Words from the Soul
Time, East/West Spirituality, and Psychotherapeutic Narrative
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A spiritual reformulation of psychotherapy that starts with an acceptance of relentless impermanence as the ground of human experience and draws from philosophy, kundalini yoga, and the author's own extensive clinical/mediation experience.
Description
Accepting relentless impermanence as the ground of human experience, Words from the Soul derives a spiritual psychology from the mystery and poignancy of time-passage itself. Drawing from Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Foucault, Dostoyevsky, Buddhism, kundalini yoga, and twenty-five years of clinical/mediation experience, the author's epigrammatic insights into our struggles with mortality, gratitude, apology, and forgiveness make this book relevant to psychotherapy and conflict resolution in a wide range of professional settings.
In his exploration of the furthest-reaches of human development, Stuart Sovatsky reveals the deepest potentials of the ensouled body, transforming our views of language, sexuality, ecstatic spiritualities, and of the human life cycle.
Stuart Sovatsky is Assistant Professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies, Clinical Supervisor at John F. Kennedy University, and Director of Kundalini Clinic. He is the author of Passions of Innocence.
Reviews
"This is an extremely riveting, original book that makes a compelling case for a refreshingly radical understanding and practice of transpersonally oriented psychology. In challenging the tacit assumptions of 'basic' psychotherapeutics, transpersonally oriented or otherwise, this text does what most other transpersonal theorizing falls short of doing. That is, it reveals the ways therapeutic taken-for-granted 'basics' can work to actually undermine any therapeutic endeavor, as well as presenting an alternative outline of what a more genuine set of 'soteriological basics' could look like, both in theory and in practice. In this way, this book opens up an exciting way of thinking about psychotherapy that has not been clearly opened up before.
"This is a pioneering work that will be a fertile source of inspiration and innovation in 'holistic' forms of psychology and psychotherapeutics into the twenty-first century. " — Kenneth Bradford, Clinical Director, Maitri Psychotherapy Institute
"It is a marvelous act of freedom-making, dissolving the constricting fetters of the traditional psychoanalytic view of life's possibilities and dangers, and strikingly original and creative in its sweep and in its conception of the ultimate goals of human development. " — Richard D. Mann, University of Michigan