Mitchell Ginsberg, Ph.D., has worked in the fields of philosophy, psychology, and psycholinguistics since the 1960s, and has been a kalyana-mitta (meditation teacher) in the Thai-Burmese Theravada Buddhist tradition since 1975, having led residential meditation retreats in Great Britain, France, Norway, and the USA. He has been a licensed psychotherapist in California since 1981.
Dr. Ginsberg's publications include Mind and Belief: Psychological Ascription and the Concept of Belief (1972), The Far Shore: Vipassana, The Practice of Insight (1980, 4th ed., 2009), The Inner Palace: Mirrors of Psychospirituality in Divine and Sacred Wisdom-Traditions (2002, 8th ed., 2013), Calm, Clear, and Loving: Soothing the Distressed Mind, Healing the Wounded Heart (2010; 2nd ed., 2012), Peace and War and Peace: The Heart in Transformation (2012; 2nd ed., 2015), Mindful Raft over Troubled Waters (2015), and The Hitler Era: Philosophical, Psychological, and Historical Reckonings. (2019). Forthcoming are (1) Death, O Death: Savoring the Human Condition and (2) Mutating Hallelujahs: The Sacred and the VIsionary Swimming in Worldly Waters.
His tribute to a major influence in his understanding of therapy is available as a new contribution to the 4th ed. of Effective Psychotherapy: The Contribution of Hellmuth Kaiser (2018) and is entitled "Untimely Kaiserian Meditations"; the book's first edition dates from 1965. This 4th ed. also includes two translations from the German by him and Angela Graf-Nold (Swiss Jungian therapist and Professor of Psychology, Psychotherapy, and Psychiatry at the University of Zurich). The first of these two is a critical essay by Swiss psychoanalyst Gustav Bally (Kaiser's supervisor in psychoanalytic training) from early 1934, questioning Carl Gustav Jung's cooperative attitude toward the (newly Nazified) German Medical Society for Psychotherapy, and the second, an interview of Hellmuth Kaiser in 1958 by the founder of the Sigmund Freud Archives, Kurt Eissler.
He has taught at the University of Michigan (where he earned his Ph.D. in 1967), Yale University, the American Institute of Buddhist Studies, Antioch University, and elsewhere, in the departments of Philosophy, Far East Studies, Buddhist Studies, and Clinical, Humanistic, Transpersonal, and Counseling Psychology.
Dr. Ginsberg has been a licensed psychotherapist since 1981, where his approach is transpersonal and systemic, integrating Buddhist introspective psychology and Indic Tantra with a strong background in the perspectives of Hellmuth Kaiser, Friedrich Nietzsche, R. D. Laing, Maurizio Andolfi, Israel Charny, and traditional psychodynamics. His training includes work at the (Yale University) Connecticut Mental Health Center, the Connecticut Valley (State Psychiatric) Hospital, a Clinical Psychology Internship at the West Haven VA Hospital, a Yale University Psychology/Psychiatry training hospital, work at Emanon in the NIMH-MRI Soteria Research Project, and studies at the Istituto di Terapia Familiare in Rome, Italy.
He has also studied at UNAM (México, DF) and at the Université de Lausanne, and has held postdoctoral and visiting professor research positions in linguistics (MIT), in Buddhist Studies (University of Texas), in Indic Studies (Yale), in Judaic Studies and Middle East Studies (UCSD), and in the Psychiatry Departments at UCSF’s Langley-Porter Institute and at UCSD.
He has worked with survivors of politically-motivated torture from various countries around the world in their search for political asylum and physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual well-being, and acted as Expert Witness in US Immigration (Homeland Security) Courts for issues of torture and applications for asylum.
Dr. Ginsberg’s primary areas of academic interest are psychospirituality and psychotherapy, Buddhist psychology & meditation, the therapy of post-traumatic stress processes and the counseling of refugees (especially of survivors of torture), philosophy of mind, and Tantra & consciousness.
Check out www.jinavamsa.com and www.wisdommoonpublishing.com for more information about Dr. Ginsberg's work.