IntegrationHow might a possible integration of Buddhist insights and approaches concerning
‘self-perception’ into psychotherapy be of help? Long ago, Buddhism developed a
technique for healing the problems that go with the fact that human beings make an
image of themselves and get attached to it, a technique for healing problems connected
with the narcissistic attachment to a fixed self-image of human beings. This is
something Western psychology has only relatively recently started to focus on.
Before going further, I want to relate the following case example:
A client, John, relates an incident in which a friend, Rose, was very angry with
him. She reproached him for not complying with her request that he go with her to
a meeting which was important to her, saying that he had let her down terribly.
Rose felt that this said something about him, that he was just not interested, and
that he was no good. Her fierce reproaches gave John something of a shock. At first
he winced at the thought that he really had been very thoughtless; and it also touched
upon a sensitive spot: Am I really like that? He then started to wonder whether he
considered her reproaches justified under these circumstances—and then he became
increasingly angry: he thought her reproaches were exaggerated and out of
proportion. Actually he was furious: What did she think? He felt hurt, not only
because of what she had said about the situation, but more about the way she made
this into ‘that he was like this’. No, he was not like this! He felt hurt; and at the
same time he didn’t want to be so touched by it; he didn’t want to take it seriously.Her image of him and his self-image sound and felt fixed and stable. She says he is
like this, and he thinks he is like that. Buddhists recommend ‘keeping anger in check’,
which means to feel it and recognize it, but not to assume that the anger is a fact in
itself. It was right that John had fully experienced his anger, and was able to stay with
it. It was also right not to leave that feeling of fear that went with the hurt. Could it
perhaps be true, what she had said about him? And then, true or not true, he felt the
panic, for a short while: was he going to lose the friend? Naturally, John and I also
looked at whether these feelings might possibly say something about the feelings that
played a role in the therapeutic relationship, his transference to me. What did they
mean to him, the feelings of abandonment, of anger that arose with Rose; might he
feel that I didn’t accept him, was he angry with me, was he afraid I was angry with
him or criticizing him? And what were my (counter) transferential feelings in this?
Letting go of identification‘Working through’ experiences in a Buddhist and in a psychoanalytic sense allows us
to observe the workings of what is called the I. This goes beyond what we commonly
name ‘insight’, and is focused both on content and on process, on the ways of working
of the mind. In most therapies we will discuss with clients, in some ongoing way,
how they deal with themselves, with feelings of superiority and inferiority in
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