Theoretical Models of Counseling and Psychotherapy

Integral:the word means to integrate, to bring together, to join, to link, to embrace. Not in the sense of uniformity, and not in the sense of ironing out all the wonderful differences, colors, zigs and zags of a rainbow-hued humanity, but in the sense of unity-in-diversity, shared commonalities along with our wonderful differences

-Wilber, 2000c, p. 2

For much of his career, Ken Wilber developed his ideas in association with the field of transpersonal psychology, although he has not called himself a transpersonal thinker, per se, for nearly 20 years. Yet one of the outstanding features of his theory, which he has termed integral, is its explicit inclusion of a transpersonal dimension of psychological and spiritual experience. The following section will begin with an explanation of the term "transpersonal," provide a brief overview of the history of the field of transpersonal psychology, and conclude with a discussion of the relationship between transpersonal psychology and integral psychology and counseling.

Throughout history and across cultures, many people have reported transpersonal experiences, and many of these people have manifested transpersonal levels of development. The term transpersonal means "beyond the personal," that is, beyond the sense of oneself as a separate entity who functions in the space/time world of earthly existence to achieve individual survival.

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