Abstract

This study is to compare psychoanalysis, personcentered counseling, and Buddhism (especially Mahayana Buddhism) with their ways of dealing with psychological problems. The goal of psychoanalyis is to reconstruct the patient's personality, in other words, to modify his infantile needs and adjustment patterns to more realistic and more appropriate ones. This goal can be achieved by making the patient conscious of, and working through, his repressed conflicts and his infantile needs, impulses, and coping mechanisms related with those conflicts. A psychoanalyst makes use of therapeutic alliance, transference, and free association to accomplish this goal. A psychoanlyst interprets his patient's transference and resistance to make his patient understand the patient's repressed infantile needs and his unconscious defences, guilt, and fear. A psychoanalyst takes an analytic attitude as no more or no less than a therapist during the treatment. Person-centered counseling aims at a client's actualization of his inherent potentialities which have been distorted or denied. This goal is achieveved only when, the client gets an insight into his experiences and changes his self-concept accordingly. Such undrstanding and changes are possible through therapeutic atmosphere of congruence, acceptance, and empathic understanding from a counselor. In Buddhism, the solution of psychological problem lies in enlightenment. Such enlightenment is achieved by getting insight into one's True Mind or Buddha Nature, and living up to it. For this, a disciple must believe in and understand his True Mind, and must cultivate it by practising six paramita; charity, keeping the commandments, patience under insult, zeal, meditation, and wisdom. A disciple is given a Wha-doo (or Koan) and stimulated by his master to devote all his energy to it in Gan-wha Sōn, which is a kind of meditation and is usually considered in Korea the representative way of cultivating one's mind among the six paramita. A Wha-dco is a puzzle-like problem, which seems to be pointing at. the disciple's essential attachment (upādāara) and ignorance (avidya). A master is a guide, who pays his attention only to his disciple's progress in the solution of the Wha-doo, but gives no explanation hint about it. Psychoanalysis, person-centered counseling, and Buddhism are similar in their emphases on insight into one's mind and on the importance of therapeutic relationship beween a therapist (a counelor, or a guide)and a patient (a client, or a disciple). However, they differ greatly in the folliowing respects. First, the contents of insight are different. In psychoanalysis, repressed infantile wishes and adjustment mechanisms are understood, while repressed potentialities for growth (or actualization) are awakened in person-centered counseling. In Buddhism we can find both sides. Second, they differ in their placement of insight along the whole process. In psychoanalysis and person-centered counseling, a patient's (or a client's) intellectual/emotional insight into one's own mind is the consequence of the successful treatment (or counseling). However, in Buddhism, the intellectual insight and the belief in one's own True Mind are the prerequisite for the successful practice of cultivation. Third, their views on the nature cf the relationship during the treatment process are different. In psychoanalysis, the frustration of patients' transference needs is emphasized, while the healthy relationship which satisfies clients' needs for growth is regarded important in person-centered counseling. Buddhism seems to have both aspects, that is, frustration of egotistic impulses and satisfaction in the form of hope and belief in his True Mind.