Close encounters of a new kind: toward an integration of psychoanalysis and Buddhism

Article Abstract:

Both psychoanalysis and Buddhism should be appreciated as valuable but incomplete narrative traditions. A comparison focuses on their world views, models of ideal health, approaches to the mind, understanding of self, and processes of change. Buddhism is incomplete because it neglects self-construction and the interpersonal dynamics involved in the teacher-student relationship. On the other hand, Buddhist meditation can help the therapist develop nonattachment, enhance capacities for self-introspection, and tolerate a wider spectrum of experiences.

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Suffering and the dialectical self in Buddhism and relational psychoanalysis

Article Abstract:

Both Buddhism and relational psychoanalysis suggest a conception of the dialectical self in relation to suffering. The dialectical self can be understood as both process and structure, associated with liberation as well as suffering, and both interdependent and separate from others. In clinical work, the model suggests that the practitioner should attend to both objective and subjective aspects of the self intrapsychically and in relationship to identify patterns that give rise to suffering or to expansion.

Dialectic, Suffering

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What on closer examination disappears

Article Abstract:

The self is that which disappears on closer inspection. Both Buddhism and psychoanalysis provide a method of examining the self, and both have found it to be elusive. Both approaches indicate that by opening more deeply to experience one finds that things are not what they seem to be and one's self is not what one thought it to be.

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