Beyond Happiness: Deepening the Dialogue Between Buddhism, Psychotherapy and the Mind Sciences

In Beyond Happiness, Gay Watson deepens the discussion between Buddhist thought and psychotherapy and the new findings of neuroscience.

Buddhist teachings are concerned with a way of living and engage most resonantly with practice rather than with theory, thus the conversation between Buddhism and psychotherapy has been a particularly fruitful one. In search of a way to happiness, Buddha set out to explore our experience and, in so doing, presented what may well be called the earliest psychology, an experiential exploration of subjectivity. In the West, for much of the twentieth century, psychology (science) and psychotherapy (practice) had little to say to one another.

Despite Sigmund Freud’s early wish to consider psychoanalysis as a science, academic psychology has had scant time for what it considered at best an art form, while psychotherapy found little of interest in psychology’s lack of concern with subjective experience. All this has changed since the growth of the interdisciplinary fields of cognitive science, neuroscience and consciousness studies, and the development of new technology. Today, ideas arising from Buddhism and from contemporary cognitive science may encourage us to engage anew with our experience, our embodiment and our relationships.

A compelling and original synthesis of psychotherapy, Buddhist meditation, neuroscience, ecology and feminism, Beyond Happiness points to a more sane and compassionate way of living in this world at this critical juncture in human history.