Jared D. Kass, Ph.D.  a Professor of Counseling and Psychology, Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences, Lesley University; and a Visiting Scholar at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind-Body Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital.  He is a licensed mental health counselor who utilizes mind-body psychotherapeutic approaches, particularly with trauma survivors.  During four decades of teaching and research, Dr. Kass has made many contributions to the integration of yoga psychology and western psychotherapy.  These include the development of two assessment tools: The Inventory of Positive Psychological Attitudes, measuring a resilient worldview, Confidence in Life and Self; and the Index of Core Spiritual Experience, tapping subjective experiences commonly reported during meditation.  Dr. Kass is deeply committed to building communities of health, social justice, and peace.  He has developed a curriculum for young adult university students, Know Your Self, which promotes psychological resilience while helping students learn to build culturally-inclusive community.  His recent book, A Person-Centered Approach to Psychospiritual Maturation: Mentoring Psychological Resilience and Inclusive Community in Higher Education, describes this project.  Throughout his work, Dr. Kass explicates the neuroscience of somatic memory because this phenomenon plays a central role in the repetition of intergenerational trauma and Humanity’s Chain of Pain.
Dr. Kass graduated from Amherst College with high honors and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa (1969).  He received his Ph.D. in Psychology and Education from the Union for Experimenting Colleges and Universities, with support from a Danforth Foundation and Woodrow Wilson Foundation Graduate Fellowship (1975).  During his early professional work, he had the honor and opportunity to work with Dr. Carl Rogers, as a staff-member of the Person-Centered Approach Project.  Dr. Kass has been training mental health clinicians at Lesley University since 1976.  He is the senior faculty member of a holistic studies specialization that trains clinicians to practice trauma-informed, culturally-competent, mind-body-spirit behavioral health.