The Concept of Anxiety
All of Kierkegaard's books have either a preface, dedication, or prayer at the beginning. This book includes a lengthy introduction. "The Concept of Anxiety" was published on exactly the same date as "Prefaces", June 17, 1844. Both books deal with Hegel’s idea of mediation. Mediation is a common thread throughout Kierkegaard’s works. His work up to this point was to show that faith was being mediated by knowledge. Here he takes up the questions of sin and guilt.
Contemplative psychology
The term Contemplative Psychology was coined by Han F. De Wit in 1991 when he, a theoretical psychologist at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, published his pioneering book "Contemplative Psychology." The goal of this project was to "establish a dialogue between contemplative psychology and academic psychology" (p. 233). As a first step Han did not offer a systematic contemplative psychology but rather he suggested a "framework in which a full-fledged contemplative psychology may be developed" (p. 3). Is this work he outlines the "contours and the view of contemplative psychology" (p. 4). As Han develops the concept, his first point is to illustrate "a position from which the 'excavation' and 'exposure' of the contemplative psychologies seems possible" (p. 115) and to "make explicit and clarify the nature and position of the psychological "know-how" that contemplative traditions contain" (p. 14) This implied a comparative study of different religious and contemplative traditions in the belief that there was enough in common between these traditions to make "the search for a general contemplative psychological perspective and approach" meaningful (p. 4).