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), and 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). 

Art & Neuroscience> Brain. The perception of art by the brain. 

This is the approach that studies what happens to art when it enters the brain: how our brains reconstruct, assess, and fasten judgment to works of art. This includes not only bottom-up flows (sensory input moving higher and higher, up into the cortex), but also top-down flows (expectations influencing the viewing or listening process; jogged memories coloring our incoming perceptions). These flows are what the vast majority of current neuroaesthetics research is concerned with, and indeed what most books concerning art and the brain investigate. 

What this approach is most interested in is perception and analysis of basic aesthetic details: how we see color, detect motion, hear sound, recognize faces, feel rhythm, and what the peculiarities of each perceptual system tell us about the way the brain stitches these properties together. Then, at the next level, we can begin to untangle emotional and executive areas of the brain and their involvement in making and viewing art. Art’s effects can be correlated with the production of fear via the amygdala, pleasure in the nucleus accumbens, mystery/problem solving in the prefrontal cortex, disgust in the insula. Also involved at these higher levels is our empathetic connection to the work, be it a character in a film, or a melody in a song, and the top-down control it has over the perception of the work at hand. 

"The perception of art by the brain" and other related concepts are derived from non-scientific writings of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the Nobel Prize-winning “father of modern neuroscience.”

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