As the new director of the Integral Transpersonal Journal I would like to introduce myself to the readers and contributors of the journal.
My educational background is in clinical psychiatry and neuroimaging research. I can describe my professional development in few words: “From therapist to healer”. I started as a psychiatrist to move to transpersonal psychotherapy, changing my approach to the psychological dimension from biochemical imbalances to a spiritual level; from state of vigilance, as consciousness is defined in medical terms, to states of consciousness. I moved from research in psychiatric diseases using imaging techniques to qualitative research methods applied to psychotherapy.
It is therefore with great pleasure that I accepted the appointment as director of the Integral Transpersonal Journal, which tries to reconcile science and technologies with art and poetry in the transpersonal field.
This task can be difficult as a lot of the experiences reported in this field are very personal and difficult to objectivise, and very often it is hard to express them in a scientific language, which is free from the ambiguity and ambivalence of everyday language and it has no place at all for metaphor. Quoting Janet Cohen “language of science represents the zero degree of deviance while poetic language is its possible maximum”.
I accept the challenge to reconcile scientific and poetic language on this journal, giving the place for transpersonal psychotherapist to report in a scientific language the results of their research and for transpersonal philosophers to share their thoughts and insights in a poetic and metaphorical language.
As it has been said in the first issue “The transpersonal vision is broad, deep, integral and integrating”. Transpersonal can be a philosophical approach to describe human life, it can be a therapeutic method to treat psychological, if not even physical, diseases. In this latter case we need to interface with the scientific medical environment, we have to prove the efficacy and reproducibility of our methods; we have to be prepared to defend our professionalism if not even to deny the accusation of quackery that is moved to us from the academic establishment.
I fully agree with the intent of this journal as it was stated saying: “We wish to help craft an epistemology that allows the transcendental inner experience and the phenomenal experience of the world, nature, culture and environment, consciousness and matter, to be all examined in a participatory light…”, therefore I welcome contributions in the form of philosophical discussion around general topic about human being, environment, etc. However I see this journal also as a way to develop and propagate the knowledge on transpersonal psychotherapy, therefore articles discussing in more scientific terms of therapeutic methods will be accepted as well. Of course the format of the two will be different according to the former statements.
Moreover comments on books, or papers published elsewhere, on transpersonal issues as well as on other interesting topics will be considered for a wider distribution among our readers. Whatever it is our position in the transpersonal field we have to be aware of the world around us, the academic and scientific world, the economic and the organizational world.
I look forward to involve in this exciting enterprise as more readers and contributors as possible, as I believe that sharing thoughts, ideas, even doubts, is the best way for scientific knowledge to progress and make the difference in human development.