[Buddha-l] (no subject)

[Michael Essex]

Taking your question seriously, there are many researchers/clinicians who  have developed emperically-supported therapies somewhat based on Buddhist ideas.
To start, you should look at the work of 
Marsha Linehan - Dialectical Behavioral Therapy
http://www.behavioraltech.org/resources/whatisdbt.cfm
which specifically addresses severe personality disorders.

Jon Kabot-Zinn's Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction 
has been adapted for treatment of Depression by Zindel Segal
http://www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-Based-Cognitive-Therapy-Depression-Preventing/dp/1572307064

Work is being done at Emory University and Wisconsin regarding Compassion meditation and therapy. 

http://dalailama.emory.edu/2010/compassion.html

There are regularly organized conferences on mindfulness and therapy. Read things by the various presenters. 
http://www.facesconferences.com/

The idea that having low self esteem or poor self image makes you somehow closer to enlightenment is a fallacy, well worked out by the 80's in the many volumes on psychoanalysis and Buddhism. 
It was clearly laid out by Jack Engler, as mentioned by one of the previous respondents, in the first part of the sometimes hard to find
http://www.amazon.com/Transformations-Consciousness-Ken-Wilber/dp/0394742028


Hi,

Psychotherapy based on Buddhist understandings of the workings of the mind
look promising from a scientific point of view. However, I have often
wondered how such therapeutic approach works on patients who suffer from low
self esteem, have no stable sense of a self, don't 'know how they really
are', etc. Wouldn't the notion of anatta be 'nothing new' to them, or the
very problem itself, being that the sense of the absence of a self IS a
contributing factor to the existence of the personality disorder?

Thank you,

Stefan