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Utilizing Abhidhamma principles in Psychotherapy

Publication at First Faculty of Medicine, Faculty of Arts |
2008

Abstract

Satitherapy is an integrative psychotherapy, which uses mindfulness (sati) as the key principle within a person centered approach. It integrates knowledge and skills from Western sources as well as from the ancient Buddhist teaching of Abhidhamma. There are several things unique to satitherapy:

1) the techniques of commenting the inter-subjectively experienced bodilyphenomena used as a method of mindfulness development;

2) the use of abhidhammic matrices of knowledge as means for diagnosis and therapeutic strategy planning;

3) the use of ethics as the explanatory principle of suffering and as the basic paradigm of skillful coping; and

4) the practical principle of skillful setting or removing of conditions enabling the upheaval of reality against the pathogenic wrong views. This presentation will illustrate and discuss all these points in more detail.