Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The Human Change Project (HCP) came into existence in the fall of 2000 as the
first fully funded project of the Integral Institute. Its goal is the creation of an
Encyclopedia of Human Development, a detailed and easily accessible catalog of all
research on human psychological and spiritual growth. Ken Wilber’s extensive work
in the field of human development provides a guideline for the project, while a
number of other prominent developmental psychologists serve as consultants to it.
The creation of this encyclopedia will be followed by a series of annual or bi-annual
appendices that will keep it current. It is being created initially on a private web site
to later be converted to bound publications and CD versions. These will be made
available to libraries and private collections for the benefit of researchers in the field
of human transformation throughout the world. [1]
Personnel.
The core team is directed by two Ph.D. psychologists, Allan Combs [2] and Richard
Mann, [3] and initially included three master’s level personnel, David Zeitler, John
Churchill, and David Arrell, [4] as well as consultants Dr. Susanne Cook-
Greuter, [5] Jeff Stewart, [6] and Dr. Michael Mahoney. [7] Developmental
psychologist Robert Kegan of Harvard University serves as a special consultant to
the project.
Such a large project requires considerable discussion and planning. With this in
mind, the group took the time to design and create a support structure that would
sustain the project over the years to come, while optimizing its usefulness to
researchers. To facilitate the discussion and planning a web forum was created and
maintained for the team by Antony Arcari.[8]
Accessibility of resources.
The team surveyed the libraries locally accessible to its members in order to
discover which contained journals in the above list. They also developed
access routines to electronic library resources on the web.
Copyright considerations.
Richard Mann and Allan Combs consulted with university librarians
concerning copyright issues that might be raised by the creation of such an
encyclopedia. This will be a matter of ongoing exploration for the project,
but certain facts have emerged. First, abstracts are widely reproduced in the
literature and it is unlikely that anyone would fault our duplication of them
exactly as they are written in the original research publications. Beyond this,
the other aspects of each report must be transcribed in our own words and
not reproduced exactly as they originally appeared.
The team began the actual job of transcribing research reports onto the
template with The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology (JTP). Beginning
with its first issue, the entire journal was surveyed for research reports that
matched the criteria for inclusion in the encyclopedia. About 25 reports were
selected and these were transcribed onto the Filemaker template where they
are now available for viewing.
In the spring of 2001, during the completion of the above phase of the
project, financial restrictions made it necessary for the HCP to scale back its
activities while the Integral Institute sought new funding commitments. The
team first responded by shifting its priorities to allow its master’s level
members to continue their work. Three months later, with further reductions,
it reduced its activities to a single part-time commitment by David Zeigler.
David continues to develop and round out the accomplishments of the team
so far, in preparation for future funding that will allow the HCP project to
again move forward quickly with the project.
During the late spring of 2001 the project shifted its chief priority to seek out
and catalog research reports in preparation for a full future reactivation.
Reports on file.
At the time of this writing (early August) the Filemaker template contains
roughly:
David Zeigler continues this work as a part-time employee of the Integral Institute.
[1] We also anticipate a series of studies, using meta-analysis or similar procedures, that will be
published in research journals and reported at professional meetings.
[2] University of North Carolina-Asheville; Saybrook Graduate School, San Francisco
[3] University of Michigan, Professor emeritus of Psychology and Religion.
[4] John Churchill, and David Arrell left the project in the spring because of school and other
obligations.
[5] President of Harthill USA; Harvard School of Education Ed.D.
[6] Harvard School of Education ABD.
[7] Professor of Psychology, University of North Texas
[8] Technical consultant and doctoral student; Saybrook Graduate School.
[9] A more easily read version of this table can be downloaded as an Excel file.
[10] This approach avoids repeated library visits to collect articles from the same journals.
[11] Use “super” for both the Login name and the Password. In reading the files note that, since limited
formatting is available with Filemaker, carriage returns are each indicated by a “~” sign, and the
beginning and ending of italics are indicated by “*” signs. This allows a word processor with a “search
and replace” utility to re-create the original line breaks and italics. For a more detailed report on the
Filemaker data template and its use, see the recent report by David Zeitler.
[12] Abstract only, but rated high, medium, or low priority for complete transcription.
[13] Also rated high, medium, or low priority for complete transcription.