Summary of Alan Watts's Psychotherapy East & West

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The similarities between Western psychotherapy and Eastern ways of life are that they both focus on changing the consciousness of individuals, and that the normal state of consciousness in our culture is the breeding ground of mental disease. #2 The idea of stuff is based on the experience of coming to a limit where our senses or instruments are not fine enough to make out the pattern. But when the scientist investigates any unit of pattern so distinct to the naked eye that it has been considered a separate entity, he finds that the more carefully he observes and describes it, the more he is also describing the environment in which it moves and other patterns to which it seems inseparably related. #3 Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism are examples of non-Western cultures that have never been able to attain the rigorously exact physical knowledge of the modern West. However, they were able to grasp in principle many things which are only now occurring to us. #4 The therapist must realize that his work is not just about the patient’s psyche and its private troubles. It is about the patient’s entire relationship with society, and more specifically, the social institutions that govern these relationships.