Self and Society Volume 43 Issue 1

The following lists the contents of Self and Society, Volume 43 Issue 1.
Each article can be downloaded as a PDF, but only if you are logged in as an AHP subscriber.
The table of contents for this issue can be downloaded as a PDF file.


Editorial:
Authors: Kalisch, House
Download the PDF


FEATURES:
Before and after mindfulness
Author: Bazzano
Download the PDF


Confessions of a mind-wandering MBSR student: remembering social amnesia
Author: Purser
Download the PDF
Abstract:

Based upon a first-person experience of a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, this article provides a critical reflection on this clinical intervention within the context of late capitalist society. It draws inspiration from Russell Jacoby's critique of contemporary psychology, what he referred to as ‘social amnesia’, a form of collective forgetting, manifesting as a tendency to repress, forget, and exclude the larger social, historical, and political context of therapeutic interventions. With its fetishization of the present moment, MBSR is predicated on a politics of subjectivity that assumes stress is localized to the failure of the individual to regulate their emotions.


Painting eyeballs on chaos: on Zen and birth trauma
Author: Talbot
Download the PDF
Abstract:

This article is an exploration of how reconnecting with the somatic memory of pre- and perinatal life experience can bring to light and help to resolve very early wounding. In the author's experience, meditation and psychotherapy alone could not access this deep, preverbal territory. The key to peace of mind and ease of being may lay in allowing the body to remember and fully process the trauma of birth.


A popular misconception
Author: Brazier
Download the PDF
Abstract:

In this critical article, mindfulness as understood in contemporary psychological dialogue and mindfulness in Buddhism are distinguished. Mindfulness is distinct from awareness and from consciousness, these latter not being factors of enlightenment. Their role in Buddhist faith and practice is explained. The this-worldly, hedonistic, here-and-now spirit of our times is contrasted with the transcendental, renunciant, eternity-oriented perspective of Buddhism. Such a spiritual refuge, once established, does not require ceaseless awareness or endless consciousness. The idea of dwelling in the here-and-now is examined and put in context. The value of the there-and-then, the unconscious, and longer-term perspectives is also reasserted.


Mindfulness now
Author: Chisholm
Download the PDF
Abstract:

Mindfulness is now being touted as an all-purpose solution for virtually any problem that is set before it. But is it possible that something essential might be lost when it is presented as nothing more than an effective method of stress reduction? According to Buddhism, mindfulness should be linked to morality and wisdom in order to realize its benefits fully. But following the example of Kabat-Zinn, psychotherapy may have much to gain by using it as a secular practice.


Beyond mindfulness, towards antiquity
Author: Greenslade
Download the PDF
Abstract:

This article explores an alternative philosophical route to contemporary mindfulness practice. Through a consideration of Hellenistic philosophy, the article argues that a Western cultural heritage has much to offer the current mindfulness milieu, which largely depends upon a singular model of secularized Buddhism. This latter approach can limit the therapeutic potential of mindfulness as an embodied practice for living. Through embracing a more complex understanding of present-moment awareness – one that is underpinned by Hellenistic philosophical practice – we encounter valuable seeds for self-transformation.


POEMS:
Why a Zen monk of dubious repute persists in calling himself thus
Author: Bazzano
Download the PDF


Old Angel
Author: Rowan
Download the PDF


ARTICLE:
Twilight of the wolves: on terrorism, psychology and the Left
Author: Bazzano
Download the PDF
Abstract:

This article is a reflection as well as a personal response to Islamic terrorism, psychology and the political Left. It discusses Nietzsche's notions of active and passive nihilism in response to a New Statesman article by Slavoj Žižek and the shortcomings of contemporary psychology in responding to the Arab world.


CONFERENCE SYMPOSIUMS:
Psychotherapy and counselling: from cottage industry to factory production – can we survive, and do we want to?
Author: Loewenthal
Download the PDF
Abstract:

This article reports on a conference designed to explore whether something has gone seriously wrong with the psychological therapies. While through the state's Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme more people are having psychotherapy and counselling, is this through the psychological therapies becoming an industrial process requiring technicians? Is our work and training fundamentally changing with call centres, state regulation and manualization in addition to the overall ills of neoliberalism? In different ways William Morris, John Ruskin and Karl Marx saw the move from cottage industry to factory production as leading to a deterioration in working people's quality of life. Rather than the intrinsic pleasures of the work itself, instead money compensates for our working time, which leads to consumption as the external source of pleasure. Consideration is given as to whether this is also becoming increasingly true of the work of psychotherapists and counsellors, and increasingly inevitable for their working clients.


Conference Reports
Author: de Carvalho
Download the PDF


Stray dogs or belonging to the Emperor: commentary on the UPCA conference, 2014
Author: Johnston
Download the PDF


Conference Reports
Author: McKie
Download the PDF


REPORTS:
Celebrating John Rowan – London, 12 January 2015
Author: Scurfield
Download the PDF


ROOTS AND HISTORY OF HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY:
Roots and History of Humanistic Psychology
Author: Hall
Download the PDF
Abstract:

The author shares her excitement on first encountering humanistic psychology approaches in the early 1970s – a breakthrough into a new world of experience. A considered critique follows, while accentuating the liberation of the non-victim culture of that period. The author goes on to elucidate her appreciation of the training she undertook with Gerda Boyesen, with its emphasis on a respectful handling of our varying modes of defence, enabling access to our primary or natural vitality. It was this approach that led gradually to reconnection with the spiritual dimension of life that had sustained the author as a child. She concludes with an account of the growth of humanistic psychology in Norwich (UK),  fortuitously arriving there at the same time as Brian Thorne in 1974.


AHP CHAIR'S PAGE:
Association for Humanistic Psychology in Britain – Chair's Page
Author: Scurfield
Download the PDF


NEWS INTERCHANGE:
News Interchange
Author: Lykou
Download the PDF


LETTERS TO THE EDITORS:
On John Rowan's ‘Patriarchy’
Author: Barclay
Download the PDF


On Sue Gerhardt's ‘Hard Times’
Author: Davies
Download the PDF


On Sue Gerhardt's ‘Hard Times’
Author: Watts
Download the PDF


On Sue Gerhardt's ‘Hard Times’
Author: Duffell
Download the PDF


ETHICAL DIALOGUES:
Ethical Dialogue
Author: Rogers
Download the PDF


BOOK REVIEWS:
Scandalous feminism Women in dark times
Author: Dodgson-Katiyo
Download the PDF


The space between us Nomadic theory: the portable Rosi Braidotti
Author: Brewer
Download the PDF


Mindful and existential Mindful counselling and psychotherapy: practising mindfully across approaches and issues
Author: Perez
Download the PDF


Being-in-the-world, again Existentialism: an introduction
Author: Pearce
Download the PDF