Journal of Humanistic Psychology

Before gaining notoriety as a promoter of the psychedelic drug experience, Timothy Leary established impressive credentials in the field of interpersonal psychology and was developing a humanistic form of psychotherapy he called "existential-transactional." This article plots the evolution of his work in these areas, from publication of his classic Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality (1957), based on research conducted at Kaiser Foundation Hospital from 1950 to 1956, through his experiments with humanistic psychotherapy techniques and psychedelics at Harvard University, where he taught graduate student seminars from 1960 to 1963. Emphasis is placed on existential-transactional psychology, which he formulated, prior to accepting the Harvard position, in The Existential Transaction, a treatise that enjoyed extremely limited circulation among Harvard colleagues and that never was formally published. It urged psychologists to work in "real life situations... observing behavior in the trenches" without imposing "a medical or any other model" on their subjects, and to be willing to "get involved, engaged in the events they're studying." Leary's Harvard research using psychedelic drugs to change behavior patterns is discussed as an example of this theory's application. He is quoted as saying his subsequent expulsion from Harvard in 1963 and emergence as a public figure allowed him and fellow believers in the theory "to expand... [their] experimental design from selected laboratory samples of hundreds to field studies involving millions." It is reported that Leary's bibliographers have so far been unable to locate a copy of The Existential Transaction.

During part of the time that the author taught graduate student seminars in psychology at Harvard University from 1960 to 1963, he traveled weekly to a Catholic orphanage in New Bedford, Massachusetts. There, he and graduate students worked with social workers and nuns to develop a program in which older children learned to help younger children. Consequently, children of all ages took more responsibility for running the school and planning their lives. This report on the program, presented at the Northeast Regional Conference of the American Public Welfare Association, Boston, in September 1961, has never before been published. It demonstrates the author's "existential-transactional" theory of behavior change, in which transactional means that the therapist must abandon the role of expert and openly collaborate with the client in figuring out a solution to his or her problems. Existential means that the therapist must leave the safety of the consulting room and get out there in the field where the client is experiencing unique problems and will be the one to solve those problems, using flexible concepts and methods growing out of the unique, changing situation. The therapist's role is essentially that of a coach in a game where the star player is the client. The coach can help, can point out mistakes, can share wisdom. But, in the last analysis, the person who does the job is the one out there in the field. This article illustrates how clients can be helped to overcome helplessness by stimulating them to action rather than by "doing something to" them.

This article describes a personal experience of altered consciousness as a result of ingesting "magic mushrooms" (psilocybin). It also briefly notes the reactions of Fred Skinner and Abraham Maslow to a report to them of this experience made by the author when he was a graduate student 30 years ago. Familiarity with the effects of hallucinogens may facilitate communication with terminally ill individuals, and such substances may serve as efficacious tools for actualizing visionary potential.

This essay presents a brief summary of the great chain of being, as historically conceived and as it is reappearing in modern evolutionary and system theories. It particularly addresses the misconception that the notion of "hierarchy" is abstract and linear and reiterates Arthur Koestler's point that "hierarchy," which is a holistic concept of fields within fields, really ought to be called "holoarchy." The implications for psychology of the great holoarchy of being are briefly addressed, and the comprehensive nature of the great chain is related to various modern schools of psychology.

Participant observation and open-ended interviews with Indian and English elderly who were recognized as spiritually mature provided data for evaluating Washburn's claim that a period of egoic regression precedes movement to the transpersonal level. Hermeneutical analysis of interview protocols and research notes indicated that half of those nominated in each sample had reached the transpersonal level, but of these, only about half gave indications of having undergone a regressive transition period. On the basis of this, and other internal evidence, support was found for Wilber's theory. Cross-cultural similarities at the higher levels of spiritual development are seen as providing support for the claims of the perennial philosophy.

This article introduces Vasily Nalimov, humanist, philosopher, and visionary, and Zhanna Drogalina Nalimov, co-worker and researcher, as individuals whose concepts regarding human consciousness are both provocative and exciting. Following his years in Soviet labor camps and labeled "an enemy of the people," Nalimov found that his ideas were better received in the West than in his own country. The author met the Nalimovs in 1991 when they visited Princeton University, and she was impressed not only by their vast knowledge and experience in the field of human consciousness research but also by the spiritual bond that exists between them. Later that year, she was honored to be invited to interview Nalimov in their Moscow home: that interview, plus Vasily's prodigious writings, showed her a man who sees far beyond his own time. Nalimov's concepts of meaning and consciousness, which will probably not be fully realized until well into the next century, encompass topics as varied as language, mathematics, and philosophy.

This article reports research in "Walking in Your Shoes," an empathic way of deeply relating to one another. Stating one's intention to be another person and walking with that intention, one is able to experience a subject's energetic style, how he or she is in the world, and what abilities are used to cope. The awarenesses that arise as one walks with no conscious intention of imitating or calling on one's cognitive knowledge about the person can be used to glean information otherwise not available to one's consciousness. In the walking, one experiences a shift in awareness and, continuing to walk, shares that new awareness with the subject. Later, one notices his or her attention shifting to the subjects more repressed and constricted faculties. People who have been "walked" frequently report that they have never before felt so understood and accepted. The Buddhist, existential-phenomenological, and self psychology premises underlying the walking are discussed.