Techniques for nothingness

Debate over the comparability of hypnosis and Zen in early-twentieth-century Japan

Bibliographic Data

ID4392257
AuthorsY C Wu (0000-0002-2085-1609, Academia Sinica, corresponding author), Yu-Chuan Wu (Academia Sinica, Taiwan)
Year2018
Volume56
Issue4
Pages470-496
Publication date2018-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistory of Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0073-2753 • E-ISSN: 1753-8564
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0073275317743120
PMID29219000
OpenAlexW2773914621
LanguageEN
Citations received6

This paper explores a debate that took place in Japan in the early twentieth century over the comparability of hypnosis and Zen. The debate was among the first exchanges between psychology and Buddhism in Japan, and it cast doubt on previous assumptions that a clear boundary existed between the two fields. In the debate, we find that contemporaries readily incorporated ideas from psychology and Buddhism to reconstruct the experiences and concepts of hypnosis and Buddhist nothingness. The resulting new theories and techniques of nothingness were fruits of a fairly fluid boundary between the two fields. The debate, moreover, reveals that psychology tried to address the challenges and possibilities posed by religious introspective meditation and intuitive experiences in a positive way. In the end, however, psychology no longer regarded them as viable experimental or psychotherapeutic tools but merely as particular subjective experiences to be investigated and explained

Alternative medicine · Buddhism · Comparability · Epistemology · Gautama Buddha · Hypnosis · Introspection · Meditation · Nothing · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology · Mathematics · Medicine · Philosophy · Psychology · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub