Eastern philosophy in clinical psychology refers to the influence of Eastern philosophies on the practice of

clinical psychology Clinical psychology is an integration of social science, theory, and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well-being and persona ...

based on the idea that East and West are false dichotomies. Travel and trade along the

Silk Road The Silk Road () was a network of Eurasian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles), it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and reli ...

brought ancient texts and mind practices deep into the West. Vedic psychology dates back 5000 years and forms the core of mental health counselling in the Ayurvedic medical tradition. The knowledge that enlightened

Siddhartha Gautama Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist tradition, he was born in Lu ...

was the self-management of mental

suffering Suffering, or pain in a broad sense, may be an experience of unpleasantness or aversion, possibly associated with the perception of harm or threat of harm in an individual. Suffering is the basic element that makes up the negative valence of a ...

through

mindfulness Mindfulness is the practice of purposely bringing one's attention to the present-moment experience without evaluation, a skill one develops through meditation or other training. Mindfulness derives from ''sati'', a significant element of Hind ...

awareness practices. Humane interpersonal care of the mentally disturbed was practiced in the Middle East in the Middle Ages, and later in the West. Many of the founders of clinical psychology were influenced by these ancient texts as translations began to reach Europe during the 19th century.

Historical clinical psychologists

The historical practice of clinical psychology may be distinguished from the modern profession of clinical psychology. The Greek word ''psyche'' means 'breath' or 'soul', while ''-logy'' (from ''logos'', meaning 'speech') means 'study of'. Psyche was the Greek goddess of the soul. An early use of the word

clinic A clinic (or outpatient clinic or ambulatory care clinic) is a health facility that is primarily focused on the care of outpatients. Clinics can be privately operated or publicly managed and funded. They typically cover the primary care needs ...

was to describe 'one who receives baptism on a sick bed' (Webster 1913). In contemporary use it usually describes another kind of cleansing and rebirth – a non-hospital, healthcare facility for rehabilitation in the community.

Patanjali Patanjali ( sa, पतञ्जलि, Patañjali), also called Gonardiya or Gonikaputra, was a Hindu author, mystic and philosopher. Very little is known about him, and while no one knows exactly when he lived; from analysis of his works it i ...

was one of the founders of the yoga tradition, sometime between 200 and 400 BC (pre-dating Buddhist psychology) and a student of the

Vedas upright=1.2, The Vedas are ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism. Above: A page from the '' Atharvaveda''. The Vedas (, , ) are a large body of religious texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the ...

. He developed the science of breath and mind and wrote his knowledge in the form of between 194 and 196 aphorisms called the

Yoga Sutras of Patanjali The ''Yoga Sutras of Patañjali'' is a collection of Sanskrit sutras (aphorisms) on the theory and practice of yoga – 195 sutras (according to Vyāsa and Krishnamacharya) and 196 sutras (according to others, including BKS Iyengar). The ' ...

. These remain one of the only scientific books written in poetic form. He is reputed to have used yoga therapeutically for anxiety, depression and mental disorders as common then as now. Guru Rinpoche - Padmasambhava statue

Padmasambhava was the 8th-century medicine Buddha of Tibet, called from the then Buddhist India to tame the Tibetans, and was instrumental in developing Tibetan psychiatric medicine. Tibetans were diplomats, counselors, traders, warriors and military tacticians in the Royal courts of East and West. Through these means they introduced arts of war and medicine to the west. Rhazes was a Persian physician and scholar of the Middle Ages who had a profound effect on Western thought and medicine as well as the invention of alcohol and of sulfur drugs. He applied the psychology of self-esteem in clinical treatment of his patients (predating

Nathaniel Branden Nathaniel Branden (born Nathan Blumenthal; April 9, 1930 – December 3, 2014) was a Canadian–American psychotherapist and writer known for his work in the psychology of self-esteem. A former associate and romantic partner of Ayn Rand, B ...

by over a thousand years). He opened the first hospital ward for humane treatment of the mentally ill.

Avicenna Ibn Sina ( fa, ابن سینا; 980 – June 1037 CE), commonly known in the West as Avicenna (), was a Persian polymath who is regarded as one of the most significant physicians, astronomers, philosophers, and writers of the Islamic G ...

's ''Canon of Medicine'' was a standard medical text in many European universities for 500 years. He performed psychotherapy without conversing, by observing the movement of a patient's pulse as the patient recounted broken hearted anguish, reported in 'The Life and Work of Jalaluddin Rumi' by Afzal Iqbal, A. J. Arberry, page 94. His treatises have touched most of the Muslim circle of the sciences. Jalaluddin Rumi's view on psychotherapy was to embrace the dread, depression and anger as a blessing. Negative emotions were a bridge to a better life. This style of coping is illustrated in his guesthouse poem: ::This being human is a guesthouse
every morning a new arrival a joy, a
depression, a meanness. Some momentary
awareness comes as an unexpected
visitor. Welcome and entertain them
all! Even if they're a crowd of sorrows
who violently sweep your house empty of
its furniture. Still treat each guest
honorably, He may be cleaning you out for
some new delight! The dark
thought, the shame, the malice meet them
at the door laughing and invite them in,
be grateful for whoever comes because
each has been sent as a guide from the
beyond.

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...

read the German translation of the works of

Hayyim ben Joseph Vital Hayyim ben Joseph Vital ( he, רָבִּי חַיִּים בֶּן יוֹסֵף וִיטָאל; Safed, October 23, 1542 (Julian calendar) and October 11, 1542 (Gregorian Calendar) – Damascus, 23 April 1620) was a rabbi in Safed and the foremo ...

(1542–1620). Vital was a 16th-century rabbi who had been

Isaac Luria Isaac ben Solomon Luria Ashkenazi (1534Fine 2003, p24/ref> – July 25, 1572) ( he, יִצְחָק בן שלמה לוּרְיָא אשכנזי ''Yitzhak Ben Sh'lomo Lurya Ashkenazi''), commonly known in Jewish religious circles as "Ha'ARI" (mean ...

's student, the great master of the theosophical

Kabbalah Kabbalah ( he, קַבָּלָה ''Qabbālā'', literally "reception, tradition") is an esoteric method, discipline and Jewish theology, school of thought in Jewish mysticism. A traditional Kabbalist is called a Mekubbal ( ''Məqūbbāl'' "rece ...

. Freud read the French translation of the

Zohar The ''Zohar'' ( he, , ''Zōhar'', lit. "Splendor" or "Radiance") is a foundational work in the literature of Jewish mystical thought known as Kabbalah. It is a group of books including commentary on the mystical aspects of the Torah (the five ...

. He declared the material 'gold!' without acknowledging that source in his theories. His corpus was deeply influenced by his Jewish heritage and by the Jewish mysticism.

Carl Jung Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philo ...

read the German translations by Richard Wilhelm of '' The Secret of the Golden Flower'', the I Ching. He also read the Kabbalah and drew on its sources for development of his theory of the archetypes. Martin Buber

Karen Horney Karen Horney (; ; 16 September 1885 – 4 December 1952) was a German psychoanalyst who practised in the United States during her later career. Her theories questioned some traditional Freudian views. This was particularly true of her theories of ...

studied Zen-Buddhism.

Fritz Perls Friedrich Salomon Perls (July 8, 1893 – March 14, 1970), better known as Fritz Perls, was a German-born psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and psychotherapist. Perls coined the term "Gestalt therapy" to identify the form of psychotherapy that he devel ...

studied

Zen Buddhism Zen ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text= 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (''Chánzong'' 禪宗), and ...

. Typifying such a perspective, Perls once stated: We must lose our minds and come to our senses.

Erich Fromm Erich Seligmann Fromm (; ; March 23, 1900 – March 18, 1980) was a German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was a German Jew who fled the Nazi regime and settled in the U ...

collaborated with D. T. Suzuki in a 1957 workshop on "Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis"; wrote the foreword to a 1986 anthology of

Nyanaponika Thera Nyanaponika Thera or Nyanaponika Mahathera (July 21, 1901 – 19 October 1994) was a German-born Theravada Buddhist monk and scholar who, after ordaining in Sri Lanka, later became the co-founder of the Buddhist Publication Society and author ...

's essays.

Erik H. Erikson Erik Homburger Erikson (born Erik Salomonsen; 15 June 1902 – 12 May 1994) was a German-American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on psychological development of human beings. He coined the phrase identity c ...

wrote a biography of Gandhi.

Viktor Frankl Viktor Emil Frankl (26 March 1905 – 2 September 1997) was an Austrian psychiatrist who founded logotherapy, a school of psychotherapy that describes a search for a life's meaning as the central human motivational force. Logotherapy is part ...

was the founder of Logotherapy. He wrote ''From Death Camp to Existentialism'' (1959) drawing on concentration camp experience and Jewish mysticism.

Abraham Maslow Abraham Harold Maslow (; April 1, 1908 – June 8, 1970) was an American psychologist who was best known for creating Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a theory of psychological health predicated on fulfilling innate human needs in priority, cul ...

, an American-born Jew who struggled to make his way as a psychologist in an academic atmosphere which was not then ready to receive Jews. He believed his theories of motivation and self-actualization were, despite his avowed atheism, driven by a Jewish consciousness. The Transpersonal psychology that Maslow founded is a blend of Eastern and Western mystic traditions.

Stanislav Grof Stanislav "Stan" Grof is a Czech-born psychiatrist who has been living in the United States since the 1960s. Grof is one of the principal developers of transpersonal psychology and research into the use of non-ordinary states of consciousness ...

studied pre-industrial cosmologies including Egyptian and explored the significance of the posthumous journey of the soul in works such as ''Books of the Dead'' and ''The Human Encounter with Death''.

Influential Western writers and translators

Baruch Spinoza Baruch (de) Spinoza (born Bento de Espinosa; later as an author and a correspondent ''Benedictus de Spinoza'', anglicized to ''Benedict de Spinoza''; 24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, b ...

's legacy to psychology includes his holistic approach and determinism. He was alienated from his Jewish roots by

excommunication Excommunication is an institutional act of religious censure used to end or at least regulate the communion of a member of a congregation with other members of the religious institution who are in normal communion with each other. The purpose ...

and yet embedded in Jewish philosophy and mysticism, for example, 'The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but something of it remains, which is eternal. We feel and know by experience that we are eternal'. (Book V, Proposition 23). He distinguished between active emotions (those that are rationally understood) and passive emotions (those that are not). This predated Freud's popularization of the

unconscious mind The unconscious mind (or the unconscious) consists of the processes in the mind which occur automatically and are not available to introspection and include thought processes, memories, interests, and motivations. Even though these processes exis ...

. His view, that emotions must be detached from external cause in order to master them, presages

rational emotive therapy Rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT), previously called rational therapy and rational emotive therapy, is an active-directive, philosophically and empirically based psychotherapy, the aim of which is to resolve emotional and behavioral p ...

. His understanding of the workings of mind makes a bridge between religious mysticism and clinical psychology.

Arthur Schopenhauer Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the prod ...

was deeply influenced by the first translations of Hindu and Buddhist texts to reach the west in the 19th Century. His philosophy and methods of inquiry have many similarities to those traditions. His ideas foreshadowed and laid the groundwork for Darwin's theory of evolution and Freud's concepts of libido and unconscious

mind The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...

. He added empiricism to self-examination, which presaged Freud's interpersonal application in

psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...

Caroline Rhys Davids Caroline Augusta Foley Rhys Davids (1857–1942) was a British writer and translator. She made a contribution to economics before becoming widely known as an editor, translator, and interpreter of Buddhist texts in the Pāli language. She was ...

was a Pali scholar who translated original Pali texts in Buddhist Psychology. In 1914, she wrote ''Buddhist Psychology: An Inquiry into the Analysis and Theory of Mind in Pali Literature''. Her teacher in Psychology was

George Croom Robertson George Croom Robertson (10 March 1842 – 20 September 1892) was a Scottish philosopher. He sat on the Committee of the National Society for Women's Suffrage and his wife, Caroline Anna Croom Robertson was a college administrator. Biography ...

, Scottish philosopher, editor of Mind from foundation in 1876 until 1891. Richard Wilhelm was a translator of Chinese into German of the I Ching, Tao Te Ching and The Secret of the Golden Flower, with a foreword written by Jung, a close personal friend.

Idries Shah Idries Shah (; hi, इदरीस शाह, ps, ادريس شاه, ur, ; 16 June 1924 – 23 November 1996), also known as Idris Shah, né Sayed Idries el- Hashimi (Arabic: سيد إدريس هاشمي) and by the pen name Arko ...

was an author in the Naqshbandi sufist tradition who wrote works on psychology and spirituality. Defined Sufism in a way that predated Islam and did not depend on the Qur'an.

Coleman Barks Coleman Barks (born April 23, 1937) is an American poet, and former literature faculty at the University of Georgia. Although he neither speaks nor reads Persian, he is a popular interpreter of Rumi, rewriting the poems based on other English t ...

has translated ecstatic poems of

Rumi Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī ( fa, جلال‌الدین محمد رومی), also known as Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī (), Mevlânâ/Mawlānā ( fa, مولانا, lit= our master) and Mevlevî/Mawlawī ( fa, مولوی, lit= my ma ...

and other mystic poets of Persia. Jack Kornfield trained as a Buddhist monk in India and Southeast Asia, holds a PhD in clinical psychology and co-founded the Insight Meditation Society and the Spirit Rock Meditation Center. His books include ''Seeking the Heart of Wisdom'' (1987, co-authored with Joseph Goldstein), ''A Path with Heart'' (1993) and ''The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness and Peace'' (2002). Daniel Goleman taught psychology at Harvard, wrote on science for ''The New York Times'' and is the author of the best-selling ''Emotional Intelligence'' (1995) and ''Destructive Emotions: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama'' (Bantam Books, 2003).

Thomas Cleary Thomas Cleary (24 April 1949 – 20 June 2021) was an American translator and writer of more than 80 books related to Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian, and Muslim classics, and of ''The Art of War'', a treatise on management, military strategy, and ...

was a prolific translator of Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian and Muslim religious literature. First publication with his brother of the Blue Cliff Record in 1992.

Contemporary clinicians

Marsha M. Linehan Marsha M. Linehan (born May 5, 1943) is an American psychologist and author. She is the creator of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), a type of psychotherapy that combines cognitive restructuring with acceptance, mindfulness, and shaping. Line ...

incorporates mindfulness techniques (particularly Zen practices) in her Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) which has been found to be particularly effective with Cluster-B personality disorders.

Jon Kabat-Zinn Jon Kabat-Zinn (born Jon Kabat, June 5, 1944) is an American professor emeritus of medicine and the creator of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medi ...

incorporates Buddhist

techniques in his Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program. Kabat-Zinn describes the program in his book ''

Full Catastrophe Living ''Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness'' is a book by Jon Kabat-Zinn, first published in 1990, revised in 2013, which describes the mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program de ...

''. Vidyamala Burch utilizes

Buddhist Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...

and '' metta'' practices in her Mindfulness-Based Pain Management (MBPM) programs, which are delivered through Breathworks.

Mark Epstein Mark Epstein (born 1953) is an American author and psychotherapist who integrates Shakyamuni Buddha's teachings with Sigmund Freud's approaches to trauma. He often writes about the interface of Buddhism and psychotherapy.Mark Epstein''Freud and B ...

is the author of ''Thoughts Without a Thinker, Thoughts without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective'' (1995) and ''Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart'' (1998).

Mordechai Rotenberg Mordechai Rotenberg (born 1932) ( he, מרדכי רוטנברג) is an Israeli professor of social work at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Biography Mordechai Rotenberg was born in Breslau, Germany (today Wrocław, Poland). His father was f ...

has adopted the

Kabbalistic Kabbalah ( he, קַבָּלָה ''Qabbālā'', literally "reception, tradition") is an esoteric method, discipline and Jewish theology, school of thought in Jewish mysticism. A traditional Kabbalist is called a Mekubbal ( ''Məqūbbāl'' "rece ...

Hasidic Hasidism, sometimes spelled Chassidism, and also known as Hasidic Judaism (Ashkenazi Hebrew: חסידות ''Ḥăsīdus'', ; originally, "piety"), is a Jewish religious group that arose as a spiritual revival movement in the territory of contem ...

tzimtzum The ''tzimtzum'' or ''tsimtsum'' (Hebrew ' "contraction/constriction/condensation") is a term used in the Lurianic Kabbalah to explain Isaac Luria's doctrine that God began the process of creation by "contracting" his ''Ohr Ein Sof'' (infinite ...

paradigm, which he believes has significant implications for clinical therapy. According to this paradigm, God's "self-contraction" to vacate space for the world serves as a model for human behavior and interaction. The tzimtzum model promotes a unique community-centric approach which contrasts starkly with the language of Western psychology.Rotenberg Center for Jewish Psychology
/ref>

Techniques used in clinical settings

Vipassana ''Samatha'' (Pāli; sa, शमथ ''śamatha''; ), "calm," "serenity," "tranquillity of awareness," and ''vipassanā'' (Pāli; Sanskrit ''vipaśyanā''), literally "special, super (''vi-''), seeing (''-passanā'')", are two qualities of the ...

- trains one to perceive the momentary arising and dissipating of all phenomena, nurturing the calm, detached recognition of all things' impermanence and interdependence.

References

External links

Neuroscience and Buddhism Sarunya Prasopchingchana & Dana Sugu, 'Distinctiveness of the Unseen Buddhist Identity' ( nternational Journal of Humanistic Ideology, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, vol. 4, 2010) {{DEFAULTSORT:Eastern Philosophy In Clinical Psychology Clinical psychology Eastern philosophy History of psychology Mindfulness (psychology) Psychology in the medieval Islamic world