First, the exceptional and fascinating nature of this topic has garnered the interest of different disciplines across the years (e.g., James, 1902 Maslow, 1962 Mezirow, 1978 Turner et al., 1986 Bruner, 1991 Calhoun and Tedeschi, 1995 Miller and C’de Baca, 2001 Brown, 2009 Stone, 2014 Gaggioli, 2015 Yaden et al., 2017 Kason, 2019), but this endeavor has yet to establish an integrated operational interdisciplinary definition of the term TEs. The complexity within the scientific investigation of TEs unfolds through three levels. However, given the consequences of personal transformation, understanding its underpinnings, its elicitors, as well as the boundaries of this process has become an urgent scientific issue. It is not unusual to read about people changing their lives, their jobs, divorcing, or moving away from home.Īnecdotally, many readers could identify with the above descriptions of transformative experiences (TEs), and several definitions and types of TEs already exist nevertheless, an interdisciplinary cross-domain operational definition of this complex phenomenon is yet lacking. For instance, suddenly and unexpectedly, the pandemic has prompted people to change their daily routine as well as their personal view of the world, themselves, and of others ( Marmarosh et al., 2020 Vos, 2021). The current COVID-19 pandemic could be taken as an example, in terms of events and consequences deriving from it that may be considered transformative. More recently, in 1999, the Wachowskis staged one of the most famous transformative moments in the history of cinema, within their masterpiece “The Matrix.” Red or blue pill? The main character, Neo, faced the choice of whether to continue living in his habitual illusory world, or to discover the true reality, thus, embarking upon a change with no way back.Īlthough these fascinating examples of transformation may suggest that this phenomenon could pertain more to the domain of art and fiction than to that of reality, evidence has shown that transformation – at least, several instances of it – may occur in any moment of an individual’s life (e.g., Pearsall, 2007). In Ovid’s Metamorphoses ( Fantham, 2004), which inspired Bernini, transformation was conceived as a sudden and unexpected phenomenon, which irreversibly changes the state of things. This examination, in turn, can help organize current research and theories, thus providing suggestions for operationalizing TEs as well as encouraging new interdisciplinary research endeavors.Īll the Facets of Transformative Experiences: Toward an Integrated PictureĪs early as 1622, an example of a memorable transformation can be identified, in the work of renowned sculptor Bernini, in his representation of the precise moment in which Daphne, while fleeing from Apollo, physically transformed herself into a laurel tree. Then, this preliminary analysis was integrated with an in-depth examination of redundancies and particularities across domains and disciplines, to provide an integrated theoretical framework of TEs and a preliminary interdisciplinary operational definition of TEs. Firstly, all the models and theories on TEs were reviewed to extract and analyze TEs’ main components emerging from different disciplines. The aim of this work is to provide an initial comprehensive interdisciplinary, cross-domain, up-to-date, and integrated overview on the concept of TEs. However, a consistent and clear understanding of this construct remains elusive. ![]() This attitude has engendered heterogeneous models to explain this phenomenon. The concept of transformative experience (TE) has been widely explored by several disciplines from philosophy to neurobiology, and in different domains, from the spiritual to the educational one. ![]() Istituto Auxologico Italiano, Milan, Italy
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