what has taken place between them, they come to feel a deep gratitude for their unique
work together, a gratitude that transcends even the insights gained.
Through the specific meeting of these two people, each discovers in the context of
their relationship how the self-centered self-conscious subject mistakes the world and
others to be separate, passive, external, and permanent. In place of this separateness,
the therapeutic partners come to see and experience their mutual, fluid self-other
constructions that are rooted in the emotions and desires of the moment. Both people
—especially the patient because the therapy is focussed on her or him—see clearly
how the ego complex constructs others and the environment to be reflections of its
own wishes and needs. The technical terms for these mistaken projections and
perceptions are ‘transference’ and ‘countertransference.’ Transference means the
experience of one person that another is a particular way, or feels a particular way,
that the first has unknowingly imposed from her or his internal state of pressure,
feeling, or image. One person transfers a whole context or story, or a particular feeling
state, to another and believes that it originates with the other. Countertransference
is simply the reaction of the second person to the transference of the first, especially
in the feeling states and images of the second person. As these are witnessed and
interpreted within the safe bounds of effective psychotherapy, the two individuals
begin to awaken to greater compassion and wisdom through their knowledge of how
suffering is created. In the process of such an awakening, the two people of the
therapeutic dyad feel deeply grateful for their interdependence in this process.
Aspects of interdependence in Zen and JungIn one example of how this interdependence can be traced in psychotherapy, Kopf
(1998) compares Jung’s account of the transferential phenomena of therapy with the
account of katto (vines) from Zen Master Dogen’s analysis of the master-disciple
relationship in the chapter of Katto Shobogenzo. Dogen exhorts the Zen student to
attain the face of the teacher, and vice versa, while averring that the interwovenness
of master and disciple still includes the individuality of each. ‘The self attains the
other’ and ‘the other attains the self’ while the self never abandons itself to the psyche
of the other. Self and other are not one, and they are not two (summarized in Kopf
1998:282–3). If it is possible for the self to attain the other without dissolving its
individuality, argues Dogen, then the traditional concept of a separate self does not
apply to our subjectivity. Dogen maintains that self and other are ultimately
interdependent; the self does not exist prior to, or outside of, the other; we only have
the possibility of experiencing self or other through relationship.
Both Zen discipleship and long-term psychotherapy demonstrate this
interdependence to the practitioners when the relationship is effective. Psychotherapy
was designed specifically to respond to personal pain and suffering, not to spiritual
questions per se, while Buddhism offers a theory and many methods to respond
spiritually to universal aspects of human suffering, not personal suffering with its
unique familial and emotional patterns. I will give a brief example of the ways in
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