Transpersonal psychology, or spiritual psychology, is a sub-field or school of psychology that seeks to integrate the spiritual and transcendent aspects of the human experience with the framework of modern psychology. The 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". It has also been defined as "development beyond conventional, personal or individual levels".
Counseling psychology is a psychological specialty that began with a focus on vocational counseling, but later moved its emphasis to adjustment counseling, and then expanded to cover all normal psychology psychotherapy. There are many subcategories for counseling psychology, such as marriage and family counseling, rehabilitation counseling, clinical mental health counseling, educational counseling, etc. In each setting, they are all required to follow the same guidelines.
Cultural psychology is the study of how cultures reflect and shape their members' psychological processes.
Cross-cultural psychology is the scientific study of human behavior and mental processes, including both their variability and invariance, under diverse cultural conditions. Through expanding research methodologies to recognize cultural variance in behavior, language, and meaning it seeks to extend and develop psychology. Since psychology as an academic discipline was developed largely in North America and Europe, some psychologists became concerned that constructs and phenomena accepted as universal were not as invariant as previously assumed, especially since many attempts to replicate notable experiments in other cultures had varying success. Since there are questions as to whether theories dealing with central themes, such as affect, cognition, conceptions of the self, and issues such as psychopathology, anxiety, and depression, may lack external validity when "exported" to other cultural contexts, cross-cultural psychology re-examines them using methodologies designed to factor in cultural differences so as to account for cultural variance. Some critics have pointed to methodological flaws in cross-cultural psychological research, and claim that serious shortcomings in the theoretical and methodological bases used impede, rather than help the scientific search for universal principles in psychology. Cross-cultural psychologists are turning more to the study of how differences (variance) occur, rather than searching for universals in the style of physics or chemistry.
Michael Lamport Commons is a theoretical behavioral scientist and a complex systems scientist. He developed the model of hierarchical complexity.
International or global psychology is an emerging branch of psychology that focuses on the worldwide enterprise of psychology in terms of communication and networking, cross-cultural comparison, scholarship, practice, and pedagogy. Often, the terms international psychology, global psychology, transnational psychology, and cross-cultural psychology are used interchangeably, but their purposes are subtly and importantly different: Global means worldwide, international means across and between nations, transnational means to transcend the nation-state, cross-cultural means across cultures. In contrast, the term “multicultural” is more often used to refer to ethnic and other cultural differences existing within a given nation rather than to global or international comparisons.
Jochen Fahrenberg is a German psychologist in the fields of Personality, psychophysiology and philosophy of science.
Scott Plous is an American academic social psychologist. He is currently a Professor of Psychology at Wesleyan University and Executive Director of Social Psychology Network.
John D. Hogan is an American psychologist and noted author on the history of psychology. He is a professor of psychology at St. John's University in Jamaica, Queens, New York, where he taught since 1965. Additionally, he served as the history and obituary editor for American Psychologist for thirteen years. He was elected President of Division 52 of the American Psychological Association for 2011–2012. From 2009 to 2010, he served as President of Division One.
Jefferson Morris Fish is a professor emeritus of psychology at St. John's University in New York City, where he previously served as Chair of the Department of Psychology and as Director of the PhD Program in Clinical Psychology.
Luciano L'Abate was an Italian psychologist working in the USA. He was the father of relational theory and author, co-author, editor or co-editor of more than 55 books in the field of American psychology.
Judith V. Jordan is the co-director and a founding scholar of the Jean Baker Miller Institute and co-director of the institute's Working Connections Project. She is an attending psychologist at McLean Hospital and assistant professor of psychology at the Harvard Medical School. She works as a psychotherapist, supervisor, teacher and consultant. Jordan's development of relational-cultural therapy has served as a foundation for other scholars who have used this theory to explore the workplace, education. leadership and entrepreneurship.
Ethnocultural empathy refers to the understanding of feelings of individuals that are ethnically and/or culturally different from oneself. This concept casts doubts on global empathy, which assumes that empathy is "feeling in oneself the feelings of others" regardless of the other's characteristics or context. Ethnocultural empathy, on the other hand, assumes that empathy toward others probably increases if the other is similar to oneself in terms of ethnicity, gender, age, or cultural background.
John Widdup Berry is a psychologist known for his work in two areas: ecological and cultural influences on behavior; and the adaptation of immigrants and indigenous peoples following intercultural contact. The first is broadly in the domain of cross-cultural psychology; the second is in the domain of intercultural psychology.
Fathali M. Moghaddam is an Iranian-born psychologist, author, professor of psychology at Georgetown University and director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Cognitive Science (ICOS), Department of Government, Georgetown University.
Sathasivan "Saths" Cooper is a clinical psychologist in South Africa who was born in Durban of Indian-South African background. He began to identify with the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) and joined the South African Students' Organisation (SASO), and was one of the so-called "SASO Nine" student leaders arrested in 1974 for their anti-Apartheid activities. During this time Saths spent nine years banned, house arrested and jailed, including over five years in Robben Island where he shared a cell block with Nelson Mandela.
Paul T. P. Wong is a Canadian clinical psychologist and professor. His research career has gone through four stages, with significant contributions in each stage: learning theory, social cognition, existential psychology, and positive psychology. He is most known for his integrative work on death acceptance, meaning therapy, and second wave positive psychology. He has been elected as a fellow for both the American Psychological Association and the Canadian Psychological Association.
Dinesh J. Sharma is an American social scientist, psychologist, academic and entrepreneur in the fields of human development and rights, leadership and globalization; his recent publications include, “The Global Obama: Crossroads of Leadership in the 21st Century” and most recently “The Global Hillary: Women's Political Leadership in Cultural Context."
Harold Takooshian is an American psychologist, scholar, and professor at Fordham University. He is best known as an expert on the Kitty Genovese murder case, having spent many years studying the subject and the role that the "bystander effect" played therein.
John A. Meacham is SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus at the University at Buffalo—the State University of New York. Meacham initiated the study of prospective memory, a research subject in cognitive psychology, in the early 1970s. He also argued that wisdom is a balance between knowing and doubting and that most people lose their wisdom as they grow older. Meacham edited the international journal Human Development on theory in developmental psychology; was elected a Fellow in the American Psychological Association; served as president of the Jean Piaget Society; and taught in the Fulbright program in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Earlier publications were authored as John, more recent ones as Jack.
