VARIETIES OF TRANSPERSONAL EXPERIENCES: OBSERVATIONS FROM LSD PSYCHOTHERAPy

Until recently the theoretical structures of psychiatry and psychology were based on the observations of a rather limited range of mental phenomena and human experiences. Very little systematic and serious attention was given to a variety of phenomena that have been described over centuries within the framework of the world's great religions, as well as temple mysteries, mystery religions, initiation rites, and various mystical schools. There has been a tendency in contemporary science to label such experiences simply as psychotic and to consider them manifestations of mental illness,because similar or identical experiencescan frequently be observed in schizophrenicpatients. Such classificationhas in the past almost precluded unbiased scientificstudy of these phenomena and acceptance of their possible relevance for the understanding of human personality and the nature of man. When such study was attempted, it focused frequently on peripheral aspects, and inadequate and often superficial explanatory hypotheses were offered by the investigators. This can be best illustrated by Freud's attempts to explain religious phenomena; obviously underestimating the paramount role of firsthand visionary experience for the development of religions, he equated religion with symbolic rituals and tried to explain it in terms of unresolved conflictsof the child's psyche and in terms of infantile sexuality (Freud, 1952).