[Buddha-l] Buddhism and Psychology research

[Dan Lusthaus]

Richard writes:

> Buddhists are still breaking "mind" into the same four skandhas that 
> Buddhists were using 2500 years ago. Nothing new has appeared for over two 
> millennia.

That may be true of some Buddhists. Especially those who do not train in 
abhidharma. It's precisely because the Abhidharmikas found the skandha model 
too narrow and insufficient that they expanded it dozens of dharmas 
(Yogacara rounded them off to 100 dharmas, but the reality is that the lists 
and enumerations were fluid, and subject to much debate). Aside from 
assigning various cognitive activities to ever more specific brain regions 
(and interacting brain regions), what modern psychologists do and what the 
leading abhidharma thinkers were doing are not all that different -- nor are 
their conclusions in many cases. Unfortunately with a few exceptions 
(Dhammajoti being one, H. Gunaratna being another), most of those discussing 
abhidharma before a larger audience have only a superficial knowledge of the 
most rudimentary features. It would be like presuming that chemistry in the 
21st c consists of what freshmen get introduced to in Chem 101.

> Nasty speech? Since when did saying that science is intellectually more 
> sophisticated than abhidharma nasty?

I said that already, without being nasty.

> Places like Harvard Medical and
>> MIT have much more progressive views. Time to catch up on current trends.
>
> More progressive than Freud? Yes, I know. Most of what I have read in the 
> area of psychology comes from Harvard, MIT and McGill. Those folks leave 
> Buddhism and Freud in the dustbin of outmoded ways of thinking. But thanks 
> for your touchingly empathic concern for the cultural backwaters of New 
> Mexico.

You're welcome. In fact, Freud is having something of a comeback in recent 
years, esp. among some brain researchers, who are finding that some of his 
theories do seem to have physiological correlates.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/reading-minds-method-or-muddle/201003/who-s-afraid-sigmund-freud

Lots of people forget that Freud himself predicted that at some future date 
he expected physiological processes will be discovered that account for the 
psychological dynamics he was analyzing. Unlike Jung, he wasn't a fan of the 
wookie, and prefered scientific method.
http://www.neuro-psa.org.uk/download/SAorig.pdf

Still playing catch up.

Dan