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What is the purpose of Design Psychology? 

 

The purpose of Design Psychology is to create environments that reflect the individual or group as well as encourage positive change.

What is Transpersonal Art therapy? 

A growing trend among academics is Transpersonal art therapy, which focuses on self-realization, dealing less with curing and more with healing. Curing without healing is a triumph; healing which may entail curing is a necessity.  The mind and body is more than just an extremely complex machine. We are also spiritual beings learning from life, searching for meaning in birth, death, and all that precedes and follows our life cycle.  The psycho-spiritual traditions of the world's cultures offer us the potential for new models of health and well-being. Comparative studies of spiritual and religious systems and transpersonal anthropology are an important part of  Transpersonal art therapy, because all significant events in life reflect a deeper sense of purpose, meaning and direction and the spiritual or transpersonal dimension of the human experience!

How does it work? 

Design Psychologists take clients through a series of carefully developed exercises which help them look inward for a place if inspiration. Usually done as part of the programming process, these exercises bring to the fore a vast personal store of experience and emotions that contribute to a client's vision of ideal place.

 

 

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Transpersonal psychology approaches to health, social sciences and practical arts.

Transpersonal psychology is sometimes confused with parapsychology, a mistake made due to the overlapping and unconventional research interests of both fields; parapsychology would however tend to focus more in its subject matter on the "psychic" and transpersonal psychology the "spiritual" (relatively crude though these categorizations are, it is still a useful distinction in this context). While parapsychology leans more towards traditional scientific epistemology (laboratory experiments, statistics, research on cognitive states), transpersonal psychology tends to be more closely related to the epistemology of the humanities and the hermeneutic disciplines (humanism, existentialism, phenomenology, anthropology), although it has always included contributions involving experimental and statistical research.

Transpersonal psychology is also sometimes confused with the New Age. Although the transpersonal perspective grew out of the human potential movement, a movement that many commentators associate with a broad conception of the New Age, it is still problematic to place transpersonal psychology within such a framework. Transpersonal psychology is an academic discipline, not a religious or spiritual movement, and many of the field's leading authors, among those Sovatsky (1998) and Rowan (1993), have addressed problematic aspects of New Age hermeneutics. Transpersonal Art is one of the disciplines considered by Boucovolas (1999), in listing how transpersonal psychology may relate to other areas of transpersonal study.

In writing about transpersonal art, Boucovolas begins by noting how, according to Breccia and also to the definitions employed by the International Transpersonal Association in 1971, transpersonal art may be understood as art work which draws upon important themes beyond the individual self, such as the transpersonal consciousness. This makes transpersonal art criticism germane to mystical approaches to creativity. Transpersonal art criticism, as Boucovolas notes, can be considered that which claims conventional art criticism has been too committed to stressing rational dimensions of art and has subsequently said little on art's spiritual dimensions, or as that which holds art work has a meaning beyond the individual person.

Transpersonal perspectives are also being applied to such diverse fields as psychology, psychiatry, anthropology, sociology, pharmacology, cross-cultural studies (Scotton, Chinen and Battista, 1996; Davis, 2003) and social work (Cowley & Derezotes, 1994). Currently, transpersonal psychology, especially the schools of Jungian and Archetypal psychology, is integrated, at least to some extent, into many psychology departments in American and European Universities. Transpersonal therapies are also included in many therapeutic practices.

Certain aspects of the psychology of Carl Jung, as well as movements such as music therapy and art therapy, may also relate to the field. Boucovolas' paper cites Breccia (1971) as an early example of transpersonal art, and claims that at the time his article appeared, philosopher Ken Wilber had made recent contributions to the field. More recently, the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, in 2005, Volume 37, launched a special edition devoted to the media, which contained articles on film criticism that can be related to this field. Reference: Boucovolas, M. (1999). Following the movement: from transpersonal psychology to a multidisciplinary transpersonal orientation. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 31 (1) 27-39 Wikipedia information about transpersonal art. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Transpersonal art" "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transpersonal_art

 

 

The History of Transpersonal Thinking.

 

Transpersonal psychology is one of the disciplines considered by Boucovolas (1999), in listing how transpersonal psychology may relate to other areas of transpersonal study. In writing about transpersonal art, Boucovolas begins by make note how, according to Breccia the definitions employed by the International Transpersonal Association in 1971, transpersonal art may be understood as art work draws upon important themes beyond the individual self, such as the transpersonal consciousness. This makes transpersonal art criticism germane to mystical approaches to creativity. Transpersonal art criticism, as Boucovolas notes, can be considered that which claims conventional art criticism has been too committed to stressing rational dimensions of art and has subsequently said little on art's spiritual dimensions, or as that which holds art work has a meaning beyond the individual person. Certain aspects of the psychology of Carl Jung, as well as movements such as music therapy and art therapy, may also relate to the field. Boucovolas' paper cites Breccia (1971) as an early example of transpersonal art, and claims that at the time his article appeared, philosopher Ken Wilber had made recent contributions to the field. 

 

More recently, the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, in 2005, Volume 37, launched a special edition devoted to the media, which contained articles on film criticism that can be related to this field. By common consent, the following branches are considered to be transpersonal psychological schools: Jungian psychology, depth psychology (more recently rephrased as the archetypal psychology of James Hillman), the spiritual psychology of Robert Sardello, (2001), psychosynthesis founded by Roberto Assagioli, and the theories of Abraham Maslow, Stanislav Grof, Ken Wilber, and Michael Washburn.

 

Amongst certain thinkers who are considered to have set the stage for transpersonal studies are William James, Sigmund Freud, Otto Rank, Carl Jung, Abraham Maslow, and Roberto Assagioli (Cowley & Derezotes, 1994; Miller, 1998; Davis, 2003).  Research by Vich (1988) suggests that earliest usage of the term "transpersonal" can be found in lecture notes which William James who had prepared for a semester at Harvard University in 1905-6.  A major motivating factor behind the initiative to establish this school of psychology was Abraham Maslow's who had already published work regarding human peak experiences. Maslow's work grew out of the humanistic movement of the 1960's, and gradually the term "transpersonal" was associated with a distinct school of psychology within the humanistic movement.

In 1969, Abraham Maslow, Stanislav Grof and Anthony Sutich were the initiators behind the publication of the first issue of the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, the leading academic journal in the field.  This was soon to be followed by the founding of the Association for Transpersonal Psychology (ATP) in 1972.  Past presidents of the association include Alyce Green, James Fadiman, Frances Vaughan, Arthur Hastings, Daniel Goleman, Rob Frager, Ronald Jue, Jeanne Achterberg and Dwight Judy.  In the 1980s and 90s the field developed through the works of such authors as Jean Houston, Stanislav Grof, Ken Wilber, Michael Washburn, Frances Vaughan, Roger Walsh, Stanley Krippner, Michael Murphy, Charles Tart, David Lukoff, Vasily Nalimov and Stuart Sovatsky. While Wilber has been considered an influential writer and theoretician in the field, he has since personally dissociated himself from the movement in favor of what he calls an integral approach.

Institutions of higher learning that have adopted insights from transpersonal psychology include The Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (US), California Institute of Integral Studies (US), John F. Kennedy University (US), Burlington College (US), Liverpool John Moores University (UK) and the University of Northampton (UK) Naropa University (CO).  There is also a strong connection between the transpersonal and the humanistic perspective. This is not surprising since transpersonal psychology started off within humanistic psychology (Aanstoos, Serlin & Greening, 2000). 

"Woody" began writing his manifesto on transpersonal art in 1988 while a partner in a corporate communications firm, CR2, then located in Rochester, NY. His concept during that time was derived from the school of Humanism as a derivative of the Futurist and DADA art movements. His goal then was to interject a new definition of "corporate art" as an adjective rather than a noun.   During those years, CR2's had birthed and redefining "corporate art" within the context of functional works designed to document the evolutionary process of mans relationship to this technologies who's role as art is to "sensitive" the populist to innovations with in the technology sector. "Woody" continues to promote the concept of art as healing in his personal artwork, as demonstrated with in these online galleries.

 

For your convenience additional web-links as well as  free downloadable PDF's regarding design psychology, art therapy and transpersonal art can found on the main galleries.

For all inquires please feel free to use this form to contact us 

 

Ms. Ann Reade-Moore 

gp2@besensitive.com

561.948.4091

 

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