forts go well beyond some of the soft formulations
found in the literature of self-help, spirituality, New
Age, and pop psychology. In fact, the implicit and the
avowed recognition of the influence of Buddhist ideas
and attitudes extends beyond associations with con-
temporary popular expectations. We now count sev-
eral systematic, and successful attempts to integrate
aspects of Buddhist theories of cognition and medita-
tion into empirically testable clinical theory. The most
explicit use of Buddhist models is seen in Zindel Se-
gal’s mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depres-
sion (Segal et al.). This technique incorporates both
the behavioral and the cognitive aspects of mindful-
ness meditation into the treatment of depression,
including the practice of mindfulness of breath
(anapanasati) as a way to refocus or shift attention
away from distorting patterns of cognition and emo-
tion toward adaptive schemas.
Less explicitly linked to Buddhist practice, but now
amply tested as an effective therapy is Marsha Line-
han’s dialectic cognitive-behavioral therapy or DBT
(Linehan 1993a and 1993b). This system is a subtle in-
tegration of empirically based cognitive-behavioral
strategies and a number of elements of Buddhist the-
ory of knowledge and meditation. Linehan, for in-
stance, conceives the processes of dysfunction and
therapy in part through the lens of her own experience
with Zen practice, but also through her own nontra-
ditional understanding of the practice. The process is
a dialectic because it assumes and relies on the “fun-
damental interrelatedness or wholeness of reality” and
the placement of individual experience within a whole
of relationships. This means, on the one hand, that
the client needs “to accept herself as she is in the mo-
ment and the need for her to change” (1993b, pp.
1–2), but also that change requires the cultivation of
“core mindfulness skills” through which the client
learns to observe and accept without judgment even
those behaviors or interpersonal deficits that need to
be changed.
Jeffrey Schwartz, who was also inspired in part by
his Buddhist practice, has adapted similar mindfulness
techniques into the treatment of obsessive-compulsive
disorder. In this particular technique, one may posit
that Schwartz’s behavioral strategy is a variant of Bud-
dhist uses of attention and selective inattention, in-
cluding the confrontation of disgust and negative
emotions while in a serene state. Here Buddhist tech-
niques may be understood as equivalent to Western
systematic desensitization, and exposure with response
prevention. Yet, although both traditions follow sim-
ilar paths in reorienting the suffering individual to-
ward a revaluation of the causes of distress and
disgust, Schwartz highlights the Buddhist practice of
detached, nonjudgmental awareness, rather than the
purposeful increase in anxious tension built into ex-
posure techniques.
Unlike attempts to link Buddhism to psychology by
demanding a softening of the strictures of scientific
research, these applications respond to a critical re-
flection on Buddhist conceptions followed by system-
atic clinical trials and empirical testing. But they also
represent a willingness to follow the theory and tech-
nique in whichever direction is required to achieve ef-
fectiveness, including the use of techniques and belief
systems that would have been totally foreign to tradi-
tional Buddhists.
However, one should note that the danger of miss-
ing a valid parallel is as great as the danger of ac-
cepting spurious correspondences. An important
component of Linehan’s technique called “distress
tolerance skills” (1993a) parallels psychodynamic
concepts of affect tolerance and affect dysregulation
(Riesenberg-Malcolm). One would be tempted to re-
gard these principles as unrelated (at least genetically)
to any Buddhist technique of self-cultivation, except
that a wide range of Buddhist practices pursue simi-
lar goals. One may mention, in passing, the contem-
plation of objects of disgust (corpse meditation or
as ́ubhabhavana), as well as the use in the TIANTAI
SCHOOLof repentance rituals that both move away
from distress and remorse by contemplating empti-
ness and approach emptiness by contemplating the
passions and their effects.Commensurability and dialogue
The use of Buddhist techniques or beliefs as points of
departure for contemporary psychologies or as a part-
ner in scientific dialogue raises issues of commensura-
bility: Are Buddhist psychological conceptions in some
way commensurate with Western ideas of psychology
and can there be a fruitful dialogue between the two?
An obvious risk is to read psychological (scientific) lit-
erature the same way one reads religious literature: as
statements of eternal truth. But equally tempting is the
tendency to read psychological studies as confirma-
tions or equivalents to Buddhist doctrinal speculation
and religious practice.
Psychological “conclusions” are essentially provi-
sional heuristic tools, with two functions: predictionPSYCHOLOGY