D. B. Sleeth’s scientific contributions

Despite the importance of recovery in mental health treatment, the role of love in the delivery of services is rarely explicitly stated. Similarly, the role of love in development has rarely been clearly explicated. Yet the two are closely intertwined, based on certain aspects of love that can be called the continuum of love, involving a dialectical sequence of development—autistic love (all about me), empathetic love (all about you), and integral love (all about us)—the last combining the prior two. Unfortunately, this ideal state is constantly undermined by traumatic forces in the world. This article claims that disruption brought on by trauma is best treated by what can be called the cycle of love, manifesting as the three pillars of recovery: awareness, acceptance, and integration.

The profession of psychology seems embarrassed, even apprehensive, about love being part of the therapeutic process. Yet the essence of treatment comes down to a single precept: Love is the healing principle. When people speak of recovery in clinical practice, that which is recovered is best thought of as love. Unfortunately, love is poorly understood. People tend to align with either of its two main forms, autistic love or empathetic love, where each vies for dominion as the respective pole of a seemingly inexorable paradox. Consequently, the developmental task of treatment is to integrate these two poles into their most mature and auspicious form: integral love. Only when all forms of love are taken together can clinical practice operate within a shared framework of understanding, ever working toward a deeper and more profound embrace of the whole person.

Of all psychology concepts, perhaps none has a more lengthy history or engendered more controversy and ambiguity than that of the self. Indeed, the self has come to mean so many things that it hardly means anything at all. Consequently, there is currently no single theory integrating all the various meanings of the self concept. Therefore, the primary purpose of this article is to develop an overarching metapsychology by which all aspects of the self can be understood.To accomplish this purpose, this article engages in a hermeneutic analysis of the self as it appears in transpersonal psychology and also what could be called transcendental psychology (i.e., nondualism). In so doing, it is possible to identify two principle concepts by which the various aspects of the self can be compared and classified: the S/self and the Twin-Tiers, the presence of both a lower self and deeper Self as aspects of the individual; as well as the presence of nondual reality (i.e., God), which is described relative to two fundamental processes: the Illusion of Relatedness and the Grid of Attention.

Of all psychology concepts, perhaps none has a more lengthy history or engendered more controversy and ambiguity than that of the self. Indeed, the self has come to mean so many things that it hardly means anything at all. Consequently, there is currently no single theory integrating all the various meanings of the self concept. Therefore, the primary purpose of this article is to develop an overarching meta-psychology by which all aspects of the self can be understood. To accomplish this purpose, this article engages in a hermeneutic analysis of the self as it appears in transpersonal psychology and also what could be called transcendental psychology (i.e., nondualism). In so doing, it is possible to identify two principle concepts by which the various aspects of the self can be compared and classified: the S/self and the Twin-Tiers, the presence of both a lower self and deeper Self as aspects of the individual; as well as the presence of nondual reality (i.e., God), which is described relative to two fundamental processes: the Illusion of Relatedness and the Grid of Attention.

Of all psychology concepts, perhaps none has a more lengthy history or engendered more controversy and ambiguity than that of the self. Indeed, the self has come to mean so many things that it hardly means anything at all. Consequently, there is currently no single theory integrating all the various meanings of the self concept. Therefore, the primary purpose of this article is to develop an overarching metapsychology by which all aspects of the self can be understood. To accomplish this purpose, this article engages in a hermeneutic analysis of the self as it appears in cognitive-behavior psychology, the psychoanalytic theories of ego and self psychology, and humanistic-existential theories of the self. In so doing, it is possible to identify three principle concepts by which the various aspects of the self can be compared and classified: the Conflation Frame, the collapsing of entity, intellect, and identity into a single rendering of the self; the Integral Interface, the overriding theoretical framework within which each of these aspects of self can be differentiated and subsumed; and the Integral Axes, the two fundamental tracks by which the individual grows and develops, which consist of self-actualization and self-emancipation.

Of all psychology concepts, perhaps none has a more lengthy history or engendered more controversy and ambiguity than that of the self. Indeed, the self has come to mean so many things that it hardly means anything at all. Consequently, there is currently no single theory integrating all the various meanings of the self concept. Therefore, the primary purpose of this paper is to develop an overarching metapsychology by which all aspects of the self can be understood. To accomplish this purpose, this article engages in a hermeneutic analysis of the self as it appears in cognitive behavior psychology, the psychoanalytic theories of ego and self psychology, and humanistic-existential theories of the self. In so doing, it is possible to identify two principle concepts by which the various aspects of the self can be compared and classified: the conflation frame, the collapsing of entity, intellect, and identity into a single rendering of the self; and the integral interface, the overriding theoretical framework within which each of these aspects of self can be appropriately differentiated and subsumed.