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CIIS Scholars Help Shape Landmark New Edition of The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology
Newly released second edition highlights the scholarship of CIIS faculty and students and the University’s continuing leadership in transpersonal psychology
San Francisco, CA— September 2026 — Faculty and students from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) are prominently represented in the newly released second edition of The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology, a major international reference work surveying the rapidly evolving field of transpersonal psychology.
Published by Wiley and edited by Glenn Hartelius, CIIS adjunct faculty member Jenny Wade, PhD, and Harris L. Friedman, the new edition brings together leading scholars to examine the full range of human consciousness, transformative experience, psychological development, spirituality, research methodology, healing, and transpersonal approaches to individual and collective flourishing.
The volume reflects more than a decade of developments in the field since the publication of its first edition and includes significant new and substantially revised scholarship. With increased attention to empirical research, cultural and philosophical perspectives, psychedelic-assisted therapies, altered states of consciousness, somatic approaches, and emerging areas of transpersonal inquiry, the handbook is designed as both an academic text and an authoritative reference for researchers, clinicians, educators, students, and practitioners.
CIIS scholars are represented throughout the volume.
Wade, a longtime CIIS scholar of developmental and transpersonal psychology, serves as one of the handbook’s three editors and contributes to multiple chapters spanning transformative human development, qualitative research, neurophenomenology, transcendent sexuality, transpersonal psychotherapy, and workplace spirituality.
Christopher Walling, PsyD, MBA, Core Faculty and Chair of the Department of Research Psychology at CIIS, contributes the volume’s concluding chapter, “Transpersonal Approaches in Gerontology: Integrative Pathways to Meaning and Transformation,” examining the possibilities for meaning, development, and transformation across later life.
Jeanine M. Canty, PhD, CIIS core faculty member in Transformative Studies, co-authors the chapter “Ecopsychology,” exploring the relationship between psychological life, ecological consciousness, and the more-than-human world.
CIIS adjunct faculty member Chris A. Roe, PhD, contributes to “Parapsychology: The Scientific Study of Anomalous Experiences,” bringing contemporary research perspectives to an area historically significant to the development of transpersonal psychology.
The volume also showcases the emerging scholarship of CIIS students. Jacqueline Hermida, a doctoral student in the CIIS Department of Research Psychology, joins Jenny Wade and Phyllis Alongi as a co-author of “Transpersonal Psychotherapies,” demonstrating the Department’s commitment to bringing doctoral students into consequential scholarly conversations and faculty-student research collaborations.
CIIS has been one of the intellectual homes of transpersonal psychology for more than half a century and seeing our faculty and doctoral students represented throughout a landmark volume like this speaks to the continuing vitality of that tradition.
Christopher Walling, Chair and Associate Professor, Research Psychology
“What is especially exciting about this new edition is that transpersonal psychology is not being treated simply as a historical movement. It is being advanced as a living field of research—one increasingly engaged with empirical science, embodiment, culture, consciousness, human development, and some of the most consequential questions about what it means to be human. I am deeply proud that CIIS scholars, including one of our current PhD students, are helping shape that conversation,” said Christopher G. Walling, PsyD, MBA, Chair of the CIIS Department of Research Psychology.
The handbook’s publication underscores a distinctive dimension of CIIS’ scholarly legacy. Since its founding, CIIS has fostered forms of inquiry that bring Western psychology and research into sustained conversation with contemplative traditions, embodied knowledge, spirituality, consciousness studies, cultural inquiry, and transformative approaches to human development. Today, that legacy continues through interdisciplinary scholarship across the University and particularly through doctoral research and faculty scholarship in Research Psychology and related CIIS programs.
The second edition of The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology was first published online by Wiley on August 20, 2026. The 866-page volume is available in print and online, with individual chapters also available through Wiley Online Library.
The book is available to view and order through Wiley:
The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology, Second Edition
Editors: Glenn Hartelius, Jenny Wade, and Harris L. Friedman
Print ISBN: 978-1-394-21565-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-394-21568-3
California Institute of Integral Studies
Integral education for therapists, thought leaders, creatives, and activists since 1968.
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