Samuel Malkemus, PhD
Lecturer
Email: samuel.malkemus@aleftrust.org
Personal website: instituteofholistictransformation.com
Biography
Samuel Malkemus, is an interdisciplinary thinker and holistic counselor with a passionate interest in healing personal and collective trauma through a psychospiritual and integrative lens. He holds a PhD in psychology and a MA in philosophy and religion from the California Institute of Integral Studies. In the last decade he has taught over 70 graduate courses in psychology and consciousness studies, focusing on his expertise in Transpersonal, Somatic, and Eco Psychologies, as well as Sexuality Studies. He is the co-founder and co-director of the Institute of Holistic Transformation in Berkeley, California, which carries forward a unique approach to embodied healing and personal transformation and offers training modules, workshops, and seminars internationally. A fifth generation Californian who divides his time between California and Spain together with his wife and two beloved boys, Samuel combines his academic work with supporting his clients find vibrant health by working with body, heart, mind, and spirit. At Alef Trust Samuel has taught in various modules and is currently acting as a Dissertation Supervisor for the MSc in Consciousness, Spirituality, and Transpersonal Psychology.
Research interests
Samuel’s research interests align around a common theme of personal transformation and consciousness expansion. This has taken shape around his research which aims to present an expanded understanding of human sexuality that does not reduce sexuality to genital function but includes concepts such as sexual energy, vitality, and life-force. Another common theme in Samuel’s research is the primacy of embodied experience, exploring concepts from the locus of somatic-sensual consciousness and in this way offering a critique to disembodied and experientially ungrounded psychological research. This leads into Samuel’s affinity for qualitative research which champions the value of first-person accounts of experience and opens a doorway to the poetic and ineffable nature of our place in the mystery of life’s unfolding.
Key publications
Malkemus, S. A., & Smith, J. F. (2021). Sexual disembodiment: Sexual energy, trauma, and the body. Journal of Humanistic Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022167821996144
Malkemus, S. A. & Thouin, M. (2019). Introduction to the special topic section on transpersonal sexuality: Bringing sexy back to transpersonal psychology. International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 38(1), 59-65. https://doi.org/10.24972/ijts.2019.38.1.59
Malkemus, S. A. (2012). Toward a general theory of enaction: Biological, phenomenological, and transpersonal dimensions. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 44(2), 201-223.
Malkemus, S. A., & Romero, M. T. (2012). Sexuality as a transformational path: Exploring the holistic dimensions of human vitality, International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 31(3), 112-118. https://doi.org/10.24972/ijts.2012.31.2.33
