This accessible and comprehensive overview of the work of Stanislav Grof, one of the founders of transpersonal psychology, was specifically written to acquaint...

This article presents a model of dissociative experience that includes a transpersonal perspective. The first aspect ofthe model focuses on whether an experience represents controlled flow, uncontrolled flow, controlled dissociation, or uncontrolled dissociation. The second aspect asks whether there are alterations in one's identification with the ego-self or whether one transcends the ego-self, making contact with a hypothetical All-Self. The third aspect of the model asks whether the experience is life-affirming or life-denying. The model is postmodern in that it recognizes (...) that these latter judgments are a matter of time, place, and power, as is the determination whether or not a dissociative experience is psychopathological. (shrink)