Contemporary Psychoanalysis
ISSN: 0010-7530 (Print) 2330-9091 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uucp20
Somebody and Nobody: Thoughts on
Psychoanalysis and Buddhism
Mark Epstein M.D.
To cite this article: Mark Epstein M.D. (2004) Somebody and Nobody: Thoughts on
Psychoanalysis and Buddhism, Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 40:2, 299-304, DOI:
10.1080/00107530.2004.10745832
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BOOK REvIEWS
SOMEBODY AND NOBODY: THOUGHTS ON PSYCHOANALYSIS
AND BUDDHISM
A review of Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: An Unfolding Dialogue,
edited by Jeremy D. Safran. Boston, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2003.
443 pp.
MARK EPSTEIN, M.D.
Contemporary Psychoanalysis 2004.40:299-304.
T HE INTERPLAY of Buddhism and modern Western psychology
goes back at least a hundred years. The most spiritual of the world's
psychologies and the most psychological of the world's religions, Bud-
dhism teaches that the cultivation of self-awareness dispels ignorance
about the nature of the self. William James, lecturing at Harvard in the
early 1900s, was known to be impressed with Buddhism's inherent psy-
chological nature. Its core teachings of unsatisfactoriness, transience, and
egolessness were not difficult for him to appreciate. He once interrupted
a lecture he was giving when he spied a visiting Buddhist monk from
Ceylon in the auditorium.
"Take my chair," he is reputed to have said. "You are better equipped
to lecture on psychology than 1. Yours is the psychology everybody will
be studying twenty-five years from now."
It was one of the unforeseen legacies of the British colonial experience
in India that James knew anything at all about Buddhism. It had virtually
vanished in India, the country of its origin, by the time the British arrived
there. But thanks to the painstaking work of British explorers, linguists,
and amateur archaeologists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
the hidden legacy of Indian Buddhism was gradually uncovered. Frag-
ments of stupas, burial mounds that became sacred Buddhist monu-
ments, first built by the Indian emperor Asoka in the second century s.c.,
were dug up and puzzled over by the British sahibs. The inscriptions on
these monuments were decoded and the language of the time translated
so that the lost history of Indian Buddhism could be gradually pieced
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Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Vol. 40, No.2 (April 2004)
300 BOOK REVIEWS
together. Translations of important Buddhist texts were made, influenc-
ing such nineteenth-century figures as Shopenhauer and Thoreau. Edwin
Arnold's Light ofAsia became an international bestseller after its publica-
tion in 1879, bringing Buddhism for the first time into mainstream West-
ern culture. The living Buddhist traditions of Ceylon, Tibet, and Burma
also began to open their doors to the West.
By Freud's time, much of the intelligentsia was at least marginally fa-
miliar with the outlines of Buddhist thought. A religion without a God,
where Mind was considered the beginning, middle, and end, it was natu-
rally of interest to those also drawn to psychoanalysis. There are scat-
tered references to it-the most notable being Freud's niruana princi-
ple-throughout the early analytic literature. Yet James was off in his
Contemporary Psychoanalysis 2004.40:299-304.
prediction. In twenty-five years, everybody in his field was studying psy-
choanalysis, something he could never have foreseen. Only a few in-
trepid European pioneers took the further investigation of Buddhism se-
riously, but their efforts took some time to be noticed. It would take
another seventy-five years for Buddhism to fulfill James's prophecy, but
it now seems to be coming true.
In his new book, Professor Jeremy Safran of New York City's New
School shows what all of the fuss is about. In an ingenious arrangement,
Safran asked nine psychotherapists, all of them deeply influenced by
both Buddhism and psychoanalytic thought, and many of them analysts
themselves, to write about the relevance of Buddhism to their work and
their thought. He then asked nine senior psychoanalysts, none of them
dismissive of Buddhism, but few of them conversant with it, to comment
on the initial papers. The original authors were given a chance to re-
spond, a form familiar to those who regularly read the journal Psychoan-
alytic Dialogues.
These pairings were inspired. The dialogues that resulted are fascinat-
ing, not only for what they revealed about the links between analysis
and Buddhism, but for what they revealed about the authors themselves,
all of them serious therapists struggling to integrate spirituality into their
work. Rarely in the analytic literature has there been so open a discussion
of the role of spirituality in the mind of the therapist. The author of the
most lucid chapter, Jack Engler, was responded to by Stephen A. Mitch-
ell, in what was probably the final written essay of his precipitously ab-
breviated life. Other commentaries were written by James Grotstein, Nev-
ille Symington, Owen Renik, and Philip Ringstrom.
BOOK REVIEWS 301
One of the special treats of this volume is to see how surprisingly
Buddhist the psychoanalysts often are: clear, open, doubting, and precise
in their thinking, delicately exposing the egos of their "Buddhist" coun-
terparts. Indeed, many of the dialogues are delightful in just this way.
They are true exchanges, in which we can see strong minds grappling
with difficult ideas, or, in some cases, strong minds wrestling with Simple
ideas made difficult by the very minds that are trying to simplify them.
But the patient reader will be rewarded many times over. This volume
marks a maturation point in the Buddhist-analytic dialogue. It is more
than an introduction, more than a litany of similarities and differences
between the two traditions. In this work, we can see the beginning of
something new: an analytic psychology that is not exclusively Buddhist
Contemporary Psychoanalysis 2004.40:299-304.
and not simply psychoanalytic, but that is true to the spirit of both. It
marks the emergence of Buddhism as an influence that will not go away.
Its ideas are too compelling, too synchronous with a postmodern sensi-
bility, to not be a lasting influence on the field. And the language of
psychoanalysis is too close to Buddhism not to exert an influence on that
2500-year-old discipline as well. Just as Buddhism has been changed by
every culture that it has entered, it will inevitably be changed by psycho-
analysis. In this volume, we can begin to see its new shape.
The linchpin of the book is the magnificent contribution ofJack Engler
entitled "Being Somebody and Being Nobody: A Re-examination of the
Understanding of Self in Psychoanalysis and Buddhism." This article
alone makes the entire book worthwhile. Engler's is a voice that we
rarely hear, despite his seminal contributions to the emerging East-West
dialogue some twenty-five years ago, in a volume he coedited with Ken
Wilber and Dan Brown, entitled Transformations ofConsciousness: Clin-
ical and Contemplative Perspectives on Human Development. Engler is
known primarily for two things. As a doctoral student in clinical psychol-
ogy he traveled throughout Asia and America giving projective tests to
both beginning and advanced students of Buddhist meditation, as well
as to several masters of the discipline. One of his principal findings was
that there was no diminution of internal conflict in even the most experi-
enced meditators he studied, only a greater willingness to acknowledge
the presence of such conflict. Coming on the heels of the introduction of
meditation to our culture as a vehicle for stress reduction and anxiety
resolution, this finding was both counterintuitive and tremendously im-
portant. It suggested that Buddhist meditation was not a means of per-
302 BOOK REVIEWS
sonality transformation as much as one of personality acceptance, and it
opened up all kinds of questions about what precisely was changed as
a result of intensive Buddhist practice.
In his subsequent theorizing about the psychoanalytic aspects of the
meditative experience, Engler coined a phrase that has haunted him ever
since. "You have to be somebody before you can be nobody," he sug-
gested more than twenty years ago, affirming that the development of
the self, as envisioned by object relations theory, has to precede the
dismantling of the self-representation that Buddhism encourages. In this
phrase, Engler took on the most difficult aspect of Buddhist psychology,
its theory of "no-self," or "egolessness." This notion, easy to misconstrue,
requires a deep grounding in meditation to begin to appreciate. Engler's
Contemporary Psychoanalysis 2004.40:299-304.
formulation gave the mistaken impression that, from a Buddhist perspec-
tive, the self should first be developed and then taken apart. While he
was trying to differentiate the "empty" self of the borderline or narcissistic
patient from the "empty" self of the Buddhist master, many people at
the interface of Buddhism and psychoanalysis were critical of Engler's
formulation. Buddhism teaches that the self, however it appears, lacks
solidity. The task, from a Buddhist point of view, is not to develop a
cohesive self and then see through it; it is to understand the emptiness
of the self, wherever it happens to lie on the developmental spectrum.
While Engler's point, at the time, was well taken-he was the first to
talk openly about the degree of character pathology in Buddhist circles-
over time his phrase took on a dogma that he did not intend. A kind of
prejudice against analytic work, already implicit in many Buddhist cir-
cles, was reinforced by the idea that the concerns of the self were inferior
to those of the "no-self." If therapeutic work was only a prelude to that
of meditation, the thinking went, then the need for therapy was time-
limited, its contribution only necessary for those whose selves were not
yet formed.
This idea was contradicted by Engler's own research. His advanced
subjects, those presumably closest to being true nobodies, were in as
much conflict as those with no meditative experience. Their selves, such
as they were, were still present. The changes evoked by meditation were
less obvious than we might assume. As a more careful reading of the
Buddhist texts reveal, the self, once formed, does not disappear through
meditation, but the meditator discovers that the self that he or she once
took to be so real never existed in the way they imagined.
Engler's essay in the current volume is a condensation of twenty years
BOOK REVIEWS 303
of further thought on the subject by a man whose meditation practice
and psychoanalytic understanding are both on the highest level. His
probings of the self are formidable. He takes us in and out of ego psy-
chology, object relations theory, and the latest views of intersubjectivity
straight into the most cogent and nuanced psychological descriptions of
"no-self" that can be found anywhere. While words can never be a sub-
stitute for a perspective that can only come through the cultivation of
subjective experience, a careful reading of Engler's chapter can bring the
mind to the threshold of a new understanding. The following excerpt
about the ego's capacity for self-reflection is but one of the most illustra-
tive:
Contemporary Psychoanalysis 2004.40:299-304.
Whatever I can be aware of, whatever I can notice or conceptualize,
whether in the field of sense perception or intrapsychically, is always an
object of my awareness-never awareness itself. I can become aware of
being aware, but when this happens, what I have done is take this reflex-
ive awareness as an object of experience. What I cannot do is be aware
of the source of awareness in the act of being aware. In other words, I
cannot directly observe my observing self. If I try, it recedes each time I
tum to observe it: I never catch "it"; I only turn the act of awareness into
another object of awareness in an infinite regression.... The eye that sees,
Zen says, cannot see itself. Finally it dawns: detaching our "self" from
awareness in order to observe it is impossible because we are that aware-
ness. lp. 681
This is notoriously difficult material, but Engler succeeds in making the
Buddhist view much clearer. Buddhism encourages an important shift,
he concludes, from a psychological to an ontological stance. It makes
possible what he calls "unselfconscious experience," something not en-
tirely alien to psychoanalysis. Engler's clarity is no small achievement,
and his patience in developing his thoughts over the past several decades
really pays off.
Unfortunately, this is not an accomplishment that many of the other
"Buddhist" contributors to this volume can equally claim. In many cases,
the task of clarity falls to the analytic commentators, who patiently ex-
pose the inconsistencies of their colleagues' arguments. Yet this makes
for fascinating reading. In his commentary on Sara Weber's piece, for
example, Neville Symington makes a beautiful contribution. The psy-
chotic part of the personality, he says, can be contained by the state
of choiceless awareness, an advanced meditation technique linked to
304 BOOK REVIEWS
Winnicott's holding environment that Weber describes in her paper on
analytic surrender. Interpretations made by an agitated analyst only in-
flame a patient further, he acknowledges. Choiceless awareness is a func-
tioning mother, he concludes, while interpretation must then be a func-
tioning father. And "the two need to be in harmonious intercourse if the
child (patient) is to flourish" (p, 193). We can almost picture the famous
Tibetan paintings of couples united in ritual coitus hovering above the
page.
Other exhilirating moments come in James Grotstein's response to Jo-
seph Bobrow. "Perhaps we can also say that Eastern and Western
thought come together ... to achieve individual honesty in order to be
able eventually to face the uncertainty of truth" (p, 225), he wonders.
Contemporary Psychoanalysis 2004.40:299-304.
Grotstein's thought is a good one, and it could serve as a motto for Sa-
fran's whole endeavor. It is this combination of individual honesty in the
face of uncertain truth that so characterizes the entire volume of Psycho-
analysis and Buddhism. It is a very impressive, and moving, combina-
tion-one that reflects well on each discipline while opening up the
possibility of something new. It might take another hundred years, but,
on the basis of this collaboration, it will certainly be worth the wait.
52 White Street
New York, NY 10013
KRISTEVA'S KLEIN
A review of Melanie Klein by Julia Kristeva. New York:
Columbia University Press, 2001. 296 pp.
KATHERINE WEISSBOURD, Ph.D.
J ULIA KRISTEVA'S intriguing study of Melanie Klein's life and work
praises Klein as "the most original innovator, male or female, in the
psychoanalytic arena" (p, 11). In Kristeva's able hands, Klein emerges
as a woman who moved through anxious preoccupations and personal
struggles to develop a theory of the mind that is fluid, interactive, and
