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Transpersonal Research Methods for the Social Sciences: Honoring Human Experience
There is no shortage of research methods that are easily applied to the study of everyday human experience. How, though, does one attempt to study extraordinary human experiences - ultimate values and meanings, peak experiences, transcendence and heightened awareness, among others. William Braud and Rosemarie Anderson introduce a series of transpersonal research methods that are intended to help researchers develop new ways of knowing and methods of inquiry. While these methods will be of particular interest to researchers in transpersonal psychology, humanistic psychology, or transpersonal studies applied to traditional fields, the authors argue that these approaches - with their emphasis on developing intuition, empathy and self-awareness – can benefit anyone involved in the research enterprise across many disciplines.
354 pages, Paperback
First published April 29, 1998
About the author
William G. Braud
2 books1 followerWilliam G. Braud (November 26, 1942 – May 13, 2012) was an American psychologist and parapsychologist.
Braud obtained his Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the University of Iowa. He was director of research in parapsychology at the Mind Science Foundation. He taught at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (1992–2010).
During the 1970s and early 1980s he conducted a series of experiments to test for psychokinetic influences upon living systems. Braud with Charles Honorton were the first to modify the ganzfeld procedure for parapsychological use.
Braud obtained his Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the University of Iowa. He was director of research in parapsychology at the Mind Science Foundation. He taught at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (1992–2010).
During the 1970s and early 1980s he conducted a series of experiments to test for psychokinetic influences upon living systems. Braud with Charles Honorton were the first to modify the ganzfeld procedure for parapsychological use.
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
September 22, 2026
I was fascinated by the problem at the center of this book. How do you scientifically study mystical experiences, exceptional human experiences, intuition, transcendence, and other deeply subjective events without stripping away the very qualities that make them significant? William Braud and Rosemarie Anderson argue that research methods designed for more conventional questions sometimes need to be expanded when consciousness itself is part of what is being investigated. Coming from Braud, who had already spent years doing experimental parapsychology, that argument carries particular weight for me. He clearly understands the value of controlled quantitative research, yet he also recognizes that statistics alone cannot tell us everything about what an extraordinary experience is like or how it transforms the person having it.
The discussions of intuitive inquiry, integral inquiry, phenomenological approaches, exceptional human experience, and alternative ways of encountering and working with data were especially interesting. I liked the willingness to treat intuition, empathy, self-awareness, and even changes within the researcher as potentially relevant to inquiry while still asking questions about validity and disciplined method. That feels particularly important for consciousness research. If someone undergoes a mystical state, psychic experience, synchronicity, or profound altered state, reducing the event to a questionnaire score can lose enormous amounts of information. Detailed first-person accounts can reveal patterns that later become hypotheses for experimental testing. I kept thinking about how useful this could be for parapsychology, where laboratory evidence tells us whether an anomaly occurs under controlled conditions while qualitative research can investigate how people actually experience anomalous information and what conditions seem to accompany it.
This is an academic research-methodology book, so it requires a very different kind of attention from the consciousness and parapsychology books I usually read, but I found its underlying philosophy enormously valuable. Braud and Anderson are essentially asking researchers to become more conscious of how they know what they know. Their expanded discussion of validity is crucial because opening research to additional ways of knowing only becomes useful if those approaches remain disciplined enough to produce meaningful knowledge. For me, that has implications well beyond academia. Anyone seriously exploring magick, mysticism, psychic perception, or altered states eventually faces the same challenge of honoring an experience without becoming uncritical about its interpretation. This book gave me a much richer way of thinking about how subjective experience can be investigated with rigor while allowing the strange, transformative, and deeply human qualities of that experience to remain visible.
The discussions of intuitive inquiry, integral inquiry, phenomenological approaches, exceptional human experience, and alternative ways of encountering and working with data were especially interesting. I liked the willingness to treat intuition, empathy, self-awareness, and even changes within the researcher as potentially relevant to inquiry while still asking questions about validity and disciplined method. That feels particularly important for consciousness research. If someone undergoes a mystical state, psychic experience, synchronicity, or profound altered state, reducing the event to a questionnaire score can lose enormous amounts of information. Detailed first-person accounts can reveal patterns that later become hypotheses for experimental testing. I kept thinking about how useful this could be for parapsychology, where laboratory evidence tells us whether an anomaly occurs under controlled conditions while qualitative research can investigate how people actually experience anomalous information and what conditions seem to accompany it.
This is an academic research-methodology book, so it requires a very different kind of attention from the consciousness and parapsychology books I usually read, but I found its underlying philosophy enormously valuable. Braud and Anderson are essentially asking researchers to become more conscious of how they know what they know. Their expanded discussion of validity is crucial because opening research to additional ways of knowing only becomes useful if those approaches remain disciplined enough to produce meaningful knowledge. For me, that has implications well beyond academia. Anyone seriously exploring magick, mysticism, psychic perception, or altered states eventually faces the same challenge of honoring an experience without becoming uncritical about its interpretation. This book gave me a much richer way of thinking about how subjective experience can be investigated with rigor while allowing the strange, transformative, and deeply human qualities of that experience to remain visible.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review