In this article I examine an important episode in the growth of ‘mindfulness’ as a biomedical modality in Britain: the formation and establishment of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) by John Teasdale and his colleagues Mark Williams and Zindel Segal. My study, focusing on Teasdale’s contribution, combines ethnographic, oral historical and archival research to understand how mindfulness was disseminated or, to use a term sometimes used by mindfulness practitioners themselves, ‘transmitted’. Drawing on theoretical support from Max Weber, Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, I argue that transmission had a very specific form within the Buddhistic milieu that Teasdale occupied and within which he developed MBCT. To ‘transmit’ mindfulness was to transmit an experiential essence; a type of subjectivity that was seen as perennial, universal and radically distinct from its historical context. In tracing the recurring metaphysical, metaphorical and visual tropes of mindfulness and its transmission, I attempt to understand how Teasdale was embedded in both local and global networks of discourse and practice, and how his life and work contributed and depended upon an assemblage whose elements (institutional, technical, conceptual, textual) straddled empiricist psychology and religious mysticism. I also examine how authority, experience and knowledge were closely interwoven in the birth of British mindfulness, coming together to form an affectively compelling ‘diagram’ that shaped the way mindfulness was practiced and disseminated. In doing so, I aim to open up the possibility of studying the history of the human sciences from a new perspective: one which places an emphasis on the emotional impetus generated by metaphysical assumptions.
...MoreArticle Sarah Marks (2018) Psychotherapy in Europe. History of the Human Sciences (pp. 3-12).
Similar Citations
Article
Salguero, C. Pierce;
(2014)
“Treating Illness”: Translation of a Chapter from a Medieval Chinese Buddhist Meditation Manual by Zhiyi (538--597)
(/isis/citation/CBB001450745/)
Book
Thomas Nathan Patton;
(2018)
The Buddha's Wizards: Magic, Protection, and Healing in Burmese Buddhism
(/isis/citation/CBB189158508/)
Article
Daniel Burton-Rose;
(2017)
Desiderata for the Principles of Compilation of a Canon of Buddhism and Medicine
(/isis/citation/CBB301803046/)
Book
Mirinda A. Karshan;
Annelore Homberg;
(2020)
La sfida della cura: Lo psicoterapeuta Canio Tedesco tra formazione, professione e ricerca
(/isis/citation/CBB038825054/)
Book
Tomas Matza;
(2018)
Shock Therapy: Psychology, Precarity, and Well-Being in Postsocialist Russia
(/isis/citation/CBB052329453/)
Article
David J. Harper;
Sebastian Townsend;
(2022)
From the margins to the NICE guidelines: British clinical psychology and the development of cognitive behaviour therapy for psychosis, 1982–2002
(/isis/citation/CBB379283288/)
Article
Schmit, David T.;
(2010)
The Mesmerists Inquire about “Oriental Mind Powers”: West Meets East in the Search for the Universal Trance
(/isis/citation/CBB000932857/)
Chapter
Oosterhuis, Harry;
(2011)
“Not Very Happy and Mixed with a Lot of Nervousness”: The Priest as Therapist in Catholic Mental Health Care
(/isis/citation/CBB001250533/)
Article
Jonathan Sadowsky;
(2022)
The Human Factor: Psychotherapy and the Reign of Technology
(/isis/citation/CBB412803595/)
Article
Paul Williams;
Brian Edgar;
(2018)
The Primal Is the Political: Psychotherapy, Engagement, and Narcissism in the 1970s
(/isis/citation/CBB945026857/)
Book
Robert H. Abzug;
(2021)
Psyche and Soul in America: The Spiritual Odyssey of Rollo May
(/isis/citation/CBB374714406/)
Article
Francis Mckay;
(2019)
Equanimity: The somatization of a moral sentiment from the eighteenth to late twentieth century
(/isis/citation/CBB380198689/)
Article
Ngar-sze Lau;
(2017)
Desire for Self-healing
(/isis/citation/CBB341925229/)
Article
Jennifer Jetter;
(December 2019)
The Good, the Bad, and the Aesthetically Challenged: Providing Online Counseling and Psychotherapy
(/isis/citation/CBB744908890/)
Book
Antonio Semerari;
(2022)
La relazione terapeutica. Storia, teoria e problemi
(/isis/citation/CBB311426059/)
Chapter
Brian Rappert;
Catelijne Coopmans;
Giovanna Colombetti;
(2016)
The (Non)-Conveying of the Experiential in Scientific Accounts of Buddhist Meditation
(/isis/citation/CBB745870408/)
Article
Baker, Ian A.;
(2012)
Embodying Enlightenment: Physical Culture in Dzogchen as revealed in Tibet's Lukhang Murals
(/isis/citation/CBB001450732/)
Article
Nicholson, Ian;
(2007)
Baring the Soul: Paul Bindrim, Abraham Maslow and “Nude Psychotherapy”
(/isis/citation/CBB000773070/)
Book
Füredi, Frank;
(2004)
Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age
(/isis/citation/CBB000701273/)
Article
Mélanie Henry;
(2023)
Trauma, protest, and therapeutic culture in Algeria since the 1980s
(/isis/citation/CBB510149017/)
Be the first to comment!