What is Therapy?

Integrative

Person-Centred

Art Therapy

Hypnotherapy

Humanistic

Core Process

Psychodynamic

TRANSPERSONAL

Gestalt

EMDR

 

 

TRANSPERSONAL

A Transpersonal approach to psychotherapy and counselling considers the whole person, and in particular honours the innate capacity of a person to find a way forward in life. It also acknowledges that a person may have lost sight of this capacity and/or may never have consciously known it. It is an approach which focuses on the here-and-now as well as on the there-and-then, and is also interested in potential and possibility, as well as how an individual creates a meaningful and purposeful life. The approach also recognises the importance of a spiritual dimension to life however the individual chooses to define this.

Within the context of the therapeutic relationship, a typical session would include considering the dilemma and/or difficulty which the person brings, and discerning the most appropriate or beneficial
way(s) forward. Though primarily a conversational therapy, sometimes (and where appropriate) a range of creative methods are used to help in this process, for example working with a dream, and/or making an visual image or working with clay, and/or playing with objects in sand, and/or working with physical symptoms, and/or using gestalt, and so on. There is no specific formula, and each course of therapy is unique to the individual, and depends on the specific needs of the person coming in to therapy, be it for six weeks, six months or longer.

The term “trans” means “beyond”, so “transpersonal” means “beyond the personal”. Practically speaking this means that the therapist is interested in more than the biographical narrative and related issues which concern a person, and often (particularly in longer term work) aims to help a person recognise seeds of unlived potentials. Transpersonal psychotherapy and counselling has its roots in humanistic, Jungian, archetypal, existential and Buddhist psychologies, as well as other traditions, and is sometimes described as a psychology with a soul.

Mike Wilson