Integral Psychology - Ken Wilber, Part I

Bio of Ken Wilber - Born 1949 in Oklahoma;
- On the move growing up – father in army;
- Dropped out of medical school, then biochemistry
too, for informal East-West research funded by odd jobs;
- His influential relationship with his second wife, Treya, who died of cancer in 1989, was described in “Grace and Grit”.
- Over 20 world-renowned books now published on spirituality and science;
- Key insights into transpersonal psychology, and "perennial philosophy", the conception of reality that lies at the heart of all major religions;
- Dubbed “the Einstein of consciousness”
- Now lives in Boulder, Colorado, and has set up set up the Integral Institute, promulgating his theories and their application through multi-media outreach.

Need for a New Psychology
Einstein said: “We should take care not to make the intellect our god. It has, of course, powerful muscles but no personality. It cannot lead, it can only serve”.

Wilber’s belief is that psychology as a discipline--referring to any of the four traditional major forces (behavioristic, psychoanalytic, humanistic/existential, and transpersonal)--is slowly decaying, never again, to be a dominant influence in culture or academia.

Western history (basically, an amalgam of traditional, modern, and postmodern currents)--and specifically in America has been recently going through a period of rampant scientific materialism (‘flatland’) and the "nothing but surfaces" of the extreme postmodernists.

Interiors are out, exteriors are all; there is no depth. This puts an intense selection pressure against any sort of psychology that emphasizes solely or mostly the interiors (psychoanalytic, humanistic/existential, and transpersonal).

This is compounded by numerous specific social factors, such as the medical/insurance and "managed care" industry supporting only brief psychotherapy and pharmacological interventions i.e. biological psychiatry, behavioral modification, cognitive therapy (a manipulation of the sentences one uses to objectively describe oneself).

Silly things like trying to find out why you behave in such a fashion, or trying to find out the meaning of your existence, or the values that constitute the good life, are not covered by insurance policies, and so, in this culture, they basically do not exist. Three of the four forces (psychoanalytic, humanistic/existential, and transpersonal) are thus, once again, selected against; a negative cultural pressure is moving them to extinction and in some ways has already succeeded, so that these major forces are one jot away from dinosaur status.

Book Summary
The goal of an "integral psychology" is to honor and embrace every legitimate aspect of human consciousness under one roof.

Wilber's is the first truly integrative model of consciousness, psychology, and therapy, drawing on hundreds of sources — Eastern and Western, ancient and modern.

Psychological model includes waves of development, streams of development, states of consciousness, and the self, and follows the course of each from subconscious to self-conscious to superconscious.

Charts are included, correlating over a hundred psychological and spiritual schools from around the world, including Kabbalah, Vedanta, Plotinus, Teresa of Ávila, Aurobindo, Theosophy, and modern theorists such as Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson, Jane Loevinger, Lawrence Kohlberg, Carol Gilligan, Erich Neumann, and Jean Gebser.

The book is recognised as a landmark study in human development: "The first truly comprehensive map of the human mind”, said Larry Dossey.

In What Sense Integral?
“Integral” means integrative, inclusive, comprehensive, balanced; the idea is to apply this integral orientation to the various fields of human knowledge and endeavors...deeply alter conceptions of psychology and the human mind; of anthropology and human history; of literature and human meaning; of philosophy and the quest for truth…” - Ken Wilber, The Eye of Spirit

General if not unanimous consensus prevails that neither mind nor brain can be reduced without remainder to the other. Wilber argues that indeed both mind and brain need to be included in a non-reductionistic way in any genuinely integral theory of consciousness.

Results of an extensive cross-cultural literature search on the "mind" side of the equation are analysed, suggesting that the mental phenomena that need to be considered in any integral theory include developmental levels or waves of consciousness, developmental lines or streams of consciousness, states of consciousness, and the self (or self-system).

A "master template" of these various phenomena, culled from over one-hundred psychological systems East and West, is presented. It is suggested that this master template represents a general summary of the "mind" side of the brain-mind integration.

This leads to break-through reflections on the notorious "hard problem," i.e. how the mind-side can be integrated with the brain-side, to generate a more integral theory of consciousness. -> -> ->

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