Critical Mindfulness Exploring Langerian Models

Expanding on the trailblazing ideas of Ellen Langer, this provocative volume explores the implications of critical mindfulness for making psychology more responsive and its practice more meaningful. Powerful critiques take the discipline to task for positioning therapists as experts over their clients and focusing on outcomes to the detriment of therapeutic process.

Contributors use the principles of Langerian mindfulness to inform self-understanding and relationships, areas such as athletic performance and consumer decision making, and basic and complex forms of cognitive engagement. The mindfulness demonstrated here is not only critical but also creative, inclusive, and humane, with the potential to transform the consciousness of psychology and other mind-based fields.

Included in the coverage: 

• Critical mindfulness of psychology’s mindlessness.
• The construct of mindfulness amidst and along conceptions of rationality.
• Understanding confidence: its roots and role in performance.
• Mindfulness in action: the emergence of distinctive thought and behavior.
• Langerian mindfulness and optimal sport performance.
• Health and the psychology of possibility.

Critical mindfulness of psychology’s mindlessness.- The Construct of Mindfulness Amidst and Along Conceptions of Rationality.- On the Way to Mindfulness: How a focus on outcomes (even good outcomes) prevents good outcomes.-  Understanding Confidence: Its Roots and Role in Performance.- Irrational Attachment (Why We Love What We Own).- MINDFUL DISSENT.- Psychohistory as a Means to Understand Langer’s Contributions to Psychological Science.- Mindfulness in action: The emergence of distinctive thought and behavior.- Priming the Mind to see its Double:  Mindfulness in a New Key.- Langerian Mindfulness and Optimal Sport Performance.- Health and the Psychology of Possibility.- Ellen Langer: Philosophy, Autobiography and a Healing Quest.- Possible Components of Mindfulness.

Dr. Sayyed Mohsen Fatemi (Ph.D., University of British Columbia, 2003, Post Doctorate, Harvard University, 2009-2013) is a Fellow in the department of psychology at Harvard University and works on mindfulness and its psychological implications for cross cultural, clinical and social psychology. He is a frequently published author and has been the keynote speaker of numerous international conferences. He brings  mindfulness in his psychological and therapeutic interventions and has run training and coaching programs for clinicians, practitioners and corporate people  in North America, Europe and overseas. His publications appear in Springer, Wiley, Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press and Journals such as APA's Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology. In addition to teaching at Harvard, he has also taught for the department of psychology at the University of British Columbia, Western Washington University, University of Massachusetts in Boston and University of Toronto. He is presently working on the clinical implications of mindfulness for anxiety and stress management.