Prescribing the Dharma
Psychotherapists, Buddhist Traditions, and Defining Religion
Ira Helderman
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Imprint: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 02/2019
Pages: 328
Subject: Religion, Psychology
| University of North Carolina
Print ISBN: 9.78147E+12
eBook ISBN: 9781469648538
DESCRIPTION
This is the first comprehensive study of the surprisingly diverse ways that psychotherapists have related to Buddhist traditions. Through extensive fieldwork and in-depth interviews with clinicians, many of whom have been formative to the therapeutic use of Buddhist practices, Helderman gives voice to the psychotherapists themselves. He focuses on how they understand key categories such as religion and science. Some are invested in maintaining a hard border between religion and psychotherapy as a biomedical discipline. Others speak of a religious-secular binary that they mean to disrupt. Helderman finds that psychotherapists' approaches to Buddhist traditions are molded by how they define what is and is not religious, demonstrating how central these concepts are in contemporary American culture.