Franklin Merrell-Wolff comments upon the radical difference between the Eastern and Western approach to psychology as reflected in William James’ The Variety of Religious Experience and in The Foundations of Eastern and Western Psychology, edited by Swami Ajaya. In regard to the psychology of religious experience, Wolff characterizes the Eastern approach as metaphysical, wand he contrasts this approach to the empirical, scientific interest in observable psychical facts prevalent in the West. He submits that the Western approach to psychology is, in general, analytic, materialistic, and reductive, while the Eastern approach tends to be synthetic or integral, idealistic, and goal-oriented.