Psychology of Mindfulness

$179.00

Series: Psychology of Emotions, Motivations and Actions
BISAC: PSY036000

In our daily attempt to make sense of life and the world, we come to realize that appropriation of life hinges upon our mindfulness. Being alert to how we dwell in the interior and exterior landscapes of our existence may yet turn around the present modes of living into a salutary condition and/or a better direction. And yet, in what sense(s) does “mindfulness” matter to us for genuinely experiencing our mortal time and for (re-)creation of the world? How successfully does “mindfulness” intervene the psycho-somatic experience of predicaments and enable us to better cope with times of distress and suffering?

This book is an interdisciplinary collection of studies on mindfulness explored and discussed by the authors from different walks of life, disciplines and interests. It offers a rich set of interventions related to the practice of mindfulness meditations which effectively reduces human predicaments of menstrual-stress, neurosis, loneliness, anxiety, trauma, forgetfulness, and distress over cancer, fear of dying alone, mourning, etc., gathered by the authors through their research, teaching, and practice from the fields of philosophy, psychology, medicine, therapy, social work, education and fine arts.

Most of the authors, even those of hard-nosed empirical scientists, share their concern and disquietude about the dualistic stance of the representational subject and the discriminatory thinking and language of substance and intentionality. They address, covertly or overtly, the difference between the Western mode of reflection and Eastern mode of meditation in the human subject’s experience of life and try to integrate various forms of Christian, Hindu, Taoist and Zen meditations into their contexts. The authors in this volume are thus attuned to the menace of recognizable objectivism and objectification of intrinsically interconnected lives of things, and are seeking, through their studies, ways of overcoming a tyranny of the “I” under a zenith of its objectivism in our cultural climate. Accordingly, this volume includes also three informative essays on the Mahayana Buddhist traditions in India and China, Japanese Sôtô Zen practice of Dôgen, and a comparative study of meditation between the Western and the Eastern traditions of spirituality, so as to shed light on the historical and philosophical backgrounds of mindfulness meditation of the far East.

This collection of essays closes with mindfulness as an issue of “interspecies, human-animal relations.” In order to find a step beyond the epoch of anthropocentrism, this book will extend our alertness to nonhuman animals wherein the essential traits of mankind have been repeatedly drawn and appropriated in the history of man. In conclusion, the book will examine new possibilities in the mind of the reader for seeking a way of authentic co-belonging with other species and of building a new çthos beyond the age of objectivism and anthropocentrism. (Imprint: Nova)

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Introductory Remarks

Chapter 1 – From the Heart: Compassionate Knowing in the Heart and Diamond Sutras (pp. 1-10)
David Jones (Philosophy Department, Kennesaw State University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA)

Chapter 2 – Remembering the Vast Emptiness (pp. 11-22)
Kimiyo Murata-Soraci (School of Global Studies, Tama University, Kanagawa, Japan)

Chapter 3 – No Mindfulness without Self-Boundaries (pp. 23-34)
Klaus Blaser (Centre for Applied Boundary Studies, Basel, Switzerland)

Chapter 4 – Awareness in Karl Jaspers‘ General Psychopathology (pp. 35-44)
Elena Bezzubova (University of California, Irvine and New Center of Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles, California, USA)

Chapter 5 – Cognitive Decentering: Relation to Constructs from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Positive Psychology (pp. 45-68)
Tomoko Sugiura and Yoshinori Sugiura (Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan, and others)

Chapter 6 – Mindfulness-Based Approaches in Cultural Populations (pp. 69-86)
Keisha-Gaye N. O‘Garo and Christopher L. Edwards (Womack Army Medical Center, Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, USA, and others)

Chapter 7 – Mindfulness-Based Interventions: Evaluating the Biopsychosocial Effects for Patients with Cancer (pp. 87-106)
James L. McAbee, Elise E. Labbé and Kelley L. Drayer (Combined Clinical and Counseling Psychology, Doctoral Program at the University of South Alabama, Alabama, USA, and others)

Chapter 8 – The Effects of Mindfulness on Stress-Related Physiology, Hormones, and Subjective Reports in Women (pp. 107-122)
Haley A. Carroll, Charlotte Heleniak, Helen Valenstein, Sarah Ballard and M. Kathleen B. Lustyk (Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Washington, Washington, USA, and others)

Chapter 9 – Mindfulness: A Gift to Psychology? (pp. 123-162)
Frank A. M. Vernooij and Jesse Vernooij (Department of Psychiatry and Psychology, St. Antonius Ziekenhuis Hospital Utrecht, The Netherlands, and others)

Chapter 10 – Buttons: Memory, Mindfulness, and the Work of Art (pp. 163-182)
Patricia Trutty-Coohill (Department of Art History, Siena College, New York, USA)

Chapter 11 – Interspecies, Human-Animal Relations (pp. 183-190)
Don Ihde (Department of Philosophy, Stony Brook University, New York, USA)

List of Contributors

Editor’s Contact Information

Index


Audience: University professors and graduate students in Humanities and Social Sciences; medical doctors and health care professionals; psycho therapists and their clients; general public who are interested in the form of meditation

Publish with Nova Science Publishers

We publish over 800 titles annually by leading researchers from around the world. Submit a Book Proposal Now!