associated with the human potential movement of the 1960s and the founders of the field of transpersonal psychology; Anthony Sutich, Abraham Maslow and Stanislav Grof. According to Vich all three had used the term as early as 1967, in order to describe new ideas in the field of Psychology. In 1968 the term was selected by the founding editors of the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, Abraham Maslow and Anthony Sutich, in order to represent a new area of psychological inquiry. Porter locates the start of the so-called transpersonal psychology movement to the American west-coast in the late 1960s. In addition to Maslow, Vich and Grof the movement was associated with the names of Ken Wilber, Frances Vaughan, Roger Walsh and Seymoor Boorstein. According to Powers the term "transpersonal" starts to show up in academic journals from 1970 and onwards. The use of the term in academic literature is documented in Psychological Abstracts and Dissertations Abstracts. The use of the term grew during the 1970s and 1980s and stabilized in the 1990s. Movement The collective of people and organizations with an interest in the transpersonal is called the transpersonal movement. Walsh and Vaughan defines the transpersonal movement as the interdisciplinary movement that includes various individual transpersonal disciplines. The philosophy of William James, the school of psychosynthesis (founded by Roberto Assagioli), and the analytical school of Carl Jung are often considered to be forerunners to the establishment of transpersonal theory. However, the start of the movement is associated with the emergence and growth of the related field of humanistic psychology. Several of the academic profiles of the early transpersonal movement, such as Abraham Maslow and Anthony Sutich, had their background in humanistic psychology. The formative years of the transpersonal movement can be characterized by the founding of a few key organizations and institutions, such as: Transpersonal Institute in 1969, the Institute of Noetic Sciences in 1973, The International Transpersonal Psychology Association in 1973, Naropa Institute in 1974, and the California Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in 1975. The California Institute of Transpersonal Psychology later emerged as the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (ITP) and is today known as Sofia University. Contemporary transpersonal disciplines include transpersonal psychology, transpersonal psychiatry, transpersonal anthropology, transpersonal sociology and transpersonal ecology. Other academic orientations, whose main focus lies elsewhere, but that are associated with a transpersonal perspective, include humanistic psychology and near-death studies. Contemporary institutions include: the Association for Transpersonal