Surrender to Another Person: The Case of a Spiritual Master
Open accessAbstract
The experience and posture of surrender has been espoused by religious traditions as key to spiritual life and development for millennia. Within psychology, on the other hand, surrender’s position has been likened to an “unwanted bastard child,” and its research has been neglected. Moreover, when occurring in the context of a relationship with another person, the terms “submission” and “obedience,” laden with negative connotations, have been commonly used. We propose that psychologically and spiritually developmental surrender is a common experience both when it occurs in relationship to “reality,” the Self or God, and in the context of relationship with another person, as in love, sex, patientship, followership, and discipleship. We focus on surrender to a spiritual master, which is in some respects the most extreme form of surrender to another person and the most challenging for the modern secular worldview to accept and suggest that, with all its complexity and potential pitfalls, it can be a powerful enabler and facilitator of the search for the sacred, self-transcendence, and spiritual integration.
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Cites
Religion, Spirituality, and Health: The Research and Clinical Implications
Koenig, H. G. (2012) · ISRN Psychiatry · doi:10.5402/2012/278730 · Cited by 2,423 · cited 1× · see citing works
“While currently there is no widely agreed on definition of spirituality (Koenig, 2012), and surveys of the use of the term in scholarly research showed a broad range of definitions (McCarroll et al., 2005), a common thread for many of them is the individual’s affinity to, relationship with or…”
Surrender to God and stress: A possible link between religiosity and health.
Clements, A. D., & Ermakova, A. V. (2012) · Psychology of Religion and Spirituality · doi:10.1037/a0025109 · Cited by 123 · see citing works
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K. Canby, N., R. Lindahl, J., J. Cooper, D., Joseph, N., Palitsky, R., & Britton, W. B. (2025) · Contemporary Buddhism · doi:10.1080/14639947.2025.2485677 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
“Additionally, some relationships may be structured around the expectation that the student completely and unconditionally trusts in and surrenders to the spiritual teacher as a catalyst for self-transformation (Capper 2004; Freimann and Mayseless 2020).”
Influential
- Authors
- Freimann, A., & Mayseless, O.
- Affiliations
- University of Haifa (IL)
- Corresponding author
- Freimann, Amir
- Venue
- Journal of Humanistic Psychology
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2020-12-16
- Volume
- 65
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 1163-1186
- ISSN
- 0022-1678 (ISSN-L)
- 1552-650X
- OpenAlex
- W3112475119
- Cited by
- 4
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2025: 2 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 1
- FWCI
- 0.28
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Humanistic Psychology (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Health › Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Jungian Analytical Psychology
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Paranormal Experiences and Beliefs
- Keywords
- surrender, spiritual masters, discipleship, spiritual development, self-transcendence, spiritual integration, obedience, followership, sacred, relationship with God, religious experience
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