OUR HISTORY
GROW TO WISDOM
The Contemplative Studies Project began in 2006 as an offering from the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis for continuing professional enrichment for mental health practitioners both within and outside the NYU community. It evolved organically from collegial study and meditation groups, faculty writing, and enthusiastic responses to invited speakers such as Edward Podvall, M.D., Joseph Goldstein, Jack Engler, M.D., and our own Michael Eigen, Ph.D. In 2006, Sara Weber, Ph.D., together with her study and meditation colleagues James Ogilvie, Ph.D., Therese Ragen, Ph.D. and Sue Shapiro, Ph.D., founded The Contemplative Studies Project of New York.
Shortly after getting approval to operate from our Postdoctoral Program, we co-sponsored a conference entitled Enlightening Relationships (2007) with Tricycle Magazine, Polly Young-Eisendrath, PsyBC, and the New School, which was an enormous success and included a large number of psychoanalysts and Buddhists as speakers and group leaders. Since that conference, each year we have offered more programs, retreats, classes, study groups and events.
In September 2015 we established ourselves as an association independent of the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis.
Our goal has been to study meditative practices and writings of contemplatives in a manner that embodies the characteristics of contemplation itself. We endeavor to approach all that we do with the meditative qualities of awareness, insight and compassion for the well-being of self and others. Our aim is to combine intellectual and intuitive levels so that we can enter deeply into the experiences and ideas explored. Many different contemplative and meditative traditions are explored including but not limited to mystical psychoanalysis, Buddhism, mystical aspects of Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism, humanism and existentialism. These practices and writings are considered as they relate to the experience of psychotherapeutic listening and attending, consciousness and transformative experiences.
“Our goal is to study meditative practices and writings of contemplatives in a manner that embodies the characteristics of contemplation itself.”
FOUNDERS & FACULTY
PARTNER
SARA L. WEBER
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