According to Osho, the ABC's of psychology are a playful pointer: A—neurotics build air castles (they imagine anxiously); B—psychotics live in those castles (they inhabit delusion); C—psychiatrists collect the rent (they manage the whole show). With humor, he exposes how mind-made fantasies trap us and how roles around pathology perpetuate the game.
It’s a joke saying some people imagine problems, some get lost in them, and others make a living dealing with it.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: BELOVED MASTER, WHAT ARE THE ABC'S OF PSYCHOLOGY? The A of psychology: neurotics build air castles. The B of psychology: psychotics live in them. The C of psychology: psychiatrists collect the rent. The last question:
Beloved Osho, what do you mean by "the psychology of the buddhas?" how is it different from the present psychology that prevails in the world?
It has to be understood; the people who came to Sigmund Freud, the founder of modern psychology, were all sick people -- obviously, otherwise why should they come to the psychoanalyst? They were seriously sick, their minds were falling apart. Sigmund Freud came in contact only with sick people -- that gave him the impression that man himself is sick. In a way he is logical because everybody he examined, everybody he analyzed, everybody he treated was sick. And these were high-class people, bourgeois -- professors, scientists, very rich people -- because a psychoanalyst's time is the costliest thing in the world today. All these people were basically living an insane life, but because everybody else is also living the same insane life you don't become aware of it. If Sigmund Freud denied that there is any possibility of a soul in man he cannot be blamed. He never came…
Beloved master, please explain whether the techniques you have discussed so far from vigyana bhairava tantra belong to the science of yoga instead of to the actual and central subject matter of tantra. What is the central subject matter of tantra?
This question arises to many. The techniques that we have discussed also belong to yoga. They are the same techniques, but with a difference: you can use the same techniques with a very different philosophy behind them. The framework, the pattern differs, not the technique. You may have a different attitude toward life, just the contrary to tantra. Yoga believes in struggle; yoga is basically the path of will. Tantra does not believe in a struggle; tantra is not the path of will. Rather, on the contrary, tantra is the path of total surrender. Your will is not needed. For tantra your will is the problem, the source of all anguish. For yoga your surrender, your will-lessness is the problem. Because your will is weak, that is why you are in anguish, suffering - for yoga. For tantra, because you have a will, because you have an ego, an individuality,…
I am a so-called psychologist. Usually I enjoy it. Recently I have begun to appreciate witnessing. I wonder now if I am 'qualified" to be a psychologist. Carl rogers used the phrase "unconditional positive regard" as the core of psychotherapy. Compassion is so foreign and new to me.
ALL PSYCHOLOGISTS are so-called psychologists -- because the real psychology does not exist yet, because man is still not known. Psychology is just a groping. It is still not a science; it is just in a very primary stage. So every psychologist is a so-called psychologist because psychology is a so-called psychology. The real psychology is yet to be born. But the so-called psychology is paving the way for it, so it is valuable. When I say it is so-called psychology, I am not condemning it. It is just like alchemy preceded chemistry and astrology preceded astronomy. This so-called psychology is preceding, is a requirement, for the real psychology to be born. Just as alchemists are no longer remembered, forgotten, you cannot even mention their names, sooner or later Freud and Jung and Adler will be forgotten the same way -- they are alchemists of the inner world. Sooner or…
Western psychotherapy has gone only on the lower steps of the ladder. And the reason why they have gone on the lower steps of the ladder is because Western psychology started studying sick, mentally deranged people. They were on the lower steps, so naturally they started finding out more and more about those lower steps. Eastern psychology has simply mentioned that these steps are there to be avoided, but they have not been studied. No thesis is available in the East which goes into details about these steps, they have simply been mentioned. But in the East the higher steps have been very deeply studied, because they were studying the meditators, not the sick people. Because the objective study was different, the whole approach became different. They were studying the meditators so they became aware of the no-mind, of superconsciousness, of cosmic consciousness.