The aim of this study was to explore psychotherapists‘ practice of mindful acceptance. I employed the hermeneutic phenomenological approach with the intention of creating thick descriptions of how mindful acceptance is performed in therapy sessions with clients by psychotherapists with backgrounds in mindfulness. The findings for this study came from a variety of sources including,...
Behavioural scientists typically classify cognitive processes as either controlled or automatic. Whereas controlled processes are slow and effortful, automatic processes are fast and involuntary. Cognitive researchers have recently begun investigating how top-down influence in the form of suggestion can allow individuals to modulate the automaticity of deeply ingrained processes. The present...
Philosophers have been trying to solve the mind-body problem for hundreds of years. Consciousness is the core of this problem: How do subjective conscious sensations, perceptions, feelings, and thoughts arise out of objective physical brain activities? How is this subjective conscious world in causal interaction with the objective sensory and motor mechanisms of the brain and the body? Although...
This is an autoethnography that provides a thick description, analysis and reflection of my personal Multiple Sclerosis healing journey, supported by a transpersonal modality based on an ancient shamanic wisdom.This research explores Ayahuasca as a transpersonal therapy, which is facilitated by a spiritual plant that has been used for centuries by Indigenous Peoples in the Amazonian region for...
Spirit possession is the core religious practice in most Afro- American religions. It is usually described as "mounting"; the spirit "rides" the body of the devotee as a horseman rides a horse. The description projects the image that a spirit takes control over the body of the medium and "uses" the human medium; the body of the person is passive and submissive, while the spirit is active and...
The Hand, an Organ of the Mind, edited by Zdravko Radman, consists of seventeen essays by an impressive array of philosophers, psychologists, and cognitive scientists, as well as a foreword by Jesse Prinz and a postscript by haptic artist Rosalyn Driscoll.62 As the title suggests, this collection concerns the role of the hand in cognition and consciousness, and aims to occupy a novel middle...
There is a material dimension of subjectivity that constitutes a conscious feature profoundly different from the representational feature. The former corresponds in many respects to what for the contemporary philosopher of mind is the qualitative mind or authentic consciousness (qualia). In the Husserlian phenomenology, non-intentional consciousness is also characterized by its inevitable...
Paul Churchland (born on 21 October 1942 in Vancouver, Canada) and Patricia Smith Churchland (born on 16 July 1943 in Oliver, British Columbia, Canada) are Canadian-American philosophers whose work has focused on integrating the disciplines of philosophy of mind and neuroscience in a new approach that has been called neurophilosophy . They are also central figures in the philosophical stance...
Thomas Nagel is an American philosopher currently teaching Philosophy and Law at New York University. In 1974, he published an article – titled What Is It Like to Be a Bat? – that had enormous resonance in the community of philosophers of mind. The expression used by Nagel in his article has become a mesmerizing phrase in the common usage among philosophers to indicate the subjective feature of...
Max Velmans, born 27 May 1942, is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London. In 1994, he cofounded the Consciousness and Experiential Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society and made several publications in the area of consciousness studies, which culminated in a book titled Understanding Consciousness . In this book – which thus far has had two...