Psychoanalysis

Beloved master, cannot psychoanalysis solve man's problems? Is religion really needed at all?

For example, in India, sex is taboo -- you should not talk about it -- but death is not taboo. You can talk about it; in fact, all the religious teachers talk about death. They make people so much afraid of death, talking again and again and again about it. They create so much fear in people that out of fear people start becoming religious. All Indian scriptures are full of the description of death. Death seems to be one of the most talked about subjects in India -- not sex. Sex is taboo. Sex is life, and if you choose death you cannot choose sex -- either/or. Freud did a great service to humanity; he brought sex from the dark corners of the soul into the open world. But immediately death became taboo; he himself became afraid of death. They are polar opposites, and the total man will be…

Is psychoanalysis really that useless?

No, not always. Sometimes it helps too. Meditate on this story. Felix Simons was a nice guy but a social flop. Although he was thirty-five, he had never conquered his childhood habit of bedwetting. Finally, one of his friends told him, 'Look, Felix, you might as well know the truth. We're all very fond of you, but nobody can stand to come into your house because it smells, and you're driving your wife up a wall. Why don't you see a psychiatrist about your problem? Enuresis is not too uncommon and it can be cured. Get it over with once and for all!' Felix was convinced. After six months of treatment he ran into the same friend. 'Well, Felix, did you take my advice?' 'Yes,' answered Felix, 'I've been seeing a psychiatrist three times a week for six months now.' 'Well, have you had any results?' 'Oh,' beamed Felix, 'great…

Can't psychoanalysis help people to know themselves? Is religion really necessary?

Sugeet, psychoanalysis can help a little bit, it can prepare the ground, but it cannot be a substitute for religion. In the West it is becoming a substitute for religion, and that is going to destroy something immensely beautiful. Religion is a totally different phenomenon from psychoanalysis. Religion is not analysis at all, religion is meditation. It is not thinking, it is not analysis. Psychoanalysis is concerned with the mind and helping the mind to become adjusted to society, to whatsoever is thought to be normal. It may be, it may not be. Usually the average is thought to be the normal, but the average is not necessarily the normal. The word normal comes from 'norm'; norm means the law. Normal is one who lives according to the law, the ultimate law, the ultimate norm. A Buddha is normal, a Jesus is normal, a Zarathustra is normal, a Bodhidharma is…

Beloved Osho, in the west, psychoanalysis has grown through freud, adler, jung and wilhelm reich, to solve the problems arising from the ego such as frustrations, conflicts, schizophrenia and madness. In comparison to your meditation techniques, please explain the contributions, limitations and incompleteness of the system of psychoanalysis in solving the human problems rooted in the ego.

What is happening? You have been operating; you have done many operations. And now what is happening? You cannot do it on your child or your wife because the distance is so little -- as if there is no distance. Without distance you cannot be impartial. So a psychoanalyst can help others but when he is in trouble he will have to take advice, he will have to be psychoanalyzed by someone else. And this is really strange that even a person like Wilhelm Reich goes mad in the end. We cannot conceive a buddha going mad -- or can you conceive of it? And if a buddha can go mad, then there is no way out of this misery. It is inconceivable that a buddha goes mad. Look at Sigmund Freud's life. He is the father and founder of psychoanalysis; he went on talking about problems very deeply. But…