Being and Becoming

“In Being and Becoming, Franklyn Sills offers us a wonderful synthesis of Western developmental concepts and Buddhist psychology. He presents an integrated paradigm for understanding the nature and development of selfhood and the suffering involved in its dynamics. He also stresses the importance of developing a state of being, one of moment-to-moment awareness, as the key to alleviating personal and interpersonal suffering.… A true guide through this multifaceted territory for clinician and layperson alike.”
—James low, consultant psychotherapist at Guy’s Hospital, London, and author of Being Right Here
 
“Franklyn Sills is a true pioneer—working in fields that can seem so different yet just yearn to come together in intelligent and comprehensible ways: psychotherapy, Buddhism, and perinatal psychology. The result is an almost unimaginably moving synthesis that is, at the same time, usable in a down-to-earth way by clinicians from diverse backgrounds and in a variety of settings.… Sills wears his immense learning lightly and is an affable and empathic guide into some difficult and mysterious areas of human experience, suffering, and joy.”
—Andrew Samuels, Professor of Analytical Psychology, University of Essex, U.K., Visiting Clinical Professor of Psychoanalysis, New York University, and author of The Plural Psyche: Personality, Morality and the Father
 
“Franklyn’s work, drawing together the insights of Buddhism and the understanding of psychotherapy, encourages each individual to bring their spirituality into the healing process. In this book, he draws on a lineage of analysts, psychotherapists, and Buddhist masters, as well as his own years of fieldwork to provide an in-depth and pragmatic guide. His writing forms a very solid, pragmatic, and technically sound exhortation to workers in the field to develop their compassion, their mindfulness and sensitivity, rather than just see patients through the lens of a textbook.”
—Ajahn Sucitto, Abbot of Chithurst Monastery, Petersfield, U.K.
 
“Sills draws on a lineage of masters from many modalities: analysts, psychotherapists, Buddhist masters, as well as from the field of perinatal psychology, and his own many years of fieldwork… Sills considers therapy and the resolution of suffering as a reclamation of sorts, a return to our inherent spirituality. Based upon this experiential idea, he has constructed an in-depth and pragmatic guide for therapists wishing to develop their compassion, mindfulness, and sensitivity, and more effectively restore their clients to a sense of spiritual well-being.”
—Keeping in Touch, The United States Association for Body Psychotherapy