A Brief History of Transpersonal Psychology

In the middle of the twentieth century, American psychology was dominated by two major schools behaviorism and Freudian psychology. Increasing dissatisfaction with these two orientations as adequate approaches to the human psyche led to the development of humanistic psychology. The main spokesman and most articulate representative of this new field was the wellknown American psychologist Abraham Maslow. He offered an incisive critique of the limitations of behaviorism and psychoanalysis, or the First and the Second Force in psychology as he called them, and formulated the principles of a new perspective in psychology (Maslow 1969).