Passages Beyond the Gate: A Jungian Approach to Understanding American Psychology

"In a clear and persuasive argument, Jennings suggests that, in order to move forward in understanding what it means to be a person. American psychology must break through the barrier constructed by the big three mainstream approaches...and embrace a promising fourth force which conceives of personality as entailing a transpersonal dimension."---Barbara Engler, PhD. author of Personality Theories (8th Edition)

"In Passages Beyond the Gate, Dr. Jennings calls American psychology to accountability for its own blind spots. Using Jung's discovery of the inevitable biasing of perspectives by personal typology, Jennings powerfully argues that the spiritual dimension of our human journey finds such short shrift in American psychology because of its privileging of the sensate, thinking, and feeling functions at the expense of then intuitive. When the intuitive function is restored to its proper equality with the others, then questions of meaning, which so much psychology avoids, may be addressed with the respect they deserve."---James Hollis. PhD, Jungian analyst, author and director of Jungian Studies Program at Saybrook Graduate School in San Francisco and Honston

Examining American psychology development from a Jungian perspective, Jennings argues that the descipline is at a point where a deeper and broader exploration of spirituality is essential in order to realize the goal of creating a complete psychology of human beings. Having already developed an understanding of the person that rests upon the tenets of behavioral cognitive-behavioral, psychoanalytic, humanistic, and existential approaches, many mainstream American psychologists now seem eager to embrace a growing viewpoint of the person grounded in biological psychology which draws the discipline closer to a materialistic understanding of human beings. This direction little to reveal the fullness and purpose of human spirituality. To address this deficiency. Jennings encourages more American psychologists to integrate spiritual concepts readily explored in transpersonal psychology with respect to our more traditional psychological understanding of what it means to be human.