"The genius of Tulku Urgyen was that he could point out the nature of mind with precision and matter-of-factness of teaching a person how to thread a needle and could get an ordinary meditator like me to recognize that consciousness is intrinsically free of self ... I came to Tulku Urgyen yearning for the experience of self-transcendence, and in a few minutes he showed me I had no self to transcend ... Tulku Urgyen simply handed me the ability to cut through the illusion of the self directly, even in ordinary states of consciousness.  This instruction was, without question, the most important thing I have ever been explicitly taught by another human being.  It has given me a way to escape the usual tides of psychological suffering - fear, anger, shame - in an instant. "

Sam Harris

Recent research: articles from summer journals

Sept. 10, 2013

I read a lot of research. When I find an article of particular interest I download it to my bibliographic database - EndNote - which currently contains over 20,000 abstracts.

Every few weeks I scan through all the articles I've found interesting in the previous month (in the general areas of stress, health & wellbeing) and then filter them into four narrower, more specific mailings. One is primarily for cognitive-behavioural therapists linked with the British Association for Behavioural & Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP) and other CBT organizations around the world. This set of abstracts focuses particularly on cognitive therapy in its many applications (anxiety, depression, psychotic disorders, etc). Click on BABCP mailing to see the 30 abstracts (mostly from this summer) that I have listed.

A second, and more recent development, is for people who have expressed an interest in keeping up to date with research relevant to compassion - see the post "Proposal for a BABCP special interest group on compassion" - this month there are 34 abstracts in the Compassion mailing.

A third mailing is to various people involved with Action on Depression Scotland (AOD). AOD is the only charity specifically working for people with depression who live in Scotland. I've been on their Clinical Advisory Board for some years. These abstracts focus more on depression and many are about antidepressant medication as well as others which overlap with the BABCP mailing on psychotherapy. Click on AOD mailing to see the 29 abstracts recently sent out.

The fourth mailing is to the editor of the British Holistic Medical Association (BHMA) newsletter. Back in the early 1980's I was on the working party that set up the BHMA. I'm not much involved with them now - partly because many of their original objectives have been achieved and are now mainstream. This month's BHMA mailing contains 34 abstracts covering a multitude of stress, health & wellbeing related subjects including the therapeutic alliance in psychotherapy, infections & subsequent mood disorders, the changing pattern of diseaseprevalence, conflict reappraisal & benefits for marriage, improved mortality rates for coffee & tea drinkers, burnout in medical students, psychedelics & mental health, the benefits of friendships between heterosexual women & gay men, and much more.