The Vibrant Center

Product Description

An impassioned sense of urgency runs through Kirk Schneider’s The Vibrant Center: A New Consciousness for Our Broken Age. It is “a call to awareness” targeted at parenting, education, work and employment, religion, government, politics, and, ultimately, all of our world relations in order that we reconnect with the fundamentally human commitment to co-create a better world not only for ourselves but for all humankind. Always challenging, at times discomforting in its honesty, this is a deeply relevant book full of concrete wisdom, humor, and inspirational commitment. Always accessible, packed with insightful and revealing reflections from Dr. Schneider’s own life as well as from the lives of other notable individuals, The Vibrant Center reminds us of the realistic possibilities available when we open ourselves to the possibilities and responsibilities of existence. No doubt about it: This is a book for our times.

Professor Ernesto Spinelli, author of Practising Existential Therapy: The Relational World

I love the whole concept of this book and I’m so glad Kirk Schneider wrote it. It’s a much-needed book for our times.

Scott Barry Kaufman, author of Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization

 We are living through a moment of dangerous either/or thinking—in our politics, our institutions, our most intimate relationships. Kirk Schneider’s powerful alternative—The Vibrant Center—takes us to a new consciousness and asks how we can embed that integrative approach in our lives, our relationships, and our societies. This book shows, concretely and convincingly, what it looks like to parent, teach, lead, and govern from that place of deeper connection. It is one of the most important calls to awareness I have encountered in years.

Wendy Smith, Author of Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems

The Vibrant Center is a personal and wide-ranging book that challenges us to think about psychological depth beyond the clinic as a civic and cultural matter. The book brings together existential-humanistic thought and practical proposals for reforming aspects of our lives from parenting to governance. Schneider insists on the necessity of the difficult, ongoing work of holding complexity. The underlying vision of a society that takes inner life seriously as a foundation for collective well-being continues to deserve sustained attention and debate.

Awais Aftab, MD, Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Case Western Reserve University; Editor, Conversations in Critical Psychiatry (Oxford University Press, 2024)

The Vibrant Center is a bold attempt to grapple with the galloping polarization, dehumanization, and alienation we face in the 21^st century. It alerts us to the tremendous dangers we face if we do not attempt to remedy them in all spheres of our lives: politics, education, parenting, spirituality, and work. Schneider’s reflections on “resilient luminaries,” or the courageous thinkers, artists, and activists who embodied the traits we are so deeply in danger of losing—Viktor Frankl, Simone de Beauvoir, Nelson Mandela, Stephen Hawking, Federico Garcia Lorca, Maya Angelou and others—remind us that even in the face of adversity, we can rise above the barriers that prevent us from experiencing, embodying, and promoting the most precious and redeeming human qualities in our own lives.

Daniel Burston, Professor Emeritus and former Chair of Psychology at Duquesne University, author of The Wing of Madness:  The Life and Work of R.D. Laing

For over a decade, I have been deeply drawn to Dr. Schneider’s ideas on existential-depth psychology; he is a constant innovator. From “awe” to the “fluid center,” and currently to the “vibrant center,” he has synthesized his past existential thought and taken it to new heights. Dr. Schneider has always focused his concern on the human condition, and his greatest contribution to human well-being lies in his ongoing endeavor to provide or awaken that vibrant center in human life—which, in a more specific way, realizes what Rollo May referred to as the “center of strength.”

Xuefu Wang, Founder of the Zhi-Mian Institute for psychotherapy, Nanjing, China.

I found The Vibrant Center to be innovative, refreshing, idealistic-aspirational, and very relevant to the dangerously polarized times that we are living in. Although Schneider’s far-reaching descriptions of what he refers to as the “vibrant center” may appear unrealistic to achieve on a societal level, he has admirably given us descriptions of how he has been putting his ideas into practice. Schneider describes his vibrant center thesis in a number of realms—such as parenting, education, the workforce, and government—but, personally, I found his political depolarization and dialogue descriptions particularly relevant. Also, Schneider made the educated guess that the influential political organization Indivisible would welcome his ideas about the vibrant center, and as an active member of Indivisible, I wholeheartedly agree with Schneider. In particular, Indivisible strongly advocates for direct actions involving protests and demonstrations, but it also recommends dialogue with one’s Members of Congress in their repertoire of activities to save democracy in the United States. I have used both of these Indivisible actions, and they are very consistent with Schneider’s both/and approach as well as the central thesis of his vibrant center ideas.

Elliot Benjamin, Active member of Indivisible, Bangor, Maine, and author of The Creative Artist, Mental Disturbance, and Mental Health

Refreshingly honest and abundant with ideas, the moral courage of this book is exhibited both by its unconventional diagnosis of humanity’s current state and its call for sweeping social changes. Our lives have been broken—fractured by extremism, dogma, and divisive ideology. The Vibrant Center poses audacious questions about healing, possibilities, and what a true democratic republic demands of us. What could be more important now than the collective endeavor to build vibrant worlds and lives worth living?

Zenobia Morrill, PhD

The Vibrant Center: A New Consciousness for Our Broken Age is an “invitation” to participate both interpersonally and intrapersonally with the cultivation of presence. Kirk Schneider’s heartfelt vision and appeal to what Kierkegaard termed the “Solitary Individual” (or person who lives presently and responsibly) is invaluable for leading our species into a sensibility that promotes civility and quality of life.

Jim Hernandez, Depth Healer, Founder and Director of The Center for Inner Peace; formerly Youth Violence Prevention Specialist, Concord Police Department, Concord, CA

This book is both erudite and pragmatic. In The Vibrant Center, Kirk Schneider draws on some of the best thinkers of modern times to propose a framework for how ethically and morally to use our authority to move forward as human beings. From politics to parenting to religion, he provides a roadmap for how we humans can behave better, and he believes we have it in us to do so.

Maureen O’Reilly-Landry, PhD, Teaching Faculty, NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis