Category: Blog

For quite some time I have been interested in the relationship between psychotherapy and Buddhism. Perhaps the key thing that Buddhism adds to psychotherapy is the idea that, although therapeutic practice is very important, at the end of the day we must still face the challenge of experiencing and tolerating the powerful feelings that drove us into therapy.  Buddhism brings to this situation the means by which we can accept our ‘negative’ feelings – learn to live with them and, in so doing, experience their diminishment.

Below I quote from Bruce Tift’s book Already Free which addresses this issue:

“As we feel a sense of panic we use a range of coping methods – diversion, splitting, drugs etc. And most of these strategies are based on the conviction that we are not capable of tolerating too much emotional intensity. … The practice is not to manage the intensity, not to heal it, not to understand it; rather, it is to consciously participate in the sensation-level experience of it. … With discipline, however, I might allow myself to feel my intense discomfort, be curious about it, not go into any story about it, and watch while the intensity peaks and then dissolves all by itself. When we can train ourselves to let our intense experience have a life of its own, we discover that there’s no such thing as a permanent feeling.’ (175-6)

Crucial to our capacity to tolerate very panicky feelings is that we have a sense of higher purpose – a sense that life, and that my life, has a purpose. When we are beset by intense fears we need a strong sense of purpose to give us the strength that we need. Typically, when faced with deep suffering, we gain this sense of purpose by turning to spirituality for it is spirituality that provides meaning in the face of the utter meaninglessness of pain and suffering.

I am  not sure that the conventional Buddhist notion of there not being a  self really works. It seems like a doctrine that lacks a good reason. The doctrine (or perhaps more like a dogma?) appears to be more a consequence of another concept rather than having sounds reasons of its own. At a higher level of conceptual priority is the excellent idea that the basic ethic of any religion or philosophy of life should be the reduction of suffering. I fully agree with this aspect of Buddhism. But it then gets developed into the objective of the elimination of all  suffering – hence the concept of Nirvana as a place, or time where suffering no longer exists.

But if Buddhism is wedded to the idea of the possible elimination of all suffering – and that suffering is caused by the self or ego’s clinging and attachment – then eliminating suffering necessitates the elimination of the self. So the concept of the elimination of the self is not particularly driven by empirical observation and psychological argument but by the religious or spiritual necessity of contemplating the possibility of eliminating all suffering.

We might be a whole lot better off if we were to redefine the purpose of Buddhism as being not the elimination of all suffering but the elimination of all unnecessary suffering. This would then eliminate the need to call for the elimination of the self and release it from what feels like outdated metaphysical claims.

I have looked at many definitions of religion and this one by Thomas Nagel works quite well.

‘To better identify the question, we should start with the religious response. There are many religions, and they are very different, but what I have in mind is common to the great monotheisms, perhaps to some polytheistic religions, and even to pantheistic religions that don’t have a god in the usual sense. It is the idea that there is some kind of all-encompassing mind or spiritual principle in addition to the minds of individual human beings and other creatures—and that this mind or spirit is the foundation of the existence of the universe, of the natural order, of value, and of our existence, nature, and purpose. The aspect of religious belief I am talking about is belief in such a conception of the universe, and the incorporation of that belief into one’s conception of oneself and one’s life.’  [Nagel – Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament; pp.44-5]

Observed from the outside counselling and psychotherapy appear to be fragmented. This state of affairs enables the contradictory trends of single schools or traditions claiming a certain level of uniqueness for their methodology, whilst at the same time individual practitioners create their own methodological cocktails from competing traditions. What is absent is a general theoretical framework. I believe that I can present a reasonable case for proposing that there is a viable framework for considering the purpose of all counselling and psychotherapy.