Who is the Most Controversial Scientist you know?

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Ooooh, I love this question and I'm looking forward to reading other answers as well!

Enter Dr. Stanislav Grof

In terms of controversial scientists who are still alive, I would say that Stan Grof is up there. He's a Psychologist & Psychiatrist that, while not a household name, is one of the co-founders of something called Transpersonal Psychology (what my M.A. is in, actually) with someone who is known to all Psych 101 students: Abraham Maslow (he created the hierarchy of needs developmental model.)

What is Transpersonal Psychology?

Right quick, to define Transpersonal Psych for you: it's the study of the expansion/widening of a human being's subjective sense of self as they psychologically develop. Trans being shorthand for Transcendent and Personal as in the word Persona meaning Mask (in other words, the mental structures create to define who we are.) For example, as people grow older and continue to grow laterally through the stages of psychological development, people often start identifying themselves with just their name, body, profession, etc. They discover more about who they are beyond the mask.

Back to Stan Grof

I personally don't think most of Stan's research and beliefs are too out there for 2018 (although many people disagree.) I've seen him speak once, referenced his work a lot in graduate school, and overall think he's made fine contributions to Transpersonal Psych, Developmental Psych, & Psychedelic Drug Therapy,

Where things get tricky for me, is when he crosses completely over the line of objective research when describing subjective territory and begins to speak of things like past lives and birth trauma caused by memories from within the womb as objective and factual.

He's got a lot of great stuff and a brilliant scientific mind. So maybe he's just operating on another level, but for me it goes a little too far.

Learn more!

If you're interested in learning more about Stan, you can check out his website here: http://www.stanislavgrof.com/

If you're interested in learning more about Transpersonal Psychology, you can check out a YouTube video I made about it here:

Thanks for reading and let me know what you think!