Course Catalog:
Global Doctorate Programs
Listed below are brief descriptions of courses offered at the Institute. Not all courses are offered in an annual enrollment cycle nor is every course available in each program.
New courses may be developed to meet changing curricular requirements. The Institute reserves the right to substitute an equivalent course for any course listed in any curriculum. Some courses which offer special topics may be repeated for credit.
For a list of all classes for all programs, click here.
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To see all classes as listed online, click here.
Transpersonal Approaches to Creative Expression
This course explores archetypal themes, psychospiritual development, and healing processes through creative expression and self-reflection. The student will participate in a variety of media including clay, the visual arts, creative writing, collage, drama, and movement: letting the creative process inform their inner processes.
Creative Expression Portfolio
The creative expression portfolio is developed to explore how creative process informs the student over time. Under the guidance of the Creative Expression mentor, the student will develop a portfolio of work and a written response to this work that reflects a multi-media approach to creative expression, and highlights personal journey and insights throughout the certificate year. It is designed to deepen one's understanding of the power of creative process.
Dreams, Intuition, and ESP
Transpersonal processes such as dreamwork enhance personal growth and sometimes change attitudes. This course is designed to enhance understanding of dreams, ESP, and intuition in order to deepen understanding of self and others.
Mind/Body Interventions in Health and Medicine
This course explores a variety of approaches in alternative healing and psychoneuroimmunology studies.
Spiritual Perspectives
This experiential course explores psychological, mythical, and spiritual perspectives of personal growth and development. It includes readings, activities, and explorations that help students to reflect deeply on how each moment is a spiritual moment. Exercises are included that stimulate application of principles learned.
Spiritual Psychology Application Project
Under the guidance of the faculty mentor, student designs and completes a project in spiritual direction.
Archetypes, Myths, and Symbols
This course explores archetypes, myths, and symbols as living energies that transcend time and culture. Students will reflect both personally and conceptually on themes from several different cultures, and express one's insights in writing and symbolic art.
Women's Mysteries, Women's Wisdom
This course explores psychological and spiritual developmental themes in women's lives, including childhood experiences of the sacred, the search for identity, resacralization of the female body, and life-long initiations into women's wisdom from menarche to menopause.
Psychology of Sufism
An introduction to classical Sufism, its teachings of inner life development and practices. This course includes sections on Sufi stories and dreamwork as well as the role of women.
Psychology of Christian Mysticism
This course provides a rich and fertile experience of meditative prayer and psychology of inner life of the Christian mystic. It focuses on themes of inner transformation and purification, death and resurrection, and a creative life of service.
Psychology of Shamanism
This course teaches tools for self-growth and explores the universal processes that are inherent to indigenous peoples and shamanic traditions. Students discover how these principles appear in modern times and will work with journeying and soul retrieval. This is an experiential course that invites exploration of creativity and connection to Earth.
Spiritual Dimensions of Human Behavior: Lifespan and Aging
This course explores spiritual dimensions of human development across lifespan, including the aging process. It emphasizes existing maps, theories, patterns, and emergence of spiritual and transpersonal development.
Spiritual Dimensions of Human Behavior: Spiritual Wholeness Across the Lifespan
This course presents a psychospiritual approach to the questions of spiritual life development and explores how psychospiritual evolution informs all aspects and stages of our personal and professional lives throughout our lifespan. In this course, students will explore universal themes that transcend specific spiritual traditions and apply them personally as a spiritual follower and professionally as a spiritual guide.
Psychology of the Body
This course provides an experiential, historical, and theoretical base for body psychology and the field of body psychotherapy. Through readings and experiential activities, students will explore the mind/body split and find ways to move toward deeper integration of mind, body, and spirit. Students will further reflect upon their personal lifestyle, and implement strategies for continued healthy living.
Health Psychology
This course presents an overview of optimal health and well-being. Students understand how physical health is impacted by psychological states.
Feminine in World Spiritual Traditions
This course explores the common historical and cultural patterns and cross-cultural images of the feminine in the world's spiritual traditions.
Introduction to Transformational Coaching
Coaching as a life transformational tool.
Introduction to Transpersonal Theory
This course introduces theories and concepts of transpersonal psychology. Students will learn about the origins of transpersonal psychology, the contributors to the field, the research that is being conducted, and the applications of transpersonal studies to personal growth, counseling, education, society, and human welfare.
Creative Problem Solving
Designed to challenge preconceptions, this course evokes innate problem-solving capacities and offers experience with a variety of tools for increasing effective problem-solving ability through creative means.
Basic Concepts of Jungian Psychology
This course teaches Jung's unique insight into the nature of the psyche and the creative wisdom of its archetypal dimension. Through academic inquiry as well as creative processes such as painting, moving, dream work and active imagination, students will learn about and engage in the body-mind-spirit journey towards wholeness from Jung's perspective. Students will explore the experience of human individuality as the paradoxical mystery at the core of one's being in which the unique and the universal merge.
Self-Reflection Paper
The self-evaluation paper is designed to help the student integrate learning throughout the first year both professionally and personally. The paper is written at the end of Certificate and Ph.D. Year 1 by all students, and is presented for peer review at the closing seminar.
Independent Study: Certificate Level
In consultation with the faculty mentor and Global Programs Dean, students may in some cases substitute independent study for subject areas not available through Global Programs course material. (3.0 units maximum)
Application and Integration of Transpersonal Theory Project
Students may choose to combine the Application Project and Integration Paper into a longer work with a single focus that also integrates transpersonal theory. This opportunity may be especially appealing to students wanting to begin a major writing project.
Creative Approaches to Scholarly Writing
This course will introduce students to their "Inner Author," instilling self-confidence and enthusiasm for writing in general, for scholarly writing in particular, and for the benefits of peer review. After reading the works of contemporary authors in several fields, students will use what they have learned in their own work, applying their innate creativity and passion to the work.
Approaches to Transpersonal Psychotherapy
This course provides a basic overview of the field of transpersonal psychotherapy. Although there are many different theories and approaches to transpersonal psychotherapy, they all consider spirituality to be intrinsic to psychological healing and maturity. Transpersonal Psychotherapy is the melding of the world wisdoms with psychology. This course explores various approaches to transpersonal psychotherapy, and requires that you consider questions about the integration of psychotherapy and spirituality and the nature of the spirit, psyche, and diverse ways of being in the world. In this course you will explore one theory of transpersonal psychotherapy in depth and cultivate the transpersonal quality of empathic holding.
Women's Psycho-Spiritual Development
Featuring the creative work of Jungian Dr. Marion Woodman, women's psycho-spiritual development is explored focusing on the symbols, issues and challenges particular to women.
A Transpersonal Approach to Family Systems
This course is an exploration and application of a family systems theory, providing students with an opportunity to search for patterns in their own family history through the generations. The transpersonal tools of dreamwork and journaling will further the exploration. Feminist revisions of family systems theory are presented as well.
Parapsychology
This course explores what one has learned, through careful scientific research, about the paranormal processes of telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and psychokinesis, as well as evidence bearing on the possibility of survival of physical death. Theories, implications, and possible applications of these findings are discussed--with emphasis on their relevance to human interconnectedness, healing, consciousness, and other transpersonal concerns.
Transformational Coaching Process
The course will be informational, didactic, and experiential. Students will gain a solid foundation in the coaching process, have an opportunity for extensive practice, and be given feedback about coaching skill. The course is taken in conjunction with practicum in Transformational Coaching.
Practicum in Transformational Coaching
Students will work with others to master the International Coaching Federation (ICF) core Competencies that were discussed previously. This course focuses on specific coaching issues that arise through the process of coaching. Students will consider in more depth the underpinnings of the coach’s issues, as well as clients’ survival strategies and mechanisms, which act as obstacles to their desired results.
Professional Application of Transformative Coaching
This course will help students to bridge previously acquired specialized knowledge and skills with transpersonal coaching strategies. A Faculty Mentor who understands the nuances of coaching will guide students in creating a plan for the development of a specialized transformational coaching practice.
Transpersonal Discipline and Practice (Second Year Level)
The transpersonal discipline and practice is designed as an experiential course to help students integrate transpersonal practice more fully into life. It is a practicum that uses self-observation and reporting in the pursuit of a spiritual discipline, along with the theoretical and psychological basis for the practice.
Cross Cultural Values and Transpersonal Experiences
This course explores the relationship between self knowledge and change, healing and disease, relationships, and spirituality. It addresses the values and experiences that transcend cultural and national boundaries, describing underlying human nature.
A Transpersonal Investigation into Death and Grief
This course begins to prepare us for the moment of death by examining how the deaths of others have informed and shaped our lives; by inviting an examination of our current relationship to grief and the inevitability of death; and by looking at the possibilities of living consciously up to and through our final breath.
Beginning Practicum
This course introduces the basic concepts of social activism and the bridging of transpersonal theory and community involvement. Students will write a proposal for involvement in a brief practicum site, participate in a visit to the proposed practicum site, and provide reflection upon the experience.
Transpersonal Leadership
This course will delve into the characteristics of personal philosophies held by transpersonal leaders, peer evaluation of leadership approaches, and the development and presentation of models of potential leadership held within the scope of transpersonal psychology. The aim of transpersonal leadership is to create a deep ecological wisdom in recognition and in understanding of the diverse human potentials held within the community of potential.
Spiritual and Social Applications of Transpersonal Principles
Our course will explore the transformative power of the American Civil Rights Movement with attention to the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the women and men who worked with him to turn vision into action for positive social change. We will reflect on the observation by William James that, "The Community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The Impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community."
Introduction to Research Methods and Design
This course introduces a framework, a process, and compositional approaches for understanding research methodologies and design for the discipline of transpersonal psychology. Unique to this course is the comparison of three approaches to transpersonal inquiry: quantitative–including an introduction to descriptive statistics; qualitative–including an introduction to transpersonal approaches to naturalistic inquiry; and mixed methods approaches–including an introduction to integral inquiry. One of the primary purposes of the course is to lead the student toward the completion of their research proposal by way of exploring the design process for the dissertation project.
Psychology of States of Consciousness
This course explores alternative ways of transpersonal knowing, issues in the definition and functional valuation of altered states, as well as criteria for the correlation and comparison of these states cross-culturally.
Critical Thinking and Scholarly Writing in Transpersonal Psychology
This course is designed to enhance student's critical thinking skills and scholarly writing ability. Students will be asked to read about and reflect on strategies that enhance critical thinking and analyze scholarly papers and methods using these skills. The course also supports initial planning for the Transpersonal Application/Integration Paper. This course will help the student write more authentically, and, hopefully, to develop a love for the writing process. Students will participate in a daily writing practice.
Ecopsychology and Deep Ecology
Ecopsychology combines an understanding of how the psyche is influenced by the environment, with how psychological orientation influences interaction with the environment. Deep ecology extends that sense to include how people can extend an identification with the environment, in order to work toward planetary healing.
Transpersonal Ecology
Transpersonal Ecology explores the connection of Nature and the Sacred. Exploring the ways that transpersonal experiences in nature and with nature both expand the human, and help to reweave our sacred connection in the world. Transpersonal ecology explores how our spirituality interfaces with the world ecological crisis. Prerequisite is course 8650.
Theories of Personality
Theories of Personality lays the foundation for personality theory, psychological inquiry, and the understanding of psychological concepts. This experiential course surveys eastern, indigenous, ecological, and western perspectives on being human and emphasizes an integration of personality theories and spiritual practices as preparation for identifying one's own beliefs about human development.
Independent Study (Second Year Level)
In consultation with the faculty mentor and the Global Ph.D. Program Chair, the student may in some cases substitute independent study for subject areas not available through Global Programs course material.
Independent Study
In consultation with the faculty mentor and the Global Programs Dean, the student may in some cases substitute independent study for subject areas not available through Global Programs course material.
Biological Dimensions: Neuropsychology
This course is a review of the biological foundations of consciousness and behavior, including the latest brain research, psychoneuroimmunology, clinical applications and transpersonal approaches to stress prevention.
Professional Ethics
This course is an introduction to the fundamental issues in psychology with focus on the moral philosophy underlying legal and ethical principles. There is an exploration of the practical application of these principles to psychotherapy, research, education, and other areas of practice.
Advanced Practicum I
This course is designed to provide students with an opportunity to apply transpersonal guiding principles and methods to living systems and application areas that include: individual, group, community, and global. The practicum experience should be chosen which can help inform and prepare the student for future professional work or provide new tools for use in the student's present professional work.
Advanced Practicum II
This course is designed to provide students with an opportunity to apply transpersonal guiding principles and methods to living systems and application areas that include: individual, group, community, and global. The practicum experience should be chosen which can help inform and prepare the student for future professional work or provide new tools for use in the student's present professional work.
Advanced Practicum III
This course is designed to provide students with an opportunity to apply transpersonal guiding principles and methods to living systems and application areas that include: individual, group, community, and global. The practicum experience should be chosen which can help inform and prepare the student for future professional work or provide new tools for use in the student's present professional work.
Ignatian Spirituality
This course explores the spirituality and spiritual practice of St. Ignatius of Loyola, a 16th century soldier turned Christian mystic, and founder of the religious order known as the Society of Jesus (“the Jesuits”). The course also considers transpersonal psychological constructs that underlie the spirituality of St. Ignatius, such as the role of memory, imagination, intellect, and desire in prayer and meditation; the role of affect in the process of spiritual discernment and decision-making; and Ignatius’s notion of the intimate interpersonal quality of communion with the divine.
Eastern Meditation Practices
This course in Eastern Meditation Practices explores the theoretical and experiential issues in Buddhist and Hindu meditation practices. In this course we will discuss the nature of meditation practices of mindfulness, awareness, insight, equanimity, yoga, loving kindness and their relationship to health and healing. In addition to the required readings, primary as well as secondary, students will be asked and encouraged to self-reflect on their own practice(s) and bring their experiential knowledge to on-line discussions.
Introduction to Integral Yoga and Psychology
This introductory online course will begin with a brief introduction to the lives, work and world views of the founders of integral yoga, Sri Aurobindo and Mother Mirra and their principal exponent in the U.S., Haridas Chaudhuri. After a brief introduction to the meaning, goal and various types of yoga, we will examine the key elements of integral yoga, philosophy, and their implication for integral psychology. In addition, principal tenets and a number of central concepts of integral psychology will be explored to present the basic premises underlying transformation of ego, self, personality, and consciousness in the process of integral self-realization.
Doctoral Seminar I
Seminars offer a variety of transpersonal approaches to personal and professional growth in a group setting, providing the opportunity for students to meet with ITP faculty. This seminar is taken at the beginning of Ph.D. Year 1 and is required for all students.
Doctoral Seminar II
Seminars offer a variety of transpersonal approaches to personal and professional growth in a group setting, providing the opportunity for students to meet in seminar settings with Institute faculty. The advanced standing students will also be introduced to the online classes at seminars.
Doctoral Seminar III
Seminars offer a variety of transpersonal approaches to personal and professional growth in a group setting, providing the opportunity for students to meet in seminar settings with Institute faculty. The advanced standing students will also be introduced to the online classes at seminars.
Doctoral Seminar IV
Seminars offer a variety of transpersonal approaches to personal and professional growth in a group setting, providing the opportunity for students to meet in seminar settings with Institute faculty. The advanced standing students will also be introduced to the online classes at seminars.
Doctoral Seminar V
Seminars offer a variety of transpersonal approaches to personal and professional growth in a group setting, providing the opportunity for students to meet in seminar settings with Institute faculty. The advanced standing students will also be introduced to the online classes at seminars.
Doctoral Seminar VI
Seminars offer a variety of transpersonal approaches to personal and professional growth in a group setting, providing the opportunity for students to meet in seminar settings with Institute faculty. The advanced standing students will also be introduced to the online classes at seminars.
Doctoral Seminar VII
Seminars offer a variety of transpersonal approaches to personal and professional growth in a group setting, providing the opportunity for students to meet in seminar settings with Institute faculty. The advanced standing students will also be introduced to the online classes at seminars.
Doctoral Seminar VIII
Seminars offer a variety of transpersonal approaches to personal and professional growth in a group setting, providing the opportunity for students to meet in seminar settings with Institute faculty. The advanced standing students will also be introduced to the online classes at seminars.
Doctoral Seminar IX
Seminars offer a variety of transpersonal approaches to personal and professional growth in a group setting, providing the opportunity for students to meet in seminar settings with Institute faculty. The advanced standing students will also be introduced to the online classes at seminars.
Doctoral Seminar Elective
Global doctoral students who choose to attend an additional seminar after completing the required seminars register using this course number.
Integral Research Skills: Advanced Topics in Transpersonal Psychology
In this course, students will learn to apply the integral research skills (including working with intentions, quieting and slowing, playing, focusing attention, auditory skills, visual skills, kinesthetic skills, proprioceptive skills, direct knowing and intuition, and accessing unconscious processes and materials) to research. Students are expected to evaluate their own means of integral knowing and apply them directly to research.
Doctoral Qualifying Paper (DQP)
A 25 to 40 page paper in which the student demonstrates the scholarly and professional writing skills necessary to advance to the more research-oriented portion of the doctoral program. Each paper is read by one or more members of the Institute's faculty.
Qualitative Research Methods
Qualitative methods provide means to study the qualities, features and narratives of human experiences. For the transpersonal researcher, qualitative methods provide valuable theoretical frameworks and procedures for conducting research on psycho-spiritual-somatic development and transformation. The course explores case study, phenomenological, heuristic/intuitive, narrative/discourse and feminist/cultural approaches to research.
Quantitative Research Methods and Statistics
This course familiarizes students with quantitative approaches to research emphasizing both traditional and non-traditional methods to facilitate a clear understanding of the major concepts of quantitative research and statistics.
Doctoral Research and Process: Mini-Proposal
The student learns about the ITP dissertation process, the "inner and outer dissertations," and the expected content and format of proposals and dissertations. The student focuses the research topic, questions, hypotheses, and methods, and prepares a preliminary proposal ("mini-proposal"). Extensive structure, support, and feedback are provided for this work.
Technical Approaches to Online Learning
This course focuses on the variety of technological tools (in addition to the Institute's online learning management system) used in online education, as well as the various pedagogies that might use these tools. In particular, Web 2.0 elements including WIKIs, podcasting, and related online collaborative community endeavors will be covered. Coverage of this material facilitates further in-depth knowledge and skill-based experience with online learning, encouraging development into the online teaching arena
Feminist Approaches to Transpersonal Psychology
You will study transpersonal feminist and womanist texts to arrive at a research theory and approach that furthers the pursuit of social justice. At the same time, you will pursue creative, communal, and/or body-mind transpersonal practices that help produce and ground your insights. The body-mind practice, Focusing, which also furthers creativity—allowing you to write, paint, or dance from the felt sense—will be taught in early sessions. All genders are welcome and promise to contribute to a rich dialog.
Transpersonal Approaches to Diversity
This course focuses on the diversity of philosophy within transpersonal theory, introduces aspects of cultural relativism, and social activism, and invites the students to revision their own perspectives on transpersonal psychology to include diverse personal aspects of culture, race/ethnicity, religion, sex/gender, sexual orientation, ability, region, nationality, etc.
Research Specialization: Dissertation Seminar
Support and assistance for students in the process of researching and writing dissertations.
History and Systems of Psychology
The first course in a three-part sequence examines foundational systems in classical psychology, covering such theorists as Freud, the Object and Self object psychologists, Jung, and the humanistic and transpersonal psychology theorists. Psychological premises are re-examined in the light of the historical arc of science, culminating in the New Physics, as well as in the light of Eastern approaches to self, society and spirit.
Self, Collective, and Global Psychologies
The second course in a three-part sequence highlights the social bases of psychology-the psychospiritual health of the individual, the family, religious institutions, the body politic and the planet. Gender and multi-cultural perspectives are brought to bear.
Cognition and Affect: Contemporary and Wisdom Psychologies
The third course in a three-part sequence surveys theorists of cognition and affect, whether in the contemporary psychological mode or the indigenous, Middle Eastern, and Far Eastern modes. It utilizes transpersonal/ integral theorists who establish an overview of various psychological and spiritual approaches-such as Fritjof Capra or Frances Vaughan-to bring organization to the considerable array of knowledge accumulated throughout this three-course sequence.
Jungian Psychology
This course will cover six aspects of C.G. Jung's contribution to analytical psychology: 1) Personality Theory, 2) the depths of the Collective Unconscious, 3) the Archetypes as a template to organize an individual's interaction with the world, 4) Dreams, 5) Visions and 6) Mandalas. Continual posting, Didactic and Experiential components will form the online course structure.
Global Online Transpersonal Community
This course provides experiential learning of an online transpersonal community. Course content will include basics on structure, etiquette, and flow of an online community. Participation will include continual posting within an online community for the full academic year of the program.
Global Online Transpersonal Community: Second Year Level
This course is a continuation of GLBP/GLBM 9721A with experiential learning within an online community. Whereas 9721A presents and focuses on basics of community participation, 9721B focuses on more in-depth awareness of online communication and flow within the community, as well as utilizing the online community as a container for distance learning. Participation will include continual posting within an online community for the full academic year of the program.
Lifespan Development Psychology
This course examines major Western theories of human development, and explores alternative Eastern theories of true Self-development. It is designed to integrate East-West theories and practices of human development from several transpersonal psychology perspectives.
Psychopathology and Diagnosis
This course examines our decision-making process in how we decide upon what is psychopathology and what is not. From a transpersonal psychology's perspective, psychodiagnosis can serve as a concrete psycho-spiritual and clinical practice of integration of life for students, clients, clinicians, and healing practitioners.
Cultural Psychology: Culture and Consciousness
This course in cultural psychology explores the theoretical and experiential issues in emotion theories as presented in the traditions of East and West. In this course we will discuss the nature of emotions, the cultural, and psychological significance of emotions in human life, human emotions and the divine, the relation between emotion and other psychological states, emotion and meditation, dispassion, and enlightenment. More importantly, we will discuss the worldviews and underlying presuppositions which shape the emotional worlds of individuals from diverse cultures.
Research Group: Part I
The first of a three-course sequence designed to give students hands-on practice in conducting research. Following the classic European model, small groups of faculty and students work together in the same research area, with students gradually developing their own projects. Topics and research locations to be arranged.
Research Group: Part II
The second of a three-course sequence designed to give students hands-on practice in conducting research. Following the classic European model, small groups of faculty and students work together in the same research area, with students gradually developing their own projects. Topics and research locations to be arranged.
Elective - Ph.D. Year 4
Doctoral elective with the specific subject selected by the cohort in consultation with the Program Coordinator and Chair.
Research Group: Part III
The third of a three-course sequence designed to give students hands-on practice in conducting research. Following the classic European model, small groups of faculty and students work together in the same research area, with students gradually developing their own projects. Topics and research locations to be arranged.
Dissertation Research: Tracking
This is a five-part sequence of courses (15.0 units total) in which students receive credit for all of their dissertation work beyond the mini-proposal. Credit is given for establishing the dissertation committee, developing the proposal, conducting the research, analyzing data, writing the dissertation, having appropriate formal meetings, and gaining necessary approvals.
Transpersonal Integration Practicum
This course emphasizes balanced growth and development in the six areas. Students will meet with a practicum committee of peers, plus a faculty member 2 to 3 times a year to review past work and future plans regarding their personal and professional development.
Research Specialization: Dissertation Seminar
Support and assistance for students in the process of researching and writing dissertations.
Research Specialization: Narrative Research
This advanced research course focuses on the exploration of the foundational constructs of naturalistic inquiry. Research procedures of data collection and analysis processes, the role of literature critique, and ethical issues will be examined within a transpersonal context.
Research Specialization: Intuitive Inquiry
In this advanced research elective, faculty and students will explore the philosophic contributions of hermeneutics to transpersonal research and scholarship and learn to apply a hermeneutical method known as intuitive inquiry to student research projects. Students will apply intuitive inquiry or aspects of intuitive inquiry to research projects of their own choosing either to advance current dissertation research or other professional or scholarly endeavors.
