Paradoxical intention?

betaboy

Has anyone used this method, and if so do you feel it's somewhat similar to yogic/buddhist techniques?

Share.

genkaku

For those of us who are less well-informed, could you describe what "paradoxical intention" means?

MaryAnne

I see Betaboy Rinpoche is quizzing us again ;-)
I hope he doesn't start swatting us with a long bamboo switch!

AllbuddhaBound

Paradoxical intent is used fairly extensively in Viktor Frankl's Logotherapy. It is a form of therapy where you give a person what they want, even after they cease wanting it. A prime example would be "you catch your kids smoking a cigar, and you make them smoke cigars in front of you until they get sick or can't stand it anymore." It extinguishes unhealthy desires.

I have actually used the approach in a different set of circumstances and it was successful.

betaboy

AllbuddhaBound said:

Paradoxical intent is used fairly extensively in Viktor Frankl's Logotherapy. It is a form of therapy where you give a person what they want, even after they cease wanting it. A prime example would be "you catch your kids smoking a cigar, and you make them smoke cigars in front of you until they get sick or can't stand it anymore." It extinguishes unhealthy desires.

I have actually used the approach in a different set of circumstances and it was successful.

Thanks to paradoxical intention, I am now a chain smoker.

Seriously, I have used it effectively for my insomnia. But it doesn't work for 'smaller' habits like moving hands, twitch etc. I thought since they were habitual, the method would work.

fivebells

It bears no obvious similarity to any meditation techniques I've found useful.

betaboy

Also people who complain about getting too many thoughts during meditation ... PI could work. All they have to do is purposely try to think as many thoughts as they can.

MaryAnne

betaboy said:

Also people who complain about getting too many thoughts during meditation ... PI could work. All they have to do is purposely try to think as many thoughts as they can.

That is absolutely the craziest s--- I ever heard. Come on Betaboy... really.
First of all - too many thoughts? How many is too many? I thought the idea behind meditation was not to eliminate thoughts, but to let them pass, with awareness, but without clinging or aversion.
So the answer to too many thoughts is to snatch more thoughts from all over the place (like they are stacked on shelves just waiting to be grabbed!) and cram them into your head while meditating.... Seriously? You really mean that?
:screwy:

fivebells

I agree with MaryAnne. That is a load of self-indulgent BS.

Jeffrey

I think for not thoughts, but rather for conditioning of day dreaming it might work to try to daydream.

Rigdzen Shikpo says if your breath is outside mundane normal breathing you should sit tight and tell yourself that you are not meditating. By making it not meditating the regular mundane breath comes back. I find this similar to what betaboy is saying.

Mani

Yes. Thoughts are a function of mind after all are they not?

lobster

betaboy said:

Has anyone used this method, and if so do you feel it's somewhat similar to yogic/buddhist techniques?

It is traditionally used in some forms of Tantra. For example a person grieving a death may be instructed to use the dead persons skull as a a drinking cup in order to be reminded of impermanence and health and safety issues.
I make a lot of use of it, taking an idea and bringing it to an extreme to illustrate its fallacy.
As a form of self therapy it has inherent dangers. For example many depressives take depressives such as alcohol. How does that work out?
The inherent problem with methods that do not address the core and cause is they patch up. In yoga and Buddhism we are trying to integrate and simplify not indulge and propagate.
This is why when a crisis occurs or difficulties, Buddhists consider this normal. Others seem to wonder 'why me?' and look for a magic wand to wave . . .

:wave:

MaryAnne

^^ Not buying it.

matthewmartin

Paradoxical intent sounds like a recipe for making smokers, alcoholics, people with eating problems, gambling problems, and so on. Consumption beyond what you'd desire is opening up the possibility of consumption for reasons that you hadn't thought of before (you puked but you scored machismo points! you gambled away all your assets and are 100,000 in debt, but you got a royal flush! you drank until you though you were going to black out, but you didn't black out and now you aren't afraid of blacking out! You thought that a doing all the drugs would kill you, but it wasn't so bad, you just hallucinated all night! Next time you can try to do that on purpose!)

In any case, bingeing to solve a problem sounds very unbuddhist, with that "desire being the source of misery part".

MaryAnne

I think there may be some confused blending of this "Paradoxical Intention" weirdness with the methods of "aversion therapy" -- which garners its own doubts among therapists and psychologists as far as being a 'good' method .

Steve_B

Though it may well have certain selected appropriate uses in psychotherapy, it is not at all the same as conversationally reducing an idea to the ridiculous, and it has no common ground that I can perceive with meditation.

betaboy

MaryAnne said:

^^ Not buying it.

The skull or the drinking cup?

Dennis1

In Tibet they take the beloved Guru's body (dead body), up to vulture peak and cut it up and feed it to the vultures so that he can still be useful-even in death. Do you mean sort of like that? You grieve that he is dead so you desecrate his body. Funny idea.
I have found that it is hard to find something until you stop looking for it. The effort or force seems to push away what you are grasping after. Meditation might be like that too.

lobster

Dennis1 said:

In Tibet they take the beloved Guru's body (dead body), up to vulture peak and cut it up and feed it to the vultures so that he can still be useful-even in death. Do you mean sort of like that?

Sky burial is one example.
The fearless Aghori and Kapalika are another.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapalika

These are extreme practices.

It is similar to how many performers are notoriously shy. Their performance is a kind of over compensation . . .

A guru might encourage us to enter the very area of our fears and obstacles, rather than avoiding them. Similar graduated techniques are used for phobias.

Incidentally the previous mayor of London did contemplate a sky burial area for Zoroastrians and others who wanted to practice this. However if a crow with an eyeball dropped it outside the designated area it might frighten the muggles and vegans.

genkaku

Strange how the mind seems to seek out, hover over or gloat about extreme or weird or incredibly intricate practices while all the time the shoelaces still need tying.

Yo! My koan's kooler than yours! Ergo I am enlightened-er.

pegembara

If you're really frightened of something, consciously be frightened. Don't just back away from it, but notice that tendency to try to get rid of it. Bring up fully what you're frightened of, think it out quite deliberately, and listen to your thinking. This is not to analyse, but just to take fear to its absurd end, where it becomes so ridiculous you can start laughing at it. Listen to desire, the mad "I want this, I want that, I've got to have - I don't know what I'll do if I don't have this, and I want that...". Sometimes the mind can just scream away, "I want this!" - and you can listen to that.

I was reading about confrontations, where you scream at each other and that kind of thing, say all the repressed things in your mind; this is a kind of catharsis, but it lacks wise reflection. It lacks the skill of listening to that screaming as a condition, rather than just as a kind of 'letting oneself go', and saying what one really thinks. It lacks that steadiness of mind, which is willing to endure the most horrible thoughts. In this way, we're not believing that those are personal problems, but instead taking fear and anger, mentally, to an absurd position, to where they're just seen as a natural progression of thoughts. We're deliberately thinking all the things we're afraid of thinking, not just out of blindness, but actually watching and listening to them as conditions of the mind, rather than personal failures or problems.

Ajahn Sumedho
http://www.budsas.org/ebud/ebdha052.htm

DairyLama

pegembara said:

I was reading about confrontations, where you scream at each other and that kind of thing, say all the repressed things in your mind; this is a kind of catharsis, but it lacks wise reflection.

The Ajahn teaches the importance of fully accepting one's current feelings. As do people who run encounter groups.....