Therapist

 

 

Question :

Osho,

Am I really a Good Therapist?

 

 

Prasad, to be a good therapist is a very difficult job. A good therapist has to be immensely compassionate, because it is not his techniques of therapy that help people, it is his love. There is nothing compared to love as far as healing the wounds of a man's being are concerned. All other techniques can be helpful, supportive, but the basic is not a technique but a loving heart.

 

A therapist cannot be a professional. The moment a therapist becomes professional things start going wrong, because the profession of therapy means that the patient should never be cured. He should be given hope but he should never be cured, because once you cure him you have lost one customer. The physician or the therapist, their profession is very strange. [....]

 

Prasad, a good therapist is one who avoids being a professional. It should be part of your love, not part of your business; only then can you be a good therapist. And as far as I know, you are one of the best therapists around here. I don't see in you things which lead therapists astray. One is a certain kind of gurudom. A therapist should not become a guru, because the moment you become a guru you start changing your patients into your disciples, you start exploiting their misery for your own aggrandizement, for your own ego. You start playing a role of being superior to you, higher than you.

 

I have not seen in your eyes that ugly ego which changes helping people into exploiting people. I have seen so many therapists who sooner or later fall into the trap. Because they know something more than the ordinary normal human being, they are in a position to exploit, they are in a position to create a following. That is not the work of the therapist. The work of the therapist is to help the patient to drop his tensions, to drop his unnecessary problems, to drop his habit of creating problems. Most of the patients that come to you are hypochondriacs; they are not suffering from any real problem. Seventy percent of their problems are just imaginary. [....]

 

In fact, if you are attentively listening to somebody a subtle help happens. He unburdens himself; things that he cannot say to other people he can say to you, because it is part of your work that you will keep it secret, that you will not start gossiping about it. So in privacy and secrecy he can open his heart, his wounds which he goes on hiding in the society. And by hiding the wounds, you can never cure them. By exposing them to light they are cured. [....]

 

Prasad, be attentive, be respectful, be loving. That makes a good therapist. The patient is not different from you. You are in the same boat. You not only allow him to open his heart, you also open your heart to him to give him a feeling that he is not alone in his suffering, that perhaps everybody in the world is suffering and hiding it.

 

The good therapist will create a friendliness, a deep intimacy with the patient. He should not remain on a high pedestal, far above, as if he has no problems. The fact is therapists have more problems than anybody else. They have their own problems and they have other people's problems too; hence four times more therapists go insane than any other profession, and four times more therapists commit suicide than any other profession. It is not just accidental.

 

But if you can be friendly, if you can hold the hand of the patient, if you can tell him that these are your problems too and it is good to have a companion, to have a friend, "We can work it out together. It is not only that you will be helped, I will be helped also...“

 

Unless a therapist comes to this humbleness, he is not going to help. And I can see in your eyes the possibility of this humbleness. [....]

 

Patients are being exploited sexually, financially, in every possible way. The patient has to be given as much respect and dignity as you can manage. You should be a humble helper, not a savior, then you can help people immensely. You can be a good therapist. You have to be. My therapists have to be in a different way than the therapists in the outside world. There they are business people. Here you are helping your fellow travelers, your brothers, your sisters. And by helping them, you are helping yourself because their problems and your problems are not different. [....]

 

Buddha never needed any psychotherapy for his sannyasins; those people were innocent. But in these twenty-five centuries, people have lost their innocence, they have become too knowledgeable. People have lost their contact with existence. They have become uprooted.

 

I am the first person who uses therapy but whose interest is not therapy but meditation, just as it was with Chuang Tzu or Gautam Buddha. They never used therapy because there was no need. People were simply ready, and you could bring the rosebushes without clearing the ground. The ground was already clear.

 

In these twenty-five centuries man has become so burdened with rubbish, so many wild weeds have grown in his being that I am using therapy just to clean the ground, take away the wild weeds, the roots, so the difference between the ancient man and the modern man is destroyed.

 

The modern man has to be made as innocent as the ancient man, as simple, as natural. He has lost all these great qualities. The therapist has to help him -- but his work is only a preparation. It is not the end. The end part is going to be the meditation.

 

As far as you are concerned, Prasad, you are doing perfectly well.

 

-Osho, "The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here, #27, Q3"