Prescribing the Dharma by Ira Helderman - 2019: Psychotherapists, Buddhist Traditions, and Defining Religion

Condition: clean copy, top edge wear.
Content: This is a study of the 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, the author gives voice to the psychotherapists themselves. He forces 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. The author 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.
314 pages, notes, work cited, index.