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Maslow espoused a philosophy of science that set the stage for the development of humanistic and transpersonal psychology. He studied persons he considered self-actualized and described the spiritual values, beliefs, and actions of such individuals. He concluded that there is an inherently spiritual dimension to human nature and explicated a hierarchy of motivations that completes itself in spiritual self-realization. Maslow proposed the term transpersonal and addressed many of the basic concepts of the field. (Battista, 1996, p. 52)
Higher potentials of human nature recognized. Maslow’s studies on metamotivation, peak-experiences, and self-actualization suggested the possibility of alternate modes of experience and higher potentials of human nature that could form the basis of a new psychology that was “trans-humanistic” (Maslow, 1969a). Based on his study of “peak experiences” Maslow came to propose a model of human personality “beyond self-actualization.” Peak experiences once stabilized are one path to higher personality development,
Peak experiences can occur to individuals at almost any stage of development…. Nonetheless, the way in which those states or realms are experienced and interpreted depends to some degree on the stage of development of the person having the peak experience…. In order for higher development to occur, those temporary states must become permanent traits. Higher development involves, in part, the conversion of altered states of consciousness into permanent realization (say, for example, through the practice of meditation techniques). (Wilber, 2000b, pp. 14-15)
Humanistic psychology as transitional to a “higher” Transpersonal psychology. Abraham H. Maslow, a co-founder of both humanistic and transpersonal psychology, soon came to consider “Humanistic, Third Force Psychology to be transitional, a preparation for a still ‘higher’ Fourth Psychology, transpersonal, transhuman, centered in the cosmos rather than in human needs and interest, going beyond humanness, identity, self-actualization, and the like” (Maslow, 1968, pp. iii-iv).
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Toward a psychology of being. In the preface to the second edition of Toward a Psychology of Being published in 1968, Maslow wrote:
These new developments may very well offer a tangible, usable, effective satisfaction of the ‘frustrated idealism’ of many quietly desperate people, especially young people. These psychologies give promise of developing into the life-philosophy, the religion-surrogate, the value-system, and the life-program that these people have been missing. Without the transcendent and the transpersonal, we get sick, violent, and nihilistic, or else hopeless and apathetic. We need something ‘bigger than we are’ to be awed by and to commit ourselves to in a new, naturalistic, empirical, non-churchly sense, perhaps as Thoreau and Whitman, William James and John Dewey did. (Maslow, 1968, pp. iii-iv)
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Anthony J. Sutich (1907-1976). Abraham Maslow did not found humanistic or transpersonal psychology alone. He had a great deal of help, notably from his long-time friend Anthony (Tony) Sutich. Sutich (1976) was a remarkable individual who played a pioneering role in the founding of both humanistic and transpersonal psychology. Transpersonal psychologist James Fadiman (1999) describes this unsung and unknown hero of the transpersonal revolution in his “irreverent history” of transpersonal psychology.
William James is well known; he is a hero we share with mainstream psychology, but Tony Sutich is uniquely our own…Tony created two of the four major schools of psychology that exist in the world – while lying in a slant bed with muscles that worked only half his face and one hand, enough so he could pull a cord to turn his phone on and off. He had been disabled by arthritis from age 18, finishing his education and getting his license to practice clinical psychology at a time when such a feat was close to impossible. (Fadiman, 1999, p. 5)
What to call the “Fourth” Force of psychology? Shortly after becoming founding editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology and one of the founders of the Association for Humanistic Psychology in 1961 - which included notable future proponents of transpersonal psychology such as James Fadiman, Sidney Jouard, Abraham Maslow, Michael Murphy, and Miles Vich - Anthony Sutich became interested in developing a “psychology of mysticism, modified by humanistic considerations and the Western attitude of empiricism” (Sutich, 1976, p. 8) and was looking for a name for the newer development of psychology that would expand the humanistic orientation
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“Transhumanistic” is first proposed. In conversations with fellow humanistic psychologists Miles Vich and Abraham Maslow, a term suggested by Sir Julian Huxley, “transhumanistic,” was proposed. This was the term that Maslow (1969a) used in his first public reference to the “Fourth Force” in psychology in a lecture presented at the San Francisco Unitarian Church on September 14, 1967.
“Transpersonal” is decided upon. A name change was soon to occur, however. In a later letter written to Anthony Sutich in February 1968, Abraham Maslow refers to a meeting with Stanislav Grof who had earlier used the word “transpersonal” in a lecture given September 21, 1967 in Berkeley in connection with the terms “supra-individual” and “death and rebirth of the ego”:
The main reason I am writing is that in the course of our conversations we thought of using the word “transpersonal” instead of the clumsier word “transhumanistic” or “transhuman.” The more I think of it, the more the word says what we are all trying to say, that is, beyond individuality, beyond development of the individual person into something which is more inclusive than the individual person, or which is bigger than he is. What do you think? (Sutich, 1976, p. 16)
In later correspondences among Anthony Sutich, Abraham Maslow, Viktor Frankl, James Fadiman, and Stanislav Grof, the term “transpersonal” was agreed upon to describe the new movement.
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