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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Psychologisation of Eastern Spiritual Traditions: Colonisation, Translation and Commodification

The Psychologisation of Eastern Spiritual Traditions: Colonisation, Translation and Commodification

Cohen, Elliot

Hardcover

Series: Concepts for Critical Psychology

BuddhismGeneral Eastern ReligionsHinduism

ISBN10: 0367375397
ISBN13: 9780367375393
Publisher: Routledge
Published: Sep 30 2021
Pages: 158
Weight: 0.74
Height: 0.44 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English

This essential book critically examines the various ways in which Eastern spiritual traditions have been typically stripped of their spiritual roots, content and context, to be more readily assimilated into secular Western frames of Psychology.

Beginning with the colonial histories of Empire, the author draws from the 1960s Counterculture and the subsequent romanticising and idealising of the East. Cohen explores how Hindu, Buddhist and Daoist traditions have been gradually transformed into forms of Psychology, Psychotherapy and Self-Help, undergoing processes of 'modernisation' and secularisation until their respective cosmologies had been successfully reinterpreted and reimagined. An important component of this psychologisation is the accompanying commodification of Eastern spiritual practices, including the mass-marketing of mindfulness and meditation as part of the burgeoning well-being industry. Also presenting emerging voices of resistance from within Eastern spiritual traditions, the book ends with a chapter on Transpersonal Psychology, showing a path for how to gradually move away from colonisation and towards collaboration.

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