Psychotherapy East and West

by Alan W. Watts

What is the common ground between Western psychiatry and Eastern philosophy, and what has each to learn from the other? Alan Watts found a common principle that, intentionally or otherwise, seems to be used wherever therapy is trying to overcome man's false sense of himself as an isolated ego -- an ego that traps him in a perpetual flight from death and loneliness. In varying ways and degrees, both Eastern philosophy and Western psychotherapy engage the individual in experiments that vividly reveal the fallacy of this conception and give him a new feeling of identity.

Genres: Psychology, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Buddhism, Spirituality, Religion, Eastern Philosophy

196 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1961

About the author

Alan Wilson Watts was a British philosopher, writer and speaker, who held both a Master's in Theology and a Doctorate of Divinity. Famous for his research on comparative religion, he was best known as an interpreter and popularizer of Asian philosophies for a Western audience. He wrote over 25 books and numerous articles on subjects such as personal identity, the true nature of reality, higher consciousness, the meaning of life, concepts and images of God and the non-material pursuit of happiness. In his books he relates his experience to scientific knowledge and to the teachings of Eastern and Western religion and philosophy.

Reviews

[Heather Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Psychotherapy East and West, Alan Watts compares eastern methods of liberation, specifically Buddhism, Taoism, Vedanta, and Yoga, with modern western methods, in particular the psychotherapeutic models pioneered by Freud and Jung. In a complex, lucid philosophical book of 214 pages, he finds, among other things, that the very urge toward liberation is problematic, since it presumes the existence of someone (the ego) who is not already liberated.

Perhaps one of the most interesting claims Watts makes, and the ramifications that he develops from it, is the notion that enlightenment is not a metaphysical phenomenon but a social one; namely, the liberation experienced is freedom from a socially imposed fiction that each of us inherits: specifically, that our ego identity is our real identity, that we are an island of consciousness existing in a physical body separate from all other bodies, and identified with a personal history. Thus, for Watts, "cosmic consciousness" or enlightenment is not liberation from the bounds of physical existence, nor does it confer psychic powers and reward in a heavenly hereafter; it simply restores the individual to a state of Reality, wherein his own identity is felt as inseparable from everything previously taken as "Other."

What prompted me to re-read this book after having read it more than twenty years ago was a desire to review Watts's critique of Carl Jung's thought. That Watts had read Jung extensively is evident from this and other books, including The Meaning of Happiness, which has an extensive review of Jungian ideas.

In the chapter, "Society and Sanity" Watts asserts that human societies are consistent patterns of behavior. All societies involve consistent patterns of organization, traditions and customs. Yet this pattern of organization is rooted in nature, it is not separate and opposed to a nature which is chaotic. Human beings are part of nature, and all humans exist in societies: hence, societies too are part of nature. The first rule of society is that life must go on. Watts deconstructs such taken-for-granted notions as the "survival instinct," arguing that to say that an organism eats in order to survive is only to say that an organism is an expression of its environment, i.e., a transformation of air, sunlight, vegetation, water, etc.

There is no scientific reason to suppose that there are such things as instincts for survival or for pleasure. When we say that an organism likes to go on living, or that it goes on living because it likes it, what evidence is there for this "like" except that it does in fact go on living---until it doesn't? (36)

The assertion is astonishing. Don't we all "know" that all animals have a "survival instinct"? We do, but where do we get such knowledge, and is there any basis for it? Watts as always is brilliant at exposing the unconscious metaphysical assumptions which masquerade as scientific truth or "common sense." To say that animals possess a "survival instinct" is to say simply that animals prefer to go on living, except when they commit suicide. Watts' point is that organisms are expressions of environments, a point which field theory has long ago articulated. As such they are inseparable from their environments, and exist in a state of dynamic equilibrium, taking in nutrients and disposing of wastes in a manner consistent with the environment. To project necessity onto what happens as a matter of course is to create a gigantic problem out of life by making what is play into work, transforming a dance into drudgery.

As Watts puts it: the first rule of the social game is that life is not a game, but something deadly serious. He calls this the "primordial repression," probably "our most deeply ingrained social attitude." As a result, human life becomes problematic, a predicament from which there appears to be no escape. One manifestation of life-as-dilemma is our relationship to time. One cannot enjoy the present moment because one worries about future events. If we cannot enjoy ourselves in the present due to worries about the future, we lose much of the joy available in life. While being able to remember the past and predict future events based on it allows us to reduce suffering, as for example with weather reports, the same time sense renders human beings all-too-frequently lost regretting past events or dreading future ones.

Man is thus the self-frustrating organism, and this self-frustrating activity Watts likens to the Buddhist concept of samsara. Samsara is the restlessness that is the inevitable consequence of our assumption that life is serious, and that we must go on living. Liberation depends upon becoming aware of this primordial repression, and seeing that the problem is absurd. Release does not come from seeing that there is no solution to the problem, for that would only result in a stoic resignation to life as inevitable tragedy. Rather, enlightenment comes from seeing that the problem itself is meaningless.

In sum, society is organized around a hallucination of a fictitious identity, and includes basic premises such as that one must go on living and that life must go on. In other words, the source of all our anxiety and suffering is to be found in society, not in the individual. Various things follow from this insight: for example, the "neurotic" suffers overtly from the same problem everyone is burdened with, being only a more extreme case of the same fundamental problem, which is alienation based on a false sense of identity inculcated by society. For psychotherapy to be effective, the therapist must not merely help patients adjust themselves to an insane social order, but he must himself have already seen through to the sickness of society.

In "The Ways of Liberation," Watts claims that moksha or nirvana means release not from the bonds of the physical organism or universe, but from society and the consensus trance it induces. He is not impressed by the tales of feats of magic and psychic phenomena attributed to people who become enlightened, and he claims that the testimony of friends and associates who have reached "the other shore" assure him that any changes in consciousness are far more humble, but in other ways more impressive. Accordingly, Watts does not believe in reincarnation, a doctrine he says is tied to the Hindu myth that liberation means freedom from the physical universe. He adds that Buddhists and Vedantists who are in fact liberated, do not take the doctrine of reincarnation literally. If they have not gone out of their way to disabuse others of this doctrine, it is because they are not revolutionaries, and furthermore, they realize that people must discover this for themselves, that telling them will do nothing.

However, Watts' assumption that, because enlightenment means awakening from consensus trance, and not transcendence of the physical world, therefore reincarnation as taught by the Buddha cannot be true, is questionable. This raises a host of issues, since Buddha explicitly taught a doctrine of reincarnation. Why did Buddha teach it if he didn't think it was true? It won't do to say that he was aware that Hindu society would not accept his teaching otherwise, for in other important respects he was a harsh critic of Hinduism; for example, he railed against the Hindu caste system as unnecessary and oppressive. It is conceivable that Buddha thought that many people, mired as the masses were in samsara and false, egoic consciousness, would not be able to follow his path of awakening without a sense that they would attain release from rebirth upon realizing nirvana, or, alternately, they would attain to a more auspicious rebirth upon becoming awakened bodhisattvas. Of course, this whole matter of "what the Buddha thought" begs the question, Who was the Buddha? Watts' critique of Western Buddhists' finding reincarnation "consoling, in flat contradiction of the avowed objective of obtaining release from rebirth" (67) may fairly apply to an Hinayana hermeneutic (and to Theravada, the only extant Hinayana school). However, that is ironic, since Watts's states in one of the footnotes that the form of Buddhism he is referencing throughout is the Madhyamika of Nagarjuna, i.e., a Mahayana teaching. (Mahayana does not teach an objective of release from rebirth, but embracing rebirth as a bodhisattva so as to relieve the suffering of others.)

Accordingly, since Siddhartha had been a bodhisattva for many lifetimes before becoming a Buddha (as related in the Jataka tales, which are accepted as canonical by both Theravada and Mahayana Buddhists), he had vowed not to enter final nirvana until all beings were liberated. Hence, the teaching of a nirvana that is an escape from rebirth, from life itself, cannot possibly be consistent with Buddha's teaching, unless one is to argue that his teaching is self-contradictory, in which case one can hardly argue he was genuinely enlightened. But since emptiness is form, nirvana is found nowhere else but in the midst of samsara, or earthly life. Nirvana is thus not an escape from life itself, in the sense of obviating future rebirths, but rather a mode of being in which life is fully embraced - lived as it is, rather than as seen through the distorting lens of ego.

It is thus quite possible simultaneously to assert that (1) enlightenment or nirvana is an awakening from a social fiction, not transcendence of the phenomenal world; and (2) though the ego self is a fiction, reincarnation of a subtle mind stream (or soul) does occur. The point here is not to assert that I know reincarnation is true, but simply to state that I don't know whether it is true or not, and neither did Alan Watts. Moreover, it is a logical fallacy to state that because liberation means liberation from a social fiction (ego), this necessarily means reincarnation is an illusion. In addition, it bears repeating that Buddha did teach the doctrine of reincarnation, and that while there are varying interpretations of it within Buddhist hermeneutical tradition, all schools of Buddhism accept the teaching of reincarnation in some form. This of course does not make it true. The point is rather that Watts' claim that enlightened Buddhists and Vedantists don't take reincarnation literally is debatable. Certainly Buddha was enlightened, and he clearly taught a doctrine of reincarnation. Indeed, he said that one of the powers gained upon realizing enlightenment was the ability to remember his many previous lifetimes.

Watts correctly asserts that the Madhyamika Buddhist concept of the world as maya does not mean the concrete world does not exist; rather, it means that "things are relative: they have no self-existence because no one thing can be designated without relation to others, and furthermore because 'thing' is a unit of description--not a natural entity." (64)

Some of Watts's strongest points come in his critique of the limitations of psychotherapy as a way of liberation, including the theories of Carl Jung. The weakness of psychotherapy is less in the theoretical distinctions between schools than in the dualistic nature they all impose upon humankind: ego and unconscious, subject and object, psyche and soma, reality principle and pleasure principle, reason and instinct. If therapy is healing, or making whole, then psychotherapy, by beginning from a premise of self-division, may be a medicine that simply perpetuates the disease. At best, it may help one achieve a "courageous despair." (117) He quotes Jung to the effect that Jung could not conceive of a state of consciousness without a subject, an ego.

Moreover, Jung viewed the accounts from the East of egoless states of mind as essentially regressive rather than transcendent. To Jung, it was nonetheless okay for Easterners to indulge in this "participation mystique" (of egoless states of consciousness), because they had social structures that somehow kept them in closer touch with instinctual forces. But Westerners, he felt, should avoid Eastern paths because Westerners had repressed the unconscious so much that they would be in danger "inflation" with the uprising of previously repressed instinctual forces.

If Eastern cultures were less ego-conscious than Western, Buddhist and Taoist texts would be relatively silent as to the illusory nature of he ego. Jung is therefore perfectly right in sounding a warning--but for the wrong reason. He assumes that a strong ego structure, a struggle against nature, is the necessary condition of civilization, and is thus in danger of reaching the same despair as Freud. But it is one thing to note that civilization as we know it has depended upon the ego concept; it is quite another to assert that it must, as if this convention were somehow in the nature of things. Freud and Jung are both fully alive to the interdependence of life's great opposites, but for both they constitute a finally insoluble problem. Freud fears that the tension between them must at last become unbearable; Jung seems prepared to walk the tightrope between them forever. (122)

For Jung there was no overcoming the problems of life; the meaning and purpose of life's problems was found in the incessant effort to overcome them. "This alone preserves us from stultification and petrifaction," he wrote. Watts called this attitude "the voice of the Protestant conscience," which assumes that "man is inherently lazy; by nature, by original sin, he will always slide back into dissolution unless there is something to goad him . . ." (123) I don't know if this is quite fair to Jung. Jung's quote may also be taken to mean that the path of transformation is endless, and thus the meaning is in the effort of the journey, not the destination. This is a sentiment that seems more characteristic of Eastern wisdom, and I'm not sure that stating the necessity of incessant effort is tantamount to stating that man is inherently lazy. Although, laziness does seem to be the mother of all vices. Call that Protestant conscience if you wish, but that is how it seems to this reviewer.

Watts' analysis of the problems of Jungian thought is nonetheless fair and balanced. He acknowledges that among Western psychotherapists, Jung's theories most closely approached the wisdom of the East, yet the Jungians didn't quite make it all the way. He rightly says that Jungian writings abound in accounts of the fearsome and primitive shadow, lurking just beneath the everyday consciousness, which, if left to function unchecked, would wreak havoc upon the world.

Jungians never allow us to forget, Watts maintains, that not only consciousness but also psychic integration, the goal of therapy, is precarious. This attitude echoes the Biblical warning, "Brethren, be sober, be vigilant, for your adversary the Devil walketh about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour!" The unconscious can be creative, it seems, only if skillfully pacified by the conscious, which must act all the while like the wary trainer of a performing lion.

Jung's view was that the ego was the historically necessary yet problematic evolution which raised humankind out of a more primitive animalistic state, and thus its loss posed the danger of the individual being overwhelmed by regressive psychic forces. But Watts theorizes instead that humankind's history of barbarity, its wars and genocidal impulses, stem not from insufficient or absent ego but from too much ego, i.e., they are a rebellion against "the double bind of a self-contradictory social institution." (127) Moreover, he questions the assumption whether development of an ego is the necessary basis for consciousness and intelligence by noting that the neural structures in the brain which are the basis of man's intelligence are certainly not the creation of any ego.

Moreover, Watts questions Jung's dictum that all experience is psychological, asserting that this makes "psychological" meaningless, just as any statement about everything is perfectly meaningless. Watts quotes the Zen master Nansen, who, pointing at flowers, said that "people of the world" look at them as if they were in a dream. Yet the content of cosmic consciousness is not primarily an "inner" experience, but consists in a new way of viewing the world. Nansen's flowers are not intended to be seen as an archetype in a dream. He is not pointing to them as if they were an archetype or visionary form seen in a dream or trance. He is simply pointing to the flowers. The confusion is due to the West's view of Taoism and Zen as religions, and its notion that religions are concerned primarily with "inner" experience. But while in the East aspirants to liberation are told to "look within" for truth, this is so they will realize there is no "inside" per se but only a seamless being-in-the-world, as the existentialists call it. Indeed, Watts believes the existential school comes closer than either Freud or Jung to the Eastern forms of liberation, inasmuch as existentialism seeks to overcome the artificial split between subject and object, while Freud and Jung's thought only reinforce this split via their dualistic concepts of the psyche. For example, Jung and Freud both wrote about the unconscious as though it were a spiritual entity or personality with a mind of its own, but Watts correctly observes that there is no such "thing" as "the unconscious"; it is more accurate to speak of unconsciousness, or, as L.L. Whyte wrote, that it would be more accurate to speak of man's life as "unconscious process with conscious aspects."

But Watts is not without criticism of the existentialists. They give him the impression that to live without anxiety is to somehow lack seriousness, which brings up the "ancient quarrel" between East and West, the latter always alleging that the East "does not take human personality seriously." "What amounts in Existentialism to an idealization of anxiety is surely no more than a survival of the Protestant notion that it is good to feel guilty, anxious, and serious." This is quite a different thing than accepting that one feels anxious, which breaks the vicious circle of being anxious about being anxious. At the other extreme, if all compound things, including human beings, are in anguish, without abiding self, and impermanent, isn't liberation tantamount to learning not to care? But this is only a stereotype of the Eastern attitude, and Watts wisely rejects it as a "parody of serenity." He suggests we may learn more by examining the great works of art of east and west, such as the faces of Christ and Madonna in Michelangelo's Pieta in St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome, or the statue of Maitreya at Horyu-ji in Nara. Such faces reveal great sadness, resignation, serenity, compassion, and wisdom, all at the same time, yet without any trace of guilt or apprehension. He opines that such faces, far from representing divine and impossible-to-attain states, are similar to the faces of many people when they are dying. Watts then hypothesizes that in death many people experience "the curious sensation not only of accepting but of having willed everything that has happened to them." (134)

[muthuvel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This work of Alan Watts is the closest one to the academic essence, I gathered it from the goodreads circle since this has been my first read of him and it took a month to complete a book of 160 pages. Obviously I'm not going to pretend I understood everything.

Watts compares the Western 'scientific' tradition of Psychotherapy with the Eastern traditions of Vedanta, Yoga, Taoism, and draw parallels I'm their objective of 'liberating' people, working inferences, distorted misunderstandings and challenges in the process of 'liberation.'

"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 been interested in changing the consciousness of peculiarly disturbed individuals. The disciplines of Buddhism and Taoism are concerned with changing the consciousness of normal, socially adjusted people."

With the notions of his contemporary academics in various fields of sociology, anthropology, philosophy and psychology, he develops a claim that liberation is not of metaphysical means but culturally / socially imposed. He also makes sure that the liberation doesn't let the person (or Bodhisattva) liberate from physical bound or heavenly supernatural powers but let the person see the reality belong in a non-attached state of oneness breaking the distinction of agent body duality and in primal narcissism with surrounding, leading to a conscious awareness of one where there'll be no 'self' and 'other.'


"..the maya or unreality lies not in the physical world but in the concepts or thought forms by which it is described, it is clear that maya refers to social institutions — to language and logic and their constructs — and to the way in which they modify our feeling of the world."

The problem he finds with western tradition is that the dependency of a repressed ego agency guiding another analysand to get through and accept the nature of his indistinguishable unconscious and conscious generating a state of one upmanship and double bind because of the ego nature conflicts. The conflict also arises when he brings the vulnerable rudimentary postulates of scientific tradition. He washes out some of the challenges and discrepancies in the tradition of philosophy that the idea of mind body duality propagated from Aristotle, Descartes and Kant still haunting the fields of Anthropology, Psychology and almost every discipline of social sciences if not the Sciences in general.

With the context to the Jungian Analytical Psychology, he says, "The real problem is to put these disciplines at the disposal of spontaneity. For when we have Eros dominated by reason instead of Eros expressing itself with reason, we create a culture that is simply against life, in which the human organism has to submit more and more to the needs of mechanical organization, to postpone enjoyment in the name of an ever more futile utility."

One of the problems he finds with eastern traditions is that most of them have distorted understanding to the extent most of the spiritual gurus contract their own traditions filling themselves with vanity and authority. He says, Eastern philosophies were most often misconceived (sometimes done deliberately giving rise to esotericism) by Eastern Philosophers.

As an end note, Watts concludes blending all the crucial field studies of western tradition and eastern way by saying that not to be is the only way to be, an existence of spontaneity (or paradoxical if not approached by experience.)

"In such a morality the function of play is to make work tolerable, and work is a burden, not because it requires more effort than play, but because it is a contest with death. Work as we know it is contaminated with the fear of death, for work is what must be done in order to survive, and to survive, to go on, is the ultimate and irreducible necessity. Why is it not obvious that to make survival necessary is to make it a burden? Life is above all a spontaneous process, and, as we have seen, to command spontaneity, to say that one must live, is the basic contradiction imposing the double-bind on us all."

Clearly it has been an absolutely delightful in the journey of traveling with Alan Watts. The way he blends things and still making sense is something I feel phenomenal. I'm definitely looking up for more of his works for he speaks to me and I'm able to make sense with the experience.

[Hameed Younis · Rating 3 out of 5]

شعرت بالتوهان اثناء القراءة! لا أعلم ماذا كان يريد الكاتب أن يصبو إليه في منتصف الكتاب إلى الأخير؟ أين المقاربة التي وعد أن يصل إليها بين الفكر الشرقي والغربي في العلاج النفسي؟

[Meg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oye, well, I’m not sure where to begin. I read this with a grain of salt knowing Alan watts had no psychotherapy background. He is an expert in Eastern religions, and knows the religions well. I enjoyed his “judo” analogies about the self and ideas of the ego. He went deeper into the concepts and put together some quandaries I sometimes struggle with. Don’t get me wrong, I’m absolutely still lost but I enjoyed the playful “ego” chess game. In terms of psychotherapy and Eastern religions, I have always found similarities, they come together naturally. To quote Alan,
“The psychotherapist is perfectly in accord with the ways of liberation in describing the goal of therapy as individuation (Jung), self-actualization (Maslow), functional autonomy (Allport), or creative selfhood (Adler), but every plant that is to come to its full fruition must be embedded in the soil, so that as its stem ascends the whole earth and reaches up to the sun”. These are found not through our own uniqueness or separateness but through our connection with the environment and those around us.

I enjoyed his ideas of spontaneity, following the Toa through Wu wei (non effort action, the course of nature), and his countless quotes from various ageless souls around the world. He compares Wu wei with the non-directive therapy of Carl Roger. The therapist plays a passive role by not assuming he knows what is wrong, rather by restating what the patient says in a more clear and concise way. This allows for patients to better understand their own “made up” problems and to find a solution for themselves. This puts trust in the idea of people having the wisdom they seek innately. Like the Zen master with his monk, the patient just needs some prodding to discover the answers for themselves.

After saying that, I did have moments when I wanted to say” fuck you Alan Watts”. He goes into some of Jung and Freud’s theories of psychoanalysis, and thinks he knows better than Jung did. He leans closer to Freud’s versions of Eros over logos, which is totally cool and all, but maybe at some point we should discuss all the cocaine Freud inhaled. I mean, honestly, Freud was right about a lot of things and I do agree with the Eros being repressed from society, that’s right on, but Jung had some stellar points as well. Jung had been a medical doctor during WW2, he had treated 100’s of patients for psychosis. Alans version of human beings following the “natural way” is good for normal everyday people, but not for people actually being treated with psychosis (I mean obviously it could work for some people, but….). Not for the people who have seen babies killed. Not for the people who have seen WW2 type evil, or for people who “naturally” want to kill people. Jung emphasized balance, a lot like Taoism, and he actually got a lot of his ideas from the Eastern religions. Jung’s points were to be aware of your inner monsters so they don’t control you. He thought violence came from primitive archetypes (which is an entire book of its own, read it). He valued the Eros as well, he used art and spirituality as therapy tools. In reality, we know any one person is capable of extremely sadistic acts. Science has learned a lot about hypo-arousal, PTSD and psychopaths. Alan states violence comes from contradictions between your true self and what society expects from you. He lectures saying our true self will always be uncomfortable with-in societal norms. I feel like that idea is right but not as an opposition to Jung. In this book Alan rambles on about Jung being wrong and himself being right, but I truly don’t see how one opposes the other. The whole section made me irritable. I swear he must have been half stoned during some parts of the book, he starts on one topic then jumps to something unrelated. I wonder if he is relying on the reader not knowing enough to catch his incoherent rambles. This guy really is a good lecturer though; I mean there is some really good stuff in this book too. He talks about subliminal affects from society before subliminal ideas were known. To quote him, “when, therefore, I feel that “I” am knowing or controlling myself-my cortex- I should recognize that I am actually being controlled by other people’s words and gestures masquerading as my inner or better self”. A lot of the book is really thought provoking. I enjoyed 75% of it. I’ve become a cruel critic over the years though.

[Mack · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm really glad I got the stick out of my ass and started listening to / reading Alan Watts. For so long, I wrote him off because the fans of his I knew were also the type to recommend burning sagebrush in my house to ward off evil spirits. This book, more than any of his others I've come across, cements just how anti-woo he was. The beauty, to me, of Eastern religion and philosophy is the lack of mumbo jumbo at its core—there's obviously still plenty, but the basic message is very pragmatic and verifiable through observation of empirical reality. Watts lets you see under the hood of both how and why Eastern ways of liberation and Western psychoanalysis lead to greater clarity about oneself and the world around us all. It almost feels like a Penn & Teller trick—he exposes exactly how this stuff produces valuable and beneficial change in human beings and that somehow makes it all the more mystifying and awe-inspiring. Highly recommend it, especially if you're skeptical of Watts himself or Eastern thought in general.

[Marshall · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of Alan Watts' more mediocre books, correlating Eastern philosophy of liberation with Western 70's-era psychology. Its main premise is that both address the suffering caused by the "double-bind" of social conditioning, which is basically the demand that we follow a strict system of rules while also being genuine, an impossible contradiction of expectations. This book is very old for such a new field as psychology, so it's limited to the theories of Freud, Jung, Carl Rogers, existentialism, and gestalt therapy. Most of what we know about the human mind came after this book was written, so this book definitely counts as outdated.

This book has its moments. There were a few explanations that I found extremely interesting and helpful, particularly the chapter, The Ways of Liberation, which explained nirvana and rebirth in such reasonable terms. Otherwise, most of this book was drab.

[Alexandru · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes it's hard to pierce through the words of Alan Watts. But I quite enjoyed this book, a thought provoking discussion comparing Western psychology and Eastern philosophy and religion.

[Irene Jurna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dit boek is een goede keus voor een boekenclub. In zes korte hoofdstukken legt Watts het verschil uit tussen Oosterse en Westerse psychotherapie. De inhoud en compacte tekst maken het een goed boek om samen te bestuderen.

Een voorbeeld van een zin die ik besprak met mijn boekenclub, een zin die bij mij bleef hangen: ‘’(...) Every plant that is to come to its full fruition must be embedded in the soil, so that as its stem ascends the whole earth reaches up to the sun.’’

Deze eenheid, van de plant en de aarde, of van mijzelf en mijn omgeving, is waar het boek naar wijst. En als je opkijkt van de pagina’s dan gebeurt het misschien... dat (je) de eenheid leeft.

[Dank Pieter Aart en Esther voor de boekenclub]

[Noel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been lost recently and I have found myself in this book. Thank you Alan Watts for the perspective. It is a reminder of the most simple truth: that life is life, here and now, using copious amounts of dense research and specific examples and links to language, art, history, religion and politics to feed the intellectual and rational mind. So happy I randomly picked this book up off my grandfather's shelf.

[S · Rating 4 out of 5]

This guy knows what he's talking about without offending his reader (me).
Cautions against bastardising Eastern traditions for Western gains and well...many moons later and everyone in the West thinks they know what mindfulness is; division of camp between 'being a sham' or 'my way or the highway'.
People of the West, read this. People of the East, read this.

[James Rhydderch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another fascinating read by Alan Watts with gems of wisdom throughout. Its fair to say that he's completely changed the way that I see the world. That being said, it is definitely the most difficult read of all the Alan Watts books I've read so far (Wisdom of Insecurity, Out of Your Mind, and Nature Man and Woman).

[Anders · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very stimulating book, it took me a while to get through because it's dense and jam-packed with thoughtfulness. In comparing "eastern spiritual practices" and "western psychotherapy", attempting to show a way beyond the double-bind of erroneous mental captivity one easily finds oneself tied to, he comes up with the most poignant and sharp ways of expressing himself. Man, can he branch out! Two quotes: "Life is above all a spontaneous process, and, as we have seen, to command spontaneity, to say that one must live, is the basic contradiction imposing the double-bind on us all."
"Ordinary language refers to life, but music is living. But life itself is made to behave as ordinary language when it is lived for a purpose beyond itself, when the present serves the future, or when the body is exploited for the purposes of the soul. Such a way of life is therefore "beside itself"-insane- and because it is being made to behave as language and words it becomes as empty as "mere words". Read this!

[Hamed · Rating 5 out of 5]

كتاب خيلي عالي بود و نكات بسيار عالي و بكري در آن مطرح شده بود كه خيلي از تناقضات را حل مي كند ولي ترجمه آن خيلي ثقيل بود و احتياج به صبر زيادي دارد تا از سر بالايي هاي آن رد شد اما من بدليل زمينه ها و تجارب شخصي خودم نظر نويسنده را خيلي خوب درك كردم در كل يكي از بهترين هايي بود كه خوانده ام
ضمنا مترجم توضيحات خوبي را راجع مكاتب شرق و غرب در آخر كتاب اضافه كرده كه بعضي از آنها واقعا عالي مختصر و مفيد است

[Nic · Rating 3 out of 5]

what little of this book i was able to focus on was well-liked. the rest of it was cool too, i just didn't get it. not the authors fault.

[Travis Hosgood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Life is not a problem to be solved. Loved the focus on social double binds and how a therapist, or zen master will essentially become a mirror for the student. What a marvelous author watts is.

[Nick Kroger · Rating 4 out of 5]

At a glance, it’s easy to assume this project by Watts will be a “compare/contrast” that fringes too heavily on the “eastern” (if we can even call it that) ways of liberation. However, what actually takes place is a serious inquiry (almost a “intervention” if you will) to both psychotherapy and any sort of “spiritual practice”. He approaches both disciplines as if they were separate functions converging on the same point.

In other words, this exploration seeks to diagnose (to use the psychological term) the philosophies of Freud, Jung, Erickson, and Piaget in hopes to identify their shortcomings (of which, he finds many. It is a relief to know that he was heavily criticizing Freud before it was popular and compulsory in Academia). The “ways of liberation” are treated with a similar inquiry, and similar results are found: their philosophies are partial and often reinstating a “double-bind” just as “orthodox psychology” does.

Throughout his underlying inquiry, the threads of an argument wind together which land on the topic of Eros. For both psychotherapy and “The Ways of Liberation” see this basic human capacity through a glass darkly. They constellate “Eros” as “blind lust” (Frued) or, in the more conservative realms of Buddhism a “attachment” that keeps one bound in the illusory wheel of samsara (suffering).

If we are to break the wheel (*GoT reference not intended, but welcomed), we must acknowledge that Eros PRECEDES any sort of linguistic law, rule, moralism, or science. It is the energy of essence of human action. It comes before knowledge and awareness. It is the finger pointing at the moon, signifying nothing other than itself.

In a rather ingenious way, Watts imagines an “Ethic of Eros” in which “reason/logic” is the “feedback” that comes *after* our playful and erotic energy (obviously, beyond simple “sexual Eros”). This wider view of Eros (which, for a deeper dive y’all should read bell hooks) provides a joyous acceptance of ourselves and our environment. It is an awareness that “organisms” are inseparable from our environment. In Catholic terminology it is a “return to god”, in Zen it is the remembrance of our “original face”. As far as psychotherapy is concerned: perhaps it is when we realize that even though we cannot “rid” ourselves of our ego, so too, it can never be our master.

[Jeffrey Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Writing half a century ago, too many of Watt's contributions here have been forgotten or remain ignored by the fields psychology, education, counseling, and Western society writ large.

Dear westerners, kill the ego already!

In Psychotherapy East & West, Watts continues his challenge to the toxic mindset we westerners have inherited from our Judeo-Christian forebearers, particularly the uniquely American heritage found in 'The Protestant Work Ethic.' We create more problems for ourselves by asking the wrong questions. We reach for personal identity, ego-gratification, external validation from society, forgiveness for sins we haven't committed or have been deluded into believing have any metaphysical significance.

He articulates how psychotherapy, in the tradition of psychoanalysts like Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Erich Fromm, and Karen Horney, of all western endeavorers came closest to achieving what the Eastern ways of liberation can. Watts labors to describe what he feels to be "the most fruitful way in which Eastern and Western psychotherapies can fertilize one another. For not only have they much to learn from each other, but also it seems...that the comparison brings out hidden and highly important aspects of both." Ever humble and cautious in his statements, Watts blushes that he does not "believe that the Eastern disciplines are the last word in sacrosanct and immemorial wisdom such that the world must come and sit humbly at the feet of their masters. Nor do I feel that there is a gospel according to Freud, or to Jung, in which the great psychological truths are forever fixed. The aim of this book is not to say the last word on the subject, but to provoke thought and experiment." Watts considered himself a spiritual entertainer and not a sage or purveyor of truths.

Buddhism, Taoism, Vedanta, and Yoga are ways of life, and not religions or philosophies. They are the Eastern equivalent of psychotherapy, or at least the approaches most akin to it. "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 journey is inward, psychological. Westerners are far too narrowly focused on bringing about external improvements to "change the world." This reinforces the western illusion that the self is separate from the world: object and environment are the same organism. We are the world. "Though it cannot as yet be shown that a society is a body of people in the same way a man is a body of cells, it is clear that any social group is something more than the sum of its members." Society is not a thing or a detached object either though: "as a pattern of behavior, society is above all a system of people in communication maintained by consistent action." We are not objects or subjects. We are mediums through which patterns pass, emotions, thoughts, and actions.

Pschotherapy's primary task is "to bring about a reconciliation between individual feeling and social norms without, however, sacrificing the integrity of the individual...[it] tries to help the individual to be himself and to go it alone without giving unnecessary offense to his community, to be in the world (of social convention) but not of the world." Society has scripts for our lives and psychotherapy aims to relieve us of those burdens, although ultimately falls short as it then turns to reinforce egoistic thinking. This is where our neuroses manifest.

Eastern ways of liberation most closely identify with Jung's notion of individuation, Maslow's view of self-actualization, Allport's concept of functional autonomy, and Adler's idea of creative selfhood.

For such a short book, it packs a lot of high concepts into it. Watts is difficult to fully grasp at any moment, but Psychotherapy East and West is one of his more challenging and academic books, probably geared toward an audience better read than myself. It helped me crack open a bit more the chest containing the ways of liberation, but I have a lot of unlearning to observe before Watt's approach to existence reveals itself to me. Here are some of his gems.

On the Protestant Ethic: "Is not this, after all, the voice of the Protestant conscience? Man is inherently lazy; by nature, by original sin, he will always slide back into dissolution unless there is something to goad him, and thus there must never, never be anything but quite temporary rest from the task of working out his salvation with fear and trembling."

On living for the future: "In all directions we use the means of life to justify the ends: we read or go to concerts to improve our minds; we relax to improve our work; we worship God to improve our morals; we even get drunk in order to forget our worries. Everything that is done playfully, without ulterior motive and second thought, makes us feel guilty and it is even widely believed that such unmotivated action is impossible. You must have a reason for what you do! But the statement is more of a command than an observation...if we could see ourselves whole, as differing positions in the unified field of the world, we should see that we are unmotivated--for the whole floats freely and does not rest upon something beyond itself."

On anxiety and guilt: "What amounts in Existentialism to an idealization of anxiety is surely no more than a survival of the Protestant notion that is is good to feel guilty, anxious, and serious."

On liberation and progress: "...the more you believe that liberation is something which you can get, the harder you will have to work. Liberation is attractive to the degree that one's ego seems to be a problem."

On morality: "It has always been man's custom to look for the authority for ethical standards outside ethics, to the laws of nature or the laws of God. We have never felt fully free to base our ethical principles simply upon what we would like to do and to have done to us, for fear that such experimental conduct might injure us in unforeseen ways."

Watts concludes that "psychotherapy and liberation are completed in the moment when shame and guilt collapse, when the organism is no longer compelled to defend itself for being an organism, and when the individual is ready to own his unconscious behavior."

Life is play. Don't take life too seriously. Trust your nature. Forget about identity or self-image. Follow your bliss. Don't pay too much attention to social scripts. Don't try to force outcomes. Go with the flow. All of these platitudes hold much deeper meanings for me now.

Just. Be.

[Aart · Rating 5 out of 5]

In his book, Alan Watts, builds up to a cresendo of conclusion and non-conclusion. About how western psychotherapy is just a game, part of the way, towards, and away from liberation. Freeing patients from taking the play of the ego seriously or building up Eros behind the dam, generation momentum towards the breaking of the dam. Both roads might cause different relationships to arise and might result different ways (or amounts) of suffering.

I like how Watts uses very precise wording to express an understanding that to him must be childishly clear. Reading this book will put yourself into a double bind about liberation and psychotherapy. Reading it you might develop judgement or a sense of onderstanding about their differences only to be reconsidering or reversing your own stance towards either, a moment later.

To critics of Alan Watt's life, Shunryu Suzuki said: "You completely miss the point about Alan Watts! You should notice what he has done. He is a great bodhisattva." Whatever Alan Watts has done in this book, he did it in quite a complex and precise way and I suspect him of playing his own games. A beautiful and forceful game in this case. If you are interested in sharp thoughts on psychochology and the eastern way of liberation, you will most likely enjoy this book.

(4 instead of 5 stars for lingering and complex writing, asking patience of the reader, ending up at 5 stars because of the content of his writing)

[Dani Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

this book is so heavy, i got lost so many times in order to understand it. naturally, you have to have an inkling of how the west and how the east define their methods in psychotherapy. there is a lot of discussion on how to deal with the ego, the role of society, being enlightened, being humbled, the guru and the student etc. References mostly to Jung, Freud, Tao, and Buddhism.

the book discusses the stark contrast between the two but considering the date of its publication, I wonder how relevant it is when it comes to the modern age approach where a lot of people are mixing Yoga in their therapy.

[Rayhan Ghanchi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Think I’d have appreciated Watts’ insights more if I knew what was going on

[Annette Duffy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book required for a yoga teacher training course, I completed. It is tagged as seminal work and I understand why, however it was difficult to read and I had to remain disciplined...

[Gary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I initially rated it 3 stars, but since then I have been thinking about it quite a bit, and anything that sticks with me this long after reading it deserves at least 4 stars. The first chapter and the last are keepers. In fact the last chapter was such a doozy that I had to read bits and pieces out loud to my wife. The middle section was a bit dull for my taste (hence the initial 3 stars).

The book is a comparison of 2 ways of self-liberation; the western way (psychotherapy, with a focus on Jung and Freud) and the Eastern way (the eastern religion-philosophies of Buddhism, Taoism, Vedanta, and Yoga). At the heart of the problem is self-contradiction, and his point of view is that western religion contributes to self-contradiction and hatred of one's own nature rather than self-liberation. To that regard he says "the minister might become an extraordinarily helpful person if he could see through his own religion."

After a cursory glance at western religion Watts then turns to Society, and here he provides what I think is the best definition of society that i've come across:

"As a patter of behavior, society is avocet all a system of people in communication maintained by consistent action. To keep the system going, what is done has to be consistent with what has been done. The pattern is recognizable as a patter because it goes ahead with reference to its own past; it is just this that establishes what we call order and identity, a situation in which trees do not suddenly turn into rabbits and in which on man does not suddenly behave like another so that we do not know who he is. "Who" is consistent behavior."

He goes on to say that the "maintenance of society would be simple enough if human beings were content just to survive. In this case they would be simply animal, and it would be enough to eat, sleep, and reproduce. But if these are their basic needs, human beings go about getting them in the most complicated way imaginable." It's funny because it's true.

Watts says "when we say that an organism likes to go on living, or that it goes on living because it likes it, what evidence is there for this "like" except that it does in fact go on living - until it doesn't? Similarly, to say that we always choose what we prefer says no more that that we always choose what we choose." That's easy enough to follow, but then he says that the "transformation of food and air into the pattern of the organism is what we call existence." and then "to say that the organism needs food is only to say that it is food. To say that it eats because it is hungry is only to say that it says when it is ready to eat." In a way I get it... I was especially thinking about this part a few days ago at the wild animal park when the guides kept talking about animals "liking" this, and the "purpose" of adaptations, which, I get why they use the terms, but there is no "purpose" in an adaptation - no end goal. The anthropomorphization of it all bugs me. In Watts's words, "the consistencies or regularities of nature are patterns that do occur, not patterns that must occur."

Anyways Watts says that society is essentially a game we all play, and if you want to belong to society you must play the game, and "the first rule of the game is this game is serious, i.e. not a game."

One thing that stuck with me is how man is a self-frustrating organism, "For example, one of our greatest assets for survival is our sense of time, our marvelously sensitive memory, which enables us to predict the future from the pattern of the past. Yet awareness of time ceases to be an asset when concern for the future makes it almost impossible to live fully in the present, or when increasing knowledge of the future makes it increasingly certain that beyond a brief span we have no future."

Watts says that our self-frustrating activity is what the buddhists actually mean by samsara (the cycle of death and reincarnation). In other words, it is a metaphor and later dedicates a whole chapter to the idea of eastern religious beliefs being more metaphor than literal belief. But sometimes literal belief. But really just metaphor. Except when they really believe it.

A major focus of the book, is the separation of ourselves from our egos, and this is what I struggled with. I sort of get it, but I don't know how to do it, but that wasn't the point anyways. It wasn't meant to be an instruction manual. Still in chapter one and he turns to the classic problem of free will and responsibility - he asks the question but never actually answers it, which bugged me. He says "The problem is, of course, that if men are patterns of action and not agents, and if they individual and the world act with each other, mutually, so that action does not originate in either, who is to be blamed when things go wrong? [my question exactly!!]

Anyways, the book goes on. Here are the parts I underlined:

On perception:
"Our perception of the the world is relative to our neurological structure and the ways in which social conditioning has taught us to see. Because the latter can to some extent be changed, it means something to say that it is imaginary."

On Society:
"Society is always insecure and thus hostile to anyone who challenges its conventions directly. To disabuse oneself of accepted mythologies without becoming the vicim of other people's anxiety requires considerable tact."

On positive dishonesty:
"A Japanese coastal village was once threatened by a tidal wave, but the wave was sighted in advance, far out on the horizon, by a lone farmer in the rice fields on the hillside above the village. At once he set fire to the fields, and the villagers who came swarming up to save their crops were saved from the flood. His crime of arson is like the trickery of the guru, the doctor, or the psychotherapist in persuading people to try to solve a false problem by acting consistency upon its premises."

On trusting your own nature:
"If men [...] do not trust their own nature or the universe of which it is a part, how can they trust their mistrust? Going deeper, what does it mean either to trust or to mistrust, accept or reject oneself, if one cannot actually stand apart from oneself as, say thinker and thoughts?"

On problems in nature:
"The Taoist's position [...] is that while there may be logical problems there are no natural, physical problems; nature or Tao is not pursuing any purpose, and therefore is not meeting any difficulties.

On fake humility:
"There is a certain contradiction in saying "I am liberated" if the ego is unreal. But there is also the false modesty of so imitating humility that it becomes more important to be humble that to be liberated. Golden chains are as binding as chains of iron."

Parody of insight:
"The stereotyped attitudes of a culture are, of course, always a parody of the insights of its more gifted members. Not caring is the parody of serenity, just as worrying is the parody of concern."

On the organism and its environment being one:
"The question as to which side of a curved surface moves first is always unanswerable."

On morality:
"Practical morality, whether Judaic or Christian, capitalist or communist, is a provision for the future - a perpetual renunciation or postponement. This is a future which no one is ever going to be able to enjoy because, by the time it arrives, everyone will have lost the ability to live in the present. Thus the test of liberation is not whether it issues in good works; the test of good works in whether they issue in liberation."

On repression, war, and rage:
"In no sense are the wars and revolutions of modern times examples of what happens when the civilized repression is removed. They are the outbursts of sadistic rage for which the civilization of repression must always provide; they are its price, but a technological civilization can no longer afford its price."

On hard work as a virtue:
"Technology is not permitted to abolish labor because "... of all things, hard work has become a virtue instead of the curse which it was always advertise to be by our remote ancestor.... Our children should be prepared to bring their children up so the won't have to work as a neurotic necessity. The necessity to work is a neurotic symptom. It is a crutch. It is an attempt to make oneself feel valuable even through there is no particular need for one's working."

"When technology is used - quite absurdly - to increase employment rather than to get rid of it, work becomes "busywork" [amen to that!] - an artificial creation of ever more meaningless routines, and interminable production of things that are not so much luxuries for physical gratification than pretentious trash." [OUCH. I love it.]

On bougie zombies:
"As Marcuse says, "to link performances on assembly lines, in offices and shops with instinctual needs is to glorify dehumanization as pleasure." The type of human being who submits to this culture is, almost literally a zombie. He is docile and "mature" in the style of our drab and dismal bourgeoisie; he is quite incapable of gaiety or exuberance; he believes that he is dancing when he is shuffling around a room; he thinks he is being entertained when he is passively watching a couple of muscle-bound thugs in a wrestling match; he thinks he is being scholarly and intellectual when he is learning to speak with modesty and "all due reservations" about some minor Elizabethan playwright; worse still, he thinks he is revealing against all this when grow a beard and gets himself a dingy "pad" in the slums." [OUCH! Who doesn't love a good smackdown?]

On spontaneity:
"The absence of spontaneity at almost any gathering of psychotherapists is one of the sorriest sights in the world."

On moralists:
"There was never a moralist at any time who was not certain that things were going from bad to worse."

On grammar nazis:
"The task of the grammarian and lexicographer is to maintain orderly change - not to lay down the law, but to stabilize linguistic change by keeping all members of a society informed as to what rules are being used."

[Tanya McGinnity · Rating 4 out of 5]

With its initial release way back in 1961, Psychotherapy East and West by noted philosopher Alan Watts sought to examine the parallels between Western psychotherapy and Eastern philosophy. I must say it has aged well despite both areas of his interest transforming greatly in the 50+ years since the book first hit the presses.

Psychotherapy East and West focuses on the methods and objectives of both segments and how they converge and contrast with one other. Watts’ overall goal with this book was to bring both together in a new way and have both parties examine each another – or as he suggests – take a look at how they can “fertilize each other.”

He begins with a nod towards the contributions that Eastern philosophy has made to advance the domain of Western psychology. As one would expect, there is plenty of mention of the ego in here – either Freudian-flavoured, or as it is viewed in Eastern philosophy. The transformation of one’s consciousness is advanced as what both areas have in common. Be it a guru, minister – or a therapist, it’s all about liberation.The therapist is concerned with helping the individual resolve their personal feelings with the social norms that surround them. It���s the wire-walk between being oneself and not offending those around them. For the guru or master, it’s helping the adept see how samsara may come from trying to contort oneself to fit into society’s rules and identifying greatly with the ‘I’ at the centre of it all.

Freud and Jung are the core individuals who Watt’s explores in this book (makes sense). As far as Buddhism, the concepts of suffering, samsara, reincarnation, liberation, karma, bodhisattvas, the ego, sense perceptions and name dropping of several key figures occurs. Much is said about the process of both psychotherapy and interactions with one’s guru. I personally found it quite interesting to see the links that Watts finds between the two.

But…

The book jumps around a bit in my opinion. I found myself thinking I had understood the first few chapters – to then getting lost in the woods in several areas towards the middle and end of it. I approached Psychotherapy East and West with the view that I would take what I could from it and not sweat what seemed to be over my head or rambling. I still feel satisfied having read this book and figure that maybe someday I’ll go back for a second read if Watt’s koan calls out to me!

Overall, this was a very interesting read. I have an affinity for reading psych books – and well, give me a great Buddhist book any day and I’m in! With both of these subjects examined by such a revered scholar as Watts, Psychotherapy East and West deftly covers each with the respect they deserve. Neophytes may find the subject matter a bit heady (confession- there were several areas where I was in deep waters) – but readers are certain to find something that will speak to them within its pages.

If you are interested in a deeper exploration of Psychotherapy East and West by Alan Watts, I would encourage you to visit the blog Going for Refuge as it is currently exploring the book chapter by chapter.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the first chapter of Psychotherapy East and West he skates along big ideas, and typically in academia you're supposed to get into smaller chunks to make sure you've got it right. In some ways Watts is kind of refreshing and there are interesting insights, like that you're going to have to get into social commentary in psychotherapy.

The second chapter is a mash up of physical theories, Wittgenstein and anthropology. The question whether good creates evil was raised, that was my favorite part because it reminds me of the movies MegaMind and Watchmen, who have that theme as well.

Parts of the chapter, I was scratching my head as he switched from topic to topic without transition sentences. It's a kind of riff, and you could see why he was popular in the counter culture when that type of writing was more acceptable. He had some interesting theological views, that in the book of Job, the devil is an adjudicating angel. And he notes he could never get angry at Judas because he just followed Jesus' orders. He thinks schizophrenia is caused by double binds, strong pulls in opposite directions. When the mother tells the little boy, "you don't want to play in that muddy puddle," when the kid really does.

The third chapter on liberation is a kind of history of eastern religions. Watts takes Madhyamaka as the form of Buddhism he is taking about when he generalizes about Buddhism, Vedanta and Taoism. It's an odd choice, when he's speaking in a kind of perfection of wisdom way of Chan.

Watts talks about the caste system of Hinduism, but forgets to mention the "untouchables", the Dalits who have used Buddhism as part of their liberation theology in present times, since Ambedkar converted to Buddhism. Ambedkar died in 56, so the movement had been going for 5 years at least. And yet I don't think right or wrongness in his generalizations and characterizations touches his arguments much, such as they are. Watts' style of writing is a kind of challenge in every statement, a kind of interpretation of a philosophy that is at once hard to evaluate, and bold sounding.

The liberation chapter could almost break the chapter up, because he goes on a long riff about reincarnation which is fairly interesting. Watts suggests that all the magic and miracles are for the weak minded. He points out that westerners see reincarnation as a good thing, where as in the east it is meant to be liberated from.

He compares Taoism and Confucianism, then compares Taoism to Rogerian psychotherapy. He looks at the influence of Ch'an Buddhism from Taoism. Then he throws in a dash of neuropsychology. It's a heady brew to gulp down, but occasionally there's an interesting sentence, and a new way of looking at things.

Many times I find myself asking about a statement about Jung or the other topics, "Is that really true?" I have no way of verifying many of the wide claims Watts makes.

I like the concept of distance of excessive reverence: The further away the prophet, the more reverential there must be, and thus a vibrant tradition "dies of respectability."

The question of sexuality is discussed, but he quotes Vedanta, which I'm not as interested in. The Mahayana is supposed to enter the world and therefore one is more likely to be married as a Mahayana Buddhist.

A tour de force is what they call these kinds of books, because it assumes a lot of background and interpretations on that background which are hard to know how true they are. There's a large grand comparison of liberation east and west, which is what the title is, so there you have it.

Chapter 3 starts out comparing scientific views that are experience far for humans, and that it's not going to be the road to liberation except that it does give insight into some hooey. Then he runs through the confusion between western "ego" and eastern "ego".

Watts discusses difference between Freud and Jung, and is frustrated that even though the Jungians learned a lot of eastern religion, they didn't seem to grasp it beyond psychology. Through that section, I was thinking about how Stephen Mitchell has his grand unification theory of relational psychotherapy, and that drive theory was overturned. I bet Watts would have loved Relational Concepts of Psychoanalysis. I think more about The Denial of Death, Donald Winnicott, Melanie Klein, Fromm, existential psychotherapy, Kohut and self psychology, systems theory, interpersonal psychotherapy, and attachment theory. Freud is a reference point, but his grand theory has been debunked of late, in favor of relational psychoanalysis.

Watts seems to see how the denial of death is in play, says you can't live unless you face death. Kafka is often quoted that the meaning of life is death. Watts is also into field theory which is a close cousin to systems theory.

Much intellectual discourse is tilting at windmills. Nowadays in NYC most of the psychotherapy is done by social workers, who have a kind of curious and supportive approach, and few have further training. Maybe they have read The Drama of the Gifted Child.

Positive psychology is just starting out, not just about the deficit model. We have a long way to go. The conflict between the pleasure principle and the reality principle is something I think a lot about. Watts sees the double binds of cultural institutions is at the heart of the ishkabibble. The teachings of the Buddha are a way to enlightenment and liberation!

Then he shifts to existential psychotherapy. That is not going to understand the Buddhist project either. Watts is very quotable: "The stereotypical attitudes of a culture are, of course, always a parody of the insights of the more gifted members." Creating a meaningful life is a better project than a happy life, to me, but liberation is something different all together.

He explores the idea that we in the west must be anxious, guilty and insecure. Protestantism infects our thinking whether we're protestant or not. Everything in modern society conspires against liberation. He has a dim view of history, almost likens it to a hoarder of strings and rubber bands and whatnot. Every moment is a rebirth of possibility to be creative and not reactive.

Watts describes one of the fetters: that life is nothing and life is eternal are two ends of the spectrum that are to be avoided.

He seems to know about Sullivan and Frida Fromm-Reichmann, a contemporary psychiatrist of Freud from Germany, who emigrated to the USA during WW2. When you think of it, Watts is pretty well read for someone who is not a psychotherapist. I'm warming to this book as I read it, and get used to his style of writing. Next blog on the book will be about the rest of the book.

This book seems to get better going forward. The Countergame chapter is an intense critique of psychotherapy, and presents it as similar to the guru relationship. That psychotherapy comes crashing down, implies also that Vajrayana Buddhism comes crashing down. I felt it was a strong critique of both.

On the psychotherapy front, he wonders if we can truly free associate, and if we could, why would we do that with a stranger? In the end we have conflict between society and our impulses. The therapist can be anti-society, or he can buy into "symptoms" and "mental illness". The way to get over mental illness is to accept your feelings, and when you screw up, you are not accepting them. It's hard not to get past a game of one-up-manship.

The discussion of games, made me think about Games People Play, a book that is 60+ years old, and that I read as a teenager, and found it quite bewildering. I hadn't really been that aware of social activity, but on some level the games seemed authoritative the way the writer wrote about them. I think today we would perhaps not put women into such a negative light, for some of the games, it feels dated in my memory, me reading the book 30+ years ago.

I also think of Knots by RD Laing, a very different kind of book, and kind of poetic book about his therapeutic experiences, and the knots people tie them selves up in.

The Countergame chapter is bigger, more of a critique of the knots and games people play in psychotherapy. He bases the chapter on a paper by J. Hailey. When you google that name you can come up with Jay Hailey, a family therapist. A little more looking and indeed his is the author of the essay that Watts quotes in the book, and is collected in a book of collected essays.

Not sure if he is the same one because they don't list publications, only books. He seems family therapy royalty sitting next to Minnuchin. Strategic family therapy sounds like the way child welfare is done today:

A therapist employing strategic therapy must:
Identify solvable problems.
Set goals.
Design interventions to achieve those goals.
Examine the responses.
Examine the outcome of the therapy.

This also seems like a forerunner to the short techniques of cognitive behavioralism. Insurance companies love brief therapy and there's something to be said for a non-endless therapy.

Anyway, I found this chapter interesting, might have to reread this chapter again in the future.

Alan Watts' book Psychotherapy East and West, treats Buddhist liberation as another boondoggle by civilization to tame humans. So you can imagine his last chapter is going to be a bit of a letdown. His suggestion is to dance with life, a full eroticism with all of life and not just the genitals.

He is as usual eminently quotable: "The type of human being who submits to this culture is, almost literally, a zombie." He is talking about the human who submits to technology. At times like these he doesn't nail down his insight cleanly, he is more like a continental philosopher who uses philosophy more like an art, than a logic inquiry. His statements are suggestively artistic.

In another place he quotes a 6000 year old Egyptian he quote from a Fromm book: "Our earth is degenerate...Children no longer obey their parents." Boy, wish everyone heard this. I hear this kind of statement all the time. It comes from nostalgia for a past that didn't exist, like the mother who tells her children she would never do this or that as a child, but really she did.

In the end this book is impressionistic. I can't help but think how Watts ended his life divorced from his wife, fired from his job, living like a total genital hedonist. What he actually did with his ideas does not seem to be where I want to end. His rhetoric can have a liberative feel to it, but it's target is vague and unclear, and does disentangle the bewilderment and confusion, the fog we all walk through in the world we find ourselves in. It does encourage one to believe in themselves and be bold, which might be useful to the insecure. In the end it is an interesting meditation on psychotherapy and the guru relationship, even if it fizzles out, after it gains some momentum.

[Tonny Mustika · Rating 5 out of 5]

First time I've got this book was when I searched for an alternative reading materials for cross-cultural psychology course in my university. initially I was a bit skeptical about the title. Mainly because of the use of dichotomous terminology which splitting 'the East' from 'the West'; this immediately reminded me of Edward Said's Orientalism. But after reading this book until the mid part, I learned that my suspicion was wrong. This book definitely awesome! Personally I thought this book gave me silver lining by summarizes all of my scientific and philosophic interests which scattered before. As a clinical and a social psychologist as well as a practitioner of zen, and also a relativist in cultural view, sometimes I found it difficult to get one philosophical foundation for all of my interests. Usually I groping in the dark. I get messed in the situation that all of that knowledge, understandings, and doctrines I've learned seem just stand separately each other -- like all have some element of truth in itself, but refused to be tied up in a series of thoughts and practices that coherence. After reading this book I learned that long before I thought about this problem-or, in fact, long before I was born - it turns out there was someone who already compiled these in one compact book. So I think this book is answer for many philosophical problems, especially for one who linger between varies thoughts. I'm very grateful for this.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having only a shallow understanding of psychotherapy and not an iota of understanding of eastern philosophy this book to me was a perfect metaphor for a life lived. Did I enjoy it? I think I did. Can I explain what it was all about? Only vaguely but it felt good to have read it. (Well, I cheated and got it on audio as I suspected it would be hard to follow on paper)
I should think that I would derive infinitely more from it if I were to re-read it in 2-3 years time. It's definitely a worthwhile read if at times obscure. For now I will stick to the kiddie pool of Buddhism and Daoism and concentrate on my L3 counselling studies. But I will return to it for sure.

[Ludvig · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read this book dozens of times. Watts speaks from the perspective of someone who gained enlightenment, in the Buddhist sense, and so he speaks very personally about what that means for those of us who are still clinging to our finite selves. His words and concepts help you to peel away some of the masks that cover and obscure the light of your Soul.

[Deb · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Watts' book in the late '60's. It planted seeds of thought that I continue to cultivate to this day. As a died in the wool Westerner, I continue to try (not always successfully) to integrate them. Westerners would all benefit from focusing more on acceptance and appreciation and less than on expectation and accumulation.

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

here is in my opinion all of his work all his books into one little book. from zen to tao from Christianity to Mahayana from judo to Vedanta . he explains in no uncertain terms the mis approach of the west to understand a individual in its dualistic way . its division of labor and specialization and compartmentalization of applied science to grasp what is the mind . highly recommended

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Which of his books to recommend? Such a dilemma but I'll start with this one. He contrasts and compares the East's Buddhism with the West's psychotherapy. Each aims to change a person's concept of self in a particular way, and embodies a critique of the culture it's embedded in.