Psychotherapy East & West
By: Alan Watts
Publisher: New World Library
Published: 2017
Place of publication: Novato, California
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 193
ISBN-13: 9781608684564
Copyright date: 1989
Subjects: East and West; Asian Philosophy; Psychotherapy
Description: Before he became a counterculture hero, Alan Watts was known as an incisive scholar of Eastern and Western psychology and philosophy. In this 1961 classic, Watts demonstrates his deep understanding of both Western psychotherapy and the Eastern spiritual philosophies of Buddhism, Taoism, Vedanta, and Yoga. He examined the problem of humans in a seemingly hostile universe in ways that questioned the social norms and illusions that bind and constrict modern humans. Marking a groundbreakingsynthesis, Watts asserted that the powerful insights of Freud and Jung, which had, indeed, brought psychiatry close to the edge of liberation, could, if melded with the hitherto secret wisdom of the Eastern traditions, free people from their battles with the self. When psychotherapy merely helps us adjust to social norms, Watts argued, it falls short of true liberation, while Eastern philosophy seeks our natural relation to the cosmos.
Notes: Originally published by Pantheon Books in 1961.

Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: Psychotherapy and liberation; title: Society and sanity; title: The ways of liberation; title: Through a glass darkly; title: The countergame; title: Invitation to the dance.