ANC 101 — Introduction to Transformative Learning
The necessity and importance of Transformative Learning grows in times of crisis and complexity. We live in such a time, and as such Transformative Learning is being practiced within multiple domains, multiple levels, and utilizing varied approaches. This course introduces students to Imaginal Process, a distinct approach to transformative learning practiced at Meridian. In this approach, human capacities are cultivated through diversifying, deepening, embodying, and personalizing experience. Imagination amplifies and integrates the sensory, emotional, and cognitive dimensions of our experience. Through the labor of imagination, it is possible to craft our experience towards truth, joy, and effectiveness. This approach reflects an emerging multidisciplinary and multicultural synthesis which can be applied to education, therapy, organizations, and the arts. Listening deeply to each other’s stories is at the heart of this process. The living presence that constitutes good listening requires that we inhabit vulnerability, mystery, and complexity. This gathered listening engages the empathic imagination in ways that catalyze mutual individuation. (4 credits)
ANC 103 — Art and Science of Well-Being
Human well being is multi-dimensional: Biological, biographical, cultural, social, historical, evolutionary, spiritual, aesthetic, ecological, and economic. A wide and deep inquiry into the possibilities and actualization of human well being entails an integral approach that meaningfully and trans-contextually draws together these many dimensions.
This course reviews knowledge from scientific research and professional practice concerning central functions of human existence such as relating, learning, working, and ritualizing. The primary aim is to develop both personal and professional capabilities for coherent and creative action in responding to individual and collective complex challenges. (4 credits)
ANC 105 — Emotional Development
Emotions are an essential dimension of both individual and collective human development. In addition, emotions have a critical role in human well-being. Emotional development also significantly impacts our development physically, cognitively and spiritually. Research in neuroscience over the last thirty years has contributed significantly to our current understanding of emotions. This research has now been extensively applied to the functioning of families, schools and workplaces. Topics explored in this course in relation to emotion include: Attachment, empathy, conflict imagination, gender, sexuality, leadership, self-regulation, power, and destructive emotions such as hate and envy. The course also explores the link between emotion and capacities like courage, clarity, compassion, conscience, dignity and resilience.
ANC 110 — Relational Development
As a uniquely social species, human development at all systemic levels - individual, couple, family, team, organization, community, and society - is anchored in relational experience. This relational experience is culturally, societally, and historically specific. Along with this vast and diverse specificity there are also general patterns of relational development that span time, place, and culture. In exploring general patterns of relational development, this course addresses dimensions and dynamics entailed in relational experience including: identity, mutuality, authenticity, vulnerability, reciprocity, power, loyalty, collaboration and leadership. (4 credits)
ANC 115 — Complexity Capability Practicum
The complexity capability practicum is designed to be a self-organized course that prepares students for future practicum courses. Its purpose is to enable students to develop complexity capability in relation to domains and levels of practice that are aligned with their aspirations for their professional future. The problems humanity faces amidst a civilizational crisis, are so complex that our historical epoch is sometimes described as a crisis of complexity . Such a degree of system complexity – at a level in which humans have never before had to cope, can be viewed as a root of the current ecological, economic, and political turmoil. Even our own inventions—technologies, cultural memes, and organizations—have been evolving into increasingly complex forms, which have increased the demands of everyday life. In each case, what is required of humanity is more complex than what our current mindsets allow. We are often in over our heads , overwhelmed by the demands of our everyday lives. Professionals across all domains are looking for tools and practices responsive to this new world of unprecedented and accelerating complexity. Promoting “vertical development” is not enough, nor are systems thinking or the principle of evolving cultures. Rather, a comprehensive approach to living, coping, and even thriving on complexity is trans-disciplinary and practitioner-focused. The goal of this course is to engage with a comprehensive set of practices and frameworks for thriving on complexity. The course addresses the relationship between inner and outer complexity in service of aligning individual capabilities with what Oliver Wendell Holmes termed, “the simplicity on the far side of complexity.” We can learn to transform the complexity both within and outside of ourselves in ways that can enrich our lives and enhance our professional contributions within diverse professional domains. (4 credits)
ANC 118 — Post-Conceptual Identity Development
The unfolding of unique human identity into a free and flourishing personality is both constrained and enhanced by archetypal universals. This course focuses on practices that enable the emergence of a unified post-conceptual identity responsive to the multiplicity of subjective states entailed in human consciousness. Through awareness-based practices students explore the dynamics of adaptive, purified, fixated, normative, post-conventional, reflexive, and pluralized identity towards an understanding of mature identity: An identity capable of free, wise, and creative action.
This course will also consider the implications of identity development for topics such as leadership, democracy, culture, social media and other technologies. (4 credits)
ANC 122 — Central Development Practicum
Human development may be understood as “the multidimensional unfolding of Being through staged complexity.” This multidimensionality is sourced, anchored, and cohered by a governing dimension whose unfolding may be called Central Development. The world’s mythologies and spiritual traditions have recognized the primacy of central development through the millennia. Authentic religious and mystical practices have identified the human potentials entailed in central development as sacred. Depth psychology in particular has drawn on this great transmission of the “Splendor of Being.”
This course situates central development in a cultural context, through the specific case of ancient Greece, through exploring how relational, moral, and political development were actualized. This experiential inquiry, facilitated within a transformative learning lab, supports an understanding and appreciation for how transformative learning was once practiced through religion, politics, and the intimacies and practicalities of ordinary life. (4 credits)
ANC 124 — Transformative Communities of Practice
Between the modern emergence of professions and the additional layer of the digital revolution, practitioner-communities have an even more vital and evolutionary role in creating contexts for capability development. Leaps in practice are catapulted by communities of practitioners, underscoring the social and dialogical nature of human learning and knowledge. Practitioners drive both domain-specific learning associated with technical complexity as well as vertical development associated with dynamic complexity.
Transformative Communities of Practice (TCoP) are any group of people who share their passion, experience, and learning related to the vertical development of self, organizations, and social systems. By TCoP is meant an upgrade of the traditional concept of “communities of practice” in that a TCoP supports the development of its members and stakeholders to the next stage of consciousness, competence, and social creativity.
Three characteristics of TCoP make it a foreshadowing harbinger of the organization of the future. TCoPs: are a commitment to an evolutionary purpose; emphasize wholeness; have a preference for self-management. These characteristics combine for TCoP to represent an evolutionary force contributing to current movements for civilizational renewal. (4 credits)
ANC 125 — Joy and Developmental Practice
Joy is often misconstrued as a pleasant byproduct of favorable circumstances rather than as a generative capacity cultivated through developmental practice. This course approaches joy as a fundamental human capability that can be deepened, refined, and embodied across the sensory, emotional, cognitive, and relational dimensions of experience. Rather than treating joy as the absence of suffering or as a transient affective state, the course explores joy as a steady ground of vitality, presence, and meaning-making that supports resilience, creativity, and mature action in the face of complexity. The cultivation of joy is considered both as an individual developmental line and as a collective condition shaped by culture, relationship, and institutional life.
Drawing on developmental psychology, contemplative traditions, somatic practices, and inquiry into positive affect, this course engages joy in its many nuances: aesthetic joy, relational joy, vocational joy, and the quieter joy that accompanies authentic presence. Topics include the cultivation of delight as a daily practice, the relationship between joy and grief, the role of joy in individuation, the social and cultural conditions that enable or constrain joyful experience, and the place of joy in professional life and community making. Students will engage embodied practices that support the emergence of joy as a reliable developmental resource, while examining how joy functions as both a personal capacity and a collective force in the transformation of relationships, organizations, and cultures. (4 credits)
ANC 130 — Transformative Learning Praxis
The necessity and importance of Transformative Learning grows in times of crisis and complexity. We live in such a time, and as such Transformative Learning is being practiced within multiple domains and at multiple levels. The term praxis refers to the integration of theory and practice. Domains of praxis include psychotherapy, spiritual practice, coaching and personal development, business, education, civil society, and the arts. Levels of praxis include individuals, teams, communities, organizations, and societies. This course is an overview of diverse approaches to Transformative Learning Praxis. (4 credits)
ANC 135 — Coaching, Facilitation, and Human Development
Forty years ago the term “coaching” was limited to what took place in the context of sports. But now, driven by technical, social, and dynamic complexity in virtually all economically wealthy societies, coaching has broadened in application, having attained a significant role and status within numerous professional domains such as healthcare, business, and governance.
This course is based on understanding the complexity revolutions associated with the emergence of coaching as a highly meaningful, well-compensated, and widespread practitioner frame.
As well, after reviewing the key features of the coaching relationship, the course explores the coaching competencies needed to foster client outcomes associated with states of well-being, transforming mindsets, developing meaning structures, shifts of habits, leaps in performance, and paths to living a creative and purposeful life. (4 credits)
ANC 144 — Partnership and Human Systems
This course explores how the potentials of partnership systems can be harvested by developing partnership capability as applicable to all system levels, from intimate - starting in families - to societal and economic, including specific principles and practices that guide the process of transforming adversaries and bystanders into partners and allies.
Partnership capabilities enable members of a system to collaborate in generating synergistic outcomes. Five dimensions of partnership consciousness will receive particular emphasis: relationality, pleasure, prosperity, creativity, and spirituality. (4 credits)
ANC 150 — Awareness-Based Systems Change
Individuals, families, teams, organizations, communities, and societies are all human systems nested within larger systems. Living systems change for better or worse without intentional or deliberate efforts, sometimes in profound ways. However, a portal to transformative change also opens when a system begins to be aware of itself. There is power and magic to systems change through collective intention and collaborative learning when there is systemic awareness of possibilities, including unintended consequences. This course introduces principles, perspectives, and practices for the application of awareness-based practices that empower mutual and aware initiatives for transforming individual lives within complex living systems. (4 credits)
ANC 160 — Developing Dialogic Capability
Dialogic capability, one of the eight capabilities that make up the anchor curriculum’s practicum course on Complexity Capability, is understood as an advanced capability. While individuals have the potential to develop this as a major strength of character, doing so requires both the earlier capabilities (affective, relational, imaginal, perspectival) as well as progressively refined kinds of practice. In this course, we will explore the philosophical roots of dialogue as a form of human communication. This will include, from ancient times, the pre-socratics and Socrates/Plato. From the modern period we will draw in part from the work of David Bohm, Martin Buber, bell hooks, Mary Belenky, Harriet Lerner, and Paulo Freire.
The student’s work with transformative practices towards their own development of dialogic capability will be a key focus of the course. This will be informed by involvement in a Special Interest Group, selected according to the student’s own evolving professional interest related to this important capability. (4 credits)
ANC 170 — Dialogic and Developmental Approaches to Coaching
Dialogic approaches to coaching emphasize the transformative potential of conversation and the co-creation of meaning between coach and client. This course explores the theoretical underpinnings and practical applications of dialogic coaching, highlighting its capacity to foster meaningful change. Students will engage with various dialogic methods to enhance coaching practice including narrative, appreciative inquiry, and generative dialogue. The course will focus on developing skills in deep listening, powerful questioning, and both reflexive and reflective dialogue. Emphasis will be placed on the role of dialogue in unlocking potential, fostering self-awareness, and driving sustainable growth in both individuals and organizations. (4 credits)
PSY 501 — Psychopathology
Each of us suffers in a unique way. Yet it is interesting and useful to recognize distinct varieties of human suffering without succumbing to the diagnostic illusions of the medical model. This course pivots around the difference between a medical and a psychological approach to psychopathology as well as an overview of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, (DSM-V). A genuinely psychological approach draws our attention to culture, myth, story, and metaphor in the meaning we make about the symptoms we observe. The limits, ambiguities, and cruelties of professionalized responses to human suffering will be among our considerations. In addition, we will explore the impact of differences on diagnosis (such as gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, and class). Students are encouraged to cultivate an empathic understanding of the experience of symptoms. (4 credits)
PSY 505 — Human Development
The work of the psychological practitioner often involves assisting children and adults through the joint processes of growing up and growing older, as they traverse the predictable and unpredictable passages of the life cycle. We are best prepared to assist our clients and students through their lives when we, ourselves, are well grounded in both the objective context of the human development literature as well as the subjective context, the experience of moving through our own lives.This course also addresses curricular requirements for Aging and Long Term Care, and will do so by first re-imagining the elder years as a rewarding period in life. We will also examine the psychological, cultural, physical, and social challenges facing older people in Western culture,including changes in physical and cognitive capacities, social stigma, oppression, the American youth culture, and variations in family values regarding the care of elderly parents by their adult children. Finally, the course examines the assessment, reporting, and treatment related to elder and dependent-adult abuse and neglect. (4 credits)
PSY 510 — Group Process
We live our lives in the company of others. Our identity is in part formed through recognition by others, within couple relationships, family, friendship, neighborhood, and workplace. Groups offer us a context in which to explore the mystery of identity and to evolve a mode of communication that honors individuality and multiplicity. This first course in the two-course sequence focuses on theories of group dynamics and psychotherapeutic orientations related to group counseling, and looks at common negative dynamics that can be destructive to group life such as scapegoating, dyadic withdrawal, envy, betrayal, and group think. Group facilitation skills that help to reveal and correct these dynamics such as building trust, the constructive use of feedback, team building, the therapist’s skillful self-disclosure, and building community amongst group participants are explored. Theoretical linkages between therapy with groups and therapy with couples and families are also emphasized. (4 credits)
PSY 515 — Healing and Transforming Trauma
Individual and collective trauma is an actuality, worldwide. This course explores current issues in the field of psychological trauma through personal, historical, cultural, and archetypal perspectives. Its intent is threefold: To develop the student’s ability to engage their own personal traumatic material (generally experienced through fragmented images that are the common aftermath of overwhelming experience); to integrate imaginal approaches to trauma with principles inherent in the recovery model; and to identify key somatic, cognitive, affective, behavioral, and neurological effects associated with trauma. (4 credits)
PSY 518 — Psychology of Power, Privilege, and Culture
The psychological experience of oppression - external and internal, culturally based and community-based - is of central significance in psychological healing and growth. In this course, we will explore the internalization of cultural oppression as well as oppressive voices towards ‘the other’ that live in our own hearts. The course will review forms of systematic oppression such as racism, sexism, classism, able-bodyism, adultism, ageism, and homophobia and experiences of race, ethnicity, class, spirituality, sexual orientation, gender, disability, and their relationship to historical, socio-cultural and political dynamics. Of special concern will be the phenomena of scapegoating as well as the mechanisms at play that function to keep these difficult and painful cultural messages in force. We will explore these topics primarily from archetypal perspectives, which includes the influence popular culture and media have on creating and/or promoting cultural biases. An understanding of cultural differences in marriage, family, and community is critical to good therapeutic practice. The psychological practitioner’s role in promoting cultural social justice and eliminating biases and prejudices, as well as individual and community strategies for working with and advocating for diverse populations, will also be explored. (4 credits)
PSY 520 — Culture and the Law
This course considers legal and ethical issues pertaining to the practice of psychology and psychotherapy. Such issues include confidentiality and privilege, Tarasoff duty to warn, danger to property, forensic issues, court testimony, mandatory reporting, client suicidality, and cultural sensitivity. We will also consider more subtle ethical issues such as therapist encouragement of client dependency, forms of financial greed by the psychotherapist, the use of language which serves to mystify clients’ suffering, and the objectification of clients. Emphasis is given to how the helping professional’s shadow issues can influence both psychotherapy and other helping relationships, and the importance of becoming aware and adopting ongoing practices to maintain personal awareness of one’s own shadow issues is also confronted. Special emphasis is placed on child abuse assessment, intervention strategies, and reporting laws, and suicide risk assessment and intervention. (4 credits)
PSY 525 — Career Development
Joseph Campbell’s famous phrase, “Follow your bliss,” is a directive that for most people is easier said than done. In this course we will explore the crucial need in the human soul for purpose, vocation, and work with passion. The significance of finding one’s own inner calling and the potential relationship between forms of psychopathology and Western culture’s lack of support for the notion of personal destiny, finding one’s purpose, mentorship, and structures for rites of passage will be considered. The course reviews models of career development, assessment, and counseling that are designed to assist individuals and families through the life cycle and that emphasize awareness of individual needs, values, aptitudes, and interests in making career choices. Students will also focus on charting their own vocational path and timeline for their upcoming fieldwork opportunities, and in the process will become thoroughly familiar with Meridian’s fieldwork process. Students are aided in formulating a potential direction for their fieldwork including the pros and cons of having fieldwork fulfill California licensing board hours, time frames and procedures for applying to and completing internships, the use of one’s job as an internship site, and options for arranging alternative field placements. (4 credits)
PSY 530 — Ecstatic States and Culture
The use of mind-altering substances to influence states of consciousness has been a part of the human experience since prehistoric times. Modernization and urbanization have made our relationship with state-altering substances more problematic. This course is an overview of the assessment and treatment of substance abuse, addiction, and co-occurring disorders. Also included are the legal and medical aspects of substance abuse, populations at-risk, the role of support persons and support systems, follow-up programs, and methods for relapse prevention. This course utilizes myth, current psychological models, and our own experience to develop an integrated view of addiction that considers biology, psychology, cultural considerations, and human yearning. Issues regarding the use and abuse of drugs and alcohol will be explored within the contexts of culture and the human need for ecstatic experience. (4 credits)
PSY 555 — Psychotherapy Integration: Individual and Relational
The beginning psychotherapist is faced with a wide array of approaches to psychotherapy. This sequence considers the diversity of psychotherapeutic approaches and develops our own coherence as psychotherapists. The first course in the sequence surveys a variety of approaches to individual psychotherapy. The second course examines several major approaches to couples therapy and includes an emphasis on spousal or partner abuse assessment, detection, and intervention. The third course surveys approaches to family therapy, including looking at family conflicts through a broader social and historical context which includes an awareness of culture, class, gender, race, and religion. (4 credits)
PSY 556 — Psychotherapy Integration with Couples
The beginning psychotherapist is faced with a wide array of approaches to psychotherapy. This course sequence has the objective of considering this diversity and developing our own coherence as psychotherapists. This second course in the sequence explores several major approaches to couples therapy. Additionally, detection, assessment, and intervention strategies for spousal abuse are examined and discussed throughout the course. (4 credits)
PSY 570 — History of Psychology
There is no consistent, agreed upon, or neutral history of psychology. The illusion of neutrality is an aspect of scientism in which psychology, as both a discipline and a profession, is still entangled. The intent of this course is to situate psychology at Meridian in relation to important historical and theoretical issues in psychology. We can make sense of these issues by locating our own interests and orientation to psychology at this historical moment, and by articulating our stance in relation to other orientations and historical periods. Reviewing the history of psychology, versus situating psychology historically, are distinct but interrelated tasks. The intention of this course is to clarify, differentiate, and activate our relationship to psychology as a discipline and profession. (4 credits)
PSY 581 — Neuroscience of Human Experience
This course surveys selected topics in physiological psychology, psychophysiology, and psychoneuroimmunology. Contemporary research informing our current understanding of the mind/body relationship, psychological well being, psychological distress, and the importance of image in neurobiology and psychology are reviewed. Also explored are the effects of subjective experience on the body generally and the neurological system in particular as they relate to the process of meaning making and change in psychotherapy. Specific topics include: addiction, trauma, attachment, emotion and health. (4 credits)
PSY 593 — Clinical Case Study Development
This course provides a setting to apply principles of qualitative research to the development of clinical case studies, and gives students the opportunity to have a hands-on experience of developing elements of the clinical case study. This course also provides students with an experience of the possibilities of collaborative research and writing. (4 credits)
PSY 597 — Supervised Fieldwork
Supervised fieldwork is an integral aspect of study at Meridian. Students earn supervised fieldwork credits through the performance of job activities in paid and volunteer positions. Beginning with study about their own emerging careers in Career Development students are guided in designing and implementing a fieldwork plan to advance their progress as emerging psychological practitioners. The Director of Assessment and Student Development monitors the progress of students’ specific fieldwork goals. (11 or 25 credits)
PSY 598 — Supervised Fieldwork
Supervised fieldwork is an integral aspect of study at Meridian. Students earn supervised fieldwork credits through the performance of job activities in paid and volunteer positions. Beginning with study about their own emerging careers in Career Development students are guided in designing and implementing a fieldwork plan to advance their progress as emerging psychological practitioners. The Director of Assessment and Student Development monitors the progress of students’ specific fieldwork goals. (11 or 25 credits)
PSY 599 — Supervised Fieldwork
Supervised fieldwork is an integral aspect of study at Meridian. Students earn supervised fieldwork credits through the performance of job activities in paid and volunteer positions. Beginning with study about their own emerging careers in Career Development students are guided in designing and implementing a fieldwork plan to advance their progress as emerging psychological practitioners. The Director of Assessment and Student Development monitors the progress of students’ specific fieldwork goals. (11 or 25 credits)
PSY 644 — Human Development II
This course addresses curricular requirements for Aging and Long Term Care, and will do so by first reimagining the elder years as a rewarding period in life. We will examine the psychological, cultural, physical, and social challenges facing older people in Western culture, including changes in physical and cognitive capacities, social stigma, oppression, the American youth culture, and variations in family values regarding the care of elderly parents by their adult children. Finally, the course examines the assessment, reporting, and treatment related to elder and dependent-adult abuse and neglect. (4 credits)
PSY 701 — Introduction to Yoga and Psychology
Although there are significant shared assumptions about psychological well being and healing between approaches to Yoga and western psychology, a literature explicating these is only just emerging. The use of Yoga as a healing art for somatic difficulties is well underway. However, the use of Yoga as a facilitator of mind/body integration is in the early stages of professional practice. This course will explore key overlapping themes and principles in Yoga, western psychology, as well as ways in which Yoga can be utilized in its own right in professional practice. (4 credits)
PSY 705 — Expressive Arts in Groups
This course focuses on the use of the expressive arts in groups. Implications and applications for group therapeutic work are considered. Additionally, experiential processes are used to gain awareness of how we conduct our lives and how we use images to inspire and direct our own living. (4 credits)
PSY 706 — Expressive Arts in Therapy
This course focuses on traditional ways of healing through the arts. Use of the expressive arts in psychotherapy allows for depth, even when therapy has to be brief. In the spirit of multiplicity, this course focuses on many forms of art as well as on the intermodal transfers between them. Through the shaping of art, students work towards developing the facility for following the image in its many manifestations and to deepen their ability to help clients explore and create experience. Additional emphasis is placed on utilizing expressive arts in the treatment of trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder. (4 credits)
PSY 707 — Art Psychotherapy
This course deepens our understanding of the relationship of art to psychology. Using an experiential format in which themes are explored through various media, students learn about theories, traditions, methodologies, and professional issues involved in combining psychotherapy with the arts. Students will use the expressive arts therapies and dreamwork to explore the use of image, symbol, and ritual in their own personal process and into implications for clinical work, research, and creating ritual. The specific professions of art, movement, music, and drama therapies will be discussed. (4 credits)
PSY 710 — Cultivating the Senses
A psychology concerned with soul must recognize the essential role the body plays in everyday experience. The life of the senses is vital to the nourishment of the soul. This course focuses on the relationship between the physical senses and the life of the imagination. The repression of the senses cripples the imagination, leaving it unable to guide one’s life in nourishing and sustainable ways. Traumatic occurrences further disable the body’s way of knowing. Once it is nourished, a well-fed imagination can amplify our senses, aiding us in leading a life that is embodied, passionate, and self-aware. Topics to be explored include the use of language which engenders soul-making, the intelligence of the senses, and the repression of pleasure. (4 credits)
PSY 711 — Experiential Anatomy
This course draws on an experiential approach to learning human anatomy, based on the premise that understanding the physicality of the human body is necessary to working with its psychological dimensions. Students will explore the major body systems through guided imagery, drawing, movement, and touch. (4 credits)
PSY 712 — Psychology of Dreams
Dreams may be viewed as messages of the soul. Yet, while dreams convey the deeper stirrings of the soul, their language is often baffling to the waking self. This course introduces students to a range of approaches for working with dreams. Students will explore various ways of constructing the relationship between waking and dreaming and its implications for the individuation process. Approaches and practices for engaging with dreams within contemporary Western psychological systems as well as traditional, non-Western psychological systems will be considered. Dreaming experience is related to the knowledge domains of Imaginal Psychology, especially mythology, somatic practices, and indigenous wisdom. Students are encouraged to develop practices for tending their dreams, in order to access their transformative power. This course seeks to deepen students’ capacity for cultivating, engaging, interpreting, and integrating their own dreams as well as those of others. (4 credits)
PSY 713 — Foundations of Somatic Psychotherapy
Somatic Psychotherapy has its roots in depth psychology and before that in ancient somatic practices. This course is a survey of the history theories and techniques of Somatic Psychotherapy. Key ideas such as character grounding boundaries embodiment and presence are explored. In addition the pivotal role of imagination in Somatic Psychotherapy is considered. (4 credits)
PSY 714 — Somatic Practices
Somatic practices have been available within the local knowledge of many traditional and indigenous cultures. The political economics of modern psychology and allopathic medicine have marginalized these great resources for healing and pleasure. In the last 30 years, however, there has been a watershed in the restoration and integration of somatic practices. This course sequence explores the use of somatic practices to reconnect with the sensory foundations of experience. These practices involve movement and touch, and affect regulation all of which support the imagination’s role in integrating the sensory, affective, and cognitive domains of experience. Imagery-based practices enhance mind-body integration which is key to our effective functioning and well-being. (4 credits)
PSY 715 — Somatic Awareness
The capacity to experience, identify, and cultivate kinesthetic sensation is fundamental to the practice of Somatic Psychology. Students in this course will be introduced to a variety of practices designed to facilitate somatic awareness in themselves and others, including the Sensory Awareness work of Charlotte Selver. Emphasis will also be placed on how somatic awareness skills and strategies translate to a psychotherapeutic context. (4 credits)
PSY 716 — Somatic Approaches to Trauma
Recent developments in traumatology have underscored the role of the body in mediating trauma and re-conceptualizing trauma as an event occurring in the nervous system, affecting individual and social experience. This course will introduce students to somatically oriented models of working with trauma and to working with trauma through a psychobiological approach. (4 credits)
PSY 717 — Clinical Skills in Somatic Psychology
This course sequence offers students a structured and facilitated opportunity to integrate the material offered in the current year into a cohesive theoretical framework, and to practice applying their knowledge and skills in somatic psychology to a range of clinical and educational issues and contexts. This first course explores the dream as a form of somatic play. Donald Winnicott, in his classic text, Playing and Reality, stated that psychotherapy is about two people playing together. Winnicott found playing as the road to the true self, and so it seems quite natural to bring his approach to our somatic work with dreams, as playing has the potential to engage the dream outside of rational evaluation and interpretive skills. In this class we will discuss the work of Johan Huizinga, Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott, Carl Jung, and Wilhelm Reich as background to working with our own dreams. We will walk through the dream as a form not unlike theatre, as a way to confront and deepen our emotional presence and our bodily thought. Perhaps the play of our dreams will shine a light on the myth we are living. (4 credits)
PSY 718 — Body Narratives
This course introduces students to a selected approach to facilitating interactive body-dialogue that incorporates a client’s posture, movements, and bodily experiences into psychotherapy. Students will learn to understand and work with body processes and narratives in the evolving context of the whole person, rather than as isolated physical events. (4 credits)
PSY 719 — Transpersonal Models of Human Development
The human species is the most complex known form of life that has evolved. One outcome of this evolutionary process is that across the human lifespan, consciousness unfolds into more complex phases, and to a threshold that has been characterized as transpersonal. Over the millennia, as culture has enabled extension of human lifespan, these transpersonal phases of consciousness development became more and more consequential to culture and society. A consolidation of this shift has been evidenced during the Axial Age, in the emergence of the world’s major religions. With the onset of modernity and the scientific revolution, the center of culture and society pivoted away from religion. However, the era of postmodernity has brought a turning towards a fresh appreciation of religion and spiritual traditions. This turn has been reinforced by research on adult development in psychology and allied disciplines, seeking to understand the phases or stages entailed in the transpersonal development of human consciousness. This course reviews and integrates major models guiding practitioners seeking to actualize the transpersonal potentials of human development. In being informed by many models, developmental practitioners can be even more effective in serving their client systems at all system levels. (4 credits)
PSY 721 — The Knowing Body
Focusing, an approach to personal exploration developed by Eugene Gendlin, provides a simple yet effective tool for transforming implicit embodied awareness into explicit knowledge. This research-based model emphasizes the importance of attending to the felt sense of the body in exploring psychological concerns, and serves as a base for many somatic psychotherapy techniques. Students will be introduced to Focusing both theoretically and experientially with opportunities to practice facilitating Focusing sessions. (4 credits)
PSY 722 — The Social Body
This course explores the application of Somatic Psychology to sociocultural issues, proposes strategies for bringing the body into the exploration of diversity and equity issues, and underscores the need to address social, cultural, and political influences on issues of embodiment. (4 credits)
PSY 723 — The Transpersonal Body
Drawing on both Eastern and Western perspectives, this course addresses the transpersonal dimensions of Somatic Psychology theory and practice. Students will have the opportunity to explore the interaction between body processes and states of consciousness through a transpersonal psychological perspective. (4 credits)
PSY 724 — The Poetic Body
This course focuses on the intersecting dimensions of Somatic Psychology and the expressive arts. By working with imagination through the implicit knowledge of the body, students will have an opportunity to explore how music, art, poetry, dance, and theater can enrich and transform embodied experience in a psychotherapeutic context (4 credits)
PSY 725 — Approaches to Somatic Psychology
This foundational course in Somatic Psychology provides students with a historical and theoretical overview of the field of Somatic Psychology and introduces them to the principles, concepts, and methods that underlie many of the established modalities. Students are offered the opportunity to experience some of these modalities in action and to begin to develop basic clinical and psychoeducational somatic skills. (4 credits)
PSY 726 — The Body in Motion
Movement forms one of the cornerstones of Somatic Psychology theory and practice. It can serve as the primary basis for psychotherapeutic intervention (as it does in dance movement therapy) or it can be integrated into clinical work by focusing on movement behaviors as they emerge in the session. Students will learn strategies for facilitating movement explorations in both individual and group formats. (4 credits)
PSY 727 — Somatic Assessment
In this course, students will explore a range of somatically oriented observation and assessment models, including developmental, psychodynamic, and process-oriented frameworks. An integrative somatic assessment framework will be introduced and students will be provided with an opportunity to work with this model in clinical and psychoeducational contexts. (4 credits)
PSY 728 — Somatic Inquiry
Somatic Inquiry is an approach to research that privileges subjective embodiment in understanding human experience. Students will have an opportunity to see how a somatic perspective informs each stage of a research project, from topic selection through data presentation, and how to practice using somatic inquiry methods. (4 credits)
PSY 729 — Psychology of Touch
Touch is one of the oldest and most fundamental forms of healing and helping. This course examines the evolutionary emergence of touch, its fundamental significance in human experience, and the intricate connections between skin and brain via the nervous system. This course also addresses the contemporary application of touch in psychotherapy, including important legal and ethical considerations. (4 credits)
PSY 730 — Psychology of Purpose: Creativity and Polyphrenia
This course explores the nature and function of purpose as a tool for enhancing creative action and strategy. For this, we work with the development of four levels of inner capacity: sensory-physical, psychological, mythic-narrative, and integral-spiritual. This development leads to the ability to select and orchestrate our inherent polyphrenia - the various ‘selves’ and skill sets which we already contain. (4 credits)
PSY 731 — Psychology of Vocation
The course will look at metaphoric, imaginal, and narrative theories, such as the idea of personal mythology, to understand contemporary forms of vocation. The approach will involve analysis of stories from ancient and modern sources. A key text will be the New Zealand film, Whale Rider (2002). This initiatory tale shows how vocational calls arise from the inner life, and how these stirrings can include ancestral patterns. (4 credits)
PSY 732 — Cross-Cultural Perspectives
A psychology arising exclusively out of western European academic experience fails to adequately respond to the rich varieties of human experience. This course gathers contemporary multicultural sources, as well as the wisdom of indigenous cultures, to educate psychological practitioners to be responsive to each person’s unique cultural heritage. This course explores multicultural counseling theories and techniques promoting cultural social justice and the therapist’s role in bringing bias and prejudice to our own and our client’s awareness. An understanding of cultural differences within couples, families, and community institutions is critical to professional practice. (4 credits)
PSY 733 — Myth, Ritual, and Story
In most cultures throughout history individuals have found psychological support and orientation through the myths and stories they inhabit. The vitality of memory depends on engaging myth, ritual, and story in supporting individuals to re-story their lives for initiation into a greater story. This course explores such topics as the archetype of the wounded healer and the significance of initiatory experience. (4 credits)
PSY 734 — Myth and Contemporary Culture
Wisdom stories reflect a broad range of human concerns. This course explores the psychological functions of the mythic imagination. Initiatory patterns drawn from ancient narratives appear in movies and other cultural forms that reveal our aspirations. Familiar mystery tales and films are examined to study archetypal elements that shape experience, social roles, and social institutions. This course also considers how mythic narratives reflect pluralistic models of psychological life. (4 credits)
PSY 735 — Psychology of Metaphor
In ancient Greek, the word metaphor meant “transformer,” and in this course we will explore how metaphors form the foundation of our thinking, influencing our learning and growth. Metaphor allows our perception to operate at a deeper level of understanding and a variety of perspectives will be presented that elucidate this aesthetic realm of everyday life. Drawing inspiration and guidance from the creative process of the natural world which is in a perpetual state of “generative” creativity, we will explore the notion of metaphor as a non-linear way of connecting and creating. In other words, we will examine metaphor as an “aesthetic world.” By immersing ourselves in this aesthetic world, we enter a process that biologists call creative emergence, a realm of creative possibility and transformation. (4 credits)
PSY 736 — Psychology of Mystical Experience
Through various definitions controversies and stories of some of the great mystics - both ancient and modern - this course aims to illuminate experience that is typically described as being beyond the realm of everyday consciousness. Such experience is often referred to as mystical transcendent transpersonal and/or visionary as being direct or unmediated and as having a sacred quality associated with connection to a sense of something greater than one’s self. Topics include the perennial philosophy constructivism participatory spirituality the problem of pure consciousness dualistic mystical states unitive mystical states vs. stages introvertive mysticism vs. extrovertive mysticism nature mysticism nondual mysticism and epiphenomenalism. Of central concern will be the discernment of key differences between spiritual and psychological experience as well as the overlapping areas between them. Both the question of how mystical and transcendent experiences may be relevant to working with potential clients and foundational skills in bringing mystical wisdom to one’s clinical work will be explored. (4 credits)
PSY 736PSYCHOLOGY OF MYSTICAL EXPERIENCEThrough various definitions controversies and stories of some of the great mystics - both ancient and modern - this course aims to illuminate experience that is typically described as being beyond the realm of everyday consciousness. Such experience is often referred to as mystical transcendent transpersonal and/or visionary as being direct or unmediated and as having a sacred quality associated with connection to a sense of something greater than one’s self. Topics include the perennial philosophy constructivism participatory spirituality the problem of pure consciousness dualistic mystical states unitive mystical states states vs. stages introvertive mysticism vs. extrovertive mysticism nature mysticism nondual mysticism and epiphenomenalism. Of central concern will be the discernment of key differences between spiritual and psychological experience as well as the overlapping areas between them. Both the question of how mystical and transcendent experiences may be relevant to working with potential clients and foundational skills in bringing mystical wisdom to one’s clinical work will be explored. (4 credits)
PSY 737 — Psychology and Community Making
We live in a time of immense longing for community and beauty. The social structures that maintain individualism are crumbling. However, the new convivial forms that would support us are only partially in place. Most of us heroically struggle in isolation much of the time. The ideology of professionalism reinforces this isolated self-reliance. How might we transform such a culture of privatism and cruelty to a culture of participation and accountability? Can we re-imagine professional work in ways that support the creation of communities? Psychological practitioners are in a unique position to make significant contributions to the revitalization of culture. (4 credits)
PSY 738 — Health Psychology
This course introduces the field of Health Psychology the role of the psychologist in medicine and the psychologist’s participation in the treatment and prevention of health-related issues. Emphasis is placed on the complex issues entailed in the mind-body relationship and on expanding the role of social environmental biological and psychological factors in understanding the development of disease states and their treatment. (4 credits)
PSY 739 — Psychology of Evil
All cultures have developed their own conception of good and evil. Yet, the study of the nature of evil has often been forbidden. As evil has evolved and increased in complexity in our time, there is an urgent necessity to try and understand this phenomenon, as those who are attracted to manifest evil are able to manufacture and employ increasingly dangerous weaponry, both literally and psychologically. This course probes the reality of destructive archetypal forces that threaten us all and the possibility of developing our own creativity to engage these forces. Students will enhance their capacities to encounter evil and to perhaps begin to find ways to contain its malignancy. (4 credits)
PSY 740 — Psychology and Religion
This course explores the crossroads where psychology and religion converge and diverge in the life of the soul. Course topics include the phenomenology of numinous experience, shadow and evil, and the evolutionary role of ritual. (4 credits)
PSY 741 — The Transformative Power of Ritual
Ritual is a necessity. As the lungs breathe, so does the soul ritualize. Ritual has an essential role in tending relationships, families, communities, and even workplaces. The origins of art and religion are in ritual; to ritualize is to make sacred. Our ancestors knew that life is unbearable without ritual. This course explores the creative and transformative uses of ritual in our everyday lives. Potential themes for the course include ritual in times of conflict, crisis, and illness; ritual and sexual experience; and ritual and temporary madness. (4 credits)
PSY 742 — Archetypal Psychology
Archetypal Psychology sets forth principles laying ground in depth psychology for post-modern or post-postmodern points of view. Themes of this course include polytheistic viewpoints (what Archetypal Psychology refers to as Multiplicity); animistic worldviews (what Archetypal Psychology calls Personifying); diaphanous perception (what Archetypal Psychology calls Seeing-Through); structures falling apart (what Archetypal Psychology calls Pathologizing); decentralizing and reflexive functioning (what Archetypal Psychology calls Dehumanizing); the something more or ‘more than’ in everything (what Archetypal Psychology calls Soul, and the activity for which is called Soul-making). (4 credits)
PSY 748 — Social Class and Clinical Practice
North America is a highly stratified society in which dominant classes exist and enjoy a myriad of intangible social privileges at the expense of those in subordinate classes. The American Dream myth that permeates the national consciousness espouses that upward mobility is not only desirable, but can be achieved by everyone through the individual efforts of hard work, tenacity and strength of will. Furthermore, it implies that those who do not move up the class ladder have been unsuccessful because of their own weaknesses and/or character flaws. This conflict that exists at the core of the national psyche is viewed by many theorists as affecting identity development and emotional well-being. Those who turn toward psychotherapy for help are often impacted by contradictory cultural expectations and beliefs that surround class identity. The culture’s unwritten and conflicting rules and beliefs regarding social class are often not in the conscious awareness of clients or clinicians. In this course, students will explore the formation of their personal class identity through examining the influence of their family histories and consideration of the impact of cultural norms. Students will deepen their understanding of their own biases and imaginal structures surrounding class identity and consider models of common defensive patterns that will likely impact psychotherapy clients. Awareness of countertransference, case formulation and treatment planning related to social class will also be considered. In addition students will practice therapeutic interventions to assist clients who are negatively impacted by internal class conflicts. (4 credits)
PSY 749 — Psychotherapy Craft
This course re-imagines the practice of psychotherapy as a craft and explores the most basic instrument of psychotherapy and psychological work, the self of the practitioner. This course explores the personal history, psychological development, family of origin issues, and associated narratives that have converged in the choice to become a psychotherapist. Potential vulnerabilities in work with couples and families for repeating problematic patterns of relationship and communication learned from an early age are explored. Topics include personal motivations, family-of-origin issues, stages in the development of the therapist, self and other shame-awareness, and the role of ongoing work with one’s own countertransference issues. (4 credits)
PSY 751 — Clinical Practicum: Therapeutic Contexts
Clinical Practicum coursework is designed to provide applied skill development and focus to the student’s emerging involvement in supervised practicum and clinical work. Through this series of courses, students are supported and challenged to apply and refine their emerging clinical skills to their practicum work (whether current or in the future) including intake assessment, case formulation, treatment planning, note-taking procedures, and crisis management, partly in the context of evidence-based and best practices. (4 credits)
PSY 752 — Clinical Practicum: Therapy and Culture
Clinical Practicum coursework is designed to provide applied skill development and focus to the student’s emerging involvement in supervised practicum and clinical work. Through this series of courses, students are supported and challenged to apply and refine their emerging clinical skills to their practicum work (whether current or in the future) including intake assessment, case formulation, treatment planning, note-taking procedures, and crisis management, partly in the context of evidence-based and best practices. This course has an emphasis on integrating multicultural themes and applications to counseling, psychotherapy, and clinical supervision. (4 credits)
PSY 753 — Clinical Practicum: Classical Approaches
This three-course sequence is designed to provide applied skill development and focus to the student’s emerging involvement in supervised practicum and clinical work. Through this course sequence, students will be supported and challenged to apply and refine their emerging clinical skills to their practicum placement, including intake assessment, case formulation, treatment planning, note-taking procedures, and crisis management in the context of evidence-based and best practices. This course sequence also provides students with an introduction to the scope and practice of Licensed Professional Clinical Counseling and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapy. (4 credits)
PSY 754 — Clinical Practicum Extension
This course provides students who are MFT-bound with the necessary coursework required by the California BBS to overlap with the student’s fieldwork hours. Coursework continues to build on the student’s development as a clinician including the application of emerging clinical skills to intake assessment, case formulation, treatment planning, note-taking procedures, and crisis management, partly in the context of evidence-based and best practices. This course has particular focus on the exploration of process and patterns in the phenomena of counter transference. (4 credits)
PSY 756 — Psychotherapy with Children
This course introduces the process and practice of child therapy, including the use of diagnostic tools and play materials. Also addressed are collateral work with parents, community resources, and professionals, and additional legal and ethical issues pertaining to working with children. In establishing a therapeutic relationship with a child, the therapist has the opportunity to make a profound difference in the quality of the child’s life and others in the child’s life. Our interventions may not only decrease suffering in the child, but can further the child’s emotional, physical, intellectual, and spiritual growth, benefiting parents, siblings, teachers, and community. (4 credits)
PSY 757 — Psychotherapy Integration with Families
Like rival theologians, psychotherapists argue for the superiority and truth of their particular pathway to heaven. In this course we will explore the similarities and differences between the different schools of family therapy. As students learn about the range of perspectives, we will also focus on theories and methods that fit best with our own personalities and worldviews. We will work to understand family conflicts in a broader social and historical context which includes an awareness of culture, class, gender, sexual orientation, race, and religion. (4 credits)
PSY 761 — Developmental Embodiment
In this course students will be introduced to developmental approaches to Somatic Psychology, and to how notions of embodiment have been applied to Developmental Psychology and related disciplines. Experiential components will underscore the idea of embodiment as a developmental process, rather than as a static condition of human experience. (4 credits)
PSY 762 — Ecology and the Arts
For millennia humans have expressed their relationship to nature through the arts. The 12000 to 30000 year-old images in the caves of Lascaux and Chauvet as well as the 100000 year-old painted walls of Arnhem Land are a staggering testimony to this. Civilization and in particular the modern world have profoundly disturbed our connectedness to this prior mode of dwelling in embedded balance. Human cultures have gone from embeddedness in nature to alienation from nature. The traditions suggest that the psyche is not inside us but rather that we dwell in psyche. The arts can cultivate the ecological imagination and can help restore an engaged respectful and animated dwelling. This course explores the psychological significance of rekindling our participation in nature through the arts. (4 credits)
PSY 763 — Ethics in Depth Psychology
An important principle in depth psychology is that developing more complex access to inner states opens the possibility of working with others at deeper levels. This enhanced quality of engagement however presents unique ethical challenges. This course explores the application of ethics to the orientation of depth psychology and how shifts in our sense of identity can influence the process of ethical decision-making. Through exploring the enduring classic Peter Pan to reflect on the theme of adventure we will also reflect on the story’s origins as presented in the film Finding Neverland. The course includes discussion of legal and ethical aspects of the current standard of care such as informed consent duty to warn and mandated reporting. However the emphasis is primarily on the philosophical exploration of ethical behavior. (4 credits)
PSY 764 — Human Development and the Shadow
The concept of the shadow provides a framework in which the underbelly of the human condition can be explored. Often depicted as a symbol for dark, malevolent behavioral traits, the shadow is realized indirectly where the ego-ideal attempts to detach and disassociate from those positions it finds unacceptable or “other than” what it desires to be. This course explores the shadow’s enigmatic scaffolding and the consequences that can come from ignoring its potentially destructive capacities. Scapegoating and projection as processes by which the disowned shadow usurps and propels unwanted primitive pathologies onto others are examined, as well as how such displacement can bring about victimization, shamelessness, and even criminal conduct. (4 credits)
PSY 765 — Culture and Consciousness
Everyday life within modernity has been a wasteland for many. In previous centuries the sacred was experienced in everyday life. Societies were organized around rituals which bound the lives of individuals to a religious worldview. In contemporary secular cultures however, emptiness, depression, and busyness are familiar states rather than the fullness of being. Finding one’s relationship to the sacred sadly becomes the task and challenge of the individual. Essential to a culture of participation is animism as a mode of perception. This course explores the role of animism in the co-evolution of culture and consciousness. Several key texts are reviewed which offer psychological and historical perspectives on Western approaches to the sacred. The course focus is on the Italian Renaissance as an example of the convergence of art, religion, and science within a past culture where the animated image vitalized both culture and consciousness. (4 credits)
PSY 766 — The Political Psyche
This course takes a psychological approach to understanding politics. In particular, the disciplines of developmental psychology and integral psychology will be used to contextualize the field of political psychology, to reflect critically on research in the field, and to develop new insights into the psychological bases of political thought and behavior. Topics of interest include the psychology of political movements, media, propaganda, ideologies, and partisan identities. (4 credits)
PSY 770 — Principles of Psychopharmacology
The circumstances of contemporary clinical practice require practitioners to understand the effective and discerning use of psychoactive medications. As such this course provides a thorough overview to the field of psychopharmacology including the biology and neurochemistry of behavior. This course reviews the different classes of prescription drugs and their judicious use relative to the context of psychotherapy including the biological bases of behavior; basic classifications indications and contraindications of commonly prescribed psychopharmacological medications; and effective collaboration with prescribing physicians and other health care providers. (4 credits)
PSY 771 — Resilience, Recovery, & Systems of Care
The provision of psychological services in the current healthcare environment is sharply split between those who can pay for care through out-of-pocket fees and/or health insurance, versus those who must rely on public services. This course reviews principles and best practices in the provision of therapeutic services to diverse populations in public and community settings. The basic principles of the Recovery Model are explored, as well as an understanding of case management and client advocacy to assist in connecting people with needed resources. The impact of poverty and social stress on mental health and recovery, disaster and trauma response, coping with and recovery from severe trauma and mental illness, and services for survivors of abuse, are especially emphasized. Also, the course provides students with the opportunity to meet with consumers and family members of consumers of mental health services to enhance understanding of their experience of mental illness, treatment, and recovery. Navigating complex systems of care for one’s clients and their families and assisting clients in building their own sense of personal resiliency and social support systems are addressed, as well as having an opportunity to meet people with severe mental illness. The necessity of the counselor’s own ongoing inner work to maintain personal equilibrium is an important backdrop of this course. (4 credits)
PSY 772 — Human Sexuality in Relational and Cultural Contexts
This course provides a consideration of the varying ways in which individuals experience their sexual selves, sexual behavior, and sexual orientation. Participation in this course is expected to deepen and enrich students’ awareness and acceptance of aspects of their own sexuality, as well as to deepen their understanding of the variety of ways in which people express and draw meaning from their sexuality. Students will also be encouraged to develop an awareness, appreciation, and comfort with the erotic imagination. The erotic imagination unites the senses with the soul, provides a liminal/ transitional space between virtual and actual, and can facilitate new experience in relation to ourselves and our partners. Overall, students will acquire skills and information that can be applied to clinical practice, as well as to their own lives and relationships. (4 credits)
PSY 773 — Psychology of Love and Intimacy
The longing for love and intimacy is our deepest human yearning. Yet many people pass through life deeply unfulfilled. This course explores what needs to happen both within oneself and between others for a climate of love and intimacy to be created. The psychological underpinnings necessary for mature love, while retaining an appreciation for love’s mystery, are also examined. Recent research helps illuminate basic principles that lead to fulfilling relationships. (4 credits)
PSY 776 — Psychological Assessment: Principles and Practices
This course provides an introduction and overview to psychological assessment. Special emphasis is placed on personality testing and the use of personality and projective tests. Assessments include the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI), the Millon Adolescent Clinical Inventory (MACI) , the Rorschach Inkblot test, the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), the Bender-Gestalt, and projective drawings. Also included are basic concepts of standardized and nonstandardized testing and other assessment techniques, norm-referenced and criterion-referenced assessment, and social, cultural and ethical considerations in selecting, administering, and interpreting assessment instruments. Students will learn to prepare a basic assessment report integrating personality and projective factors. (4 credits)
PSY 777 — Psychological Assessment: Cognitive Testing
This course sequence provides an introduction and overview to psychological assessment. The emphasis for this second course in the sequence is on administering, scoring, and interpreting intelligence and cognitive tests, primarily through the study of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC). Additional cognitive tests are discussed as well. Neuropsychological screening will continue to be explored, from its initial review in the first assessment course. (4 credits)
PSY 779 — Ego and Self in Depth Psychology
This course is an overview of several Depth Psychology theories regarding the development of identity. (4 credits)
PSY 780 — History of Integral Psychology
The field of Integral Psychology stretches back to such figures as James Mark Baldwin and Sri Aurobindo. This course thus examines the emergence of Integral Psychology over the last 150 years. Particular attention is paid to the roots of Integral Psychology and how these influences came together through philosopher Ken Wilber's life work. This course also looks at the emerging directions the field of Integral Psychology is taking as a whole. (4 credits)
PSY 781 — Meta-Theory in Psychological Praxis
There are over 200 schools of psychology and an even larger number of distinct therapeutic interventions. Integral Theory provides a robust framework for honoring the unique contribution of each of these schools and a way of organizing these interventions into a useful taxonomy. This course equips students to leverage a meta-theoretical perspective in their research and clinical practice. (4 credits)
PSY 782 — An Integral Approach to Evil
Evil is arguably one of the most complex topics anyone could engage. This course takes an integral approach to explore the many dimensions of evil and how we talk about evil. Such a multi-dimensional view of evil also serves to illuminate the power of the practical and nuanced value of Integral Theory, via its capacity to hold and coordinate many perspectives on a complex topic. (4 credits)
PSY 783 — Foundations of Integral Psychology
This course begins with an introduction to the five elements of the AQAL model within Integral Theory - quadrants, levels, lines, states, and types - and explores the relevance of these elements as a framework for psychology in today's world. Topics include models of consciousness & human development, the relationship of egoic self and transpersonal self, and the potential of Integral Theory to deepen our understanding of and help bring about personal development as well as social change. (4 credits)
PSY 784 — Integral Theories of Consciousness and Development: States and Stages
One of the core contributions Integral Psychology has made to our understanding of consciousness is a very nuanced description of the relationship between states of consciousness and stages of psychological development. This course provides students with a comprehensive understanding of this relationship and its implications in both clinical and non-clinical contexts. A comparison of old and new models of consciousness further help to understand the relationship between states and stages. (4 credits)
PSY 785 — Integral Theories of Consciousness and Development: Intersubjectivity and Attachment
Intersubjectivity is appropriately referred to by Ken Wilber as "the miracle of we." In order to explore this miracle, this course investigates intersubjectivity from a variety of established perspectives, including psychology (relational psychoanalysis, intersubjectivity theory, attachment theory, and object-relations theory); neurology (interpersonal neurobiology and mirror neurons); philosophy (alterity, phenomenology, and intercorporeality); social theory (communicative rationality); and spirituality (nonduality and I-Thou). Throughout the course we will explore how these perspectives inform our own first- and second-person experiences of intersubjectivity. (4 credits)
PSY 786 — Integral Theories of Consciousness and Development: Vision-Logic
This course explores various theories of post-formal and trans-rational cognition. Key topics include the pre/trans fallacy, what can and can't be said about the highest stages of psychological maturity, the historical emergence of vision-logic, and the application of vision-logic to psychological assessment. First-person practices will allow students to explore different aspects of vision-logic in their own experience. (4 credits)
PSY 787 — Integral Theories of Consciousness and Development: Developmental Assessment
What we can say about consciousness is in large part determined by how we measure and assess it. This course focuses on assessing transformation, integration, and development. The limits and strengths of a number of leading assessment instruments will be explored, with special emphasis on a few such innovative instruments that attempt to assess the further reaches of human consciousness and development. (4 credits)
PSY 788 — Integral Awareness & Planetary Citizenship
The concept of planetary citizenship has taken on increasing importance in recent decades, as the sheer scale of human activity has eclipsed previously recognized boundaries of nation-states, resulting in planet-wide issues and planet-wide responses. The course will explore the intrinsic role of integral awareness in activating and engaging global frameworks of human rights and responsibilities, and the creative contributions that integral awareness can make to social and political life in our global age. (4 credits)
PSY 789 — Integral Perspectives: Human Development and Cultural Evolution
This advanced course builds on previous course work in the evolution of consciousness and culture. Links between the fields of individual human development and cultural evolution are explored, drawing on key concepts and research within each. Special emphasis is placed on inquiry into the ethics, historical lessons, and practical implications of advancing an evolutionary view of individuals and cultures. (4 credits)
PSY 790 — Integral Healing
The term "healing" shares its etymological root with the term "wholeness" - a connection that reveals insight into the nature of both coaching and therapeutic work. Accordingly, the term "integral healing" affirms that genuine healing intrinsically entails caring for the whole person and the whole system, recognizing their fundamental interconnectedness. Developmental practitioners recognize that attending to barriers to development requires an integral approach to healing that honors this wholeness. This entails careful attention to the physical, emotional, relational and meaning-making dimensions of the whole person as they exist within their cultural context. No dimension can be effectively addressed in isolation from the others. Such a holistic approach is firmly anchored in the activation of Central Capability, which serves as the foundation for sustainable transformation and growth. (4 credits)
The live classes for this course may include open-enrollment participants in addition to matriculated students.
MER 510 — Sacred Purpose and Professional Practice
Human beings thrive on meaning and purpose. Bringing meaning and purpose together into a coherent professional life is a challenge. In part this is so because the professions paradoxically and often tragically undermine their purposeful intentions to meet human needs in support of the flourishing of individuals communities and societies. Understanding the underlying economic structures and practices that shape the unintended consequences of professions is critical to transforming the professions. This course weaves together developing leadership competencies for professionals necessary for transforming the professions in ways that realign the professions to their deeper and sacred purpose. (4 credits)
MER 515 — Foundations of Transformative Leadership
Leadership is an inherent dimension of human collective life. The technical, dynamic, and social complexity of contemporary life calls for distinct capabilities of leadership, some unprecedented. The force of the future that drives complexity in modern and postmodern societies requires that leadership be effective in supporting transformation.
This course provides an overview of transformative leadership as practiced in domains such as business, law, education, and politics. And as well, transformative leadership is practiced in varying levels such as teams, organizations, and societies. Topics and approaches to transformative leadership explored in this course include presencing, imagination, learning, beauty, emergence, design, culture, conflict, scaling, and political development. (4 credits)
MER 524 — Transformative Communities of Practice
With the modern emergence of professions, and with the additional layer of the digital revolution, practitioner-communities have an even more vital and evolutionary role creating contexts for capability development. Leaps in practice are catapulted by communities of practitioners underscoring the social and dialogical nature of human learning and knowledge. Practitioners drive both domain-specific learning associated with technical complexity and vertical development associated with dynamic complexity. Transformative Communities of Practice (TCoP) are any group of people who share their passion, experience, and learning related to the vertical development of self, organizations, and social systems. TCoP is an upgrade of the traditional concept of “communities of practice” i.e., they support the development of their members and stakeholders to the next stage of consciousness, competence, and social creativity. Three characteristics of TCoP make it a prefigurative harbinger of the organization of the future: They are a commitment to an evolutionary purpose, an emphasis on wholeness, and a preference for self-management. They also make TCoP represent an evolutionary force contributing to the present movements for civilizational renewal. In this course, students will not only learn about TCoP but gain an enacted experience of it. Formative assessment will be embedded within the learning activity. (4 credits)
MER 590 — Research Methods
Understanding research studies and their conclusions can be a vital aspect of a psychological practitioner’s continuing education. This course prepares the student to understand and engage with psychological research literature by conducting a literature search and gathering sources on a focused topic area within the field of psychology. The course examines aspects of research; which emphasize critical thinking skills, enabling the student to begin to discriminate valid, relevant data from faulty, inconclusive data. Additionally, we will ask specific questions about the culture of psychological research by examining such areas as the relationship between soul and research, the construction of psychological theory, the competing claims of quantitative versus qualitative research, and the primary research paradigms. (4 credits)
MER 591 — Writing Literature Reviews
Doctoral Project courses provide doctoral students a hands-on opportunity to develop elements of the dissertation or clinical case study. This course focuses on developing a preliminary Literature Review chapter for the dissertation proposal or clinical case study. Emphasis is also placed on the continuing refinement of the topic, research questions, and gaps in the literature that emerge from the student’s deepening familiarity with their topic’s literature. Students will also develop a building block of the Literature Review, that of the Sources component of the Context Paper/ Clinical Case Paper. As a result of the information, practice, and feedback offered through the course, students will gain significant familiarity with the process and elements needed in the development of an effective review of the literature. (4 credits)
MER 592 — Research Design
This course provides the opportunity for students to have a hands-on experience developing the third chapter of the doctoral project: The dissertation’s Methodology or the clinical case study’s Progression of the Treatment . Particular emphasis is placed on the development of the research design or a thorough gathering of essential aspects of the treatment story. A secondary focus is for students to integrate feedback from previous assignments, complete any outstanding assignments, and continue to build the project’s emerging second chapter, the Literature Review. (4 credits)
MER 592RESEARCH DESIGNThis course provides the opportunity for students to have a hands-on experience developing the third chapter of the doctoral project: The dissertation’s Methodology or the clinical case study’s Progression of the Treatment. Particular emphasis is placed on the development of the research design or a thorough gathering of essential aspects of the treatment story. A secondary focus is for students to integrate feedback from previous assignments, complete any outstanding assignments, and continue to build the project’s emerging second chapter, the Literature Review. (4 credits)
MER 593 — Dissertation Development
This course sequence provides the opportunity for students to have a hands-on experience developing elements of the dissertation/clinical case study. This fourth course in the sequence provides a structure for each student to individually utilize towards their progress in completing the dissertation proposal/first three chapters of the clinical case study. While the primary focus is for students to integrate feedback from previous assignments and complete outstanding assignments through a cycle of writing and reflection, peer-to-peer collaboration, and frequent faculty feedback, its secondary focus is to identify and break through obstacles to students’ doctoral progress. (4 credits)
MER 708 — Collective Trauma and Transformative Justice
In this time of turbulent global transition, this course underscores the importance of unlocking the transformative potential of trauma for redemptive and transformative action in the face both of historic and current injustice. We will develop an integral, inclusive, and system-wide perspective towards healing trauma and restoring justice in crisis-affected communities. A basic premise of the course is that trauma can serve as a potential source for individual transformation, and that the so-called ‘victim’ can be a potential agent for societal regeneration. Participants will engage in an integral approach to transformative justice in its interconnected dimensions: systemic, socio-economic, cultural, ecological, epistemic, human, and spiritual. Faculty will draw from their extensive experience and research in crisis-affected countries over the past three decades. Real-life testimonies will be enacted and case stories of collaborators in crisis-affected countries across diverse cultures will be discussed. What were once ‘victims’ of trauma have emerged as pioneering leaders who have made vital contributions to systems change and societal renewal. The course seeks to cultivate the potential within each of us as individuals - and in our diverse cultures - both for ourselves to journey from trauma to transformation, as well as to accompany and assist others to do the same.
The course spotlights the unique wisdom and resources within each of our diverse cultures and communities for social healing, and highlights and cultivates the inherent potential within each individual to journey from trauma to transformation, to accompany and capacitate others to do the same, and to actualize social healing and planetary renewal. (4 credits)
MER 709 — Conflict and Cultural Transformation
This course explores issues in the field of peace psychology: peace, conflict, and violence. Topics include direct violence, structural violence, non-violence, peace-making, peace-building, and social justice. Students will develop skills in facilitating the recognition and engagement of differences necessary for creative collaboration and cultural transformation. (4 credits)
MER 710 — Liminal Processes and Initiatory Practices
This course offers a multifaceted exploration of the structure and process of initiatory and transformational experiences through the perspective of the rites of passages framework. The course especially focuses on the liminal phase, the betwixt and between in the process of change, where one is no longer the old and not yet the new. Topics range from rites of passage in indigenous cultures, to applying a reconceptualization of the rites of passages framework, to experiences of complex change in contemporary cultural settings. This course shines light on the epistemological challenges of translating observations, knowledge, and insights from indigenous traditions to western academic contexts, and examines the competencies that are needed for stewards of liminal process to cultivate and harvest the vital forces of change, and to be better able to discern between and apply traditional understanding and practices to contemporary settings. As well, students will consider the competencies and authority they need in moving toward becoming facilitators of liminal processes. (4 credits)
MER 715 — Revisioning Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship is now a major driver of social and economic transformation. Social Entrepreneurship entails social innovation in the service of positive social impact. Generative Entrepreneurship goes beyond positive social impact to include regenerating the commons and furthering collective transformative learning that impacts future generations. Instead of exploiting the commons by externalizing costs, Generative Entrepreneurship seeds and grows the commons. In doing so Generative Entrepreneurs combine technological and social innovation with cultural innovation. In cultural innovation emphasis can be placed on partnership, interdependence, synergy and empowerment. When combined with social innovation, entrepreneurship has the potential to seed and build the commons, producing systemic cultural shifts and going beyond positive social impact by facilitating individual learning and influencing the evolution of social institutions. This course will review examples of Generative Entrepreneurship around the globe as a way to imagine further possibilities in local contexts. In addition, the course explores the overlap between leadership and entrepreneurship for social innovation. We will also survey examples of national and global enterprises that are engaged in creative social innovation as evolutionary experiments that potentially create pathways for solving problems and creating future possibilities. (4 credits)
MER 720 — Imaginal Inquiry
Imaginal Inquiry is a research methodology anchored within the participatory paradigm of research, which recognizes participative consciousness as our true nature. Imaginal Inquiry applies Imaginal Process, Meridian’s approach to cultivating human capacities, to psychological research. These capacities include reflexivity, collaborativity, and empathic imagination. Imaginal Inquiry draws upon these capacities in emphasizing the roles of imagination, participation, and reflexivity in research. Researchers using this methodology are called upon to access and create knowledge that ordinarily may be restricted by the cultural prescriptions that shape our personal identities. This approach to research expands the possibilities for taking actions which can create new meaning, helping to revitalize personal and cultural transformation. (4 credits)
MER 726 — Leadership and Embodiment Practices
Action sourced in embodiment is a critical dimension of leadership. Leadership has played a critical role in the course of human evolution. As human societies become more and more complex, the requirements for leadership effectiveness intensifies. This intensification calls for an emphasis on the transformative and cultural dimensions of leadership. Embodiment or somatic practices can serve as a steady foundation for transformative leadership.
This course focuses on the use of somatic practices to develop leadership capabilities. Drawing on neuroscience research as well as somatic, contemplative, expressive, and dialogical practices, the course explores aspects and dimensions of leadership, including action, self-aware presence, authority, conflict, purpose, meaning, endurance, receptivity, connection, responsibility, and accountability. (4 credits)
MER 728 — Organizational Development and Transformation
Sustainable organizations in an emerging creative economy are dynamic in their response to managing change. Leading organizational change involves collaborative leadership, creativity, motivation, effective team dynamics, process stabilization, and improvement. This course covers the characteristics of a leadership team and their relation to successful organizational transformation in a creative economy. Topics include: stages of commitment, organizational behavior for effective ecological and human sustainability, and support systems needed to sustain long term change. (4 credits)
MER 731 — Purpose, Culture, and the Professions
Worldwide, societies are crying out for assistance in the transformation of their citizenry, organizations, businesses, and institutions. To bring a new vision of the Possible Earth into reality, we need to begin with ourselves so that we are operating with the fullness of our being. The global need is to achieve a new humanity and a new way to nurture the human species while we work to heal our home, the planet Earth. The need is to develop the possible human, in the possible society, in a more possible world. This is the art of world-making, spirit-catching, mind-growing, soul-quaking leadership! The complexity of our time requires both greater and wiser use of our capacities - a rich playing of the mental and emotional instrument we have been given. The world needs Social Artists - skilled facilitators, change agents, and leaders - to guide and lead the shift to a set of new global values and local practices. Social Artistry provides strategies that are effective in an interdependent world, developing effective leaders who can productively address interconnected world problems. This course in Social Artistry guides human development in its most primary form: The development of capacities, skills, and potentials that activate both individuals and groups in ways that enhance their societal choices and commitments, liberate their inventiveness, and raise levels of esteem and cooperation essential to carrying out individual and collective social goals. (4 credits)
MER 735 — Integral Development
This highly interactive course exposes students to key concepts and practices of Integral Development – an approach to human development that focuses on actualizing the interconnected potential of self, organization and society. The course is designed as a “development journey,” taking participants step by step, through all levels of integral development. An “engagement map” with guiding questions, will help participants to navigate through the course, and the multiple layers of development that are discussed. The course focuses simultaneously on the acquisition of relevant knowledge, deep insights, as well as innovative new practice. The course assignment is designed to enable transfers to the personal development journey each participant is on (and, of course, her particular organization and society), thereby strengthening the personal capacity to become an “integral” agent of transformation. Throughout the course, students are exposed to real-life case stories from diverse cultures from around the world, to purposefully draw on cultural and societal particularities. Cases range from private enterprise, to civic society initiatives, to transformative educational institutions, including a cutting-edge leadership laboratory in Brazil. The course is infused with arts, performance, and poetry, to help create a stimulating and expansive learning and innovation environment within the classroom. The course culminates in the visualization and co-creation of an ‘Integral University Perspective’: an educational context that can authentically “care” for the interconnected development of self, organization and society. (4 credits)
MER 736 — Models of Self-Identity
One’s self-identity is a fundamental part of being alive, and much research shows that our self- identity grows up. This course is a dive into six self-identity developmental models, the theory that underlies them and practical application of each one. Two of the models are from the Loevinger lineage: Torbert’s Developmental Action Inquiry and Susanne Cook-Greuter’s MAP. Three other models will be featured: Hall’s Values Mode, the Lectica which is based on Fisher and Dawson’s research and STAGES, O’Fallon’s Integral model combining the Integral Frame and the Loevinger lineage. Each model will be featured including guest speakers from several of these traditions. Embodiment of these approaches will include group discussions and learning activities. (4 credits)
MER 737 — Ecology, Culture, and Pluralism
Psychologists can make significant contributions towards healing modernity’s cultural trauma. Revitalizing our culture towards community, beauty, conviviality, and sustainability requires that we embrace a pluralist vision which recognizes the necessity of difference and interdependence. Pluralizing of our own identity is an essential element in reimagining and revitalizing our culture. We will consider how a culture of conviviality and pluralized identity can reconstitute personal responsibility. Topics explored may include home, money, food, violence, gender, and sexuality. (4 credits)
MER 745 — Integral Development and Transformative Leadership
Earth, our shared home planet, is on fire. Humanity is at a perilous but nonetheless promising crossroad. Despite the alarming degeneration of our politics, economy, environment, and culture, we have the potential to reshape our shared future by embodying our full humanity and taking creative responsibility for our Earth home. This course is an invitation to develop the capacities needed for transformative leadership at this crucial time of planetary transition, relative to one’s consciousness, creativity and courage. This course will engage the theory and praxis of Integral Development, addressing the interconnected realms of human life: humanity, nature, culture, education, systems, and unity. (4 credits)
MER 745INTEGRAL DEVELOPMENT AND TRANSFORMATIVE LEADERSHIPHumanity is at a perilous but nonetheless promising crossroad. Despite the alarming degeneration of our politics, economy, environment, and culture, we have the potential to reshape our shared future by embodying our full humanity and taking creative responsibility for our Earth home. This course is an invitation to develop the capacities needed for transformative leadership at this crucial time of planetary transition, relative to one’s consciousness, creativity and courage. This course will engage the theory and praxis of Integral Development, addressing the interconnected realms of human life: humanity, nature, culture, education, systems, and unity. (4 credits)
MER 760 — Modern Consciousness and Indigenous Wisdom
The stories of indigenous peoples provide inspiration for a mythic imagination that attempts to address the crises of modern consciousness. This course explores how indigenous wisdom can appear differently depending on the particular self-construction in which we happen to be engaged. Understanding the history of the self gives us access to a relationship with native knowing that does not appropriate but instead engages in a moral discourse which seeks healing through integrative states of consciousness including the painful awareness of collective shadow material. Healing our contemporary pathologies and suffering in ways that transcend individualistic paradigms without romanticizing native people will be considered. The intent is to narrate ourselves freely in the face of historical dissociations and denied aspects of ourselves and our communities. (4 credits)
MER 765 — Interpersonal Neurobiology
Interpersonal Neurobiology is a field of inquiry named so by Daniel J. Siegel, whose work is prominent in this course. Themes and practices addressed focus on attachment, resonance, interpersonal communication, movement, and embodiment. (4 credits)
MER 776 — Research Writing
This course provides a structure for each student to individually utilize towards their progress in completing the dissertation proposal/first three chapters of the clinical case study. While the primary focus is for students to integrate feedback from previous assignments and complete outstanding assignments through a cycle of writing and reflection as well as peer and faculty feedback, its secondary focus is to identify and break through any personal obstacles to the student’s doctoral progress. (4 credits)
MER 780 — Developmental Performance Coaching
Human development has very broadly been conceptualized in three stages: preconventional, conventional, and post conventional. This course explores the ways in which developmental coaches engage the staging of development and as such are able to coach with a nuanced understanding of how the client makes sense of and grows from their experience. The practice of scaffolding is a key element of this course. (4 credits)
MER 790 — Process Facilitation Consulting
The functioning of teams and organizations is enhanced and transformed through effective process facilitation and consultation. This course focuses on both dialogic and visual practices that emphasize the role of collective imagination. This course is based on an understanding of liminality and ritualization. Students will engage with both history and present philosophy and pedagogy to develop a model of facilitation as applied to current cultural, community, and organizational learning edges. (4 credits)
MER 799 — Professional Specialization Practicum
This course provides students with a framework to complement and integrate learnings from an approved professional specialty program (PSP). The course considers such questions as the PSP's effectiveness in being an avenue for transformative learning, the student's ongoing experience of the PSP, ways in which ideas and principles from the PSP can potentially be applied to the student's final project in their Meridian degree program (as applicable), and how the student's overall learnings might be congruent with concepts and principles from Meridian's curriculum. It is expected that by the end of this course the student will have had the opportunity to reflect on their experience and learnings from their PSP from the perspective of transformative learning praxis and in ways that help to deepen their longer-term understanding of the material, situating it as well within their Meridian coursework journey. (4 credits)
Meridian University revises the specifics of its curriculum frequently and without prior notice. Please direct questions about any curriculum revisions to your Academic Advisor.