ABSTRACT
This is the second of a two-part retrospective reflection on Alan Watts’ Psychotherapy East and West. Part I, focused on 1961–1970 assessments in academic journals, noted the text’s innovative alignment with countercultural and human potential movements, plus critical appraisals of Watts’ approach to the ego. Part II concerns subsequent considerations of Psychotherapy East and West, including (1) later academic and literary reviews based on 1970s–1980s reissues of the text, (2) developments in ‘Orientalism’ and postmodernism, and concluding with (3) the twenty-first-century views of Bankart, Kripal, and Puhakka.
Notes on contributor
Peter J. Columbus is administrator of the Shantigar Foundation for Theater, Meditation, and Healing, adjunct professor of psychology at Assumption College and Greenfield Community College, and serves on the Board of Directors of Valley Zendo, a Soto Zen Buddhist temple in the lineage of Kodo Sawaki and Kosho Uchiyama. Co-editor (with Don Rice) of Alan Watts – In the Academy: Essays and Lectures (SUNY Press, 2017) and Alan Watts – Here and Now: Contributions to Psychology, Philosophy, and Religion (SUNY Press, 2012), he holds a PhD in experimental psychology from the University of Tennessee, and an MA in Humanistic Psychology from the University of West Georgia.