Episode 37 - Kathleen Gregory: Mindfulness as Psychological Redemption

In Episode 37, I spoke with Kathleen Gregory about her chapter “The Modern Mindfulness Movement and the Search for Psychological Redemption” recently published in Richard Payne’s new edited volume, Secularizing Buddhism (Shambala Publications, 2021).

Kathleen offers a unique perspective on modern mindfulness as she is both a licensed therapist and clinician, as well as long-time Buddhist practitioner. Our conversation explores the process by which mindfulness was psychologized, which accounts very much for its widespread diffusion and popular appeal in Western cultures. One of the key lines of inquiry in this conversation is how mindfulness meditation was reimagined and repurposed as a technique – that speaks to familiar ways of how we see ourselves. Mindfulness became a tool for fixing the self, namely, for addressing the seeming deficits that are in need of improvement and psychological redemption.

A little more about Kathleen Gregory…Kathleen is an Australian psychologist with a PhD in Comparative Philosophy; she has taught for many years as an associate professor in graduate counselling programs both in Australia and the US. She currently works in the graduate careers development program at RMIT University. She is also former Dean of the Graduate School of Counselling and Psychology at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. She has been a student of late Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche IX.