Don Hanlon Johnson Receives Prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award

Don Hanlon Johnson, Ph.D., a long-time professor of Integral and Transpersonal Psychology at CIIS, received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the United States Association for Body Psychotherapy during its 2023 Annual Conference this past May in San Francisco. The award is presented annually to a body psychotherapist recognized for their lifetime achievements specifically in the field of body psychotherapy by impacting the field, contributing to the body of knowledge, expanding the audience, mobilizing the community, and their support of the field at large.

Dr. Johnson founded the “first of its kind” Somatics Program at CIIS in 1983, establishing one of the nation’s most well-respected somatics program. During his time as director, Dr. Johnson saw to it that graduates were able to situate themselves fully within the mainstream clinical community. To that end, he served as one of three consultants helping to reshape the State of California’s Marriage and Family Therapy Legislative Task Force to allow more room for training in a variety of expressive modalities. He also initiated the purchase of a neighborhood psychotherapy clinic as a training site for students in practicum and he has continued to develop the research segment of the program.

In addition to his work at CIIS, Dr. Johnson as served a member of the Center for Theory and Research at Esalen Institute and has served as a member of the Esalen-Soviet Union Health Promotion Project, focusing on addiction and gerontology. Dr. Johnson received his M.A. from Gonzaga University and his Ph.D. from Yale University.

Previous Lifetime Achievement Award winners include former CIIS faculty member Judyth O. Weaver, Ph.D., Eugene T. Gendlin, Ph.D., and Peter A. Levine, Ph.D., among others.