Kirk J Schneider
Biographic Data
| ID | 3428338 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kirk J Schneider |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kirk J |
| FAMILY NAME | Schneider |
| SIGNATURE | SCHNEIDER K J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Saybrook University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7152-2007 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 56 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 40 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1983 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Introduction to the Special Issue: Tributes to Ilene Ava Serlin
Depth Psychology in Action: The Corps of Depth Healers’ Vision for Collective Healing
The Corps of Depth Healers, founded by Kirk Schneider in 2023 and assisted by Tyler Gamlen, emerged in response to escalating social, political, and environmental crises. The Corps addresses contemporary challenges such as political polarization, mental health disparities, and societal fragmentation through emotionally restorative relationships, depth healing, and bridge-building. Key initiatives include Experiential Democracy Dialogues, based on…
Humanism’s Bemused Hero: Tom Greening
The Existential-Humanistic Institute: Formalizing Training for Hungering Professionals of Today and Tomorrow
This article describes the formation, history, and current mission of the Existential-Humanistic Institute (EHI) located in the San Francisco Bay Area. Created at the behest of pioneering existential-humanistic psychologist James F.T. Bugental to provide a “home” for trainees specializing in the existential-humanistic approach to psychotherapy, EHI is now a flagship center for that domain of practice. It was also recently granted the Karl and Cha…
My Dance With Donna
Project Earthrise: Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Conference of inVivo Planetary Health
The "Earthrise" photograph, taken on the 1968 Apollo 8 mission, became one of the most significant images of the 20th Century. It triggered a profound shift in environmental awareness and the potential for human unity-inspiring the first Earth Day in 1970. Taking inspiration from these events 50 years later, we initiated Project Earthrise at our 2020 annual conference of in VIVO Planetary Health. This builds on the emergent concept of planetary h…
Awe: More than a lab experience—A rejoinder to “awe: ‘more than a feeling’” by Alice Chirico and Andrea Gaggioli
The Wiley World Handbook of Existential Therapy
Wiley World Handbook of Existential Therapy
The Chief Peril Is Not a DSM Diagnosis but the Polarized Mind
This article calls on organized psychiatry and psychology to wake up and address a major underappreciated discrepancy. This is the discrepancy between diagnostic nomenclature for therapy clients and the nonpathologizing or even glorifying nomenclature for many throughout history who are abusive, degrading, and massively destructive. While the former, typically clinical population, may be referred to as the “diagnosed” and the latter, typically no…
The resurgence of awe in psychology: Promise, hope, and perils
My Journey With Kierkegaard: From the Paradoxical Self to the Polarized Mind
This article is adapted from an invited address sponsored by European Humanities University, Vilnius, Lithuania, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Soren Kierkegaard’s birth. In this article, I show how Kierkegaard’s philosophy—in particular that depicted in Fear and Trembling and the Sickness Unto Death—runs through each of my major books on existential psychology and practice, from The Paradoxical Self to my latest work The Polarized M…
In Memorium: Mentor, Friend, “Father” Mark Stern
This article is a slightly adapted eulogy I was invited to deliver on behalf of my dear friend and mentor, Mark Stern, who died on March 11, 2014. It was delivered on March 22, 2014, at St. Paul’s of the Apostles Chapel, 415 W. 59th St., New York City
Awakening to an awe-based psychology
This article is adapted from my opening keynote address to the First International Existential Psychology Conference in Nanjing, China on April 2nd, 2010. The article begins with an overview of the history and current trends within Western (and to some extent Eastern) existential psychology. Existential–integrative psychology and the spiritual dimension of awe are proposed as two contemporary edges of those trends. Although existential–integrativ…
Humanistic Psychology’s Chief Task: To Reset Psychology on its Rightful Existential–Humanistic Base
SYNOPSISThis article examines professional psychology's shifting paradigms throughout the last 100 years, beginning with its roots in philosophy and concluding with its recent embrace of neuroscience. The main contention of this article is that the evolution of psychology is a philosophical as much as, if not more than, a scientific issue, and that the philosophical fashions of the given times tend to influence the focus of the profession. The au…
An existential-integrative approach to experiential liberation
This article summarizes my existential–integrative (EI) model of therapy, with an emphasis on the experiential level of contact. The experiential (or being) level of contact comprises 4 basic dimensions—the immediate, the affective, the kinesthetic, and the profound (or cosmic). The engagement of the experiential level of contact is contingent on clients' readiness and capacity for intensive, whole-bodied awareness; it may or may not be relevant …
Rollo May on Existential Psychotherapy
This article is a lightly edited transcription of an interview conducted by Kirk Schneider, John Galvin, and Ilene Serlin with Rollo May at his retreat home in Holderness, New Hampshire, in the summer of 1987. Drawing from the influence of his forefathers, Freud, Jung, Fromm, Adler, Sullivan, and Rank as well as classical mythology, philosophy, and literature, May gives a passionate explanation of existential psychotherapy and why it is so urgent…
Editor’s Commentary
Interview with John Levy: A Personal Reflection on Abe
Biology and awe: Psychology's critical juncture
Psychology stands at a crossroads. Even more than in the time of Rollo May, psychology faces a dilemma of alarming moral and scientific proportions. On the one hand, psychology is about to become a biologism. This is a discipline-led by the high tech, consumerist model for living-that emphasizes measurement, materialism, and efficiency. On the other hand, psychology still has a chance-mainly through humanistic and depth orientations-to be a vibra…
I "Grew Up" With Frank Barron
The Fluid Center: An Awe-Based Challenge to Humanity
This article raises two basic questions: What is humanistic psychology's relevance to post 9/11/2001? and, Can that relevance be practically applied to daily life? To address these questions, the author elaborates a humanistic concept that he calls the “fluid center.” The fluid center is an “awe-based” consciousness exemplified by playful constraint, humble daring, and reverent adventurousness. Whereas 9/11 represented the triumph of personal and…
The lure of excess
This article anatomizes the experience of violence. Drawing on the phenomenological observations of classic literature, and in particular, the horror genre, this article proposes that the tendency toward violence is a complex, multifaceted phenomenon. While brain pathology, genetic disposition, and quantifiable stressors all appear to play a role in the outbreak of violence, the literary genre points to other, less well‐appreciated dimensions. Am…
The fluid center: A third millennium challenge to culture
This article proposes an existential vision of self and culture‐the fluid center.” Drawing on existential philosophical and therapeutic principles, the fluid center is elucidated as a “pivot point,” a pause, between the reductionisms, elitisms, and anarchisms, that beset our age. Stated formally, the fluid center is any sphere of consciousness, which has as its concern the widest possible relations to existence. To help illustrate the fluid cente…
Clients deserve relationships, not merely "treatments."
The Deified Self: A "Centaur" Response to Wilber and the Transpersonal Movement
This article is an existential-phenomenological ("centaur level") 1 response to Ken Wilber's concept of deified or ultimate consciousness. Ultimate consciousness, according to Wilber, is the supreme expression of human awareness. It is the point at which highly developed people (i.e., mystics) totally transcend space and time, and are aware (at once) of all perspectives in the universe. Three areas of this concept are evaluated and questioned: th…
The Revival of the Romantic Means a Revival of Psychology
In the past 20 years, American psychology has firmly dissociated itself from its romantic roots. This article elaborates the reasons for this development, the consequences of it, and the rationale for reclaiming those roots. The marginalization of existential-humanistic psychology within mainstream academia, the loss of the influences of the arts and humanities on psychology, and the rich and practical advantages of literary investigations of hum…
Infallibility Is So Damn Appealing: A Reply to Ken Wilber
This article is a reply to Ken Wilber's (1989b), "God Is So Damn Boring' and an elaboration upon my original article, "The Deified Self: A 'Centaur' Response to Wilber and the Transpersonal Movement" (Schneider, 1987). The focus of this article is on Wilber's increasing use of pragmatism to justify his metaphysical claims, in particular, "ultimate" claims. This inclination is misguided on several grounds: (a) "'Ultimate" claims cannot be defined …
Encountering and Integrating Kierkegaard's Absolute Paradox
Kierkegaard's absolute paradox is proposed as the fundamental basis for a cohesive existential-phenomenological theory of perception. Absolute paradox is defined as a continuum of physical, intellectual, and emotional finitude (limitation) counterpoised by physical, intellectual, and emotional infinitude (freedom). After setting forth the tenets of this theory of paradox, the author explores its implications for the history of philosophical thoug…
Rollo May on Existential Psychotherapy
This article is a lightly edited transcription of an interview conducted by Kirk Schneider, John Galvin, and Ilene Serlin with Rollo May at his retreat home in Holderness, New Hampshire, in the summer of 1987. Drawing from the influence of his forefathers, Freud, Jung, Fromm, Adler, Sullivan, and Rank as well as classical mythology, philosophy, and literature, May gives a passionate explanation of existential psychotherapy and why it is so urgent…
My Journey With Kierkegaard: From the Paradoxical Self to the Polarized Mind
This article is adapted from an invited address sponsored by European Humanities University, Vilnius, Lithuania, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Soren Kierkegaard’s birth. In this article, I show how Kierkegaard’s philosophy—in particular that depicted in Fear and Trembling and the Sickness Unto Death—runs through each of my major books on existential psychology and practice, from The Paradoxical Self to my latest work The Polarized M…
The Fluid Center: An Awe-Based Challenge to Humanity
This article raises two basic questions: What is humanistic psychology's relevance to post 9/11/2001? and, Can that relevance be practically applied to daily life? To address these questions, the author elaborates a humanistic concept that he calls the “fluid center.” The fluid center is an “awe-based” consciousness exemplified by playful constraint, humble daring, and reverent adventurousness. Whereas 9/11 represented the triumph of personal and…
The Chief Peril Is Not a DSM Diagnosis but the Polarized Mind
This article calls on organized psychiatry and psychology to wake up and address a major underappreciated discrepancy. This is the discrepancy between diagnostic nomenclature for therapy clients and the nonpathologizing or even glorifying nomenclature for many throughout history who are abusive, degrading, and massively destructive. While the former, typically clinical population, may be referred to as the “diagnosed” and the latter, typically no…
Humanistic Psychology’s Chief Task: To Reset Psychology on its Rightful Existential–Humanistic Base
SYNOPSISThis article examines professional psychology's shifting paradigms throughout the last 100 years, beginning with its roots in philosophy and concluding with its recent embrace of neuroscience. The main contention of this article is that the evolution of psychology is a philosophical as much as, if not more than, a scientific issue, and that the philosophical fashions of the given times tend to influence the focus of the profession. The au…
The Existential-Humanistic Institute: Formalizing Training for Hungering Professionals of Today and Tomorrow
This article describes the formation, history, and current mission of the Existential-Humanistic Institute (EHI) located in the San Francisco Bay Area. Created at the behest of pioneering existential-humanistic psychologist James F.T. Bugental to provide a “home” for trainees specializing in the existential-humanistic approach to psychotherapy, EHI is now a flagship center for that domain of practice. It was also recently granted the Karl and Cha…
I "Grew Up" With Frank Barron
Boiling Energy: Community Healing Among the Kalahari Kung
Boiling Energy: Community Healing Among the Kalahari Kung ." Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 15(4), pp. 351–352
Encountering and Integrating Kierkegaard's Absolute Paradox
Kierkegaard's absolute paradox is proposed as the fundamental basis for a cohesive existential-phenomenological theory of perception. Absolute paradox is defined as a continuum of physical, intellectual, and emotional finitude (limitation) counterpoised by physical, intellectual, and emotional infinitude (freedom). After setting forth the tenets of this theory of paradox, the author explores its implications for the history of philosophical thoug…
The Deified Self: A "Centaur" Response to Wilber and the Transpersonal Movement
This article is an existential-phenomenological ("centaur level") 1 response to Ken Wilber's concept of deified or ultimate consciousness. Ultimate consciousness, according to Wilber, is the supreme expression of human awareness. It is the point at which highly developed people (i.e., mystics) totally transcend space and time, and are aware (at once) of all perspectives in the universe. Three areas of this concept are evaluated and questioned: th…
Infallibility Is So Damn Appealing: A Reply to Ken Wilber
This article is a reply to Ken Wilber's (1989b), "God Is So Damn Boring' and an elaboration upon my original article, "The Deified Self: A 'Centaur' Response to Wilber and the Transpersonal Movement" (Schneider, 1987). The focus of this article is on Wilber's increasing use of pragmatism to justify his metaphysical claims, in particular, "ultimate" claims. This inclination is misguided on several grounds: (a) "'Ultimate" claims cannot be defined …
The wisdom of uncertainty
R.D. Laing Remembered
This article conveys some of my thoughts, feelings, and experiences with R. D. Laing. Although I met him only briefly and did not know him personally, I sympathize greatly with his concerns. Once people believed that the world was flat; however, science has proved that the world is round.... Now in spite of that, one still believes that life is flat and goes from birth to death. However, life is probably round and much superior in extension and c…
Paradox and health
Mounting research suggests that the way we deal with psychophysiological paradoxes or opposites (such as separation vs. attachment, firmness vs. supportiveness, formality vs. informality, masculinity vs. femininity, assertiveness vs. submissive‐ness, or in short, constriction and “drawing back” vs. expansion and “bursting forth) has key implications for our health. Although convincing theoretical treatises have addressed this topic, there has yet…
Hitchcock's Vertigo: An Existential View of Spirituality
Recently, we have witnessed an explosion of interest in the transcendental dimension of human experience. Leading psychological theorists, however, have become polarized on this matter. Whereas emphatic rationalists (such as Albert Ellis) perceive little value in the transcendental, ardent transpersonalists (such as Ken Wilber) stress its most expansive implications. This article explores a third alternative to these positions-what I term existen…
Reflections on becoming a humanistic psychologist
Transpersonal views of existentialism: A rejoinder
Over the past several years, a growing number of transpersonal theorists have addressed existentialism. These articles have been supportive of existential positions but only to a point. This point concerns one major theme: whether or not the universe is friendly (assimilable, consoling) or unfriendly (unassimilable, “other). Transpersonalists tend to adopt the former, and in their view, superior, position and existentialists lean toward the latte…
Jim Bugental's Vision: The Next Step
This article is a tribute not just to Jim Bugental but to his vision. As Jim himself has increasingly recognized, the implications of existential-humanistic practice stretch far beyond the individual and his or her immediate domain. Such notions as liberation, searching, responsibility, and presence have significant implications for the sociopolitical contexts that Jim's (and our) existential-humanistic clients invariably confront. This article a…
Toward a science of the heart: Romanticism and the revival of psychology
Existentlal-Humanistic Training Institute
The fluid center: A third millennium challenge to culture
This article proposes an existential vision of self and culture‐the fluid center.” Drawing on existential philosophical and therapeutic principles, the fluid center is elucidated as a “pivot point,” a pause, between the reductionisms, elitisms, and anarchisms, that beset our age. Stated formally, the fluid center is any sphere of consciousness, which has as its concern the widest possible relations to existence. To help illustrate the fluid cente…
Clients deserve relationships, not merely "treatments."
Clients deserve relationships, not merely "treatments."
The Crisis of the Romantic in Psychology: Four Views
The Revival of the Romantic Means a Revival of Psychology
In the past 20 years, American psychology has firmly dissociated itself from its romantic roots. This article elaborates the reasons for this development, the consequences of it, and the rationale for reclaiming those roots. The marginalization of existential-humanistic psychology within mainstream academia, the loss of the influences of the arts and humanities on psychology, and the rich and practical advantages of literary investigations of hum…
The lure of excess
This article anatomizes the experience of violence. Drawing on the phenomenological observations of classic literature, and in particular, the horror genre, this article proposes that the tendency toward violence is a complex, multifaceted phenomenon. While brain pathology, genetic disposition, and quantifiable stressors all appear to play a role in the outbreak of violence, the literary genre points to other, less well‐appreciated dimensions. Am…
I "Grew Up" With Frank Barron
The Fluid Center: An Awe-Based Challenge to Humanity
This article raises two basic questions: What is humanistic psychology's relevance to post 9/11/2001? and, Can that relevance be practically applied to daily life? To address these questions, the author elaborates a humanistic concept that he calls the “fluid center.” The fluid center is an “awe-based” consciousness exemplified by playful constraint, humble daring, and reverent adventurousness. Whereas 9/11 represented the triumph of personal and…
Biology and awe: Psychology's critical juncture
Psychology stands at a crossroads. Even more than in the time of Rollo May, psychology faces a dilemma of alarming moral and scientific proportions. On the one hand, psychology is about to become a biologism. This is a discipline-led by the high tech, consumerist model for living-that emphasizes measurement, materialism, and efficiency. On the other hand, psychology still has a chance-mainly through humanistic and depth orientations-to be a vibra…
Interview with John Levy: A Personal Reflection on Abe
Rollo May on Existential Psychotherapy
This article is a lightly edited transcription of an interview conducted by Kirk Schneider, John Galvin, and Ilene Serlin with Rollo May at his retreat home in Holderness, New Hampshire, in the summer of 1987. Drawing from the influence of his forefathers, Freud, Jung, Fromm, Adler, Sullivan, and Rank as well as classical mythology, philosophy, and literature, May gives a passionate explanation of existential psychotherapy and why it is so urgent…
Editor’s Commentary
Psychology (36 works) · Philosophy (30 works) · Epistemology (27 works) · Psychoanalysis (22 works) · Philosophy (19 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Existentialism (13 works) · Psychotherapist (10 works) · Humanism (9 works) · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications (9 works)