This week on the show we feature a pre-recorded conversation with Elliot Cohen, author of The Psychologisation of Eastern Spiritual Traditions: Colonisation, Translation and Commodification. 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.
Dr. Elliot Cohen is a Chartered Psychologist and Senior Lecturer in Social and Interdisciplinary Psychology at Leeds Beckett University, UK. He worked as a Psychotherapist for several years and then worked in Psychiatric units and therapeutic communities in and around Manchester; specializing in Psychodrama, Dramatherapy, Music Therapy and Mindfulness-Based Therapies. He is the current Secretary of the British Psychological Society’s Transpersonal Section and an active member of the Discourse Unit, which promotes more critical/radical approaches to Psychology. Elliott has traveled extensively around the Far East where he studied Daoist, Buddhist, and Hindu philosophy. He is an authorized teacher of Buddhist meditation and Mindfulness-Based Approaches from the Dhamma Nikethanaya Buddhist Academy.
More information about Elliot Cohen's work can be found at:
Elliot Cohen at Leeds: www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk,
Elliot Cohen on Academia.edu: leedsbeckett.academia.edu,
Elliot Cohen on Facebook.com: www.facebook.com,
The Psychologisation of Eastern Spiritual Traditions at Routledge: www.routledge.com.
