The Relevance of the Wisdom Traditions in Contemporary Society

Psychology is known as a discipline arising from Western experimental method, but there is perhaps no society that does not have a psychology, a way of understanding and training the person, in accordance with particular social values and concepts. Some of these ‘other psychologies’ are known as the Wisdom traditions, which include Eastern and Christian meditation practices, but also the age-old knowledge of the soul of the American Indian and Australian Aboriginal peoples.

This collection of articles arose from a conference of the Transnational Network for the Study of Physical, Psychological and Spiritual Wellbeing, held at Wollongong University, Australia, in 2002, where scholars from various traditions met to discuss the significance of non-Western psychological knowledge and to challenge the prevailing direction of Western academic psychology. Some articles are theoretical in nature, others are based on clinical experiments. Themes range from concepts in Buddhist psychology to the effect of meditation on patients with chronic disorders.