Meet the Existentialists

Tom Greening, PhD

Dr. Greening was there at the birth of humanistic psychology: he worked with James Bugental and Abraham Maslow, and edited the movement's flagship publication, the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, for 35 years. As a member of the Board of Directors of the Association for Humanistic Psychology, he was also present for Saybrook's founding in 1971 as the Humanistic Psychology Institute. He agreed to join Saybrook's faculty in 1990 because Rollo May asked him too, and remains on its executive faculty to this day. A licensed clinical psychologist in California, Dr. Greening has been practicing client-centered, psychodynamic existential-humanistic psychotherapy for 47 years. He is a Diplomate in Clinical Psychology and a Fellow of five APA Divisions. He is also a clinical professor of psychology at UCLA where he has supervised graduate students for 30 years. Dr. Greening has been active in citizen diplomacy for much of his life. His first overseas trip was with the Quaker International Volunteer Service in 1952, followed by a Fulbright Fellowship to Vienna. During the Cold War he made five trips to the Soviet Union and recently he traveled to China. He and Saybrook graduate Clay Foreman created Saybrook University’s course in Citizen Diplomacy, the first such course in the world. Often referred to as Humanistic Psychology's poet laureate, Tom is the author of Words Against the Void: Poems by an Existential Psychologist.

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