Why I’m interested in transpersonal psychology

This year I started reading and listening to Stanislav Grof. He was a psychiatrist who spent decades studying non-ordinary states of consciousness and helped start the field of transpersonal psychology. The basic idea that stuck with me is that some intense experiences, the kind people describe as spiritual or hard to put into words, aren’t just symptoms. They can be part of how people heal.

Reading that while living in Mexico hits differently. There are healing traditions here that are much older than modern psychology, like the temazcal and the work of curanderos, and they’re still part of everyday life in a lot of places. Mexico also had psychiatrists working in this area decades ago, like Salvador Roquet in Mexico City.

What I keep thinking about is where all of that meets the law. Mexico’s Supreme Court has spent years loosening the rules around personal cannabis use, based on what it calls the right to the free development of personality: the idea that adults get to make decisions about their own lives. I’m curious how far that idea goes when it comes to the mind itself.

I’m not a researcher or a clinician. I’m a law student who finds this interesting and wants to understand it properly, without romanticizing it. I’ll write more as I read more.

If you work in this area, in Mexico or anywhere in Latin America, I’d like to hear from you.