Integral Education: The CIIS Blog

Taking Charge of Your Education

By MARIKA O'BAIRE-KARK, student in the Writing and Consciousness MFA program
 
You are in charge of your education. As your knowledge, intelligence, and understanding evolve, then perhaps wisdom can focus and accelerate your advance into becoming the person you wish to become. You are going to create a future anyway out of the unknown that lies ahead. You could be well aware and do this deliberately or not. You decide.

Kris Brandenburger, a poet and professor at CIIS, introduced me to Tobin Hart, an educator. He wrote a philosophy in his book, "From Information to Transformation: Education for the Evolution of Consciousness." I created an algorithm from his work in parallel with that of Patricia Benner, from her work, "Expertise in Nursing Practice: Caring, Clinical Judgment and Ethics"; Stuart Dreyfus, an applied mathematician, and Hubert Dreyfus, a philosopher wrote about how air force pilots, chess players, and army tank drivers acquired their skills. Benner and Dreyfus and Dreyfus collaborated on the second chapter of her book, about how nurses, who are artists and scientists, acquire their skills. I write here about their viewpoints in relation to writers. This may seem complex. And why do it?

Writers initially work alone, or perhaps in the company of others but not with others. However, in the journey of their work, they learn from everyone and everything around them. Once they produce their piece, writers and other artists often seek supportive observers to respond to their work. Doctors, nurses find that from the beginning of their professional life in becoming educated they must learn to work as a team, even though as healers they find their actual presence with someone experiencing illness, may often be solo. It is a creation in the moment. The medium is the space between them. This demands great skill.

Artists and writers use similar skills of observation—listening, watching, feeling, then intuiting what action must come next and originating it. How does one learn a high level of skill? Or would someone want to stop at the level of being competent to perform certain physical tasks? If an individual knew how to deliberately develop his or her own skill, I believe most individuals would want to go for excellence, for the extraordinary. Here is a comparison of algorithms between Hart and Benner.

Interview: Bryant Welch, Chair of the Clinical Psychology Program

By PAULINE E. REIF, alumna of Writing and Consciousness MFA program

Bryant Welch, JD, PhD, chair of the Clinical Psychology (PsyD) program, comes to CIIS with more than 30 years of experience as a nationally prominent psychologist. A Harvard College and Harvard Law School graduate, he received his PhD in clinical psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1976. He’s held faculty appointments at the University of University of North Carolina and George Washington University. He is a research associate graduate of the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute. From 1986 to 1993, Welch initiated and ran the American Psychological Association Practice Directorate, leading organized psychology through one of its most successful advocacy eras.

Much can be said of Dr. Welch’s broad experience and leadership in law, psychology, and politics. As a clinician, researcher, teacher, advocate, activist, and author he brings to the CIIS community a wealth of knowledge, skill, and passion.

I recently spoke to Welch about what brought him to CIIS and why he views it as a “wonderful home” in which to continue his work.

Pauline: Let’s begin with how you came to CIIS. Why CIIS for you?

Bryant: I came to CIIS because this is a uniquely exciting time in psychology. For the first time in my career as a psychologist we have this very exciting convergence of neuroscience and spirituality and what was at one time dismissed as “West Coast Woo-Woo” is now, lo and behold, being substantiated by Western neuroscience. That is a huge intellectual development with all kinds of implications. I think for CIIS it represents an astonishing validation for the vision of its founding fathers, namely that Eastern thought had a lot to inform Western psychology and Western culture. This leads to a variety of implications for the practice of psychology. We’ve now got a critical mass of integrated information that we’ve just not had in the past. And we’ve got new treatments that are flowering as a result of this convergence. So, I was looking for a place where I could work and integrate this new information and disseminate it into the mental health field and also into the larger world community. 

I’ve also always been interested in social justice and politics and been particularly intrigued by the psychological consequences of injustice and oppression. In my book written a few years ago called, "State of Confusion: Political Manipulation and the Assault on the American Mind" (Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martins Press, June, 2008), I explore how people are being manipulated and trying to show psychologically how that kind of manipulation exploits psychological vulnerabilities but also makes people sicker in the process of doing it. So I’m very interested in the psychology of what oppression does to people whatever form it’s in and hope to build a strong social justice component focusing on answering the psychological questions surrounding these issues. I see CIIS as an incredible place to address these goals.

Also, when I first came here for interviews, I loved the faculty and thought that the administration seemed to be very, very trustworthy and so, it felt like a potentially wonderful home and I feel that it is.

Pauline: So CIIS is the kind of place one comes home to, a community of like minds, but it’s also a place where one is stretched as well.

Bryant: Yes. I’ve been to some really good schools and I’ve been with some really good institutions and I’ve never been in a place as stimulating as this…never. You know, I was on the Harvard campus in the 60s and the early 70s and that was pretty exciting but I’m telling you it’s nothing compared to this.

And then you’ve got the people here, an extremely bright faculty who actually practice what they teach. It’s just a remarkable place, an extraordinary culture, that’s very different from others I’ve been a part of.

Pauline: Can you address in a little more detail what makes the PsyD program at CIIS unique? Why come here?

Bryant: Yes. There are a lot of things I can say about why it’s unique. I think the most unique thing about the culture here is that thing that’s hardest to put into words that I don’t think a person can understand by reading a course catalog.

(Visit CIIS' YouTube channel to watch Bryant Welch talk more about the PsyD program)

Second, issues like cultural diversity, social justice and subjective human experience are revered here and people here—actually—live their respect for those aspects of human experience.

In terms of our program compared to other programs, our students have tremendous academic flexibility. The range of things our students can study here wouldn’t be allowed in other more conventional programs. This is evident in their dissertations, written on subjects that include spiritual issues and subjective human experience.

It’s also important to note that we’re one of three Clinical Psychology Doctoral program facilities in the State of California that’s been approved for Mental Health Stipends to support graduate students who are working in underserved populations. These internships meet the APA standards even though serving this population is not an APA requirement. These programs tend not to have as much money nor provide as big a stipend as the APA programs offer, but our students want to work in these programs and we support them in these situations. As I’ve said, this is a very, very humanistic and spiritual place with just tremendous emphasis on subjective human experience.

EWP Chair Jorge Ferrer and EWP Students to Present at Upcoming Conference in Palo Alto

East-West Psychology Program Chair Jorge Ferrer will deliver the keynote speech at the upcoming Institute of Transpersonal Psychology PhD Symposium, "Leading Edge Research in Service to Community," on May 12, 2012, in Palo Alto, Calif. His speech is  titled, “Embodiment and the Heart of Participatory Spirituality.”

EWP doctoral candidate Zayin Cabot will present, “Evolution and the Poetics of Indigenous Participation: African and American Indian Modes of Participation"; and EWP doctoral student Samuel Malkemus will present, “The Clash of Instinct and Culture: Eros, Phobos and the Roots of Morality.”

Detailed descriptions of these three talks after the jump.

Don Hanlon Johnson on Somatics and Mind-Body Integration

Don Hanlon Johnson, professor of somatics in the School of Professional Psychology at CIIS, recently appeared on the radio show of CIIS alum Michael Ostrolenk. Hanlon Johnson, who trained as a Jesuit priest in the 1960s, tells Ostrolenk about gaining an awareness of the “vital reality” of the mind/body connection. Hanlon Johnson founded the Somatic Psychology program at CIIS in 1983.

Listen to Becoming Embodied: Somatics and Mind, Body, Integration

Don Hanlon Johnson's website >>

CIIS Professors Lead Course in Chiapas, Mexico, to Study Unique History of the Zapatista Movement

By SONYA SHAH, professor in the School of Undergraduate Studies, and CHARLOTTE SÁENZ, adjunct professor in the School of Undergraduate Studies

"We have nothing to lose, absolutely nothing, no decent roof over our heads, no land, no work, poor health, no food, no education, no right to freely and democratically choose our leaders, no independence from foreign interests, and no justice for ourselves or our children. But we say enough is enough! We are the descendants of those who truly built this nation, we are the millions of dispossessed, and we call upon all of our brethren to join our crusade, the only option to avoid dying of starvation!"

- Zapatistas (EZLN) Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, Chiapas, 1993

On New Years Eve 1993, the Chiapas Mayan Highlanders said “enough is enough!”: no longer willing to tolerate 500 years of foreign and domestic conquest over our land, people, community, and way of life. Theirs is an ongoing story of self-determination in the face of neoliberalism, modernity, and the modern nation-state. As Howard Zinn writes, "The Zapatista uprising in Chiapas was certainly one of the most dramatic and important instances in our time of a genuine grassroots movement against oppression.”

In progressive international circles, the Zapatistas are a household name, their continuous call to resistance and creation of five caracols—self governed autonomous municipalities not under control of the Mexican state since the 1994 uprising—serve as a most contemporary model of resistance in the face of globalization. They beg us to consider: Will we too demand to live differently, not governed by the pace of modernity or the philosophy of capital?  Will we not fight for a world centered around relationships, mutuality, collective governance instead of capital, industry, production, and corrupt “democracy”? Subcomandante Marcos has said it best, “We want a world where other worlds are possible.”

From December 31, 2012, to January 9, 2013, we, two CIIS faculty, Charlotte Saenz and Sonya Shah, will travel with a group of graduate and undergraduate students to Chiapas, Mexico, to explore, on the ground, the way in which contemporary Zapatismo (the emergent philosophy of the Zapatistas) is lived. This trip is not a tourist trip but a learning journey. Meaning we are students of life, engaging other worlds by understanding the unique history and context of the Zapatistas, walking with (as opposed to in front of) another world in order to learn from it and participate in our intertwined liberation. We will hopefully walk into “another world” with respect, humility, collectivity, and the ability to hold multiple world views above individualism, judgment, and a singular world view.

In our morning sessions, students will visit several autonomous centers of integral learning and healing, community arts, popular theater, women's crafts cooperatives, and local NGOs doing human rights observation, ecological monitoring, accompaniment, and research in and around San Cristobol de las Casas, living and working with the principles of Zapatismo. A visit to a Zapatista Caracol might also be possible, but depends on the current political situation.