Introduction to Holistic Psychology

 

The following excerpt is from the book,

Sing Your Own Song, Dance Your Own Dance

What Is Holistic Psychology?

       Holistic psychology is a new awakening. It sweeps aside the one-dimensional picture of standard psychology and reveals our true nature — multidimensional, yet unitary. It brings about a theoretical and practical integration that includes all aspects of the person: physical, mental, and spiritual, within a physical and social context. Thus it reorients us to the essence of our human nature, and of our personal identity. It paints the picture of ourselves in proper perspective — a picture of the whole person, the unique person, the person with will and consciousness, with potential for transformation and transcendence.

A New Science

       Holistic psychology builds on what has gone before. Like Gestalt psychology, it insists on the integrity of the whole. Like humanistic psychology, it emphasizes realizing our full human potential. Along with Psychosynthesis and transpersonal psychology, it explicitly addresses the transcendental and the spiritual. It taps diverse sources to adopt, adapt, and elaborate techniques, incorporating them into its methodology of personal change, transformation, and healing.
       Though not new and distinct in every detail, holistic psychology as a whole offers a fresh start. It strips away encrusted notions from the past that are false and limiting, and points us in some radically new directions. It makes a clean break with the unbridled materialism and mechanistic reductionism of nineteenth-century physics —and twentieth century psychology. It replaces such narrow, misconceived, and dated notions with an epistemology that truly reflects and accommodates our human nature. Its conceptual framework forms a sound basis for a new science that opens the door to a richer, more complete, more meaningful, and more functional understanding of our world, and of our place within it. Its methodology for exploring and transforming consciousness leads us to a new world within.

A New Map of Consciousness

       New Physics took us inside the atom to open up our understanding of the outer world. Holistic psychology takes us inside our own consciousness to open up our inner world. As the relationship of matter and energy was a defining issue for physics, so consciousness has always been the defining issue for psychology. Yet standard psychology has paid scant attention. In academic psychology, consciousness has to do mostly with degrees of awareness and responsiveness. Clinical psychology follows Freud and his coterie in posing a strict duality — the nice, tame, rational, conscious, social self, and the largely inaccessible, dark, inchoate, irrational, untamed, unconscious. This crazy, troublesome uncle in the basement is prone to make uncouth noises, crash the party, or cause damage, and therefore must be propitiated and closely monitored — perhaps even listened to, for fifty minutes at a time.
       Holistic psychology offers neither a bland gradation of activation nor a dark duality harboring a repressed atavistic threat. Rather, we enter upon a grand garden of exotic plants. There is plenty of space, light, and water, but perhaps the garden suffers from lack of proper planning and tending. Some plants are anemic and stunted, others grossly misshapen, overgrown, inter-grown, or choked with weeds. The garden awaits the master gardener to re-design, re-shape, prune, and cultivate. The resources are at hand. Holistic psychology provides the map and the tools. The choice and the plan are ours. And the work as well.

A Practical Discipline

       Holistic psychology is meaningful and useful to everyman. It strikes a resonant chord within, and offers workable solutions to personal and social problems.
Holistic psychology offers a fresh perspective on the "facts" of standard psychology. It reframes the prodigious knowledge-base of standard psychology to make it more user-friendly. Thus it bids fair to reform and revive the practice of psychology as a profession.
       Holistic psychology focuses on the central issues of human existence and experience. Such as happiness — How can we experience life as meaningful, productive, and joyful? Such as love — How is loving different from being in love? Such as health — What is it, how can we attain it?
       Holistic psychology is a science, a technology, and a healing art. It encompasses all aspects of human nature — physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. It has full scope to solve problems in all aspects of our existence. It is not burdened by an encrusted mythology or limited by artificial restrictions and limitations that would keep it from being generally useful and available. It is well positioned to cooperate with any other science, technology, or discipline, but does not look to any other profession for direction or authority to define its scope or carry out its work.
       Holistic psychology is a new awakening that sweeps aside the one-dimensional picture of standard psychology, and reveals our true nature — multidimensional, yet unitary. It brings about a theoretical and practical integration that includes all aspects of the person: physical, mental, and spiritual, within a physical and social context. Thus it reorients us to the essence of our human nature, and of our personal identity. It paints the picture of ourselves in proper perspective — a picture of the whole person, the unique person, the person with will and consciousness, with potential for transformation and transcendence.

A Road to Personal Change and Transformation

       What is your destination? For some — in some sense perhaps, for us all — the ultimate goal is personal transformation and self-mastery. From this flow personal fulfillment, career success and other accomplishments, satisfying relationships, and physical health and healing.
       But not everyone gets a ticket to the end of the line. Perhaps for now you wish to go just to the next station, then perhaps take another leg of the journey later on. Still, it helps to have the map. At least you can avoid catching the train in the wrong direction!

A Model for Health and Healing

       Holistic psychology illumines our search for health and healing. Its concepts, principles, processes, and techniques help us to reach our goal. It also provides a conceptual framework suitable for the health care of the future.
The search for health and healing is but one aspect of the search for personal transformation and self-mastery — the search for our real Self. Spirit is the source of health and healing. Attunement to Spirit allows energy to flow freely through all aspects of our being: spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical. The real Self is Spirit. Thus, to attain transformation and healing, our task is nothing more and nothing less than to connect to our real Self.
       Holistic psychology is a new awakening that sweeps aside the one-dimensional picture of standard psychology, and reveals our true nature — multidimensional, yet unitary. It brings about a theoretical and practical integration that includes all aspects of the person: physical, mental, and spiritual, within a physical and social context. Thus it reorients us to the essence of our human nature, and of our personal identity. It paints the picture of ourselves in proper perspective — a picture of the whole person, the unique person, the person with will and consciousness, with potential for transformation and transcendence.

 

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