Charles
T. Tart, Ph.D. (1937– ) is internationally known for
his psychological work on the nature of consciousness
(particularly altered states of consciousness), as
one of the founders of the field of transpersonal
psychology, and for his research in scientific parapsychology.
His two classic books, Altered States of Consciousness
(1969) and Transpersonal Psychologies (1975), became
widely used texts that were instrumental in allowing
these areas to become part of modern psychology.
Charles Tart was born in 1937 and grew up in Trenton,
New Jersey. He was active in amateur radio and worked
as a radio engineer (with a First Class Radiotelephone
License from the Federal Communications Commission)
while a teenager. Tart studied electrical engineering
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before
electing to become a psychologist.
He received his doctoral degree in psychology from
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in
1963, and then received postdoctoral training in hypnosis
research with Professor Ernest R. Hilgard at Stanford
University. He is currently (2005) a Core Faculty
Member at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology
(Palo Alto, California) and a Senior Research Fellow
of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (Sausalito, California),
as well as Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the
Davis campus of the University of California, where
he served for 28 years.
He was the first holder of the Bigelow Chair of Consciousness
Studies at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas and
has served as a Visiting Professor in East-West Psychology
at the California Institute of Integral Studies, as
an Instructor in Psychiatry at the School of Medicine
of the University of Virginia, and a consultant on
government funded parapsychological research at the
Stanford Research Institute (now known as SRI International).
As well as a laboratory researcher, Tart has been
a student of the Japanese martial art of Aikido (in
which he holds a black belt), of meditation, of Gurdjieff's
work, of Buddhism, and of other psychological and
spiritual growth disciplines. His primary goal is
to build bridges between the scientific and spiritual
communities, and to help bring about a refinement
and integration of Western and Eastern approaches
for knowing the world and for personal and social
growth.
