“Get to know Polly Young-Eisendrath”

Interview with playwright, screenwriter and director, John Patrick Shanley

“Polly Young-Eisendrath is a psychologist, speaker, writer and Jungian analyst who maintains a clinical and consulting practice in central Vermont. She came to psychology and Jungian training through the doorway of Buddhist practice, taking formal Zen vows in 1971. Polly, a psychotherapist and mindfulness teacher, is optimistic about a new paradigm of healing developing from the dialogue between two meditative and contemplative practices: Buddhism and psychoanalysis. In this emerging conversation, ancient practices of awakening and liberation are meeting up with contemporary models of examining our minds in the two-person relationship of long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy. Together, these two practices are becoming more refined in their ability to help people to wake up to, and then to transform, entrenched habitual emotional dynamics in everyday relationships.

Polly’s writing — on couple relationship, women’s development, parenting and psychotherapy practice — is aimed at practical applications of the insight and wisdom we can gain from meditation and self-awareness, whether we are on our mediation cushions or looking at our relationships with our children, parents, partners and friends. In Polly’s most recent book, “The Self-Esteem Trap: Raising Confident and Compassionate Kids in an Age of Self-Importance,” she offers an incisive analysis of the psychological, cultural and moral components of the widespread mistake of trying to inject self-esteem through over-praising or over-parenting. Her writing helps parents, teachers, and counselors — and the young adults who have grown up in a confusing “child-centered” environment — to recover the guidelines for real happiness and freedom in adulthood.

If you are looking for an imaginative and engaging speaker or facilitator, for personal consultation by telephone, or for in-person psychotherapy or Jungian analysis, please contact Polly’s manager, Jay Koebele (pollyassist@gmail.com, or 620-262-7174) who will direct you to the best way of reaching Polly. Polly is dedicated to an environmentally-friendly and ecologically sane world in which we recognize, moment-by-moment, that we are webbed in a network of relationships and conditions that require compassion and kindness for ourselves and others if we are to become confident about our lives.