St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology (Jun 2024)
Buddhism and Western Psychology
Abstract
Psychology emerged as an independent field of naturalistic inquiry during an era of dawning Western scholarly and popular interest in Buddhism. Over the past century-and-a-half psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychoanalysts have analysed, pathologized, misinterpreted, appreciated, assimilated, adapted, and/or converted to Buddhist ideas and practices. At the same time, psychological approaches to Buddhism have led to ‘naturalized’ and ‘psychologized’ forms of contemporary Buddhist practice, especially in ‘convert’ Buddhist communities. This article explores the relationship between Western psychology and Buddhist texts and teachers from the World Parliament of Religions in 1893 through the dramatic post-1960 expansion of possibilities for Westerners to engage in Buddhist practice, and beyond. It covers Buddhist influences on psychoanalytic, humanistic-existential, transpersonal, cognitive-behavioural, and positive psychologies, as well as on cognitive science and contemplative neuroscience. It examines the current interest in mindfulness-based interventions and the resurgence in psychedelic research. Finally, this article critically examines (1) the cultural and historical reasons for psychology’s continuing interest in Buddhism; (2) the problems inherent in adapting Buddhist metaphysical, soteriological, and ethical tenets into an empirical, naturalistic framework; and (3) the value of Buddhism’s contributions to Western psychology, and through Western psychology to Western culture writ large.
