REPOST: THE PRIME MORAL PRIVILEGE!

This is a repost about a piece that was on the Huffington Post by Pilar Jennings, Ph.D., entitled: Ushering Wellness: The Convergence of Buddhism and Psychoanalysis, which talks about the "recent" merging of the principles of psychoanalysis and Buddhism in healing practices.

Here's Dr. Jennings:

"What has changed in recent years, and captured the attention of both Buddhist teachers and psychoanalysts, is the fascinating relationship between these divergent traditions. Today, there are growing numbers of people looking for therapists who respect their need for meditation and spiritual support."

Don't get me wrong. This is great to see being written about, but there are those of us who've been using the techniques and understandings of the sciences of the mind, body and spirit for many decades now. To her credit, Jennings does mention two of my favorite psychoanalytic theorists who embraced metaphysical principles in their writings in the last century:

"The interest in how Buddha Shakyamuni's approach to wellness might converge with Freud's began more than 60 years ago. In the 1950s, psychoanalysts including Karen Horney and Eric Fromm wrote about their growing interest in Zen Buddhism, and its more hopeful vision for how people might come to genuinely enjoy their lives, despite the pain of loss and the power of desire. In the intervening years, many more therapists and Buddhist teachers joined in this conversation, exploring the tools of each path, and seeking creative ways to bring them together."

Here's a quote by Karen Horney from a blog post of mine, a quote in which she is espousing the same understanding as Full Permission Living:

"Inherent in man are evolutionary constructive forces, which urge him to realize his given potentialities, that man by his very nature and of his own accord, strives toward self-realization, and that his values evolve from such striving. With such a belief in an autonomous striving toward self-realization, we do not need an inner straight jacket with which to shackle our spontaneity, nor the whip of inner dictates to drive us to perfection. There is no doubt that such disciplinary methods can succeed in suppressing undesirable factors, but there is also no doubt that they are injurious to our growth. We do not need them because we see a better possibility of dealing with destructive forces in ourselves: that of actually outgrowing them. The way toward this goal is an ever increasing awareness and understanding of ourselves."

Karen Horney finishes the passage with this great statement, which I leave you with as we delve into the final week of the decade, a reminder of what it really means to be "working" on yourself:

"Self-knowledge, then, is not an aim in itself, but a means of liberating the forces of spontaneous growth. In this sense, to work at ourselves becomes not only the prime moral obligation, but at the same time, in a very real sense, the prime moral privilege."