DATE: Saturday, September 15, 2012
TIME: 11:00 a.m.
PLACE: Studio, Lambert Road campus
CANDIDATE: Suzanne Miles
DISSERTATION TITLE: "Tuning In: The Impact of Maat Inner Resource Training on African American Adolescent Males in the Inner-City"
PROGRAM-TRACK/YEAR: PhD-B; 2007
CHAIR: Dr. Oksana Yakushko
READER: Dr. Wendy Phillips
EXTERNAL READER: Dr. David Horne

Miles, S. (2012). Tuning In: The Impact of Maat Inner Resource Training on African American Adolescent Males in the Inner-City (Doctoral dissertation, Pacifica Graduate Institute, 2012)

ABSTRACT

Increasing evidence supports the psychological benefits of meditation. In an extension of research examining effects of meditation on adolescents, this qualitative study explores the impact of a culturally significant inner awareness meditation for African American adolescent males who live in an inner city environment. Five African American adolescent males from South Central Los Angeles, participated in an eight week inner awareness training that required holding their attention on the feather of the Khemetic archetype Maat. After the eight weeks were completed the young men engaged in unstructured phenomenological interviews to explore their experiences. In summary, the Maat inner awareness training had many benefits and no negative consequences for the five adolescents. Their description of internal processing illuminated an affinity between Majors and Billson 's Cool Pose Theory and C. G. Jung's theory of the Transcendent Function. This study discovered a new way to understand the African American male adolescent thought process through the participants’ reports of re-membering and through their experiences of “letting it go”. It also provided insight into the Archetype’s relationship to the individual unconscious, and how culturally grounded symbology impacts the adolescent psyche.