Allan Combs (6 November 1942 – 5 April 2025) is an American

psychologist A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and explanation, interpretatio ...

and parapsychologist who attempts to combine his ideas of

consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is awareness of a state or object, either internal to oneself or in one's external environment. However, its nature has led to millennia of analyses, explanations, and debate among philosophers, scientists, an ...

and

systems theory Systems theory is the Transdisciplinarity, transdisciplinary study of systems, i.e. cohesive groups of interrelated, interdependent components that can be natural or artificial. Every system has causal boundaries, is influenced by its context, de ...

Education and academic career

Combs attended

Ohio University Ohio University (Ohio or OU) is a Public university, public research university with its main campus in Athens, Ohio, United States. The university was first conceived in the 1787 contract between the United States Department of the Treasury#Re ...

in the early 1960s, first studying

physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

and then switching to

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...

. During these studies, he overcame impediments due to

dyslexia Dyslexia (), previously known as word blindness, is a learning disability that affects either reading or writing. Different people are affected to different degrees. Problems may include difficulties in spelling words, reading quickly, wri ...

, something he later noted would influence his thinking about psychology. He then restarted his graduate education in clinical psychology at the

University of Georgia The University of Georgia (UGA or Georgia) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university with its main campus in Athens, Georgia, United States. Chartered in 1785, it is the oldest public university in th ...

, and at the same time started taking courses and doing research on

single-cell recording Single cell may refer to: Biology * Single-cell organism * Single-cell protein * Single-cell recording, a neuro-electric monitoring technique * Single-cell sequencing ** Single cell epigenomics *Single-cell transcriptomics, a technique in molecular ...

s of

neuron A neuron (American English), neurone (British English), or nerve cell, is an membrane potential#Cell excitability, excitable cell (biology), cell that fires electric signals called action potentials across a neural network (biology), neural net ...

s, and mathematically modeled their activity on early versions of the computer. Through this time he was reading

Carl Jung Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and psychologist who founded the school of analytical psychology. A prolific author of Carl Jung publications, over 20 books, illustrator, and corr ...

, European phenomenology, Eastern spirituality

Abraham Maslow Abraham Harold Maslow ( ; April 1, 1908 – June 8, 1970) was an American psychologist who created Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a theory of psychological health predicated on fulfilling innate human needs in priority, culminating in self-actua ...

Carl Rogers Carl Ransom Rogers (January 8, 1902 – February 4, 1987) was an American psychologist who was one of the founders of humanistic psychology and was known especially for his person-centered psychotherapy. Rogers is widely considered one of the f ...

, and

John C. Lilly John Cunningham Lilly (January 6, 1915 – September 30, 2001)John C. Lilly
at

; he also participated in

gestalt therapy Gestalt therapy is a form of psychotherapy that emphasizes Responsibility assumption, personal responsibility and focuses on the individual's experience in the present moment, the therapist–client relationship, the environmental and social c ...

and human potentials workshops. After graduating he taught biology and psychology for a year at

Earlham College Earlham College is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Richmond, Indiana. The college was established in 1847 by the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and has a strong focus on Quake ...

in Indiana, then for about a decade at a small college in Missouri. While he was there he read

Charles Tart Charles T. Tart (April 29, 1937 – March 5, 2025) was an American psychologist and parapsychologist known for his psychological work on the nature of consciousness (particularly altered states of consciousness), as one of the founders of the f ...

and was inspired by his application of

to psychology. In the early 1980s he moved to a college in North Carolina. In the mid-1990s he started corresponding and then collaborating with David Loye, who invited Combs to join a group formed around the ideas of Ervin László. Reading László furthered his interests in systems and consciousness and he was soon invited to join László's General Evolutionary Research Group. In 1989 Combs learned of the work of Frederick Abraham, who was beginning to meld

chaos theory Chaos theory is an interdisciplinary area of Scientific method, scientific study and branch of mathematics. It focuses on underlying patterns and Deterministic system, deterministic Scientific law, laws of dynamical systems that are highly sens ...

and psychology, and worked with him to found The Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and the Life Sciences. As of 2020 Combs held appointments at

California Institute of Integral Studies The California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) is a private graduate school (with limited undergraduate offerings) in San Francisco. Founded in 1968 as the California Institute of ''Asian'' Studies, the name was changed in 1980. CIIS has b ...

, where he built the program in consciousness studies in 2015, and The Graduate Institute in Connecticut. He also was Professor Emeritus at the

University of North Carolina-Asheville The University of North Carolina at Asheville (UNC Asheville, UNCA, or simply Asheville) is a public liberal arts university in Asheville, North Carolina, United States. UNC Asheville is the designated liberal arts institution in the University o ...

. As of 2020 he had authored over 200 articles, chapters, and books on consciousness and the brain. Much of his work has been accomplished in collaboration with colleagues

Ervin Laszlo Ervin may refer to: * Ervin (given name) * Ervin (surname) *Ervin Township, Howard County, Indiana, one of eleven townships in Howard County, Indiana, USA See also * Justice Ervin (disambiguation) * Earvin * Ervine * Erving (disambiguation) * Erw ...

and

Stanley Krippner Stanley Krippner (born October 4, 1932) is an American psychologist and parapsychologist. He received a B.S. degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1954 and M.A. (1957) and Ph.D. (1961) degrees from Northwestern University. Fro ...

. He is also known for his collaboration with

Ken Wilber Kenneth Earl Wilber II (born January 31, 1949) is an American theorist and writer on transpersonal psychology and his own integral theory, a four-quadrant grid which purports to encompass all human knowledge and experience. Starting publishing ...

. He is the founder, Academic Advisor, and President Emeritus of The

Society for Consciousness Studies The Society for Consciousness Studies (SCS) is a professional scholarly organization founded in San Francisco. The Society aims to promote a multidisciplinary approach to human and animal consciousness studies. Allan Combs is the founder and presid ...

, co-founder of The Laszlo Institute of New Paradigm Research and a member of the one-hundred member Club of Budapest. He is the Senior Editor of Consciousness: Ideas and Research for the Twenty First Century, co-editor of the Journal of Conscious Evolution, Associate Editor of Dynamical Psychology. Combs won the National Teaching Award of the Association of Graduate Liberal Studies Programs for 2002/2003 and in the same year held the UNCA Honorary Ruth and Leon Feldman Professorship.

References

External links

''Source Integralis'', Combs' website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Combs, Allan 21st-century American psychologists 1942 births Living people Ohio University alumni University of North Carolina at Asheville faculty 20th-century American psychologists American parapsychologists