A certain degree of idealization of the teacher on the part of the student is healthy
and useful in awakening the longing to see through the false sense of self and access
his or her True Nature and in spurring the student to practice (Gopfert 1999;
Young-Eisendrath forthcoming). But over-idealization of spiritual teachers may arrest
development and set the stage for unhealthy patterns of relatedness learned from the
past (Gopfert 1999; Rubin 1996; Tart and Deikman 1991). If a student’s
over-idealization of a teacher, and his or her self-submissiveness, self-devaluation, and
deferentiality remain unexamined and unresolved, this may play itself out in other
relationships (Rubin 1996). This is especially true if the student, after long years of
training with an over-idealized teacher, goes on to become a teacher himself or herself
(Young-Eisendrath forthcoming). In dealing with Buddhist clients, perhaps this very
intense transference that they have with their teachers may well compete with any
transference that may develop between the therapist and the client. The feelings of
disloyalty when revealing difficulties in the teacher-student relationship may further
inhibit effective understanding of and working through of negative emotions in
therapy. This may result in a lukewarm, marginally effective relationship with a
therapist.
Unfamiliar meditative experiencesRanging from rage and depression on the one hand to bliss and euphoria on the other,
meditative states facilitate the upsurge of primitive drives and affects (Engler 1984;
Epstein and Lieff 1981; Rubin 1996). In traditional Zen Buddhist contexts,
meditation students are instructed to ignore the content of these states and focus on
the object (such as the breath, or koan) or on the mental process itself, which leaves
meditation practitioners with little opportunity to understand or resolve various
mental states.
Extreme oscillations in unfamiliar mental states, such as may occur during the
emergence of makyo, may further weaken a faulty functioning ego, and the
practitioner will tend to resort to disavowal of negative states and splitting
mechanisms to keep the good and bad apart (Engler 1984). Makyo may take the form
of regressive reactivations of childhood or primordial states, including unresolved
‘bad’ internalized object-relations which appear as primary-process type images or
hallucinations (Krynicki 1980). The ‘observing self’ (Deikman 1982) may be unable
to sit with what emerges in consciousness (Epstein 1990). Both in individuals with
and without a family history of psychosis, psychotic breaks have been known to occur
after week-long Zen retreats, and have traditionally been linked to overexertion in
meditation practice (VanderKooi 1997).
Through deepened concentration, the practitioner’s mind may be significantly
calmed during meditation, but negative emotional states may return after meditating
because they were suppressed rather than examined and worked through (Cooper
1999). While thoughts, feelings, and fantasies may be made more available for
scrutiny, non-judgmental attentiveness to their emergence while ignoring their
meaning may not be enough (Rubin 1996). Therapists working with advanced
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