Psychology Discovers Zen

When Western intellectual first had the occasion of deepening their knowledge of Buddhism, it is not surprising to find that the explorers of human mind were rapidly attracted, in particular psychologist, captured by the message of Buddhism as a Way to overcome life’s sufferings. The pioneers of these initial approaches were psychoanalysts, whose basic approach is strongly grounded in a humanistic perspective, where individual mental difficulties are related to the life experiences of the subjects in a psychodynamic relationship. The possibility to employ Buddhist and Zen meditation as a means for psychotherapeutic intervention thus began to be explored, and this happened in the West and also in Japan. Human mind, originally depicted by Buddhism in an extraordinarily deep and accurate way, could then be studied by researchers belonging to a psycho-dynamically oriented, humanistic, person-centred and even interpersonal-oriented approaches, which inspired their psychotherapeutic efforts.