Abstract                                        

This research work is a comparative study of the psychotherapy between Buddhism and Western Psychology. This Study has three objectives: (1) To study of the way to recover mental illnesses in psychology. (2) To study of the way to recover mental illnesses in Buddhism. (3) To comparative study of the way to recover mental illnesses between psychology and Buddhism.

This study divided into five chapters. In the first chapter, it is introduction about the background of significance. In the second chapter, it is explained that the history of Western psychotherapy and psychotherapy methods. The third chapter examines the Buddhist way to recover mental illnesses. The fourth chapter is the comparison of the Western psychotherapy and Buddhist psychotherapy. The fifth chapter is conclusion and suggestions for the further studies.

The mental illnesses have been taken the special attention of the world, because the way people live in the society is caused to increase the mental illnesses. In early period, although the western people did not pay special attention on mind in the present time it is popular topic. Since the 19^th century, the studying about mind was increased. As the result, there are many healing methods appear in Western psychology under the topic of psychotherapy.

Buddhism is mainly focuses on mind, because the way to attaining the goal of Buddhism is overcoming the all of defilements completely. According to the Buddhism until eradicate the defilements, cannot recover the mental illnesses. Because of these reasons, in the Buddhism, the way to be free from mental illnesses has been explained in detail. The Western psychologists take a look for this in another way. In this research mainly focuses on psychoanalysis’ psychotherapy and mindfulness based cognitive psychotherapy only. This research supports to make an understanding the differences and similarities of Buddhism and these methods.     

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