Harris Friedman

University of Florida | UF · Department of Psychology

Parapsychology and transpersonal psychology were founded independently and have evolved separately as two distinct movements, although there is considerable overlap in both their content and in the interests of a number of scholars who are active in both areas. Harris Friedman, Co-President of the Association of Transpersonal Psychology, and Dean R...

Replication and extension hold high value in the field of psychology as these practices provide validation of psychological constructs, and allow for discovery of intricacies, as is typically expected in the physical sciences. When extending human ability to identify emotions in facial expressions of dogs to various morphologies of dogs and wild ca...

Studies have shown that paranormal belief is correlated with numerous variables, including schizotypy and transliminality. The current study aimed to examine (a) the role of transliminality in understanding variability in paranormal belief and (b) whether transpersonal self-expansiveness improved the prediction of paranormal belief after accounting...

This study replicated and extended previous research (Bloom & Friedman, 2013) indicating that humans can correctly identify emotional expressions in photographs of dog faces when tested with one breed (i.e., a Malinois). It examined the effect of dog facial morphology on accuracy of emotion identification by using images of a Malinois, as well as t...

Self-expansiveness is a transpersonal construct that uniquely provides a secular-naturalistic conceptualization related to, but distinct from, constructs based on a supernatural approach to spirituality. It avoids supernatural references that are often explicitly or implicitly embedded within many approaches to understanding spirituality. Self-expa...

Although he formally departed from the transpersonal psychological community in the 1990s, Ken Wilber was, and continues to be, one of the most important and influential theoreticians in this subdiscipline of psychology. Given his indisputable prominence and substantive contributions to transpersonal psychological thought, both Harris L. Friedman a...

SCIENTIFIC Transpersonal psychology provides a heterodox approach to psychological science. Although it is currently marginalized from mainstream psychology, it offers potential for advancing the discipline of psychology, as well as for human betterment. It currently suffers from rampant romanticism, but it also challenges narrow scientism prevalen...

An extraordinary claim was made by one of the leading researchers within positive psychology, namely, there is a universal–invariant ratio between positive to negative emotions that serves as a unique tipping point between flourishing and languishing in individuals, marriages, organizations, and other human systems across all cultures and times. Kn...

Transpersonal psychology has at times critiqued the broader psychology field for perpetrating a somewhat arbitrary Cartesian subject-object divide. Some phenomenologists claim that reframing this purported divide as an experienced phenomenon can defuse its philosophical impact. If subjective experiences are viewed as continuous with the lifeworld o...

Recent randomized controlled trials of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy for patients with cancer suggest that this treatment results in large-magnitude reductions in anxiety and depression as well as improvements in attitudes toward disease progression and death, quality of life, and spirituality. To better understand these findings, we sought to...

The psychological mechanisms of action involved in psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy are not yet well understood. Despite a resurgence of quantitative research regarding psilocybin, the current study is the first qualitative study of participant experiences in psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy. Semistructured interviews were carried out with 13 adu...

Heroism requires acting altruistically in the face of considerable risk. Professions such as psychology are based on working toward a public good and accordingly provide offsetting privileges for the sacrifices expected. Consequently, psychologists occasionally face professional dilemmas that provide everyday heroic opportunities. Examples of such...

Transcultural competence involves more than recognizing and respecting cultural differences. It also involves reconciliation and realization, creating new ways for dealing with cultural dilemmas. We present scientifically based concepts and methods for identifying, analyzing, and reconciling cultural dilemmas, including illustrations from our work...

When the scientific method yields discoveries that imperil people’s lifestyle or worldviews or impinge on corporate vested interests, the public and political response can be anything but favorable. Sometimes the response slides into overt denial of scientific facts, although this denial is often claimed to involve “skepticism”. We outline the dist...

We critically re-examine Fredrickson et al.’s renewed claims concerning the differential relationship between hedonic and eudaimonic forms of well-being and gene expression, namely that people who experience a preponderance of eudaimonic well-being have gene expression profiles that are associated with more favorable health outcomes. By means of an...

Supporting Information. (PDF)

Aikido, and related martial arts, such as Hapkido, offer insights for reconciling conflict at intrapersonal, interpersonal, organizational, and global levels. How these operate can be understood scientifically using psychological concepts, especially from transpersonal and transcultural psychology. Some basic approaches for applying these principle...

Comments on the original article "Life is pretty meaningful," by S. J. Heintzelman and L. A. King (see record 2014-03265-001). Heintzelman and King explored meaning in life (MIL), which they acknowledged "remains, in some ways, a construct and experience shrouded in mystery" (p. 561). Unfortunately, they dealt with this complex topic in a very simp...

Using data obtained from 4004 participants across eight countries (Canada, India, Japan, Korea, Poland, Slovakia, Uganda, and the U.S.), the factorial reliability, validity and structural/measurement invariance of a 30-item version of Expressions of Spirituality Inventory (ESI-R) was evaluated. The ESI-R measures a five factor model of spirituality...

Sundararajan and Kim (2014) claimed that Thomas Müntzer was a false mystic based on criteria that they believed characterize authentic mystics, such as preferring transcendence over immanence. They selected Müntzer as a false mystic, compared to so-called authentic mystics, due to his not, at least in their evaluation, meeting their criteria, as we...

Review of "Handbook of Positive Emotions" (2014), by Michele M. Tugade, Michelle N. Shiota, and Leslie D. Kirby (Eds.).

Replies to the comments of Nickerson (see record 2014-36500-010), Guastello (see record 2014-36500-011), Musau (see record 2014-36500-013), Hämäläinen et al. (see record 2014-36500-014), and Lefebvre and Schwartz (see record 2014-36500-015) on the authors article (see record 2013-24609-001). Fredrickson and Losada's (2005) article was the subject o...

Recently we (Brown, Sokal, & Friedman, 2013) debunked the widely cited claim made by Fredrickson and Losada (2005) that their use of a mathematical model drawn from nonlinear dynamics (namely, the Lorenz equations from fluid dynamics) provided theoretical support for the existence of a pair of critical positivity-ratio values (2.9013 and 11.6346) s...

This is a response to five comments [American Psychologist 69, 626-629 and 632-635 (2014)] on our article arXiv:1307.7006.

Comments on the article by Fredrickson and Losada (see record 2005-11834-001). Recently the current authors (Brown, Sokal, & Friedman, 2013) debunked the widely cited claim made by Fredrickson and Losada (2005) that their use of a mathematical model drawn from nonlinear dynamics (namely, the Lorenz equations from fluid dynamics) provided theoretica...

Significance This article critically reanalyzes the work of Fredrickson et al. [Fredrickson BL, et al. (2013) Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 110(33):13684–13689], which claimed to show that distinct dimensions of psychological well-being are differentially correlated with levels of expression of a selection of genes associated with distinct forms of immune...

Meant to be an authoritative guide for psychiatrists and others interested in understanding and applying ketamine psychedelic psychotherapy (KPP), this paper focuses on its pharmacology, phenomenology, and clinical applications. Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic widely used by physicians and veterinarians in the United States. In addition to it...

Comments on the article "The humanistic psychology-positive psychology divide: Contrasts in philosophical foundations" by Waterman (see record 2013-12501-001). Waterman has provided some broad-brush generalizations about differences between humanistic psychology and positive psychology, many of which do not hold in all cases, and he has pointed out...

Injustices in the criminal justice system in the United States

Replies to the comments of Nickerson (see record 2014-36500-010), Guastello (see record 2014-36500-011), Musau (see record 2014-36500-013), Hämäläinen et al. (see record 2014-36500-014), and Lefebvre and Schwartz (see record 2014-36500-015) on the authors article (see record 2013-24609-001). Fredrickson and Losada’s (2005) article was the subject o...

This chapter presents information regarding the status of quantitative assessment as it applies to the definition and measurement of constructs arising from, or related to, spirituality and transpersonal psychology. It provides this information to assist transpersonal psychologists in becoming aware of available technologies and to compel researche...

The content area of transpersonal psychology has undeniably been linked to the study of spirituality. Spirituality is explicitly contained within many definitions of transpersonal psychology. To address whether transpersonal psychology is really only spiritual psychology under another name, there first has to be clarification about the conceptual d...

We examine critically the claims made by Fredrickson and Losada (2005) concerning the construct known as the "positivity ratio." We find no theoretical or empirical justification for the use of differential equations drawn from fluid dynamics, a subfield of physics, to describe changes in human emotions over time; furthermore, we demonstrate that t...

Humans accurately read other humans' emotional facial expressions. Little research was found examining human ability to read dogs' expressions. Cross-species research extended facial expression research to chimpanzees, and there is much research on dogs' auditory signaling to humans. To explore humans' ability to identify dogs' facial displays, pho...

Reported near-death experiences (NDEs) have been associated with various extraordinary phenomena, including profound psychological, physiological, and spiritual aftereffects. One specific phenomenon involves electromagnetic aftereffects (EMEs) where technological and electrical equipment malfunctions for no apparent reason. This qualitative pilot s...

The Self-Expansiveness Circles Test (SECT), an alternate form of the Self-Expansiveness Level Form Transpersonal Scale (SELF TS), was compared to the SELF TS and two measures of similar constructs. The SECT is primarily graphical in content, but otherwise is similar to the SELF TS. These measures were administered to undergraduate students (n = 96)...

Research using moral dilemmas has consistently found religious conservatives make poorer moral decisions than liberals. A sample of 104 Evangelical Christians leaders were found to score poorly in moral reasoning using this approach, but were also found to have high moral identity. Their moral identity correlated highly with self-reported moral beh...

Three computer-aided qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) were compared to each other and to a hand-coded method for analyzing spiritual content in 49 dream journals and 11 diary entries. The CAQDAS ratings demonstrated strong convergence with each other, despite using different assumptions; the hand-coded ratings were less correlated with t...

Childhood obesity can lead to serious health problems and has become a US health crisis. Although multiple factors contribute to childhood obesity, rarely is it treated in a multifactorial way. Pediatric endocrinologists are among the most qualified health professionals in this area, and their perceptions about multifactorial approaches, and the ba...

It is pertinent to explore stimulus conditions that might produce psi effects at least as strong as those elicited in the ganzfeld condition, particularly if those stimulus conditions are less complex than the ganzfeld. Consequently, Storm and Rock developed an imagery cultivation (IC) model, which considers shamaniclike techniques to be psi-conduc...

Resiliency is the ability to survive, or even thrive, during adversity. It is a key construct within both humanistic and positive psychology, but each sees it from a contrasting vantage. Positive psychology decontextualizes resilience by judging it as a virtue regardless of circumstance, while humanistic psychology tends to view it in a more holist...

Neurobiological advances have resulted in growing interest in many psychological phenomena heretofore resistant to scientific scrutiny, including within transpersonal psychology and parapsychology. These advances perhaps can resolve longstanding tensions between these two psychological subdisciplines, which have generally been treated as disparate....

Harris Friedman has made a unique contribution to science by constructing the first explicitly transpersonal measure, helping to bring transpersonal psychology into the realm of more conventional science. He has also engaged in a wide range of professional activities during his career, including mentoring younger scholars and professionals. This pa...

Humanistic psychology has often been misportrayed as obsolete, especially by some positive psychologists who have tended to minimize their humanistic roots and to co-opt the humanistic psychology agenda through unfairly accusing it of various errors while pursuing a narrowed version of humanistic psychology. Through this distancing from and denigra...

Awe is a concept central in much of humanistic and transpersonal psychology, but it still lacks a consensual scientific meaning. Consequently, this article conceptually clarifies awe for its further use in scientific research and theory, as well as in applications such as psychotherapy. Previous understandings of awe and its changing meaning are di...

Using a sample of 647 Canadian children in kindergarten to Grade 3 (325 boys, 322 girls), the present study evaluated the perceived effectiveness of Skillstreaming (McGinnis & Goldstein, 2003), a widely known social skills program implemented to target the development of four skill sets, i.e., listening, following directions, problem-solving, and k...

Claims from those having near-death experiences (NDEs), as well as those sympathetic to such claims, challenge the prevailing assumption that consciousness is dependent on a functioning brain. Extant theories, both neurobiological and psychosocial, that attempt to explain NDEs are examined and found unable to adequately account for the full range o...

Bioenergetic therapy combines bodywork with psychoanalysis. Also known as bioenergetic analysis or simply bioenergetics, this therapeutic system was created by Alexander Lowen (2004), a protégé of Wilhelm Reich (see Sharaf, 1994), who in turn was Freud's student; as such, it stems from the Freudian psychoanalytic tradition. It is seen as a humanist...

Transpersonal psychology (TP) emerged in the United States during the 1960s, a turbulent time when psychedelic experimentation and the rediscovery of mysticism, primarily from Eastern and indigenous traditions, caused much deep reflection. It grew from the growing discontent by some humanistic psychologists who questioned the limitations of a solel...

This paper focuses on exploring various models of spiritual development. It first addresses philosophical dilemmas underpinning the concept of spiritual development by questioning whether these can be addressed without metaphysical assumptions embedded in religious worldviews and thus understood in any consensual way across different historical and...

This article presents information on standardized paper-and-pencil measures of spiritual and transpersonal constructs that hold promise for use in yoga research. Nine instruments are discussed at length including the Assessment Schedule for Altered States of Consciousness, Ego Grasping Orientation, Expressions of Spirituality Inventory, Hindu Relig...

The construct validity of the five bioenergetic–analytic character types was explored through a multitrait multi-method approach. Twenty-five college students had full-body photographs and Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) data rated using this typology, and these were compared to psychometric data, including from the Adjective Check List (ACL). The...

Xenophilia, seen as a type of romanticism, is proposed as an explanation for the tendency within transpersonal psychology to privilege so-called exotic religious and spiritual traditions, as opposed to the xenophobic tendency within mainstream Western psychology of religion and spirituality to privilege the Judeo-Christian tradition. Claims made in...

Psychological diagnosis faces unique challenges when used to differentiate nonpsychopathological religious/spiritual/transpersonal (R/S/T) experiences from those that might evidence psychopathology, particularly considering the diversity of such experiences and the value-laden assumptions inherent in most diagnostic practices. Theoretical and pragm...

The role of qualitative methods within humanistic psychology research is explored though a Web-based dialogue among the authors expressing varying, and often quite diverging, views on assorted concerns about research methodologies and their underlying epistemologies. Specifically explored is whether qualitative methods are inherently better for cap...

Humanistic and positive psychology both focus on similar concerns, but have differences regarding methodology and epistemology. In terms of methodology, humanistic psychologists tend to prefer qualitative over quantitative approaches, whereas positive psychologists tend to hold the opposite preference. Likewise, in terms of epistemology, humanistic...

The International Transpersonal Association (ITA) was formed in 1978 for the purposes of promoting education and research in transpersonal subjects, as well as sponsoring global conferences for the international transpersonal community. The association was subsequently dissolved in 2004, but is now in the process of being reactivated and revitalize...

The self-concept is usually seen as individualistic and/or social-relational, although sometimes it is viewed as ecological, temporal, or biological, constituting differing perspectives that are not well unified. The construct of self-expansiveness, which shows how the self-concept can expand from a narrow individualistic identification to wider so...

Ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic commonly used by US physicians, has recently been shown to be a powerful anti-depressant and is also capable of eliciting transpersonal experiences that can be transformative. Although currently approved in the US only for use as an anesthetic, physicians there can legally prescribe it off-label to treat various...

Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic widely used by physicians in the United States and also a psychedelic drug that physicians can legally prescribe off-label within the United States for other therapeutic purposes. It has been used in Russia and elsewhere to successfully treat alcoholism and other psychological or psychiatric problems, but has n...

Humanistic psychology’s tradition of controversy regarding the worth of psychological testing and assessment is reviewed. Assessment is defined as a process involving qualitative professional judgments integrating information from various sources and necessarily guiding all professional activities, whether performed explicitly or implicitly. Testin...

A number of medication trials at major U.S. research universities are now, once more, legally exploring psychedelics' vast potential for treating various physical and psychological problems. These studies have been approved based on a medical model that considers psychedelics' effects as primarily biochemical, but some are also addressing wider hum...