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The Integration of East and West Psychotherapy |
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¡Ø Reproduced from the Proceedings of The First Joint Academic Meeting in Commemoration of Professor Dongshick Rhee's Kohi (70th birthday), The Korean Academy of Psychotherapists, The American Academy of Psychoanalysis.
This commemoration lecture was given at the above mentioned Meeting, held on August 4, 1990, in Seoul, Korea.
The Integration of East and West Psychotherapy
Rhee, Dongshick. M.D.
Distinguished guests, members of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and the Korean Academy of Psychotherapists, and ladies and gentlemen! It is my great pleasure and honor to give this lecture to you at this time and place. This is the culmination and crystallization of my 70 years of life and 48 years of psychiatric practice.
I was born as the eldest grandson of my family under the Japanese occupation of Korea, 2 years after the 1919 Korean independence uprising. What has plagued me from my childhood until now is the distorted idea of my fellow countrymen that foreigners or foreign cultures are better than Korean.
I started psychiatry in 1942 when the Second World War was under way. At that time the Japanese occupied every leading position in every area. Psychiatry was no exception. There were no psychiatric facilities except Seoul (then Keijo Imperial) University Hospital. There were 3 private mental hospitals with a little over 200 beds altogether. There was not a single Korean professor in the university. Japanese psychiatry was organic psychiatry of Kraepelinian tradition. I was exposed to German literature with some personal interest in British and American and some French psychiatry.
The prevailing trend was organic. Cause of neurosis was supposed to be hereditary or constitutional degeneration. Eugen Bleuler and Ernst Kretschmer, later Kurt Kolle was the exception. I came to believe in the emotional origin of most mental disorders through the influence of Freud, Janet, Charcot etc. on the basis of personal insights formed in late childhood.
I realized as a child that human happiness depends on the solution of emotional problems. I discerned genuineness and hypocrisy. I was regarded as well-versed in life, like a priest as a child. I made little apology, remorse and no revenge. My choice of career as a medical student was as an educator among the professions of statesman, reporter and educator.
At the beginning of my work as a psychiatrist I studied hysteria and hypnosis to understand body-mind relation and came to be convinced that mental influence could cause organic change of the body. I always tried to understand people and patients. My credo was that of Aristotle 'Nil admirari'. Another credo was 'Humani nihil me alienum puto.' Then I came across Ludwig Binswanger's paper on 'Inner life history.' After 3 or 4 years of study of psychiatry I began to understand the inner world of my patients. As a medical student I was exposed to Hermann Hesse's novels which depict the inner world and loneliness. Also to Schopenhauer and much of Friedrich Nietzsche and Kierkegaard.
In the first years of psychiatric study, I was also exposed to Heidegger's Sein und Zeit. I read almost all books of Bertrand Russel's except 'Principia Mathematica', studied linguistics, psychology and cultural anthropology and was interested in William James. John Dewey, and in the study of shamans. After the Second World War, when Korea was liberated from Japanese occupation and came under American occupation, my Korean friend advised me to go to the U. S. A for further study but this did not materialize at that time.
In 1953 I had a case of psychogenic headache I successfully treated with 12 interviews. In 1954 I went to New York to study psychoanalysis at the strong suggestion and urging of an American military psychiatrist. I was exposed to American psychiatry and was analyzed for 6 months and attended the William Alanson White Institute as a general student for 1 year. After 4 years of study at various other institutions I visited Europe and attended 4 international conggresses including the World Philosopher's Congress.
When I came back to Korea at the end of 1958, there was a case conference every week in Seoul. After attending this meeting 2 or 3 times, and I pointed out that the presentation and discussions had nothing to do with the patient's reality and was only thoughts of the presenter or discussants. After this the weekly conference disappeared.
I introduced dynamic psychiatry, psychotherapy and interview technique and also existential psychiatry into Korea. Since 1965 I have been studying Buddhism, Confucianism, Laotzu and Chuangtzu with my friends and students. In 1970 I gave a lecture on 'The Modern Significance of the Tao' at the meeting of the Korean Philosophical Association. At that time when I talked about the Tao, everybody laughed including my students, because most Korean intellectuals ignored their own culture and adored foreign cultures. This I found as identification with the aggressor.
In 1973 a German philosopher Georg Picht came to Korea and gave a lecture 'Theorie und Meditation'. He maintained that Platonic theory destroys man, nature, society and culture and that this is because theory is based on logic and logic is only dogma. He further stated that the whole Western culture and science are derivatives of the Metaphysics of Plato. He explained that you cannot reach the truth by theory. You can attain the truth only by meditation but he did not show how to meditate. No Korean philosophers seemed to understand what he was saying.
In Plato's Phaedo you have to purify (Catharsis) your mind to get to the reality. Purification means being freed from the shackles of the body (emotions) by intellectual pursuit. This is the Western tradition still persisting.
In the Eastern tradition intellectual pursuit is the hindrance to reaching reality. Words, thoughts (concepts) and theory are not reality. they are only the means to reach reality, the pointing fingers. I found a similarity of the psychotherapeutic process and the process of enlightenment in Zen practice in the course of my study of the Tao, Western philosophy and psychotherapy. I gained the following insights:
The goal of the Western psychoanalysis and psychotherapy and the Eastern Tao is the same and there is only the difference of degree or level. The process of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy and the process of enlightenment in Zen practice is the same up to a certain point.
In Western psychotherapy only personal emotional problems and partial cultural problems can b e solved. You cannot transcend total culture and organism. In other words no self-transcendence. Medard Boss maintains that in terms of the purification of the mind the best Western psychoanalytic training si only an introductory course. There is a fundamental cultural difference between the West and the East. Western culture is alienating whereas the East is relationship oriented. The West is verbal-, conception-, theory-, and technique-oriented. The East is non-verbal, perception, practice or reality and personality-oriented. The West is concerned with doing, whereas the East is concerned with being. The West is contract-oriented, whereas the East is trust-oriented. Empathy can be best realized by Confucian jen, Buddhist compassion. If you say the patient lives in a frozen land, jen or compassion brings the spring to him.
In Buddhism a Boddhisattva helps the client by relationship and accomodate himself to the ego-strength of the client. He becomes any kind of objects needed by the client. Complete removal of projection through purification of the mind or the resolution of love and hate is the final goal. In Confucianism it is resolution of the desire, in Laotzu wuwei (no striving), in Chuangtzu liberation from being hung upside down.
A Boddhisattva and a mature analyst is the same in the sense that both are not completely purified and a trace of neurotic motivation remains but they are aware of it and are not influenced by this trace in helping others. The Chinese character of sage shows the meaning of therapy very succintly : á¡
ì¼ = ear Ï¢ = mouth ìó = clear
a sage is clear in dialogue, can communicate with the whole universe without hindrance.
Conclusion
I have described some similarities of Eastern Tao and Western psychotherapy. The Tao emphasizes the positive, the reality, self-training and becoming a Boddhisattva or a sage. Western psychotherapy is more the negative, theory, technique and verbally oriented. In this respect the existential approach is closer to the Eastern approach. In Western psychotherapy and existential philosophy it is said that one can remove neurotic anxiety but one cannot remove normal or existential anxeity by any means. But in Eastern Tao, one aims to remove this existential anxiety which originates from the fear of death, by facing death without anxiety. The Tao transcends the personal experience, culture and organism, becomes congruent with the ultimate reality. Western existential thinking is in this sense the gate which leads to Eastern Tao. It is the awareness of the fear of death. Tao is the solution of this. Transpersonal psychotherapy tries to reach the goal. Heinz Kohut represents a good example of Western culture which cannot be freed from intellectual and conceptual prison, whereas C. Rogers is Taoistic but much too verbal, Finally we should remember the words of C. G. Jung who said that Westerners are barbarians and the Chinese are civilized and that Europeans should become a bridge between the East and the West. Also there is East-West dialogue going on in Christian mystical theology. Lastly Alan Watts' words : The Tao is a critique of cultures whereas the Western religion or philosophy is a culture which is limited in time and space. Martin Buber's frist paper was on the Tao. |
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