Alan Watts: Psychotherapy East and West

''If we look deeply into such ways of life as Buddhism and Taoism, Vedanta and Yoga, we do not find either philosophy or religion as these are understood in the West. We find something more nearly resembling psychotherapy.' In a study designed `to provoke thought and experiment' the author of The Way of Zen compares Eastern ways of life with Western psychotherapy, both bent on inducing changes of consciousness and of attitudes to society. Psychotherapy, in Alan Watts's view, is too much concerned with the 'skin-encapsulated ego' - the individual mind - whereas Eastern cultures have never distinguished mind from matter but seen everything (as modern science is tending to see it) as one indivisible whole. Eastern thought, on the other hand, is in danger of passive resignation amid a shocking social environment. Each can learn from the other, and Alan Watts suggests the kiad of cross-fertilization which might breed a genuine human liberation. A provocative book in many ways. Some of its suggestions are intriguing. It is magnificent in its broad sweep and yet careful of the niceties of logic' - Guardian˝