Biography:

Arthur Warmoth, Ph.D.

Arthur Warmoth is professor of psychology chair of the Academic Planning Committee at Sonoma State University in Northern California. He is also the executive director of the Skaggs Island Foundation; its principal activity is an extensive web site on Sustainable Community Development (at

http://www.skaggs-island.org/sustainable). He is past president of the Association for Humanistic Psychology (AHP) and past chair of the Council for Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology. He has also served as visiting professor of human systems at La Universidad Autónoma de la Laguna in Torreón, Mexico.

He is married to Georgina Aida Emery González of Torreón. They have three adult children and three grandchildren.

Art Warmoth has been involved in humanistic psychology since 1959, when he went to Brandeis University to pursue doctoral studies with Abraham H. Maslow. This was the period just following the publication of Maslow’s ground-breaking Motivation and Personality. At that time the use of the terms "humanistic" and "existential" were still being debated, and the idea of the "Third Force," which Maslow introduced in his 1962 book, Toward a Psychology of Being, was still being formed. In addition to his work with Maslow, Warmoth studied with James B. Klee (who was recently given an AHP Special Award for a Distinguished Lifetime Achievement in Teaching Humanistic Psychology), Ulric Neisser (author of the first textbook on cognitive psychology), and psychoanalysts Harry Rand, Walter Toman, and Richard M. Jones (the latter was a founding faculty member of The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.) He was an NIMH predoctoral fellow and completed his Ph.D. in 1967. His dissertation topic was "An Existential-Humanistic Study of Psychologial Theories of Myth."

Dr. Warmoth has been teaching in the field of humanities and humanistic psychology since 1965, when he spent a year at the experimental Franconia College in New Hampshire. In 1967, he returned to his native California for a postdoctoral internship in clinical psychology with Wilson Van Dusen at Mendocino State Hospital. He also served as staff psychologist and superviser of the field work and internship program. He has been teaching at Sonoma State University (originally Sonoma State College) since the fall of 1969. He has served four terms as Department Chair. Sonoma State is one of two state university psychology departments that has been identified since its founding with humanistic psychology. (The other is the State University of West Georgia in Carrollton, Georgia.)

While at Sonoma State, he was co-founder, with Eleanor Criswell, of the Humanistic Psychology Institute (now Saybrook Graduate School) and the M.A. in Psychology, External Program, at Sonoma State. He has continued, with minor interruptions, as coordinator of the latter program. He has also served as consultant for academic administration and planning to the founders of the California Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (now the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology) and the Sonoma Institute (a humanistic depth psychology clinical training program). He has been a board member and development consultant for the Hawthorne Learning Network and the Person Centered Expressive Therapy Institute (founded by Natalie Rogers).

In 1987-88, Dr. Warmoth spent a year as an exchange professor at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, participating in that institution’s unique interdisciplinary team teaching model. In 1989, together with William McCreary, co-founder of the SSU School of Expressive Arts, he initiated the SSU Psychology Department’s Learning Community program. This is a holistic program of coordinated studies in psychology (with important contributions from the humanities and social sciences), in which students typically take most of their academic program in one integrated block of units. More recently, he has been involved in developing Learning Community programs at Sonoma State

Arthur Warmoth has published in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, the AHP Perspective, the Sonoma Management Review, The Humanistic Psychologist, and Humanity and Society. In the spring of 1995, he guest-edited a special issue of the AHP Perspective, on the theme "What Humanistic Psychology Has Become." A second special edition on "Human Potential and the Economy" was also published.

In 1990, he joined the Board of Directors of the Association for Humanistic Psychology as vice president-elect. This was in the midst of a financial and organizational identity crisis. He played an important role in facilitating the transition of AHP to a new, more decentralized and interdisciplinary organizational model, and was later elected as president of the organization. He also served as AHP and Sonoma State’s representative to the Consortium for Diversified Psychology Programs (CDPP), which was the major national organization representing accredited graduate programs in humanistic-existential-transpersonal psychology. He served as the chair of that organization during its transition to becoming the Council for Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology.

In 1994, he received the Distinguished Service Award from Saybrook Institute. At the 1994 American Psychological Association Convention in Los Angeles, Professor Warmoth, along with the Psychology Department of Sonoma State University, received the Charlotte & Karl Bühler Award for Pioneering Work in Graduate Education in Humanistic Psychology, from APA Division 32, Humanistic Psychology. The award presentation included an invited address on "Community Learning: What the 60’s Have to Say to the 90s." In 1995, gave an invited address to the AHP Annual Meeting in Baltimore on the topic "What In Tarnation Is This Postmodern Thing, Anyhow?" In May, 2005 he received the Community-Based Learning Founders Award from Sonoma State University

He was involved in the development of the Old Saybrook II Project as a member of the Steering Committee, along with Maureen O'Hara, of Saybrook Graduate School, and Mike Arons, of the State University of West Georgia. He edited the Old Saybrook 2 Project Web Site and was an adviser to the West Georgia Conference Committee, which organized a culminating conference for the Project, Old Saybrook 2: Coming Home to the Third Millenium, May 11-14, 2000, at the State University of West Georgia.

Since 2000 he has primarily been involved in teaching and academic planning at Sonoma State. He has also been involved in community service, including the boards of The Family Connection (a transition services agency for volunteers mentoring homeless families), the Latino Commission for Alcohol & Drug Abuse Services of Sonoma County, and the Latino Democratic Club.