History
The Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, now Sofia University, was founded in 1975 by Drs. Robert Frager and James Fadiman in response to the growing need for a shift in the pedagogy of higher learning. It has remained at the cutting edge of psychological research and education.
As graduates themselves of two of the nation's finest academies (Frager from Harvard; Fadiman from Stanford) Sofia's founders had experienced first-hand the conventional approach to the study of psychology, and found it lacking and often fragmented. In particular, Dr. Frager's educational ideal hearkened back to the ancient Greek system which held the belief that education should take into account all aspects of the human experience. With this ideal in mind, he set out to create a school of psychology that would fully prepare psychologists to understand human nature from an approach that transcends the pathological and encompasses the whole human being in the context of culture, physical health, mental health, and spiritual health.
The unique curriculum developed by Frager, Fadiman, faculty and students together focuses on six core areas of inquiry: the intellectual, emotional, spiritual, physical, social and creative aspects of life. This educational model incorporates the tenets of transpersonal psychology and offers the student of psychology not only a solid intellectual foundation, but an extraordinary opportunity for deep growth and personal experience of the subject matter as well. The founding principle was to develop an educational and research model that took all aspects of human experience, including the spiritual dimension of our lives, seriously.
