Polly Young-Eisendrath

Polly Young-Eisendrath, Ph.D., is a psychologist, speaker, Jungian analyst, and has published 15 books including The Self-Esteem Trap, The Resilient Spirit, and Women and Desire. Her most recent book, The Present Heart: A Memoir of Love, Loss and Discovery is an unsentimental meditation on the healing power of love in the face of early onset Alzheimer’s that attempts to answer the question “What is love, anyway?”
Polly came to psychology and Jungian training through the doorway of Buddhist practice, taking formal Zen vows in 1971. Polly, a Jungian analyst 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.
Polly is dedicated to an interpersonally sustainable 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. Polly maintains a clinical and consulting practice in central Vermont.