About The Presentation

What is Transpersonal Psychology? How did it begin? How has it evolved, taught and practiced today? Our expert panelists will share their personal stories, observations and experiences… from being with movers and shakers at the birth of the transpersonal movement, to how it’s taught in academia and practiced in the field today.
Transpersonal psychology is sometimes referred to as the 4th “school” of psychology which reached beyond Abraham Maslow’s humanist framework by integrating the spiritual and transcendent aspects of the human experience with the framework of modern psychology. As a “spiritual psychology”, transpersonal is defined as “experiences in which the sense of identity or self extends beyond (trans) the individual or personal to encompass wider aspects of humankind, life, psyche or cosmos”.

From its beginnings in the late 60’s with Abraham Maslow, Stanislav Grof and Anthony Sutich, issues considered in transpersonal psychology today include spiritual self-development, self beyond the ego, peak experiences, mystical experiences, systemic trance, spiritual crises, spiritual evolution, religious conversion, altered states of consciousness, spiritual practices, and other sublime and/or unusually expanded experiences of living.

What has been your experience with the Transpersonal? Discussion and Q&A with the Interface community following the panel will be most welcomed.

About the Presenters

Deborah Bowman, Ph.D. Professor, Dean, Graduate School of Counseling and Psychology, Naropa University Boulder. Ph.D., Clinical Psychology, Union Institute and University, Certificate Gestalt Therapy, Gestalt Institute of the Rockies, BA Speech Communications and Human Relations, Kansas University.

Deborah is the founder of the Transpersonal Counseling Psychology and the Wilderness Therapy programs at Naropa University. She is a licensed psychologist and certified Gestalt therapist and also a trainer with the Boulder Psychotherapy Institute, offering post graduate education and supervision. Deborah has served as president of Boulder Graduate School, worked for Boulder County Hospice and Boulder County Social Services, and instructed with the National Outdoor Leadership School. She is a meditation instructor with Nalandabodhi Boulder. Deborah is author of The Female Buddha: Discovering the Heart of Liberation and Love, The Luminous Buddha: Images and Words and co-author of When Your Spouse Comes Out, published by the GLBT Family Series with Haworth Press.

Deborah’s interests in transpersonal began in 1985 when she began working with a Jungian oriented psychotherapist and later started her dissertation in 1987 on Jung’s dream painting process.  Founding the Transpersonal Counseling Psychology program at Naropa University accelerated her studies as she became responsible for guiding the program as chair and taught Transpersonal Psychology for many years.  Angeles Arrien was Deborah’s most significant transpersonal mentor helping her to also formulate new programming at Naropa in conjunction with the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in California.

Dominie Cappadonna, PhD, CT received her Doctorate in Transpersonal Psychology in 1976, and offers a post-doctoral practice as a Transpersonal psychotherapist, Ecopsychologist and Death Awareness Educator under her work called, “Radiant Living~Luminous Dying®: Let your Life Shine!

Her interests in transpersonal began by bearing witness with the pregnancy and tending the birth and first steps of the transpersonal movement in the early 70’s.
At the time she worked for the Association of Humanistic Psychology and served on the administrative board for HPI-Saybrooke’s Transpersonal doctoral program, and received her doctorate in the first graduating class. She studied with humanistic, Jungian, transpersonal teachers and Buddhist masters who infused the field with a variety of views and practices. She taught Transpersonal Psychology in universities and as a psychotherapist loves to explore with clients how to access within a deep resource of undeniable, unsurpassable wisdom and guidance, as key to a liberated life.

Barry Erdman, LCSW, DCSW,  Private Psychotherapy Practice, Boulder, Interface Coordinator, Master’s of Social Work, University of Denver, 1983.

Barry is a licensed clinical social worker and diplomate of clinical social work in private practice since 1979. He has been the coordinate for Interface for more than 30 years.

His interests in all things transpersonal began as an undergraduate psychology student at Brooklyn College NY, in the early 1970’s when he volunteered at Maimonides Medical Center sleep lab, devoted to parapsychology experiments studying dreams and telepathy under psychiatrist Montgue Ullman and Dr. Stanley Krippner. During that period, he also pursued his study and practice of meditation and yoga, eastern psychology and spiritual communities. In the summer of 1974, he attended the start up of Naropa Institute in Boulder, which then led to a 2.5 year solo, world wide spiritual pilgrimage with a focus on both Vedanta Hinduism and Theravadin Buddhist practices. In 1980-81 he worked at the Association for Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, CA. His transpersonal interests continued in the 80’s with his investigation of clinical hypnosis, eastern psychology and mystical experience. He has been coordinator for Interface since the mid 80’s, and continues to incorporate transpersonal perspectives as part of his psychotherapy practice with adults, couples and families.

Additional Resources