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Dialogue between Prof. Medard Boss and Prof. Dongshick Rhee / THE SECOND INTERVIEW |
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¡Ø This verbatim record is the dialogue between the late Prof. Medard Boss and Prof. RHEE, which took place at June 12 (10:00-10:50 AM), and 15 (9:00-9:50 AM), 1976, on Zurich Zollicon, Swiss. Prof. RHEE visited Prof. Medard Boss after the attendance of the 10th International Congress of Psychotherapy held on Paris, France.
It's reprinted from Psychotherapy (ïñãêö½Öû) Vol. 6, No. 1, pp.30-43, 1992, Korean Academy of Psychotherapists, Seoul, Korea.
Dialogue between Prof. Medard Boss and Prof. Dongshick Rhee
THE SECOND INTERVIEW
Prof. Boss: Now I mean it is the most interesting paper and it should be published. The two approaches, Western & Eastern approach, I always have in mind how rigid and structured our people are. They are influenced by culture, by church, and everything else, and they have to a large extent, to repress their feelings, and to distantiate themselves (Prof. Rhee: Distanzierung) from everything that matters and from other human beings. They have to build in order to be able to exist at the heart of belief and to fight for their living, they have to build a hard shell around their heart. (Prof. Rhee: Schloss) And therefore the psychoanalysis also Daseinsanalysis first tries to destroy the shell and give them the courage to be their real and true self as a human being. So first we have to open them up to be able to engage themselves into the relationships with things and matters. It's just the opposite of detachment. (Prof. Rhee: It is attachment.) They first have to learn, and so I can honestly say that the way, the Eastern way, the Zen way or the meditation way has different ways from our Western way and only if the Western people become analyzed and/or by nature remain open, free of judgement, being able to be attached, then they can hope of their free will detach them again. So that's the Western way of psychotherapy and the Eastern way, Buddhism is also a kind of psychotherapy. They are not equivalent, not the same but here the Western people, Western psychoanalytic treatment has to come first. And then they can detach themselves again, out of their free will. Formerly they have to detach themselves by force, by meditation, not out of their own will and therefore I have seen in India, I have seen so many Western people who try to go into monasteries in India and do meditation before they have really destroyed the shell and then they become caricatures of human beings. So it's a kind of step in-between the two.
Prof. Rhee: Yes, I think you're quite right. Even I think among Korean patients, while I am doing psychotherapy to Korean patients -we are interested in Zen practice, a kind of meditation- usually I've found this Zen practice more suitable for those who have a certain degree of health, not too sick, you cannot have, you have to have a Western type of psychotherapy first and after we can have certain results, there is some limit in Western type of psychotherapy. If you want to grow more, then you can go on with meditation or Zen practice. If you are too sick, it's very harmful to have longer hours of Zen practice, you become worse.
Prof. Boss: With Eastern patients of India, when you apply to them Western psychotherapy, Western psychoanalysis they fall a pieces altogether, because the ordinary man with riches, they are living not individually but the whole family is there. They also stick themselves dissolved into the mass, the whole family. And if they want to live in the cities and industries they have to become first as well structured single individuals. But then if you should apply Western psychoanalysis to these people first they fall to pieces. They have to first train themselves to become individual. And also all sort of self-hood of their own. And so I say the Eastern way, the Zen way is completing with what Western psychoanalysis can do with Western people. That's how I find out. (Prof. Rhee: That's the final goal of psychotherapy) It's a kind of higher degree of health. A doctor in Africa knows about our Western psychotherapy.
Prof. Rhee: Ya, even among Eastern ? ? ?
Prof. Boss: ? ? ? take mysticism and abstinence just to begin their career.
Prof. Rhee: Yes, even among monks, even if you try whole career, you can't sometimes, Zen monks¡¦ ? ? ? They get crazy.
Prof. Boss: Maybe in Japan crazy too.
Prof. Rhee: Even in Zen practice they screen disciple. For example in Korea there is a Zen monastery someone who stayed there six years, three years, two years, one year without communication with outside. There is one place in Seoul. They have one hundred days of screening test. How can this man endure complete seclusion? He must eat in a cell, take bath alone, no human voice, food comes out by machine from upstairs, complete seclusion, he cannot communicate with outside. (Prof. Boss: It's hard test, they check only if he stand one hundred days alone.)
Prof. Boss: Yes, yes, that's what I experienced I don't know. You create in this paper to equate¡¦. He Suzuki¡¦.
Prof. Rhee: Yes, I tried to emphasized only difference, you cannot understand a thing, you cannot get the complete picture, first you have to understand the common elements, then you have to find out difference, then we can get the complete picture of things, then, so, I try to common elements and then you can perceive the difference and then you can understand Eastern and Western ways completely. Otherwise, your understanding can be always confused, onesided if you stress only differences.
Prof. Boss: But how would you summarize the commonality, what are the common factors in Western psychotherapy and Eastern meditation? The main common factor, in your opinion?
Prof. Rhee: So there are in this paper, I described the common factor like the third patriarch(ß²ðÓ), if you do not love and hate then everything will become clear. In even Western psychoanalysis literature like Saul wrote that the central features of every psychoanalytic treatment is the patient's dependency and hostility on the therapist. Dependency is love, hostility is hate, so love and hate is the central feature. The comparison of the process of psychotherapy and the process of Zen practice is similar depicting in the ten pictures of cow to understand themselves and of course the goal, self-realization, that is also in common, perhaps, its level is only the difference. Western psychotherapy is not still far enough as Eastern Tao. Eastern Tao is completely defined.
Prof. Boss: Yes, Western psychotherapy is mainly to go only so far as to liberate hate and love. So an analyst everybody and then they may stop if they are have liberated a man to live and feel his hate and love. These hate and love are both attachments and most therapists stop at the liberation of this emotion, whereas meditation goes on and freeing the man from this attachment and still enjoying a helps him to become a Boddhisattva.
Prof. Rhee: Yes, it is my impression therapy should have the spirit of Boddhisattva, selflessness. In reality but therapists lack of this spirit of Boddhisattva.
Prof. Boss: It's a kind of selflessness. To give patient just freedom the space into which he develop his own being without wanting something for yourself from the patient¡¦.
Prof. Rhee: That is in Laozu, Wuwei?
Prof. Boss: That's rare. That's the aim one from Peru, the therapeutic Eros. He means the same line. The psychotherapeutic eros is superior even to the goal should be (Both Prof.) love of priest for his belief in God because he still wants something from God. Maybe to believe in his God such and parents also want something from children, perhaps love for themselves. So psychotherapist must abstain from any demand on the patient to develop into certain fashion. Therefore it was so repulsive. The congress also laughed¡¦ some people, political people, leftist people maintained that psychotherapy is just an instrument, technique for to keep up the power of the capitalists. Politicians! Now certain therapeutic group, now they want to try to use psychotherapy to train communists.
Prof. Rhee: So that is a war. Communist psychotherapist and capitalist psychotherapist.
Prof. Boss: They say psychotherapy or psychoanalysis is not completed as long as the person is turned into a communist.
Prof. Rhee: Oh, he is not cured by the¡¦. What kind of school?
Prof. Boss: That is a part of orthodox Freudian. But before communists, leftists, they complained psychoanalysis is used as an instrument to transform capitalist and now they themselves want to use psychoanalysis to make communists. Psychoanalysis itself is liberating the person to his own being. Now mature human being, most of you are tuned in the state of Boddhisattva, selflessness.
Prof. Rhee: So what's I read your selbst darstellung what made you depart from Freud and Jung and get interested in Heidegger?
Prof. Boss: Just because I, this feeling, his way of thinking of Freud, he made psychology a cage, mental prison and mechanistic prison which does not justice to the essence of human being. And then here was Jung who searched for disciples for he had none. And he approached me and some of my work in Zurich. And had workshops for ten years we worked together and so I became acquainted with Jungian ideas. But I felt his talking about unconscious and the occupied conscious in hidden psychic¡¦ but these are mostly on the just opposite positions which cannot be proved for the existence really a book on Jung by Dr. Stern, he well described as a person who conducted his own psychological perceptions in order to overcome his own psychotic split and it was my impression too when I worked with him. So it just didn't do justice to what I thought a human being is. Therefore I stopped it to become came across to Heidegger. At first I didn't understand what I'd let myself in for. I became acquainted personally and a friendship developed. Naturally I become interested in the work. I thought it could be most adequate. Indian saints and later Japanese monks and but it was same goal. That the whole story.
Prof. Rhee: I couldn't understand out the Jung's belief in world of dead souls or incarnation. Jung believed, I think, in his autobiography written he distated to his secretary. At his home in the daytime he felt soul of the dead, people moving around I can't understand. Why did he believe soul of dead people? (Prof. Boss: But he believed) He saw it? His hallucinations. I thought he had very weak ego strength in contrast to Freud. (Prof. Boss: Yes) Perhaps Jung's mother, he was not cared enough by, while he was a child.
Prof. Boss: No, he was always threatened by psychosis. He knew it himself just by building up construction, construction it was a kind of shell he was hiding himself. But nonetheless, when I saw what Jung did for himself, how he saw, it was for me a liberating step in regard to a prison of theoretical metapsychology. Whereas I always see two Freuds, two which are separated. Freud doing his analytic practice, how he made his practice, I started my own training with him when I was with him and that's how I experienced it, how he treated me.
Prof. Rhee: How many hours did you have with Freud?
Prof. Boss: Six months and six times a week.
Prof. Rhee: Oh, six times a week. That's a long time.
Prof. Boss: You see, Freud was an absolute contradiction between Freud's saying about practice and his theoretical metapsychological theory. In his papers on techniques he recommend, his position on analysis to liberate human beings, the technique about freedom, making him freer, it is stated about person whereas his theory is natural scientific theory, complete determinism, absolutely determinism whereas something like freedom hasn't any place at all. And there is very strict contradiction, there are two parts.
Prof. Rhee: But Freud in his actual practice with his patient, you think he was doing right.
Prof. Boss: Yes, he was very right and if you followed his advice about practical relationship and behavior, it's still the best.
Prof. Rhee: Yeah, I See. Every psychotherapist makes like this. For example first we have to find the effect. afterward one can make the theory. Therefore with the theory one cannot describe the fact, what it is.
Prof. Boss: No, Freud himself stated that primary analysis is doing practice. First is practice and solving very important things, then build theory upon the facts and only with the natural scientific way of thinking at hand so we try to press these observations about human being in treatment, into the theory. But he himself called this whole metapsychology, this whole theory as superstructure, super-structure of which any part can be thrown over board if it should prove to be useless. He himself set upon good practice first and practicing is the basic rule mainly to ask the patient to become absolutely truthful, to be honest about himself.
Prof. Rhee: So in that respect, what did you feel about my discussion on theory and practice of? There were many Korean and Western therapists they try to make use of theory and technique rather than understanding reality, etc. What do you think about that?
Prof. Boss: That's absolutely.
Prof. Rhee: I think that's most important thing in present time for psychotherapy.
Prof. Boss: Ya, ya, ya. It's useless to a doctor. Each one wants a new theory. All these different schools of psychotherapy, they just pick out mainly one spot of one Freud already and make out a whole school, take out as an absolute truth in it. Therefore it's not just not a good theory. But at the same time we have to think the whole society of human being is together, and the ways to live together has changed since Freud. This change may ask us to find new ways of practical behaving. For instance, the aloofness of each other in this industrial society becomes more and more strong and the isolation of the individual becomes more and more strong, and therefore these new methods, Gestalt therapy and Encountering and Sensitivity training to overcome this type of deficiency. That may be too sensitive for many patients. Sometimes it's a gate to good help and this group is the primary screaming, they may break up a person, opening him up, so that he can start doing a proper psychoanalysis which would have taken perhaps two years of psychotherapy. But the primary screaming of these groups, if you hold these Encounter groups and Gestalt groups in themselves are not, they never are sufficient. I think they never reach the point you can reach later on through psychoanalysis. But I call that is Daseinsanalysis, because out of my point of view, for instance the use of dreams are completely different from Freud. This therapy between two people, analyst and analysand, can't be replaced by these group. Like in the East, the master-disciple relationship, in this relationship, in which the highest form can be reached.
Prof. Rhee: The first thing here, do you have anything to say to our Korean psychotherapy as a senior advisor to our Korean colleagues? Any advice or suggestions because you have experienced not only Freud, but many different kinds. I think what you can say, something helpful to our Korean colleagues, guiding younger men.
Prof. Boss: A very difficult question. I should know first the young Korean psychotherapists and what kind of human beings they are. Therefore the first idea which comes to me to your question is that I would like to be with them for a certain length of time, then I could give them advice, then if I take them as being similar to Indians, Indian psychotherapists, then I'd warn them first to do psychoanalytic work with themselves as long as they are not yet developed individual, out of their own mass and as I still think for them training analysis, etc, for instance, psychotherapy. They should not get engulfed and slowed up by Western natural scientific thinking, that to remain with their feet in their tradition and to have this highest goal in mind, of becoming free from attachment, to become really a Boddhisattva, but this is only possible by first engaging themselves with hate and love into a very encounter and to open up yourself first to all demands of this made upon you from slowly your fellow being, then you can liberate yourselves from this attachment and the operative thinking of the Eastern tradition, the Eastern wisdom is far superior to the wisdom of our Western philosophies. They should preserve this tradition of their own and not let themselves become too impressed with Western computing skills because this technical skill is inimical to human being because it makes a machine, computer or destruction, life destructive.
Prof. Rhee: Do you Know Georg Picht, from Heidelberg University, a German philosopher. He came to Korea after leaving Japan in 1972. He gave a lecture on theory and Meditation. He made the statement that Western philosophy and science, which is the derivative of Western metaphysics destroys human being, nature and society because it is based upon dogma of logic. So he said theory cannot be, logical thinking cannot reach "Wahrheit" But he proposed a way of thinking which can reach "Wahrheit". He called it meditation.
Prof. Boss: But to be able to so for the Western people they first have to dissolve their artificial shell which has walls conceiving of themselves as computers, in order to be able to open up to feel perceive, to have things to encounter, and then open at this truth which can only be reached by experience.
Prof. Rhee: In Korea we have about, a philosopher, maybe a little bit over 72 or 73 of age, he wrote a book on the world of Zen and the world of Martin Heidegger, I think if you come to Korea you'll find it very interesting.
Prof. Boss: In Korean language?
Prof. Rhee: Yes, If you want he can discuss it. So, are you coming to Japan next year?
Prof. Boss: Yes, I hope so.
Prof. Rhee: If so, you can meet Korean psychiatrists and also many philosophers.
Prof. Boss: Is Korean language anything to do with Japanese language? Korean language derivative of Japanese language?
Prof. Rhee: Yes, Japanese language is derivative of Korean language, grammatical structure of Japanese and Korean, these language are alike, grammatical structure is the same, linguistics call it agglutinate languages, described as the 8th wonder of the world, history of language trees. In ancient Japan, there were colonies of three kingdoms of Korea. They were, the kings became alternately. In Korea, Shilla Dynasty conquered the other two kingdoms in Korea and apparently the relatives of Baekje Kingdom emigrated to Japan. After that the Bakjae people only became the king of Japan. So they did never get married with the natives. A Japanese magazine, a few years ago, they said that the wife of the prince (Akihito) of Japan, he was the first of the Royal family to get married with a native of Japan in Japanese history. They are excavating that time the king of Japan was pure Korean. (Prof. Boss: -Both laugh- Ah Yeah?) A professor at Tokyo University who died few years ago, he held a new conference, said to the newspaper men that Japanese Royal family are pure Korean. See you in Seoul next year.
Prof. Boss: Pleasant talking to you. |
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