Energy Centers

To Form or Affiliate a New Community or Project:

If you simply wish to become a part of AHP, wherever you reside, please just click on Join Now and submit your membership online, or contact our office at AHPOffice@aol.com.

If you are inside the United States and wish to form or affiliate a new Community or Project, please contact Bonnie Davenport

If you are outside the United States and wish to form a new Community or Project, or affiliate WITH AHP, please contact AHPoffice@aol.com

International Programs

The AHP International Program conducts exchanges, events and projects that share knowledge and expertise with emerging humanistic movements worldwide. It has a strong role in producing the ANNUAL International Conference on Conflict Resolution that AHP cooperates with each year in St. Petersburg, Russia, and convenes an Annual International AHP Network Meeting of AHP organizations, interest groups, and humanistic professionals from around the world in conjunction with that conference.

The International Program cooperates with and supports related efforts in many areas of the world, and assists professional groups in organizing national and regional associations, AS WELL AS EDUCATIONAL AND TRAINING PROGRAMS to work together on common purposes in promoting humanistic psychology. For many years this Energy Center lead professional exchange delegations to provide support and share knowledge with emerging humanistic movements in Russia, Eastern Europe, and other parts of the then communist world.

For more information on our international activities contact AHPoffice@aol.com

Journal of Humanistic Psychology

The Journal of Humanistic Psychology is an interdisciplinary forum for contributions, controversies and diverse statements pertaining to humanistic psychology. It addresses personal growth, interpersonal encounters, social problems and philosophical issues.

An international journal of human potential, self-actualization, the search for meaning and social change, the Journal of Humanistic Psychology was founded by Abraham Maslow and Anthony Sutich in 1961. It is the official journal of the Association for Humanistic Psychology, and maintains a close connection with the Saybrook Institute where Thomas Greening, JHP''s editor for the past 26 years, is a member of the faculty. You can visit the Saybrook Institute''s web site at www.saybrook.org
Current Table of Contents, contact and subscription information.
Kirk J. Schneider, Editor
1314 Westwood Blvd.
Suite 205
Los Angeles, CA 90024

Oregon Community

For AHP members living in Oregon, this community's purpose is to strengthen wisdom, cooperation and positive action. It holds monthly breakfast meetings on topics of common interest, such as "A Transpersonal Perspective", "Responsible Stewardship", Narrative and Telling One's Own Story", "Horse Riding Therapy", and "Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing", and produces workshops and seminars with luminaries like James Bugenthal.

AHP members can join for $20. For more information please email Ray Siderius Siderius@pobox.com.

Professional Issues of the Paradigm Shift

Student Communities

AHP Student Communities was established as an official component of AHP in August of 1997. Here is a statement of the first community at California State University at Northridge, and a link to the informative
independant web site they've established. A number of other campuses around the country are exploring or in the process of establishing AHP Student Communities. Please contact either Dr. Nesenholz (address below) or Dr. Charnofsky for details and support if you are interested in such a project.

The AHP Student Energy Center was created in 1997 to address current and emerging interests of students preparing to enter the fields of counseling, psychology, social work, and other helping relationships in the theory and practice of humanistically oriented approaches. The need for humanistically oriented healers is particularly important currently with the heavy influence of large corporations, managed care companies, and the resulting emphasis on brief approaches to helping. The Student Energy Center is concerned with promoting the theories, and philosophies, of the founders of AHP, along with advancing the cause of humanistically oriented healing practice.We are influenced by researchers such as Maslow (1954), who studiedthe development of normal people rather than focusing on the behaviorgenerally considered abnormal or maladaptive. We take a developmentalperspective of individuals as emerging and growing. We believe that people have the ability to organize their experiences into meaningful patterns and create their own meaning of the environment in which they live.

We perceive the goal of humanistic helping as facilitating clients to move toward self direction, self awareness, and improved decision making. In doing so helpers need to be sensitive to multicultural considerations. Clients are helped to trust their own capabilities and to assume responsibility for all aspects of their lives.

We believe in the importance of the interpersonal relationship for therapeutic success. The helper's personal characteristics, such as openness, warmth, empathy, and unconditionally respecting the client's potential for self-healing are the crucial components of the interpersonal relationship. We believe in emphasizing the actual experience of the client - that what is reality for a person is what he or she perceives. To effectively work with people, then, counselors must be able to understand how clients perceive events in the environment and in themselves. In working with clients, counselors need to be in tune with clients' internal frame of reference, and understand clients' world views. This is especially significant in a multicultural society.

We believe that a major construct is the self-concept-the person's view of self. People whose concept of self is relatively close to their experience and who believe their behavior represents their ideals and values could be considered psychologically whole. When their awareness matches their experience, they would be considered congruent.

Stan Charnofsky stan.charnofsky@csun.edu
Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling
California State University Northridge
Northridge, CA 91330-8265

Technology and The Human Spirit

Islamic Community, Iran

The mission of the energy center in Iran is to provide a community where individuals interested in human development can work and dialogue. One of the main efforts that the energy center has focussed on in recent years is the creation and implementation of a successful prison reform project which has received world wide recognition.

This project is an example of combining Islamic theory and humanistic psychology in a practical, useful application in society. The energy center hopes to create a closer contact with individuals interested in human growth and potential, spirituality, and ways of change, from all over the world, to find common bonds of understanding, and expand horizons of knowledge.

The energy center serves as a source, guiding researchers and scholars to information about the psychological knowledge contained in the greater Islamic worldview, thus helping to add to the understanding of diversity and opening perspectives. Likewise, it informs Islamic theory of the contributions and perspectives of humanistic psychology. This interplay of knowledge, understanding, and collegiality fostered by the center is important not only educationally and theoretically, but also helps build bridges to understanding in an area which has been troubled by misunderstanding and suspicion.

Comments and questions, research matters, and communication in general are welcomed by Sayid Muhammad-Muhsin Jalali-Tehrani, Ph.D. at
tehrani@aalulbayt.org
The Website of Sayid Muhammad-Muhsin Jalali-Tehrani, Ph.D
He can also be reached by mail at
S.M.M. Jalali-Tehrani, Ph.D.
Mental Health and Counseling Center
PO Box 1161-91775
Mashhad, Iran

Northern Mexico Community

AHP's Northern Mexico Community is interested in the development of humanistic psychology and creation of humanistic professional practice in areas like education, human potential development, community development, and transpersonal humanistic psychotherapy.

For more information please contact Manuel F. Cervantes Mijares at Veracruz #208 Ote. Col. Las Rosas, Gomez Palacio, Durango, Mexico, call (17) 14-40-24, or e-mail him at mcervan@halcon.laguna.ual.mx

Ontosofia Psicosomatica - Italy

SOMA in the Pythagoran sense meant "instrument of harmony", and the words and the ideas psyche and soma were interchangeable and meant the same thing. Yet, why is it that today Psyche and Soma are considered as separate entities? The aim of our method is to recreate the lost awareness of that integrated unity, giving back to individuals the awareness of their innate ability to direct their own lives.

Ontosophy means "the Wisdom of Being". Beginning in 1985, Psychosomatic Ontosophy was developed from ancient humanistic philosophies and practices by Francesco Palmirotta, and applied to different scientific and artistic fields including music therapy, psychotherapy, education, art, and philosophy . It is developed from Socrates' maieutics (the art of being born from the self into the self) and its philosophical origins, which go back to Pythagoras, as do all Western notions of humanistic therapy. It is integrated with the theories and approaches of Carl Rogers, Abe Maslow, and Rollo May, through the concepts of being, knowledge, and love.

The Psychosomatic Ontosophy Energy Centre operates a living community of psychotherapists, music therapists, and art therapists in the hills near Cassano delle Murge, West of Bari, in South Italy. It holds an annual international conference, coordinates two post-graduate schools, one for psychotherapy and one for music therapy, and organizes seminars, training courses, and workshops led by professionals from Italy and abroad. These activities are backed by UNESCO, AHP, World Federation for Mental Health, World Council of Psychotherapy, and the Italian Ministry of Health.

The Associazione Ontosofia Psicosomatica, AHP’s Energy Center in Italy, shares its philosophy, therapeutic process, history, and activities in Italian at www.ontosofia.it. It defines Ontosophy (the study of being), and discusses the curriculum of the school of psychotherapy operated by AOP in Bari.

AHP INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITIES