Buddhism and psychotherapy?

SattvaPaul

Is psychotherapy useful alongside the Dharma practice? Or would you expect Buddhism to solve all your problems?

There are people who claim that meditation and practice doesn't necessarily address psychological issues, and scandals with teachers are an example of this. Psychotherapy can be very useful in this case.

Then others would say that Buddhism is sufficient and psychotherapy is redundant.

How do you think psychotherapy fits with Buddhism?

Note, I am not talking here about therapy for people with mental health problems, more in a humanistic/existential sense.

What do you think?

Glow

I'm not sure if you've read it, but Jack Kornfield has a beautiful article on just this topic: http://www.buddhanet.net/psymed1.htm

My experience jives with Kornfield's observations. Meditation and skillful living helped immensely. But there were still "kinks" in my life that I needed to make friends with. All good psychotherapy fosters greater self-awareness. It brings light to the places in our lives where we are unconscious or unwilling to look. With this awareness, we can live more consciously and wisely.

SattvaPaul

Thank you @Glow, that was a good article.

DhammaDhatu

Is psychotherapy useful alongside the Dharma practice? Or would you expect Buddhism to solve all your problems?

Buddhism can definitely solve all of our problems

But one of our current problems is we don't understand Buddhism in its entirety

If we are in tune with the totality of the Buddhist teachings, which cover: (1) morality & relationships; (2) concentration and (3) insight, then we have a way to gain clear perspective on many our problems

Generally, the problems addressed by psychotherapy fall into the category of 'morality & relationships' (although many Buddhists try to incorporate them into concentration and insight)

Regards

Mountains

...would you expect Buddhism to solve all your problems?

I think that's pretty unrealistic if you have serious mental health issues.

Spaceless

Buddhism by the very fact is super humanistic in existential sense :cool:

SattvaPaul

I think that's pretty unrealistic if you have serious mental health issues.

I agree. I wasn't talking about serious mental health issues, as stated in my first post.

Kwantum_Kev

Is psychotherapy useful alongside the Dharma practice? Or would you expect Buddhism to solve all your problems?

...
Generally, the problems addressed by psychotherapy fall into the category of 'morality & relationships'

As someone who has been seeing a therapist regularly for years, I have to politely , but completely, disagree with this statement. The relationships part I agree with, but not the morality one. That is unless you are talking about treating sociopaths or psychopaths. But since the original commenter stated that he/she was not talking about serious mental health issues, that would seem to negate those from consideration.

To answer the question, I agree completely with @Glow : the true purpose of any quality therapy is to awaken an individual to the positivity and ability to deal with life issues that exists within them. I do believe there are some things that Buddhism, on its own, may not be able to fully address - at least not in the purest sense, just by reading the primary texts and such.

But then again, I think that any form of training or teaching that increases our self-awareness can be considered Buddhist in nature. That's just me though. I'm very open in my interpretations, and try never to limit any school of thought or group of teachings to only what was put in books or what others say it's "supposed to mean". To me, any real teaching is a living, growing thing that adapts and blossoms over time to encompass new things that the original 'teacher' may never have even thought of.


Namaste'

Kwan Kev

ravkes

Honestly speaking, I can't afford psychotherapy.

I had to get through my psychosis, depression and bipolar "disorders" by myself.

Now, I can firmly say that over the past 2 years Buddhism has helped me tremendously. I can't say that if I had gone to visit a Psychotherapist I would have healed faster, but I can say that by diagnosing myself, researching a bit about mental illnesses and listening to the Buddha's teachings -- I have made tremendous progress without wasting hundreds of dollars.

So yes, I would say that for me a combination of my own reasoning and the use of Buddhism has helped me realize that one should trust himself to get out of his circumstances before seeking tutelage from others.

Because I think that ultimately, nobody knows what life is and therefore doesn't have an accurate assumption of what the mind or really anything is - so their theories are as good as mine.

This realization garnered a sense of curiosity and self dependency that led me from a state of confusion and hopelessness to a state of relative contentment with room for improvement..

Then again, I'm just one person. What works for one may not work for another.