Welcome from Mitchell Ginsberg (Jinavamsa).
..... comments invited: see email, below .....

For a more general introduction, go to my Home Page.
On mindfulness, see mindfulness practice or insight (vipassana) meditation.
(There is more on Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapies, below.)
For more on The Far Shore, including some selections and reviews, go to The Far Shore directory.
And, similarly, for more on The Inner Palace, go to The Inner Palace directory.

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This link acts as a note to the web site on Health and the Mind. If in going through that site you wanted more specific information about the influences on my approach to psychotherapy, this and other links given there are especially for you.

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As mentioned in Health and the Mind, my work in therapy is basically an integration of approaches from within Western psychotherapy with an Eastern (Indic, primarily Buddhist) understanding of the mind and its processes. More specifically, my orientation involves an integration of Buddhist introspective psychology (called Abhidhamma or Abhidharma) with a Western humanistic/transpersonal approach combined with a systemic understanding of marital and family processes. There are also the specific perspectives of teachers whose understandings go beyond such neat categories. More on these below.

More in other linked pages on the Eastern focus, including a discussion of the systematic cultivation of mindfulness and insight, a practice known as Mindfulness Meditation, also referred to as Vipassana (Insight) Meditation.

On humanistic and transpersonal psychotherapy: The context to make sense of this is an earlier distinction between Psychoanalysis, which was the first approach to psychological problems in this context, and a second approach, that of Behaviorism. Each of these had its own supporters and theoreticians. As an alternative to these two understandings, a new perspective was proposed, Humanistic Psychology, seen as the Third Force; defined by Five Basic Postulates. A second name, "Person-Centered" therapy, is used mostly in the particular perspective of Carl Rogers.

Out of this Third Force came an understanding that there are concerns that go beyond the individual, beyond ego-centered awareness. This has been termed the transpersonal. It is spoken of in a number of spiritual traditions that talk of going beyond our small selves or our self-centered awareness into a more encompassing understanding of life (of our lives). One recent delineation is given at this Transpersonal Psychology presentation.

On systemic Marital and Family Therapy: This understands a family as an interconnected group of people with many mutual influences on one another -- in this way, a system. This perspective on couples and families allows for an understanding of how our relationships have a strong impact on how we think, feel, react, and act. The social and cultural context of the family is also taken into account in this systemic perspective. That makes it clearer what shifts might be made in order to influence the overall patterns in the family in satisfying and mutually respectful and caring ways.

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A number of teachers that I have worked with extensively have been most important for my work.

Most influencial have been the following:

Maurizio Andolfi is the founder of the Italian Society of Family Therapy (Societa Italiana di Terapia Familiare) and the Institute of Family Therapy (Istituto di Terapia Familiare), now called the Academy of Family Psychotherapy (Accademia di Psicoterapia della Famiglia, in Rome, Italy. His is an approach that makes use of both a strong support of the potential within the members of the family and a clear confrontation about important patterns that are harmful in various ways. Confrontation here should be clearly distinguished from aggressivity. It also makes use of our rational understanding of the family's interactions, as well as our intuitive insights into them. In this way this can be called a confrontive-supportive, rational-intuitive approach.

Israel Charny is the founder of the Israeli Family Therapy Association. His approach takes into account a realization that each family operates within a context of the limited lifespans of all of its members (our being mortals). This is the level that acknowledges the nature of our existence (and is thus "existential"). It also focuses on the way in which capacities of each individual become strengthened at the cost of other potential abilities that remain weak. This makes for a division of abilities, where a couple may often feel like a meeting of polar opposites. This development may create rigidities within the couple and the family that bring about a limited freedom to deal with life's demands. This second focus is what is called "dialectical" (as involving the setting up of polarities and their ways and limits of movement). In this way, this can be called an existential-dialectical approach to marital and family issues.

Hellmuth Kaiser may be glimpsed here on the net via an article on Hellmuth Kaiser (Kaiserian therapy), in the web site on Hellmuth Kaiser, and in the transcript of a 1955 seminar given by Kaiser in Connecticut. Kaiser was originally a psychoanalyst from the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. His primary supervisors were Karen Korney and Wilhelm Reich. With the coming of the Third Reich, he and other analysts left Germany. After World War II, he was invited to England and then to the Menninger Clinic in the United States. His investigations led to the development of an approach to therapy that looked at the communication between the therapist and the patient, to come to a direct, clear, and mutually respectful honesty, in which the relationship between the therapist and the patient was understood as being central to supporting the changes possible in an in-depth therapy. The related form of therapy is usually called Kaiserian Therapy. His work may be found collected and edited in the published text edited by Louis B. Fierman, M.D., Effective Psychotherapy: The Contribution of Hellmuth Kaiser.

Friedrich Nietzsche, although not a psychotherapist, did write much that suggests a particular model of interaction as therapeutic. I have written on what this model would be, based on an extensive reading of the texts of Nietzsche, especially an extended essay entitled "Nietzschean Psychiatry" that was first published in 1973 in Robert C. Solomon, editor, Nietzsche: A Collection of Critical Essays. This essay has been revised and is part of Calm, Clear, and Loving.

In addition to these specific individuals, there are several traditions that I have found interesting and useful in my professional work. These are discussed at the page on Childhood & Attachment Theory, and on Trauma Therapy.


Please come back soon and visit here, as I will be updating and adding to this home page as time permits.

More to be added.... visit when inspired.

email: jinavamsa@yahoo.com
C 2008