Kirk Schneider | Saybrook University (original) (raw)
Papers by Kirk Schneider
The Experiential Democracy Dialogue for Two: Summary and Overview, 2024
This summary is adapted from my book The Depolarizing of America: A Guidebook for Social Healing ... more This summary is adapted from my book The Depolarizing of America: A Guidebook for Social Healing (University Professors Press, 2020)--emphasizing Curiosity, Respect, and Openness, enhancing the prospect of achieving common ground. Common ground may simply entail the ability to be civil toward and attain a degree of empathy with one's dialogue partner, and not necessarily achieve actionable policy agreements. It is highly recommended that dialogue partners read the aforementioned book to attain the optimal background for this dialogue process. The summary is also adapted from a recent book titled Life-enhancing Anxiety: Key to a Sane World (2023) as well as from my term as a trained moderator for the conflict mediation organization "Braver Angels.". Note that the time ranges for each of the phases of the Experiential Democracy Dialogue are subject to some variation, depending on the needs and capacities of the partners to engage them. Moreover, Although this summary is based on emerging research, it makes no claims as to the outcomes of the dialogue encounters. These outcomes are entirely the responsibility of the dialogue partners and those who facilitate their engagement. It is highly recommended that this one-on-one dialogue format is overseen by a trusted facilitator, preferably with a background in mediation or counseling, who ensures the dialogue partners adhere to the ground rules and who keeps time for each phase of the process.
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Spirituality in Clinical Practice, 2014
This was an invited paper for the journal Spirituality in Clinical Practice. The Editor at the t... more This was an invited paper for the journal Spirituality in Clinical Practice. The Editor at the time, Dr. Lisa Miller asked me to write a piece that summarized my spiritual and clinical philosophy and thus the reason for the topic of this piece. It's a relatively short piece that is expanded on in my books Existential-Integrative Psychotherapy, Rediscovery of Awe and Awakening to Awe, but hopefully it gives the reader a sense of the awe-based consciousness or radical openness to mystery that existential-integrative approaches can foster.
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The Humanistic Psychologist, 2010
... ''I will be with you,'' the archetypal therapistguide Vi... more ... ''I will be with you,'' the archetypal therapistguide Virgil intimates ... She also has found new resources to realize her avocations: travel, collage-making, and singingbut, most important, she has found new ... Sanctuary and presence: An existential view of the therapist's contribution ...
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Choice Reviews Online, Dec 1, 2001
... of workshops, during one memorable year, with Sidney Jourard, Abraham Maslow, James Bugental,... more ... of workshops, during one memorable year, with Sidney Jourard, Abraham Maslow, James Bugental, James Fadiman, Rollo ... And may it lead us toward a fully realized human nature in ournew millennium ... Afterward, I read most of Maslow's writings as well as those of Rogers and ...
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Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Jul 1, 2003
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Self and society, Dec 1, 2014
any psychological insights or explanations. Part 2 is devoted to ‘What we can do about the polari... more any psychological insights or explanations. Part 2 is devoted to ‘What we can do about the polarized mind’. And the answer given is that we have to adopt an awe-based mind instead of a polarized mind. This of course follows earlier books where Schneider has written at length about awe. I have never been convinced by this approach, because it seems to me that it conflates two quite different ideas. On the one hand, it is virtually identical with the humanistic virtue of openness. This is really about the move from first-tier thinking to secondtier thinking, with its adoption of dialectical logic instead of formal logic. Most humanistic workshops and trainings involve this shift of consciousness. But Schneider sneakily slips in, with this idea, a much more spiritual theme, involving profundity, connectedness, the numinous, an awareness of vastness, ineffable wonder, and heightened perception. This material seems to me much more to do with what Ken Wilber calls the Subtle realm, the realm of spirituality proper. We then get a mass of historical material showing that this shift of thought – from polarized thinking to awe-based thinking – is possible, and has indeed occurred in a number of historical movements. In Chapter 6, entitled ‘Toward a fluid center of life’, we get child rearing as one of the most important requirements towards an awe-based culture. If we can move in this way towards an awe-based society, we shall achieve wisdom. ‘Wisdom is the “guidance system” for awe and leads to the fluidly centered life.’ I have to say that this seems a very optimistic book. It speaks of nothing less than a massive shift of consciousness. It seems to me very much like the shift from the Mental Ego consciousness to the Centaur consciousness that Wilber talks about. Wilber himself is quite sanguine about this, saying that it only needs 10 per cent of the population to make this shift, and the rest will follow. The Spiral Dynamics people seem less sure that the shift from Green to Yellow consciousness will take place on a mass scale, seeing it as an unlikely outcome. My own view is that although this is a passionate book, with an impressive sense of history, it is not particularly convincing as a harbinger of world-wide change.
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SAGE Publications, Inc. eBooks, Dec 24, 2014
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The Humanistic Psychologist, Mar 1, 2020
This article is a response to Chirico and Gaggioli’s (2018) commentary “Awe: More than a feeling”... more This article is a response to Chirico and Gaggioli’s (2018) commentary “Awe: More than a feeling” which addressed my 2017 article “The Resurgence of awe in psychology: Promise, hope, and perils.” First, I discuss my appreciation of the commentary including its admirable efforts to broaden the scope of mainstream inquiries into awe; its openness to my “slow simmer” conception of awe which comprises complex, potentially life-altering dimensions; and its expansion of the mainstream conception of awe from that of an emotion to that of an experience. Next, I convey my concerns about the commentary, which include the authors’ implication that virtual reality (VR) or any such “constructed” environment, is an ideal setting with which to investigate the experience of awe; the authors’ intimation that laboratory experiences, such as that of VR are psychophysiologically comparable and therefore equivalent to naturalistic experiences of awe; and the authors’ contention that experimental inductions of awe are “especially” important in the investigation of awe-based experience. I conclude that despite the authors’ laudable intentions to investigate fuller and more nuanced experiences of awe they ironically overlook key limitations associated with the artificiality of their methodology. This omission highlights the need for increased attention to a complementary methodology, i.e., phenomenology, that can address the larger and more complex dimensions of experiential awe.
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American Psychological Association eBooks, 2013
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The Humanistic Psychologist, 1999
Page 1. The Humanistic Psychologist Vol. 27, No. 1,1999, pp. 114-130 The Fluid Center: A Third Mi... more Page 1. The Humanistic Psychologist Vol. 27, No. 1,1999, pp. 114-130 The Fluid Center: A Third Millennium Challenge to Culture Kirk J. Schneider Saybrook Graduate School ABSTRACT: This article proposes an existential ...
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American Psychological Association eBooks, Jun 12, 2017
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American Psychological Association eBooks, 2014
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PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2008
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American Psychological Association eBooks, Jun 12, 2017
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... Horror and the holy : wisdom-teachings of the monster tale / Kirk J. Schneider, p. cm. ... Ca... more ... Horror and the holy : wisdom-teachings of the monster tale / Kirk J. Schneider, p. cm. ... Campbell 4 Bela Lugosi as Dracula 16 Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's Monster 32 Smaller and Smaller, MC Escher 42 Lon Chaney as the Phantom of the Opera 46 Mark Damon as Philip ...
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APA PsycNET Our Apologies! - The following features are not available with your current Browser c... more APA PsycNET Our Apologies! - The following features are not available with your current Browser configuration. - alerts user that their session is about to expire - display, print, save, export, and email selected records - get My ...
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Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Jun 24, 2023
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PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2020
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The Experiential Democracy Dialogue for Two: Summary and Overview, 2024
This summary is adapted from my book The Depolarizing of America: A Guidebook for Social Healing ... more This summary is adapted from my book The Depolarizing of America: A Guidebook for Social Healing (University Professors Press, 2020)--emphasizing Curiosity, Respect, and Openness, enhancing the prospect of achieving common ground. Common ground may simply entail the ability to be civil toward and attain a degree of empathy with one's dialogue partner, and not necessarily achieve actionable policy agreements. It is highly recommended that dialogue partners read the aforementioned book to attain the optimal background for this dialogue process. The summary is also adapted from a recent book titled Life-enhancing Anxiety: Key to a Sane World (2023) as well as from my term as a trained moderator for the conflict mediation organization "Braver Angels.". Note that the time ranges for each of the phases of the Experiential Democracy Dialogue are subject to some variation, depending on the needs and capacities of the partners to engage them. Moreover, Although this summary is based on emerging research, it makes no claims as to the outcomes of the dialogue encounters. These outcomes are entirely the responsibility of the dialogue partners and those who facilitate their engagement. It is highly recommended that this one-on-one dialogue format is overseen by a trusted facilitator, preferably with a background in mediation or counseling, who ensures the dialogue partners adhere to the ground rules and who keeps time for each phase of the process.
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Spirituality in Clinical Practice, 2014
This was an invited paper for the journal Spirituality in Clinical Practice. The Editor at the t... more This was an invited paper for the journal Spirituality in Clinical Practice. The Editor at the time, Dr. Lisa Miller asked me to write a piece that summarized my spiritual and clinical philosophy and thus the reason for the topic of this piece. It's a relatively short piece that is expanded on in my books Existential-Integrative Psychotherapy, Rediscovery of Awe and Awakening to Awe, but hopefully it gives the reader a sense of the awe-based consciousness or radical openness to mystery that existential-integrative approaches can foster.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
The Humanistic Psychologist, 2010
... ''I will be with you,'' the archetypal therapistguide Vi... more ... ''I will be with you,'' the archetypal therapistguide Virgil intimates ... She also has found new resources to realize her avocations: travel, collage-making, and singingbut, most important, she has found new ... Sanctuary and presence: An existential view of the therapist's contribution ...
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Choice Reviews Online, Dec 1, 2001
... of workshops, during one memorable year, with Sidney Jourard, Abraham Maslow, James Bugental,... more ... of workshops, during one memorable year, with Sidney Jourard, Abraham Maslow, James Bugental, James Fadiman, Rollo ... And may it lead us toward a fully realized human nature in ournew millennium ... Afterward, I read most of Maslow's writings as well as those of Rogers and ...
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Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Jul 1, 2003
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Self and society, Dec 1, 2014
any psychological insights or explanations. Part 2 is devoted to ‘What we can do about the polari... more any psychological insights or explanations. Part 2 is devoted to ‘What we can do about the polarized mind’. And the answer given is that we have to adopt an awe-based mind instead of a polarized mind. This of course follows earlier books where Schneider has written at length about awe. I have never been convinced by this approach, because it seems to me that it conflates two quite different ideas. On the one hand, it is virtually identical with the humanistic virtue of openness. This is really about the move from first-tier thinking to secondtier thinking, with its adoption of dialectical logic instead of formal logic. Most humanistic workshops and trainings involve this shift of consciousness. But Schneider sneakily slips in, with this idea, a much more spiritual theme, involving profundity, connectedness, the numinous, an awareness of vastness, ineffable wonder, and heightened perception. This material seems to me much more to do with what Ken Wilber calls the Subtle realm, the realm of spirituality proper. We then get a mass of historical material showing that this shift of thought – from polarized thinking to awe-based thinking – is possible, and has indeed occurred in a number of historical movements. In Chapter 6, entitled ‘Toward a fluid center of life’, we get child rearing as one of the most important requirements towards an awe-based culture. If we can move in this way towards an awe-based society, we shall achieve wisdom. ‘Wisdom is the “guidance system” for awe and leads to the fluidly centered life.’ I have to say that this seems a very optimistic book. It speaks of nothing less than a massive shift of consciousness. It seems to me very much like the shift from the Mental Ego consciousness to the Centaur consciousness that Wilber talks about. Wilber himself is quite sanguine about this, saying that it only needs 10 per cent of the population to make this shift, and the rest will follow. The Spiral Dynamics people seem less sure that the shift from Green to Yellow consciousness will take place on a mass scale, seeing it as an unlikely outcome. My own view is that although this is a passionate book, with an impressive sense of history, it is not particularly convincing as a harbinger of world-wide change.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
SAGE Publications, Inc. eBooks, Dec 24, 2014
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The Humanistic Psychologist, Mar 1, 2020
This article is a response to Chirico and Gaggioli’s (2018) commentary “Awe: More than a feeling”... more This article is a response to Chirico and Gaggioli’s (2018) commentary “Awe: More than a feeling” which addressed my 2017 article “The Resurgence of awe in psychology: Promise, hope, and perils.” First, I discuss my appreciation of the commentary including its admirable efforts to broaden the scope of mainstream inquiries into awe; its openness to my “slow simmer” conception of awe which comprises complex, potentially life-altering dimensions; and its expansion of the mainstream conception of awe from that of an emotion to that of an experience. Next, I convey my concerns about the commentary, which include the authors’ implication that virtual reality (VR) or any such “constructed” environment, is an ideal setting with which to investigate the experience of awe; the authors’ intimation that laboratory experiences, such as that of VR are psychophysiologically comparable and therefore equivalent to naturalistic experiences of awe; and the authors’ contention that experimental inductions of awe are “especially” important in the investigation of awe-based experience. I conclude that despite the authors’ laudable intentions to investigate fuller and more nuanced experiences of awe they ironically overlook key limitations associated with the artificiality of their methodology. This omission highlights the need for increased attention to a complementary methodology, i.e., phenomenology, that can address the larger and more complex dimensions of experiential awe.
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American Psychological Association eBooks, 2013
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The Humanistic Psychologist, 1999
Page 1. The Humanistic Psychologist Vol. 27, No. 1,1999, pp. 114-130 The Fluid Center: A Third Mi... more Page 1. The Humanistic Psychologist Vol. 27, No. 1,1999, pp. 114-130 The Fluid Center: A Third Millennium Challenge to Culture Kirk J. Schneider Saybrook Graduate School ABSTRACT: This article proposes an existential ...
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American Psychological Association eBooks, Jun 12, 2017
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American Psychological Association eBooks, 2014
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PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2008
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American Psychological Association eBooks, Jun 12, 2017
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... Horror and the holy : wisdom-teachings of the monster tale / Kirk J. Schneider, p. cm. ... Ca... more ... Horror and the holy : wisdom-teachings of the monster tale / Kirk J. Schneider, p. cm. ... Campbell 4 Bela Lugosi as Dracula 16 Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's Monster 32 Smaller and Smaller, MC Escher 42 Lon Chaney as the Phantom of the Opera 46 Mark Damon as Philip ...
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APA PsycNET Our Apologies! - The following features are not available with your current Browser c... more APA PsycNET Our Apologies! - The following features are not available with your current Browser configuration. - alerts user that their session is about to expire - display, print, save, export, and email selected records - get My ...
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Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Jun 24, 2023
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PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2020
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Book Review: Life-Enhancing Anxiety: Key to a Sane World, 2024
I'm very pleased to share a remarkably comprehensive and insightful review of my latest book "Lif... more I'm very pleased to share a remarkably comprehensive and insightful review of my latest book "Life-Enhancing Anxiety: Key to a Sane World" by Dr. Zenobia Morrill of William James College.
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This review of the remarkable book "The Birth of Relationship: Carl Rogers Meets Otto Rank" by Ro... more This review of the remarkable book "The Birth of Relationship: Carl Rogers Meets Otto Rank" by Robert Kramer suggests a revolution in our thinking about the founding figure(s) of the American version of existential-humanistic (E-H) psychology. Despite traditional emphases on the European philosophical and psychiatric lineages of Martin Heidegger, Medard Boss, and Ludwig Binswanger, it now appears that the most central and comprehensive inspiration for the movement--and thus Carl Rogers and Rollo May's importation of it in the 1930s and 1950s--was Otto Rank. This review elaborates why and raises compelling questions about both the long-standing neglect of Rank in the E-H and neo-analytic therapy communities, as well as ways to revive Rank's critical body of work for a fuller and deeper understanding of human lives.
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[
This review of the remarkable book "The Birth of Relationship: Carl Rogers Meets Otto Rank" by Ro... more This review of the remarkable book "The Birth of Relationship: Carl Rogers Meets Otto Rank" by Robert Kramer suggests a revolution in our thinking about the founding figure(s) of the American version of existential-humanistic (E-H) psychology. Despite traditional emphases on the European philosophical and psychiatric lineages of Martin Heidegger, Medard Boss, and Ludwig Binswanger, it now appears that the most central and comprehensive inspiration for the movement--and thus Carl Rogers and Rollo May's importation of it in the 1930s and 1950s--was Otto Rank. This review elaborates why and raises compelling questions about both the long-standing neglect of Rank in the E-H and neo-analytic therapy communities, as well as ways to revive Rank's critical body of work for a fuller and deeper understanding of human lives.
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I believe this article goes to the heart of our troubled times both individually and collectively... more I believe this article goes to the heart of our troubled times both individually and collectively, and especially challenges us as therapeutic agents to find creative ways to integrate polarizing systemic and environmental factors into the context of our guidelines for so called mental disorders. This could entail some kind of narrative discussion of the evidence for psychosocial polarization (or what I call the "polarized mind" or fixation on a single view to the utter exclusion of competing views) as a context-where relevant-for individual "disorders," such as depression, anxiety, substance abuse, obsessive-compulsiveness, post-traumatic stress and even autism spectrum, bipolar and schizophrenic spectrum syndromes. I call for urgent research to expand the present DSM to include contextual-systemic supplementation such as above. Short of this, we will perpetually fall short of a fuller understanding of troubled lives.
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Abstract This article calls on organized psychiatry and psychology to wake up and address a major... more Abstract
This article calls on organized psychiatry and psychology to wake up and address a major underappreciated discrepancy. This is the discrepancy between diagnostic nomenclature for therapy clients, and the nonpathologizing or even glorifying nomenclature for many throughout history who are abusive, degrading, and massively destructive. While the former, typically clinical population, may be referred to as the “diagnosed” and the latter, typically nonclinical population, as the “undiagnosed,” I show how the compartmentalization of our current psychiatric diagnostic system prevents us from seeing the larger problems with mental health in our country and beyond, and that these problems require an alternative framework. Such a framework would address both that which we conventionally term “mental disorder” as well as the disorder of cultures, which so often forms the basis for that which we term mental disorders. I propose that the phenomenologically based framework that I call “the polarized mind” is one such alternative that might help us more equitably treat suffering, whether individual or collective.
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This article proposes that presence is the core contextual factor of therapeutic effectiveness. P... more This article proposes that presence is the core contextual factor of therapeutic effectiveness. Presence is defined as a complex mix of appreciative openness, concerted engagement, support, and expressiveness, and it both holds and illuminates that which is palpably significant within the client and between client and therapist. While the therapeutic alliance, empathy, collaboration, and the provision of meaning and hope have been established as primary contextual factors in the facilitation of effective therapy, this article contends that presence is at their hub. Given that position, it is concluded that although presence is viewed favorably by leading practitioners, there are two major problems with how presence is actually being engaged: The first problem is the way some practitioners are " using " or " performing " presence rather than cultivating it as a therapeutic stance, and the second problem is how the training of therapists is becoming increasingly technical at the very time when the research (informing such training) is becoming contextual, relational, and nontechnical.
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The sense of awe, also defined as a perception of vastness that cannot be assimilated but can be ... more The sense of awe, also defined as a perception of vastness that cannot be assimilated but can be accommodated; or as the experience of humility and wonder--adventure--toward living, has become a “hot” topic in psychology. This article considers the basis for this trend, some promising avenues of research, and several challenges to the mainstream--quantitative--perspective on awe. It is concluded that while mainstream perspectives on awe appear to have beneficial effects on an impressive array of human behaviors, the relative neglect of historically rooted, in depth, qualitative approaches to awe pose notable perils. Among these perils are the comparative reductionism of the findings on awe to overt and measurable reactions; the neglect of longer term, life-changing experiences of awe, and the neglect of the broader social implications of awe-based transformation.
Keywords: awe, awe-based, positive psychology, happiness, humanistic, existential, social-political, methodology
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This is a draft of a published paper for the Association for Humanistic Psychology Perspective Ma... more This is a draft of a published paper for the Association for Humanistic Psychology Perspective Magazine (2009). It consists of a tribute to my mentor and early founder of Existential-Humanistic Therapy James F.T. Bugental. The distinguishing feature of the article is that it shows how the cultivation of existential-humanistic therapy skill is akin to a course of training in meditation. I experienced the rigors of this training for about a 3 year period as a supervisee of Jim and Elizabeth Bugental in the 1980s, with a particular stress on therapeutic "presence," which is akin to mindfulness and other meditative practices.
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The sense of awe, also defined as a perception of vastness that cannot be assimilated but can be ... more The sense of awe, also defined as a perception of vastness that cannot be assimilated but can be accommodated; or as the experience of humility and wonder--adventure--toward living, has become a “hot” topic in psychology. This article considers the basis for this trend, some promising avenues of research, and several challenges to the mainstream--quantitative--perspective on awe. It is concluded that while mainstream perspectives on awe appear to have beneficial effects on an impressive array of human behaviors, the relative neglect of historically rooted, in depth, qualitative approaches to awe pose notable perils. Among these perils are the comparative reductionism of the findings on awe to overt and measurable reactions; the neglect of longer term, life-changing experiences of awe, and the neglect of the broader social implications of awe-based transformation.
Keywords: awe, awe-based, positive psychology, happiness, humanistic, existential, social-political, methodology
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APA Handbook of Psychotherapy, 2024
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