Stanislav Grof
Czech pychiatrist
Stanislav Grof (born July 1, 1931) is a Czech-born American psychiatrist. Grof is one of the principal developers of transpersonal psychology and research into the use of non-ordinary states of consciousness for purposes of psychological healing, deep self-exploration, and obtaining growth and insights into the human psyche.
Early life and education
Stanislav Grof was born July 1, 1931 in Prague, Czechoslovak Republic. Grof received his M.D. from Charles University in Prague in 1957 and then completed his Ph.D. in medicine at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in 1965, training as a Freudian psychoanalyst at this time.
Career
Czechoslovakia was the centre of psychedelic research behind the Iron Curtain during the Soviet empire in the 1950s and 1960s. Grof’s early research in the clinical uses of psychedelic substances was conducted at the Psychiatric Research Institute in Prague, where he was principal investigator of a program that systematically explored the heuristic and therapeutic potential of LSD and other psychedelic substances.
In 1967, he received a scholarship from the Foundations Fund for Research in Psychiatry in New Haven, Connecticut, and was invited by Joel Elkes to be a Clinical and Research Fellow at Henry Phipps Clinic, a part of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, United States. In 1969, he went on to become Chief of Psychiatric Research for the Spring Grove Experiment at the Research Unit of Spring Grove State Hospital (later part of the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center where he worked with Walter Pahnke. In 1969, Grof also became Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University.
In 1973 he was invited to the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, and lived there until 1987 as a Scholar-in-Residence, developing his ideas and conducting month-long workshops.
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