Therapy
Therapy is basically a function of love, and love flows only when there is no ego. You can help the other only to the extent that you are non-egoistic. The moment the ego enters, the other becomes defensive. The ego is aggressive; it creates an automatic urge in the other to be defensive. Love is non-aggressive. It helps the other to remain vulnerable, open, nondefensive. Hence, without love there is no therapy.
Therapy is a function of love. So with ego, you can't help. You may even destroy the other. In the name of help you may hinder his growth. But Western psychology is caught up in a mess.
The first thing Western psychology still thinks in terms of a healthy ego. And ego can never be healthy. It is a contradiction in terms. Ego as such is ill. Ego can never be healthy. Ego is always leading you towards more and more illness. But Western psychology thinks -- the whole Western mind has been -- that people are suffering from weak egos. People are not suffering from weak egos; people are suffering from too much of egoism.
But if the society is male-mind-oriented, aggression-oriented, if the only desire of the society is how to conquer all, then naturally you have to drop all that is feminine in you. You have to drop half of your being into oblivion -- and you have to live with the other half. The other half can never be healthy because health comes through wholeness. The feminine has to be accepted... the feminine is egolessness, the feminine is receptivity, the feminine is love.
A really healthy person is one who is utterly balanced between the male and the female. In fact, he is one whose maleness has been cut, destroyed by his femaleness, who has transcended both, who is neither male nor female -- who simply is. You cannot categorize him. This man is whole, and this man is healthy. And to such a man, in the East, we have always looked as the Master.
In the East we have not created anything parallel to the psychotherapist. The East has created the Master, the West has created the psychotherapist. When people are mentally disturbed, they go to the psychiatrist in the West; in the East, they go to a Master. The Master's function is utterly different. He does not help you to attain to a stronger ego. In fact, he makes you feel that the ego that you have is already too much. Drop it! Let it go!
Once the ego is dropped, suddenly you are one and whole and flowing. And there is no block and no hindrance.
In the West also, sooner or later, psychotherapy will have to understand the ultimate psychology -- the psychology of the Buddhas. Before I enter into it, I would like to say a few things about the ego -- how this mechanism functions, what exactly it is.
-Osho, "Zen: The Path of Paradox, Vol 3, #4, Q1"