There is an obscure story about of one of Freud’s personal conversations that puts an interesting twist on the state of psychology in the West. The discussion was with Ludwig Binswanger, a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of the existential movement in psychoanalysis. Binswanger felt that there was something missing in Freud’s approach to therapy – too many patients simply did not get better. He raised the problem of paralysis of analysis with Freud. Might there not be a deficiency of spirit, asked Binswanger delicately, such that certain people were unable to raise themselves to a level of ‘spiritual communication’ with their analysts? Could this lack of spiritual communication be the thing that stopped people from healing? To Binswanger’s surprise, the old man readily acknowledged his point. “Yes” he said. ” Spirit is everything”………
……The spirit that Binswanger ebbing out of the field is essential if true healing is to take place. People who are suffering want to change, but they do not know how. They feel that they have to go into their problems, or somehow get rid of them entirely. They want to analyse, or be analysed, and they want to love, or be loved. But they do not know that to bring about true healing they have to learn to see themselves as they truly are.
– Mark Epstein from ‘ Going on Being: Life at the crossroads of Buddhism and Psychotherapy
ONE TUSK 
“…our lives and our psychological health depend on a sense of purpose. Mere survival is a purpose, but not enough for human consciousness. Nor is working for the survival of others sufficiently meaningful if one believes that the human race has no place to go, that it endlessly repeats the same patterns, or worse….
The fundamental questions, “Who am I?” and “What am I?” arise increasingly in the struggle to find meaning and purpose in life. Therapists hear them as explicit queries or in indirect form: “Who is the real me?” or “I don’t know what I want – part of me wants one thing and part of me wants something else. What do I want?” Western psychology is severely handicapped in dealing with these questions, because the center of human experience – the observing self – is missing from its theories….”
The Observing Self: Mysticism and Psychotherapy – Arthur J. Deikman, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco
http://www.deikman.com
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