I am a big fan of Dr. Mark Epstein. I haven't ever seen or met the man but I have read three of his books and am working on a fourth. This most recent one is Psychotherapy Without the Self.
Epstein says in the early pages that a fundamental difference between Freud's approach to the injured psyche and the approach of the Buddha is that Freud thought of digging down into the mind while the Buddha thought of opening to parts of life or experience that had seemed unbearable or too scary or shameful.
Another way to look at the difference, the psychotherapist says, is that Buddha found ways to get into a different relation to one's memories and impressions while Freud thought of uncovering or excavating content of the mind that had been repressed. Epstein emphasizes that toward the end of his life, Freud wrote Analysis: Terminable and Interminable coming to grips with the inadequacies of psycho-therapeutic analysis, which he had invented as a tool to help minds. Epstein emphasizes that meditation can accomplish accomplish more quickly and completely some of the things that Freud often had trouble accomplishing with his patients but he also emphasizes that psychotherapy in its modern form can help people who are having trouble that meditation alone cannot.
Epstein mentions the difference in focusing on content, as in "my mother was mean to me", as opposed to obtaining a new relation to my thoughts and feelings as in "my mother was mean to me and I understand why and forgive her". That difference reminds me of what my friend the communication professor told me about a debate in communication rhetoric theory that has been going on since the Greeks: style vs. content. A good story is a good story because of the content or because of the way it is told -- which is it? My mother and my wife and others have told me that HOW I say something affects them as much or more as WHAT I say. I realize that another way to put the idea is that the timing and voice tone and vocabulary matters as much as the meaning.
I have a friend who once went with his wife to the famous Masters and Johnson marital therapists to improve their marriage. The first thing they learned at the clinic was to use "I" messages, stating their ideas and impressions about themselves instead of making accusations about their partner. An elementary teacher just told me this afternoon how she was stressing the same idea to the students.
