International Transpersonal Association
"The ITA was first established by Stan Grof in 1978 for the purposes of promoting education and research in transpersonal subjects, as well as sponsoring global conferences for the international transpersonal community. This first incarnation was dissolved in 2004, and a revitalised ITA was launched in 2009.
"The Association of Transpersonal Psychology (ATP) was created in the late 1960s and has held regular conferences in California since its inception. Later, several transpersonal conferences were held outside of California but still within the US, including those held in Council Grove, Kansas, which were started in 1969 by a small group of people (e.g., Walter Pahnke, John Lilly, Ken Godfrey, Helen Bonny, Elmer Green, Alyce Green, and Stan Grof ). These Kansas conferences had some participants from abroad and represented the precursor of later international transpersonal conferences.
"As interest in the transpersonal movement grew, extending beyond the San Francisco Bay area and outside of the US, occasional international transpersonal conferences were held. The first was in Bifrost, Iceland in 1972, organized by Geir and Ingrid Vilhjamsson. Among the attendants were Joseph Campbell and Jean Campbell-Erdman, Huston Smith, Walter Houston Clark, and Icelandic mythologist Einar Palsson. This was followed by another conference held in Bifrost in 1973, again organized by Geir and Ingrid Vilhjamsson. The third international transpersonal conference was held in a school in Inari, Finland in 1976, on the Soviet border. Among its participants were Salvador Roquet and Prince Peter of Denmark. The fourth international transpersonal conference was held in Belo Horizonte, Brazil in 1977, organized by Pierre Weil and Leo Matos. During the final meeting of this 1977 conference, it was noted that these conferences had become quite popular and well attended, so it was suggested that the tradition of the international transpersonal conferences should be formalized and hosted through the creation of an international association of transpersonal psychology.
"Out of this, the International Transpersonal Association (ITA) was launched in 1978 by Stan Grof, its founding president, and Michael Murphy and Richard Price, the founders of Esalen Institute in California, the first modern human potential (growth) center."[1]
Since 2010 their official journal has been the International Journal of Transpersonal Studies.
