Faculty

Concetta Alfano, Ph.D., LCSW    Co-Founder

Dr. Alfano is training and supervising analyst at the Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis and a faculty member at the New Center for Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles, CA.   She has taught at seminars and at conferences on the interplay of Buddhist psychology and psychotherapy.  She co-developed the program in Contemplative Relational Psychotherapy at CMP with Dr. Marjorie Schuman.

Focusing on the indwelling nature of a contemplative attitude and its transcendent function, Concetta is the author of an article on Traversing the Caesura: Transcendent Attunement in Buddhist Meditation and Psychoanalysis (Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 2005). Prior to analytic  training she trained extensively in family systems therapy.

Since 1972, Concetta has practiced in the Vipassana, Tibetan and Zen traditions in both Asia and the United States. She is a member of the Zen Center of Los Angeles and is in private practice in Santa Monica, CA.

John Daishin Buksbazen, Psy.D., LMFT

 Dr. Buksbazen is Faculty and a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles, as well as a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Mindfulness and Psychotherapy.  He  is in private clinical practice in Santa Monica, California.

A Zen Buddhist priest since 1968,  Daishin Sensei is a Dharma successor of Roshi Egyoku Nakao, and a member of the White Plum Asanga (Dharma successors in the lineage of Taizan Maezumi Roshi).  He is the teacher of the Ocean Moon Sangha in Santa Monica, California and also teaches at the Zen Center of Los Angeles.
 
Daishin is the author of Zen Meditation in Plain English (Wisdom Publications, 2002) and To Forget the Self  (Center Publications, 1977), and, with Roshi Egyoku Nakao, has co-edited   On Zen Practice (Wisdom Publications, 2005) and Hazy Moon of Enlightenment  (Wisdom Publications, 2007).

Marjorie Schuman, Ph.D.     (Co-Founder)

Dr. Schuman is a licensed psychologist who practices  psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in Santa Monica.   Her life-long passion for understanding the nature of consciousness led her to professional training in neural science and psychopharmacology, then to clinical psychology and ultimately to psychoanalysis.  Alongside this academic background, she has been a long-time practitioner of Vipassana meditation and student of Buddhism.   Her primary professional focus is the interface of meditation and psychotherapy.

Marjorie is a member of the faculty at the Los Angeles Institute for Psychoanalytic Studies. She teaches and has presented and published original thinking on the psychophysiology of meditation, eastern and western concepts of self, unconscious processes in Buddhism and Psychoanalysis, and the evolution of subjectivity.   She co-developed Contemplative Relational Psychotherapy with Concetta Alfano,  a psychotherapeutic approach which weaves together contemporary psychoanalysis and Buddhist psychology.    In addition to her psychotherapy practice, she offers supervision in the contemplative relational approach.
 
Marjorie has been practicing Vipassana meditation since 1974 and is affiliated with the Community Dharma Leaders Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Northern California.

AFFILIATES

Insight LA (www.insightla.org)  is a local organization which offers training in mindfulness meditation as well as courses, workshops, and retreats for the integration of mind, body, and heart.  Trudy Goodman,  Founder and Guiding Teacher of Insight LA, was also a co-founding member of CMP.

Institute for Meditation & Psychotherapy (Boston)   (www.meditationandpsychotherapy.org)
is our east coast affiliate.   Like CMP, IMP is a organization dedicated to teaching Western and Buddhist psychology to mental health professionals who are interested in the integration of mindfulness meditation and psychotherapy