Kirk Schneider
We’re pleased to share that we’re working with Kirk J. Schneider, PhD, a psychologist and one of the leading figures in existential-humanistic psychology. He is cofounder and president of the Existential-Humanistic Institute, adjunct faculty at Saybrook University and Teachers College, Columbia University, and a 2022 candidate for president of the American Psychological Association. He has authored or edited 16 books, including The Psychology of Existence (with Rollo May), The Polarized Mind, and Life-Enhancing Anxiety. His work has long carried existential psychology out of the consulting room and into public questions of polarization, democracy, and awe.
The Vibrant Center:
A New Consciousness for Our Broken Age
Polarization is usually treated as a political problem with political fixes. Kirk Schneider argues that it runs deeper, into how we raise children, teach, work, worship, and govern. The Vibrant Center calls for a change in consciousness across all of those settings. Schneider’s center is not the cautious middle or a split-the-difference compromise. It is a dynamic capacity to stay present, open, and discerning under pressure, and to respond rather than react. Drawing on his clinical work, his own life, and figures such as Viktor Frankl, Simone de Beauvoir, Nelson Mandela, and Maya Angelou, Schneider offers concrete strategies and case examples for moving from a culture organized around fear toward one grounded in awe. Arriving as the United States marks its 250th anniversary, the book makes the case that repairing public life requires change in households, classrooms, and houses of worship, not only in legislatures.
