Interesting article comparing eastern and western psychology

[ajay0]

Found an interesting article comparing eastern and western psychology as well as the compatibility of meditation with psychotherapy...

Meditation and Psychotherapy: A Review of the Literature

Deikman argues that Western psychology has much to learn from the traditions of mystical sciences, which claim that central sources of human suffering originate in ignorance of our true nature, and that achieving enlightenment, or the experience of the "Real Self" alleviates human suffering by removing its basis.

Western therapy, he writes, focuses on emotions, thoughts, memories, impulses, images, self-concepts, all of which are contents of consciousness. But Western psychology fails to concern itself with the fact that our core sense of personal existence-what Deikman calls "The observing self"-is located in awareness itself, not in its contents. Thus awareness remains beyond thought and images, memories, and feelings, and cannot be observed, but must be experienced directly.

Meditative techniques heighten awareness of the observing self, change customary patterns of perception and thinking(p.33), and change motivation, lessening the intensity of motivations connected with the ego (the "object self"), leading to reduction of symptoms (p.11).

 

[mangalavara]

Found an interesting article comparing eastern and western psychology as well as the compatibility of meditation with psychotherapy...

Meditation and Psychotherapy: A Review of the Literature

I like this. For three years now, my paradigm has been Upanishadic/Pauranic, and I am so far the happiest and least worried than ever before. If I were focused on emotions, thoughts, desires, self-concept, etc. instead of that which is permanent, immutable, and eternal, I would not be at my current level of calmness and happiness.