Rating: 
Summary: "Marvelous clarity"?
Review:
Here is an actual excerpt from "Integral Psychology" (p. 47):
>>
We now return to Spiral Dynamics for a brief overview of one version of the self-streams and their waves of unfolding. Remember that this is simply one series of photos of the Great River; there are actually numerous different streams proceeding relatively independently through the basic waves; and individuals can simultaneously be at many different waves in their various streams:
1. Beige: Archaic-Instinctual
2. Purple: Magical-Animistic
3. Red: Power Gods
4. Blue: Conformist Rule
5. Orange: Scientific Advancement
6. Green: The Sensitive Self
7. Yellow: Integrative
8. Turquoise: Holistic
<<
While this language might be appropriate in a book called "Comparative History of Mythology and Religion" (or "The Healing Power of Magnets"), it contributes nothing to psychology, therapy, or modern theories of consciousness. Apparently Ken Wilber was absent during that important elementary school class where the suffix "-ology" was explained. Judging from the other reviews, he's not the only one.
So let's revisit: The great discovery of modern civilization is that ideas can be tested by performing little experiments. Such a simple method has proven to be an amazingly powerful tool for correctly reasoning about the world, motivating scientists to reformulate every speculation as a "testable" theory. Obviously the true/false distinction is less relevant for highly subjective topics such as metaphysics or personal reflection, but that's why PSYCHOLOGY is not the same thing as PHILOSOPHY. It is certainly ironic that Wilber's attempt to "honor and embrace every legitimate aspect of human consciousness" neglects to mention even the most basic discoveries of modern psychology, let alone the genuinely fascinating advances in recent decades.
In this light, I propose the following experiment: Write down 20 glossary words from your favorite philosophy and New Age texts, pull them randomly out of a hat, and then scatter them arbitrarily across graphs, quadrants, and axes. My hypothesis is that the reviewers who wrote so gushingly about "Integral Psychology" will be unable to distinguish random charts from actual Ken Wilber diagrams. There's no fine line between "marvelous clarity" and bombastic ignorance.
Rating: 
Summary: The Einstein of Consciousness
Review: "The roots of modern psychology lie in spiritual traditions, precisely because the psyche itself is plugged into spiritual sources." As a branch of his Integral Studies, Wilber reviews the history of psychology and establishes his Integral Psychology as, of course, necessarily a developmental one. Few are integrating East and West better than Ken Wilber, and no one explains the painful ramifications of the four hundred year split between matter and spirit better. No one offers better (integral) solutions. The correlating charts here alone are worth the price of the book.One objection I must include: "Horizontal Typologies" on page 53. "Finally, a word about 'horizontal' typologies, such as Jungian types, the Enneagram, Myers-Briggs, and so forth. For the most part, these are not vertical levels, stages, or waves of development, but rather different types of orientations possible at each of the various levels." For the most part. For one thing, "Jungian types" and "Myers-Briggs" are the same thing; for another, the unfolding developmental pattern of hardwired Jungian function preferences (extravert/introvert, thinking/feeling, intuition/sensation) may very well fit vertically into Wilber's charts. Nevermind -- he has something important to add to, revise or refine in his stunning four quadrant model with each new book (here he joins with Spiral Dynamics), and he, most important, never fails to make a deliberate point to welcome authoritative feedback for continual revision for accuracy and precision. "Whatever [integral] contributions any of us might make will only be the shoulders, we can hope, upon which others will soon stand."
Rating: 
Summary: Not psychology, but interesting philosophy
Review: "The roots of modern psychology lie in spiritual traditions, precisely because the psyche itself is plugged into spiritual sources." As a branch of his Integral Studies, Wilber reviews the history of psychology and establishes his Integral Psychology as, of course, necessarily a developmental one. Few are integrating East and West better than Ken Wilber, and no one explains the painful ramifications of the four hundred year split between matter and spirit better. No one offers better (integral) solutions. The correlating charts here alone are worth the price of the book. One objection I must include: "Horizontal Typologies" on page 53. "Finally, a word about 'horizontal' typologies, such as Jungian types, the Enneagram, Myers-Briggs, and so forth. For the most part, these are not vertical levels, stages, or waves of development, but rather different types of orientations possible at each of the various levels." For the most part. For one thing, "Jungian types" and "Myers-Briggs" are the same thing; for another, the unfolding developmental pattern of hardwired Jungian function preferences (extravert/introvert, thinking/feeling, intuition/sensation) may very well fit vertically into Wilber's charts. Nevermind -- he has something important to add to, revise or refine in his stunning four quadrant model with each new book (here he joins with Spiral Dynamics), and he, most important, never fails to make a deliberate point to welcome authoritative feedback for continual revision for accuracy and precision. "Whatever [integral] contributions any of us might make will only be the shoulders, we can hope, upon which others will soon stand."
Rating:
Summary: A Few More Words on Mr. Wilber
Review: An Added Note, Jan 2002: Reading the reviews on this page, some of them remind me of a philosophy class I once took with an excellent professor. The subject matter was Sextus Empiricus, and his "fathering" of Skepticism as a formal philosophical method. What the professor mentioned to us, just before handing back our first essays, in a friendly but admonishing manner, was that it is far too easy to simply cast aspersions or find thinkers wrong; whereas it is far more productive to find what is right about what they say; and that only after you've got what they say down pat & can recount it, can you start to do an intelligent criticism of their work. Mr. Wilber himself parses his work into four periods, sometimes revising his earlier views (such as on Romanticism). And though there is a general concern that informs what he has written - the totality of human knowledge and how we come to that knowledge and what characterizes that knowledge & perhaps most importantly what we can do with that knowledge (which therefore makes is difficult to write something that is not somewhat related to something else that is already written in Wilber’s ongoing opus) – UP FROM EDEN is not the same book as, say, INTEGRAL PSYCHOLOGY. And the repetition in the books simply, yes, rehashes the basic outlines of his foundational Quadrant model, which any good writer will offer, as there will always be readers who are new to him. Thus each book can be self-contained and does not require what can be a frustrating practice of buying a book that refers back to another book the reader is therefore forced to get in order to be able to make sense of the tome in her hands at the moment – a tome which could have set her back 50 dollars. Who else out there can summarize so much, so clearly, and be good enough at writing to actually sell books, thus making his work available (can anyone really argue otherwise, agree or no with his starting-point conclusions) to all of us easily, and not have us searching for his work in obscure, disparate, academic journals? And what other philosopher is so perspicaciously tooting the horn of so many other writers, introducing them to us and contextualizing them for us? For my buck, it is difficult to find a better analytical guide to knowledge, and his hand-holding - as he guides us through the annals of consciousness - is simply too valuable and too rare, to my eye, to cast aside as simply repetitious. Is it a wonder at the relatively young age of Mr. Wilber that his works are, though unfinished, already collected?
Rating:
Summary: Excellent integration!
Review: As more and more people meet Wilber, they often say they don't like him. But like him or not as a person, his work is in a class of its own. This is one of the most insightful books ever written. Wilber's ability to integrate vast amounts of information in a way that makes sense is incredible. He is also one of the clearest writers you will ever read. I find that reading Wilber also requires that one read many of the references he cites to really understand where he is coming from. Absolutely a must book.
Rating:
Summary: What is Psychology?
Review: Mr. Ken Wilber is simply a national treasure. Wilber's approach is to cast a compassionate yet perspicaciously critical eye on the entire history and practice of human's efforts to know, examine everything we know, and further, to understand and explain how we share this knowing. The kinds of knowing the mind & brain (all of them here explained) are carefully explicated in this clearly written powerhouse of a concentrated book. Though the title accurately cues us to its subject matter, those not familiar with Wilber's scholarship will be pleasantly surprised - thoroughly and gently challenged - by the breadth of the concern this book so carefully and compactly elucidates. Elucidates is what this books so clearly does. Many books attempt to bring light to the subject of psychology, however few so clearly and so broadly cast, as one reviewer says, "...conceptual order to psychology of the east and west." And all this in a friendly and clear prose which though simple, imparts heady ideas in an inviting, open style that makes the book a pleasure to read. Wilber teaches, but a didactic diction is as foreign as is superficial analysis in this and all of his work. If you are new to him you wonder why so many others are so positively bumbling in their grasp of ideas and in the delivery of their insights. I find it difficult to put down his books; they're surprisingly fun to read, given the subject matter of his prolific output - nothing less than, to borrow from the title of another work, A Theory of Everything. To give a taste of his work, I'll quote a passage from Integral Psychology that speaks to the positivistic predilection for eschewing all things non-quantifiable: "The bleakness of modern scientific proclamation is chilling. In that extraordinary journey from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, scientific materialism halted the journey at the very first stage, and proclaimed all subsequent developments to be nothing but arrangements of frisky dirt. Why this dirt would get up and eventually start writing poetry was not explained. Or rather, it was explained by dumb chance and dumb selection, as if two dumbs would make a Shakespeare. The sensorimotor realm was proclaimed the only real realm, and it soon came to pass that mental health would be defined as adaptation to that 'reality.' Any consciousness that saw anything other than matter was obviously hallucinating." Being a condensed 300 page version of a yet to be published two volume textbook on psychology, this immanently respectful contribution to the storehouse of knowledge on what we call "psychology" (there is polemic, but it only answers unfair or misconstrued erroneous criticisms of his work) not only elucidates its history & strengths, weaknesses & schools, but, anchored to the etymology of the word 'psychology,' plumbs the depths of what all quarters (east and west, ancient and modern) have brought to the question: what is consciousness? Collecting "sturdy conclusions" - as Wilber calls them - of the valid insights that various thinkers have had throughout history and within the conceptual constellations of their various schools of thought, Wilber tackles the idea of what therefore are Integral approaches to healing, to therapy; & true to his form, informs us of not only what the various schools positively contribute to this effort (& what we can do without) but what an Integral approach to psychology might entail and how to implement this approach. Reading this volume - heavily end-noted for those who want to pursue the spectrum of scholarship that Wilber has examined for this book - will definitely bolster anyone's novice, veteran or professional interest in the ideas of what knowing is, how knowing works and how we can cull the resources of the history of the effort to know knowing so as to further what we know (& expand our active repertoire of how we know), and how we can use this study of the psyche, of consciousness, to heal ourselves (& others); so that we can become better, if not more conceptually ordered, people - at least as regards the idea of what psychology is. Agree or disagree with Wilber - his method or his conclusions - he is not someone that you can ignore without peril to your own knowing. I can think of no one else who is as perceptively and unrelentingly, book by book, disclosing the nature of, again borrowing from what was his first book, The Spectrum of Consciousness. No matter what your particular area of concern, or if your concern is the entire realm of the various areas & forms of knowing, Wilber has insights to impart that you will find merit your careful and considered attention. I suspect Integral Psychology is a volume you will read several times, and with much enthusiasm.
Rating: 
Summary: put up or shut up
Review: There are some people that suggest that Wilber has been too repetitive in his last few books. That he's simply been repeating the same basic refrain over and over again. I can understand that criticism, but I disagree with it. Wilber's theory of integration is both complex and important, and I find it incredibly useful to have new books in which he expands the examples of his theory. My own feeling is that the integral theory is a very important theory to understand, so the more in depth Wilber goes, and the various diffirent paths of exploration he goes at his thory from, the happier I am, as I feel like I have a greater grasp of what he's speaking about. As an aside, there is a wondeful novel called We All Fall Down by Brian Caldwell which seems to take quite a bit of Wilber's theory, and even mentions him several times in the book. The novel is a great example of a man caught trying to transform his life into something better, but who is able only to translate. It's about the frustration and difficulties in trying to move up to the next level of consciousness. Techinically, it's set in a Christian framework, but it elevates past that small structure and uses it to really bring home quite a few of Wilber's theories. It's a wonderful novel and I'd highly recomend it to any fan of Wilber.
Rating:
Summary: Very interesting integration.
Review: This book introduces us to a very interesting integration of theories in Psychology and Philosophy. By putting a large variety of well-known theories together, the author explains how the spirit unfolds as we develop and evolve as living organisms. Although other people have tried this type of thing before, Wilber may be one of the best in the business. The only other thinker who is truly fantastic at this sort of thing is Toru Sato. His book "The Ever-transcending Spirit" is so good it is just unbelieveable! Read it and you'll know what I'm talking about.
Rating:
Summary: A psychological thriller for thinkers.
Review: This is the second book I've read toward my goal of reading all of Ken
Wilber's books this year. In 1835, philosopher Gustav Fechner wrote
"Man lives on earth not once, but three times: the first stage of
life is continual sleep; the second, sleeping and waking by turns; the
third, waking forever (pp. vii-ix). This observation inspired Wilber
to write this book. His aim, he writes, is to start a discussion, not
to finish it, to act as a beginning, not an end (pp. xii; 193).
Wilber's book is not so much a "history of psychology," as
he calls it (p. ix), but an attempt to reconcile the spiritual
dimensions of the human consciousness with the discipline of
psychology. "Consciousness is real, the inward observing self is
real, the soul is real, however much we debate the details"
(p. xi). From Wilber's perspective, we are living in a modern
"flatland." "The nightmare of scientific materialism is
upon us (Whitehead), the nightmare of the one-dimensional man
(Marcuse), the disqualified universe (Mumford), the colonization of
art and morals by science (Habermas), the disenchantment of the world
(Weber)" (p. 70). "Flatland," Wilber explains, is
"the belief that only the Right-Hand world is real--the world of
matter/energy, empirically investigated by the human senses and their
extensions (telescopes, microscopes, photographic plates, etc.). All
of the interior worlds are reduced to, or experienced by
objective/external terms" (p. 70). Modernity "marked the
death of God, the death of the Goddess, the commodification of life,
the leveling of qualitative distinctions, the brutalities of
capitalism, the replacement of quality by quantity, the loss of value
and meaning, the fragmentation of the lifeworld, existential dread,
polluting industrialization, a rampant and vulgar materialism"
(p. 59). With the "thundering authority of science"
(p. 55), modernity denies the premodern belief that higher potentials
are available to any individual "who wishes to pursue a path of
awakening, liberation, or enlightenment" (p. 55), and reduces the
entire spectrum of consciousness and certainly its higher levels (soul
and spirit) . . . to permutations and combinations of matter and
bodies" (p. 64). However, Wilber is not without optimism.
"This is the dawning of the age of vision-logic," he writes,
"the rise of the network society, the postmodern, aperspectival,
internetted global village. Evolution in all forms has started to
become conscious of itself. Evolution, as Spirit-in-action, is
starting to awaken on a more collective scale" (pp. 193-4). A
truly integral psychology, Wilber says, would involve the best of
religious premodernity, scientific modernity, and postmodernity,
"all level, all quadrant" (p. 87). "The soul is not
running around out there in the physical world; it cannot be seen with
a microscope or telescope or photographic plates. If you want to see
the soul, you must turn within. You must develop your consciousness.
You must grow and evolve in your capacity to perceive the deeper
layers of your Self, which disclose higher levels of reality: the
great within that is beyond: the greater the depth, the higher the
reality" (p. 189). Integration is possible through authentic
spiritual practice. Authentic spirituality is "fostered by
diligent, sincere, prolonged spiritual practice . . . such as active
ritual, contemplative prayer, shamanic voyage, intensive meditation,
and so forth. All of those open one to a direct experience of
Spirit" (p. 136). In one of the book's many poetic passages,
Wilber writes, "looking deep within the mind, in the very most
interior part of the self, when the mind becomes very, very quiet, and
one listens very carefully, in that infinite Silence, the soul begins
to whisper, and its feather-soft voice takes one far beyond what the
mind could ever imagine, beyond anything rationality could possibly
tolerate, beyond anything logic can endure. In its gentle
whisperings, there are the faintest hints of infinite love, glimmers
of a life that time forgot, flashes of a bliss that must not be
mentioned, an infinite intersection where the mysteries of eternity
breathe life into mortal time, where suffering and pain have forgotten
how to pronounce their own names, the secret quiet intersection of
time and the very timeless, an intersection called the soul"
(p. 106). Wilber encourages us to beware of those spiritual paths
that involve simply changing your beliefs or ideas. "Authentic
spirituality is not about translating the world differently, but about
transforming your consciousness" (p. 136). Whether you are
interested in psychology or not, this book is filled with fascinating
insights into human consciousness. Although portions of Wilber's book
overlap in subject matter with his other books, this is not a
criticism. Rather, it is an indication, perhaps, of how
all-encompassing Wilber's philosophy is when applied to a variety of
subjects. This book left me in awe. G. Merritt
Rating:
Summary: a non-rider's guide to the equestrian arts
Review: Those who have read Wilber know that he writes with marvelous clarity. If every help manual in the world were written in such a style, we could all follow the directions, no doubt about it. Even granted the Wilberian preoccupation with spatial metaphors: up, down, around, transcend and include. What I question are the credentials re: "therapy." One could definitely make a case that many of the best "therapists" never get licensed at all and don't have impressive credentials. At the same time, however, it's strange to read suggestions about therapy or counseling without seeing any of the author's background in these disciplines. Was Wilber trained by therapists? Has he actually sat with clients and received supervision from therapists? Listened as a group of colleagues told him about his own countertransference issues? I don't know. Perhaps he has. I hope so. Because work on yourself isn't enough to make you knowledgeable about psychotherapy--just as meditations on the nature of horseness don't make you an expert on dressage. Wilber does some of the homework in terms of theory, but the real grist, the give-and-take of actual case histories, actual in-session learnings, knowledge of the analytic literature, accounts of the mistakes all trainees make in session, notes on dealing with fighting couples or self-destructive families: where is it? Because without it, degree or no degree, we are scarcely in a position to write adequately about psychotherapy, let alone recommend modifications to how it is performed by seasoned practitioners who every day get their hands and hearts dirty with genuine human conflict and tragedy, illness and death.
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