982 Book review / Behaviour Research and Therapy 40 (2002) 981–982

second part of the book consists of a more practical approach to living out this contemplative‘spiritual path’ and describes various disciplines including those involving thought, ‘mindfulness’ ,insight, action and speech.

Although this volume provides some useful insights and attempts a very complex area, it canbe confusing in its aims and content and sometimes read like ‘pop psychology’ . One underlyingtheme is that, although he claims to study the traditions of various religions, in practice de Witseems to give us a systematic definition of a philosophical and spiritual approach, namely ‘Con-templative Psychology’ , and then proceeds to justify or compare areas of it by references to majorreligions. Thus the whole stated aim is inverted. Moreover, the references are often brief andcursory and some are questionably taken out of context. The various religions can seem to beput in a melting pot at times and none of them done justice. It is fair to say this psychology’sapproach does contain clear elements consistent with these traditions and some are quite wellexamined in psychological terms. However, most of the book introduces and assumes definitionsand concepts regarding the truth of ‘Contemplative Psychology’ with no background evidence ordiscussion, such as automatically defining humaneness as taking the forms of ‘courage compassionand joy in life…and clarity of mind’ . I think this book may well be a disappointment to psychol-ogists and adherents to particular faiths, but it does provide some interesting interpretations ofcontemplation in, albeit somewhat ‘popular’ , psychological terms.

Peter Webster

PII: S0005-7967(01)00109-7