Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

Buddhism and psychoanalysis have sporadically encountered one another over the last
century, a situation brought about by: the paucity of Buddhist texts; Freud's split with Jung,
who adopted ideas from Eastern religions (Bion quoted in Young-Eisendrath and Muramoto
2002: 4); Freud's reductionist reading of oceanic feeling and mysticism (Parsons 1999); the
dominance of Freud's views as orthodoxy (Akhtar 2009); and the trauma caused by World
War Two, with a distrust between East and West. 278 Buddhism impacted on psychoanalysis
in Britain and the USA differently, where the latter had particular affinities to Zen
Buddhism (Safran 2003; Weiner, Cooper, and Barbre 2005). 279 Suler combines Eastern
thinking with Western ideas in a ‘collage’ of Taoism, Zen and Buddhism to transform
psychoanalysis and allows for a greater engagement of ideas and practices.
As the royal roads of psychoanalysis and the ancient ways of the East converge, the
ultimate goal for each will be the same: To understand fully in all dimensions the
self and no-self. On this path, the Eastern and Western disciplines will be
complementary explorers of human nature and complementary healers of human
suffering (Suler 1993: 263).
Psychoanalytic and Buddhist engagement in Britain
Buddhism in Britain is based on traditional Theravadian and Mahayanian forms and was
primarily taken up in the humanistic, transpersonal and body therapies that evolved in the
1980s. 280 In psychoanalysis the most significant figure to engage with Buddhism was Nina
278
The early engagement began with the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism (Tom Son 1924; Alexander 1931),
yet within Japan Marui Kiyoyasa started the Tohoku school in the 1920s, gaining Freud's approval to form the
first Japanese centre for the International Psychoanalytic Association, developed after World War Two by
Kosawa Heisaku and the Kosawa school. Unique Japanese psychoanalytic concepts: ‘amae’; the ‘ajase’
complex; and the ‘Don’t Look’ prohibition all have Buddhist and Taoist elements and are still relatively
unknown in the West (Kawada 1977; Alvis 2003). Zen Buddhism as a new development was discussed at the
Japanese Psychoanalytical Society 1958-1959 (King 1960).
279
While I have focused on the UK and the USA, new forms of engagement are being found in many contexts,
including Japan (Shingu and Funaki 2008).
280
The Sills established the Karuna Institute in 1982 offering the first accredited and academic course using a
core model drawn from Buddhist concepts and this has played a significant role in developing Buddhist ideas
in psychotherapy, establishing an international reputation. David Brazier combines Gestalt and Person-
Centred ideas with Buddhist concepts, although his understanding of object relations is a Buddhist concept
rather than a psychoanalytic understanding (Brazier 1995).
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