Four Noble Truths and The Medical Model
Broadly speaking, differences between traditional Buddhism and contemporary institutionalized Western psychology can be conceived in terms used in the following table.
| Buddhism (Four Noble Truths) | Western psychology | |
| problem | suffering (dukkha) | significant distress, disability, pain, loss of freedom, suicidality |
| etiology | craving (tanha), ignorance (avijja) | conditioning, genetics, biology, childhood development, socialization |
| goal | Enlightenment (bodhi), Nirvana | normal or higher functioning, lack of initial symptoms |
| treatment | Noble Eightfold Path | counseling, therapy, medication, systems advocacy |
Read more about this topic: Buddhism And Psychology
Famous quotes containing the words medical model, noble, truths, medical and/or model:
“The entire construct of the “medical model” of “mental illness”Mwhat is it but an analogy? Between physical medicine and psychiatry: the mind is said to be subject to disease in the same manner as the body. But whereas in physical medicine there are verifiable physiological proofs—in damaged or affected tissue, bacteria, inflammation, cellular irregularity—in mental illness alleged socially unacceptable behavior is taken as a symptom, even as proof, of pathology.”
—Kate Millett (b. 1934)
“The slight reproach to which the virtue of patriotism is commonly liable, the noble are most likely to incur.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)
“There may perhaps be a new generation of doctors horrified by lacerations, infections, women who have douched with kitchen cleanser. What an irony it would be if fanatics continued to kill and yet it was the apathy and silence of the medical profession that most wounded the ability to provide what is, after all, a medical procedure.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“Socrates, who was a perfect model in all great qualities, ... hit on a body and face so ugly and so incongruous with the beauty of his soul, he who was so madly in love with beauty.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)