I've been reading Michael Washburn's epic Embodied Spirituality in a Sacred World recently, and continue to rave about it being one of the most important reads of my life. I'm doing a long-analysis with an excellent Sydney Jungian and Conversational-Model analyst, and the material which I'm integrating through this, as well as the process itself, feels extraordinarily sympathetic to the view expressed by Washburn. I've been wanting to read this one for quite a while - years ago Sass, when finishing her PhD read a couple of Washburn articles and we'd discussed him a few times. She'd read about his spiral view, and in particular, the regression in the service of transcendence and came waving the paper about at me as if her unconscious were saying: "Look here kids! You need to be doing this!". In the hot and heavy days of our courting, we never properly explored it. It took us both three years of other shenanigans before Washburn's worked reentered our lives, and it was in stunningly synchronistic style: I'd had three fairly significant emotional catharses in the fortnight prior to the book showing up on my doorstep, and only that afternoon had been journalling about the value of the dips into the underworld (and especially the libidinal and autosymbolic realms), and how I'd only very recently come to terms with it being a seriously important process after a couple of years of only focussing on emotional exploring and Gendlin focussing. With the much wider view of the nonegoic dawning on me, Michael Washburn's tome arrived from the dark to illumine the exact corners of the psyche, soma and spirit which I'd prepared myself to receive. I'd clearly known there was something I needed to know two months prior when I ordered the book from the State University of New York.I've mentioned his treatment of Wilber's pre-trans fallacy, and a couple of you have asked me to expand on it. In the following, I've transcribed the parts of his first chapter which I think are important in making the point. It all centres around old debate from 20-30 years ago in the transpersonal psychology field which this book replies to. There was an ongoing conversation between Wilber and Washburn way back when, and Washburn adds to the debate again with 15 pages on the pre-trans fallacy conception right at the beginning.
Essentially, Wilber takes the Piagetian developmental view of increasing stage-structure unfolding and suggests that there is the potential for arrests in development at each of those stages (e.g. his fulcrums). Because of that 'linear' march north, he didn't like the spiral concept which Washburn observed in his work - that is, that post-latency, there is a steady return of the id, and that the move to transpersonal identifications includes the 'regression in service of transcendence' (Wahsburn: "Spiral theories are mistaken, according to Wilber, because (1) nothing essential to the psychic inventory is lost during the course of normal development, and therefore a return to sources as described in spiral views is unnecessary; and (2) if such a return were to occur it would only result in a descent from higher-level basic structures and, therefore, only a u-turn of regression rather than a spiral of transcendence"). What Washburn argues is that: "Wilber's criticism of the spiral perspective, although incisive and of heuristic value, is flawed because Wilber, in correcting one pre-trans fallacy, commits a pre-trans fallacy of his own. In exposing the error of equating "earliest" with "highest", Wilber falls prey to the opposite error of equating "earliest" with "lowest". That is, he mistakenly assumes that everything that, in normal development, is *developmentally* pre must therefore be also *inherently* pre. Now of course there are inherently pre-sturcutres, and many of these, as Wilber explains, are both bases and preserved functional components of later or higher structures. A great deal of research supports this point. An immense amoutn of evidence supports the structural-developmental perspective generally ans Wilber's structural-hierarchical perspective in particular. There is no question that Wilber's structural-hierarchical theory describes important dimensions of human development. There is a question, however, whether it accurately describes *all* of human development, for Wilber's assumption that everything that normally emerges in prepresonal stages of development is inherently - and, therefore merely - pre is suspect. Indeed, according to spiral theorists, this assumption is false".
He goes on to say that: "In this book then, care is taken to distinguish between psychic resources that are inherently pre and psychic resources that, although expressing themselves in a pre way early in life, are not. Among these latter resources are dynamic potentials - here called nonegoic potentials - of the deep psyche or Dynamic Ground: energy, instinctual rives, sources of affective response and the creative imagination or autosymbolic process. Attention is given to these nonegoic potentials because in the spiral view, they are the original sources of life form which ewe depart and to which, at a higher level, we return. They are sources of life that (1) express themselves in a pre way early in life (2) are then quieted to a significant extent in the transition from prepersonal to personal stages of development, and (3) can, if reawakened in later life, begin to express themselves in a trans way. Because nonegoic potentials are inherently neither pre nor trans but can have both pre (early) and trans (late) developmental expressions, they are psychic resources that can be revisited on a higher level. they are resources that, having been experiences pre, can be revisited as trans as part of a spiraling, rather than a merely regressive, return to origins. The reawakening of nonegoic potentials in the course of adult life is, in the spiral view, an essential dimension of the transition from personal to transpersonal stages of development. The nonegoic potentials of the dynamic ground, which had been subdued during the course of ego development, begin to reawaken in the fullness of their power, and the ego, which had developed its functions in relative isolation from the dynamic ground, begins to be reconnected with the ground. This reconnection is a return to origins that, to be sure has a dangerous, regressive aspect in its initial phases, for it is a return to sources of life that had been banished and limited to a pre expression. This reconnection, however, despite its initial regressive aspect, is by no means merely a regressive u-turn. It is rather a spiraling return to nonegoic potentials that, having earlier expressed themselves as pre, are about to begin expressing themselves as trans. It is then, a return to origins that is the beginning of transpersonal stages of development. To modify an expression coined by psychoanalyst Ernst Kris, this return to origins is a regression in service of transcendence. Although Wilber's argument against the spiral view does no achieve its aim, it nonetheless has heuristic value because the idea of the pre=trans fallacy presents a needed caution to spiral theorists, alerting them to an error to which many have been prone. Mistaking pre for trans, although not inherent to the spral perspective, is an errot to which many spiral theorists haev in fact fallen prey. The prepersonal and the transpersonal, in being alike nonpersonal, are easily confused. If, then, Wilber is incorrect in holding that the spiral perspective is based on a pre-trans fallacy, he is correct in holding that many spiral theorists have mistaken prepersonal levels of experience for transpersonal levels, with most unfortunate, merely regressive consequences. Too many romantically oriented writers have indeed been retro-Romantics. Too many romantically oriented writers have fallen prey to glorifying young children or noble savages for the wrong reasons, as if earlier were necessarily better, when it is not earlier that is better but rather reconnection with earlier lost psychic resources that is better".
He also concludes with: "The spiral and structural-hierarchical perspectives are not inherently in conflict. Conflict only arises when a proponent of one or the other perspectives insists that only the spiral or only the structural-hierarchical perspective describes all of normal development. Such an exclusivist approach is self-limiting and traps the proponent in pre-trans fallacies... The implication for transpersonal psychology is clear: an inclusive "both-and" position with respect to the spiral and structural-hierarchical perspectives is needed in order to clear away errors and make progress in mapping human development. Neither the spiral nor the structural-hierarchical perspective is based on a pre-trans fallacy. Wilber commits a pre-trans fallacy only becase he holds that all normal development follows a structural-hierarchical course, and therefore, that all that is developmentally pre must also be inherently pre. The challenge for the future, then, will be for transpersonal theorists to explore how the spiral nd structural-hierarchical perspectives might be brought into fruitful collaboration on matters of concern to transpersonal inquiry"
If that doesn't give you a kosmic chubby, I don't know what will!
