Eastern philosophy and clinical psychology
Encyclopedia
Eastern philosophy in clinical psychology refers to the influence of Eastern philosophies on the practice of clinical psychology
based on the idea that East and West are false dichotomies. Travel and trade along the Silk Road
brought ancient texts and mind practices deep into the West. Vedic psychology dates back 5000 years and forms the core of mental health counselling in the Ayurvedic medical
tradition. The knowledge that enlightened Siddhartha Gautama was the self-management of mental suffering
through mindfulness awareness practices. Humane interpersonal care of the mentally disturbed was practiced in the Middle East in the Middle Ages, and later in the West. Many of the founders of clinical psychology were influenced by these ancient texts as translations began to reach Europe during the 19th century.
was, 'one who receives baptism on a sick bed' - Webster 1913. In contemporary use it is usually describes another kind of cleansing and rebirth - a non-hospital, healthcare facility for rehabilitation in the community.
Patanjali
was one of the founders of the yoga tradition, sometime between 200 and 400 BC (pre-dating Buddhist psychology) and a student of the Vedas
. He developed the science of breath and mind and wrote his knowledge in the form of between 194 and 196 aphorisms called the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
. These remain one of the only scientific books written in poetic form. He is reputed to have used yoga therapeutically for mental disorders as common then as now - anxiety and depression.
Padmasambhava
was the 8th Century medicine Buddha of Tibet, called from the then Buddhist India to tame the Tibetans, was instrumental in developing Tibetan psychiatric medicine. Tibetans were diplomats, counselors, traders, warriors and military tacticians in the Royal courts of East and West. Through these means they introduced arts of war and of medicine to the west.
Rhazes was a Persian physician and scholar of the Middle Ages who had a profound effect on Western thought and medicine as well as the invention of alcohol and of sulfur drugs. He applied the psychology of self esteem in clinical treatment of his patients (Predating Nathaniel Branden
by over a thousand years). He opened the first hospital ward for humane treatment of the mentally ill.
Avicenna
's Canon of Medicine was a standard medical text in many European universities for 500 years. He performed psychotherapy without conversing, by observing the movement of a patient's pulse as the patient recounted broken hearted anguish, reported in 'The Life and Work of Jalaluddin Rumi' by Afzal Iqbal, A. J. Arberry, page 94. His treatises have touched most of the Muslim circle of the sciences.
Jalaluddin Rumi's view on psychotherapy was to embrace the dread, depression and anger as a blessing. Negative emotions were a bridge to a better life. This style of coping is illustrated in his guesthouse poem:
Sigmund Freud
read the German translation of the works of Hayyim ben Joseph Vital
(1542–1620). Vital was a 16th century rabbi who had been Isaac Luria
's student, the great master of the theosophical Kabbalah
. Freud read the French translation of the Zohar
. He declared the material 'gold!' without acknowledging that source in his theories. His corpus was deeply influenced by his Jewish heritage and by the Jewish mysticism
Carl Jung
read the German translations by Richard Wilhelm
of The Secret of the Golden Flower
, the I Ching. He also read the Kabbalah and drew on its sources for development of his theory of the archetypes.
Martin Buber
Karen Horney
studied Zen-Buddhism.
Fritz Perls
studied Zen Buddhism. Typifying such a perspective, Perls once stated: We must lose our minds and come to our senses.
Erich Fromm
collaborated with D. T. Suzuki in an 1957 workshop on "Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis"; wrote the foreword to a 1986 anthology of Nyanaponika Thera
's essays.
Erik H. Erikson wrote a biography of Gandhi.
Viktor Frankl
was the founder of Logotherapy. He wrote From Death Camp to Existentialism (1959) drawing on concentration camp experience and Jewish mysticism.
Abraham Maslow
, an American-born Jew who struggled to make his way as a psychologist in an academic atmosphere which was not then ready to receive Jews. He believed his theories of motivation and self-actualization were, despite his avowed atheism, driven by a Jewish consciousness. http://www.art.man.ac.uk/RELTHEOL/JEWISH/Silverman.htm. The Transpersonal psychology that Maslow founded is a blend of Eastern and Western mystic traditions.
Stanislav Grof
studied pre-industrial cosmologies including Egyptian and explored the significance of the posthumous journey of the soul in works such as Books of the Dead and The Human Encounter with Death.
's legacy to psychology includes his holistic approach and determinism. He was alienated from his Jewish roots by excommunication
and yet embedded in Jewish philosophy and mysticism, for example, 'The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but something of it remains, which is eternal. We feel and know by experience that we are eternal'. (Book V, Proposition 23) http://www.euronet.nl/~advaya/randomnotes.htm. He distinguished between active emotions (those that are rationally understood) and passive emotions (those that are not). This predated Freud's popularization of the unconscious mind
. His view, that emotions must be detached from external cause in order to master them, presages rational emotive therapy. His understanding of the workings of mind makes a bridge between religious mysticism and clinical psychology.
Arthur Schopenhauer
was deeply influenced by the first translations of Hindu and Buddhist texts to reach the west in the 19th Century. His philosophy and methods of inquiry have many similarities to those traditions. His ideas foreshadowed and laid the groundwork for Darwin's theory of evolution and Freud's concepts of libido and unconscious mind. He added empiricism to self-examination, which presaged Freud's interpersonal application in psychoanalysis
.
Caroline Rhys Davids was a Pali scholar who translated original Pali texts in Buddhist Psychology. In 1914, she wrote Buddhist Psychology: An Inquiry into the Analysis and Theory of Mind in Pali Literature. Her teacher in Psychology was George Croom Robertson
, Scottish philosopher, editor of Mind from foundation in 1876 until 1891.
Richard Wilhelm
was a translator of Chinese into German of the I Ching, Tao Te Ching and The Secret of the Golden Flower, with a forward written by Jung, a close personal friend.
Idries Shah
was an author in the Naqshbandi sufist tradition who wrote works on psychology and spirituality. Defined Sufism in a way that predated Islam and did not depend on the Qur'an.
Coleman Barks
has translated ecstatic poems of Rumi and other mystic poets of Persia.
Jack Kornfield
trained as a Buddhist monk in India and Southeast Asia, holds a PhD in clinical psychology and co-founded the Insight Meditation Society
and the Spirit Rock Meditation Center. His books include Seeking the Heart of Wisdom (1987, co-authored with Joseph Goldstein
), A Path with Heart (1993) and The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness and Peace (2002).
Daniel Goleman
taught psychology at Harvard, wrote on science for the New York Times and is the author of the best-selling Emotional Intelligence (1995) and Destructive Emotions: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama (Bantam Books, 2003).
Thomas Cleary
was a prolific translator of Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian and Muslim religious literature. First publication with his brother of the Blue Cliff Record
in 1992.
incorporates mindfulness techniques (particularly Zen
practices) in her Dialectical Behavioral Therapy
(DBT) which has been found to be particularly effective with Cluster-B personality disorders.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
incorporates Buddhist mindfulness techniques in his Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction
(MBSR) program.
Mark Epstein
is the author of Thoughts Without a Thinker|Thoughts without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective (1995) and Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart (1998).
Mordechai Rotenberg
has adopted the Kabbalistic-Hasidic tzimtzum
paradigm, which he believes has significant implications for clinical therapy. According to this paradigm, God's "self-contraction" to vacate space for the world serves as a model for human behavior and interaction. The tzimtzum model promotes a unique community-centric approach which contrasts starkly with the language of Western psychology.
Neuroscience and Buddhism
Sarunya Prasopchingchana & Dana Sugu, 'Distinctiveness of the Unseen Buddhist Identity' ([1]International Journal of Humanistic Ideology, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, vol. 4, 2010)
Clinical psychology
Clinical psychology is an integration of science, theory and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically-based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well-being and personal development...
based on the idea that East and West are false dichotomies. Travel and trade along the Silk Road
Silk Road
The Silk Road or Silk Route refers to a historical network of interlinking trade routes across the Afro-Eurasian landmass that connected East, South, and Western Asia with the Mediterranean and European world, as well as parts of North and East Africa...
brought ancient texts and mind practices deep into the West. Vedic psychology dates back 5000 years and forms the core of mental health counselling in the Ayurvedic medical
Ayurveda
Ayurveda or ayurvedic medicine is a system of traditional medicine native to India and a form of alternative medicine. In Sanskrit, words , meaning "longevity", and , meaning "knowledge" or "science". The earliest literature on Indian medical practice appeared during the Vedic period in India,...
tradition. The knowledge that enlightened Siddhartha Gautama was the self-management of mental suffering
Suffering
Suffering, or pain in a broad sense, is an individual's basic affective experience of unpleasantness and aversion associated with harm or threat of harm. Suffering may be qualified as physical or mental. It may come in all degrees of intensity, from mild to intolerable. Factors of duration and...
through mindfulness awareness practices. Humane interpersonal care of the mentally disturbed was practiced in the Middle East in the Middle Ages, and later in the West. Many of the founders of clinical psychology were influenced by these ancient texts as translations began to reach Europe during the 19th century.
Historical clinical psychologists
The historical practice of clinical psychology may be distinguished from the modern profession of clinical psychology. The Greek word psyche means breath or soul, while logos means study. Psyche was the Greek Goddess of the soul. An early use of the word clinicClinic
A clinic is a health care facility that is primarily devoted to the care of outpatients...
was, 'one who receives baptism on a sick bed' - Webster 1913. In contemporary use it is usually describes another kind of cleansing and rebirth - a non-hospital, healthcare facility for rehabilitation in the community.
Patanjali
Patañjali
Patañjali is the compiler of the Yoga Sūtras, an important collection of aphorisms on Yoga practice. According to tradition, the same Patañjali was also the author of the Mahābhāṣya, a commentary on Kātyāyana's vārttikas on Pāṇini's Aṣṭādhyāyī as well as an unspecified work of medicine .In...
was one of the founders of the yoga tradition, sometime between 200 and 400 BC (pre-dating Buddhist psychology) and a student of the Vedas
Vedas
The Vedas are a large body of texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and the oldest scriptures of Hinduism....
. He developed the science of breath and mind and wrote his knowledge in the form of between 194 and 196 aphorisms called the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali are 194 Indian sūtras that constitute the foundational text of Rāja Yoga. Yoga is one of the six orthodox āstika schools of Hindu philosophy, and Rāja Yoga is the highest practice....
. These remain one of the only scientific books written in poetic form. He is reputed to have used yoga therapeutically for mental disorders as common then as now - anxiety and depression.
Padmasambhava
Padmasambhava ; Mongolian ловон Бадмажунай, lovon Badmajunai, , Means The Lotus-Born, was a sage guru from Oddiyāna who is said to have transmitted Vajrayana Buddhism to Bhutan and Tibet and neighbouring countries in the 8th century...
was the 8th Century medicine Buddha of Tibet, called from the then Buddhist India to tame the Tibetans, was instrumental in developing Tibetan psychiatric medicine. Tibetans were diplomats, counselors, traders, warriors and military tacticians in the Royal courts of East and West. Through these means they introduced arts of war and of medicine to the west.
Rhazes was a Persian physician and scholar of the Middle Ages who had a profound effect on Western thought and medicine as well as the invention of alcohol and of sulfur drugs. He applied the psychology of self esteem in clinical treatment of his patients (Predating Nathaniel Branden
Nathaniel Branden
Nathaniel Branden, né Nathan Blumenthal , is a psychotherapist and writer best known today for his work in the psychology of self-esteem from a humanistic perspective...
by over a thousand years). He opened the first hospital ward for humane treatment of the mentally ill.
Avicenna
Avicenna
Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sīnā , commonly known as Ibn Sīnā or by his Latinized name Avicenna, was a Persian polymath, who wrote almost 450 treatises on a wide range of subjects, of which around 240 have survived...
's Canon of Medicine was a standard medical text in many European universities for 500 years. He performed psychotherapy without conversing, by observing the movement of a patient's pulse as the patient recounted broken hearted anguish, reported in 'The Life and Work of Jalaluddin Rumi' by Afzal Iqbal, A. J. Arberry, page 94. His treatises have touched most of the Muslim circle of the sciences.
Jalaluddin Rumi's view on psychotherapy was to embrace the dread, depression and anger as a blessing. Negative emotions were a bridge to a better life. This style of coping is illustrated in his guesthouse poem:
-
- This being human is a guesthouse
every morning a new arrival a joy, a
depression, a meanness. Some momentary
awareness comes as an unexpected
visitor. Welcome and entertain them
all! Even if they're a crowd of sorrows
who violently sweep your house empty of
its furniture. Still treat each guest
honorably, He may be cleaning you out for
some new delight! The dark
thought, the shame, the malice meet them
at the door laughing and invite them in,
be grateful for whoever comes because
each has been sent as a guide from the
beyond.
- This being human is a guesthouse
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
read the German translation of the works of Hayyim ben Joseph Vital
Hayyim ben Joseph Vital
Hayyim ben Joseph Vital was a rabbi in Safed and the foremost disciple of Isaac Luria. He recorded much of his master's teachings...
(1542–1620). Vital was a 16th century rabbi who had been Isaac Luria
Isaac Luria
Isaac Luria , also called Yitzhak Ben Shlomo Ashkenazi acronym "The Ari" "Ari-Hakadosh", or "Arizal", meaning "The Lion", was a foremost rabbi and Jewish mystic in the community of Safed in the Galilee region of Ottoman Palestine...
's student, the great master of the theosophical Kabbalah
Kabbalah
Kabbalah/Kabala is a discipline and school of thought concerned with the esoteric aspect of Rabbinic Judaism. It was systematized in 11th-13th century Hachmei Provence and Spain, and again after the Expulsion from Spain, in 16th century Ottoman Palestine...
. Freud read the French translation of the Zohar
Zohar
The Zohar is the foundational work in the literature of Jewish mystical thought known as Kabbalah. It is a group of books including commentary on the mystical aspects of the Torah and scriptural interpretations as well as material on Mysticism, mythical cosmogony, and mystical psychology...
. He declared the material 'gold!' without acknowledging that source in his theories. His corpus was deeply influenced by his Jewish heritage and by the Jewish mysticism
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
read the German translations by Richard Wilhelm
Richard Wilhelm
Richard Wilhelm was a German sinologist, as well as theologian and missionary. He is best remembered for his translations of philosophical works from Chinese into German that in turn have been translated into other major languages of the world, including English...
of The Secret of the Golden Flower
The Secret of the Golden Flower
The Secret of the Golden Flower , a Chinese Taoist book about meditation, was translated by Richard Wilhelm . Wilhelm, a friend of Carl Jung, was German, and his translations from Chinese to German were later translated to English by Cary F. Baynes...
, the I Ching. He also read the Kabbalah and drew on its sources for development of his theory of the archetypes.
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
Martin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship....
Karen Horney
Karen Horney
Karen Horney born Danielsen was a German-American psychoanalyst. Her theories questioned some traditional Freudian views, particularly his theory of sexuality, as well as the instinct orientation of psychoanalysis and its genetic psychology...
studied Zen-Buddhism.
Fritz Perls
Fritz Perls
Friedrich Salomon Perls , better known as Fritz Perls, was a noted German-born psychiatrist and psychotherapist of Jewish descent....
studied Zen Buddhism. Typifying such a perspective, Perls once stated: We must lose our minds and come to our senses.
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
Erich Seligmann Fromm was a Jewish German-American social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was associated with what became known as the Frankfurt School of critical theory.-Life:Erich Fromm was born on March 23, 1900, at Frankfurt am...
collaborated with D. T. Suzuki in an 1957 workshop on "Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis"; wrote the foreword to a 1986 anthology of Nyanaponika Thera
Nyanaponika Thera
Nyanaponika Thera or Nyaniponika Mahathera was a German-born Sri-Lanka-ordained Theravada monk, co-founder of the Buddhist Publication Society, contemporary author of numerous seminal Theravada books, and teacher of contemporary Western Buddhist leaders such as Bhikkhu Bodhi.-Chronology:*1901: born...
's essays.
Erik H. Erikson wrote a biography of Gandhi.
Viktor Frankl
Viktor Frankl
Viktor Emil Frankl M.D., Ph.D. was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor. Frankl was the founder of logotherapy, which is a form of Existential Analysis, the "Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy"...
was the founder of Logotherapy. He wrote From Death Camp to Existentialism (1959) drawing on concentration camp experience and Jewish mysticism.
Abraham Maslow
Abraham Maslow
Abraham Harold Maslow was an American professor of psychology at Brandeis University, Brooklyn College, New School for Social Research and Columbia University who created Maslow's hierarchy of needs...
, an American-born Jew who struggled to make his way as a psychologist in an academic atmosphere which was not then ready to receive Jews. He believed his theories of motivation and self-actualization were, despite his avowed atheism, driven by a Jewish consciousness. http://www.art.man.ac.uk/RELTHEOL/JEWISH/Silverman.htm. The Transpersonal psychology that Maslow founded is a blend of Eastern and Western mystic traditions.
Stanislav Grof
Stanislav Grof
Stanislav Grof is a psychiatrist, one of the founders of the field of transpersonal psychology and a pioneering researcher into the use of non-ordinary states of consciousness for purposes of analyzing, healing, and obtaining growth and insight into the human psyche...
studied pre-industrial cosmologies including Egyptian and explored the significance of the posthumous journey of the soul in works such as Books of the Dead and The Human Encounter with Death.
Influential Western writers and translators
Baruch SpinozaBaruch Spinoza
Baruch de Spinoza and later Benedict de Spinoza was a Dutch Jewish philosopher. Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death...
's legacy to psychology includes his holistic approach and determinism. He was alienated from his Jewish roots by excommunication
Cherem
Cherem , is the highest ecclesiastical censure in the Jewish community. It is the total exclusion of a person from the Jewish community. It is a form of shunning, and is similar to excommunication in the Catholic Church...
and yet embedded in Jewish philosophy and mysticism, for example, 'The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but something of it remains, which is eternal. We feel and know by experience that we are eternal'. (Book V, Proposition 23) http://www.euronet.nl/~advaya/randomnotes.htm. He distinguished between active emotions (those that are rationally understood) and passive emotions (those that are not). This predated Freud's popularization of the unconscious mind
Unconscious mind
The unconscious mind is a term coined by the 18th century German romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge...
. His view, that emotions must be detached from external cause in order to master them, presages rational emotive therapy. His understanding of the workings of mind makes a bridge between religious mysticism and clinical psychology.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher known for his pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the four separate manifestations of reason in the phenomenal...
was deeply influenced by the first translations of Hindu and Buddhist texts to reach the west in the 19th Century. His philosophy and methods of inquiry have many similarities to those traditions. His ideas foreshadowed and laid the groundwork for Darwin's theory of evolution and Freud's concepts of libido and unconscious mind. He added empiricism to self-examination, which presaged Freud's interpersonal application in psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
.
George Croom Robertson
George Croom Robertson was a Scottish philosopher.He was born in Aberdeen. In 1857 he gained a bursary at Marischal College, and graduated MA in 1861, with the highest honours in classics and philosophy. In the same year he won a Fergusson scholarship of £100 a year for two years, which enabled...
, Scottish philosopher, editor of Mind from foundation in 1876 until 1891.
Richard Wilhelm
Richard Wilhelm
Richard Wilhelm was a German sinologist, as well as theologian and missionary. He is best remembered for his translations of philosophical works from Chinese into German that in turn have been translated into other major languages of the world, including English...
was a translator of Chinese into German of the I Ching, Tao Te Ching and The Secret of the Golden Flower, with a forward written by Jung, a close personal friend.
Idries Shah
Idries Shah , also known as Idris Shah, né Sayed Idries el-Hashimi , was an author and teacher in the Sufi tradition who wrote over three dozen critically acclaimed books on topics ranging from psychology and spirituality to travelogues and culture studies.Born in India, the descendant of a...
was an author in the Naqshbandi sufist tradition who wrote works on psychology and spirituality. Defined Sufism in a way that predated Islam and did not depend on the Qur'an.
Coleman Barks
Coleman Barks
Coleman Barks is an American poet. Although he neither speaks nor reads Persian, he is nonetheless renowned as an interpreter of Rumi and other mystic poets of Persia.- Biographical notes:...
has translated ecstatic poems of Rumi and other mystic poets of Persia.
Jack Kornfield
Jack Kornfield
Jack Kornfield is a teacher in the vipassana movement of American Theravada Buddhism. He trained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, Burma and India, including as a student of the Thai monk Ajahn Chah...
trained as a Buddhist monk in India and Southeast Asia, holds a PhD in clinical psychology and co-founded the Insight Meditation Society
Insight Meditation Society
The Insight Meditation Society is a non-profit organization for study of Buddhism located in Barre, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1975, by Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, and Joseph Goldstein, and is rooted in the Theravada tradition. IMS meditation practices are based on the teachings of the...
and the Spirit Rock Meditation Center. His books include Seeking the Heart of Wisdom (1987, co-authored with Joseph Goldstein
Joseph Goldstein
Joseph Goldstein is one of the first American vipassana teachers , co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society with Jack Kornfield and Sharon Salzberg, contemporary author of numerous popular books on Buddhism , resident guiding teacher at IMS, and leader of retreats worldwide on insight and...
), A Path with Heart (1993) and The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness and Peace (2002).
Daniel Goleman
Daniel Goleman
Daniel Jay Goleman is an author, psychologist, and science journalist. For twelve years, he wrote for The New York Times, specializing in psychology and brain sciences. He is the author of more than 10 books on psychology, education, science, and leadership.-Life:Goleman was born in Stockton,...
taught psychology at Harvard, wrote on science for the New York Times and is the author of the best-selling Emotional Intelligence (1995) and Destructive Emotions: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama (Bantam Books, 2003).
Thomas Cleary
Thomas Cleary
Thomas Cleary is a prolific author and translator of Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian and Muslim classics, and of the Chinese Art of War tradition of strategy and statecraft. He lives in Oakland, California in the United States.-Life and work:...
was a prolific translator of Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian and Muslim religious literature. First publication with his brother of the Blue Cliff Record
Blue Cliff Record
The Blue Cliff Record ; Vietnamese: Bích nham lục ) is a collection of Chán Buddhist koans originally compiled in China during the Song dynasty in 1125 and then expanded into its present form by the Chán master Yuanwu Keqin .The book includes Yuanwu's annotations and commentary on Xuedou...
in 1992.
Contemporary clinicians
Marsha M. LinehanMarsha M. Linehan
Marsha M. Linehan is an American psychologist and author. Linehan is a Professor of Psychology, Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry and BehavioralSciences at the University of Washington and Director of the Behavioral Research and TherapyClinics...
incorporates mindfulness techniques (particularly Zen
Zen
Zen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism founded by the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma. The word Zen is from the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word Chán , which in turn is derived from the Sanskrit word dhyāna, which can be approximately translated as "meditation" or "meditative state."Zen...
practices) in her Dialectical Behavioral Therapy
Dialectical behavioral therapy
Dialectical behavior therapy is a system of therapy originally developed by Marsha M. Linehan, a psychology researcher at the University of Washington, to treat people with borderline personality disorder...
(DBT) which has been found to be particularly effective with Cluster-B personality disorders.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Jon Kabat-Zinn is Professor of Medicine Emeritus and founding director of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Kabat-Zinn was a student of Zen Master Seung Sahn and a founding member of...
incorporates Buddhist mindfulness techniques in his Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction
Mindfulness-based stress reduction
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction is a structured complementary medicine program that uses mindfulness in an approach that focuses on alleviating pain and on improving physical and emotional well-being for individuals suffering from a variety of diseases and disorders. The program was established...
(MBSR) program.
Mark Epstein
Mark Epstein
Mark Epstein, M.D. , is an American psychiatrist who has written extensively about Buddhism and psychotherapy. Epstein is a graduate of Harvard College and the Harvard Medical School. He has been a practicing Buddhist since his early twenties, primarily as a student of Joseph Goldstein and Jack...
is the author of Thoughts Without a Thinker|Thoughts without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective (1995) and Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart (1998).
Mordechai Rotenberg
Mordechai Rotenberg
Mordechai Rotenberg is an Israeli professor of social work at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.-Biography:Mordechai Rotenberg was born in Breslau, Germany . His father was from Warsaw, descended from Rabbi Yitzchak Meir Alter, the founder of the Hasidic sect. His father owned a publishing...
has adopted the Kabbalistic-Hasidic tzimtzum
Tzimtzum
Tzimtzum is a term used in the kabbalistic teaching of Isaac Luria, explaining his concept that God began the process of creation by "contracting" his infinite light in order to allow for a "conceptual space" in which a finite and seemingly independent world could exist...
paradigm, which he believes has significant implications for clinical therapy. According to this paradigm, God's "self-contraction" to vacate space for the world serves as a model for human behavior and interaction. The tzimtzum model promotes a unique community-centric approach which contrasts starkly with the language of Western psychology.
Techniques used in clinical settings
- VipassanaVipassanaVipassanā or vipaśyanā in the Buddhist tradition means insight into the true nature of reality. A regular practitioner of Vipassana is known as a Vipassi . Vipassana is one of the world's most ancient techniques of meditation, the inception of which is attributed to Gautama Buddha...
- trains one to perceive the momentary arising and dissipating of all phenomena, nurturing the calm, detached recognition of all things' impermanence and interdependence.
See also
- History of medicineHistory of medicineAll human societies have medical beliefs that provide explanations for birth, death, and disease. Throughout history, illness has been attributed to witchcraft, demons, astral influence, or the will of the gods...
- History of philosophyHistory of philosophyThe history of philosophy is the study of philosophical ideas and concepts through time. Issues specifically related to history of philosophy might include : How can changes in philosophy be accounted for historically? What drives the development of thought in its historical context? To what...
- Buddhism and psychologyBuddhism and psychologyBuddhism and psychology overlap in theory and in practice. Over the last century, three strands of interplay have evolved:* Descriptive phenomenology: Western and Buddhist scholars have found in Buddhist teachings a detailed introspective phenomenological psychology .* Psychotherapeutic meaning:...
- Research on meditation
- Eastern philosophyEastern philosophyEastern philosophy includes the various philosophies of Asia, including Chinese philosophy, Iranian philosophy, Japanese philosophy, Indian philosophy and Korean philosophy...
- Egyptian philosophy
- Sufi philosophySufi philosophySufi philosophy includes the schools of thought unique to Sufism, a mystical branch within Islam. Sufism and its philosophical traditions may be associated with Sunni Islam or Shia Islam. It has been suggested that Sufi thought emerged from the Middle East in the eighth century, but adherents are...
- Iranian philosophyIranian philosophyIranian philosophy or Persian philosophy can be traced back as far as to Old Iranian philosophical traditions and thoughts which originated in ancient Indo-Iranian roots and were considerably influenced by Zarathustra's teachings...
- Hasidic philosophyHasidic philosophyHasidic philosophy or Hasidus , alternatively transliterated as Hassidism, Chassidism, Chassidut etc. is the teachings, interpretations of Judaism, and mysticism articulated by the modern Hasidic movement...
- Psychology of religionPsychology of religionPsychology of religion consists of the application of psychological methods and interpretive frameworks to religious traditions, as well as to both religious and irreligious individuals. The science attempts to accurately describe the details, origins, and uses of religious beliefs and behaviours...
Further reading
- Sarunya Prasopchingchana & Dana Sugu, 'Distinctiveness of the Unseen Buddhist Identity' (International Journal of Humanistic Ideology, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, vol. 4, 2010)
- Abdullah, Somaya (Ph.D.) 'Multicultural social intervention and nation-building in South Africa: the role of Islamic counselling and psychotherapy.' Researcher and project leader at the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation.
- Damásio, António 2003. Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain, Harvest Books, ISBN 978-0156028714
- DeMartino, R.J. "Karen Horney, Daisetz T. Suzuki, and Zen Buddhism." Am J Psychoanal. 1991 Sep; 51(3):267-83.
- Drob, S. Freud and the Chasidim: Redeeming The Jewish Soul of Psychoanalysis. Jewish Review 3:1, 1989
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External links
Neuroscience and Buddhism
Sarunya Prasopchingchana & Dana Sugu, 'Distinctiveness of the Unseen Buddhist Identity' ([1]International Journal of Humanistic Ideology, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, vol. 4, 2010)