SYNOPSIS
One of the most important ideas which is being discussed at the moment is the notion of levels of consciousness. It is a deeply embarrassing notion, because it suggests that some people are further on in their mental development than others, and are actually thinking differently from the average. This is a disturbing idea for many people, because it seems to threaten the democratic ideal. Of course it does not. What I am trying to do in this article is to give evidence for the belief that Humanistic Psychology comes from, and relates to, a higher level of thought than the everyday thinking of black and white, yes or no, either/or, one or zero—and which is generally labelled as ‘dialectical logic’, or ‘second-tier thought’. In this article I am trying to explore some of the facets of this conceptual jewel.
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Notes on contributors
John Rowan
John Rowan is well known as a humanistic therapist and writer, and has also done a good deal of work in the transpersonal area. His more recent efforts in the area of the Dialogical Self have borne fruit both in his work and in his writing. John is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, and also of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and the UK Council for Psychotherapy. He has consistently pushed for more attention to the Primal and to the Transpersonal, which he has dubbed ‘the Terrible Twins of Therapy’. His most recent book is Personification: Using the Dialogical Self in Psychotherapy and Counselling.