Codrin Țapu

Codrin Ștefan Țapu (born 17 December 1973) is a Romanian writer and psychologist. His work is focused on striking a middle ground between spiritual- and material-based belief systems, in the context of the multiple dimensions and nuances of the self.

Life and career
Țapu was born in Bucharest, and attended the University of Bucharest, where he earned his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in psychology. From 1998, he worked as an instructor at the psychology department of Hyperion University. In 2000, he was awarded there the chair of lecturer extraordinary. In 2006, he was appointed an associate professor of psychology at the University of Agronomic Sciences and Veterinary Medicine, being the first chair of the postgraduate module of counseling.

Work
Țapu's work addresses the multidimensionality of the self and the integrative study of a person. By integrating spirituality with materialism, he proposed a perspective of interconnected spiritual support systems.

Țapu summarized the hypostatic approach to personality in his 2001 book. The hypostatic model, originated in mathematical logic by Charles Sanders Peirce with his "hypostatic abstraction", argues, in Țapu's view, that the person presents herself in a multitude of different aspects or hypostases, depending on the internal and external realities she relates to, including different epistemological approaches to the study of personality.

The hypostatic model describes personality and self  as well as interpersonal relationships, with implications in dating. Personality is viewed as both an agency and a relatively stable construction, as the model is accompanied with specific methods of assessment, counseling, and psychotherapy addressing each of the personality dimensions. The model was listed also as a resource on counselor's qualities in life quality management.

As part of the efforts of revival and development of psychology in post-communist Romania, Tapu published a dictionary of psychopathology, and a textbook of humanistic systems psychology.

The work of Țapu has been described as inaugurating the field of concrete systems or "hypostatic" psychology, and opening new insights into integrative, synthetic and holistic studies of individual personality factors within a person. Also, some of his psychological works have been criticized for containing a large number of neologisms that make them difficult to understand, and for being "doomed to be incomplete". Țapu's model influenced another hypostatic approach to personality and counselling therapy, the propeller model approach for understanding the human being.

In his spiritual materialist writings, Țapu proposes a universal view of deity that even encompasses atheism, addressing controversial matters like guilt and euthanasia in short texts that read like poetry, and providing a provocative lifestyle perspective for people of all backgrounds. He explores the intersection of faith and material life in nonfiction philosophical ruminations containing engrossing, nuanced reflections on what it means to be human, together with practical advice on ways to obtain “mind wholeness” in the chaos of modernity. Reviewers compared the aphoristic style of Tapu to that of the ancient sacred texts, Jesus, Gandhi, the Sufi mystics, Jodorowsky, and Chopra.

Awards and accolades

 * Țapu was featured in the Anthology of Contemporary Romanian Aphorism (2017).
 * In 2022, Țapu won first prize at the International Aphorism Festival in Tecuci.