Psychology of the Future : Lessons from Modern Consciousness Research (Suny Series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology)
by Stanislav Grof

From the Back Cover
This accessible and comprehensive overview of the work of Stanislav Grof, one of the founders of transpersonal psychology, was specifically written to acquaint newcomers with his work. Serving as a summation of his career and previous works, this entirely new book is the source to introduce Grof's enormous contributions to the fields of psychiatry and psychology, especially his central concept of holotropic experience, where holotropic signifies "moving toward wholeness." Grof maintains that the current basic assumptions and concepts of psychology and psychiatry require a radical revision based on the intensive and systematic research of holotropic experience. He suggests that a radical inner transformation of humanity and a rise to a higher level of consciousness might be humankind's only real hope for the future. "This book is by a pioneering genius in consciousness research. It presents the full spectrum of Grof's ideas, from his earliest mappings of using LSD psychotherapy, to his clinical work with people facing death, to his more recent work with holotropic breathing, to his latest thoughts about the cosmological implications of consciousness research and the prospects for dealing with an emerging planetary crisis. Grof has always been one of the most original thinkers in the transpersonal field, and his creativity has kept pace with the maturity of his overall vision." - Michael Washburn, author of Transpersonal Psychology in Psychoanalytic Perspective "Grof offers an outstanding contribution to the ever-growing debate about the nature of human consciousness and about the place of humankind in the cosmos. If more psychiatrists could be persuaded that human consciousness transcends the limitations of the physical brain, and instead is but an aspect of what may best be described as 'cosmic consciousness,' we could not only expect treatment modalities to change, but we could also anticipate the possibility of culture-wide rethinking of the basic presuppositions of modern cosmology, the cosmology that grounds Western institutions, ideologies, and beliefs about the nature of personhood." - Michael E. Zimmerman, author of Contesting Earth's Future: Radical Ecology and Postmodernity

Spiritual Emergency : When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis (New Consciousness Reader) by Stanislav Grof (Editor), Christina Grof (Editor)

Stanislav Grof, M.D., is one of this century's pioneers in consciousness exploration. Born in Czechoslovakia, he came of age as an atheist in a Communist country, and was trained as a Freudian psychoanalyst. In 1954, Sandoz Pharmaceutical Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland sent a sample of a newly-developed, little-known substance called lysergic acid diethylamide to the lab where Grof worked, with a request that they study it and report back their findings.

Grof's experience with LSD caused him to substantially reconfigure his worldview. Since that time, he has devoted his professional life to the exploration of non-ordinary states of consciousness, first with psychedelic substances and later with non-pharmacological means.

For years, he performed legal, government-sponsored research with psychedelics, exploring ways to utilize these substances in a psychotherapeutic setting. His book LSD Psychotherapy grew out of his work. He is a former Chief of Psychiatric Research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, and is the author of over ninety professional articles and six books, including The Adventure of Self-Discovery and Beyond the Brain, and The Holotropic Mind. With his wife Christina, he co-authored The Stormy Search for the Self, and co-edited Spiritual Emergency.

His current work focuses on the use of non-drug methods for deep psycho-spiritual work. Stan and Christina Grof have developed a method called Holotropic Breathwork, which employs specialized breathing techniques, in conjunction with music designed to evoke deeper states.

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