The Dynamic Psychology of Early Buddhism

Originally published in 1979, The Dynamic Psychology of Early Buddhism was a psychologist’s attempt to understand what the Buddha meant by “dependent origination” (paticcasumappāda, sometimes translated as “causality”). Those who are familiar with Theravada Buddhism have met the famous series of twelve links in the chain of causation (nidanas) of which each is said to be the condition of the next one, and the background of this book is exactly the challenging, teasing incomprehensibility of this series. The author collected all the passages in the Nikāyas or scriptural literature which throw light on the meaning of conditioned sequences, accepting only those explanations which agree with the facts in the Nikāyas. The result of these investigations is that the dynamic aspect of the Buddha’s psychology must have been much more extreme and all-pervading than was usually believed at the time of first publication. Today it can be read in its historical context.