chapter 5

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.

Chapter 4 Psychotherapy East and West

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.

Chapter 4 Psychotherapy East and West

Psychotherapy East and West by Watts Chapter IV: Through A Glass Darkly:

The chapter 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.

Alan Watts reprint of 1961 book

The First Half of Psychotherapy East and West:

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.

Alan Watts Psychotherapy East and West

Alan Watts Psychotherapy East and West has been reissued now that it's 56 years old. In the preface he talks about all the places where he's compared the two (psychotherapy and Buddhism), lots of academic setting and with lots of people in the field--the only name I recognized was Karen Horney--and he does not wish to summarize other's work and whatnot.

Before I read the book I have many thoughts. I reflect back on all the various books I have read synthesizing the two, seeing what both can shed light on the other. I have No Boundaries on my book shelf to read, which seems to be yet another synthesis. I also want to read Mixing Minds. Watts mentions the Fromm and DT Suzuki discussions.

I recently read a excerpt of Mary Pipher's Seeking Peace, where it seemed that meditation was the crucial event that got her to be mindful of how her past was present. I think of Marsha Linehan's integration of mindfulness into her DBT.

Undoubtedly Buddhism has impacted western psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Now the other way around is more complicated. Freud's project was to turn people into ordinary unhappy people, which seems to stop rather abruptly. Recently I've been taking a positive psychology course on line. But of the ten positive emotions, metta, karuna, mudita and upekka are not mentioned. Instead we have: Joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement, inspiriation, awe and love. In a way they very much overlap with universal lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity.

The usual cliche is that you have to love yourself before you can love others, but Mary Pipher seems to be a pretty good therapist with unexamined self loathing. The other cliche is "you have to be somebody before you can become nobody". I always think of the story of the guy who says I'm nobody, and then you walk up to them and kick them in the shins and they double over in pain. There you are.

Faith and confidence in the path for me, means that regardless of the goal, the movement towards the goal is beneficial. Being more mindful and aware--how can you argue against that? In the Triratna Buddhist Community, at ordination, you accept "For the attainment of enlightenment I accept this ordination." My feeling is that if you're not going for enlightenment, now matter how far away, and no matter how vaguely understood, then you're missing a key ingredient. It's like drinking decaf coffee or non-alcoholic beer. What's the point? Now lots of people drink these things, so there must be a point, and some people will admit that they don't really know what enlightenment is, and therefore they can't really aim for a goal they don't understand. But the tradition has come down to us, is that it's important. I think the point is there are flashes, and then there are more frequent flashes, and then you might even feel like you've crossed a barrier, but in the tradition you don't brag about crossing the lines because you no longer exist, you feel the connection to everything, and therefore to say that you have attained something almost patently proves you haven't. And yet people do claim some attainments. I cannot judge however far David Smith (not the sculptor) or Daniel M. Ingram (not the composer) have gotten on the path, because I'm not even close to them. I've meditated with David Smith, and he seemed ahead of me on the journey, and I read his first book, which was interesting. Anywho, enlightenment is an orientation and intention for Buddhist so I keep it around and I'm curious about it. 

I do not know how advanced Alan Watts was as a practitioner, but a biography of him details his divorce due to infidelity, and his drinking problem. Like many people in early Buddhism, the fact that not much was know about it, left people eager to read anything about it. I wouldn't discount automatically his books because of infidelity and alcoholism. I feel like I got pretty far and saw a glimpse before I cracked up. So I'm going to read this book with an open mind and see what I can get out of it.