BUILDING A BRIDGE BETWEEN WESTERN  PSYCHOTHERAPY  AND EASTERN SPIRITUALITY

 

BY: DR. K. SOHAIL 2005

 Historically Eastern spirituality and Western psychotherapy have remained worlds apart like two banks of a river not realizing that they are connected to each other by the river of human personality and life. Practitioners of Western psychotherapy and followers of Eastern spirituality have been facing difficulties in communication as they use different languages derived from their respective disciplines and traditions. Western psychotherapy is the outcome of a scientific and secular tradition while Eastern spirituality is the product of a mystical and religious tradition. The first one deals with emotional healing and the other with spiritual enlightenment. Eric Fromm in his article about Zen Buddhism and psychoanalysis writes, “ But in spite of the fact that both psychoanalysis and Zen deal with the nature of man with a practice leading to his transformation, the differences seem to outweigh these similarities. Psychoanalysis is a scientific method, non-religious to its core.

          Zen is a theory and technique to achieve ‘enlightenment’ an experience which in the West would be called religious or mystical. Psychoanalysis is a theory for mental illness. Zen is a way of spiritual salvation.’ (Ref 1 p 122)

          In the last thirty years after studying both disciplines and traditions seriously I have come to the realization that in 21st century there is a need of building a bridge between those two disciplines and traditions by focusing on similarities rather than differences. I think both traditions have some common goals, as they both want to

…decrease human suffering

….increase human happiness and health

and

…help people lead a productive and peaceful life.

I believe all seekers of truth are trying to become fully human and grow to their highest potential as human beings individually and collectively. Western psychotherapy and Eastern spirituality have found different theories and practices to achieve those goals. In 21st century we are able to deconstruct their vocabulary and myths and reconstruct a new humanistic theory that would be acceptable to poets and priests, mystics and psychotherapists alike. I have come to the gradual awareness that those two disciplines can become complementary rather than contradictory. But to achieve that goal we need to go beyond the traditional definitions and domains and develop a liberal, modern and enlightened approach. I believe a traditional psychiatrist, psychotherapist and mystic have difficulties in communication because of the historical and cultural differences but enlightened psychiatrists, psychotherapists and mystics can have a meaningful dialogue and this essay is to explore such a possibility.

After practicing Western psychiatry and psychotherapy for twenty years and studying the biographies of Eastern mystics and spiritual teachers I feel that from the point of view of emotional and spiritual growth, we can classify healers and teachers at three levels

a.     Psychiatrists are like high school teachers who treat their patients mostly with medications and help them control the symptoms of the illness. They focus on the biological and physical dimension of human beings.

b.    Psychotherapists are college lecturers who help people in coping with their emotional and personality problems and discover a healthy lifestyle. They focus on the psychological and social dimensions of human beings,

c.     Mystic teachers are university professors who help their students and disciples in developing a mystic personality and adopting a mystic lifestyle. They focus on the spiritual dimension of human beings but their spirituality is not related to traditional religious institutions.

I have come to the realization that in that journey of personal growth there is a dynamic relationship between

A, Students whether patients or disciples

B, Disciplines of psychiatry, psychotherapy or spiritual training

and

C, Teachers, whether psychiatrists, psychotherapists or mystic teachers.

I believe it is very important for human beings to recognize their emotional and spiritual needs, level of growth and comfort with the discipline and teacher before they join a therapy or mystic program. Because of the personalities, philosophies and cultural

backgrounds, different people are able to learn and grow at different rates in different environments under the guidance of different healers and teachers.

     In the last century the tradition of psychiatry has evolved from the disciplines of science, medicine and neurology and joined hands with the discipline of psychotherapy that evolved from the disciplines of psychology, social work and family counseling. It is quite impressive how psychiatrists and psychotherapists are trained and supervised so that they follow the guidelines of the profession and high expectations of the community. If psychiatrists and psychotherapists abuse power and become controlling and manipulating their patients, then those patients and their dear ones can challenge the therapists and report them to authorities so that those professionals are disciplined.

     To be able to better serve the patients Sigmund Feud suggested that analysts be analyzed themselves so that they can be more effective and responsible as therapists. One of the other important factors is that in most cases the practice of psychotherapy takes place in the safe and secure environments of clinics and hospitals and those contacts are time limited. After a few months or years of therapy when the patients have improved and resolved or dissolved their conflicts they are discharged. The therapists are friendly and respectful during therapy but are discouraged to do business with their patients. There is extra caution between male therapists and female patients. Therapists are not allowed to date their patients so that the therapists cannot abuse their power.

On the other hand the tradition of spiritual training has been going on for centuries in the East and there are a number of schools, traditions and disciplines that most Westerners are not aware of. There was a time when those schools and disciplines had high standards and very selective people were accepted in those schools and only a very few selected ones were allowed to become teachers and have students and disciples. But over the centuries the rules have relaxed and a large number of people have chosen to declare themselves mystics and saints and have developed a following of disciples and there is no way for the communities to separate genuine mystics from those pseudo-mystics who have been manipulating and exploiting the innocent and the vulnerable. Buddha the grandfather of Eastern spirituality had stated that the spiritual teacher should be like a boat, picking the disciple from one side of the river and then letting him go when he reaches the other shore.

     The biggest challenge for the therapist and the spiritual teacher is when needy and vulnerable students, disciples or patients start to idolize the teachers. Genuine teachers discourage that idolizing and remain humble while immature teachers encourage that practice and after a while they become idols and heroes and gods and gradually transform into cult leaders. After a while because of their knowledge, charm and charisma many of them develop a cult which gradually starts to self-destruct.

     Ideally genuine psychotherapists and genuine mystic teachers help their patients and students find their own truth and find the highest level of emotional and spiritual growth.

     When we review all those people who have a keen interest in self-actualization and self-growth we can divide them in the following groups.

1.Those people who are emotionally healthy. They want to improve their quality of life. These people by their own studies, introspection and soul-searching keep on growing and do not need a therapist or a mystic teacher to help them in their journey.

2. Those patients who suffer from mental illness and need to see a psychiatrist and need medications to control the symptoms of schizophrenia, bipolar affective disorder and other forms of mental illness.

3. Those creative and mystic people who do not suffer from mental illness and are going through a psychotic episode as a part of the journey to reach the higher level of personal growth. They need support and encouragement and may not need traditional psychiatric medications. This is the group in which the patients, the family, the psychiatrist and the mystic teacher have to work together and follow the patients to see whether after those psychotic encounters the patients became stronger or became weaker and need traditional treatment to lead a healthy and happy life. In these cases the psychiatrists and psychotherapists need to consult and work with people who have an experience in understanding and helping people with spiritual crises.

4. Those people who suffer from emotional and personality problems and need psychotherapy to deal with past traumas and history of physical, emotional or sexual abuse.

When such people go to mystic teachers and want to develop themselves spiritually they have great difficulties. They are like those students who want to do their post-graduate studies while they have not passed their graduation. In those cases the mystics need to consult the psychiatrists and psychotherapists for a mental health assessment.

Jack Kornfield, an experienced therapist and spiritual teacher from Buddha Dharma Education Association, in his article titled Even the Best Meditators Have Old Wounds to Heal states, “meditation and spiritual practice can easily be used to suppress and avoid feeling or escape from difficult areas of our lives. Our sorrows are hard to touch…Freud said he wanted to help people to love and work. If we can’t love well and give meaningful work to the Earth, then what is our spiritual practice for? Meditation can help in these areas. But, if, after sitting for a while, you discover that you still have work to do, find a good therapist or some other way to effectively address these issues.”

Jack Kornfield is candid and authentic as he speaks from his own personal experience. He writes, “…intensive meditation practice has its limitations. In talking about these limitations, I want to speak not theoretically, but directly from my own experience, and from my heart.

Some people have come to meditation after working with traditional psychotherapy. Although they found therapy to be of value, its limitations led them to seek a spiritual practice. For me it was the opposite. While I benefited enormously from the training offered in the Thai and Burmese monasteries where I practiced, I noticed two striking things. First, there were major areas of difficulty in my life, such as loneliness, intimate relationships, work, childhood wounds, and patterns of fear, that even deep meditation didn’t touch. Second, among the several dozen Western monks (and lots of Asian meditators) I met during my time in Asia, with a few notable exceptions, most were not helped by meditation in big areas of their lives. Many were deeply wounded, neurotic, frightened, grieving, and often used spiritual practice to hide and avoid problematic parts of themselves….Many American vipassana teachers are now, or have recently been, in psychotherapy in order to deal with these issues.”

Jack Kornfield realizes that emotional and spiritual growth has two parts: one part can be helped by meditation practices but for the other part people need a “deep and therapeutic relationship with another person.”

It is unfortunate that we have not been able to establish practices where professionals from different disciplines can consult each other to serve their communities. We need to break down walls of isolation and build bridges of understanding.

Being a practicing psychotherapist for the last twenty years I am quite aware that people who come to see me belong to two distinct groups. The first group receives Supportive Therapy. As they are emotionally weak and fragile and vulnerable they need encouragement and support and reassurance. I help them deal with their emotional crises and with passage of time they heal and recover and are then discharged. These patients are not emotionally strong to undergo Dynamic Therapy which is quite demanding. I am afraid that with Dynamic Therapy they might get worse rather than getting better.

I have met a number of people who attended weekend encounter groups in which they received intensive therapy from Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon. Alongside some who benefited there were others who had a nervous breakdown as they could not tolerate the intensity. It took a number of months of supportive therapy to help them recover.

The second group receives Dynamic Therapy in my clinic. During such therapy these people have a personality transformation. They break down old dysfunctional patterns and develop new and healthy character traits. They get over their anxiety and depression and anger and fear and become healthy, happy and peaceful human beings. Their families and friends acknowledge that after therapy they became gentler and kinder and more compassionate. Dynamic Therapy can be long and hard and uphill struggle but at the end it is all worth it. It is like having labour pains and giving birth to a new person.

Such therapy not only transforms the patient but also the therapist. I have shared in the psychotherapy books I wrote that my patients have helped me become a better therapist and a better person. As a therapist I am more aware now how to separate those who need Supportive Therapy from those who can benefit from Dynamic Therapy. To be a candidate for Dynamic Therapy people need to

…be emotionally strong

…have patience

…have a positive relationship with the therapist

…have a history of trusting relationships in the past

…be psychologically minded

…be of average or above average intelligence

and

…have strong motivation to change.

In my clinical practice all these factors predict positive outcome and I keep them in mind while assessing people for therapy.

When I read biographies of mystics and stories of their spiritual training centers in the East, I realize that Spiritual teachers, like experienced psychotherapists, also do their strict assessments. In those centers also some students only receive Supportive Spiritual Counselling and learn meditation practices to relax while others receive Dynamic Mystic Counselling, which is demanding but produces spiritual and personality transformation. After going through such training students develop a mystic personality. Only after doing years of hard work they graduate and are allowed to wear the robe of saints and are allowed to call themselves members of that spiritual tradition. Many students who could not tolerate the hardships were asked to leave the training program and not allowed to wear the orange robe of the mystics.

One of the major problems of communication between psychotherapists and mystics is the difference of language. For example the word and term Ego means different things in different disciplines. I will try to explain with a couple of examples and interpretations. In psychotherapy and psychoanalysis Ego is the healthy part of the Self and needs to be strengthened and developed. It reflects a mature part of personality that can deal with the pressures of id and super-ego in an effective way. On the other part Ego for some mystics is the unhealthy, selfish, self-centered and arrogant part that needs to be kept under control. At the surface there seems to be a conflict but in reality the Ego of those mystics is closer to the Id of the psychoanalyst than the Ego. James Fadiman and Robert Frager define such Ego in these words, “ The lowest level of the self, the ego or lower personality, is made up of impulses, or drives, to satisfy desires. These drives dominate reason or judgment and are defined as the forces in one’s nature that must be brought under control. The self is a product of the self-centred consciousness---the ego, the “I”. The self must be transformed---that is the ideal. The self is like a wild horse; it is powerful and virtually uncontrollable. As the self becomes trained, or transformed, it becomes capable of serving the individual…Descriptions of this level of self are similar to descriptions of the id in psychoanalytic theory; it is closely linked to lust and aggression.” (Ref 2 p 20)

The other difference is the concept of Ego-boundaries. Psychotherapists would like those boundaries to be strong but on the other hand mystics want their disciples to have loose Ego-boundaries so that they can experience spiritual encounters. By dissolving Ego they can get in touch with nature and feel one-ness with the world in the form of self-transcendence.

In the process of emotional and spiritual growth, to graduate as an emotionally healthy adult, people have to develop strong Ego-boundaries but for spiritual encounters they need to dissolve those boundaries. Silvano Arieti, an American psychiatrist believes it is done by auto-hypnosis. He writes, “ In mystic experiences we have a tradition of auto-hypnosis. A subject puts himself into a state of a trance and projects power to the divinity---the hypnosis is time limited and totally reversible.” Ref 1 p 119) If the experience is not limited and totally reversible then there is a danger that the person might descend into psychosis and not come back. There are some mystics who consider well-developed Ego a hurdle than an asset for spiritual growth.

A poet and mystic can dive into the deep ocean of unconscious but have to come back with a poem or a profound insight to share with common people waiting for them on the shore. If they cannot come back they might be lost in the depths of the ocean. The therapist helps people to be emotionally strong and confident. The mystic teacher helps them dive deep into the ocean and then come back.

In this way the therapists and the mystic teachers complement each other and need to understand each other’s discipline. James Gordon highlights those differences between Western and Eastern concepts, Freudian psychoanalysis and mysticism in these words,

‘Freud had postulated a tripartite division of mental functioning. In the centre was the ego, mediating between the instinctual demands of the id and the harsh familial and cultural imperatives and prohibitions that were internalized in the super-ego. One of the goals of psychoanalysis was the reclamation for the ego of the territory previously governed by the id and the superego. For psychoanalysis, the ego represented the highest aspect of development…the ego was the realm of sanity…and the confusion of inner and outer world was one of the hallmarks of psychosis…Freud noted that this inclination to abolish the boundaries of the ego and merge with what was outside was connected with religious experience. He said he could understand the appeal of the ‘oceanic feeling’ the unbroken connectedness to the world. But he felt obliged to remind readers that it was regressive. The vestige of a lesser rather than a more highly developed consciousness…

‘…for the mystics the formation of ego was a necessary stage rather than a goal, as much a barrier as an achievement…”

“ There are some persons who embark on and complete the voyage of ego dissolution and transformation on their own. Most often, a guide seems to be necessary. The guide has experienced the process and is now prepared to aid others in undergoing it. In the East …he is called a Master. The relationship between him and his disciples provides the motive for transformation, and reassurance and protection during the process.” Ref 3 P 34

     As a psychotherapist when I review the mystic literature I realize that when mystics talk about ‘dissolving the ego” they mean two different things.

A, One group means dissolving the ego that they consider selfish and arrogant so that the person can become humble and kind and generous.

B, The second group believes that dissolving the ego is necessary before someone has the experience of self-transcendence.

The first type of dissolving the ego is needed to develop a mystic personality while the second type of ‘dissolving the ego’ is needed to have a spiritual encounter and feel one-ness with the universe.

In this process of ‘dissolving the ego’ the mystic Master can guide the journey.

     But having a mystic Master like having a psychotherapist can be a mixed blessing. It can enhance the spiritual growth like the emotional growth in psychotherapy but if the spiritual Master is inadequate and abuses power like an incompetent psychotherapist then the process can become a painful and disappointing experience and the person rather than a spiritual and emotional breakthrough can have a nervous breakdown and become a spiritual casualty. It is unfortunate how many genuine seekers of emotional and spiritual help never find the right teacher, therapist and guide.

I feel it is important to see how politics of religion has eclipsed the world of genuine mystics. It is important to note that many spiritual people do not belong to traditional religions as they believe that spirituality is part of humanity not divinity and they do not want to be part of any religious institution. Some of them are agnostics and atheists.

It is very difficult these days to separate genuine mystics from pseudo-mystics or religious priests, pundits, rabbis and maulanas who have made religion a business and an institution to control people rather than helping in discovering their own truth. Some people have been so disillusioned by pseudo-mystics that they believe that ‘if you meet Buddha on the road, kill him” They, like Krishnamurti, believe that ‘ I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect…Truth being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized, nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people any particular path” (Ref 1 p 104)

I believe that in 21st century while we are living in a global village and distances between countries and cultures are shrinking it is our need to go beyond our traditional boundaries and keep an open mind to other traditions and practices. I hope one day there will be community centers where psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, artists and mystics would be able to live and work together and establish professional bodies that will ensure that people get proper assessment and support and guidance to decrease their sufferings and increase their personal growth. After reviewing traditions of Western psychotherapy and Eastern spirituality I have come to the conclusion that both traditions help people to become fully human. I hope we are able to build a bridge between two cultures and traditions. While in psychotherapy people learn to love and work, in spiritual training they also learn to develop higher consciousness and serve their communities. I hope that with passage of time we have more enlightened people so that we can all grow together and experience more peace than violence in the world and in that journey all traditions from all cultures are our common inheritance as human beings.

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REFERENCES

1.               Sohail K …From Islam to Secular Humanism Abbeyfield Publishers Toronto Canada 2001

2.               Fadiman James and Frager Robert Essential Sufism Castle Books New Jersey USA 1997

3.               Gordon James The Golden Guru…The Strange Journey of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh Stephen Greene Books USA 1987

 

 


 

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