Hubert Benoit Books
Hubert Benoit was a French psychotherapist whose work anticipated developments in integral psychology and spirituality. He pioneered a form of psychotherapy that integrated a psychoanalytic perspective with insights from Eastern spiritual disciplines, particularly Ch'an and Zen Buddhism. Benoit emphasized the role of Western culture's spiritual ignorance in the emergence and persistence of distress. He used psychoanalytic concepts to explain defenses against fundamental unease, highlighting the importance of an analytic, preparatory phase while cautioning against an overemphasis on specific causal precursors of symptoms.
This volume is an exposition of Zen thought. It contains a number of basic ideas that seek to improve the understanding of the state of man, and seeks to examine the principles behind Zen thought through psychology.
Man cannot live fully until he has considered the great questions of life. It is for this reason that we turn to Western psychology and metaphysics for help in solving our problems. The approach of psychology and psychotherapy is based on "statistical normality," or the behavior of the greatest number. In an effort to conform, we focus on our problems rather than our possibilities, emulating a norm that falls drastically short of our full capacity for development. Oriental thought, and Zen thought in particular, seeks to activate the true potential of men and women--to transform our lives, and thereby enable us to shed our problems and suffering.The Supreme Doctrine applies the essence of Oriental Wisdom to the pursuit of self-knowledge and transcendence. The first step in a holistic psychology is to begin examining the true “state of man”, rather than its aberrations. In so doing, we can give new direction and purpose to our lives.The author does not advocate “conversion” to Eastern thought, but rather an integration of East and West, wherein Western psychological thinking and reasoning can be enriched and clarified by Oriental wisdom.