Obituary
Dr. Eleanor Criswell-Hanna
05/12/1938 - 09/19/2024
With great sadness, it is noted that Dr. Eleanor (Camp)
Criswell-Hanna, leading figure in the humanistic psychology movement, passed on
to the next chapter in her journey, on September 19, 2024, near her home in
Northern Calif. She was age 86. Her death followed a recent series of strokes,
which she weathered with the grace she displayed all her life and the support
of her family and many friends and admirers.
Eleanor's formative years were spent in Jacksonville, Fla. Upon graduation from Dupont High School, she attended Purdue University, and then University of Kentucky, where she earned a bachelor's degree in elementary education and a master's degree in counseling and guidance. It was here that she met, married and later divorced psychologist-psychiatrist, Frank Criswell.
At the University of Florida, she earned her doctorate in
education. While there, she met her second husband, Thomas Hanna, chair of the
philosophy department. Together, the two developed a highly productive
intellectual partnership. Hanna died in an automobile accident in 1990.
Subsequently, she married actor Pernell Roberts. He died in 2010.
Eleanor's career has been truly remarkable, as a scholar,
innovator, teacher, mentor, and healer. This is even more so considering that
her accomplishments took place at a time when opportunities for women in
academia were limited. Her home base through much of this was her position at
Sonoma State University (SSU), where she taught beginning in 1969, and where
she became Emeritus Professor of Psychology. In 1970, shortly after joining the
SSU faculty, she became the founding director of the Humanistic Psychology
Institute (now Saybrook University, Pasadena, Calif.), which has thrived over
the 50 years since.
Eleanor's most distinctive work has centered on somatic
education. This emphasizes the integration of mind and body for emotional and
psychological healing, and grew out of her synergistic collaboration with
Hanna. One of her pet interests at SSU was that of the teaching the psychology
of yoga, as yoga and meditation had been long-standing personal practices of
hers. Later, she developed what she called Somatic Yoga, which was a blend of
hatha yoga, raja yoga, somatics, neuroscience, and psychology. She elaborated
her novel approach in her published How Yoga Works: An Introduction to Somatic
Yoga, which fostered a huge international following in yoga therapy. A related
special interest at SSU was that of physiological psychology and biofeedback,
and she authored Biofeedback and Somatics: Toward Personal Evolution. Very
recently, she served as editor of Cram's Introduction to Surface
Electromyography.
For decades, she was the editor of Somatics Magazine:
Journal of the Bodily Arts and Science, which Hanna started. She also was
director of the Novato Institute for Somatic Research and Training, through
which she trained and certified Hanna Somatics practitioners all over the
world. More recently, she extended her work to establish Equine and Canine
Somatics.
Eleanor was preceded in death by her mother, Eleanor Lewis
(Talman) David; her father, Norman H. Camp, Jr.; her second husband, Thomas
Hanna; and her third husband, Pernell Roberts. She is survived by her brother,
Norman 'Mike' Camp (Sydney Fleischer); her nephews, Marshall (Courtney), Lee
(Eleanor) and Dean (Alex); her grandnieces, Belle and Daisy; and grandnephew,
Lucien; her stepchildren, Wendell Hanna, Tad Hanna, and Mike Hanna; and
Esperanza, her beloved horse.
Eleanor was knowledgeable, very charismatic, and had an
enormous and devoted following. Her gentle nature, soft voice and deep love for
all creatures will remain alive in their hearts