants rated different
parts of the course/approach based on their perception of
the helpfulness of various aspects of the course. Twenty
interviews were conducted, transcribed, and analyzed.
Subsequently, two global students who completed their
distance education version of ATFAFS gave permission
for their work to be included in this study. In addition,
22 students gave permission for portions of their final
papers, which discussed the experience and impact
of presenting their genograms to their classmates, to
be included in this exploratory study. In the findings
reported herein, I also drew on my experiences teaching
this approach, using it in my own life and in my work
with clients.
Participants

Participants ranged in age from 20s to 60s.
All met the criteria for admission to various graduate
programs at ITP. All students had completed at least
a Bachelors degree. Some had higher degrees as well.
Some had extensive training and experience in the
fields of psychology and psychotherapy; others were just
beginning study. Some had extensive experience with
their own families in therapy and recovery, while others
had not. The group was primarily Caucasian with some
representation from the African American, Asian, and
Hispanic communities.

Invitations to participate were given to
all students who had attended an ITP class in
which I presented this approach to family systems.
Participation was entirely voluntary. I did not look at
the names of anyone who chose to participate until
all grades were turned in for the last quarter I taught
residentially at ITP. Although grades were pass/fail
and all students in the class passed by virtue of
completing their assignments, I took this precaution
to protect students anonymity while I was writing
evaluations.

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 125

Student Reports on the Usefulness of


Various Aspects of
A Transpersonal Feminist Approach
to Family Systems
wenty students provided answers to the following
question about various aspects they experienced in
relationship to their family work:

Please rate the following activities in terms of how


helpful they have been in your processing of healing
and transformation within your family. Rate the
items on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 representing
not helpful at all and 10 representing extremely
helpful.
In Table 1, results are presented in the order of amount of
the students perceived helpfulness of class activities. This
table also provides an overview of the mix of activities in
which students were engaged.

All activities received rankings in the helpful
range. The highest ranking (9.30) was given to
preparation for the family presentation and the lowest
(6.77) was given to dreamwork.

The three activities of highest rank related to
family presentations: preparing for family presentations,
presenting ones family to classmates, and listening to
classmates family presentations. These are activities that
are commonly used in the study of Murray Bowens
Table 1.
Average Ratings of Class Activities in Terms of How
Helpful They Were in the Process of Healing and
Transformation Within Ones Family
1 = not helpful 5 = moderately helpful 10 = extremely helpful

Preparation for family presentation


Presenting your family to classmates
Listening to your classmates family presentations
Reading journal entries to class
Listening to classmates journal entries
Journaling with class
Creative expression work
Reading Dance of Intimacy (Lerner, 1987)
Informal discussions with classmates
Prayer
Reading Dance of Anger (Lerner, 1985)
Dreamwork

9.30
8.98
8.75
8.11
7.76
7.61
7.61
7.36
7.23
7.19
7.15
6.77

126 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

(1985/1990) family systems theory and the high rankings


tend to support Bowens assertion that the work of family
investigation can be extremely helpful in working with
ones own family of origin. Next highest were activities
related to journaling: reading journal entries in class
ranked highest, followed by listening to classmates
journal entries, and journaling with the class.

It is possible that the lower rankings for creative
expressive work, prayer, and dreamwork have to do with
the fact that not all students were exposed to all activities.
Dreamwork was discussed in Innerwork Practicum
briefly but not in Clinical Practicum. Students had
exposure to dreamwork in other coursework at ITP.
Creative expressive work was also offered in separate
courses at ITP. Prayer was entirely voluntary and was
not a class activity. Harriet Lerners books Dance of
Intimacy (1989) and Dance of Anger (1985) were required
reading for the Innerwork Practicum classes taught to
first year doctoral students, and were recommended
reading for Clinical Practicum students. Additionally,
it is important to note that rankings are subjective and
may change with reflection. As Karen noted:
Reading journal entries to classI ranked it as a
6. But now that Im thinking about it, it should
probably be like a 10. Wow, I just never felt really
accepted. I think thats what it is. I felt really accepted
by the class and I think a lot of that has to do with
Innerwork, because I really put myself out there. I
think there was only 1 or 2 times when I didnt read.
I remember always saying to myself, Other people
are passing, but Im going to read.
Upon reviewing the results of this questionnaire, I
realized that there were several important activities in
the class that were omitted in the questionnaire, and
that I hoped to include in future studies. These include
maintaining a non-judgmental stance, compassionate
self-awareness, and compassionate listening.
Illustrations of Important Aspects of
A Transpersonal Feminist Approach
to Family Systems
his section includes detailed examples of important
aspects of ATFAFS provided by student accounts
of their experiences. I selected the passages because of
their ability to transmit various aspects of the process.
Participants chose their own pseudonyms for the study.
I changed certain details to disguise identities. Passages
have been editing lightly for clarity and brevity.

Lazarus

I woke up and thought, what a weird dream. I wonder


who those people are. Thats so odd. And so it wasnt
until I wrote that in journaling that I realized it was my
family, that I had some sense of shame about who they
were, their flaws, their dysfunction. I never really felt
that because I didnt feel any particular connection with
most of them. I really didnt know them. Most of them
were dead by the time I came along. And so I thought,
thats really interesting that I feel that.

And so, after I did the presentation, what I was
also struck by, there was this huge, it was like a big release
afterwards. It was very emotional afterwards. It was
very emotional afterwards. I did this presentation on
Thursday. On Friday, we had that closing ritual group

practice. That whole day I was just a basket case. I was


fine Thursday, but by Friday, I felt absolutely exhausted,
spent emotionally. I think it was a rebound effect from
doing the presentation. I couldnt stop crying. I just
couldnt stop crying. This whole family presentation
thing which I had determined was merely going to be a
benign little exercise was tapping into feelings of which I
was totally unaware.

There is a big difference in sharing my familys
story with people who are interested and care about me
and sharing it with people who are not that interested.
For one thing people who arent interested in me and
my history wont sit and listen to all that. It makes them
uncomfortable. It is an act of love to be willing to listen
and empathically take all of it in. Presenting my family
in that empathic supportive environment allows me to
see and begin to drop some of those engrained defenses
and contact some of that wounding as well as the feelings
generated by that wounding. It also allows me to place
myself not just in an historical context but in an emotional
and psychological context. That part felt so big to me.

Reflections on Jane. I chose to begin this
section with Janes account because it illustrates quite
well many aspects of ATFAFS, demonstrating how many
of the pieces fit together and support each other. Janes
dream came right before her family presentation, and
the dreams significance began to clarify for her during
a class journaling session before the presentation. Jane
noted that she underestimated the power of the family
presentation, having been gathering family information
for 10 years.

The dream is about grubby people. While
journaling about the dream before class, Jane realized
that these grubby people were her family, and she
tapped into some feelings of shame about her family,
feelings that surprised her as she had never met many of
the people represented on her genogram. She said: Most
of them were dead by the time I came along.

The dream and Janes commentary illustrate
the class atmosphere that was intentionally cultivated
over time: an atmosphere of loving-kindness, respect,
curiosity, exploration, openness, and non-judgment
toward all participantsself, family members, class
members, and their families. The kindness, acceptance,
and non-judgment of her friends in the dream are
remarkable to Jane, while in her dream, as the dreamer,
she is so focused on her judgments: They werent bad
looking, but they were just so filthy.

Transpersonal Approach to Family Systems

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 127

Janes Dream, Family Presentation,


and Experience with Journaling

Jane: [I had] one dream right before I gave my
presentation. I hadnt thought it was going to be any big
deal, giving the presentation.

Id been preparing for this for about 10 years.
About 10 years ago, I began asking my mother about the
family....My mother had some notes she had written. It
wasnt very complete but at least it was something. So I
thought, well, its not going to be any big deal and I was
really looking forward to doing it. Like I said in class,
who else is going to listen to this. So its kind of an honor
to be able to tell these stories.

But the night I gave my presentation, I had this
dream about these grubby people. I told this dream in
class.
I was at a party, some outdoor party of some kind. I
was with my friends, my people, my community, the
people I socialize with. And in walked these grubby
people. Filthy, dirty people with dirty clothes and
dirty hair and everything. Fat. They werent bad
looking, but they were just so filthy. It was sort of
horrifying. Nobody was really saying anything
about it. My friends were making conversation, were
making nice with those people, and I thought, do
you guys not notice that these people are incredibly
filthy? I was the only one. I didnt even know who
these people were. They werent my relatives, like
anyone I recognized, but everybodys acting like,
Theres so and so. Finally I asked my friend B.,
Who are these people? Why are they so filthy?
And she said, Ill tell you later. But still people
were being so kind to them.


Jane commented: Presenting my family in that
empathic supportive environment allows me to see and
begin to drop some of those engrained defenses and
contact some of that wounding as well as the feelings
generated by that wounding. Here we see a beautiful
example of Jane making sense of her family history in
her own time, in her own terms. The interplay between
contemplating her dream through her journal and
contemplating her family history seems to promote
a deepening of understanding and a bridge beyond
the intellect to deep feelings that had previously been
unconscious.
Sunshines Family Investigation, Journaling,
and Listening to Classmates Family Presentations

Sunshine: I think it was a good experience in
that I had never really talked to my parents about their
childhoods. I mean we had talked a little about them,
but never really had gone into depth about them. It was
a good process in terms of me asking them questions
about their family life and childhood and getting them
to open a little bit more because they were closed about
disclosing their childhood experiences. They both had a
painful childhood in a lot of ways. So it was definitely
healing for me to talk to them and gave me insight into
what some of the patterns were.

It was really helpful for me in terms of getting
in touch with the unconscious. The journaling, really, is
like letting your unconscious take over. Theres space for
that. And theres something about the class that helps
to elicit it, I think. I never really journaled that much
outside of class. I never really got much out of it. The
space kind of allowed the unconscious to open. So I
think it is a great tool for getting in touch with your
unconscious. Hearing other people share is a great way
to build connections or intimacy. I saw sides of people
that I had never seen in other classes. And the family
presentations were really powerful tooI saw sides of
people I would never normally know about or see. [These
aspects] cannot really come out because there are some
norms or something. I dont really know what it is. Its
like a transpersonal thing.
The space is created for peoples whole self to come
forward, which I guess is what the transpersonal is. It is
a powerful approach because it does bridge the personal
family history with the transpersonal. Transpersonal is
not just focusing on your defects and pains and your
familys problems but it is holistic. I think it is a really
powerful approach.


Reflections on Sunshine. I was struck by
Sunshines words, The space is created for peoples
whole selves to come forward. This was something I
noticed as well, again and again, particularly during
students family presentations. I often noticed a sense of
students full presence and wholeness during their family
presentations and afterwards, when I observed students
relating to each other in class.

Sunshine reflected on the healing aspects of
talking to her parents about their childhoods, which
opened new conversations and avenues for exploration
and helped her understand family patterns. Many
students reported similar experiences.

She described helpful aspects of journaling
sessions in class, which particularly assisted her in
getting in touch with the unconscious. Sunshine said,
The journaling really is like letting your unconscious
takeover....The space kind of allowed the unconscious
to open. Some of the writing exercises I presented,
especially those developed by Ira Progoff (1992) and
Natalie Goldberg (1986), do have a quality of allowing
one to open to and listen to the unconscious. It was my
hope that journaling would also allow time and space for
integrating the information and insight that came from
the unconscious, as seen in Janes comments above.

Sunshine noted that the class atmosphere
allowed the unconscious to open. I believe this is
true. I believe the atmosphere of compassionate, nonjudging awareness of ones own words and of others
sharing fostered the openness. I further believe that the
presence of a group who are journaling together helps
everyone in the group move more deeply, just as a group
of meditators can support the depth of an individuals
meditation experiences.

Sunshine reflected on the community-building
aspects of ATFAFS: Hearing other people share is a great
way to build connections or intimacy. The opportunity
to hear classmates journal entries as well as family
presentations contributed to this sense of intimacy.
Marys Creative Expressive Prayer
and Genogram Work

Mary: One of the things I did was to make a
REALLY BIG CHART (genogram), and I lived with it
on my wall. So there was this corner I would slip into to
do my family work, and the three dimensionality of it
was important, the spatial aspect.

And lately what I have been doing is I have
been casting the faces of my family in plaster and then

128 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Lazarus

pressing clay into them, so right now I am doing people


that are closer to me. So I put their pictures around,
and I work on the mask, and I pray about them, and
I think about them, and I make other things around.
And theres a lot of stress and struggle in this. Im
doing my oldest sisters children right now. Shes going
through a horrific time. Its hard being so far away.
So for me, its like laying down these prayers for them
and decorating their faces with leaves of plants that are
blooming. Its a trippy thing, but its been really good
for me, you know. I woke up this morning. I spent
a couple of hours working on L. And so, its like the
same part of my room. Theres a way that spatially I
feel likeI dont know. I havent articulated this yet.
So theres a way that its significant for me to return to
that part of my room, to start to put up on the walls
further manifestations or explorations into my family.
And its helping me open myself to them in a really
good way. And theres a way I can touch those faces and
be aware of myself with those faces that I am hoping to
more and more be like.

And when I first started casting them, I didnt
have any idea that it would turn out to be such a big heart
thing for me, you know. I feel like, when Im working
on the faces, you know how you tend a little kid when
theyre sick, you wipe their face, just like that big heart
thing. You know, I really feel this big heart thing for me
to work on these.

So heres something else. Im thinking out
loud. Theres a way we have a family situation where
the boys havent really helped us. And its an old pattern
in the family where the men are very charismatic, very
powerful, and theyre each in their own way crazy....
They have wild hair or they played too hard or like this
man, he really has a screw loose.

I feel like in doing these masks that I am finding
my way with thosethat field thing again...spending
that time and I love this. [It is] really prayerful, loving
to do this work. I feel like myself. Im finding a way in
myself to be able to be congruent with whats going on. It
also feels that the working Im doing three dimensionally
is helping me find my way to this other part of the family
that Im not...that Im finding my way with this mask.
Im finding my way also into myself, like how to view the
way I develop.

Reflections on Mary. I chose to include this
excerpt because it provides a striking example of a mode of
creative expressive prayerful work that one student developed

for herself. Mary found that working in three dimensions


was important for her. She lived with her REALLY BIG
CHART (genogram) in a special corner of her house. She
described a creative expressive, prayerful practice that she
created for herself as she did her family work.

Mary worked on a project of casting the faces
of her family members in plaster and then pressing clay
into them to create masks. As she worked with each
mask, she surrounded herself with pictures of that family
member, thinking about him or her, offering prayers, and
decorating the mask with the leaves of blooming plants.

This is a modality that arose spontaneously for
Mary, and its power surprised her. Mary said, When
I first started casting them, I didnt have any idea that
it would turn out to be such a big heart thing for me.
Mary found huge benefit in this practice. She touched
a new part of herself she hoped to develop: And theres
a way I can touch those faces and be aware of myself
with those faces, that I am hoping to more and more be
like.
Sweetness Continuous Family Investigation:
Compelling, Exciting, and Painful

Sweetness: Yes, its been about 3 years. Its been
a continuous three years of working. There hasnt been a
time in which I said, OK, I need a break. Im not going
to do anything on this. Things have come about the
family and pieces about the family and family dynamics
continually over this three-year period of time, and I
know that theres still this call to continue to do work
with it. My father is very excited for me to come home
this summer because were going to look up some more
things. I have been sharing with him each step of the way
what Ive been doing and hes very, very excited about it.
Ive become more excited about it and keep doing things
on the Internet.

Interviewer: What kinds of things are you doing
on the Internet?

Sweetness: Finding birth certificates, finding
death certificates. Like I never really knew the history
of Kentucky and where people came from and how the
land was allocated originally and Kentucky was next
to Tennessee, which was a state that we were not free
in and couldnt be free in. So lots of people came to
Kentucky with no sense of family, nothing, but just to
get away from being in a slave state. Uncovering that
piece of history and what Ive recently found out is that
my mothers grandparents werent from Kentucky. So
thats been really, really interesting to really start tracing

Transpersonal Approach to Family Systems

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 129

and picking and finding and delving into. And its been
painful. Its been a really painful process. I got into some
of the Archives of Kentucky and found some of the court
hearings and where they would, a slave was trying to
run away, off a plantation, they would be caught and
sentenced to so many lashes, whippings. Reading this, the
pain and the torment, it sometimes feels overwhelming,
it feels a little much, and yet there is this push to keep
delving and trying to locate this information and trying
to make sense of it.

Im not quite sure what all this means, but its
been really important to share with the family. And
everyone wants me to bring home the big sheet that I
prepared for class, so I can hang it up. And everybody
wants to be on it. Its like we all want to find where we
are. Did you put this person in? Well yes, mom, of
course I put them in. Oh, we were hoping maybe we
could have a reunion when you come and everyone can
see this.

Theyre hoping that I have found some pieces of
information about my mothers grandparents, which has
been very difficult if you were African American. You
didnt go on a census; you went on as property. Its those
kinds of things, and peoples names changed. Oftentimes
you had to take the name of the family that owned you.
So its been that kind of holding thats been hard....I feel
a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. And I feel
this research is part of the big piece.

Reflections on Sweetness. Whereas Marys
family work drew her toward prayerful mask-making,
Sweetness was drawn deeply into family investigation. In
this transpersonal feminist approach to family systems,
students are encouraged to follow a particular direction
that has the most heart and meaning for them. Sweetness
found much benefit in her chosen direction. It brought
her closer to her family. She enjoyed sharing her work
with her father at every step of the way. In addition, her
family was interested in her ongoing exploration: And
everyone wants me to bring home the big sheet that I
prepared for class, so I can hang it up. And everybody
wants to be on it.

It also eased a burden she carried. Paradoxically,
though some of what Sweetness uncovered was extremely
painful (e.g., If you were African American you didnt
go on a census, you went on as property), she felt a sense
of lightening: I feel a weight has been lifted from my
shoulders. She attributed a part of this lifting to her
family work.


As I witnessed students of different cultures and
ethnicities share particular pieces of their family history,
I perceived greater possibilities for understanding,
empathy, and appreciation of differences. It was as if
we were each privileged to look through a very detailed
and private window of life and experience at times so
different, at times so similar, to our own. There was
something very powerful and illuminating about seeing
each person in the very deep context from which she or
he came. Several students reported that this process was
a start in the healing of past hurts that had happened in
their relationships.
Austins Somatic Response
to His Family Presentation: A Heart Opening

Austin: So it [my family presentation] was a very,
very touching experience. I didnt know how touching it
was, but I knew when I was asked how I was doing at
the end [of the presentation] I couldnt say. I didnt know
because I was so touched, too deep to really put a label or
name on what it was.

And then we did a Reichian experience [in my
next class]. We were lying on our backs and loosening
up the armoring in our bodies. I remember feeling a
ping in my left lung. I didnt know what it was. I just
remember feeling it go off, kind of like a small needle. I
went through the rest of the day. I did a drawing while
listening to class and it ended up being this drawing of
a person sitting cross-legged and having a swirl coming
out of the chest cavity. I did it completely unconsciously.
I wasnt paying attention to what my hands were doing
as I was listening to class.

Then I went home and came back the next day.
As I was pulling up to ITP a song came on the radio,
Elton Johns Candle in the Wind, the verse, youre
like the candle in the wind, youve been blown out
long before your legend ever did. At that instant my
grandmother on my moms side flashed into my mind
and I just saw so vividly my genogram and her children,
all my uncles and aunts and my mother and myself as
her lineage, and you know she was blown out so quickly
in the car accident. I just lost it.

I cried for the rest of the song. I had a little bit of
time so I was going to go in and meditate. I went into the
meditation room and my left lung started hurting again.
And so I did some concentration meditation on that area to
see what was going on. With every breath it started getting
worse and worse and finally I just stopped concentrating
on my breathing because it was hurting so much.

130 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Lazarus


I thought I had a deflated lung and so I ended
up going to the hospital. The doctor said it wasnt a
deflated lung, that it was muscular, in between my ribs
up against my lung something had pulled, supposedly.
He was going to do an EKG on me because he thought I
was having heart problems. But after checking me out he
said he didnt think that was necessary because my heart
was sounding strong. I hadnt even thought about it
being over my heart. I just was thinking about my lung.

So that was the first indicator that maybe this
was heart related. Within two weeks I was back in Aikido
practicing and so that kind of ruled out strained muscles.
It didnt hurt after that. The only other time after that
was when I was listening to someone elses family
presentation, and I was being touched emotionally again.
So really for me that was an opening up of my heart to
my family and to myself and thats kind of my indicator.
When I feel that little ping I know, Oh, that must be
emotional. Something emotional is coming up.

I havent felt it in quite a while because I am
paying attention more now to my emotions. Its like when
Im not paying attention that it goes off. Its my indicator
light. It says, Pay attention to whats going on.

Reflections on Austin. Austin spoke to the
power of the experience of his presenting his family to
his classmates: I didnt know how touching it was, but
I knew when I was asked how I was doing at the end [of
the presentation], I couldnt say. I didnt know because
I was so touched, too deep to really put a label or name
on what it was.

The experience continued as Austin progressed
through his courses that day. A Reichian experience
in his next class focused on loosening body armor. He
reported feeling a ping and unconsciously completed
a spontaneous drawing of a person sitting cross legged
and having a swirl come out of his chest cavity. I am
reminded of Peter Levines approach to the healing
of trauma, which he has termed Somatic Experiencing
(Levine & Kline, 2007). Levine talked frequently about
the healing effects of the discharge of energy that has
been trapped in the nervous system after trauma. I
wondered if Austin was experiencing such a discharge of
energy, straight from his heart area.

Austins experience continued into the next day.
In response to a song on the radio, Austin reported, my
grandmother on my moms side flashed into my mind
and I just so vividly saw my genogram...and you know
she was blown out so quickly in the car accident. I just

lost it. I cried for the rest of the song. I wondered if


perhaps more of what is called discharge in the
somatic experiencing work was occurring for Austin. I
also wondered if, in Reichian terms, Austin was feeling
the benefit of a loosening of his body armor.

Troubled by an intense pain in his chest area,
Austin made a trip to the hospital, thinking that there
was a problem with his lung. Austin was told that his
heart and lungs were fine, and that the doctor suspected
some sort of muscular strain. Austin noticed that the
ping only happens when he is touched emotionally,
as when he is listening to someone elses family
presentation. He made sense of the experience in his
own terms: So really for me that was an opening up of
my heart to my family and to myself and thats kind of
my indicator....When...I feel that little ping I know,
Oh, that must be emotional. Something emotional is
coming up.

Recent discoveries in neuroscience have pointed
to the importance of mindfulness of emotion as a factor
that supports neural integration. Siegel (2009) noted:

Transpersonal Approach to Family Systems

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 131

We find that this flow toward maximal complexity


occurs with integration and actually achieves
the qualities we can remember with the acronym
FACES: flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized and
stable. (p. 157)
Siegel further observed:
This is how integration can be seen as the heart of
healthin a body, a brain, a mind, a relationship,
or a group such as a community or a society. When
we emotionally process something within any of
these levels of experience, we are altering the state of
integration of our system. (p. 159)
I believe the way Austin moved through his experience
demonstrates the characteristics of the FACES flow:
he described an experience that is flexible, adaptive,
coherent, energized, and stable. It will be interesting to
check in with Austin to see, years later, if he feels that
experience contributed to an alteration in the state of
integration of his system, as Siegel implied.
Benefits and Drawbacks of
A Transpersonal Feminist Approach
to Family Systems
ajor themes from students comments about the
perceived benefits and drawbacks of ATFAFS are
presented in Tables 2 and 3, respectively.

Drawbacks

Four main themes of pitfalls or drawbacks
emerged from the data: possible hurts, class organization
issues, critiques regarding approach, and critiques
regarding the instructor.

Possible hurts. I discussed confidentiality issues
Table 2.
Students Perceived Drawbacks to
A Transpersonal Feminist Approach
to Family Systems

Possible hurts
Possible hurt from family members you contact/
are unable to contact
Possible cut off from important family relationships
Possible breach in confidentiality
Group not supportive
Possible physical repercussions
Process can be overwhelming
Not adequate support or container if someone has
a spiritual or psychological emergency
Process can take you to some very dark places
Unpleasant memories
Uncovering a family secret can create nervousness
in the family
Too much emotional processing for some without
enough balance of practical work in the world.
Class organization issues
Would prefer separating family systems and journaling
into two classes. More theory. More experiential
work. More time to present. More family systems
courses in curriculum for those who choose to go on.
Presentation time too rushed
Need more processing time
Would have liked a smaller class with more processing
time
Critiques regarding approach
Needs more information about the definition of a
transpersonal, feminist approach to family systems
Not easy to evaluate statistically
Lack of acceptance from the counseling world
Not enough emphasis on emotions/feelings
Takes a lot of time
Past oriented
Critiques regarding the instructor
April: My experience is that shes bringing back the
feminist side of her she had to push down in the
spiritual part of herself. In coming to terms with this,
I believe she is trying to integrate those pieces of
herself.
Mary to Irene: I question your relationship to your own
authority. Irenes own biases and blind spots

132 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

at the beginning of the class, and I asked that students


respect each others confidentiality. There is, though,
always the risk that there might be a breach.

I was aware, when planning and teaching this
course, that some deep and unpleasant material might
arise, which might at times be overwhelming. Though
there was processing time in class, through dreamwork
and journaling, I understood that this might not be
enough for some students at some times. To address
this concern, I made a repeated recommendation to
students from the beginning of class that they arrange
support for themselves through outside psychotherapy.
There were quite a number of transpersonally-trained
psychotherapists in the community during the time I
was teaching. Additionally, as I became aware of how
powerful an effect the family presentations could have
on students, I regularly suggested that students plan for
some time of rest and support after their presentations.

During my last year of teaching, with the able
help of my teaching assistant, we experimented with
creating a way in which older students might mentor new
students through this process. My teaching assistant held
a number of support groups for interested students.

Finally, due to the risks involved with bringing
up trauma, some training and practice in trauma healing
(Levine, 1997; Ogden, 2006) might be a useful adjunct
to this curriculum to support the transformative aspects
of the program.

Class organization issues. Most comments in
this category asked for more of various aspects of the
course: more presentation time, more processing time,
more theory.

Critiques regarding the approach. More
information is needed in defining this approach, which
this article begins to address. It is interesting that for
some there was too much emphasis on emotions/feelings,
while for others this emphasis was seen as a benefit. The
approach does take time, though students can choose
how much time they wish to devote. The approach does
involve taking a look at the past, but I would argue that
the present can be greatly enriched when there is a fuller
understanding of the past.

Critiques regarding the instructor. I think
there is some truth to the observation that I was in a
process of reintegrating the feminist part of myself that
did not have full expression in my spiritual life at the
time. I think there is also truth to the critique that I had
some issues with relationship to my own authority and

Lazarus

Table 3.
Students Perceived Benefits of
A Transpersonal Feminist Approach
to Family Systems

Healing




























Healing/transforming of self
Nurturing the coming out of aspects of self not
yet been explored
Insight into self/self understanding
Seeing patterns
Broadening perspective/seeing people in context
Seeing self differently
Stronger sense of self
Creates an opening to the unconscious
Making the unconscious conscious
Emotional healing
Allows dropping of engrained defenses
Opening gates to emotional awareness and
expression
Being seen and accepted
Weight lifted from shoulders
Opening the heart
Healing the heart
Movement toward softer emotions (love, forgiveness)
Acceptance
Developing love and compassion
Access to forgiveness
Healing of important relationships
Being more fully ones authentic self in
important relationships
Process of forgiveness
Honoring people as they are
Holding all people in a loving way
Renewed appreciation for those who came
before
Appreciation for family members journeys
Insight into important others
Healing for other family members
Contributes to global healing

Empowerment



Finding voice
Strengthening voice
Discovering for one self rather from outside experts
Choosing ones own focus

Having dark part seen and accepted


Increases intimacy
Promotes appreciation for differences
Feeling understood and accepted

Working with many levels at once

Community building

Powerful

Transpersonal Approach to Family Systems

with finding my voice. I do see this preliminary research


and the writing of this article as a way of finding and
strengthening my voice.
Benefits

The benefits described by students were
substantial. Four main themes emerged: healing,
empowerment, community building, and powerful.
The healing theme divided into the subthemes healing/
transforming of self, emotional healing, healing of
important relationships, healing for other family
members, and contributes to global healing.

It is not surprising, and heartening as well, that
healing was the major theme that emerged regarding
benefits of ATFAFS. That the healing category
encompassed strengthening sense of self, emotional
healing, and healing of important relationships is also
not surprising; this confirms my own experience with
the work and my observations of students and clients
over the years. I was delighted to see that the theme of
empowerment emerged as a perceived benefit: finding
voice, strengthening voice, discovering for oneself rather
from outside experts, and choosing ones own focus
were all aspects that are consciously nurtured in this
approach.

Community building was another major theme
that emerged, and again confirms my observations while
teaching. A very special kind of community is described,
one that I hope we as humanity are growing toward, where
dark parts are seen and accepted, intimacy is increased,
there is support for appreciation for differences, as well as
an increased feeling of being understood and accepted.

Powerful was the final benefit mentioned,
described by a comment as, working many levels at
once.

A major benefit not mentioned by students, but
that I have enjoyed in my own life as a result of working
with this approach, is something I call sturdiness. I
have noticed a deep groundedness, which I attribute to
an understanding and familiarity with my roots through
the generations. I have, of course, worked with this
approach longer than my students, and this sturdiness
has developed over time.
Final Words
hen I was on faculty at ITP, I participated in
a retreat at which we talked about core values
for the Institute. As I recall, we agreed on four values:
mindfulness, compassion, discernment, and appreciation
of differences. I believe ATFAFS contributed to each

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 133

of these values. Were that meeting happening today, I


would argue for a fifth value: empowerment. I would
argue that developing and strengthening voice is
critical to the training of transpersonal psychologists.
I believe that strong and developed voices will support
transpersonally-trained psychologists, spiritual guides,
teachers, and scholars as they set out to do their various
forms of healing work in the world.

Ault-Riche, M. (1994). Sex, money and laundry: Sharing


responsibilities in intimate relationships. Journal of
Feminist Family Therapy, 6(1), 69-87. doi: 10.1300/
J086v06n01_05
Bassman, L. E. & Uellendahl, G. (2003). Comple
mentary/alternative medicine: Implications for
family therapy. Contemporary Family Therapy,
20(4), 435-456.
Belenky, M., Clinchy, B., Goldberger, N., & Tarule, J.
(1997). Womens ways of knowing. (Rev. ed.). New
York, NY: Basic Books.
Becvar, D. S., Caldwell, K. L. & Winek, J. L. (2006).
The relationship between marriage and famiy
therapists and complementary and alternative
medicine approaches: A qualitative study. Journal
of Marital and Family Therapy, 32(1), 115-126. doi:
10.1111/j.1752-0606.2006.tb01592.x
Boa, F., & von Franz, M. L. (1994). The way of the dream:
Conversations on Jungian dream interpretation with
Marie-Louise von Franz. Boston, MA: Shambhala.
Braud, W. (2004). An introduction to organic inquiry:
Honoring the transpersonal and spiritual in research
praxis. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 36(1), 18-25.
Braud, W. (2006). Educating the more in holistic
transpersonal higher education: A 30+ year
perspective on the approach of the Institute of
Transpersonal Psychology. Journal of Transpersonal
Psychology, 38(2), 133-158.
Boorstein, S. (1986). Transpersonal context, inter
pretation, and psychotherapeutic technique. Journal
of Transpersonal Psychology, 18(2), 123-130.
Bowen, M. (1990). Family therapy in clinical practice.
Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson. (Original work
published 1985)
Brown, L. & Gilligan, C. (1992). Meeting at the
crossroads: Womens psychology and girls development.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Bynum, E. B. (1993). Families and the interpretation of


dreams: Awakening the intimate web. Binghamton.
NY: Harrington Park Press.
Bynum, E. B. (2000). Psi, the shared dreamscape
and the family unconscious. Retrieved at <www.
obeliskfoundation.com/articles/artpsi.html>
Caldwell, K. L., Winek, J. L., & Becvar, D. S. (2006).
The relationship between marriage and family
therapists and complementary and alternative
medicine approaches: A qualitative study. Journal
of Marital and Family Therapy, 32(1), 115-126. doi:
10.1111/j.1752-0606.2006.tb0 1592.x
Cassout, M., & Cubley, S. (1995). Life, paint and passion:
Reclaiming the magic of spontaneous expressions. New
York, NY: Tarcher/Putnam.
Clements, J. (2004). Organic inquiry: Toward research
in partnership with Spirit. Journal of Transpersonal
Psychology, 36(1), 26-49.
Clements, J., Ettling, D., Jenett, D., & Shields, L.
(1998). Organic research: Feminine spirituality
meets transpersonal research. In W. Braud, & R.
Anderson (Eds.), Transpersonal research methods for
the social sciences: Honoring human experience (pp.
114-127). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Dossey, L. (1993). Healing words: The power of prayer
and the practice of medicine. San Francisco, CA:
HarperSanFrancisco
Ettling, D. (1994). A phenomenological study of the creative
arts as a pathway to embodiment in the personal
transformation process of nine women (Unpublished
doctoral dissertation). Institute of Transpersonal
Psychology, Palo Alto, CA.
Goldberg, N. (1986). Writing down the bones. Boston,
MA: Shambhala.
Hanh, T. N. (2003). Creating true peace: Ending violence
in yourself, your family, your community, and the
world. New York, NY: Free Press.
Hastings, A. (1983). A counseling approach to para
psychological experience. Journal of Transpersonal
Psychology, 15(2), 143-167.
Hutchins, R. (2002). Gnosis: Beyond disease and
disorder to a diagnosis inclusive of gifts and
challenges. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology,
34(2), 101-114.
Hutton, M. (1994). How transpersonal psychotherapists
differ from other practitioners: An empirical study.
Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 26(2), 139174.

134 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Lazarus

References

Jenett, D. (1999). Red rice for Bhagavati/cooking for Kannaki:


An ethnographic/organic inquiry of the Pongala ritual
at Attukal Temple, Karala, South India. (Doctoral
dissertation). Dissertation Abstracts International,
Section A, 61(02), 664A. (UMI No. 9961566)
Kennett, J., Swami Radha, & Frager, R. (1975). How to
be a transpersonal teacher without becoming a guru.
Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 11(1), 48-65.
Kerr, M., & Bowen, M. (1988). Family evaluation: An
approach based on Bowen theory. New York, NY: W.
W. Norton.
Knudson-Martin, C. (1994). The female voice:
Applications to Bowens family systems theory.
Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 20(1), 35-46.
doi: 10.1111/j.1752-0606.1994.tb01009.x
Knudson-Martin, C. (1996). Differentiation and
self-development in the relationship context.
The Family Journal: Counseling and Therapy
for Couples and Families, 4(3), 188-198. doi:
10.1177/1066480796043002
Lazarus, I. (1999a). A transpersonal approach to family
systems. Unpublished Global Program Course, Institute
of Transpersonal Psychology, Palo Alto, CA.
Lerner, H. (1985). The dance of anger: A womans guide to
changing the patterns of intimate relationships. New
York, NY: Harper & Row.
Lerner, H. (1989). The dance of intimacy: A womans guide
to courageous acts of change in key relationships. New
York, NY: Harper & Row.
Le Shan, L. (1974). How to meditate: A guide to self
discovery. Boston, MA: Little, Brown.
Levine, P. (1997). Waking the tiger: Healing trauma.
Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
Levine, P. & Kline, M. (2007). Trauma through a childs
eyes: Awakening the ordinary miracle of healing,
infancy through adolescence. Berkeley, CA: North
Atlantic Books.
Lukoff, D. (2005/2006). Transpersonal psychologist
given the Abraham H. Maslow award. Association for
Humanistic Psychology Perspective, December/January, 4.
McAll, K. (1982). Healing the family tree. London, UK:
Sheldon Press.
McGoldrick, M. (1998). Re-visioning family therapy: Race,
culture and gender in clinical practice. New York, NY:
Guilford Press.
McGoldrick, M., Gerson, R., & Shellenberger, S. (1999).
Genograms: Assessment and intervention. New York,
NY: W. W. Norton.

Mellick, J. (1996). The natural artistry of dreams. Berkeley,


CA: Conari Press.
Mellick, J. (2001). The art of dreaming: A creativity toolbox
for dreamwork. Berkeley, CA: Conari Press.
Miller, J. (1986). Toward a new psychology of women.
(2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Ogden, P. (2006). Trauma and the body: A sensorimotor
approach to psychotherapy. New York, NY: Norton.
Papero, D. (1990). Bowen family systems theory. Needham
Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Pennebaker, J. W. (1991). Self-expressive writing:
Implications for health, education, and welfare.
In P. Belanoff, P. Elbow, & S.I. Fontaine (Eds.),
Nothing begins with N: New investigations of
freewriting (pp. 157-172). Carbondale, IL: Southern
Illinois Press.
Pennebaker, J. W., & Francis, M. E. (1996). Cognitive,
emotional and language process in disclosure.
Cognition and Emotion, 10, 601-626. doi:
10.1080/026999396380079
Progoff, I. (1992). At a journal workshop: Writing to access
the power of the unconscious and evoke creative ability.
Los Angeles, CA: Jeremy P. Tarcher.
Ram Dass (1975). Advice to a psychotherapist. Journal of
Transpersonal Psychology, 11(1), 84-92.
Reinharz, S. (1992). Feminist methods in social research.
New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Rhodes, L. (2000). Into the dark for gold. Palo Alto, CA:
Science & Behavior Books.
Shields, L. (1995). The experience of beauty, body image, and
the feminine in three generations of mothers and daughters
(Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Institute of
Transpersonal Psychology, Palo Alto, CA.
Siegel, D. (2009). Emotion as integration: A possible
answer to the question, what is emotion? In D. Fosha,
D. Siegel, & M. Solomon (Eds.), The healing power of
emotion: Affective neuroscience, development & clinical
practice (pp. 145-171). New York, NY: Norton.
Speeth, K. (1982). On psychotherapeutic attention.
Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 14(2), 141-160.
Vaughan, F. (1975). Transpersonal psychotherapy:
Context, content and process. Journal of Transpersonal
Psychology, 11(2), 101-110.
Vaughan, F. (1982). The transpersonal perspective:
A personal overview. Journal of Transpersonal
Psychology, 14(1), 37-45.
Vaughan, F. (1991). Spiritual issues in psychotherapy.
Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 23(2), 105-119.

Transpersonal Approach to Family Systems

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 135

Taylor, N. (1996). Womens experience of the descent into


the underworld: The path of Inanna: A feminist and
heuristic inquiry (Unpublished doctoral dissertation).
Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Palo Alto,
CA.
Zinnbauer, B. & Camerota, E. (2004). The spirituality
group: A search for the sacred. Journal of Transper
sonal Psychology, 36(1), 50-65.
Notes
1. I am very grateful to the substantial contributions of
Kathryn Lazarus Baron, with whom I developed this
approach, beginning in 1989. I am also very grateful
to Marianne-Ault Riche, June Singer, Robert
Frager, Hillevi Ruumet, and Louis Vuksinic for
their insightful consultation. The works of Murray
Bowen, Michael Kerr, Daniel Papero, Monica
McGoldrick, Carmen Knudsen-Martin, Natalie
Goldberg, James Pennebaker, Ira Progoff, Fraser
Boa, Marie Louise von Franz, Jill Mellick, Michelle
Cassout, Larry Dossey, and Thich Nhat Hanh have
been very influential as well. I am grateful as well
to all students who were present in my classes and
those who chose to participate in this preliminary
investigation. Special thanks to Darcy Horton, for
her careful editing, and Marie Mae for her invaluable
contributions as my teaching assistant.
Special thanks to Ryan Rominger and Mary
Zinsmeyer, who assisted in developing the protocol
and also conducted and transcribed interviews
and assisted in analyzing data. My thanks as well
to Kathy Stannard-Friel and Monique Vazire who
assisted in the developing of the protocol.
2. In the residential doctoral program at ITP, this
approach was taught in a class entitled Inner Work
Practicum; Creative Expression was taught as a
separate course by Dr. Jill Mellick. In the ITP Global
course A Transpersonal Approach to Family Systems
(Lazarus, 1999), creative expression was included
as part of the course. When students worked with
this approach in Clinical Practicum, journaling,
dreamwork, creative expression and other modalities
were not a part of the course. Students used these
modalities as they felt called to individually.
Public disclosure of journaling, dreams, or
family history is never required. Students may pass
on reading journal entries and may elect to submit

136 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

a paper on their family investigation instead of


choosing to make a family presentation to the class.
About the Author
Irene Lazarus, PhD, maintains a private practice as a
licensed marriage and family therapist in Chapel Hill,
North Carolina. Dr. Lazarus served on the faculty
of the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology for 24
years during which she taught in both the global
and residential programs. Dr. Lazarus served as the
Associate Editor for Clinical Matters of the Journal of
Transpersonal Psychology from 2002-2008 and as the
Coeditor and Editor of the newsletter for the North
Carolina Association of Marriage and Family Therapy
from 2002-2009. She has presented at national and state
conferences and to graduate students on A Transpersonal
Feminist Approach to Family Systems.
About the Journal
The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies is a
peer-reviewed academic journal in print since 1981. It is
published by Floraglades Foundation, and serves as the
official publication of the International Transpersonal
Association. The journal is available online at www.
transpersonalstudies.org, and in print through www.
lulu.co (search for IJTS).

Lazarus

The Wheel of the Year as a Spiritual Psychology for Women


Valeire Kim Duckett
Asheville, NC, USA

The Wheel of the Year is a name used to describe the cyclical progression of the seasons
through time and most often described as part of Pagan, Goddess, and womens spirituality
and/or Wiccan magical traditions. This article introduces the authors conceptual model
of the Wheel of the Year as an earth-based psychology for women, one that is inherently
feminist and also based in transpersonal psychologies. Women explore the turning points,
or holydays of the Wheel, on both spiritual and psychological levels through a wide range of
modalities that engage body, mind, emotion, and spirit. The Wheel provides an overarching
psychospiritual framework for recognizing, understanding, and responding to experiences
and processes that may occur over the course of a womans life.
Keywords: earth-based psychology, female development, womens spirituality, Wicca,
feminism, transpersonal psychologies, psychosynthesis.

fter woman and spirit, feminist is the term I most


often use to describe myself, my worldview, and
my spiritual path. I believe I chose, on a spiritual
level, to be part of bringing balance to the power dynamics
between the sexes/genders on the planet at this time, and
to that end, I have chosen and feel that I have been called
to work specifically in the area of female healing and
empowerment. I have done this in a number of ways all
the adult years of my life: as a student of feminism, as
an activist for the prevention of violence against women,
and through my thirty-year career as a womens studies
teacher in university settings.
Some time ago, even as I continued teaching in
the university, my work with women moved from the
academy back out into the community, where, like many
feminists of my generation, my passion and advocacy
for women began. Equipped with a solid foundation in
academic scholarship about women, I have gone on to
create environments, structures, and processes for women
to acknowledge, retrieve, name, release, and heal old pain
and anger, both as individuals and collectively, and to do
so in ways that honor and celebrate women and womens
ways of knowing and being. I call the container in which
this is done circle, and the way that it is done ritual, both
of which I consider to be remnants of ancient, longburied spiritual psychologies that are re-emerging today.
Although the technologies of circle, ritual, and the Wheel
itself can be successfully applied to a variety of settings
(Baldwin, 1998) and populations (Baker & Hill, 1998;
Starhawk, 1999), I work exclusively with women in my

professional endeavors and in theorizing, as I do here,


regarding the Wheel of the Year and female development
and psychology from a feminist perspective.1
For over two decades I have offered formal
classes in Goddess and womens spirituality2 and in this
way, sat circle with hundreds, and perhaps thousands,
of women, listening and learning about women from
women. As a woman who also teaches classes in women
and psychology in the university, I consider what I have
learned from women in circle to be of equal value to
what I have learned in academic settings. As with the
work of other woman-centered psychologies, such as
that of Carol Gilligan (1982; Gilligan, Ward, & Taylor,
1988), Jean Baker Miller (1986; Miller & Stiver, 1997),
and now many others who have also listened to and
researched the lived experiences of girls and women,
I have gone on to apply feminist research by creating
learning environments that are specific to, and supportive
of, women. For example, I have offered a Womens
Mystery School since 1997, with a three-year formal
curriculum that offers training in feminist (Christ &
Plaskow, 1989; Christ, 1997) and Goddess spirituality
based on my professional experience and training in
womens psychology and spirituality and my work with
The Wheel of the Year. I now travel throughout the US
teaching a year-long training called The Wheel of the
Year as an Earth-based Spiritual Psychology for Women
through the auspices of the Re-formed Congregation
of the GoddessInternational,3 and I am currently
completing a book on the subject.

International
Journal
of Transpersonal
Studies, 29(2), 2010,
pp. 137-151
Wheel
of the Year
as Spiritual
Psychology
International
Journal of Transpersonal Studies 137

time, or how many seasons or increments of time they


celebrated, or the names these special days were given.
However, because of the work of Marija Gimbutas
(1982, 1989, 1991, 1999), the eminent authority on old
European cultures, and others (e.g., Marler, 1997) in the
fields of archeology and archaeomythology,5 it is known
that these ancestors did in fact celebrate the seasons and
experienced them, and human life itself, as cyclical.

Although my interests and work encompass


all aspects of womens spirituality in general, and
Dianic Goddess and Wiccan traditions in particular
(e.g., Barrett, 2007; Budapest, 1989; Jade, 1991), for
the last twenty years much of my work has focused on
European, earth-based shamanic and magical traditions.
The centrality of the Wheel of the Year, or the Wheel of
Life, in these traditions has become a beloved tool in my
personal spiritual practice. I have also discovered, along
with my sisters who have followed the Wheel together
as a community for many years, that the Wheel is not
simply a teaching or illustrative tool about the seasons,
or planting, or a backdrop for the agricultural myths of
antiquity. I have come to see it as yet another remnant
of ancient psychologies as well as a spiritual path, and I
teach it as such, as will be detailed below.
The reader will note that I have adopted instances
of capitalization throughout this document to reflect the
conventions of usage adopted by the spiritualities that
are foundational to the Wheel of the Year work (e.g.,
in relation to words that signify sacred and symbolic
terminology and concepts in traditions such as Wicca or
Paganism). Such use of capitalization is in keeping with
traditional usage in mainstream religious and spiritual
practices. In other instances I have capitalized terms
and concepts that I have developed as a theorist and
practitioner that are integral to the overall conceptual
framework of this psychospiritual model.
The Wheel
he Wheel of the Year is a name used by those
involved in contemporary European earth-based
spiritualities, and now in common usage, to describe
the cyclical progression of the seasons through time. The
turning points, or holydays, of these seasons have also
been given names, though the names vary from culture
to culture and in different time periods. Some of the most
commonly known of these are: Imbolc, Spring Equinox,
Beltane, Summer Solstice, Lammas, Autumn Equinox,
Samhain, and Winter Solstice.4 Some contemporary
sources (e.g., Hutton, 1991) have asserted that the
term Wheel of the Year is a fairly recent invention of
contemporary Wicca and Neopaganism. These same
sources stressed that there is currently no evidence that
any one group of ancient peoples celebrated all eight of
the holydays now recognized by contemporary European,
earth-based groups.
It may never be known what the ancient fore
mothers called the movement of the seasons through

Just as the ancient foremothers did not separate them


selves from nature in the ways later patriarchal worldviews
proscribed (Eisler, 1987; Stone, 1978), it is also likely
that they, like contemporary transpersonalists, did not
separate their experiences into separate compartments of
spiritual and psychological.
Although I speak in passing about the idea that
following the seasons may have been a psychology as
well as a spirituality and a way of life for ancient Old
European peoples and cultures, proving such psychospiritual suppositions or the antiquity of the Wheel in
its present form is not the focus of this article. My focus
instead is to introduce readers to the concept of The
Wheel of the Year as a helpful contemporary earth-based
psychology for women and that it is, as I conceptualize
and teach it, inherently feminist and also solidly based
in transpersonal psychologies. To that end, after some
contextual information and an overview of the Wheel
of the Year teachings and format, I will explore in some
detail a number of the holydays to show how I work with
them as a spiritual psychology.
Transpersonal and Spiritual Psychology
he Wheel as it is known today is seen or experienced
mainly as an inherent part of contemporary, earthbased spiritualities, as in Wicca, Paganism, Goddess and
womens spiritualities. As I previously asserted, my work
shifts the focus of the Wheel to being a psychology, and
specifically, a transpersonal and spiritual psychology.
I have always had an organic interest in
psychology, though never in its traditional forms. My

138 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Duckett

In Neolithic Europe and Asia Minor (ancient


Anatolia)in the era between 7000 BCE and 3000
BCEreligion focused on the wheel of life and
its cyclical turning. This is the geographic sphere
and the time frame I refer to as Old Europe. In
Old Europe, the focus of the religion encompassed
birth, nurturing, growth, death, and regeneration,
as well as crop cultivation and the raising of animals.
(Gimbutas, 1999, p. 3)

early feminism taught me to mistrust much of psychology


because of its inherent androcentrism (Baker, 1986)
and, as I began to understand later, its limited scope.
I encountered more expansive psychologies in the ideas
of the transpersonal through my early experiences with
holotropic breathwork and the accompanying theoretical
frameworks of Christine and Stanislov Grof (1988) and
elsewhere in my graduate program in transpersonal and
spiritual psychologies. Only then did I begin to find and
apply psychologies that made sense to me.
Transpersonal psychologies recognize, study, and
develop responses to experiences that are transcendent
and spiritual, including those that cannot be explained
fully by the biographical life of an individual. These can
range from what Maslow (1983) called peak experiences
to altered and non-ordinary states of consciousness,
mysticism, trance states, and the like (Lajoi & Shapiro,
1992). Caplan (2009) asserted that transpersonal
psychology addresses the full spectrum of human
psychospiritual developmentfrom our deepest
wounds and needs, to the existential crisis of the human
being, to the most transcendent of our consciousness
(p. 231).
During my graduate studies in the 1990s, I
encountered a trend calling for changes in transpersonal
psychology to include more focus on the spiritual. This was
the spiritual psychology described by Thomas Yeomans
(1999). The need to distinguish between transpersonal
and spiritual psychology seems to have diminished
today, and I continue to use the terms interchangeably.
Central to both transpersonal and spiritual psychology
is the recognition of the connection and overlap of the
psychological and the spiritual, which is the basis of my
assertion that the Wheel of the Year as I conceptualize
and work with it is a spiritual psychology.
It took me some time to realize that what I
was already doing in my circles and rituals with women
was, in fact, transpersonal/spiritual psychology. That
realization came in the mid-1990s when I was introduced
to the writings of Anne Yeomans (1984) and her work
regarding psychosynthesis, which I will expand upon
later in this essay.
The Wheel of the Year
as a Spiritual Psychology for Women
he basis of the Wheel of the Year (WOTY) as a
spiritual psychology is that of honoring both the
seasons of nature and the corresponding seasons of
womens lives. Although many womens and Goddess

spirituality sources have made these same connections


(Barrett, 2007; Budapest, 1989; Christ, 1987;
Mountainwater, 1991; Starhawk, 1999; Teish, 1985),
none have named or practiced the Wheel, specifically
or explicitly, as a psychology, nor have they recognized
or explicitly made the case for the potential of
conceptualizing, living, and teaching it as such. Most of
these sources speak of and teach the Wheel as a part of
Pagan or womens/Goddess spirituality and/or Wiccan
magical traditions. I deeply honor, am versed in, and
live these traditions myself and consider these and other
women writers and thinkers my respected foremothers
in this endeavor. However, because of my training and
experience in womens circles, womens studies, womens
psychology, and transpersonal psychologies, I believe
my perspectives and theoretical model regarding the
Wheel as a psychology are broader.
Although there are many differences, some of
the works closest to my own perspective of the Wheel,
specifically as a psychology, include the articulations of
Davis and Leonard (2002) in The Circle of Life: Thirteen
Archetypes for Everywoman and the tone of Judith Bergers
(1999) work Herbal Rituals. Surprisingly perhaps, Laurel
Ann Reinhardts (2001) book for young readers, Seasons
of Magic: A Girls Journey, offered one of the most
profound psychological perspectives of the Wheel and
the holydays that I have encountered. Perhaps this is not
so surprising given that Reinhardt is also a practicing
psychologist.
In working with the WOTY, participants
explore the psychospiritual nature of the eight holydays
of the European earth-based Wheel as well as other
holydays that have been identified and added based on
womens lived experiences. For example, this Wheel
includes holydays related to Menarche, the Amazon, and
the Crone.
Whether it is in the monthly format of the
Womens Mystery School or the quarterly weekend
intensives of the WOTY trainings, all participants attend
an initial eight-hour overview of The Wheel as a spiritual
psychology. Through lecture, discussions, altars, theatre,
music, and rituals, women begin to unlearn or expand
upon much that they may have read or experienced
about these holydays exclusively as related to spirituality.
Simultaneously, they encounter the basics of this new and
unique way of perceiving and experiencing the Wheel
and the holydays as a synthesis of both psychology and
spirituality.

Wheel of the Year as Spiritual Psychology

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 139

Thereafter, for each of the holydays, participants


prepare by reading materials from a wide variety of sources,
including those that describe traditional spiritual ideas
about the holydays per se and readings from womens
studies about womens lives and psychology specifically
(Kesselman, McNair, & Schniedewind, 2004; Maitlin,
2004). For example, for Spring Equinox (March 21/22),
which in the WOTY is also the holyday of The Divine
Girl-Child, students read from Pagan, Goddess, Wiccan
and womens spirituality sources about how Spring
Equinox is generally thought of and celebrated, as well
as from feminist sources that describe the reality of girls
socialization and experiences (Gilligan, 1982; Gilligan,
Ward, & Taylor, 1988; Kesselman et al., 2004; Maitlin,
2004). As a way of exploring each womans personal
experience of Spring Equinox or the Divine GirlChild holyday, participants are asked to take all of this
information in and allow their own response to surface.
From that response, women create a five to seven minute
ritual gesture that each woman shares/enacts when the
group meets for the holyday.
Like other contemporary non-dominate
spiritualities (Cahill & Halpern, 1992), womens
spirituality has expanded upon the definition and
experience of ritual that goes beyond the notion of a
series of actions performed according to a prescribed
order (Oxford, 2002, p. 1170) to include rituals that are
organic, individual, spontaneous, and creative (Miller,
2004). I have developed a methodology I use in the Wheel
as psychology work that I call personal rituals. Individual
personal rituals are gestures that speak about or to the
emotional response that arises in a woman as she explores
the readings and reflects upon her own life experiences.
They can include enactments, psychodrama, the creation
of altars, readings, dance or movement, the honoring of
items from that time period, shamanic healings, and the
like, all done within a five to seven minute timeframe.
Although she may enlist the help of other participants
(e.g., as in a psychodrama), these are neither group rituals
nor performances, but rather deeply personal connective
conversations among the participant, the aspect of herself
she is working with, and Spirit. Often it is the emotional
and developmental processes a woman goes through
as she prepares her personal ritual that is even more
significant than the actual gesture itself. Personal rituals
done in this way are unique to this work and one of the
main reasons women are drawn to follow the Wheel as a
psychology. At each holyday, depending upon how many

women are participating, the personal rituals take three


or four hours, with women enacting their personal rituals
one after the other. Although the group takes brief breaks
in silence, the whole experience is considered a ritual in
and of itself. The intensity and power of 13 to 18 women,
each speaking the truth about her life experience in the
modality of ritual and gesture, rather than just wordsaying, creates an environment of exponential healing
and authentic celebration.
All of this is done in what is called circle or
circle culture, which has been best described by Christina
Baldwin (1998) in Calling the Circle: The First and Future
Culture and popularized by Jean Shinoda Bolen (1999) in
The Millionth Circle. Circle is a way of being together6
(The Womens Well, n.d., para. 1) and includes the use
of a talking item (a technique used by Native American
and other indigenous, earth-based peoples to assure that
each speaker in a circle may speak without interruption),
guidelines for respectful, attentive listening and
witnessing, as well as commitments to confidentiality
and anonymity. The personal ritual format described
here is, without a doubt, one of the most powerful
psychological tools I have ever experienced, applied, or
witnessed.
Since learning is not just an intellectual endeavor,
in addition to the personal rituals, each time the group
meets, women also invite learning through their
bodies, emotions, and spirits using modalities such as
personal processing, meditation, movement, journaling,
visualization, creating art, divination, singing, chanting,
drumming, trance dancing, shamanic journeying, and
the like. Those using transpersonal psychologies will
most likely recognize these healing modalities. Using a
large repertoire of methods helps assure that participants
with different learning, experiential, or emotional styles
are served.
Thus, at every holyday juncture, each woman
of the group encounters related material prior to the
session and allows an emotional response to surface, and
responds in the language of personal ritual. The group
then encounters further information and experiential
exercises related to the holyday when they meet as a part
of the Mystery School or WOTY weekend. In this way,
women work throughout the year, and each year, with
each life phase represented on the Wheel, including the
Girl-Child, the Maiden/Adolescent, She Who Cycles,
She Who Creates, Sustains, and Nurtures,7 the Amazon,
the Mid-Life Woman, the Crone, and so on.

140 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Duckett

One can name and work with these encounters


of the seasons of womens lives in many ways. For
example, in psychosynthesis they can be identified and
worked with as subpersonalities (Rowan, 2001; Rueffler,
1996). These points on the Wheel and the corresponding
phases of womens lives can also be experienced and
worked with using shamanic techniques. I use the term
shaman and employ shamanic methods with respect and
care, being aware of and committed to an ethic I gained
and maintain as a feminist, namely to take care not to
appropriate the spiritual traditions of cultures other than
my own (Three Rivers, 1991).
I have chosen to work specifically with
European, earth-based traditions such as the Wheel for
that very reason, to offer all women, and particularly
women of white, European ancestry and backgrounds,
an opportunity to explore and find their own indigenous,
earth-based roots and shamanic traditions rather than
taking the spiritual traditions of others. Sadly, at this
time, just as the names the foremothers of Old Europe
gave to the seasons or holydays remain unknown, so too
the names they gave to those who embodied what is today
known as shamanism have been lost. Although the full
extent of their practices remains unclear, this situation is
being partially rectified by the work of Max Dashu (n.d.),
Vicki Noble (1991), Barbara Tedlock (2005) and others.8
The WOTY itself, both as a spirituality and a
psychology, can be conceptualized and experienced
as shamanic in a number of ways, including using a
universal commonalities perspective (Harner, 1990). The
standards used to describe or identify shamanic methods
or experiences are many and include the following: they
must incorporate a notion of the birth/death/rebirth
cycle, be used for healing/wholeness, and include the
notion of various dimensions of reality or places one
can travel or visit for information to bring back to this
reality, or another reality, for healing. In the model I am
presenting here of the WOTY as a spiritual psychology,
all of these factors are present including the notion that
work with subpersonalities or developmental life phases
can be considered other dimensions and worked with
through the use of shamanic ritual.
Shamanic rituals and transpersonal perspectives
are fully integrated into the WOTY practice. For example,
I believe that Western women have yet to fully acknowledge
and grieve the loss of the Goddess cultures that occurred
some 6,000 years ago (Gimbutas, 1991; see also Eisler,
1987); those feelings can and do affect Western women

collectively and as individuals today. These unrecognized


and unnamed transpersonal experiences or matrices can
present in any number of ways, including serious and
immobilizing psychological problems such as anxiety,
depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, phobias, and
others.
Women in the WOTY practice learn about
Goddess cultures and their loss in intellectual work
with the Wheel, we do personal and group rituals of
acknowledgment and grieving, and we may also use
shamanic journeys to retrieve specific information and
memory in support of healing. As the ritualist and
transpersonal helper or guide, I give the same kind of
support and suggestions in these situations as one might
when working therapeutically with a personal, repressed
biographical memory, but with the added perspective of
transpersonal psychology and methods.
A similar situation often occurs as we study
the Inquisition and the torture and murder of women
en masse in what is known as the Burning Times
(Armstrong, Pettigrew, Johansson, & Read, 1990;
Barstow, 1994). Women in general, and especially those
currently involved in herbalism, midwifery, and other
female healing modalities common during that historical
period of Europe or those interested in or returning to
or maintaining their earth-based roots from any cultural
tradition, often have transpersonal experiences they
have no way of understanding or working through
within traditional psychological frameworks. Common
transpersonal perspectives and methodologies such
as visualization, ritual, past life regressions, shamanic
journeying, and the like can be of great help in these
situations.
This has been one of the most fulfilling aspects of
the fusion of feminism and transpersonal psychology for
me. Feminism, and the subsequent scholarship that has
grown out of feminism, can give factual information about
womens experiences, while transpersonal perspectives
and psychologies can offer not only a framework to
contextualize collective non-biographical experiences
but also methods inherent in that framework to respond
to womens bodily/emotional/spiritual reactions to this
information. As a longtime feminist educator and as a
woman involved in womens psychology, often the only
way I have witnessed movement and healing in womens
psyches and lives has been through this application
of transpersonal psychology, transpersonal/shamanic
methods, or both.

Wheel of the Year as Spiritual Psychology

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 141

From Autumn Equinox to Spring Equinox:


The Underworld/Inner Time of the Year
lthough this is not the place to offer an in-depth
description of each of the holydays, I would like to
focus on some of them to give the reader a sense of how
they can be worked with as a spiritual psychology. In
doing so, I also wish to highlight what I think is one of
the most important aspects of the Wheel as a psychology
for women and one that I later found echoed in the
transpersonal psychology of psychosynthesis. To explain
this further, I will return to the example used earlier:
Spring Equinox.
Earths peoples have always given names and
personality forms to the energies they experience, and
one of the names given for this time of year and its
processes is Persephone. Her story involves voluntarily
leaving her mother, Demeter, and the outer world ways
of being, in the autumn of the year, to turn toward her
inner life, to explore her soul-self and learn wisdom from
her inner Wise One, Hecate. At Spring Equinox, one
says goodbye to the inner time and returns to the outer
time to create the world anew, guided by the wisdom
gained in inner time reflections/lessons.9
The WOTY has been used to describe the amount
of sunlight reaching the Earths surface at any given time
of the year, resulting from the tilt of the Earth, which in
turn creates the seasons. This is of great importance to
those who must be attentive to the light and the seasons:
the farmers, gardeners, gatherers, fisherfolk, herders, and
others involved in the growing or pursuing of food and
other resources needed for the living of life. There are
also many myths and stories that have been overlaid on
the Wheel. Some use the lifespan of a deity, but others
were created and used to explain and teach the lifecycle
of vegetation, grain, animal life, and the seasons. One
of the most ancient of these stories is that of Persephone
and Demeter.
In the patriarchal version of this story (Foley,
1994), Persephone lives with her mother, Demeter, in a
world that is always sunny and beautiful. They pass their
days together happily tending to Earths bounty and
caring for one another. Persephone is exploring on her
own one day when Hades, the god of the Underworld,
creates a huge chasm in the earths surface and forcibly
takes Persephone into the underworld to, as it was
euphemistically framed in classical Greek versions of the
myth, be his wife. Demeter, who does not know what
has happened, grieves so deeply that all living things

on earth cease to grow and produce until another god


intercedes and Persephone is permitted to spend half of
her time above ground with her mother. However, she
must still reside the rest of the year in the Underworld
with her abductor. If elaborated on at all, this story of
abduction and rape continues to be proposed in world
civilization classes as a story that the Greeks created
and used to explain the seasons, specifically Winter
and Spring. When I recount this version of the story to
women, they shudder, shake their heads, and roll their
eyes (and often weep). All of us who share those moments
are very clear that we would never tell our children, and
especially our daughters, such a story to explain the
naturalness and beauty of the changing seasons; nor do
we believe that Greek mothers did this.
Neither did Charlene Spretnak, one of the
early writers in womens spirituality, who constructed
an earlier version of the story based on the many
artistic representations of Persephones descent that
omit the rape (Downing, 1994, p. 106). Spretnak
(1992) saw these as reminders of an earlier version of
the story. Spretnaks version of the myth proceeds
from her assumption that the story of Persephones rape
and abduction was added to the Persephone traditions
after the rise of patriarchy, indeed, that it is a disguised
representation of the patriarchal invasion (Downing,
1994, p. 106).
In Spretnaks (1992) rendition of the story,
Persephone and her mother Demeter are living in beauty
and peace. Persephone, however, experiences an internal
shift when she sees the spirits of those who have died
off in the distance, their faces drawn with pain and
bewilderment (Downing, 1994, p. 110). She chooses
to go and minister to them and in this way spends time
in the Underworld. In this story, she also returns from
the place of the dead in the spring to be with her Mother
in the above world. She feels called to be in both worlds
and goes back and forth voluntarily. There is no violence
in this version, only the story of the natural cycles of
birth, death, and rebirth.
In work with the WOTY as a spiritual psych
ology, Spretnaks story and her notion of Persephones
descent as voluntary is taken one step further, a step
based on what can be readily observed in nature and
in ones own garden. The story is much the same,
with Persephone and Demeter, the Goddess, having a
wonderful time in the beauty of the world, marveling at
all of creation and loving one another. One day, however,

142 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Duckett

Persephone has a feeling and wonders earnestly: Is this


all there is? Is there more to life? By doing so, she names
a restlessness or knowing that there is more to life than
outer pursuits, a knowledge that she later chooses to
heed by traveling to the Underworld for other kinds of
learning and experiences.10
It is not difficult to imagine that European
foremothers, as well as those of other cultures, used these
observable realities, the cycle of changing light and the
growing seasons of both animal and plant life, and the
stories they created about these cycles, to describe their
own inner lives and the dynamics between and amongst
themselves in human relationships and communities.
Just as trees and plants stop their process of producing
leaves, blossoms, and fruits in the Fall and move their
energy downward to the roots to renew and resource
by absorbing nutrients and slowing their life processes
for Winter, so too might womens needs for rest and
reflection amid cycles of productivity and outward focus
be conveyed by such a story.
This account, which stresses Persephone going
voluntarily into the Underworld, has other precedents in
nature as well. In late Autumn, if left to finish their cycle
in the garden, plants drop their seeds naturally or, as it
were, voluntarily. They fall to the ground to winter over
until the light and warmth of the sun bring them to life
again as fragile shoots in early Spring, and the growth
cycle begins again. Food plants that grow where they
were not planted or that appear unexpectedly in compost
bins are commonly called volunteers. Ancient peoples
saw this same process and may have used it as the basis
of early pre-patriarchal descent psychologies and stories
not reliant upon violence or abstract ideas.
Contemporary Western women often respond
deeply to this version of the story and its basis in nature.
Many immediately relate to the story as that of a literal
mother-and-daughter dynamic, and especially regarding
the daughters need to go on her own adventures. In the
spirit of others who also work with this story as a psychology
for women (e.g., Carlson, 1997; Downing, 1994; Meador,
1993), I ask women to consider expanding the storys
meaning to describe other relationships and psychologically
complex situations. I ask, for example, about the scenario
of being truly happy in a love relationship and with ones
life and also wanting to travel on ones own or return to
school. What about being successful and happy with a
career but feeling called to make a change that will affect
the status quo of ones life in some way? Women often nod

gravely in response to these questions. Although such a


dilemma is not an easy place to be, it is a situation women
recognize, know, and are relieved to hear described as
a natural part of their psychology, whether or not they
choose to follow the call.
In the work with the Wheel as a spiritual
psychology, we honor that each year in the Autumn,
or at other times in our lives or personal cycles, we as
Persephone go voluntarily and naturally into the inner
time of growth, often wearying of the always outer time.
We understand our need to be more reflective, knowing
that it will strengthen us. We learn to know and respect
that significant growth happens below ground and we seek
it. We say we go to be with our Grandmother Hecate,
the name we give to our own inner Wise One, a term
and concept readily recognizable to transpersonalists
who utilize shamanic or mythic tropes in their own
work.
In this psychology, Persephones return and
our own are also voluntary and natural, the heeding of
an internal call for both inwardness and outwardness.
Though adherents to patriarchal science claim to be the
ultimate authorities on the processes of nature, who can
really explain the confluence of factors that make a seed
fall when it does, or what causes it to germinate, sprout,
grow, and bloom? In the same way, who can know an
individual womans corresponding internal rhythms and
cyclical needs and patterns? Working with the Wheel in
this way can help a woman to deeply know herself, and
encourages her to find and eventually listen to and trust
her own internal cycles and processes.
We ask women following the Wheel as a
psychology to step fully into this teaching story, to think
of times they have been Persephone, Demeter, or Hecate.
In this way, we try to honor that each of us has all of
these aspects within us and to encourage ourselves to
see the overarching wisdom inherent in the story as a
psychology. Together we learn that each of us must go
inward for reflection, rest, and inner nourishment before
coming out to grow and bloom, to be healthy women.
In relation to this seasonal pattern, Spring
Equinox and Autumn Equinox are the two crucial
holyday thresholds. One can see them as the beginning
of Autumn and the beginning of Spring but also, and
more importantly as a psychology for women, the former
is the beginning of a going-in time or experience, and
the latter is a coming-out time or the Return from an
inner or Underworld experience.

Wheel of the Year as Spiritual Psychology

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 143

The WOTY as a spiritual psychology is not


an abstract idea. The Wheel is the name given to a
literal natural phenomenon, the predictable but everchanging flow of the seasons through time. While
this work with the Wheel as a psychology asserts that
there is great healing value in realigning ourselves
with this chronological reality, it is also meant to be
a psychological and developmental map or framework,
and while it is one that is firmly embedded in nature,
it can be experienced and used outside of the actual
chronology. As a way of internalizing the map, we
encourage women to follow the Wheel chronologically
year in and year out, and in this way, the Wheel can
offer women practice in this psychospiritual framework
for recognizing, understanding, and dealing with a
range of situations that may arise in the course of their
lives.
The focus here has been on the under time of the
Wheel that begins with Autumn Equinox (September
21/22) and includes five other holydays: Samhain
(October 31), Winter Solstice (December 21/22), Imbolc
(February 2), and Spring Equinox (March 21/22).11 The
fifth, one of the created holydays of our year, occurs in
November. It is the time of the Late Winter woman, the
Crone, the older woman who is honored and revered
as the Wisdom Keeper of her people. Although each
of these will be mentioned briefly in the following
discussion, the focus for now is on the two threshold
holydays, the Autumn and Spring Equinoxes, and the
season of Winter generally.
Autumn Equinox has a multitude of meanings
and psychological opportunities for those who follow
the Wheel as a spiritual psychology. In the larger Pagan,
Goddess, and womens spirituality communities, it is
most often associated with the end of the growing season
that culminates in harvest celebrations. While honoring
the harvests of the year just past, or of a lifetime, may
be part of what a woman feels called to ritualize at this
holyday, as a developmental model, this time of the year
is equated with the Autumn woman (Monaghan,
2002, p. 93). As such, it is a time of proactively taking
stock, much as the foremothers did literally in the Fall,
assessing their storehouses of foods. At Autumn Equinox,
one encounters a corresponding time of assessment. We
ask ourselves a set of pointed questions as we explore
the spiritual psychology of a woman at mid-life and the
Blood Mystery of menopause.
Another focus of Autumn Equinox is what is

called Persephones change in consciousness. This gives


name to that poignant, complex moment in the story
of Persephone and Demeter, and in real womens lives,
when a woman finds herself in the midst of situations
of abundance but is also being called to something else.
This poignancy can also intensify during mid-life and
menopause when a woman grapples with a need to seek
rest, reflection, contemplation, and resourcing for the
next half of her life as she simultaneously contends
with the life she has already created.12 Therefore, those
of us who follow the Wheel as a psychology speak of
and ritualistically enact Autumn Equinox as the time of
going voluntarily into the Underworld or what is most
often referred to as the Deep.13
It is here that one can begin to discern the many
ways to go in or find ones self in the Deep. It is possible
to see that there are times in a womans life when she has
been taken down, grabbed by Hadesor, in other words,
by patriarchy. This describes those experiences that are
outside of nature or the natural flow or experience of
nature. These are caused by human social/political
dominator systems and include such horrors as rape,
incest, and chronic povertysituations outside the
natural flow of plenty and scarcityand the many other
experiences of being degraded, diminished, or limited
that occur specifically because one is female.
Illness, separations, traumas, losses, and deaths
are also things that happen in nature or in the nature of
human life, and one can describe these experiences that
can take us Down14 as being grabbed by Hecate, and though
devastating, can be seen as an integral part of the living
of life. One can see being grabbed by Hecate as inner
wisdom or Self-creating, serving the purpose of growth
or good, situations that prompt a change in direction.
These situations, though perhaps painful and confusing
when one is in the midst of them, can ultimately serve
as a guide to more authenticity or wholeness. A woman
can still experience these situations as part of nature or
as part of the natural cycle.
It is also possible to enter the Deep voluntarily
to work on issues that need attention. I suggest to women
that they be alert to things that come up during the
outward seasons in their lives, and to make note of them
even when they cannot attend to them immediately,
knowing that there will be a time, either seasonally at
Autumn or otherwise, to focus on these issues. If these
things are not attended to voluntarily, they will likely
arise sooner or later, and often in devastating ways.

144 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Duckett

There are other less dramatic ways to be in the


Deep. A woman may simply find herself feeling out of
sorts, disoriented, or restless and seeking time alone to
check in on the direction of her day or life. She may
withdraw to try to attune herself to the natural flow, for
example, by seeking to spend the Winter as a time of
rest and quiet reflection or by taking time during her
menstrual cycle to dream and journey. It can also mean
making time in each week or day for a balanced mix of
outwardness and inwardness.
The Wheel turns and with it, life and the
seasons of womens lives continue. After Autumn
Equinox comes Samhain and with it, the multitude of
personal, psychological opportunities awaiting in facing
and grieving the losses of the year or a lifetime. It is also
a seasonal opportunity to work with and face the fact of
mortality. In November, it is time to explore the notion
and the reality of the Crone, to engage in personal
rituals focused on aging, and to celebrate and honor
female elders and strengthen the internal Wise One
or She Who Gains Wisdom Through Experience. Winter
Solstice, which is probably the best known and the most
appropriated of all the Pagan holydays, is celebrated by
those who follow the Wheel as a time of rest and quiet. It
is a time to imagine aligning ourselves with our ancient
ancestors rhythms, who, after the tending and mending
of post-harvest and the early winter days of resting and
storytelling by the fire, may have moved into semihibernation for the months of deep winter, hunkering
down into a shamanic sleep-dreaming-journeying state.
The lower level of activity and subsequent reduction
of body temperatures among these ancestors may have
stretched resources and at the same time created ample
opportunity to dream and journey for ones tribe.
The latter begins to describe the time of year
known as Imbolc (February 2), which in the Northern
Hemisphere is usually the darkest and coldest part of
Winter. Some cultures and traditions speak of Imbolc as
the beginning of Spring, and it can, in fact, have those
qualities. It is, however, this darkest, coldest, part of
Winter that serves as the focus of Imbolc. When seen as
the nadir of Winter, Imbolc signifies endurance in the
face of adversity and scarcity of resources. It is a fragile
time, when life is tenuous and uncertain. Based upon
the clues that ancestors left in the activities and gestures
suggested for this time of year, I have often imagined
the rituals foremothers created for their communities in
the darkest of Winter. I imagine that they sat circle in

caves and cottages, with whatever sources of light were


available to them, and listened closely to each member
of the tribes description of how things were for them:
this one with little food left, this one in need of a new
blanket, and this one unsure if she will even survive the
Winter. I imagine the priestesses, shamans, or healers
responding to what they heard, making sure this one
was fed, this one had the extra blanket, and that they
spent time telling stories or enacting dramas of Spring
and Return with the ones who spoke of despair and
uncertainty. In this way, I speak of Imbolc as a time
of faith, the real faith of earth-based folk living in and
closely with the cycles of nature.
This approach to teaching Imbolc is also reflected
in the work of Anne Yeomans (1984), specifically in
her articulation of psychosynthesis and transpersonal
perspectives in the essay Self-Care During Dark
Times. Her insights have now merged with and deeply
informed the way we work with the Underworld or inner
time seasons of the WOTY and is yet another example
of the value I have found in the confluence of feminism
and transpersonal psychologies.
The Wheel of the Year and Psychosynthesis
nne Yeomans (1984) described some of the basic
tenets of psychosynthesis in the following way:

Wheel of the Year as Spiritual Psychology

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 145

As a psychosynthesist, I assume the existence of a


natural process of growth within the individual. I
also assume that the process unfolds in a certain
direction. It tries to move from conflict to integration,
from partiality to a greater and greater wholeness.
I also assume that the process of growth necessarily
goes through some very difficult times. As well as
times of integration and harmony, and peaks of joy
and ecstasy, there are also times of disorientation,
of falling apart, of struggle, of darkness, of crisis.
I also assume a principle in psychosynthesis, often
hard to remember in dark times, and that is there is
help for us, both inner and outer. (p. 67)

Yeomans named specific processes that are described in


psychosynthesis as destructuring, restructuring, and the
place in between. Although it is not the main focus of her
article, she later uses the seasons as metaphors for these
processes.
Yeomans (1984) described destructuring as
experiences of coming apart, undoing, or what
has also been called the positive disintegration (p.
69). Not surprisingly perhaps, she has also associated

destructuring experiences with Autumn. She defined


these as times:
when old ways are not working, where old symbols
have a kind of emptiness and have lost their vitality
and meaning. We are in a time when the usual
habits and patterns of activity do not work quite as
well, where things may feel awkward. We are not
at one with our lives the way we might have been a
month or two before. (p. 71)
This describes the awareness or restlessness earlier
referred to as Persephones change in consciousness and
may also aptly describe ones experience of mid-life.
Recall that Yeomans (1984) also described
destructuring as those times of disorientation, of
falling apart, of struggle, of darkness, of crisis (p. 67),
and, in so doing, began to identify the other ways that
going into the Underworld or the Deep can happen.
While one may go voluntarily into Autumn as the
inner world time to release or deal with issues that
need to be healed or experiences that diminish ones
life, Yeomans description aptly captured those intense
experiences earlier described as being grabbed by Hades
or by Hecate.
Restructuring is a familiar concept. Destruct
uring, however, is something not only less known but
also feared.
When someone is in a period of destructuring, we
say they are falling apart or breaking down. These
are scary words, critical words. Our language
indicates a lot. We rarely see these times with
respect or as a necessary aspect of the process of
growth. We hope they will be gone quickly. We
hope they will not stay at all. We worry that people
will not make it through. We worry we will not
make it through. (Yeomans, 1984, p. 70)
Yeomans (1984) also likened destructuring to dying,
or the dying of certain ways of being, of certain patterns
of coping (p. 70), which echoes the understanding of
Samhain, the holyday that honors loss and death as an
integral part of life.
Before the restructuring time, here described as
the time of Spring and Return, Yeomans (1984) spoke
of the place in between as another part of the process....
This is the time between endings and beginnings, the
time in between... the time in the Winter when you
are not at all sure there is going to be a Spring (p.

146 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

70). Linda Leonard (1983), whom Yeomans referred


to in this essay, also used the metaphor of Winter to
describe what is being said here about the in between
time: Soon it will be Winter, the time for accepting
the cold outside and going inside, the hibernation and
patient waiting which cannot talk of victory, but which
can hold through and endure the dark (p. 176).
This sounds much like the description of
Winter and Winter Solstice offered here and, although
neither Yeomans (1984) nor Leonard (1983) made
distinctions or spoke of the increments that those who
follow the Wheel do, it appears that both spoke initially
of Winter generally and then of Imbolc specifically. For
example,
If destructuring is the Fall, then the time inbetween is the Winter. It can be a time of great
darkness and despair that tests ones faith deeply.
It is often experienced as flatness, an emptiness, a
time when one really doubts that there could ever
be any light at the end of the tunnel. (Yeomans,
1984, p. 74)
She then described the time in-between (as a time)
which challenges our faith. the tools of prayer and
meditation, and being with those people who have
faith in these tools, who practice them honestly, can be
very helpful (p. 77).
Regarding spring and restructuring, Yeomans
(1984) said: If we have lived through the falling apart,
the breaking down of destructuring and the waiting,
and the doubting and resting of the time in-between,
the process takes us naturally to restructuring (p.
78). Leonard (as cited in Yeomans, 1984) warned,
however:
It would seem that this season Spring would be the
easiest to accept, but we know that suicide rates
are high in Spring. If one hasnt properly related to
Winter, if one has fought it and not really accepted
the possibility of both birth and death, or if one
has gone into it too deeply, forgetting the passage
of seasons, then one may not be able to accept the
new and fearing change will cling to depression
and the old. (p. 78)
Restructuring/Return
ften I envision Spring Equinox and Return as a
woman walking out of the woods, tired, clothes
a bit tattered or mussed, gaunt perhaps, but also clear-

Duckett

eyed. She has been on a vision quest. She has been to


Hel15 and back. She is worn out and in need of care and
nourishment. She may want a hug, or she may still be too
raw, and it may take some time for her to be comfortable
around others. She has had experiences, often shamanic
experiences, that have torn her apart and put her back
together again. Hopefully, she returns more healed,
more whole, or at least with more of the parts of herself
integrated. She has at least learned a bit more about
herself and encountered opportunities for wisdom.
She has come out; she has returned. That is often
a miracle in and of itself. And now, like Persephone, she
is also a shaman, with one foot in one world and one
in another. Remember, this thing she has just traversed
(the being taken, or the going-in voluntarily to seek and
address her own shadow self, the Winter and the Imbolc
of her journey) has been tenuous, and she has made it
this far. But as Yeomans (1984) reminded, she is not yet
out of the dark (or woods) even now. Spring, re-entry,
and restructuring can be tough and dangerous.
It seems to be helpful to remember that we are
working with the re-forming of a process that is
deep inside us. We need to leave time to allow the
new integration to take shape. It is a process that
is deeper than the conscious mind can fathom.
Something new is trying to reconstruct itself within
us. We need to give it space and time. This does not
mean waiting passively or limply, but being in a state
of alert, aware receptivity. (pp. 78-79)
Each year, in the Mystery School and in the
WOTY weekend intensives, in addition to the personal
rituals each woman does in honor of her Divine GirlChild, the community creates and enacts a large ritual
at Spring Equinox to honor this thing called Return,
and what Yeomans (1984) described as restructuring. To
create such a ritual it is necessary to know something
about the psychological experiences of having gone
through a destructuring time and the transition time
of the in-between and of having returned from such an
experience. How might one honor the complexity of
going into the Deep or destructuring experience and
the subsequent restructuring process? What is it like
to come out of such an experience? What is needed
for integration? What ought contemporary priestesses,
shamans, or healers do to help prepare each woman for
these experiences? The answers are in the language of
ritual.

Wheel of the Year as Spiritual Psychology

The ritual of Return is created in a safe, wooded


place in nature. The women have a sweat experience, or
bathe in the river or involve themselves in other deep
purifications before the movement toward Return. This
is done to leave behind the dross of the work of the inner
time. Each woman emerges from the river or the dark
hut and begins a self-paced journey, walking the forest
alone, guided by the path itself and directives along the
way. Just being out in nature in the early Spring brings
many gifts and may offer women many instances of what
Yeomans (1984) spoke of as the inner and outer help
(p. 67): There are also interactive altars and experiences
discretely incorporated into nature all along the way. The
journey continues down a slight incline. At the nadir of
the path, there is a final meeting with Hecate, who is
sometimes in the form of a woman, but most times in
the form of an old tree. Here is the reminder that:
Hecate is the name given to our inner Wisdom, the
place where we go to listen, reflect, hear, and to heal.
Any time we need. And for earth-based women,
we also actively seek this time of introspection and
listening to our inner Self at the dark moon, or
when we are bleeding/menstruating, and during the
Winter season, the season just past. And at this time
of year, at the Spring Equinox, we ritualistically
leave this place, the Inner Time, to turn our energies
to the next part of the natural cycles of our world,
the Outward/Growing time. A part of that, then, is
one last visit with Hecate, to hear what final wisdom
She may offer us and to say our goodbyes to Her, as
we turn our faces toward Spring and new growth. 16
(Duckett, 2008)
Participants then begin their ascent, at the end
of which is a final ritual within the ritual, that of being
greeted by Demeter:
Demeter is that aspect of us and the Goddess that
awaits our return from the Inner Time and who
is here to not only greet us but to wholeheartedly
welcome us back from our Inner, and sometimes
dark and challenging, journeys to know our Selves.
She is our guide in the Outward Time, teaching
us how to grow and bloom, create and manifest.
(Duckett, 2008, see n. 16)
A Priestess, embodying this energy, takes each woman
by the hand and says: Persephone, just as the seed must
be planted in the earth, so too must you go into the

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 147

Underworld, the Inner Time, for the nourishment of


solitude, healing, and reflection (Duckett, 2008, see n.
16), and offers a piece of pomegranate, the fruit of the
inner world.
And, now, just as you were called to the time and
gifts of the Inner World, you are now called to the
Outer, to bring your gifts of wisdom, integration,
and all that you have learned in the Inner Time so
that you and your community, and the world, shall
benefit from your Cycles, your Journey, and your
Wisdom as you move from the Inner to Outer,
and Outer to Inner, and through all the Turnings of
the Wheel. (Duckett, 2008, see n. 16)
She gives each woman a slice of apple, the fruit of the
outer world. She continues, But for now, walk gently
and surely toward rebirth, renewal, new growth, and
Spring (Duckett, 2008, see n. 16). She places an eggshell
in each open palm, to hold, sheltered, as each woman
continues her journey toward Spring.
Each woman is led out of the forest, back out
into a clearing. Here she is fed easy, nourishing foods
and beverages. She is seated and cared for as she eases
herself into the restructuring time, into Spring. The
Wheel continues to turn, for after the Return and
Spring Equinox are the other outer time holydays of the
Maiden/Adolescence, Menarche, Summer Solstice, the
Amazon, Lammas, each with their attending spiritual
psychology for women.
Conclusion
believe that in her essay Self-Care During Dark
Times, Yeomans (1984) accurately described the
Underworld or inner time of the WOTY and did so in
the language of a transpersonal psychology. She stressed
that the processes she described are not well known
or accepted by general society and said, We need
to build a new thought form that says, for example,
that destructuring is essential, that it is integral to
restructuring (p. 70), and that the in-between time is
also necessary. In psychosynthesis, all of these processes
are seen as a part of life and the living of life in a
conscious, meaningful way. I believe that the WOTY as
an earth-based spiritual psychology as I have described
it herein, is such a thought form, and one that is solidly
based in the reality of nature and natures cycles and
dynamics.

Using the Wheel and its holydays in this way
offers women a language as well. I can say to a friend,

148 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Im feeling Imbolc-y, and she has some notion of what


I am saying or how I am feeling and what is really going
on for me. It means I feel a deep uncertaintynot the
uncertainty of what to wear to the party tomorrow but a
far more complex, I dont know if Im going to make it
state of mind. Because the Wheel is not just a seasonal
or chronological reality, it also serves as a developmental
model for women and a map of psychospiritual processes
that can be applied and followed at any given moment.
As noted at the beginning of this essay, I believe
that many of my foremothers, the writers and thinkers
in Goddess and womens spirituality, have instinctively
known that the WOTY is a spirituality that has
psychological value. Yet, until now, no one has named
nor developed it explicitly as such. Those in my circles
who have followed the Wheel as a spiritual psychology for
many years have begun to apply it to their own work. For
example, a psychotherapist used the WOTY as a spiritual
psychology with female prison inmates for two years,
meeting weekly to tell our stories and heal wounds
(N. Vanarsdale, personal communication, May 13,
2010). A counselor of adolescent girls in an out-of-home
care program offered the Wheel in a course on healthy
relationships. The class ended with the young women
creating a Menarche ritual for themselves, following the
guidelines of all that they had learned throughout the
year (S. J. Fussell, personal communication, January 18,
2009).
It is my hope that in the coming years, as more
and more women in Goddess and womens spirituality
and in transpersonal psychologies encounter the Wheel
of the Year as a spiritual psychology, that others will not
only be able to apply it to a variety of settings, but will
also join those already working with the Wheel in this
way, in exploring, developing, and crafting a womancentered, earth-based, spiritual psychology for women
that will be helpful and healing.

Blessed be!
References
Armstrong, M., Pettigrew, M., Johansson, S. (Producers),
& Read, D. (Director). (1990). Women & spirituality:
Burning times [Documentary]. New York, NY:
Wellspring Media.
Austen, H. I. (1991). The heart of goddess: Art, myth and
meditations of the worlds sacred feminine (2nd ed.).
Berkeley, CA: Wingbow.

Duckett

Baker, D., & Hill, A. (1998). Circle round: Raising


children in goddess traditions. New York, NY: Bantam
Books.
Baldwin, C. (1998). Calling the circle: The first and future
culture. New York, NY: Bantam Books.
Baldwin, C., & Linnea, A. (2010). The circle way: A leader
in every chair. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler
Publishers.
Barrett, R. (2007). Womens rites, womens mysteries:
Intuitive ritual creation (2nd ed.). Woodbury, MN:
Llewellyn Publications.
Barstow, A. L. (1994). Witchcraze: A new history of the
European witch hunts. San Francisco, CA: Pandora.
Berger, J. (1999). Herbal rituals. New York, NY: Griffin
Books.
Bolen, J. S. (1999). The millionth circle: How to change
ourselves and the worldthe essential guide to womens
circles. Berkeley, CA: Conari Press.
Borysenko, J. (1996). A womans book of life: The biology,
psychology, and spirituality of the feminine life cycle.
New York, NY: Riverhead Books.
Budapest, Z. E. (1989). The grandmother of time: A womans
book of celebrations, spells, and sacred objects for every
month of the year. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row.
Cahill, S., & Halpern, J. (1990). The ceremonial circle.
London, UK: Mandala.
Caplan, M. (2009). Eyes wide open: Cultivating discernment
on the spiritual path. [Spoken word audio]. Retrieved
from <http://www.soundstrue.com/aboutus/Our_
Vision>
Carlson, K. (1997). Lifes daughter/deaths bride: Inner
transformations through the goddess Demeter/Perse
phone. Boston, MA: Shambhala.
Christ, C. P. (1987). Laughter of Aphrodite: Reflections on
a journey to the goddess. San Francisco, CA: Harper
& Row.
Dashu, M. (n.d.) The suppressed histories archives: Real
women, global vision. Retrieved from <http://www.
suppressedhistories.net>
Davis, E., & Leonard, C. (2002). The circle of life:
Thirteen archetypes for every woman. Berkeley, CA:
Celestial Arts.
Downing, C. (1994). The Long journey home: Re-visioning
the myth of Demeter and Persephone for our time.
Boston, MA: Shambhala.
Duckett, V. K. (2000). A year and a day sacred
mystery school for women: Spring Equinox ritual.
[Unpublished program.]

Duckett, V. K. (2008). A year and a day sacred


mystery school for women: Spring Equinox ritual.
[Unpublished program.]
Eisler, R. T. (1987). The chalice and the blade: Our history,
our future. Cambridge MA: Harper & Row.
Foley, H. P. (1994). The Homeric hymn to Demeter:
Translation, commentary, and interpretive essays.
Princeton, NJ: University Press.
Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological
theory and womens development. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Gilligan, C., Ward, J. V., & Taylor, J. M. (Eds.; with
Bardige, B.). (1988). Mapping the moral domain:
A contribution of womens thinking to psychological
theory and education. Cambridge, MA: Center
for the Study of Gender, Education, and Human
Development, Harvard University Graduate School
of Education.
Gimbutas, M. (1974). The gods and goddesses of Old
Europe, 7000 to 3500 BC: Myths, legends and cult
images. Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press.
Gimbutas, M. (1989). The language of the goddess:
Unearthing the hidden symbols of Western civilization.
San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row.
Gimbutas, M. (1991). The civilization of the goddess. San
Francisco, CA: Harper.
Gimbutas, M., & Marler, J. (1997). From the realm of the
ancestors: An anthology in honor of Marija Gimbutas.
Manchester, CT: Knowledge, Ideas & Trends.
Gimbutas, M., & Dexter, M. R. (1999). The living
goddesses. Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press.
Goodman, F. D. (1990). Where the spirits ride the
wind: Trance journeys and other ecstatic experiences.
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Grahn, J. (1977). She who: A graphic book of poems with
54 images of women. Oakland, CA: Diana Press.
Grof, S. (1988). The adventure of self discovery: Dimensions
of consciousness, new perspectives in psychotherapy.
Albany NY: State University of New York Press.
Harner, M. J. (1990). The way of the shaman (10th
Anniversary ed.). San Francisco, CA: Harper &
Row.
hooks, b. (2000). Feminism is for everybody: Passionate
politics. London, UK: Pluto Press.
Jade. (1991). To know: A guide to womens magic and
spirituality. Oak Park, IL: Delphi Press.

Wheel of the Year as Spiritual Psychology

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 149

Kesselman, A., McNair, L. D., & Schniedewind, N.


(2006). Women images & realities a multicultural
anthology (4th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
Lajoie, D. H. & Shapiro, S. I. (1992). Definitions of
transpersonal psychology: The first twenty-three
years. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 24(1), 7998.
Leonard, L. S. (1983). The wounded woman: Healing
the father-daughter relationship. Boulder, CO:
Shambhala.
Marler, J. (2008). The Danube script: Neo-eneolithic
writing in Southeastern Europe. Sebastopol, CA:
Institute of Archaeomythology.
Matlin, M. W. (2004). The psychology of women. (5th ed.).
Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.
Meador, B. D. S. (1993). Uncursing the dark: Treasures
from the underworld. Brooklyn, NY: Chiron
Publishing/Lantern Books.
Miller, J. B. (1986). Toward a new psychology of women
(2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Miller, J. B., & Stiver, I. P. (1997). The healing connection:
How women form relationships in therapy and in life.
Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Miller, M. (2004, December). Ritual as art: Priestess
revives ancient traditions. Rapid River Magazine, 8,
38.
Noble, V. (1991). Shakti woman: Feeling our fire, healing
our worldthe new female shamanism. San Francisco,
CA: Harper.
Ostriker, A. (1987). Stealing the language: The emergence
of womens poetry in America. Boston, MA: Beacon
Press.
Oxford University Press. (2002). The Oxford American
college dictionary. New York, NY: G. P. Putnams
Sons.
Plaskow, J., & Christ, C. P. (1989). Weaving the visions:
New patterns in feminist spirituality. San Francisco,
CA: Harper & Row.
Reinhardt, L. A. (2001). Seasons of magic: A girls journey.
St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications.
Rigoglioso, M. (2010). Virgin mother goddesses of
antiquity. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Rowan, J. (1990). Subpersonalities: The people inside us.
London, UK: Routledge.
Rueffler, M. (1996). Our inner actors: The theory and
application of subpersonality work in psychosynthesis.
Staefa, Switzerland: PsychoPolitical Peace Institute
Press.

1. There are many and conflicting definitions of


feminism. For this discussion, I appreciate the work
of bell hooks (2000) in Feminism is for Everybody:
Passionate Politics. Regarding psychology from a
feminist perspective, please see the mission statement
of the Association of Women in Psychology (AWP)
(www.awpsych.org).
2. Womens spirituality, Goddess spirituality, and fem
inist spirituality are all related but distinct threads
that developed out of the feminist movements of the
1960s-1980s and share the notion that women have
the agency to define spirituality for themselves.

150 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Duckett

Spretnak, C. (1982). The politics of womens spirituality:


Essays on the rise of spiritual power within the feminist
movement. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.
Spretnak, C. (1984). Lost goddesses of early Greece: A
collection of pre-Hellenic myths (New ed.). Boston,
MA: Beacon Press. (Original work published 1978)
Starhawk. (1999). The spiral dance: A rebirth of the ancient
religion of the great goddess (20th Anniversary ed.).
San Francisco, CA: Harper.
Sterling, S. (1994). Innana. Second chants: More ritual
music. San Francisco, CA: Reclaiming Community.
Stone, M. (1978). When God was a woman. New York,
NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Tedlock, B. (2005). The woman in the shamans body:
Reclaiming the feminine in religion and medicine.
New York, NY: Bantam Books.
Teish, L. (1985). Jambalaya. San Francisco, CA: Harper
& Row.
The Womens Well (n.d.). Frequently asked questions:
What is the focus of the Womens Well? Retrieved from
<http://www. womenswell.org/faq.html>
Three Rivers, A. (1991). Cultural etiquette: A guide for
the well intentioned. Indian Valley, VA: Market
Wimmin.
Wolkstein, D., & Kramer, S. N. (1983). Inanna, queen of
heaven and earth: Her stories and hymns from Sumer.
New York, NY: Harper & Row.
Yeomans, A. (1984). Self-care during dark times. In
J. Weiser & T. Yeomans (Eds.), Psychosynthesis in
the helping professions: Now and for the future (pp.
65-80). Toronto, Canada: Department of Applied
Psychology, The Ontario Institute for Studies in
Education.
Notes

3. The Re-Formed Congregation of the Goddess,


International (RCG-I) is the oldest officially recognized
womens religion in the US (www.rcgi.org).
4. A lthough these particular names come from two
different cultures (the quarter-days, or the solstices
and equinoxes, are from the pre-Christian Germanic,
and the other four, Imbolc, Beltane, Lammas, and
Samhain are from pre-Christian Celtic traditions),
both are recognized as part of the Old European
culture described by Marija Gimbutas (2001) in
The Living Goddesses, and as such, may be seen as
sharing a common, ancient spiritual heritage.
5. A rchaeomythology is an interdisciplinary approach
to cultural research of ancient societies, combining
research methods and perspectives from such diverse
fields as archaeology, folklore, art, anthropology,
linguistics, and so forth. For more information, see
the Institute of Archaeomythologys website (www.
archaeomythology.org).
6. One of the best descriptions of Circle is from The
Womens Well, in Concord, Massachusetts (www.
womenswell.org/faq.html).
7. Along with many others, I use the term She Who...
based upon Judy Grahns (1977) poem, She Who.
Alicia Ostriker (1987) described the usage as being
the goddess as verb, in Stealing the Language: The
Emergence of Womens Poetry in America.
8. For further information about ancient and contemporary
women and shamanism, please see Shakti Woman by
Vicki Noble (1991), The Woman in the Shamans Body by
Barbara Tedlock (2005), and the work of Max Dashu,
founder of Suppressed Histories Archives (http://www.
sourcememory.net/womanshaman/names.html).
9. From the unpublished program (Duckett, 2000) of
our A Year and a Day Sacred Mystery School for
Women, Spring Equinox ritual, in Asheville, North
Carolina.
10. Regarding other descent stories, please see Austen
(1991), who identified a number of such stories,
Wolkstein and Kramer (1983) who wrote about the
descent story of Inanna specifically, and Marguerite
Rigoglioso (2010) and her provocative interpretation
of the Persephone/Demeter story in Virgin Mother
Goddesses of Antiquity.
11. Throughout this article, I am speaking specifically
of the seasons as they manifest in the Northern
hemisphere. They are opposite on the Wheel in the
Southern hemisphere; for example, when it is Winter

Wheel of the Year as Spiritual Psychology

Solstice in the northern hemisphere, it is Summer


Solstice in the Southern hemisphere.
12.See Borysenko (1996), especially chapter eight,
regarding womens mid-life metamorphosis.
13. The use of the term the Deep in reference to going
into or being in the Underworld comes from the lyrics
of the song Inanna by Suzanne Sterling (1994).
14. From the same song by Sterling (1994), lyrics are
She goes Down as we go Down, we follow her
underground...
15. Hecate/Persephones equivalent in Norse mythology,
the female ruler of the Underworld.
16. From the unpublished program (Duckett, 2008) of
our A Year and a Day Sacred Mystery School for
Women, Spring Equinox ritual, in Asheville, North
Carolina. What is said at each of these junctures may
change from year to year but the original sentiments
come from a synthesis of womens voices in womens
spirituality gathered by the author of this article.
Capitalizations reflect the spiritual foundations of
the Mystery School and terms and concepts integral
to the conceptual framework of this psychospiritual
model.
About the Author
Kim Duckett, PhD, received her doctoral degree at
Union Institute. She is an ordained Priestess, a beloved
Teacher, and shamanic ritualist in the Dianic Goddess
tradition. After thirty years as a Womens Studies
educator, including the area of womens psychology, she
now devotes her time to exploring, developing, teaching,
and articulating psychologies for and about Goddess
women. She travels throughout the US teaching the
Wheel of the Year training and is currently completing
a book on the Wheel of the Year as an earth-based
psychology for women. She lives in the mountains of
western North Carolina.
About the Journal
The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies is a
peer-reviewed academic journal in print since 1981. It is
published by Floraglades Foundation, and serves as the
official publication of the International Transpersonal
Association. The journal is available online at www.
transpersonalstudies.org, and in print through www.
lulu.com (search for IJTS).

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 151

ECLIPSE

I
through frozen branches

the bright moon slowly darkens

must it be so?

dreaming across the ocean

as the moon and our last embrace

fade piecemeal:
even in Amsterdam

hearing her voice

I longed for Amsterdam

II
the sparrow alights

and the bare branch gives way

I am not resigned

losing both the friend

and the city I love

how dare she!

woke up this morning

mote in my eye

tearing and tearing

III
aap van n meid we called her

monkeyfacethis

no longer makes her laugh

should have kept up my Dutch

on the phone, first time ever,


too tired for English

shes doing it her way

full of grace and laughter

but now, less laughter

IV
and when youre gone

Ill refrain from what you call

my Jewish opera
no wailing, no

railing and rending of garments

but a true savoir faire

even the sweet moon herself

fades after all

utterly to black
For your sake, dearest,

Ill bow my head to it

these things happen

Judy Schavrien

December 20, 2010, Walnut Creek, CA



For Marianne in Amsterdam

152 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies


Studies, 29(2), 2010, p. 152

Grahn

War and Nature


in Classical Athens and Today:
Demoting and Restoring the Underground Goddesses
Judy Schavrien

Institute of Transpersonal Psychology


Palo Alto, CA, USA
A gendered analysis of social and religious values in 5th century BCE illuminates the Athenian
decline from democracy to bully empire, through pursuit of a faux virility. Using a feminist
hermeneutics of suspicion, the study contrasts two playwrights bookending the empire:
Aeschylus, who elevated the sky pantheon Olympians and demoted both actual Athenian
women and the Furiesdeities linked to maternal ties and nature, and Sophocles, who granted
Oedipus, his maternal incest purified, an apotheosis in the Furies grove. The latter work,
presented at the Athenian tragic festival some 50 years after the first, advocated restoration
of respect for female flesh and deity. This redemptive narrative placed the life of Athens
democracy and empirein the wider context of Nature. Present-day parallels are drawn.
Keywords: Erinyes, Furies, Eumenides, mythological defamation, feminist, archetype,
Athens, Minoan, Eleusinian, Clymenestra, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Oedipus, masculine,
gender, ecology

Dedication
study concerns itself with two matricides, Orestes
Much of this study was conceived during Spring
and Oedipus (the latter as the indirect cause of
of 2010, the time of the British Petroleum oil spill
h i s mothers
off the coast
suicide). On a
of Louisiana.
present-day col
The Furies are
l i sion c ou r se
said in Hesiods
w it h n at u re,
Theogony (ll 186the people of
7) to be daughters
the world risk
of Gaia, and are
our own kind of
often portrayed
matricide. Let
with the wings of
the Louisiana
birds. They bring
g u l l depic te d
on madness for
here serve as the
oaths foresworn
tutelary deity of
and the spilling
this study, stand
of kin blood. As
ing in metonymy
I watched with
for t he pre horror images from
Figure
1.
Laughing
gull
coated
in
heavy
oil
from
BP
spill,
June
4,
2010,
on
Olympian
the spill, pour
chthonic pan
ing through in East Grand Terre Island. (Wim McNamee/Getty Images News/Getty Images)
theonthe matristic network of the Furies, Gaia,
the day and revisiting in my dreams, I knew it
Demeter, Persephone, and moreand for the
was time to offer this homageto the Furies and
living beings of the planet.
to Gaia desecrated, in hopes of restoration. The
International
Journal and
of Transpersonal
pp. 153-179
The
Furies Demoted
Restored Studies, 29(2), 2010,
International
Journal of Transpersonal Studies 153

his study examines, from a gendered perspective,


the history of the Golden Age of Athens, from
the early middle to the closing of the 5th century
BCE, from after the great Greek victory at Salamis over
the Persians (472 BCE); through the solidification of the
fledgling democracy of Athens; the rise and fall of its
empire; and then the skitterish survival of the city-state
after the Athenian defeat in the Peloponnesian War (404
BCE). A central focus is on the function and character
of the goddesses known as the Furies, while reference is
also included to the mother-daughter deities, Demeter
and Persephone. Demeter regulated agricultural fertility
on Earth or Gaia (Demeters grandmother); her daughter,
Persephone, reigned part-time in the netherworld;
both goddesses, like the Furies, claimed pre-Olympian
incarnations. In contrast with the Mt. Olympus, skycongregating gods, imported by Indo-European invaders,1
Demeter and Persephone, along with the Furies, extended
back to an earlier pantheon of earth and chthonic
(pronounced kthonic) deities that preceded absorption
into what became the pantheon of 5th century BCE classical
Greece, ruled by a martial Zeus of the thunderbolt. Due
to this lineage, the goddesses help illuminate the interplays
and oppositions of war and nature in the Athenian Golden
Age, throwing onto them a pre-patriarchal light.
There are ongoing controversies about the exact
lineage of these goddesses; they stretch back indubitably
to the Bronze Age or 13th century BCE, and this study
will suggest that they have roots in the Minoan Crete
of approximately 15th century BCE. It will analyze the
goddesses, however, more locally as they are depicted
within two sets of 5th century BCE tragedies. One set,
The Oresteia, a trilogy by Aeschylus, captured first prize
at the sacred Dionysiac tragic festival in 458 BCE; the
second set, known as The Theban Plays, was a trilogy by
Sophocles dealing in large part with the story of Oedipus.
This latter was written over the decades stretching from
the 440s BCE to the time when the empire saw its
destruction in 404 BCE. The last of the Theban plays
was not produced until after the death of its playwright,
then 90 years of age. By then, Sophocles had witnessed
the rise and fall of his beloved Athens, and the proud
imperial navy had been stripped down to two ships by
the Spartan victors. Thus The Oresteia trilogy and The
Theban Plays bookend the Golden Age.
The key works for examining the goddesses
in question are Aeschylus last play of his trilogy, The
Eumenides, and Sophocles last play, Oedipus at Colonus

although summaries of all plays in the trilogies will be


provided as context. In The Eumenides, Aeschylus chose
to depict the underworld goddesses, the Furies, as
preternaturally ugly. In the Coloneus, by contrast, these
same goddesses manifested as an uncannily beautiful
grove, one linking the weathered Oedipus not just to his
own magical apotheosis but also to these goddesses and
their earth-based network. As with Aeschylus, Sophocles
lived within a primarily patriarchal religious and social
tradition; why then did he heal his Oedipus through
reconciliation with feminine and natural presence? This
study proposes that his long overview of the rise and
fall of the Athenian empire afforded him an augmented
wisdom about the need to rebalance gender relations
through restoring the status of females both in the flesh
and in presiding deities.
It is fruitful to examine the dynamic between
social and religious structures of 5th century BCE
Athens, rather than either the sociohistory or the religion
alone. A gendered sociopolitical life interacted, in a
reciprocal dynamic, with religious beliefs and practices.
Gender roles in pantheon and society are neither due
strictly to pantheons influence on societyas in Dalys
famous saying: If God is king in heaven, then man is
king in the homenor to the projection of social mors
onto the Greek pantheon (Harrison, 1903/2010).
The meeting point between the society and the
religion is to be found in the gendered attitudes and
values of Athenian malesas these had bearing on both
actual women and feminine deities. The work of the two
repeatedly prize-winning playwrights must have aligned
with that of the mostly male audiences at the Dionysiac
tragic festivals; in return, the plays, as a crucial public
media event, did more than reflect citizen views, they
shaped them (cf. Platos assertions in The Republic, c.
380 BCE, 410c-412b, 595a-621d). While this reading
requires inferences and assumptions, these opinions are
informed by laws, historical accounts, popular religious
and civic myths, and the testimonies of archeological
remains that led up to and paralleled those times (cited
along the way). How did the values and attitudes show
themselves in history? How did they evolve? What effect
did they have on the fate of the bold new Athenian citystate, cradle of democracy, and on the maritime empire
which grew from it? How did the attitudes supply a
context or even a dynamus for citizen behavior as Athens
fell and in its subsequent moment of choice as to whether
and how to survive the decimation of empire?

154 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Schavrien

Furthermore, there are likely parallels between


the Golden Age and our Western contemporary times.
David Grene suggested, although along different lines
from my own, that our affinity with the political life of
fifth-century Athens is striking (1950, p. vi). I will
extend the parallel he draws into the 21st century.
Remarks on Methodology:
Mythological Defamation
Produces an Athenian Charter Myth
efore entering more fully into the content of the
trilogies, it is imperative to introduce as context
the dynamic of mythological defamation, the means

Literary Events

Dates

Aeschylus in The Oresteia,


Sophocles in The
Theban Trilogy, draw on
established myths and
pantheon figures, vary
them

Written in 5th
century BCE

Homer in Iliad and


Odyssey, Hesiod in
Theogony, coalesce myths
and pantheon, projecting
back to 13th century
BCE heroic figures of
the Bronze Age and,
in Hesiod, to Earth as
creatrix

Written in 8th
century BCE

by which Aeschylus promoted the thunderbolt god,


Zeus, and downgraded the Furies in his Eumenides. He
accomplished this defamation through a reframing of
divinity, thereby crafting a charter myth that blessed
Athens newly-flourishing democracy. The Furies,
seemingly placated, are forced into accepting a namechangethe title of Eumenides,2 or Kindly Ones.
It would seem that these older goddesses had been
properly re-fashioned at the hands of the newcomer
Olympian deities, made gentler, re-named accordingly.
Yet this camouflaged a subversion. For two and a half
millennia this story of a proper defeat and makeover

Historical Context
Myths refer to heroic figures (Orestes, Oedipus) in Founding
Times culture, 13th century BCE: Bronze Age
During 6th-5th century BCE: Golden Age
democracy solidifies
Athenian empire rises and falls
late 5th sees emergence and re-emergence of Mystery
cultsDemeter, Persephone, Dionysus: counters secular/
rational developments
Myths and pantheons have sources in pre-Bronze-Age and evolve
through 5th century BCE Golden Age. May be traced through
layers and eras:
Matrifocal religionVestiges from 15th century BCE
Minoan Crete and earlier, goddesses with a chthonic
emphasis, earth and underground; Hesiod later absorbs
them into his pantheon tales, acknowledging they created
the world
Patrifocal religion13th century BCE onward, Minoan/
Mycenaean syncretic religion forged by Indo-European
invaders; invaders absorb Minoan goddesses, and other
deities from East, to enhance the sky-congregating Olympian pantheon they bring with them into Greece; Olympians
divide up the world they conquered, but do not create it
Patrifocal religion extends into 5th centur BCE and
beyondIndo-European pantheon of Olympians, with contributions from Doric invaders (the latter disputed), jells
further during Homers 8th century BCE and carries over
into Golden Age writings of Aeschylus, Sophocles

Table 1. Chart of literary events with historical contexts, spanning Bronze Age through Golden Age
The Furies Demoted and Restored

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 155

of the goddesses was largely accepted at face value.


Not until the late 20th century did such views come
to be questioned, often by the feminist classicists, both
female and male, or their sympathizers (Komar, 2002;
Powers, 2000; Zeitlin, 1978; Campbell, 1991). Rather
than being inducted into a superior identity within a
superior socio-religious arrangement, the Furies were
demoteda demotion that functioned to the detriment
of what became an increasingly belligerent society, cut
off from roots in nature and bloodline provided by
feminine deity.
There are three Ds that evoke the dynamics of
demotion: mythological defamation, the demonization
that helped to perpetrate it, and the historical distortion
that ensued. Obviously Aeschylus in The Eumenides was
not creating single-handedly the demotion of the chthonic
goddesses at the hands of Olympians. He pretended only
to be documenting how such things occurred 800 years
before his own contemporary moment (Table 1 clarifies
the chronologies). One might picture Charlton Heston
enacting the Moses tales from the Bible, advocating
American values with a seemingly ancient and sacred
underpinning. The changes in values had of course been
evolving for millenia before Hollywood seized on the
story. Likewise with Aeschylus: What he pretended to
transmit was a re-framing driven by agenda.
Aeschylus was amplifying the effect of demoting
influences by constructing The Oresteia as a propaganda
piece for the increasing masculinization of the Greek
pantheon; the masculinized religion he presented would
do valiant service as a civic religion, peculiarly fashioned
to the (imagined) best purposes of the newly ascending
democratic city-state. This theatrical trilogy came to
function as what Lillian Doherty (2001) has called a
charter myth (p. 100)blessing a given arrangement
through narrating its hallowed founding events. As David
Grene has said (L. Doherty, personal communication,
December 19, 2011): Watching The Oresteia would be like
witnessing what began in the Garden of Eden and ended
with the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Aeschylus trilogy is thus typical of a charter mythone
which in this case made a defaming portrait of feminine
deity its stepping stone.
Countering the Three Ds:
A Feminist Hermeneutics of Suspicion
n using the acronym of three Ds to represent
the dynamics of defamation, I extend the work
of Joseph Campbell (1991) and Meredith Powers

(2000). Campbells reputation fares better among


transpersonalists than among classicists, due to the
occasional lapse in detailed accuracy, unsurprising from
such a far-ranging generalist; his methodology, however,
contributes well in this instance. My own study, in the
spirit of a feminist hermeneutics of suspicion (Gross, 1993),
attempts to reverse the historical distortions by undoing
the inevitable whitewashings perpetrated by a dominant
population, those that give history as a tale told by the
victors. Feminists aim to discover an accurate and
usable past (p. 30), one which undoes androcentric
bias. Feminist scholarship is often for women and about
women, but based on a social vision of bringing women
into full respect for the purpose of accomplishing the
same for all beings.
De-coding Defamation:
Understanding Myth as Cluster
The originating myths from which the relevant
Greek tragedies were constructed are not uniform
narratives. These source myths are instead clusters of
variants (Harrison [1903/2010] drawing on Durkheim);
the tragedian then selects from the myth-cluster a
variant that serves his or her aims, and sometimes even
innovates to this end. Especially in The Oresteia, both
the selections and innovations helped shape a city-state
religionto serve as prop and propaganda for a new
civic ideology.
Aeschylus contributed to the coalescence of a
religious myth that affirmed new and recent institutions
in the Athenian polis, or city-state, institutions that
expanded the evolution into a male democracy while
contracting the status and rights of women. Solons
sumptuary laws initiated the confinement of women
socially and politically in the early 6th century BCE;
the Ephialtic reforms of 562 BCE, four years before the
production of The Oresteia, marked a step forward for
the demos men in their challenge to aristocratic clans
but, again, no advancement for women. The Athenian
polis, emerging triumphant from a war with the Persians,
David to Goliath, was evolving its self-affirmations: We
won because we are the freedom-lovers and they, those
Persians, the tyrant-ridden barbarians. Froma Zeitlin
(1978) identified additional binary oppositions in The
Oresteia: We Athenians are not just Greek vs. barbarian
but also light vs. dark, new vs. old, orderly vs. chaotic,
reasonable vs. unreasonable, male vs. female. In short, the
gods are on our side for all these reasons, and not just
any gods either, but the shiny new patrifocal ones.

156 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Schavrien

Campbell (1991), to illustrate mythological


defamation, discussed the Mesopotamian myth in which
Tiamat, primordial ocean goddess, decorates the chest of
her first-born, who is, in the usual early configuration,
her son/consort, preparing him to war against challengers
to her hegemony:

This late work of Campbell portrayed a


sociocultural context that evolved in contrast with what
might otherwise be misperceived as universal truth on
the part of a religiously believing population. Campbell
suggested, by contrast, a context and portrayal that
morphs the archetypes, instead of keeping them static
and universal. He also discerned the political purposes to
which a patrifocal culture supplanting a matrifocal one
would put its own new narratives.
Further Socioculture Setting:
The Gender War in Athens as Pivotal
Frederick Adam Wright (1923) opened his book
Feminism in Greek Literature from Homer to Aristotle with
the following remark: The Greek world perished from one
main cause, a low ideal of womanhood and a degradation
of women which found expression both in literature and
in social life (p. 11). Known through textbooks as the
cradle of democracy, this city-state evolved, or rather
devolved, into a society in ruthless pursuit of empire.
In short, one might say that the Athenians developed a

masculinity insufficiently tempered by womens wisdom,


a hypermasculinity.
In the light of the historical analysis by
Thucydides (411 BCE/1951), who was equipped with
not only the military expertise of a general and the
vantage point of a contemporary witness, but also, one
may assume, a knowledge of at least some tragedies at
Athenian festivals, Athens lost the Peloponnesian War
due to its having grown in hubris. The word, often
translated to mean an insolence or blinding pride, was
punishable by law and was understood by some to
characterize tragic heroes.4 Thucydides treated hubris as
an overreaching while acting upon a longing for what
one does not have [3.39.4, 5]; this may be matched with
his later description of values in Corcyra [3.82-3.83]).
Such fatal overreaching manifested in the Sicilian
Expedition in 415 BCE, which contributed greatly to
the empires downfall. This was reckless risk-taking,
against the advice of Pericles before he died, undertaken
more for the short-term repair of the bruised Athenian
ego than for long-term prospects of lucre. Furthermore,
the mistake was foreseeable; Athenian values had been
careening downhill5 (cf. Thucydides, 411 BCE/1951,
Melian dialogue [5.17]; Corcyra analogous to Athens
[3.82-3.83]).
The Oresteia:
The Olympians vs. the Chthonic Goddesses
hat follows are brief plot summaries of the three
plays in The Oresteia, with commentary both in
the process and the wake of the summaries. The accounts
are cast in present tense, for the sake of vividness.
The Agamemnon
Clytemnestra and her lover, Aegisthus, have ruled
a stable Argos for more than a decade; nevertheless, the
chorus of old male clansmen, left behind by the Trojan
War, resent the man-minded woman (Aeschylus, 458
BCE/1903, l. 11).6 Clytemnestra plans to avenge herself
against Agamemnon, upon his return, for his having
sacrificed their virgin daughter, Iphigenia, to put wind
in the sails of the Greek expedition. Her paramour
carries his own grudge; he is the surviving son of the
man to whom Agamemnons father fed the flesh of his
own children. In return, the paramours horrified father
pronounced a curse, bringing the gods into play. Here
are themes of war versus natureAgamemnon the hero,
returning from his Trojan expedition, vs. the bloodline
offenses that eventually enlist the Furies to execute kin
justice.

The Furies Demoted and Restored

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 157

The reader will have recognized here the pattern of the


Greek war of the Titans3 and gods, the darker brood
of the all-mother, produced of her own female power,
and the brighter, fairer, secondary sons, produced
from her submission to fecundation by the male. It is
an effect of the conquest of a local matriarchal order
by invading patriarchal nomads, and their reshaping
of the local lore of the productive earth to their own
ends. It is an example, also, of the employment of
a priestly device of mythological defamation, which
has been in constant use (chiefly, but not solely, by
Western theologians) ever since. It consists simply in
terming the gods of other people demons, enlarging
ones own counterparts to hegemony over the
universe, and then inventing all sorts of both great
and little secondary myths to illustrate, on the one
hand, the impotence and malice of the demons and,
on the other, the majesty and righteousness of the
great god or gods. It is used in the present case to
validate in mythological terms not only a new social
order but also a new psychology. (pp. 79-80)

There are complexities regarding Clytemnestras


motives: jealousy as Agamemnon brings home a war booty
mistress; lust for her own paramour, and so on. Which
motives are uppermost? Aegisthus has underplayed a
motive that affords her the greater dignity, her intent to
avenge her daughters sacrifice. Nevertheless, she holds
the stage as the most charismatic and complex character
in the drama. She and Aegisthus kill Agamemnon, with
the Queen taking the lead; she assures Aegisthus that
they will rule and thrive.
The Libation Bearers
Electra, Clytemnestras daughter, discovers
that her exiled brother, Orestes, has returned in secret;
they can now avenge the murder of their father. Most
of the play occurs at Agamemnons grave. The chorus
of female slaves help the children gain resolve through
drumming up with characteristic mourning, uncanny
in its ululations, the angry ghost of the unavenged
father (Holst-Warhaft, 1995). To say characteristic is to
highlight that this resembled the way much mourning
was handled in the purported era of The Oresteia,
through the hiring of professional women (for which
the slaves stand in), women trained to lament with
vehemence. This custom served in addition as part of
the old justice system, the one for which the Furies
were a cornerstone; the angry ghost once roused was
the initiator of retributive actions, including the Furies
maddening pursuit of a kin murderer. In the trilogy,
there will soon be the depiction of a transition in the
justice systemaddressing purgation from pollution
and the redressing of blood-debt; that is to say, The
Eumenides will institute new deities and sociopolitical
institutions, due to Olympian reframing, for presiding
over purgation and justice. Clearly, however, in this
second play of the trilogy, the old system prevails.
Orestes manages, in the wake of the ghost rousing, to
kill both Aegisthus and his own mother. But the end
of the play sees himhaving satisfied and held at bay
the fathers Furiesunable to reclaim the throne, beset
instead by the mothers Furies, who attack his sanity.
The Eumenides
The third play, The Eumenides, focuses directly on
these underworld goddesses, still known, when the play
begins, as the Erinyes, the furious ones.7 As mentioned
before, it tells the story of their forced conversion into
subordinate and tamer powers, the Eumenides or Kindly
Ones, under the new Olympian patriarchs. The play
opens at the Delphic oracle, with the priestess soon

Aeschylus has conjured the Furiesindefinite in


number though tradition would later curtail them to
threeas a stunning and memorable theatrical premise;
he even himself invented their horrific masks (Verrall,
1908). Snakes for hair completed the picture, which
Orestes had perceived as they pursued him, at the close
of The Libation Bearers. Aeschylus, I contend, was here
stacking the cards against the old female gods and, by
implication, the theacentric goddess network, including
Earth, Demeter, Persephone, and all those, above and
below earth, interconnected with the Furies. (I will
eventually argue the relevance of the network.)
After the scene at the Delphic Oracle, Orestes,
with the Furies in pursuit, arrives to stand trial at
Athens, even though, as he argues, he murdered his
mother in obedience to Apollo. His motives, in truth,
had been multiple, as were Clytemnestras; he aimed
not just to obey Apollo and take vengeance but also to
claim a patrimony. He and the goddesses are to undergo
an adjudication over which Athenaportrayed as an
Olympian (cf. note 1)will preside. The Furies seem
to give consent rather than collide with the new set of
gods, holding back on what is usually their immediate
and implacable retribution for kin murder, whatever the
motives or circumstances.
Athena will submit the issue to a jury, her novel
invention for city-state life, but will make up the rules
as she goes along; she warns that a tie means she casts
the deciding vote. The jury, naturally, ties. She votes to
pronounce Orestes free and clear,8 due to extenuating
circumstances; but due, most of all, to what is newly
declared in the course of the trial, the preeminence of
the male over the female, even in bloodline matters.9
In response to his vindication, the Furies
threaten to blight the Athenian earth and wombs, as is
within their power and purview. Athena musters all her
persuasive charm, in a ritual back-and-forth with them,

158 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Schavrien

entering the inner sanctum and then recoiling in horror


from what she has seen, crawling out. She stammers:
A dreadful troop of women. / No, I wont say they
were women, but Gorgons. / No, not that, either;
their shapes did not seem to be / like Gorgons
shapes....These I saw now / were wingless, black
and utterly repulsive. / They snored, the smell of
their breaths was not to be borne, / and from their
eyes there trickled a loathsome gum. (Aeschylus,
458 BCE/1989, ll. 47-55; Greek ll. 47-54)

to reassure that they are not being insulted; they really


and truly have received recognitionafter all, the vote
was tied, and they shall, any minute, find themselves
well recognized and recompensed if only they relent.
She will grant them a localized shrine by the Areopagus,
the now newly founded law court for homicides, with
an underground portion, as would please them; she will
grant them ultimate authority as guardians of the oaths
taken in the court, of the oaths taken in marriage as well,
and of womb and land fertility. In fact they will soon
be seated in some metaphorical sense right next to the
ascendant Olympian Zeus, glorying in their power, for
they will preside over Fate (all the gods, even Zeus, shrink
from overriding Fate; cf. the Homeric epics). They will
enjoy this new description of themselves: They bring to
perfection for all to see / what they have provided; / for
some, occasions for song; / for others, a life rich in tears.
(2010, ll. 952-954; Greek ll. 954-955). They need only
relent.

They only seem to assent without coercion,
perhaps, because of the quantity of argument, as if they
were already transported from the 13th century BCE
heroic setting of this drama into the world of 5th century
BCE Athenian law court and assembly debate (Ober &
Strauss 1990, p. 238). The play ends with their shedding
old black garments for new red ones and accompanying
an honorific procession, mostly female, out through the
theater audience toward their new sanctuary. To convert
to their new status they need only leave to languish the
ghost of Clytemnestra, who had appeared to them at the
Delphi sanctum, spurring them on as proper avengers
of matricide. Her matricideits importance, its cry of
blood for bloodis now consigned to pre-patriarchal
history, for the patriarchy has eclipsed her mother-right.
Olympic vs. Chthonic:
Shiny and Civilized Over Dark and Irrational?
Aeschylus made choicesbecause, as explained
earlier, there was not just one myth to dramatize but
a cluster of variants, from which he selected and upon
which he even innovated (e.g., creating the horrific
masks, also portraying them as wingless [cf. Jane
Harrisons assertions, Prolegomena, 1921/1962, pp. 221232] that this too-human form made them all the more
contemptible). The Eumenides seemed to tell the tale of
the triumph of the new young Apollonian and sunlit
Olympians, advocates of reason, over the old haggish
underworld goddesses. The Olympians promised to
bring with them a new system of purification (Grene,

1989), a new subtler set of legal considerations as to


guilt and innocence, one that would acknowledge,
quite rationally after all, extenuating circumstances.
Example of a Variant Construction: The Furies
Just as Aeschylus had chosen from variant
descriptions of ClytemnestraHomers, for instance,
gave her a role as accessory rather than prime mover
in the killing of Agamemnon, and afforded her stature
by way of her landed backgroundso Aeschylus made
choices as he characterized the Furies. To demonize is
to exercise a certain creativity. The Furies need not have
been cast as first and foremost promoters of vendetta.
They might instead have been viewed as circuit-stoppers
(Visser, 1980). In actual practice, a family could, by
making suit to them at their shrine, lay the responsibility
for retribution at their door; the family could thereby
abstain from perpetuating a tragic intra-familial feud,
like the one portrayed, for instance, in The Oresteia.
Also, were the Furies properly presented as
embedded in their matrifocal network, rather than
isolated as if they were a sheer monstrosity, they would
disprove Apollos portrait of them as pariahs (cf. his
attack: To such a flock as you, no god feels kindly
[1989, complete version, l. 196; Greek, l. 197]). Implied
throughout The Oresteia is the battle between the new
he-gods and the old she-gods. The Furies, in the history
and myth implied but mostly suppressed by the trilogy,
are networked in the old pantheon with the well-loved
Demeter, who tracks back to her grandmother and
their mother, the oldest goddess, Gaia or Earth; the
underworld extension of the network would include the
maid as well as the mother, Kore / Persephone, daughter
of Demeter, and include netherworld spirits such as
the various keres (ghosts of the dead, with their roots
likewise back in Minoan religion), whom Harrison
(1903/2010) viewed as transmuting and expanding
into the Furies. The Erinyes or Furies sometimes had
reciprocal resonance with Demeter, in, for example, the
worship of Demeter Erinys of Megara, so characterized
because of her fury in the wake of Poseidons having
raped her while she desperately sought out her abducted
daughter. Demeter is also called Demeter Chthonia. The
old chthonic goddesses, in short, embedded Athenians
in an earthly and netherworld existenceand much of
that existence had roots to be found in the culture of
Minoan Crete (cf. note 17). Such figures as Earth (Gaia,
Ge) and her granddaughter Demeter were, in the first
instance, the very ground itself, giving birth to Titans,

The Furies Demoted and Restored

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 159

or were otherwise conflated with what found root in the


yield to the shift in status. But they, like Earth and
ground, given that Demeter presided over agriculture;
Demeter, had already been accustomed to affecting the
such figures as Demeters daughter Persephone, the
fertility of womb and land. If, for instance, unredressed
Furies, and the Fates, lived part- or full-time below.
kin blood polluted the earth, sterility in the land and

The Olympian gods, those sky invaders, most
womb would in fact result; so too would plague. One
likely arrived in the train of invaders-in-the-flesh,
sees such consequences in Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannus:
pastoral warriors from the North and Northeast, the
unredressed patricide issues in plague. There is a sleightIndo-Europeans. Their gods never pretended to have
of-hand, then, in the seeming generosity of Athena,
created existence as
Earth had created it.
They were instead invading hunter-warrior
gods, who divided up
the spoils (Burkert,
1991). Zeus took
heaven for himself,
d i s t r ibut i n g t he
waters to one
brother, Poseidon,
and the underworld
to the other brother,
H a de s . T he g o d s
raped and plundered
in the spirit of the
human crew who
carried them into
the conquered territories; some critics
would interpret their
celebrated rapes as
metaphors for conquering and absorbing
goddesses, one after
the other, sometimes
by offering a pretense of marriage,
s ome t i me s not ;
frequently propagating by the indigenous goddesses to
enhance the new
pantheon (Campbell, Figure 2. Greek Wine Bowl: Orestes pursued by the Furies. Circa 340-330 BCE. Retrieved from
1991; Spretnak, 1992). Southern Italian Greek colony. Orestes, with Fury above him, addressed by Athena. Apollo turns to a
In their old Fury wielding a snake, Clytemnestra, above left. (Trustees of the British Museum)
incarnations within
the chthonic network, the Furies had already possessed
who awards to the Furies those powers of preventing or
the powers Athena pretends to award them in The
fostering fertility that they already possessed. There is
Eumenides. She catalogues consolations should they
mythological defamation as well in denying them both

160 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Schavrien

their place in the theacentric network and their own


power to offer sanctuary (Visser, 1980); in The Oresteia
only Apollo or Athena, in their sunlit generosity, offer
the sanctuary that the Furies grant when Sophocles has
later restored them to dignity. The sanctuary they come
to offer Sophocles Oedipus was one they could also offer
in the historical religion (Visser, 1980).
As to their sheer primitive ugliness, this too is a
choice Aeschylus made. Pindar preceded him in this, but
Aeschylus might have relied instead on a very different
version bequeathed by his predecessor Heracleitus.
Heracleitus portrayed the Furies as august enforcers of
justice who exercised their power throughout what one
might call his natural philosophy universe. The Furies
are that force which keeps each aspect of the universe in
its proper path, confines it to its proper function. Said
Heracleitus: If the sun were to stray from its course, the
Furies would put it right (B94).
In some sense, then, Aeschylus was innovating,
not just by creating horrific masks for the Furies but
by associating the goddesses with the monster crew
Gorgons and Harpies and so forth. After his horrific
portrayal, vase painters nonetheless chose to portray
them as lithe and beautiful young women with wings
on their shoulders or on their hunting bootsaiding
in their swift pursuitssometimes with snakes for hair
but not necessarily repulsive ones. Goddesses were often
accompanied by snakes, especially in the old networks;
this was the case even in the immigrating healing cultto
which Sophocles attached himselfwhich had Asklepius
as a healing (male) deity. The Asklepian cult had a live
tutelary snake which Sophocles was said to have hosted
during a transition period, while the shrine was being
moved to Athens. In the 2nd century CE, Pausanius (c.
143-177 CE/2001), touring Greece, remarked: He saw
the Furies statue with snakes for hair, but the latter were
not a perturbing sight (1.28.6). In the 4th century BCE,
a ceramicist portrayed Orestes, with Apollo and Athena
flanking him, and Furies both above and to the side
of Apollo; there is no hint of the ugliness suggested by
Aeschylus (Fig. 2).
How rational is rational? There are at least
three arguments used by Athena and Apollo to beat
down their chthonic opponents. One is slyly ensconced
in Athenas more civilized blandishments and has been
missed by too many critics: Athena lets the goddesses
know that she herself is the only deity to have inherited
the thunderbolt of Zeus her father (Aeschylus, 458

BCE/1989, ll. 827-829, complete version; Greek, ll. 826828). All the appearances of rational persuasion pale
beside this veiled but decisive threat against them.
Beyond this, having set up a juried court,
Athena makes the rule that if the jury ties, she breaks the
tie. They do and she does. She explains her tie-breaking
vote in favor of Orestes as follows: I was born from Zeus
forehead and have no mother; except for marrying one,
Im all for the male. Therefore it matters less that Orestes
killed his mother than that he was taking vengeance on
his fathers behalf. I will vote for the male because that
is what I do.10
Apollo drives the nail home. He says: Further
more, the mother only nurses the seed; the real parent
of the child is the father alone. This purports to be
a presentation of the latest scientific certainties. It
establishes that the mother has no rights because the child
is not hers. In addition, he rebuts the Furies argument
that their job is to redress the violation of blood bond,
not marital bond. He pronounces that there must be
a primacy of the womans bond to her husband, the
marital bond, over her bond to the children (Aeschylus,
458 BCE/1989, ll. 657-671; Greek ll. 667-666).
The legal arguments are on the whole taking place
in abstraction: One might as well ask why Clytemnestra
should feel bound to Agamemnon, a man assigned to
her and not of her choosing, a man who, as myth had
it (though not one selected for The Oresteia), had killed
both her first husband and infant before claiming her
in marriage. Agamemnon is a husband who sacrificed
their virgin daughter, then went off to war for 10 years
at a time and returned with his war booty concubine
in tow. If one were to wonder what would attach her to
such a man more than to her child, one might end up
simply baffledunless one posited, as Freud (1924) did
with a scientific poker-face, that womans basic nature is
masochistic.

Apollos assertions ignore the fact that a woman
risks her life to give birth. Adding salt to the wound, he
maintains that the childs obligation, first and foremost
and without hesitation, should be to the father. Apollos
foundational argument for this is that the womb is no
generator, but a mere nursery; he purveys this notion as
if it were the latest incontrovertible scientific discovery.
In fact this argument, and its counter-arguments,
were a living controversy of the times, with different
philosophical and medical writers chiming in for or
against the mothers role in reproduction; at the heart

The Furies Demoted and Restored

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 161

of this controversy was the issue of whether Athenian


women should have full citizenship (Wiles, 2002).
Instead, Athenian women would continue to watch as
each new layer of men, from aristocrats to oligarchs
to common men, received voting rights, but neither
full citizenship nor voting rights came to women. The
intensified foreign exchanges that accompany war, as
demonstrated in Aristophanes Lysistrata, would make
accessible the knowledge that women in most Greek
city-states other than Athens (and the rest of Ionia)
enjoyed greater rights. By contrast, the one-third of the
population who were male Athenian citizens rested their
great freedom on the backs of the one-third who were
women and one-third who were slaves and metics. The
womens increasing frustration with exclusion, with the
mens misogyny and with their sheer incompetence in
governing as they brought on increasing ruin through
war, would eventually surface in Aristophanes three
plays, Lysistrata, Thesmophoriazusae (Women at the
Festival), and Ecclesiazusae (Women at the Assembly);
similarly, it appears in the last Greek tragic play that
survives from that time, Euripides Bacchae. This finds
resonance with what Sophocles had to say in his Oedipus
at Colonus, at about the same time as The Bacchae50
years after Aeschylus helped celebrate and shape the
newly triumphant city-state.
The Sophoclean view on gender differed signi
ficantly. It not only rehabilitated and even foregrounded
feminine deityin the personae of the Furies and the
Eleusinian earth deities of Demeter and Persephonebut
also rehabilitated figures like the daughters of Oedipus,
who brought their wisdom, courage, and support to the
aged Oedipus, receiving praise from the same father who
excoriated their brothers. One daughter, Antigone, had
even earned, in an earlier Sophoclean play by the same
name, her own place in heroic history.
Returning to The Eumenides, Apollos crowning
argument is this: Athena stands before the jury as child
of no mother, sprung from her fathers headtherefore
mothers are superfluous. This is reasoning by way of
fairy tale. No reader revisiting such arguments can
honor the pretense that they usher in a bold new age of
rationality.
There is, however, one new thought-provoking
argument by Athena: The justice system should retain
the Furies, in however subordinate a manner, because
fear is a necessary cornerstone to civic life; otherwise
citizens run amuck. In this way the Furies remain both

in fiction and in fact guardians of Areopagus oaths taken


to abstain from perjury.
A new era of judicial rationality. Here, by the
way, is a real-life note on the leap of progress implied
by the founding of the court: Recent archeology has
turned up an area near the court filled with masses of
carved shards inscribed with the names of defendants,
and pronouncing curses on them and their dear ones
(Hughes as historian-narrator in Copestake, 2007). The
curses, it seems, hedged the plaintiffs bets; one might
obtain results even should the rational prosecution fail,
through enlisting divinities. It was also the case that
prosecution of murder remained outside of the states
jurisdiction. A family member of the murder victim still
had to initiate a lawsuit in the court; this indicates that,
first and foremost, the unavenged kin blood was at issue.
It was true that the crime could threaten the society; the
pollution, which could be contagious, must be stemmed.
This risk of contagion might be why the Areopagus
murder trials were not held indoors but rather outdoors.
At the same time, if the victim pronounced forgiveness
before dying, the family could refrain from prosecuting
and the state need not take action. Thus, if one follows
the drama out into the streets of 5th century BCE Athens,
the notions regarding pollution and the setting right of a
cosmic upset had not changed all that much.
The positive development reflected both in
The Eumenides and later in Sophocles Colonus, is that
extenuating circumstances pressing on the suspect were
gaining relevance. For example, Orestes was merely
obeying Apollo, and Oedipus was unaware of parental
identities. The relevance of both circumstance and
intention were surfacing in the new justice system. The
negative impact was that the sophists, itinerant educators
delivering philosohical perspectives and pragmatic
tips that, together, comprised political education, had
troubling lessons for the young men who would rise in
Athenian politics, argue in the assembly, and prepare
argumentation for plaintiffs in the law courts; these
lessons were about the persuasive argument, and not at
all about scruples or truthfulness. An example of this
can be found in Platos (380-360 BCE/2008) Republic,
the sophist Thrasymachus as he argued throughout in
favor of unscrupulous manipulation of the populace
(cf. Thucydides, 411 BCE/1951, 3:823:83). Socrates
incessant campaign against the sophistic teachers
had much to do with this destructive tack of theirs.
Oddly enough, the Athenian populace prosecuted and

162 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Schavrien

ultimately executed Socrates because they mistook him


for a sophistic-type teacher rather than a dedicated enemy
to their ruthless doctrines.
How rational then was the new leap into
rationality? Was one instead leaping into an increase not
in reasoning but in rationalizing? If something may have
been gained by transition to the new order, certainly
something was being lost. The great new approach using
the logos, the argumentation, entailed misusing it more
often than not. What arguments persuaded the male
demos to vote for military action during at least every
other year throughout the 5th century empire (Hughes,
2010, p. 139)? The much-touted cradle of democracy
had instead become a warocracy (term coined by M.
Plazewski, personal communication, December 22,
2010), addicted to calculative reasoning in the service of
self-furthering. Granted, an expanding Athens seemed
to need ever more grainand land to grow it on. The
challenge was to discern between real need and sheer
appetite, and to refrain from reading opportunity and
seeming need as license to exploit.
Chthonic Goddesses, Women,
and the Political Use and Abuse of the Dead
In the middle play of Aeschylus trilogy, The
Libation Bearers, one sees an old social dynamic that was
being gradually suppressed, one associated with treatment
of the dead and observance of the demands of underworld
divinity. As already described: With their lamentations,
the foreign women drum up Agamemnons angry ghost,
rouse him to play his role in the redress of his spilled
blood. Solons 552 BCE legislation (Holst-Warhaft, 1995)
began to confine womens mourning to less loud, less
public displays, in keeping with his eliminating women
more generally from public life (Wiles, 2002). Eventually
what replaced the lavish displays of grief was the kind of
funeral eulogy given by Pericles during the Peloponnesian
War (Thucydides, 411 BCE/1941, 2.35.1-2.43.1, if this
re-construction of Pericles speech may be believed). The
eulogy was best suited for recruitment of new soldiers into
ever-new military actions. In it Pericles praised the fine
citizens and their fine city, uniquely worthy of defense;
and the Athenians ability, though living a life various in
its pursuits, to take resolute military action in search of
renown. He then assigned to women their proper nature
and role. Their nature was to remain silent; their best
behavior to earn commentary neither for ill nor for good.
If those who were listening had lost sons in the war, they
had best bear more sons to sacrifice.11 In short, women of

The priestess asserts that Phoebus Apollo came


into possession of the oracle through voluntary and
amicable transfer from Phoebe. A feminist such as
Spretnak (1992), or a mythologist with Campbells (1991)
insights, might well object that the oracle was not gifted
to Phoebus but rather conquered by him: Phoebe was a
Greek Titanand the matrifocal Titans were overcome
by the patrifocal pantheon in Greek genealogies. This
kind of re-framing of charter myth by replacement of the
female by the male occurred also in the Mesopotamian
tales of Tiamat (Campbell, 1991); surely this was a
conquest rather than a gift.

Example 2: Clytemnestra defamed and
demonized. Clytemnestra was demonized in Aeschylus
telling of the tale in the trilogys first play: She was the
princess of a wealthy, landed family; her sister, Helen,
was half-divine by birth and had a history, before
patrifocal cooption, as a goddess in her own right. These
women were established royalty, not the nouveaux riches
to which Clytemnestra disdainfully refers in the course
of the Agamemnon.

It is a great paradox that at a time when womens
rights were at their nadir, playwrights were creating
very large female figures such as Clytemnestra, Medea,
Antigone, Hecuba, and Electra (cf. Zeitlin, 1990),.

The Furies Demoted and Restored

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 163

the Golden Age suffered a corrosion of their rights and


roleas guardians not just of birth, but also of death.
Additional Oresteian Examples
of Mythological Defamation
While not every instance of defamation in
Aeschylus trilogy can be named, the following examples
round out the evidence presented here.
Example 1: Genealogy of ownership at the
Delphic Oracle. The last play, The Eumenides, relies
throughout on the authority of the Delphic oracle; as
the play opens, before she enters the inner sanctum and
views the Furies, the priestess of the oracle recites its
ownership history.12
First, in my prayer, I give to Earth first place /
Among the gods; first prophetess was she. / Second,
Eternal Lawsecond was she / To sit on her
mothers oracular seat, as the story goes. / In third
allotment, one more Titan / Daughter of earth sat
there, / Phoebea willing successor, not perforce. /
She gave the oracle to Phoebus, / A birthday gift
his name, too, echoed hers. (Aechylus, 1989, ll. 1-9;
Greek ll. 1-8)

What explains this paradox? In the case of Helen and


Clytemnestra, if Sarah Pomeroy (1975) was accurate,
the 5th century BCE figures carried traces of women
from the Bronze Age, 13th century BCE; these were
women of greater stature, with their feet planted in a
society more hospitable to their power. Their stature
survived even in the 8th-7th century Homeric epics
(see Appendix A), in which the brothers Menelaus
and Agamemnon seem to have gone to the realms of
their prospective brides in order to claim Helen and
Clytemnestra. This would suggest a matrilocal, even
matrilineal system. It is possible that Menelaus had
acquired lands and kingship through marrying Helen
and then launched the Trojan War so as to retain them
(Atchity & Barber, 1987). In other words, the Bronze
Age times seem to have included matrilineal as well as
patrilineal varieties of marriage (Powers, 2000).13 These
mixed social structures may have characterized Greek
society as it evolved from the 13th to the 5th century
BCE, not just in Clytemnestras Mycenae, but also in
the environs of Athens. Foley (2002) has noted that in
[such] narrowly oligarchic, aristocratic, or monarchic
states, women who belonged to the elite have often
wielded considerable power, even if illegitimately (p.
78). Athenian legislation gradually reduced the power
of the landed aristocratic families (e.g., 462 BCE laws
diluting their power in the Areopagus), diminishing at
the same time the rights of such women.

An additional but very different approach to
this paradoxwomen of stature onstage, constricted
at homecan be inferred from The Glory of Hera by
Philip Slater (1968). His version was psychological, but
he addressed also a 5th century BCE social situation that
had legalized social stratification by gender and class
(Powers, 2000, p. 91):
The social position of women in Athens had reached
its nadir. Respectable women, the mothers of
Athenian citizens, lived in Oriental [sic] seclusion.
They were allowed only limited social interaction,
and had few legal or political rights.They were
married prematurely [ages 12-16] into patriarchal
families to husbands twice their age, cut off from
their own kin, and subject to a system in which
they could visit relatives only when veiled, could not
remain in the main room of the house when their
husbands entertained other men, could not even
appear in the windows of their own homes. (p. 91)

Womens wombs could be re-deployed if needed by their


family of origin, and along with the ability to perform
menial labor, were their primary recommendation to the
families that acquired the womenprovided the wombs
engendered sons, of course. Despite these contributions,
women were characterized in the tradition of Hesiod
and Semonides as parasitic.

If aspects of Slaters (1968) psychoanalytic analysis
of 5th century society were correct, one may infer the
following: The women, left behind in the locked quarters,
with their men out for years at a time to war, would have
both admired and resented inordinately the gender, the
literal sexual equipment, of their sons; in the psyches of those
same sons might well be the looming figure of a mother too
accessible with no rival around, too needed as support, and
too dangerous as welltoo large altogether. This, then, is a
second possible explanation for the large figures on stage.14

In sum, although the development of the newly
ascending democracy in Athens should be assigned to a
progress spanning 6th through 5th century BCE, with
notable landmarks of military and legislative victories
in the decade preceding the plays, still the Aeschylean
formulation of a charter myth for the following
developments gave them impetus: He asserted that a
necessary subordination of the female figures had
occurred, making obsolete the rights of flesh-and-blood
figures, and the autonomous powers of the goddesses
as well. The latter were still to be honored as vestige
goddesses in the patrifocal religionbut they would
make way for the ascent and ascendancy of the polis.
From The Oresteia Through The Theban Plays:
The Historical Transition
Toward Sophocles Last Play
he Periclean eulogy for the fallen in the Peloponne
sian War reflected the transition from newly fledged
victors in a defensive war against the Persians to rulers
of an empire. Its focus was on an expansive pursuit of
renown; few pretensions were made to being in the right.
Here is where a hermeneutics of suspicion must question
a textbook view of Athens. How just and fair was it as a
culture? Surely it was admirable in some ways: admirable
for the brilliant initiating of philosophy, the beginnings
of science (some of it, such as Democritus atoms, quite
sophisticated); the development of the various arts as well
as of legal and political theorizing and experimentation.
Yet inquiring into the dark half of the Athenian history
serves an important purpose, contributing to a truer
comprehension of democracy then and now.

164 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Schavrien


For instance, was the Peloponnesian War
necessary? As Thucydides portrayed in his best
approximation of deliberations between Corinthians
and their Spartan allies (411 BCE/1951, 3.36-50), the
Corinthians were arguing that the decision to make
war should not hang on minor Athenian provocations.
The decision should focus on the fact that Athenians
had become a people who gave neither themselves nor
anyone else any rest. Only from the outside could they
be stopped.

The question here of the Athenian character bears
centrally on my argument. I cite Thucydides and Sophocles
to demonstrate that the increasingly distorted notion and
embodiment of virility at the secular and sacred level, and
a deficit as well of a counterbalancing female perspective
and contribution, sent Athenians into a downward spiral.
They certainly did not appear to advantage in the dialogue
between their own envoy and the Melian rulers, as recreated by Thucydides (411 BCE/1951, 5.17). The rulers
of the little island of Melos were protesting as follows: You
never have had any claim on us; you cannot just barge in
and take us over; this would be unjust. The envoy replies
that justice plays no role whatsoever between a big power
and a little one; it barely plays a role between two big
powersonly when all other factors are equal. Melos must
surrender or be decimated. (There has been dispute about
how typical such a ruthless aftermath of conquest was
for the Athenians: Bettany Hughes [2010, pp. 223-224]
contended that the harsh treatment, either decimation
or enslavement of males, and enslavement of women and
children, was characteristic.) What is interesting about
the envoys argument is that it lacks the usual political
patina of respectability; it is bald-faced and brutal and
speaks to an Athenian realpolitik evolved, or devolved,
beyond all concern for appearance. This is reason taken
down to sheer calculation, without an ounce of alignment
with virtuevery much along the line of the most up-todate 5th century sophistic teachings, as glimpsed in, for
instance, Platos (380-360 BCE/2008) Republic.

It is important to view the breakdown in morals
as Thucydides (411 BCE/1951) examined it on Corcyra,
for he meant this breakdown to apply to what was
happening among Athenians as well. One can infer this
from reading the text as a whole. The reader will notice
that Thucydides himself gendered these developments.
His analysis portrayed virility gone wrong, associating
this also with the denigration of kinship ties (often
sanctified by the female divinities):

The Theban Plays of Sophocles


hile The Oresteia was written in 458 BCE, the
authoring of the three Oedipus plays spanned
from Antigone, in 441 BCE, through Oedipus Tyrannus,
presented in 426 BCE, to Oedipus at Colonus, written
circa 408-406 BCE (shortly before the death of Sophocles

The Furies Demoted and Restored

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 165

People altered, at their pleasure, the customary


significance of words to suit their deeds: irrational
daring came to be considered the manly courage of
ones loyal to his party; prudent delay was thought
a fair-seeming cowardice; a moderate attitude
was deemed a mere shield for lack of virility, and
a reasoned understanding with regard to all sides
of an issue meant that one was indolent and of no
use for anything. Rash enthusiasm for ones cause
was deemed the part of a true man; to attempt to
employ reason in plotting a safe course of action,
a specious excuse for desertion. One who displayed
violent anger was eternally faithful, whereas any
who spoke against such a person was viewed with
suspicion.... Indeed, even kinship came to represent
a less intimate bond than that of party faction, since
the latter implied a greater willingness to engage in
violent acts of daring without demur. (411 BCE/1951,
3:823:83)
A Psychospiritual Version of Gender
Campbell (1991) traced these behaviors not just to their
historical and sociocultural sources but to their roots in
the psyche. The characterizations need not be taken as
absolute portraits of each gender for now and all time,
but are nevertheless useful ones:
The battle... as though of gods against Titans before
the beginning of the world, actually was of two
aspects of the human psyche at a critical moment
of human history, when the light and rational,
divisive functions, under the sign of the Heroic
Male, overcame (for the Western branch of the great
culture province of high civilizations) the fascination
of the dark mystery of the deeper levels of the soul,
which has been so beautifully termed in the Tao Te
Ching, the Valley Spirit that never dies:

It is named the Mysterious Female.

And the Doorway of the Mysterious Female

Is the base from which

Heaven and Earth sprang.

It is there within us all the while... (p. 80)

at 90) and staged by his grandson in 401 BCE. Antigone,


though written first, would, narratively, have happened
last. Oedipus Tyrannus would go first in terms of the
narrative; then the Oedipus at Colonus, about the old man
dying in a sacred grove in an Athenian suburb; then the
Antigone in which his daughter, after his death, survives
to address the miseries left behind at Thebes.
Who Was Sophocles and Why His Vision?

Sophocles had lived to see the victory over the
Persians and the consequent strengthening of the fledgling
democracy mid-century. He watched the maritime
alliance, supposedly in defense against possible return
of the Persians, grow into the tribute-collecting and,
eventually, brazen empire of the Athenians; he watched
the venture of the Peloponnesian War turn fatal with
the overextension into Sicily, and the loss along the way
of leaders such as Pericles and Alcibiades; he eventually
witnessed the arc toward defeat. Now, as he wrote near
his 90th birthday, all could see that Athens was doomed
at the hands of the Spartan Alliance; soon after his death,
the surrender treaty of 404 BCE was indeed signed. After
that, at the tragic festival of 401 BCE, his last testament
to Athenians was played posthumously, in the form of
Oedipus at Colonus.

Sophocles was in a position to view matters from
a fresh and original perspective. He had been elected
as a general for one of the expeditions but joked to his
co-general, Nicias, about his own mediocre talents in
this regard; he was perhaps less than enthusiastic about
exercising military leadership. He had a reputation, on
the other hand, as a bon vivant. He had room to view and
re-view gender matters since, in addition to his wife and
family, and a courtesan consort who gave him illegitimate
offspring, he enjoyed his beloved young men. He was
clearly quite serious and devoted to his playwrights craft.
He was likewise devoted to his position in the cult of
Asklepius, with its sacred snake, a figure of regenerative
healing, that, as mentioned before, he hosted for a while
in his own home. After his death, and after that last play
about the Oedipus hero (and so, implicitly, about the
Oedipus cult as worshipped in the actual grove of the
Furies), the Athenians made Sophocles himself into a hero
and instituted a cult. This extraordinary life renders us an
extraordinary perspectivenot a womans perspective,
yet given its incomparable scope, a crucial one.
Oedipus Tyrannus

Oedipus attempts to evade the Delphic Oracles
prediction that he would kill his father and marry his

mother. He changes venue from Corinth to Thebes and


must solve the Sphinxs riddle, a foreshadowing of his
urban career as king and his scripted rendezvous with
the cosmos as prophet. One might interpret the healing
of Oedipus to have begun at the same moment as did
his terrible self-discoveries: There is the encounter of
the young Oedipus with the feminine as devouring
mother, the Sphinxhe must conquer or be devoured.
There are the victory prizes he receives: They prove nearfatal because, accompanying the vacated throne, is the
widowed queen. He assumes the kingship and mates with
a woman who, unbeknownst to him, is his mother. He
encounters feminine energies, not only by sleeping with
that queen but again, years afterward, by coming into
conflict with the prophet Teiresias. Oedipus the King
ends up cursing the revered prophet as blind, old, weak,
and suborned to pretend to paranormal powers in the
employ of some political faction. In outraged response
Teiresias gives Oedipus what he has demanded and the
prophet dreaded delivering; he points to the identity
of a polluting murderer, the one who causes disease to
ravage the Kings city: Teiresias delivers the clues to
the unfortunate Kings own real identity as unwitting
patricide and incestuous lover to his mother. Before
long, replies Teiresias, you too will be old, blind, and
weak, traits you mock in me. Teiresias fails to mention
that along with the debilitation will come paranormal
powers, genuine rather than fake ones. Oedipus will
be a prophet like Teiresias himself. Teiresias, as told
in myth well-known to the Athenian audience of the
play though not mentioned in the play itself, had spent
adulthood alternating between 7 years as a man and 7
as a woman. So Oedipus adds a new encounter with
feminine energies, not just on the outside but also on the
inside, as effeminacy.

The encounters have been high tragedy for
Oedipus. This is in the middle period of Sophoclean
production, well before Athens loses her nearly 30year war with the Spartan-Theban Alliance but after a
decimating plague such as the one Oedipus insists on
curing through his inquiries into the cause of pollution.
Oedipus falls like an oak and the universe seems to
collapse with him. In the late years of Oedipus, however,
and of Sophocles who would tell the old kings story in
The Coloneus, the healing actualizes fully in the heros
dying, death, and afterlife. The healing of Oedipus,
including the augmenting of the hero to his destined
size, had begun paradoxically with the seeming miseries,

166 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Schavrien

including those three encountersSphinx, mother,


prophetwith the feminine.

The tyrannus in the plays title poses the question
of how far the politically expedient purposes and actions
of the despot can gogiven actions which challenge
divinitys pre-eminence (Grene, 1991/1994). What is too
much mastery, too much virility? On the other hand,
Jocasta, the Kings older wife gives advice on relating
to the feminine: Before this, in dreams too, as well as
oracles, / many a man has lain with his own mother
(1991/1994, ll. 980-982; Greek ll. 981-982); you must
take this matter less seriously, leave off inquiring. Of
course Oedipus disregards her warning, with perhaps
too much masculine recklessness, perhaps too much
attraction to the taboo feminine. He pursues instead,
as he feels he must, the truth. She commits suicide. He
plucks out his eyes.

What follows is a summary of Antigone, and
finally of Oedipus at Colonus, which, written last,
distilled the long retrospective of the Sophoclean
vision. According to some, Oedipus Tyrannus paralleled
Oedipus in his pride with Athens in her own heyday,
towering above the other city-states, but then struck with
a decimating plague (Grene, 1991/1994, p. xxii; Knox
1998; L. Doherty, personal communication, December
14, 2010). Oedipus at Colonus depicted an exhausted and
battered Oedipus, perhaps resembling Athens near her
fall after repeated Spartan invasions. Grene went on to
observe that nevertheless old Oedipus is possessed of
a mysterious inner strength and a spiritual power that
receive ultimate recognition from the gentled, if still
terrible, goddesses of the grove (p. x). Oedipus at Colonus
portrayed a kind of survivalfor protagonist and polity
both. The Furies bear witness to it; and more, they are
somehow benevolently implicated.
Antigone

The Antigone is noteworthy because so
frequently misinterpreted by critics. Granted, as critics
say, the plot bears somewhat on individual conscience
as it holds out against state dictum. Antigones brothers
have fought for the throne of Thebes in the wake of their
fathers exile and have killed each other, in accord with
Oedipus curse on them. Creon, brother of Oedipus
late royal wife and mother, inherits; he declares one
dead brother a criminal and lays him out to fatten the
vultures. Antigone instead defies Creons law, throws
dirt on the body. The point, however, is this: Her action,
rather than primarily an individuating one, is taken

Here, as in the Oedipus Tyrannus, a person, though


he or she be head of state, may not concoct religious
procedures, violating what the gods have stipulated, just
as no king may fly in the face of the prophet Teiresias,
aligned in Sophocles with both Olympians and the
old gods. Creon brings punishment down on his own
head. Thebes has its laws, says Antigone, not of today
and yesterday; / they live forever; none knows when first
they were (ll. 500-501; Greek ll. 456-457). The rulers
hot temperchallenging the gods through challenging
Teiresiasissues in his inability to put a timely stop to
Antigones decreed death: Creons son then replicates the
preemptive suicide of his beloved Antigone, and Creons
wife follows suit. The curses on the house of Oedipus,
some of them self-levied, have worked their way through
the family from top to bottom.
Oedipus at Colonus

I will deliver the synopsis, interspersing
commentary along the waypointing out the visibles
and the invisibles, the social dimensions and the sacred,
that both ran through the play and put it in a larger
context. Oedipus at Colonus provided a retrospective on
the birth of democracy in Athens, and also on the polis
rise and fall as the hub of an empire. It did so in seeming
parable, in fairy tale, rather than in a history like that
of Thucydides. But this was no simple parable; it was
a late vision, coming from the 90-year-old playwright
Sophocles, seen, in accordance with late style, in the light
of death (Schavrien, 2009). It was likewise a late vision
in terms of a cultures apogee and decline: It had the
many earmarksa piece that tended to look backward
and inward, in terms of historical foundations (being set
in the Athenian Bronze Age of the 13th century) and of
depth psychological foundations; at the same time it took
a long look forward, prophetically, since the outcome of
the plot supposedly offered Athens invulnerability in
war into the foreseeable future.

The Furies Demoted and Restored

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 167

in compliance with the chthonic pantheon and their


family-affirming burial customs. Antigone clarifies
this:
Yes, it was not Zeus that made the proclamation
[Creons against burial];/ nor did Justice, which
lives with those below, enact / such laws as that, for
mankind/ These are the laws [the proper religious
ones] whose penalties I would not/ incur from the
gods, through fear of any mans temper. (Grene,
1991, ll. 494-503; Greek ll. 450-460)


It offered a true archetypal grasp as does many
a late visionin this particular instance, it offered the
archetype of the hero in Oedipus and of the good leader in
Theseus. It also left in place the seemingly irreconcilable
threads in the fabric of life. In the Sophoclean vision,
there was Oedipus astounding precision and accuracy
in cursing his blood relations, who were nevertheless,
as he rightly guessed, planning treachery; there were on
the other side, the most intimate exchanges, with their
poignant details, between Oedipus and Antigone: Lean
your old body on my arm, says Antigone, it is I who love
you (Grene, 1954, ll. 200-201). Both the acerbic and the
tender gave naturalistic touches to the fairy tale, making
this, again, a peculiarly late vision, in which imagination
and daily reality mixed as almost equal partners. The
irreconcilables, expressed in Oedipus difficult character
and reflected in his terrible prior treatment at the hands
of the gods, intersected with a mood of sweet serenity
often found in late vision; Oedipus loving benevolence
toward his daughters and Theseus, and the great blessing
he bestowed on Athens, amplified a mystery attached to
the grove in which he died.

He died in the grove of the Furies, with
its nightingales that never stop singing, a grove as
timelessly beautiful as nature could ever be; he died
having seemingly outwitted a terrible outcome should
his trespassing have proven taboo, and having aligned
with the groves blessing instead. His alignment with the
Furies, and through this with the feminine. ushered in a
certain serene assurance for the Athens of the play.

The Athenians would identify: There were
strands in the play that put the imperiled Oedipus into
a parallel with the actual fin de sicle Athens; the latter
would die, soon after the play was written, as an empire.
As a city-state, when in 401 BCE the actual population
came to view the play, Athens would be enjoying a
momentary stabilization but would still suffer the threat
of an outburst from internal factionshaving recovered
its democracy after oligarchic takeover in 411 BCE and,
again, after the oligarchic installation by their conqueror,
in 404 BCE. Such parallels would surely have been
appreciated by those who sat to watch the Sophoclean
last testament.

In sum, as to the late vision of the play, personal
and cultural, it mixed the cantankerous with the serene:
It was not purely a serene vision, as some late visions are,
but did and does offer a potentially serene vision in which
to dwell, as one might dwell in the timeless grove; nor

was the vision purely focused on the irreconcilables as are


some other late visions. In this paradox Sophocles vision
might be compared to that in Shakespeares The Tempest:
sophistication, even life-weariness, paired in both plays
with a post-pollution return to innocence. There was the
Eden that lived in the mind and it was no mere fantasy
but a real force in human living. Both visions matched
great sophistication with magic at the root.

To convey that actuality and that magic,
Sophocles brought the sacred invisibles and the secular
visibles together; he intermixed them. This is, then, the
venue for my ongoing exploration of a dialectic between
facets of society and of the pantheon, as the former
projected onto the latter and as the latter shaped the
former.
What are the Beings and Doings
of Oedipus at Colonus?

The play was and is too strange to yield to a
conventional plot summary. Although very much
embraced by audiences at the time, it has been less
popular since then; probably, as Markantonatos (2007)
suggested, because moderns find it too episodic. The
unifying threads are not really those of plot. In his
excellent book, Oedipus at Colonus: Sophocles, Athens,
and the World, Markantonatos ventured the following
about the grove which received Oedipus: The sacred
precinct of the Eumenides [Furies] has been aptly
recognized as perhaps the most evocative of meaningful
connections with fifth-century Athens in the context of
Greek tragedy (2007, p. 74). He went on to say:

168 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Schavrien

Apart from the settings of Sophocles Philoctetes


and the disputed Rhesus, which, we should think,
present an unequal match to the shifting succession
of awe-inspiring images of landscape simplicity and
tranquility evoked in the last play of Sophocles,
the setting also gradually shows itself to be another
exceptionally important strand, woven as it is in
the complex thematic web of the play. As the action
unfolds, it will unpredictably prove to be extremely
redolent of contemporary associations with foremost
Athenian institutions. (2007, p. 39)

In his view, the play highlighted two sets
of institutions: the leadership of Athens; through
Oedipus death in this grove, the moderate and decent,
yet valorous leadership of Theseus was confirmed;
furthermore, though a king, he nevertheless would
sometimes consult with citizens. Rule by Theseus, one

may infer, would serve as a model for Athenian handling


of polis factions as it moved forward, stripped of its
empire, but needing to regain stability as a city-state. The
other set of institutions cited by Markantonatos (2007)
was the Eleusinian Mysteries, in which most if not all
Athenian citizens were inducted once in their lifetime.
These were Mysteries accenting the story of Demeter
and her daughter Persephonethe daughters abduction
by Hades, the mothers search and partial success in
demanding her return from the underworld for most of
the year; thus, the mournful sterility in one season and
the regeneration in another. (There are controversies over
what season is the setting for regeneration; desolation
may have been in the heat of Summer and regeneration
in Autumn, in keeping with agricultural cycles, rather
than desolation in Winter followed by a fruitful Spring).
Some have described the Mysteries as having involved the
baby Dionysus, and the Eleusinian Mysteries intersected
in Athenian religious life with Dionysiac and Orphic
Mystery institutions as well.

This study emphasizes instead their intersection
with the goddesses providing the setting of the play, the
Eumenides/Furies. Oedipus dies into these goddesses,
while Persephone as the Dread Goddess is invoked to guide
him; he is received on the whole by the older matristic
pantheon: The Furies grove and a kind of psychospiritual
locus of the Eleusinian Mysteries (in real life celebrated
by processions between Athens and Eleusis) join as one
setting, hosting the death of the hero. In such a context,
the Furies are ineffably beautiful:


A short and very selected version, of what
happens in the play is that Oedipus, old, blind from
his self-punishment, and in the midst of a long beggarly
exile relying on the guidance of his daughter, Antigone,
discovers himself in this mysterious setting. A local
citizen informs the pair that he may not stay where he
standsit endangers him and everyone; he stands in the
grove of those referred to as the Kindly Ones (for fear,

it may be inferred, that they should show their face as the


Furies). This new name for them builds on the turnabout
supposedly documented in the Aeschylean tragedy of
50 years earlier. (Aeschylus may not have been so much
inventing the new name, as turning to his own uses the
peoples habit of cautious euphemism). One hears in the
citizens words the underlying terror of offending the
goddesses that all still carry. Oedipus is not yet revealed to
the citizen as Oedipus indeed, but one would think that
he above all should be terrified to set foot in the grove,
patricide that he is and, indirectly, matricide. On the
contrary, Oedipus replies that, now that he knows where
he is, he most certainly will remain in place. The rest he
promises to explain when Theseus, the leader of Athens
and its suburb, Colonus, arrives.

Oedipus himself knows that old oracles and new
ones would have him die in this grove to bestow, with his
bones, protective blessings on Athens, his newly adopted
home. Athens would enjoy as his legacy invulnerability in
war. The action develops with visits from Creon, his brotherin-law, and Polyneices, his son, who aim to induce him to
return to Thebes or even, in Creons case, to kidnap him
so as to claim this same blessing of invulnerability. These
visitors, especially Creon in his violent overreaching, serve
as counterfoils to the good and moderate leader, Theseus.
This does not mean, however, that only Thebes, whom
they represent, is the bad city. Were Athens to behave this
way, and in fact she had been behaving this way, she too
would be condemned to defeat at the hands of her betters;
it was a common theatrical device in the tragedies to use
other cities to make indirect reference to Athenian woes
and misbehaviors. In any case, the outcome of the plot
sees Oedipus embracing Theseus as benefactor and heir.
Replacing the rejected son, Polyneices, is this equivalent
of a newly adopted son. Oedipus embraces as well a new
city-statenot Thebes, the scene of his attainments and
subsequent ordeal, but Athens.

It is important that Oedipus also shifts, in his
own perception and that of audiences old and new, the
position of his daughters. It speaks to his own cosmopolitan
learning, as one who has wandered Greece, and to
Antigones excellence as a guide as well, that he says, Like
the Egyptians, I have daughters who go abroad on behalf
of their father and sons who sit at home. Yet, to reiterate,
the heros sophisticated relativism cohabits comfortably
with his ownand the playwrightsattunement to
mystery and magic.

The episodic plot culminates in the old heros

The Furies Demoted and Restored

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 169

Indeed, the graduated, suspense-filled series of


landscape descriptions, which for all their apparent
specificity rebuff completely intelligible coherence,
hassled an otherwise discerning critic [Dunn, 1992]
to put forward the rather flamboyant claim that: in a
sense the drama is stripped down to a single aspect of
stage convention: from the beginning to the end we
are occupied in discovering what the scene represents.
(Markantonatos, 2007, p. 77)

death by apotheosis; it is a secretive death not witnessed


directly but heard tell of by way of a messenger. The
secretiveness of the death ties it in with the Athenian
Eleusinian institutions highlighted by Markantonatos
(2007). The Demeter and Persephone of the Mysteries
matter here; throughout, the Furies matter. The threads
of doing and being intersect in the choral song praising
the grove. The song illustrates the settings central
importance, illuminates the contention that from
beginning to end we are occupied in discovering what
the scene represents (p. 75):




In the gods untrodden vale


Where leaves and berries throng,
And wine-dark ivy climbs the bough,
The sweet, sojourning nightingale
Murmurs all day long.
No sun nor wind may enter there
Nor the winters rain;
But ever through the shadow goes
Dionysus reveler,
Immortal maenads in his train.
Here with drops of heavens dews
At daybreak all the year,
The clusters of narcissus bloom,
Time-hallowed garlands for the brows
Of those great ladies whom we fear.
(ll. 668-685; Greek ll. 670-684)


There is even an odd set of lines in a later
scene (odd as they are translated by Fitzgerald [1954],
though not by Grene [1991/1994]). The lines provide
provocative psychological insight. Fitzgerald (1954), as a
poet-translator, took telling liberties when he translated
this set of lines; they characterize the people of Athenian
Colonus, who honor the god of the sea, who loves forever
/ The feminine earth that bore him long ago (Sophocles,
441-406 BCE/1954, ll. 1070-1071; Greek ll. 1070-1073).
The rhythms suggest lovemaking: Note the waves-of-thesea rhythms, with accents on god, loves, and the ev
in forever, earth, long; the wave rhythms are also
the thrust rhythms of a graceful lovemaking. The poetry,
then, invokes the (not infrequent) incest among the oldest
gods, for whom the Mother pairing with son-consort is
standard, as are incestuous versions of the Poseidon/Earth
myth.15 (Sophocles used Rhea rather than Earth [Gaia]
as the goddess paired with Poseidon, but Rhea and Gaia
are often conflated). These lines juxtapose in a thoughtprovoking way with the drama at hand of purification

170 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

and rehabilitation from an unwitting incest, as if, when


the action is translated to divine realms, as Oedipus is
about to be translated, such a primal coupling implies
no pollution (Schavrien, 1989). The sea, embracing his
mother the earth (Poseidon as gaienokhos, Earthholder
[L. Doherty, personal communication, December 19,
2010]), makes love forever to her. The Eden is one of
safety and loveliness, as the citizen chorus says, and one of
an unstainable innocence.
The Hero and the Multivalent Goddess

There is a Greek morality that diverges from
that of contemporary Western culture. Oedipus at
Colonus portrayed the transformation of the muchdespised former king into not just a prophet but also a
daemonic herostill worshipped in 5th century Athens
(Grene, 1991/1994, xxvi) though his story occurred in
founding times. Many critics have attempted to explain
away Oedipus horrific temper, not so much when it
triggers his downfall in middle agehe would not yet
have learned his lessonbut when as an old man he is
about to transfigure into a demigod. He then displays
this same horrific rage toward both Creon and his own
son; Oedipus sees through them at once and verbally
eviscerates them, each in turn. His accuracy should
be acknowledged, yet there is no explaining away the
temper. Grenes (1991/1994) definition of a hero lays
out, instead, a uniquely Greek gestalt of the sacred, one
which accommodates such a tension:
Sophocles here draws on the complex of Greek reli
gious notions of hero-cultHe himselfreceived
such a cult after his death. Heroes, in this
technical sense, are mortal high achievers whose
life-story is generally embedded in old myths or
legends. Their extraordinary force and passion
lead them to actions beyond the limits of normal
humanity and often bring them into conflict with
human and divine laws. Hence they perform great
outrages as well as great benefactions. They generally
come to a violent and mysterious end in which the
paradoxes of transgression and greatness are enacted
in a supernatural event like sudden disappearance or
some other intervention by the gods. (p. xxvi)

Oedipus life comes to a mysterious end. The
drama in the grove may have threatened violent destruc
tion for him, what with the attempts at intervention
from Creon and Polyneices; but all of these are blocked
by Theseus on the physical side and by Oedipus himself

Schavrien

psychologically. After the victorious battles, the blind old


Oedipus enacts his fate by leading his party of Theseus
and daughters into the grove; he is for the first time
unguided and unsteadied by any arm. He then finds,
through his own prophetic knowledge, the designated
spot for his transformation; hears his name called out
by a deity impatient of delays; disappears either into
the gaped earth or else into the arms of some god; and
finally, transmutes in the course of the transport into a
daemonic hero.

In the play ending the Oedipal narrative, though
it was the first one written, Antigone followed her father
to become a heroine. What helped her qualify was the
same terrible stubbornness, which nevertheless did not
disqualify her from claiming hearts or having right on
her side. She too aligned herself with chthonic deities
when they were least in favor.

This point matters because, as the reader gains
insight into the old order goddesses, and especially
the Furies, she should notice, even appreciate, their
multivalence. They are feminine in the roundcurse,
blessing, and all. To know them fully, one should know
them in the context of their entire network. They are
a remedy to the much diminished and disempowered
goddesses of the present-day, such as Mary, sweet,
forgiving, willing to intercede humbly with the greater
masculine powers, asexual, and actually no goddess at
all but merely human, as the Catholic Church officially
maintains. In such a form, these goddesses bear the
marks of a divide-and-conquer strategy, not just external
but also internal: They are amputees, fragments of their
former selves.16

These amputated versions of the female
misrepresent figures that lived a more rounded life
in their older forms (Spretnak, 1992): Hera, Athena,
Artemis, and Hecate, for instance, had been chopped
and diced for co-optation by the Olympian pantheon.
The preceding pantheon had been presided over by a
Great Mother, with Demeter perhaps most related to
that figure, and a network of near-related figures such
as the Minoan Lady of the Beasts (who eventually
translated into either Artemis or Gaia), the Lady of the
Mountains, and so forth. The frescoes and statuettes,
plus correlations drawn with early Anatolian and Baltic
pantheons, have provided the basis for suggestions that
the Olympian goddesses found their roots in the Bronze
Age culture and earlier, as did Demeter and Persephone
(Stallsmith, 2008).17

Athens, the Compassionate City of Refuge


edipus specifically holds Athens to its reputation as
a city of refuge (Grene, 1994, ll. 271-76). When the
citizens find out his actual identity, they want only to rid
the place of him. He reproaches them with reneging not
only on the promise they had made to host him, before
they knew his name, but also on their age-old reputation
for compassion to the injured stranger. Fortunately,
Theseus, their leader, overrides their rejection. This is
significant because perhaps a polity is essentially the
promises that the folk make to each other at its founding.
Perhaps the real-life evolution of Athens from welcoming
democracy to bully empire was targeted by Sophocles in
this call for hospitable compassion.
The Glaring Paradox of the Sophoclean Bequest

As Oedipus was leaving his bones, so Sophocles
was leaving to the Athenians the bequest of this play. He
left it in a time when the Athenians had overextended,
having lost too large a fleet by sending out the Sicilian
expedition (415 BCE). There were ups and downs to come
after that, but when Sophocles was writing, the pending
defeat was clear. How, then, could he write a play, set in
its founding times, that marked the bestowing of a heros
grave that granted invulnerability to Athens? Was the
play meant as a magical amulet, as suggested by D. Grene
(personal communication, 1973)? Was it simply escapist,
in the manner of the Busby Berkeley musicals on which
Americans feasted during the Great Depression of the
1930s? In either case, one can comfortably argue that
it gave this message to the public: If Athenians could
rewind and re-do, they might have kept the brightest
promises they had made to themselves as a folk, and
their most grateful and pious promises to the deities. In
fact the choruses portray an Athens in which there are
not even competitions among the gods, as there are in
myths such as the one that sets Poseidon against Athena
in a competition for tutelary deity of the city. The play, as
Grene (1991/1994) described, juxtaposed chthonic and
Olympian religions and thereby joined areas of family
and city in exploring the larger theme of the human
relation with nature and the gods (pp. xviii-xix). They
all had their contribution to make to the Eden which
was the Athenian Colonus: Old and new, male and
female, sturdy olive tree, fish aplenty, sky, sea, and earth,
all dwelt in harmony and balance. This may well have
been an equivalent of the Eden myth, but not as sheer
fantasy; instead the Colonus myth conveyed an attitude
of remembrance and attunement.18

The Furies Demoted and Restored

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 171


Finally, to home in on the political dimension:
Athens had certainly departed from its own charter
promises of respectful governance and compassion. The
extraordinary way in which the Erinyes were showcased,
however, and made beautiful while retaining their
potency, celebrating the fertile features of their grove
and surrounding land, accomplished the following: It
embedded the story in an intimacy with nature and a
gratitude for the land, offering antidote to the cynical
impiety and ambition of the times. There was, then, a
political significance to this grateful acknowledgement of
natural setting. The political seconded what was clearly
a personal significance as well. The play was a lovesong,
from a Sophocles facing his death, to Colonus, the land
of his birth. Personal and political motives dovetailed.

Although contemporary Westerners may owe
great cultural gratitude to Athenians for their questing
spirit, their actualized ambitions were just one side of a
double-edged sword: As the Corinthians warned their
hesitant Spartan allies, Athenians had to be stopped;
their ambition was unquenchable, as indicated by their
incessant imperial expansions. The contrasting drift of
Sophocles last play might be expressed in the words of a
Dorothy weary of Oz: Theres no place like home; theres
no place like home. Home was embedded in the dear
land and sea that gave host to Athens.
Finding Crete in Colonus:
The Significance of the Goddesses Lineage
or the purposes of this study, most crucial and
astonishing in Sophocles final play was the
reassertion of the sacred power and importance of the
Furies themselves. At the same time, there was the
reactivation of their chthonic Old Girls Network
that included most notably Demeter and Persephone,
central to the Eleusinian Mysteries and thereby to
Athenian well-being. But the Mysteries had demanded
utter secrecy from their many Athenian initiates; this
enabled the patriarchal Olympian pantheon to remain
in the limelight. The Athenian women were, in fact,
conducting many festivals dedicated to maintaining
fertility of land and womb throughout the seasonal
phases of the year (Zweig, 1993, p. 167). Still, given
the secrecy surrounding the Eleusinian Mysteries, this
relative invisibility bears on the feminist search for an
accurate and usable history (Gross, 1993, p. 19; cf. pp.
19-22). Sophocles offered some remedy by assembling
a myth that linked potential Athenian healing to a
foregrounding of the chthonic goddesses.

The Three Ss: Secrecy, Survivals, Syncretism



To characterize historical developments
stretching from Crete to Athens, one might assemble
three elements and dub them the three Ss: secrecy, which
backgrounded Demeter and Persephone until they were,
at least in terms of polis destiny, quietly foregrounded
in the last Sophoclean play; survivals, which made their
appearance as vestiges of the old religion in the new,
such that, even if one tried to beat down the ancient
goddesses, they inevitably sprang up elsewhere; and,
finally, syncretism, which could be found in the respectful
solution to Athenian tensions, as Sophocles harmoniously
combined the chthonic with the Olympian pantheon.
It is true that Aeschylus had made his own version of
such an integration, but it had entailed a contemptuous
subordination. Sophocles, instead, restored all due
respect.
The Sophoclean Dynamic:
Restoration of the Feminine to Stabilize Athens

Since Sophocles, a comprehending witness of
the Golden Age, its evolutions and devolutions, saw
restoration of the feminine (in deity, energy, creature)
as crucial to the stabilizing of Athens, it makes sense
to follow his lead. Markantonatos (2007) went far
in teasing out the threads from a dynamic skein. The
present analysis adds to his a gendered perspective. He
has argued that the play alluded vividlyat least for the
sensibility of a 5th century Athenian who would catch
the referencesto the Eleusinian Mysteries; the play
in some sense echoed such a rite. The plays hero, after
encounter with a dark and frightening set of experiences
(as some assign to the process of the Mysteries) meets
then with the salvific vision: In the time between, such
portents as thunder and lightning (heard by Oedipus the
hero as well as by the real-life initiate) keep the initiate
thoroughly awake. There may be a few witnesses, but
secrecy prevails. It is understood that the vision smoothes
the way to both a regenerated life and, most notably,
after-life to come.

Demeter and Persephone have been alluded to in
several places (e.g., Grene, 1991/1994, l. 1766, l. 1786)
either by name or by an epithet both pointing to and
disguising the netherworld daughter. Many other gods
have appeared as well, all spread throughout the local
landscape although, in this instance, all arranged in an
implied relationship to the Furies, since these goddesses
have been dominating the setting. In Oedipus prepara
tion for death in the grove, Markantonatos (2007)

172 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Schavrien

has deftly identified syncretic threads of burial rites,


purification rites, and sacrificial rites; they variously
combined in those last moments of Oedipus selfpreparation for his transmuting death, and are extended
after that by the mourning from his daughters. The
entire play would have invoked a syncretic pantheon and
a syncretic participation-by-proxy in its ongoing ritual:
It would concoct a potent brew needed to address the
terrible circumstances in which the actual polis members,
the viewing audience, found themselves.

How does the analysis of Markantonatos
(2007) lay out a path for redemption? The point would
be, first of all, the point made in those Mysteries. An
Athenian would very much need an alternative, offered
by the Mysteries, to the Olympian view of death:
In the Olympian underworld one has neither joy nor
light nor vitality.19 As to the alternative: The Eleusinian
Demeter and Persephone trace back to Minoan times
in Crete (Kerenyi, 1976). Both mother and daughter
are implied in the title of Demeter Thesmophoros
(Stallsmith, 2008), the dual goddess; while the Erinyes
most probably trace back to Minoan ancestors (the
keres) as well. That Minoan underworld, in which the
three goddesses have a stake as earth and underworld
goddesses, exists in analogy to the incubation phase in
the farming cycle; in such a cycle, the seed has a hopeful
dormancy in the earth. This cycle, then, plays a central
role in Minoan culture and religion (Gimbutas, 1999, p.
136). Along the lines of a Minoan sensibility represented
by survivalsvestiges of deities and their rituals into
the Golden Agethe last scene in the Mysteries
themselves entails the holding up of a cut ear of corn
(or a sheaf of wheat): From seeming death in the earth
comes regeneration. (For resemblances between Minoan
and Eleusinian rituals, cf. Gimbutas, 1999, p. 136).
The mystical insight of the initiate may or may not be
aided at such a moment by drug enhancements from the
kykeon brew downed in the process; was it psychedelic?
This is a facet that might also link the Mysteries with
the Minoan poppy goddess (Kritikos & Papadaki,
1967). With or without the literal mystical chemistry of
a potent kykeon, the insights would still be along these
linesregenerativeafter dark encounters and death,
comes the salvific vision and life. The Mysteries earthy,
renewing orientation would have been desperately
needed by the down-and-out Athenians; they needed
both to believe in and accomplish such a renewal for
themselves and their polis.


Most crucial are the gender modification and
rebalancing required, on the secular and divine levels.
Markatonatos (2007) framed matters without a gendered
reference. His insights, nevertheless, harmonize well with
my own view. He added that this play tutors Athenians
in returning to an old view that there can and should
be traits and tendencies such as moderation, decency,
and keeping ones word, even and especially in political
leaders. This rings a salutary change on Thucydides
(411 BCE/1951) description of virility gone wrong
(cf. 3.82-3.83). Theseus served, then, as a model for
the good leader. His mythical biography, interestingly
enough for the argument of this study, intersected him
with Minoan culture: Athenians, watching Oedipus at
Colonus, would have had Minoan Crete at some level in
their consciousness due to Theseus having encountered
Ariadne there. References then, to the various earthnetwork deities, the Furies, Demeter, and Persephone,
would have implied if not carried explicitly the long ago
and far away overtones, extending the temporal telescope
by yet another segment, from contemporary Athens to
its founding days, from founding days to the Minoan
pre-history of its chthonic deities (cf. n. 17).

To return to Athenian politics: In fact, the
democratic restoration (403 BCE), after an oligarchic
interlude, showed much more restraint than had the
previous administration; as if they were led by that
mythical exemplar of moderation, Theseus. Athens
herself managed to moderate, rebalance, and have her
own kind of continuity into the 3rd century BCE and
beyond. Perhaps Sophocles message, by way of the 401
BCE staging of the play, impressed itself on the citizens?
Perhaps he was simply prescient. In any case, Athens,
though dying as an empire, escaped death as a city-state
from fractiousness and faction.
Parallels with Contemporary Challenges:
Retrieving a Home
here was a crucial female component in the syncretic
pantheon of the 5th century BCE; the pantheon
remained part Olympian, as imported by invaders, and
part chthonic. At the same time, the earth-based and
underworld figures absorbed by the Olympian pantheon
were defamed, as were the Furies, or downplayed, as
were Demeter and Persephone. The defamation and
downplaying contributed to a faux virility which turned
citizen against citizen, husband against wife, son against
father. The chthonic pantheon subsumed by Olympians,
then, stood to benefit Athens through being both

The Furies Demoted and Restored

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 173

exhumed and foregrounded. Sophocles understood this,


and the milder version of chthonic advocacy that appeared
in his earlier play, Antigone, he threw into high relief in
Oedipus at Colonus. His ability to root such advocacy
in a psychology both deep and wide, spiritual yet also
embodied, caused his sociopolitical critique to coincide
with a psychospiritual and even psychoecological one.
Such a foregrounding of the feminine held promise for
an Athens then deep in crisis. It could come to the aid of
the West today.

Politics, socioeconomics, ecology and psycho
spirituality are threads in a skein. Both the United States
and many multinational companies share traits with
Athenians. There is the questing spirit unlikely to stop
unless some outside force bridles it. There is the theory
undergirding what has become a rogue capitalism, a
capitalism that advocates incessant expansion to new
markets, questing likewise, with only the thinnest
semblance of morality, for unlimited acquisition of
natural resources. As the Athenians felt there was no
end to their need for wheat and the fertile ground that
grew it, so modern forces seek access to oil with regard
for nothing but the bottom line. It is clich to say that
greed dominates the markets and, according to relatively
unquestioned theory, greed makes the markets thrive:
greed is good. How could such a premise provide for
the upbringing of decent citizens, in the United States
and abroad (L. Vacca, personal communication, April
11, 2011)?

Like the Athenians, Americans and others may
find some counterbalance in the first and best promises
that we, as various folk, made to ourselves at founding:
For citizens of the United States, these would be the
promises of those bent on hospitality, extending as well
a reciprocal hospitality to the people and environment
that have hosted us. Other folk might cultivate their own
remembrances of their first best intentions. The caveat is
that charter myths may be misused; they must be properly
used, both to offer a home and to retrieve a home.

In his last play, Sophocles wrote for his chorus
songs of reverence and gratitudeto both the ocean and
the earth that held and sustained the culture. Likewise,
this study bears witness on behalf of the oil-slicked gull
of the Louisiana spill, who has served as its tutelary
deity. The earth calls for both a revived gratitude and
a concerted commitment to turn away from destroying
and toward sustaining. Such a solution, of course, is
simple but not easy.


There would be, in addition, a psychospiritual
benefit to executing such good intentions: When
Oedipus is finally a healer rather than a polluter, he is
simultaneously healing himself. How so? The man cut
off from the womb that first offered him a home, through
his unwitting matricide, now finds his home in a healed
city-state and in the earthy cosmos as a whole. Ancient
initiates into the Mysteries, and modern-day mystics,
the grounded kind, seek intimacy with the whole. Their
feet walk the ground not as strangers on the earth but as
those who belong. They have both retrieved and returned
to a home. They have assuaged a longing to recover
what might be called the primal intimacy. A mystics
belonging need not be characterized as the opiate of the
people, regression, or a lesser level of experiencing, as
Marx, Freud, or Wilber (1995; addressing the indigenous
brand) would have it. It may issue instead from a long
and arduous healing, entailing commitment to the wellbeing of the whole.

May my voice join the chorusgardener,
citizen, artist, scholar, scientist, legislatorof those who
promise the earth and its inhabitants both to cultivate
and retrieve the sanctity of such a home. It is a cosmic
home, so far and yet so near, to be discovered not only
at the furthest reach of imagination, but also as the dear
ground underfoot.

174 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Schavrien

References
Aeschylus. (1903). Agamemnon (R. Fitzgerald, Trans.).
New York, NY: Macmillan. (Original work
presented 458 BCE).
Aeschylus. The Eumenides (1908). (A.W. Verrall, Trans.).
Cambridge, UK: University Press. (Original work
presented 458 BCE).
Aeschylus. (1953). Aeschylus I, Oresteia (R. Lattimore &
R. Fitzgerald, Trans.). Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago. (Original work presented 458 BCE).
Aeschylus. (1989). The Oresteia (D. Grene & W. D.
OFlaherty, Trans.). Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago. (Original work presented 458 BCE)
Aeschylus. (1981). The OresteiaA trilogy by Aeschylus
in a version by Tony Harrison (Tony Harrison,
Trans.). London, UK: Rex Collings. (Original work
presented 458 BCE)
Alcock, S., Cherry, J., & Eisner, J. (Eds.). (2001).
Pausanius: Travel and memory in Roman Greece.
Oxford, UK: University Press.

Atchity, K. B., & Barber, E. W. (1987). Greek princes


and Aegean princesses: The role of women in the
Homeric poems. In K. Atchity & E. W. Barber
(Eds.), Critical essays on Homer (pp. 15-36). Boston,
MA: G. K. Hall.
Berggren, K. and Harrod, J. (1996). Understanding
Marija Gimbutas. Journal of Prehistoric Religions, 10,
70-73.
Burkert, W. (1991). Greek religion: Archaic and classical.
Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Buxton, R. (Ed.). (2001). Oxford readings in Greek
religion (Oxford readings in classical studies). Oxford,
UK: University Press.
Campbell, J. (1991). The masks of God. Vol. 3, Occidental
mythology. New York, NY: Penguin.
Copestake, T. (Director). (2007). Athens: Dawn of
Democracy (B. Hughes, Historian-Narrator).[Motion
Picture]. USA/Canada: PBS (direct).
Dodds, E. R. (2004). The Greeks and the irrational.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Doherty, L. (2001). Gender and the interpretation of
classical myth. London, UK: Duckworth.
Foley, H. P. (2002). Female acts in Greek tragedy (Martin
classical lectures). Princeton, NJ: University Press.
Freud, S. (1955). A child is being beaten: A contribution
to the study of the origin of sexual perversions. In
The standard edition of the complete psychological
works of Sigmund Freud. Volume 17 (pp. 175204). London, UK: Hogarth Press. (Original work
published 1919)
Gimbutas, M. (1999). The living goddesses (M. R.
Dexter, Ed. and Suppl.). Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press.
Grene, D. (1950). Greek political theory: The image of man
in Thucydides and Plato. Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago.
Gross, R. (1993). Buddhism after patriarchy: A feminist
history, analysis, and reconstruction of Buddhism.
Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Harrison, J. (2010). Prolegomena to the study of Greek
religion. Charleston, SC: Nabu Press. (Original work
published 1903)
Harrison, J. (1962). Epilegomena to the study of Greek
religion, and Themis: A study of the social origins of
Greek religion. Cambridge, UK: University Books.
(Original work published 1921)
Holst-Warhaft, G. (1995). Dangerous voices: Womens
laments and Greek literature. New York, NY: Routledge.

Hughes, B. (2010). The hemlock cup: Socrates, Athens and


the sea. London, UK: Jonathan Cape.
Johnston, S. (1999). Restless dead: Encounters between the
living and the dead in ancient Greece. Berkeley, CA:
University of California.
Kerenyi, K. (1976). Dionysos: Archetypal image of
indestructible life. Princeton, NJ: University Press.
Knox, B. (1998). Oedipus at Thebes: Sophocles tragic
hero and his time. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press.
Komar, K. (2003). Reclaiming Klytemnestra: Revenge or
reconciliation. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois.
Kritikos, P. G. & Papadaki, S. P. (1967). The history
of the poppy and of opium and their expansion
in antiquity in the eastern Mediterranean area (G.
Michalopoulos, Trans.). United Nations Office on
Drugs and Crime Bulletin on Narcotics, 1967(3), 1738. Retrieved from <http://www.unodc.org/unodc/
en/data-and-analysis/bulletin/bulletin_1967-0101_3_page004.html>
Krzszkowska, O. (1999). So wheres the loot? The spoils
of war and the archaeological record. In R. Laffineur
Robert, (Ed.). Polemos: Le contexte guerrier en Egee
a lage du bronze (Actes de la 7e Rencontre egeenne
internationale Universite de Lige, 1998; pp. 489498.) Lige, Belgium: Universit de Lige, Histoire
de lart darcheologie de la Grece antique.
Markantonatos, A. (2007). Oedipus at Colonus: Sophocles,
Athens, and the world. Berlin, Germany: Walter de
Gruyter.
Minoan civilization (extended definition). (n.d.). Websters
online dictionary. Retrieved from <http://www.
websters-dictionary-online.com/definitions/minoan
civilization?cx=partner-pub-09394507535297>
Nillson, M. (1964). A history of Greek religion. New York,
NY: W. W. Norton.
Ober, J. & Strauss, B. (1990). Drama, political rhetoric,
and the discourse of Athenian democracy (237-270).
In J. Winkler & F. Zeitlin (Eds.) Nothing to do with
Dionysos? Princeton, NJ: University Press.
Plato. (2008). Republic (R. Waterfield, Trans.). New
York, NY: Oxford University Press, USA. (Original
work written 4th century BCE).
Pomeroy, S. (1975). Goddesses, whores, wives, and slaves.
New York, NY: Schocken Books.
Powers, M. (2000). The heroine in Western literature:
The archetype and her reemergence in modern prose.
Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

The Furies Demoted and Restored

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 175

Rehm, R. (2003). Radical theatre: Greek tragedy and the


modern world. London, UK: General Duckworth.
Rabinowitz, N. & Richlin, A. (Eds.). (1993). Feminist
theory and the classics. New York, NY: Routledge.
Sacks, D., Murray, O., Brody, L. (Eds.). (2005). Ephialtes.
In Encyclopedia of the ancient Greek world. (Revised
edition; pp. 122-123). New York, NY: Facts on File.
Schavrien, J. (1989). The rage, healing and daemonic
death of Oedipus: A self-in-relation theory. Journal
of Transpersonal Psychology, 21(2), 149-176.
Schavrien, J. (2009). Shakespeares late style and renewal
through the Feminine: A full spectrum, all-quadrant
approach. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 40(2),
199-233.
Slater, P. (1968). The glory of Hera: Greek mythology and
the Greek family. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Sophocles. (1954). Sophocles: The Theban plays (D. Grene
& R. Fitzgerald, Trans.). Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago. (Original works written c 441-406 BCE).
Sophocles. (1994). Sophocles: The Theban Plays (D. Grene,
Trans.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago. (Original
works written ca. 441-406 BCE; republished from
1991 work entitled Sophocles I)
Spretnak, C. (1992). Lost goddesses of early Greece: A collec
tion of pre-Hellenic myths. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Sourvinou-Inwood, C. (1991). Reading Greek culture:
Texts and images, rituals and myths. Cary, NC:
Oxford University Press, USA.
Stallsmith, A. (2008). The name of Demeter
Thesmophoros. Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies,
48, 115-131.
Thucydides (411 BCE/1951). The complete writings of
Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War (R. Crawley,
Trans.). New York, NY: Modern Library. (Original
work published 411 BCE)
Visser, M. (1980). The Erinyes: Their character and function in classical Greek literature and thought. University
of Toronto (Canada). ProQuest Dissertations and
Theses, Retrieved from <http://search.proquest.
com/docview/303092108?account id=25304>
Wiles, D. (2002). Plays and politics: Women in ancient
Greece. Retrieved from http://www.fathom.com/
feature/122261/index.html
Zeitlin, F. (1978). The dynamics of misogyny: Myth and
mythmaking in The Oresteia. In J. Peradotto & J.
P. Sullivan (Eds.), Women in antiquity: The Arethusa
papers (pp. 159-194). Albany, NY: State University
of New York Press.

1. Apollo and Athena are not so new as they would


seem to be. They too have lineages that are prepatriarchal. But, for the sake of simplicity, I take
Aeschylus at his word regarding his binaries of these
two as not the old gods but the new ones, coming
from the he-god pantheon rather than from the shegod pantheon, as Tony Harrisons (1981) translation
would have it. Aeschylus relied upon the revisionist
portraits of them as Olympians, chronologically and
personally young.
2. The Erinyes in this play are renamed the Eumenides.
Another title used, along the lines of avoiding
specificity and thereby a provocation of the deitys
dark side, is the Semnae or Venerable Ones. There
is some disagreement as to whether the Semnae are
identical with the Eumenides/Erinyes but Harrison
(1903, pp. 239-253) mostly does link them, as does
Sophocles in his last play (Harrison, p. 254 as she
quoted Sophocles l. 486, her translation). Visser
(1980) in her dissertation seconded the view as have
others. Harrison linked the Semnae to the Erinyes
and to matriarchal roots as well. At another point
she linked the Erinyes to Demeter, as in the Demeter
Erinys (p. 240) and she rooted Demeter in Minoan
Crete (p. 564). These links support the argument
that the goddesses are pre-patriarchal, with roots in
both Arcadia (for Demeter) and Crete.
3. Here the Campbell parallel is inexact because
partially inaccurate: The Titans were not produced
parthenogenically (according to Hesiods theogony)
as Campbell is asserting; one can view them as
such only by conflating them with the Gigantes
(as the Greeks sometimes, in fact, did); the births
of Ouranus and others, preceding the Titans, were
parthenogenic, with Gaia only as the source.

176 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Schavrien

Zeitlin, F. (1990).
Playing the other: Theater,
theatricality, and the feminine in Greek drama. In
J. Winkler & F. Zeitlin (Eds.), Nothing to do with
Dionysos? Athenian drama in its social context (pp.
63-96). Princeton, NJ: University Press.
Zweig, B. (1993). The primal mind: Using Native
American models for the study of women in Ancient
Greece. In Rabinowitz, N. & Richlin, A. (Eds.)
Feminist theory and the classics (pp. 145-180). New
York, NY: Routledge.
Notes

Nevertheless, Campbells point about defamation


still carries. In the wake of defeat, the early broods
of both Tiamat and Gaia suffered defamation in the
tales of the conquerors.
4. Aristotle named instead for those heroes something
called hamartia, or an error of judgment [L. Doherty,
personal communication, December 17, 2011]), so it
is the Thucydidean reference to hubris that is relevant
here.
5. Despite flare-ups of strength in the wake of the Sicilian
expedition, the same factioningboth intra-city
and intra-psychically, paralleling inter-city battles
would make its appearance during the Sicilian
expedition and the years that followed. There was,
for the expedition, the confusing recall from battle
of Alcibiades, its youthful inspiration and general,
over his supposed mockery of the Hermes statues,
protectors of new enterprise; Alcibiades purportedly
perpetrated a round of phallus mutilations on these
statues, distributed throughout the city, during the
eve before the launching of the expedition. There
were rumours too that he had been mocking even
the Eleusinian Mysteries, conducting them in his
home with friends, perhaps downing the kykeon. He
was ordered by the populace, as the great Athenian
naval expedition was nearing Sicily to do battle, to
turn his ship around at once and head for Athens to
stand trial. Instead he fled to Sparta, soon aiding and
abetting the enemy; both the recall and subsequent
betrayal debilitated the expedition to Sicily, which
suffered a disastrous defeat. The recall of Alcibiades
issued from a factioning one can examine with gender
in mind, phalloi of the Hermes statuettes and all.
6. Because I do not read the Greek itself, I compare
translations and consult experts. I studied classics in
translation during 5 formal years with the classicist,
David Grene, and was mentored by him informally
for decades. Describing Grenes expertise, the Nobel
Laureate, Saul Bellow said, He was on a first-name
basis with Sophocles and Aristophanes, that was
how he made you feel. My excuse for conducting
a study with inevitable flaws in expertise, in this
one among five fields I cover, might come from the
mouth of any interdisciplinarian: Its a dirty job
but somebodys got to do it. On the other hand, I
welcome constructive critique.
For The Oresteia I consult mainly two sets of
translations, the one in 1953 and that in 1989. One

should additionally consult Peter Halls production


employing Tony Harrisons (1981) rather free stageoriented translation to get the closest to my own
interpretations of the trilogy.
7. In scholarly articles and elsewhere, one repeatedly
comes upon the translation of erinys, the adjectival
version of the Erinyes, as furious. Demeter Erinys is
angry or furious Demeter as well. This is probably an
early Indo-European word rather than a word from
the maturity of the Greek language; some consider
it Arcadian. Further discussion of translations is in
footnote 4, p. 251 of Johnston, 1999.
8. He had already gone through many purifications so
as not to carry pollution, but the retributionblood
for bloodwas still to be taken (Visser, 1980).
9. Orestes seems cleared in The Eumenides but a future
play by Euripides portrayed him as nevertheless
continuing to suffer pursuit by the Furies until such
time as he performed yet another expiation. The end of
his story, then, is not captured in one simple version.
10. Athena, it may be noted, did have a mother, Metis,
but Zeus upstaged his consort by swallowing Metis
and giving birth to Athena from himself. Aeschylus
bypassed these complications.
11. Speaking of rational or rationalizing: This is an odd
stance for Pericles to takeif indeed he did take it
rather than Thucydides who puts the words in his
mouthsince Pericles had a notably unconventional
relationship with the well-educated courtesan
(hetaera) Aspasia: She is rumored to have helped
write his speeches and he, rather scandalously, having
divorced to live with her, regularly included her in
his symposium evenings with the best of Hellenic
male artists and intellectuals.
12. It is relevant that Aeschylus and others believed in
this genealogy, giving feminine divinity primacy in
ownership of the Oracle; there is recent debate as to
whether the truth of something such as the genealogy
can be justified (cf. Christiane Sourvinou-Inwoods
work, 1991).
13. Ever since Schliemann dug up the walls of Troy,
previously considered a fictional city, scholars
have felt some justification for using Greek myths
as clarifying lenses for otherwise undocumented
history; such a use however, is tricky at best; it goes
in and out of fashion.
14. Slaters unfortunate viewsboth that the mothers
overweening influence on the son, and only this, issued

The Furies Demoted and Restored

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 177

in an Athenian homosexuality which, in turn, was


necessarily pathologicalmay be assigned to more
than one unexamined attitude and interpretation of
the 1960s. His other insights remain illuminating.
Orestes was brought up in exile but most men of the
Athenian Golden Age were not. So the insights still
indeed bear on the paradox that women loomed on
stage (and in archetype?) in an age when real women
seemed, by contrast, constricted.
15. Fitzgeralds translations of Homer are full of
metaphors he imported into the text (L. Doherty,
personal communication, December 14, 2010).
Some find this passage too loose a translation in
its suggestion of lovemaking between Poseidon
and Rhea. Nevertheless, despite Hesiods clear
separation of Rhea (Gaias daughter) from Gaia,
Greek mythographers sometimes conflated them;
modern researchers have cited conflation as well,
such as Kerenyi, or Ruck and Staples, who viewed
Demeter, Persephone, and Hecate as split off from
an original great goddess figure, Gaia or Rhea.
Poseidon did in fact have children by Gaia; this
might have been Fitzgeralds rationale for his song
to the mother-son love affair between Poseidon and
the sometimes-conflated daughter of Gaia, Rhea.
16. Two additional points are relevant here: Mary, even
in her diluted form, remains a light in the lives of
millions. Also, in the polytheistic Olympian pantheon
even the men are multiple, as if fractionedbut
none are either confined to celibacy or incapable of a
potent anger [L. Doherty, personal communication,
December 19, 2010].
17. Gimbutas (1999), in a posthumously published
work, based Anatolian inferences on Mellaarts
archeological work; see note 18 in defense of
Gimbutas; see Berggren & Harrod, 1996, for
rebuttals of characteristic attacks on Gimbutas.
18. A quote from Doherty (2001) communicates
scholarly views of the unique Minoan society:

Gimbutas from a lifelong study of female
figurines, tombs, and temples of Neolithic
cultures of the Balkan region (Bulgaria, Greece,
Hungary, and her native Yugoslavia), arrived at
the conviction that goddess worship in these
cultures was related to a higher status for women
in a peaceful, egalitarian, and environmentally
stable form of society. In her view, the cultures

178 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

of Old Europe, which flourished from roughly


7000 to 3000 BCE, were partly destroyed
and partly assimilated by the Indo-European
invaders, who brought with them a maledominated pantheon of gods to match their
patrilineal and hierarchical social structure.
(Doherty, 2001, p. 111)
Gimbutas brings specifically Minoan freedom
from invasiondue to its being an island, while
invaders were horsemendown to a date even
closer to us than 3000 BCE, down to circa 1450
BCE. Doherty adds a review of recent skeptical
rejections of the pax Minoica, the great Minoan
peace, which Gimbutas and many feminist scholars
maintain was prevalent for 1500 years or more, but
scholarly counter-refutations include a consensus,
at the archeological conference in Lige, Belgium,
1998 (Rencontre genne internationale Universit
de Lige, 14 -17 avril 1998), that scant evidence has
been uncovered to disprove the pax. That there was
human sacrifice has been the latest scandal about
Minoan Crete, but, of the three sites that might
have seen the sacrifice (nine bodies in all), only one
might actually survive rebuttal (Gimbutas, 1999,
p.140; Extended definition: Minoan Civilization,
Websters Dictionary Online, n.d.). In any case,
perfection need not be claimed for the society, just
a noteworthy cultural accomplishment of Minoan
balance and peace.
19. In another way, the play may be aetiological,
explaining the coincidence, in actuality, of these
many gods, of especially the hero Oedipus and the
Eumenidesat this actual place of sanctuary in
Colonus. (Grenes [1991/1994] thinking bears on
Oedipus in the Eumenides grove, and mine on the
rest, Poseidon, Athena, etc.; see p. xxvi). Of the two
explanations, however, Eden and aetiology, neither
need exclude the other.
About the Author
Judy Schavrien, Ph.D., MFT, is core faculty and former
chair of the Global Online Doctoral Program at Institute
of Transpersonal Psychology. She team-founded the
first two degrees in the world in Womens Spirituality,
MA and Ph.D., at California Institute of Integral
Studies; there she created and taught a groundbreaking

Schavrien

course in Feminist Transpersonal Psychology in 1991,


having published in 1989 an article offering feminist
transpersonal critique in the Journal of Transpersonal
Psychology (JTP). She publishes on late vision, which views
life in the light of death, whether of an individual or an
era, analyzing renewal through the feminine in the late
visions of Shakespeare, Sophocles, and Ingmar Bergman.
These studies (in JTP, IJTS, and elsewhere) inform her
book in progress, Late Vision in Western Culture. New
Rivers Press published her book, What Rhymes with
Cancer? and she is anthologized as poet and scholar. She
has received 16 awards as a scholar and in the arts (http://
judys.imagekind.com). These include most recently the
feminist Pioneer Award from the Association of Women
in Psychology. Contact: jschavrien@itp.edu
About the Journal
The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies is a
peer-reviewed academic journal in print since 1981. It is
published by Floraglades Foundation, and serves as the
official publication of the International Transpersonal
Association. The journal is available online at www.
transpersonalstudies.org, and in print through www.
lulu.com (search for IJTS).

The Furies Demoted and Restored

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 179

A Reply to Capriles
John Abramson
Ulverston, UK

The Editors introduced Capriles 2009 paper,


Beyond Mind III: Further Steps to a Metatranspersonal
Philosophy and Psychology, as a thought provoking
reframing of transpersonal theory from the perspective
of Dzogchen Buddhism that challenges much of
contemporary transpersonal studies and identifies Wilbers
model as the most problematic among these. The main
focus of this brief reply to Capriles is to explore possible
inaccuracies in his depiction of Wilbers theories.

Both Capriles and Wilber have been, for over
30 years, Buddhist practitioners and within a variety of
Buddhist traditions both are practitioners of Dzogchen
(although this is not Wilbers exclusive practice). They
have both, for over three decades, produced original
writings relating to the field of transpersonal studies.
Very few of Wilbers other critics have such corresponding
backgrounds. Capriles critique of Wilbers theories is
therefore particularly noteworthy, and can be expected to
encourage debate, particularly if Wilbers long standing
complaint that many of his critics misunderstand and
misrepresent his theories can be seen to be addressed.

In fact, many of Capriles points seem to be
insightful critiques of Wilbers model, but some are more
applicable to the state of Wilbers understanding in 2000,
when the work that Capriles summarized in his 2009
paper was originally written. Notable in this respect is:
1. The absence of any reference by Capriles to Wilbers
publications during the past decade means that some
of Capriles criticisms are liable to be historically
rather than currently correct. For example Capriles
took no account of the Wilber-Combs lattice that
completely separates stages of development from
spiritual states (Wilber, 2006, pp. 88-93) and thereby
overlooked the fact that Wilber now agrees with
Capriles that a persons attainment of any spiritual
state can occur at any stage of their development.

2. The omission of reference to Wilbers (2001) end


note 1 in Sex, Ecology and Spirituality. This 12,000+
word note is arguably significant in relation to some
of Capriles important criticisms. It is concerned with
Wilbers explanation of the Buddhist no-self but
its relevance here is the way Wilber weaves some of
his theories with an explanation of the Tantric and
the Dzogchen Buddhist concepts of emptiness, and
how this relates to the nondual state. For example,
in relation to Dzogchen, and seemingly in accord
with Capriles work, Wilber commented:
Different meditation practices engineer
different states and different experiences, but
pure Presence itself is unwavering, and thus the
highest approach in Dzogchen is Buddhahood
without meditation: not the creation but rather
the direct recognition of an already perfectly
present and freely given primordial Purity
(Wilber, 2001, pp. 730-731)
Contrary to some of Capriles criticisms, note 1
can be read, to some extent, as making the case that
Wilbers theories are consistent with both Tantric
and Dzogchen Buddhism. In particular:
a) Capriles dismissed Wilbers 7th, 8th, 9th and
10th progression of realization fulcrums, because
[they do] not match any of the levels of realization
that obtain in genuine paths I am familiar with
(p. 80); and he supported this with a number of
convincing arguments. Without detracting from
the force of most of his criticisms, there are some
possible sustaining arguments for Wilbers model.
Associated with this,Wilber presented his concept
of Ascending and Descending and argued this
is equivalent to processes described by Tantric
Buddhism.

Studies, 29(2), 2010, pp. 180-186


180 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Abramson

b) Capriles argued that Wilbers 10th nondual


fulcrum involves subject-object duality but Wilber
is clear in his note 1 above and elsewhere in his
writings that subject and object disappear in the
nondual.
Capriles pointed to the central premise of Wilbers
theories of spiritual attainment, namely, that they are
based on developmental steps leading to Nondual state
of Suchness, where some minimum level of attainment
of each development step must occur before one can
move to the next step. Capriles powerfully refuted this
throughout his three part Beyond the Mind work (that
commenced publication in 2000 and concluded in
2009, in the pages of this journal). This refutation draws
on the doctrines of Dzogchen Buddhism according to
which true Awakening results only from the spontaneous
liberation of delusion. This spontaneous liberation,
Capriles explained, will manifest generally among
humans at the end of the current cycle of evolution by
the mechanism of reductio ad absurdum. Prior to this
the only mechanism for true Awakening is an authentic
spiritual path such as Dzogchen. The spontaneous
liberation of delusion which can manifest in practitioners
of an authentic path can occur at any stage of development
and Awakening, which can follow repeated occurrences
of spontaneous liberation of delusion, can also occur at
any stage of development.

Remarkably, considering Wilber had held the
above view for at least two decades, by 2006 he had
admitted it was wrong and his current theories, which
make use of the Wilber-Combs lattice, imply he is in
agreement with Capriles insofar as people in our present
age1 can advance to any spiritual state at any stage of their
development. Michael Daniels (Rowan et al., 2009, pp.
14-15) explained Wilbers (2006) change of view:
what [Wilber] is saying is wrong he made the
mistakeand he admits this very explicitly in the
bookof simply adding the stages of the Eastern
meditation techniques on top of the stages of the
Western psychological model. And he says it almost
flippantly in the book: So what we did was simply
to take the highest stage in Western psychological
models and then take the three or four major
stages of meditation (gross, subtle, causal, nondual)
and stack those stages on top of the other stages
East and West integrated! (p. 88).

A Reply to Capriles

Wilbers change of view, which surprisingly, Capriles


did not identify, is further clarified in this extract about
states and stages from an exchange between Wilber and
Andrew Cohen:
Wilber: Those who have an understanding of
ground, because theyve often gotten it through a
traditional path that doesnt have an understanding
of evolutionary manifestation, are taught to express
their realization in rather static formsoneness with
nature as is, or oneness with the now momentall
of which is fine. But its really not an up-to-date
version of what that satori could be. And so they tend
not to get stages, and they dont get the evolutionary
unfolding. Its a one taste, but its a very static kind
of one taste.
And then, on the other hand, if people get the
evolutionary unfolding, they usually havent had
that experience of prior emptiness or of the unborn
or the changeless ground. And because of that, they
tie their realization to an evolutionary stage. I have
to be at this stage; then I can realize. And thats
not it at all, because that ever-present state is ever
present, and you can have that realization virtually
at any point. But in order to stabilize and ground
it, you do indeed have to then grow and develop.
So they just understand the evolutionary side of
form, and the other folks tend to have the emptiness
understood, but very rarely do you get emptiness
together with evolutionary form. (Cohen & Wilber,
2005, p. 57)
Wilbers change of view helps explain what Capriles
described as Sean Kellys brilliant denunciation of some
of [Wilbers amplified lamrim] contradictions (Capriles,
2009, p. 11). One of Kellys objections to Wilbers model
was this:
If it is possible for typhonic individuals to experience
a transpersonal epiphany or influx (i.e., the
psychic or low subtle realm) prior to the emergence
of the mental ego, then it clearly makes no sense to
conceive of the transpersonal as following the mental
egoic in the same manner that the mental egoic
follows the membership and typhonic [because]
to do so would require an explanation of how it
is possible for a supposedly holarchically higher
structurein this case the psychicto transcend
as it includes a lower structurein this case the

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 181

mental-egoicthat had not yet emerged. (Kelly,


1998, as cited in Capriles, 2009, p. 11)
The Wilber-Combs lattice separates states (e.g., psychic)
and stages (e.g., typhonic-magical, mental egoic) into
different dimensions. The psychic state is not therefore a
higher structure of mental egoic, typhonic or any other
stage and consequently does not incur the objection
Kelly ascribed to it. Kelly noted that Wilber recognizes
that the self can have access to temporary experiences
from the transpersonal domains. But Kelly objected:
If all levels of the Great Chain manifest the same
principles of holarchical integration, why is it
possible for transpersonal influxes [i.e., experiencing
transpersonal states] to occur at virtually any lower
level of organization [i.e., any stage] whereas it
is impossible for someone at, say, cognitive stage 2
(preop) to experience an influx from cognitive
stage 4 (formop)? Clearly, the transpersonal levels
as a whole are of a completely different order than
the ones that precede them. (Kelly, 1998, as cited
in Capriles, 2009, p. 11)
What Kelly referred to as transpersonal levels are now
acknowledged by Wilber a) to be psychic and higher
transpersonal states, and b) to be of a completely different
order than what Kelly referred to as ones that precede
them which Wilber now acknowledges as stages. Wilbers
(2007) explanation for being able to access any state from
any stage of development started with pointing out, the
three great states of consciousness (waking, dreaming,
sleeping) are said to correspond with the three great
realms of being (gross, subtle, causal) an idea found
inVajrayana (p. 1). According to Wilber, different
worlds such as the three realms of gross, subtle and
causal are disclosed by different states of consciousness,
and any different state of consciousness is potentially
available at any time and to anyone at any stage of their
development, because all humans have access to the
waking, dreaming, and deep sleep states. But, Wilber
explained that stages CANNOT be skipped, because
each stage is a component of its successor (this would be
like going from atoms to cells and skipping molecules)
(p. 10). Going from first person perspective (magical/
typhonic stage) to second person perspective (mythic
stage) to third person (rational stage) is a process of
development where, according to Wilber and supported
by researchers such as Jane Loevinger (1976), Robert

182 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Kegan (1982), and Susanne Cook-Greuter (2005), stages


cannot be skipped.

Wilber now acknowledges that an authentic
spiritual path such as Dzogchen is required to understand
emptiness, and this can be accomplished at any stage of
development. But Wilber has gone further to suggest it is
advantageous for practitioners to pursue higher stages of
development. Where is Wilber going with this assertion?
Two responses to this come to mind. Firstly, in his 2006
book Integral Spirituality, Wilber made the case that
identifying an object in the Kosmos involves at least two
factors: degree or stage of development (altitude) and
perspective (one of his four quadrants). Thus Kosmic
address = altitude + perspective. In doing this he is
postulating that the comprehension of more complex
aspects of samsara will require correspondingly higher
stages of development. For example, the appreciation
of ecosystems will only appear to someone at a high
enough stage of development. Thus only people at postconventional stage development will be prone to make
sacrifices to tackle the ecological crisis because people
at lower stages will not recognize the problem. Capriles
concern with ecological issues was clear:
The spiritual systems I practice and propound,
as all metaphenomenologically/metaexistentially
descending Paths, are perfectly nondual; yet [also]
descending in [the senses that] they have always
been profoundly concerned with ecological, social,
economic, political, gender, generational, cultural,
and other related issues (Capriles, 2009, pp. 7-8)
It would be therefore be interesting to know whether
Capriles considers that stage development should be
pursued in addition to following an authentic spiritual
path. It is certainly illuminating to consider further why
Wilber feels stage development is important, beginning
with one way he feels it can be achieved. Wilber muddies the
water by claiming that practising meditation is the best, or
among the best, means of achieving stage development; in
which case following an authentic spiritual path involving
meditation practice would automatically result in stage
progression, and the issue of pursuing stage development
would be redundant. On the other hand, Wilber (2006)
has controversially alleged that the Dalai Lama has an
ethnocentric worldview, at least in respect of homosexuality,
so that Wilber seemed to imply that however much
meditation accelerates stage development, cultural factors
can potentially be a dominant braking force.

Abramson


This unfolding of Wilbers explanation of the
importance of stage development which happens in
samsara, and which therefore implies samsara has an
importance beyond that Capriles ascribed to it (i.e.,
primarily to see through the relative into the absolute),
gives no hint of its denouement. Based on Wilbers
theory of Kosmic habits, Wilber, notably in his quarterly
dialogues with Andrew Cohen,2 asserted that the creative
potential in emptiness can be actualised by practitioners
being in touch with the ground of being (emptiness),
and interacting together to co-create with Spirit, novel
structures of consciousness that if repeated often enough
lay down in the Kosmos new stages of consciousness
stages that did not previously exist. Wilber and Cohen
assert this process as a process in samsara that has a
Kosmic purpose (i.e., co-creation of novel stages of
human consciousness), and that pursuing this is as
important as pursuing a path to spiritual Awakening:
The real key to this discussion, I think, is when you
understand that the only way you can permanently
and fully realize emptiness is if you transform,
evolve, or develop your vehicle in the world of form.
The vehicles that are going to realize emptiness
have to be up to the task. That means they have
to be developed; they have to be transformed and
aligned with spiritual realization. That means that
the transcendent and the immanent have to, in a
sense, flavor each other....The best of a nondual
or integral realization is that we have to basically
work on both [the world of time and the timeless].
We have to polish our capacity, in a sense, to fully
realize emptiness, moment to moment. But its the
emptiness of all forms arising moment to moment.
So we have to have a radical embrace of the world
of samsara as the vehicle and expression of nirvana
itself. (Cohen & Wilber, 2002 FIND PP at ITP)

to as his model of progression of realization fulcrums,


7th through to 10th) corresponds to the sequence of
realizations on the Tantric path. Wilbers model of
progressive spiritual states relates to progressively higher
spiritual realms (e.g., gross, psychic, subtle, causal/very
subtle), and the realm that spiritual states manifest in,
as described by a range of spiritual traditions. Capriles
argued that Wilber has used the Upanishads concept of
gross, subtle, and causal realms and misapplied them
to Buddhism by, for example, correlating these with
waking, dream, and deep sleep states. Capriles referred
to this as an example of trans-religious fallacy (p. 56)
where Wilber has transferred elements of one tradition
to another where they do not fit.

Capriles has some convincing arguments to
support the view that Wilbers descriptions of gross,
subtle and causal states/realms do not appear to
correspond to the nirmanakaya, the sambhogakaya, and
the dharmakaya respectively. This fact should not entirely
subsume the point that Wilber (2001) has demonstrated
some measure of correspondence between his model
of progressive spiritual states and extracts of Gyatsos
descriptions of Tantric Buddhism (cf. pp. 726-729).
Wilber noted that his Ascending model in which gross
mind subsides during meditation, and subtle dimensions
unfold in developmental sequence culminating in causal
cessation, corresponds to Gyatsos description:
Beginning with the fifth sign [of advanced
meditation, which is called white luminosity
appearance] the subtle minds are experienced. They
manifest from the beginning of the mind of white
appearance to the mind of red increase [which are
both subtle-level illuminations] to the end of the
mind of black near-attainment [causal cessation].
Each successive mind is subtler than the last. Each
is classified as subtle because during its arraisal there
are no gross dualistic conceptual thoughts. (Gyatso
1982, p. 139, as cited in Wilber, 2001, p. 727)

The foregoing illustrates that by apparently overlooking


Wilbers work over the past decade, Capriles does not
address the contemporary position of Wilber.

Capriles does not refer to the article-length end
note 1 in Sex, Ecology and Spirituality (Wilber, 2001,
pp. 717-741). For example, note 1 includes a number
of citations from Geshe Kelsang Gyatsos3 (1982; see
Wilber, 2001, pp. 726-729) tantric meditation manual,
Clear Light of Bliss. Wilber used Gyatsos descriptions of
tantric progressive realization to illustrate how his model
of progressive spiritual states (or what Capriles referred

There is therefore support here for the similarity between


Wilbers Ascending model and Tibetan Buddhist
progression of experience in meditation as set out by
Gyatso. This supporting citation concludes with a
definition by Gyatso of the Subtle level, which Wilber
notes is very similar to his own in that it has no gross
referents in cognition. Wilbers definition of the causal
level is similarly structured: it has no gross or subtle
referents in cognition.

A Reply to Capriles

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 183


While Capriles correctly pointed out that the
nirmanakaya, the sambhogakaya, and the dharmakaya
do not fit Wilbers model, it is interesting to note that
Wilbers definition of the Subtle and Causal levels provide
a possible explanation for this being so. For example, in
Capriles critique of Wilbers inclusion of nirmanakaya in
his psychic (i.e., lower subtle) level, Capriles implied that
while nirmanakaya may manifest in the gross level (which
Wilbers psychic level relates to), it is also of the nondual
level in the sense it is Buddhas body. Similarly this applies
to the sambhogakaya, and the dharmakaya. Cosmic
consciousness is another example of a spiritual state that
Wilber asserts to be in his psychic level, but does not, for
the same reason as above, appear to fit there. This can be
deduced from Daniels (2005, pp. 200-202) discussion of
its apparent misfit where he pointed out that, although
cosmic consciousness may manifest in the psychic level
in the sense that it relates only to gross phenomena
and not to the subtle or causal domains, it is otherwise
indistinguishable from One Taste or Ultimate
nondual consciousness which is of the nondual. Thus
Capriles objection to Wilbers ascribing nirmanakaya,
sambhogakaya, and dharmakaya to the psychic, subtle,
and causal realms respectively can be reframed as a critique
of the inherent limitations of Wilbers definition of these
levels. But equally, Wilber might claim that most of the
spiritual states that he asserts belong to these realms are
correctly placed because they do relate to his definitions of
those realms; in other words, the above examples appear
to be the limited exception.

Wilber further cited Gyatso to support his
Ascending/Descending model:


Another issue that Wilbers note 1 illuminates
concerns Capriles argument that Wilbers 10th nondual
fulcrum involves the subject-object duality. There is
insufficient space here to discuss the merits of Capriles
argument but Wilber is clear in his note 1 and elsewhere
in his writings that subject and object disappear in the
nondual. For example,

The distinguishing factor of secret mantra


[Vajrayana] is its assertion that the deluded mind of
self-grasping depends upon its gross mounted wind.
This gross wind developed from a subtle one which in
turn developed from the very subtle wind mounted
by the all empty mind of clear light. (Gyatso, 1982,
p. 194, as cited in Wilber, 2001, p. 728)

But the basic rule is: resting as emptiness, embrace


the entire world of form. And the world of form
is unfolding. It is evolving. It is developing. And
therefore resting as blissful emptiness, you ecstatically
embrace and push against the world of form as a duty.
(Cohen & Wilber, 2002 FIND PP at ITP).

Wilber noted that Gyatso here provided a description that


corresponds precisely with his definition of involution/
Descending. As has already been shown, Gyatso also
provided a description of developmental sequence that
somewhat corresponds to Wilbers Ascending. Thus,
in partial contrast to Capriles criticisms of Wilbers
Ascending/Descending model, it does have some
demonstrable correspondence to Tantric Buddhism.

184 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

for the Madhyamika, the Real [nondual] is neither


one nor many, neither permanent nor momentary,
neither subject nor object...These are relative to each
other and are equally unreal. (Murti, 1955, p. 239, as
cited in Wilber, 2001, p. 720, emphasis added)
Wilber, writing about the non-dual state: And thus,
resting in simple, clear, ever-present awareness, I notice
that there is no inside and no outside. There is no subject
and no object. (Wilber, 1997, p. 292, emphasis added)

Capriles argued that Wilbers universal map,
constructed by piecing together descriptions that different
traditions make available, wholly fails to correspond even
to gradual or Lamrim paths. However, this appears not
to take account of the evidence presented here. Capriles
offered a definition of supreme spirituality that would
ostensibly include all authentic traditions and overcome
the problems presented in Wilbers model: all that is
involved in the transition from samsara to nirvana
(p. 15), But I have argued that Wilber would see such
a definition as partial. It apparently takes no account
of Wilbers view that the generation of novel stages of
human consciousness in samsara is part of the basic
rule of spirituality which is the uniting of nirvana with
samsara:

Capriles does not seem to consider this aspect of Wilbers


model perhaps because, as mentioned earlier, Capriles
does not appear to consider any of Wilbers work over
the past decade. However, this, and the other criticisms
presented in this brief response, relate to a relatively small
part of Capriles profound and major work and similarly
to his many insightful criticisms of Wilbers model.

Abramson

References

Wilber, K. (2001). Sex, ecology, spirituality: The spirit of


evolution. 2nd. ed. Boston, MA: Shambhala.
Wilber, K. (2006). Integral spirituality: A startling new
role for religion in the modern and postmodern world.
Boston, MA: Shambhala.
Wilber, K. (2007). Ken Wilber online: Sidebar G: States
and stages. Retrieved at <http://wilber.shambhala.
com/index.cfm>

Capriles, E. (2009). Beyond mind III: Further steps to


a metatranspersonal philosophy and psychology
(Continuation of the discussion of the three best
known transpersonal paradigms, with a focus
on Washburn and Grof. International Journal of
Transpersonal Studies, 28(2), 1-145.
Cohen, A. & Wilber, K. (2002). The future of God:
Evolution and enlightenment for the 21st century.
What is Enlightenment?, 21, GET PP at ITP
Cohen, A. & Wilber, K. (2005). The resonance of
awakening: An ecstatic compulsion to transform the
world. What is Enlightenment?, 28, 5057.
Cook-Greuter, S. R. (2006). 20th century background
for Integral Psychology. AQAL: Journal of Integral
Theory and Practice, 1(2), 1-40.
Daniels, M. (2005). Shadow, self, spirit: Essays in trans
personal psychology. Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic.
Gyatso, K. (1982). Clear light of bliss: The practice of Mahamudra
in Vajrayana Buddhism. London, UK: Wisdom.
Gyatso, K. (2003). Ocean of nectar: Wisdom and
compassion in Mahayana Buddhism. Glen Spey, NY:
Tharpa Publications.
Gyatso, K. (2006). Introduction to Buddhism: An
explanation of the Buddhist way of life. Glen Spey,
NY: Tharpa Publications.
Gyatso, K. (2010). Modern Buddhism: The path of
compassion and wisdom. Glen Spey, NY: Tharpa
Publications.
Kegan, R. (1982). The evolving self: Problem and process
in human development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Kelly, S. (1998). Revisioning the mandala of conscious
ness. In D. Rothberg & S. Kelly (Eds.), Ken Wilber in
dialogue (pp. 117-130). Wheaton, IL: Quest Books.
Loevinger, J. (1976). Ego development: Conceptions and
theories. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Murti, T. (1955). The central philosophy of Buddhism.
London, UK: Allen & Unwin.
Rowan, J., Daniels, M., Fontana, D. & Walley, M.
(2009). A dialogue on Ken Wilbers contribution to
transpersonal psychology. Transpersonal Psychology
Review, 13(2), 5-41.
Wilber, K. (1981). Up from Eden: A transpersonal view of
hman evolution. New York, NY: Doubleday.
Wilber, K. (1997). The eye of spirit: An integral vision for a
world gone slightly mad. Boston, MA: Shambhala.

John Abramson, MSc, has recently attained a Masters


degree in Consciousness and Transpersonal Psychology
from Liverpool John Moores University in England.
Now retired, one of his main academic interests is in
the critique of some contemporary authors publications
which he argues have partly misunderstood Ken

A Reply to Capriles

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 185

Notes
1. But not historical eras. Although Wilber has agreed
that people of previous eras can advance to spiritual
states irrespective of their stage of development, he
has continued to posit (as in Up from Eden, 1981)
that some of the most advanced spiritual states
were not attained in previous eras. That is, the
most advanced state increased from psychic in the
magic era, through subtle and causal in succeeding
eras, and only reached nondual in the current era.
This is clearly completely at variance with Capriles
degenerative view of evolution. Capriles would
apparently maintain that true Awakening/nondual
states were potentially available, in any era, to
anyone, at any stage of development, following an
authentic spiritual path such as Dzogchen.
2. EnlightenNext magazine (previously named what is
enlightenment) has featured 25 dialogues between
Ken Wilber and Andrew Cohen since the series
commenced in the Spring/Summer 2002 issue.
4. Geshe Kelsang Gyatso has been a practitioner
and teacher of Mahayana and Tantric Buddhism
for over 30 years and is described in one of his
books as someone who is born in Tibet and
is a fully accomplished meditation master and
internationally renowned teacher of Buddhism.
Resident in the West since 1977, he is author of 21
highly acclaimed [Buddhist] booksHe has also
founded over 1200 Kadampa Meditation Centres
and groups throughout the world (Gyatso, 2010,
back cover).
About the Author

Wilbers work, particularly over the past decade or so.


His personal ambition is to put into practice a too long
delayed intention to fully take up a spiritual path. He
can be contacted on johnabramson@btinternet.com
About the Journal
The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies is a peerreviewed academic journal in print since 1981. It is published
by Floraglades Foundation, and serves as the official
publication of the International Transpersonal Association.
The journal is available online at www.transpersonalstudies.
org, and in print through www.lulu.com (search for IJTS).

186 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Abramson

You might also like