Psychotherapy, Mindfulness and Buddhist Meditation

This book critically examines the development of mindfulness, tracing its development from Buddhist meditation to its variety of popular applications today, including the treatment of mental disorders, wellbeing and improvement of performance. The book begins with a chapter on the meaning of mindfulness, then moves on to chart the spread of Buddhism into the western world and examine the development of Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). The second half of the book considers some of the growing concerns related to mindfulness such as the loss of the moral and communitarian values of Buddhism, and the psychologicization and medicalization of existential problems into a capitalist society.

Tullio Giraldi teaches neuropsychopharmacology at the University of Trieste, Italy, where he is an Eminent Scholar at the Faculty of Medicine, and is currently Visiting Professor at the King’s College London. UK. He is also an ordained Rinzai Zen lay monk at Zenshin-ij Monastery, Italy, and author of Unhappiness, Sadness and ’Depression’ (2017).