Mark Epstein – författare

Our ego, and its accompanying sense of nagging self-doubt, is one affliction we all share. And while our ego claims to have our best interests at heart, in its never-ending pursuit of attention and power, it sabotages the very goals it sets to achieve. In Advice Not Given, renowned psychiatrist and author Dr Mark Epstein reveals how Buddhism and Western psychotherapy both identify the ego as the limiting factor in our wellbeing. With great insight, Epstein offers readers a how-to guide grounded in two traditions devoted to maximizing the human potential for living a better life. Epstein uses the Eightfold Path, eight areas of self-reflection that Buddhists believe necessary for enlightenment, as the structure of the book. When informed by the sensibility of Western psychotherapy, the principles of the Eightfold Path become a road map for spiritual and psychological growth. Breaking down the wall between East and West, Epstein brings a Buddhist sensibility to therapy and a therapist's practicality to Buddhism. Our ego is at once our biggest obstacle and our greatest hope. We can be at its mercy or we can learn to mould it. Completely unique and practical, Epstein's advice can be used by all, and will provide wise counsel in a confusing world.

Before Mark Epstein became a medical student at Harvard and began training as a psychiatrist, he immersed himself in Buddhism through experiences with such influential Buddhist teachers as Ram Dass, Joseph Goldstein, and Jack Kornfield. The positive outlook of Buddhism and the meditative principle of living in the moment came to influence his study and practice of psychotherapy profoundly. Going on Being is Epstein''s memoir of his early years as a student of Buddhism and of how Buddhism shaped his approach to therapy, as well as a practical guide to how a Buddhist understanding of psychological problems makes change for the better possible.In psychotherapy, Epstein discovered a vital interpersonal parallel to meditation, but he also recognized Western psychology''s tendency to focus on problems, either by attempting to eliminate them or by going into them more deeply, and how this too often results in a frustrating "analysis of analysis." Buddhism opened his eyes to another way of change. Drawing on his own life and stories of his patients, he illuminates the concept of "going on being," the capacity we all have to live in a fully aware and creative state unimpeded by constraints or expectations.