Yes—the tiny family makes minds sick by trapping kids in narrow bonds; living in a caring community with many adults keeps us healthier and less neurotic.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, is the small family the main cause of neurosis in this society? Is the total dependence of the child on the parents, and vice versa, the cause of hypocrisy, fixations and all kinds of neurosis, fear and anxiety?
The family is certainly the cause of all kinds of neurosis, psychosis, schizophrenia. The whole sickness of man's mind is created by the family. The family is the basic unit of the old society; unless the family disappears the old society will continue, because its basic unit is intact. In my own way, without my saying anything, my communes are helping make the family disappear. A commune means the disappearance of family ties. You may be here, your wife may be here, your child may be here, but you are no longer a separate unit competing against every other separate unit. In a commune you are not competing, but on the contrary, you are pooling all your energies together. The child will not get fixated -- which is one of the most significant things to be understood. Scientists have discovered in animals a certain fact -- the first impression... and…
Beloved Osho, the phrase "a broken family" is used to conjure up the essence of a disastrous childhood. By the time I was at university, I had had two fathers and three mothers; and if you include my grandparents -- who also functioned as parents for a good while -- a grand total of seven, instead of the conventional two. Initially I was puzzled how it was that I seemed relatively free and well-adjusted, while so many of my more "fortunate" friends -- who had had the proper stable family life -- seemed endlessly troubled by the continuing demands of family ties that pursued them into adulthood
Now in big cities like London or New York or San Francisco, you can find male prostitutes. Naturally -- the woman has equal rights. If there are female prostitutes, then male prostitutes should be available too. The women's liberation movement is trying to create so much hate for man that there are a few of the leaders of that movement who are preaching lesbianism: women should love only women -- just cut out man completely. And this is happening. Homosexuality is happening. Men are tired of women, of being harassed by women, nagged by women. They have started looking for some substitute, and they have found that it is better to love a man -- it is at least not miserable. It is not a coincidence that homosexuals are called gay people; they are gay. But this is turning the whole society into a madhouse. These perversions of sex are…
A friend is asking: Osho, in one of my statements I have said that marriage as it is today—the institution of marriage as it stands now—is so distorted that, passing through it, only distortion arises in a person’s psyche, not virtue.
It is true that marriage is a very common, very necessary institution. Ordinarily, if marriage were scientific, then after marriage a person would become simpler, more peaceful, more orderly. But if marriage is wrong—as it is wrong—then troubles, unrest, and mental sicknesses will increase even more than before marriage. As I say, any marriage that has not blossomed out of love, that has been arranged by consulting an astrologer, that has been decided by the parents and not arisen from the love of the two who are to marry—that marriage will deform, not transform. Instead of resolving old problems, it will lead you into new ones. And so, across the whole world the institution of marriage has become pathological, sick, rotten. Until we change the arrangement of marriage—there are many other things that are rotting society and producing madness, but among the most fundamental is marriage—until we change it, the…
Osho: the pope is on about sex again! At a recent national convention of christian family advisors in italy he condemned pre-marital and extra-marital relations. As well as contraception and abortion. The future of the world and of the church lies in the family, he said. What do you say?
And he says he is also against extra-marital relationships. That is a little more complicated, but it has to be understood. That too is one of the latest psychological findings, that extra-marital relationships help marriage, they don't destroy it. It is always good to have a little change, just at the weekend. It does not harm at all. That idea -- that if a man starts having a little love affair with some woman other than his wife it will destroy the marriage -- is absolutely wrong. It will help, it will renew the relationship, because one gets tired. Man is, after all, human. Don't ask impossible things! One gets tired -- the same woman, the same man. One loses all taste. If you have to eat the same food every day, like I do, you will get fed up. Even my kitchen people who prepare the food, they are…
You believe that man should live more meditatively. How can this solve life problems or prevent wars?
Love should be accepted more, violence should be rejected more. Love should be available more. Two persons making love should not be worried that no one should know. They should laugh, they should sing, they should scream in joy, so that the whole neighbourhood knows that somebody is being loving to somebody -- somebody is making love. Love should be such a gift. Love should be so divine. It is sacred. You can publish a book about a man being killed, that's okay that is not pornography. To me, that is pornography. You cannot publish a book about a man lovingly holding a woman in deep, naked embrace -- that is pornography. This world has existed against love up till now. Your family is against love, your society is against love, your state is against love. It is a miracle that love has still remained a little, it is unbelievable…