Before he became a counterculture hero, Alan Watts was known as an incisive scholar of Eastern and Western psychology and philosophy. In this 1961 classic, Watts demonstrates his deep understanding of both Western psychotherapy and the Eastern spiritual philosophies of Buddhism, Taoism, Vedanta, and Yoga. He examined the problem of humans in a seemingly hostile universe in ways that questioned the social norms and illusions that bind and constrict modern humans. Marking a groundbreaking synthesis, Watts asserted that the powerful insights of Freud and Jung, which had, indeed, brought psychiatry close to the edge of liberation, could, if melded with the hitherto secret wisdom of the Eastern traditions, free people from their battles with the self. When psychotherapy merely helps us adjust to social norms, Watts argued, it falls short of true liberation, while Eastern philosophy seeks our natural relation to the cosmos. “Thoughtful and thought-provoking, involving vast knowledge and research and deeply serious in intent.” ― Los Angeles Times Alan Watts , a countercultural icon and author of more than twenty books, was also a spiritual philosopher, scholar of Buddhism, Anglican minister, and chaplain at Northwestern University. He died in 1973. Psychotherapy East & West By Alan Watts New World Library Copyright © 1989 Anne Watts and Joan Watts All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-60868-456-4 Contents Preface, I. Psychotherapy and Liberation, II. Society and Sanity, III. The Ways of Liberation, IV. Through a Glass Darkly, V. The Countergame, VI. Invitation to the Dance, Bibliographical References, About the Author, CHAPTER 1 Psychotherapy and Liberation If we look deeply into such ways of life as Buddhism and Taoism, Vedanta and Yoga, we do not find either philosophy or religion as these are understood in the West. We find something more nearly resembling psychotherapy. This may seem surprising, for we think of the latter as a form of science, somewhat practical and materialistic in attitude, and of the former as extremely esoteric religions concerned with regions of the spirit almost entirely out of this world. This is because the combination of our unfamiliarity with Eastern cultures and their sophistication gives them an aura of mystery into which we project fantasies of our own making. Yet the basic aim of these ways of life is something of quite astonishing simplicity, besides which all the complications of reincarnation and psychic powers, of superhuman mahatmas, and of schools for occult technology are a smoke screen in which the credulous inquirer can lose himself indefinitely. In fairness it should be added that the credulous inquirer may be Asian as well as Western, though the former has seldom the peculiarly highbrow credulity of the Western fancier of esotericism. The smoke is beginning to clear, but for a long time its density has hidden the really important contributions of the Eastern mind to psychological knowledge. The main resemblance between these Eastern ways of life and Western psychotherapy is in the concern of both with bringing about changes of consciousness, changes in our ways of feeling our own existence and our relation to human society and the natural world. The psychotherapist has, for the most part, been interested in changing the consciousness of peculiarly disturbed individuals. The disciplines of Buddhism and Taoism are, however, concerned with changing the consciousness of normal, socially adjusted people. But it is increasingly apparent to psychotherapists that the normal state of consciousness in our culture is both the context and the breeding ground of mental disease. A complex of societies of vast material wealth bent on mutual destruction is anything but a condition of social health. Nevertheless, the parallel between psychotherapy and, as I have called them, the Eastern "ways of liberation" is not exact, and one of the most important differences is suggested by the prefix psycho. Historically, Western psychology has directed itself to the study of the psyche, or mind, as a clinical entity, whereas Eastern cultures have not categorized mind and matter, soul and body, in the same way as the Western. But Western psychology has to some extent so outgrown its historical origins as to become dissatisfied with the very term "psychological" as describing a major field of human behavior. It is not that it has become possible, as Freud himself once hoped, to reduce psychology to neurology and mind to body. It is not that for the entity "mind" we can substitute the entity "nervous system." It is rather that psychology cannot stand aloof from the whole revolution in scientific description which has been going on in the twentieth century, a revolution in which conceptions of entities and "stuffs," whether mental or material, have become obsolete. Whether it is describing chemical changes or biological forms, nuclear structures or human behavi