[Buddha-l] Buddhism and Psychology becomes unfalsifiable

[Franz Metcalf]

Gang,

Joanna wrote,

> Successful psychotherapy in my view is a mutually worked
> out experience, not a bifurcated scenario where the client
> is supposed to be a passive receiver of wisdom and
> analysis and the therapist is allowed to be an aggressive
> know-it-all jerk.

I agree entirely. But I must add that bemoaned model of therapy as a  
process of the client passively accepting the therapist's wisdom is  
profoundly UN-Freudian. The talking cure works (if it does at all)  
through the process of the client becoming increasingly aware and  
accepting of the wonderful and previously unacknowledged (=repressed)  
complexity of her or his own mind. In this process the client *must*  
be active and creative. Classic analytical technique demands near  
silence on the part of the analyst; there is no chance for a  
beneficial outcome unless the analysand is the prime actor and true  
creator of that outcome. Good analysts have know this and helped their  
patients practice this for over a hundred years.

So have good meditation teachers, for a couple of thousand. The  
processes are remarkably parallel, as many practitioners on both sides  
have pointed out. Which leads me to ask if anyone has read Joseph  
Bobrow's very recent book, _Zen and Psychotherapy: Partners in  
Liberation_? <http://tinyurl.com/27synhw>. Bobrow is a Zen teacher and  
a psychotherapist and has written the (to me) most deeply humane and  
insightful treatments to date of the commonalities between  
psychotherapeutic and meditative work. He's done this in articles and  
chapters, so I'm keen to read what he has to say in a whole monograph.

With good wishes,

Franz