The Pre/Trans Fallacy
The Pre/Trans Fallacy
Wilber's View
Wilber's account of development runs prerational (infantile, egocentric, magical/mythic) through rational to transrational (mystical, contemplative, postformal). Because both prerational and transrational states are, in their different ways, nonrational, they can look alike to an observer who hasn't sorted out the developmental sequence — and this resemblance, Wilber argues, produces one of the most common errors in psychology and spirituality: the pre/trans fallacy. It cuts two ways. Reductionism takes genuinely transrational states (mystical experience, contemplative insight) and reduces them downward to infantile or pathological ones — this is Freud's move, treating mystical union as a regression to "oceanic" primary narcissism. Elevationism does the reverse: it takes prerational states (infantile fusion, primitive magical thinking) and elevates them to transrational glory, reading them as spiritually advanced — Wilber's example is Jung and, at length in this book, Joseph Campbell, whom he accuses of collapsing all "nonrational" material (from infant psychology to advanced contemplative states) into a single undifferentiated "mythological" category.
The fallacy matters most to Wilber's larger argument because it's the recurring flaw he finds in Eco-Romanticism — thinkers who want to recover a lost, holistic, "spiritual" union with nature by returning to an earlier, less differentiated state of consciousness. Wilber's diagnosis is that they've confused differentiation (a healthy developmental achievement) with dissociation (its pathological failure mode), and so mistake a move backward — toward the pre-differentiated — for a move forward, toward the genuinely trans-differentiated. See flatland for the broader worldview he thinks makes this confusion so easy to fall into.
In Sex, Ecology, Spirituality
"The essence of the pre/trans fallacy is itself fairly simple…"
Ever since I began writing on the distinctions between prerational (or prepersonal) states of awareness and transrational (or transpersonal) states—what I called the pre/trans fallacy—I have become more convinced than ever that this understanding is absolutely crucial for grasping the nature of higher (or deeper) or truly spiritual states of consciousness. The essence of the pre/trans fallacy is itself fairly simple: since both prerational states and transrational states are, in their own ways, nonrational, they appear similar or even identical to the untutored eye.
— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 6, "Magic, Mythic, and Beyond"
"Freud was a reductionist, Jung an elevationist—the two sides of the pre/trans fallacy."
Freud was a reductionist, Jung an elevationist—the two sides of the pre/trans fallacy. And the point is that they are both half right and half wrong. A good deal of neurosis is indeed a fixation/regression to prerational states, states that are not to be glorified. On the other hand, mystical states do indeed exist, beyond (not beneath) rationality, and those states are not to be reduced.
— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 6, "Magic, Mythic, and Beyond"
"Campbell wants to call the transrational realms 'mythological' as well…"
And here Campbell commits the classic pre/trans fallacy. Since the prerational realms are definitely mythological, then Campbell wants to call the transrational realms "mythological" as well, since they too are nonrational… So on the one side he lumps together all nonrational endeavors (from primitive mythology to highly developed contemplative encounters), and on the other side—the "bad" side—he dumps poor reason, even as he himself is in fact… using the space of reason to salvage his myths.
— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 6, "Magic, Mythic, and Beyond"
"Under a pre/trans fallacy and the pull of flatland, they confused postconventional spirit with preconventional nature."
In order to embrace Nature, the great Web of Life, they often recommended a simple return to nature (or preconventional sensory awareness). Not a transcendence from biosphere to noosphere to theosphere… but a movement in exactly the opposite direction. Under a pre/trans fallacy and the pull of flatland, they confused postconventional spirit with preconventional nature.
— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 13, "The Dominance of the Descenders"
"You have to be somebody before you can be nobody."
This is why the work of such theorists as Jack Engler is so important… "You have to be somebody before you can be nobody." That is, it is necessary to form a stable, cohesive self before one can transcend (or deconstruct) that self in pure Emptiness. Condemning the ego for not being Emptiness is like condemning an acorn for not being an oak.
— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 14, "The Unpacking of God"
See Also
- vision-logic / flatland — the developmental map the fallacy depends on, and the worldview that obscures it
- eros-and-agape — the healthy version of moving between levels (Ascent and Descent), against which pre/trans confusions are a pathology
- dominator-vs-growth-hierarchy — a related confusion, between hierarchy as growth and hierarchy as domination
- Joseph Campbell — the book's central worked example of the fallacy's "elevationist" side
- Freud / Jung — Wilber's paradigm case of reductionism vs. elevationism
