Summary of Alan Watts's Psychotherapy East & West

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The similarities between Western psychotherapy and Eastern ways of life are that they both focus on changing the consciousness of individuals, and that the normal state of consciousness in our culture is the breeding ground of mental disease.

#2 The idea of stuff is based on the experience of coming to a limit where our senses or instruments are not fine enough to make out the pattern. But when the scientist investigates any unit of pattern so distinct to the naked eye that it has been considered a separate entity, he finds that the more carefully he observes and describes it, the more he is also describing the environment in which it moves and other patterns to which it seems inseparably related.

#3 Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism are examples of non-Western cultures that have never been able to attain the rigorously exact physical knowledge of the modern West. However, they were able to grasp in principle many things which are only now occurring to us.

#4 The therapist must realize that his work is not just about the patient’s psyche and its private troubles. It is about the patient’s entire relationship with society, and more specifically, the social institutions that govern these relationships.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Apr 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669397892

IRB Media

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Insights on Alan W. Watts's Psychotherapy East West

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The similarities between Western psychotherapy and Eastern ways of life are that they both focus on changing the consciousness of individuals, and that the normal state of consciousness in our culture is the breeding ground of mental disease.

#2

The idea of stuff is based on the experience of coming to a limit where our senses or instruments are not fine enough to make out the pattern. But when the scientist investigates any unit of pattern so distinct to the naked eye that it has been considered a separate entity, he finds that the more carefully he observes and describes it, the more he is also describing the environment in which it moves and other patterns to which it seems inseparably related.

#3

Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism are examples of non-Western cultures that have never been able to attain the rigorously exact physical knowledge of the modern West. However, they were able to grasp in principle many things which are only now occurring to us.

#4

The therapist must realize that his work is not just about the patient’s psyche and its private troubles. It is about the patient’s entire relationship with society, and more specifically, the social institutions that govern these relationships.

#5

The need for psychotherapy goes far beyond the needs of those who are clinically psychotic or neurotic. It is being said that the need for psychotherapy goes far beyond those who are psychiatrically treated,