[Buddha-l] Buddhism and Psychology research

[Dan Lusthaus]

Joanna,

Actually, I share your misgivings.

> what bugs me is the tendency to ascribe
> only neurotic motivations to any and all critics, rivals etc.
> Castigation may just be castigation, like a cigar sometimes is a
> just a cigar, as the great man said.

Sometimes. And sometimes not. Freud's "only a cigar" gave him mouth cancer 
from which he died.

There are all sorts of causes and conditions for all sorts of things. The 
ones Freud identified, knowledge of which evidently still makes people 
squirm and deny, are among them. That he put his finger on things that even 
after a century still makes people squirm suggests they are deep-seated, and 
there is resistance to admitting them, much less dealing with them.

The Freudians haven't done much to solve that -- turning Freud into a fetish 
of their own (poetic justice?). There clearly is a Freud vs the freudians 
issue at play, comparable to the distinction Kierkegaard and others made 
between Christianity and Christendom, or some make between Buddha and 
(Northern) Buddhism.

Can one get from birth to death while remaining blind to what Freud 
uncovered? Sure -- people have been doing that for millennia. Does that mean 
those things are unreal or not affecting us on multiple levels all the time? 
No.

Dan