Testimonial letter from Andrew S. Ferber
This letter is one of a remarkable series of over 2650 letters amassed in 1983 to support Osho's attempt to get permanent resident status in the US at the time of the Oregon ranch. The image is reproduced here with the kind permission of The Oregon Historical Society. Information about their collection of these letters and other supporting material -- the "Jeffrey Noles Rajneesh Collection", named for Osho's immigration lawyer Jeffrey Noles, who compiled them in 1983 and donated them to the OHS -- can be found at this page. The wiki is grateful to the OHS for making access available for these documents. For more information and links to all the letters, see Testimonial letters.
This letter is from Andrew S. Ferber MD. It is "Exhibit A-1125" in the Noles collection.
The text version below has been created by optical character recognition (OCR), from the images supplied by OHS. It has not been checked for errors but this process usually results in over 99% correct transcription. Most apparent "errors" are correct transcriptions of typos already in the original. The image on the right in the text box links to a pdf file of the original letter, it has one page.
 ANDREW S. FERBER, M. D. To Whom It may Concern; Re; Contributions of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh to Psychiatry and Psychology I have been asked to submit a document outlining my views on Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh’s contributions to contemporary psychiatry and psychology. A brief note on myself.; I am an assosciate professor of psychiatry at Albert Einstein Medical School in the Branx in NYC, I have taught and done research in many fields of behavioral science including much ethology, anthropology, sociology and psychoanalytic psychology. My particular specialty was social psychiatry in general andfamily therpy in particular. I have wirtten htree books, many articles and deliver3ed more lectures and workshps than I care to recall. (My typing still leaves much to be desired.) In my opinion Bhagawan is the most profound and inclusive thinker I have ever come across. His views form a syntheses that includes and transcends contemporary schools of behavioral science, while somehow reconciling many of the apparent contradictions found within them. IN addition to the massive corpus of thought recoreded in his literaly hundreds of books, the unique guidance he has provided to thousands of individual practitioners of various therapies is of enormous impact. His disciples and followers have spread his influence and views throughout the western world wherever humane psychotherapy is practiced. His teachings are beyond sect and petty school boudaries. Finally, the therapy work happening at the Rajneesh Institute for Therapy and at many centres around the world is amongst the most healing and integrating work available to persons (sannyasins and non sannyasins equally). There is no person alive (that I am aware of) who has a more profound, far reaching and beneficial effect on psychiatry and psychology than Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Sincerely yours, |
(Please note: We assume that the above letter is still copyrighted, but we regard its historical interest to constitute a Fair Use exception for publication in this wiki.)
