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 is bracing and insightful reading for
undergraduate and graduate students, psychologists, psychiatrists,
physicians, clinicians, neurologists, and educators within and outside
positive psychology. These pages challenge the wider community of
professionals to rethink their perspectives on practice-as well as their
long-held tenets of living.