Sheldon Kopp (1929 to 1999) was an American psychotherapist and writer, best known for If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him! (1972), a book about psychotherapy as a pilgrimage in which no teacher or therapist can be our master. The Shamanic Journey draws two things from him: the warning in his title, to beware of gurus and not hand our power away, and a story about a hat pin that shows why most people need not fear being unable to come back from a shamanic journey.
Who was Sheldon Kopp? #
A psychotherapist and teacher of psychotherapy who spent his working life in Washington DC. He was born in New York in 1929, graduated from Brooklyn College in 1951, and gained his doctorate from the New School in 1960. He then practised in Washington for thirty-five years, mostly in private practice, and also served as a psychotherapy supervisor for pastoral counselling centres in the city. He wrote more than a dozen books, with titles such as Guru: Metaphors from a Psychotherapist (1971), An End to Innocence: Facing Life without Illusions (1978) and Mirror, Mask, and Shadow (1980). He died in 1999.1
What is If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him! about? #
The journey of therapy, seen as a pilgrimage, and the trap of looking for someone outside ourselves to give it meaning. Its subtitle is The Pilgrimage of Psychotherapy Patients. The title comes from a saying attributed to Linji Yixuan, a ninth-century Chinese Chan (Zen) Buddhist monk, which is usually read as a warning against idolising a teacher and against clinging to ideas, even ideas of the Buddha.2 In Kopp’s use, killing the Buddha on the road means destroying the hope that anything outside ourselves can be our master; his book says that there are no hidden meanings in life, and that our lives have the significance we give them.3
In Therapeutic Shamanism the old saying is taken in just that spirit, as a warning to beware of gurus and not to hand our power away.4 It sits easily with a path in which nothing has to be believed on someone else’s authority, and everything is there to be tried out and tested in our own experience.5 See How can I tell whether a spiritual teacher, group or practice is healthy?
What is the hat-pin story? #
A therapist’s joke with a serious point. The story, as The Shamanic Journey retells it from Kopp’s book, goes like this. Kopp ran groups that used a lot of guided imagery, and there was almost always someone who grew nervous beforehand, afraid they would not be able to come back. One day he came prepared. He told the group they would be doing a long guided visualisation, and when someone sure enough became anxious about coming back, he reached into his bag, took out a large hat pin, and said that a quick jab in the thigh always brings people straight back.6
The point is that, unless we are psychotic, we can come back whenever we want to, because we are so used to being in this physical reality. Our bodies are anchored here, and they give us a safe place to return to after a shamanic journey.6
Why does the story matter for shamanic journeying? #
Because the fear it answers is common, and for most people it is the wrong fear. For most of us, getting back is not the problem; not being able to leave ordinary reality is. Journeying is our natural state, and if we are not psychotic there is no reason to approach it with any trepidation at all.7
The story sits inside a wider teaching about groundingGrounding. Returning fully into the body and physical reality; the bedrock of safe practice, and how every journey ends. More about this. Healthy shamanic practice means having a foot in both worlds, with a strong connection to ordinary, day-to-day reality, and that grounding is the difference between healthy shamanism and psychosis. So the one exception is real. For anyone who is psychotic, or having psychotic episodes, the starting point is grounding practices, and most definitely not journeying.7 See Is shamanic journeying safe? and How is shamanic journeying different from psychosis?
How does Kopp’s view of the therapist fit with Therapeutic Shamanism? #
It can be set beside a turn in psychotherapy that Therapeutic Shamanism draws on. Kopp’s book challenges the ways analysts and psychiatrists guided their patients, and puts the meaning of a life back in the hands of the person living it.8 That turn came through Carl Rogers among others. Early psychotherapy mirrored the power imbalances of a hierarchical society, with the therapist as the expert who told the client what was wrong with them; in person-centred therapy the therapist and client meet as equals, each with their own expertise, and the client is the expert in what they want to grow into.9 See Who was Carl Rogers, and why does he matter to Therapeutic Shamanism?
