Buddhist and Western Psychology: A Comparative and Historical Approach

Catalog description

The course introduces and contrasts basic concepts of Buddha’s psychology of liberation with the modern depth psychologies of Freud and Jung. Buddhist psychology was born from Buddha’s personal awakening experience and had the effect of bridging the social divide between the privileged and working classes of 5th century BCE Northern India transforming the political milieu of the time. Buddha’s psychology of liberation offers the possibility of easing similar class tension in our time. Special attention will be given to theories of the self in Buddhist and Western texts, for it is the idea and belief in an unchanging ego that has emerged a debate between Buddhist and Western forms of psychology. While Western psychology attributes the deficiency of the ego/ self to the failure of upbringing, Buddhist psychology takes the impermanent, changing and unsatisfactory conditions of life as its starting point. Our goal in this class is to bring the Buddhist notion of healing into conversation with the models and strategies for healing in Western psychology. Texts may include: Andrew Olendski, The Radical Experiential Psychology of Buddhism; Peter Gay (ed.), The Freud Reader: David Tacey (ed.), The Jung Reader: David Gethin, The Foundations of Buddhism; Bhikkhu Bodi, In the Words of the Buddha (translation of suttas from the Pali Cannon); Thanissaro Bhikkhu, The Mind Like Fire Unbound; and Mark Epstein, Thoughts without a Thinker; John Strong, The Buddha a Short Biography.