Eastern Philosophy in Clinical Psychology - Historical Clinical Psychologists

Historical Clinical Psychologists

Further information: Islamic psychology

The historical practice of clinical psychology may be distinguished from the modern profession of clinical psychology. The Greek word psyche means breath or soul, while logos means study. Psyche was the Greek Goddess of the soul. An early use of the word clinic was, 'one who receives baptism on a sick bed' - Webster 1913. In contemporary use it is usually describes another kind of cleansing and rebirth - a non-hospital, healthcare facility for rehabilitation in the community.

Patanjali was one of the founders of the yoga tradition, sometime between 200 and 400 BC (pre-dating Buddhist psychology) and a student of the Vedas. He developed the science of breath and mind and wrote his knowledge in the form of between 194 and 196 aphorisms called the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. These remain one of the only scientific books written in poetic form. He is reputed to have used yoga therapeutically for mental disorders as common then as now - anxiety and depression.

Padmasambhava was the 8th Century medicine Buddha of Tibet, called from the then Buddhist India to tame the Tibetans, was instrumental in developing Tibetan psychiatric medicine. Tibetans were diplomats, counselors, traders, warriors and military tacticians in the Royal courts of East and West. Through these means they introduced arts of war and of medicine to the west.

Rhazes was a Persian physician and scholar of the Middle Ages who had a profound effect on Western thought and medicine as well as the invention of alcohol and of sulfur drugs. He applied the psychology of self-esteem in clinical treatment of his patients (Predating Nathaniel Branden by over a thousand years). He opened the first hospital ward for humane treatment of the mentally ill.

Avicenna's Canon of Medicine was a standard medical text in many European universities for 500 years. He performed psychotherapy without conversing, by observing the movement of a patient's pulse as the patient recounted broken hearted anguish, reported in 'The Life and Work of Jalaluddin Rumi' by Afzal Iqbal, A. J. Arberry, page 94. His treatises have touched most of the Muslim circle of the sciences.

Jalaluddin Rumi's view on psychotherapy was to embrace the dread, depression and anger as a blessing. Negative emotions were a bridge to a better life. This style of coping is illustrated in his guesthouse poem:

This being human is a guesthouse
every morning a new arrival a joy, a
depression, a meanness. Some momentary
awareness comes as an unexpected
visitor. Welcome and entertain them
all! Even if they're a crowd of sorrows
who violently sweep your house empty of
its furniture. Still treat each guest
honorably, He may be cleaning you out for
some new delight! The dark
thought, the shame, the malice meet them
at the door laughing and invite them in,
be grateful for whoever comes because
each has been sent as a guide from the
beyond.

Sigmund Freud read the German translation of the works of Hayyim ben Joseph Vital (1542–1620). Vital was a 16th century rabbi who had been Isaac Luria's student, the great master of the theosophical Kabbalah. Freud read the French translation of the Zohar. He declared the material 'gold!' without acknowledging that source in his theories. His corpus was deeply influenced by his Jewish heritage and by the Jewish mysticism

Carl Jung read the German translations by Richard Wilhelm of The Secret of the Golden Flower, the I Ching. He also read the Kabbalah and drew on its sources for development of his theory of the archetypes.

Martin Buber

Karen Horney studied Zen-Buddhism.

Fritz Perls studied Zen Buddhism. Typifying such a perspective, Perls once stated: We must lose our minds and come to our senses.

Erich Fromm collaborated with D. T. Suzuki in an 1957 workshop on "Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis"; wrote the foreword to a 1986 anthology of Nyanaponika Thera's essays.

Erik H. Erikson wrote a biography of Gandhi.

Viktor Frankl was the founder of Logotherapy. He wrote From Death Camp to Existentialism (1959) drawing on concentration camp experience and Jewish mysticism.

Abraham Maslow, an American-born Jew who struggled to make his way as a psychologist in an academic atmosphere which was not then ready to receive Jews. He believed his theories of motivation and self-actualization were, despite his avowed atheism, driven by a Jewish consciousness. . The Transpersonal psychology that Maslow founded is a blend of Eastern and Western mystic traditions.

Stanislav Grof studied pre-industrial cosmologies including Egyptian and explored the significance of the posthumous journey of the soul in works such as Books of the Dead and The Human Encounter with Death.