PT XX — Derfer, The Roar of Awakening

George Derfer, Zhihe Wang and Michel Weber (eds.), The Roar of Awakening. A Whiteheadian Dialogue Between Western Psychotherapies and Eastern Worldviews, Frankfurt / Paris / Lancaster, ontos verlag, 2009. (251 p. ; ISBN : 978-3-86838-039-2 ; 89 €)

The primary goal of this volume is to describe the contemporary state of affairs in Western psychotherapy, and to do so in a Whiteheadian spirit : with genuine openness to the relative ways in which creativity, beauty, truth and peace manifest themselves in various cultural traditions. To do so, it chooses to explore afresh a cross-elucidatory path that was born with the field of history of religion (and Religionwissenschaft) : what have we, and can we, learn from a dialogue with Eastern worldviews ? In order to generate meaningful contrasts between these different systems of thought, all the papers address the following core issues. On the one hand, how does the given system understand the interaction of individuality, society, and nature (or cosmos) ? Especially : what is its standpoint with regard to the nature of consciousness and with regard to the mind/body problem ? ; how far is it dualistic ? ; how are destiny and historicity assessed ? On the other hand, what is the paradigm of all mal-adjustment (or pathology) and what is its typical tuning-in (or curative) pattern ? What are furthermore the ins and outs of the diagnostic and therapeutic assessments involved ? Wherever possible, some (meta)theoretical and clinical issues are addressed from the vantage point of selected material from abnormal psychology or psychiatry.

Table of contents

Contents

Contributors

Foreword — George Derfer, Zhihe Wang and Michel Weber

Introduction — Michel Weber

I. The View from the East

1. Consciousness : The Vedantic Approach to Life and Reality, Francis- Vincent Anthony

2. Dual-Aspect Framework for Consciousness, RamLakhan Pandey Vimal

3. The Paradoxes of Radical Asceticism : Jainism as a Therapeutic Paradigm, Jeffery D. Long

4. Yoga Therapeutics : Philosophical, Scientific and Humanistic Approaches, Ashok Kumar Malhotra

5. Can Indian spiritual practices be used in psychotherapy ?, R L Kapur

II. Transcultural Dialogue

6. Ineradicable Frustration and Liberation in Tiantai Buddhism, Brook Ziporyn

7. An Exploration and Analysis into Chinese Traditional Psychotherapy Ideas—A Concurrent Comment on the Integrative point of view of Whitehead’s Organic Philosophy, Fengqiang Gao and Yingmin Chen

8. The Kyoto School and self-awareness in the field of the absolute nothingness —A comparison with Whitehead’s philosophy, Eiko Hanaoka

9. Jung and Hisamatsu Re-envisioning Religiosity : Jungian Psychotherapy and the Kyoto School, Tokiyuki Nobuhara

10. Reconstructing the Meaning of Being Human : A Postmodern Reinterpretation of Frankl in the Framework of Whitehead’s Philosophy, Yoshihiro Hayashi

11. The Development of Binswanger’s Daseinsanalysis, Shoji Muramoto

12. The Intercultural and Daseinsanalytical Psychiatry of Kimura Bin, Bernard Stevens

13. A Certain Form of Psychotherapy (Kenosis, Prajna, Jung, and Hillman), David T. Bradford

14. Vedanta, Process and Psychotherapy, Joseph Grange

15. On Zen Buddhism, Clive Sherlock