Freud, Jung, Janov, they all remain ill.

They have never worked it out on themselves

 

 

Question :

You spoke of the lives of Jung and Freud, and I have heard that Janov has not tried his own methods, and he seems to be a very, very ambitious man. Can you comment on his methods and whether he has healed himself at all?

 

 

That's the problem in the West with all the thinkers -- they have not tried their own methods. In fact, they have stumbled upon those methods not as part of their spiritual search. They have stumbled upon those methods working on their patients.

 

Freud stumbled upon psychoanalysis, and I say 'stumbled' because it was accidental. It was just groping in the dark. He was working on patients -- he was a doctor, trying to help. By and by he became aware that there are many illnesses which are not physical, so you go on treating them physically and nothing happens. Then he became interested in hypnosis because something could be done through hypnosis. Through hypnosis he started working. For many years he was a hypnotist working with his teacher and helping people. Then, by and by, he be came aware that in fact hypnosis was not helping. There was no need to hypnotize a person and make him unconscious. Even if a person, fully conscious, started relating whatsoever came to his mind, whatsoever floated from the unconscious to the conscious mind, if he went on saying it, that would give a release. He started trying that. That's how psychoanalysis was born: free association of thoughts. He had never tried anything on himself. He remained the same man, he attained to no maturity.

 

The same has happened with others, and with Janov also. He had been working with patients and he stumbled upon the fact that if a patient can live backwards to the very trauma of birth, when the child is born and he screams for the first time -- that is the primal scream -- if a person can go backwards to the very point when he comes out of the womb and takes his first breath, then many things are simply resolved, many problems disappear. Just by living them again, they disappear. He has not tried it on himself. He is not a healed person.

 

Freud was very ambitious. He thought himself to be a prophet inaugurating a great world movement. And he was jealous, as political leaders are always jealous, conspiratorial, spying on his own disciples and associates, continuously afraid that somebody was going to destroy his movement, take possession of the movement, become the leader; always afraid.

 

And it was the same with Jung. If you look into Jung's eyes.... Get a picture of Jung, it is worth studying. Hidden behind his glasses are very cunning eyes; the very face is egoistic. Janov is very ambitious and his new books show his ambition clearly. He has stumbled accidentally upon a small method which is not a system, just a fragment, but now he thinks he has discovered the whole truth. Now he thinks this Primal Therapy is all that is needed, that this will lead everyone to the ultimate nirvana. This is foolish. This is ambition.

 

The second thing to remember about all the Western thinkers who have become influential there is that they have been working with ill people, patients. They have not come across healthy people, so whatsoever their findings, their findings are based on pathology. A healthy person is absolutely different from a pathological person. Freud never came across a healthy man. There is no question of it because the healthy man never goes to the physician or the doctor. Why should he go? Unless you are mentally ill, why should you go to a headshrinker? There is no need. You go only because you are ill, so only ill humanity goes to these people: Freud, Jung, Adler, Janov. On these ill people they base their philosophies.

 

This is bound to be unbalanced, and not only unbalanced, but also in a certain way very dangerous because these ill specimens of humanity are not the real representatives. They are ill. It is just as if you come to know only blind men because you are a doctor of eyes, so only blind people come to you and then you think about man as blind. Mentally ill people come to you, then you think of man as mentally ill. That is wrong be cause unless healthy people exist, is illness possible?

 

All the Western psychologies are based on pathology, and a real psychology is needed that is based on the healthy person. The perfect psychology has to be based on Buddha like people, not just healthy people. So there are three types of psychologies. One, pathological: all Western psychologies are pathological. Only very recently some wholistic trends which think about the healthy person are gaining strength, but they are just at the beginning. Even the first steps have not been taken. There are psychologies of the second type which think about the healthy person, which are based on the healthy mind -- those are the Eastern psychologies. Buddhism has a very, very penetrating psychology; Patanjali has his own psychology. They are based on healthy people: to help a healthy person become more healthy, to help a healthy person attain to greater health. Pathological psychologies help m people to become healthy.

 

Then there is a third type. What Gurdjieff used to call the ultimate psychology is as yet undeveloped. That type has to depend on Buddha. It has not been developed yet, because where to go to study a Buddha, and how to study a Buddha? And only one Buddha won't do, you will have to study many. Then only can you come to conclusions. But some day that psychology will happen, it is a must. It must be there because only that can give you the total perception into human consciousness.

Freud, Jung, Janov, they all remain ill. They have never worked it out on themselves. Stumbling in the dark, groping in the dark, they come to some fragments and then they think that those fragments are complete systems. Whenever a fragment is claimed as a complete system it becomes a lie. A fragment is a fragment.

 

Eastern psychologies are for healthy people, to help you to become more whole. And my effort will be to work out a psychology of the third type, the psychology of Buddhas, be cause that will give you the perfect penetration into the whole of human consciousness.

 

Psychologies based on pathologies are good; they help ill people. But that can never be the goal. It is good, but just to become healthy, normal, is nothing much. Just to be normal is nothing much because everybody else is normal. It is bad to be ill because you suffer, but it is not much good to be normal because normal people are suffering in millions of ways. In fact, to be normal means only to adjust to the society. The society itself may be abnormal, the whole society may be itself ill. To adjust to it only means you are normally abnormal, that's all. That's not much of a gain. You have to go beyond social normality. You have to go beyond the social madness. Then only, for the first time do you become healthy.

 

Eastern psychologies: Yoga, Zen, Sufism, all help healthy people to become more healthy and holy. The third type of psychology is needed, urgently needed, because without it you don't have the goal, the perception of the very end. That has to bP worked out. Gurdjieff tried his best but couldn't succeed. The climate was not ripe. I am trying towards that again. It is difficult to succeed in it, but the possibility is there and one has to go on trying. If even a little more light is thrown on the perfect, the last, the ultimate psychology of man, even that is good, very helpful.

 

-Osho, "Yoga, Vol 4, #6, Q4"