expressed acknowledgment of such limitation is a requirement for any therapist to
be effective. Sometimes the therapist feels confused, afraid, reactive, and ignorant
about the task of the transformation of suffering. Acknowledging these limitations
allows interpretations and other interventions, such as empathy, to be made with an
openness and questioning, a kind of uncertainty or not-knowing. Within the effective
therapeutic relationship the therapist will convey the sense that she or he also suffers
and may not always know the way of transformation. This realistic acknowledgment
of constraint on ‘expert authority’ will counterbalance the powerful forces of
transference, and also invite the patient to be more open and unashamed in exploring
her or his human foibles. Yet this kind of realism must be handled skillfully so that
the patient has plenty of opportunities to experience the therapist as an authority
figure and a trusted expert—conditions that are necessary for transference and trust.
In everyday life, we are constantly immersed in transferences and projections in
our ordinary human relationships. Only in the therapeutic relationship do we
encounter the special condition of being able to study the creation of such suffering
in the moment. The requirements for effective psychotherapy—ethical conduct and
non-retaliation on the part of the therapist, certain ground-rules for meetings and
payment, the relative anonymity of the therapist and so on—nourish possibilities for
self-understanding and the development of compassion for self and others.
Eventually the patient discovers what Jung (1969/1916) has called the
‘transcendent function’: an ability to contain tensions, conflicts, and other opposite
pulls without prematurely deciding that they are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or mean this or that
(see, for example, Horne 1998). This function allows the patient to keep an open
mind in the face of momentary impulses, feelings, pressures, and so on. Eventually
the patient finds that the skill of the transcendent function can be used in many life
situations in which the patient had previously reacted through old destructive
emotional habits. The interdependence (of patient and therapist) in the discovery of
meaning through the therapeutic relationship, and the skill of the transcendent
function, together eventually allow the patient to ‘suffer with’ self and others.
Suffering-with is the essence of ‘com-passion’ (literally, suffering-with) in its ability
to witness pain, trouble, difficulty, and adversity with a sincere desire and ability to
help. True help, and not pity or sympathy or sugar-coating, requires a matter-of-fact
toleration of the demands of pain and suffering without becoming hopeless. This is
the path that patient and therapist follow in the course of an effective long-term
psychotherapy.
Buddhist methods, in contrast to therapy’s focus on personal relational and identity
themes, are designed to alleviate suffering and increase compassion in terms of broader
universal themes. In all of its methods, Buddhism focusses attention on craving,
aversion, and ignorance as experienced particularly through creating, sustaining, and
defending the illusion of a separate, stable, independent self. All methods for
transforming our delusions of separateness rely on both theory and experience in
Buddhism. A teacher’s job is especially to guide the process of awakening to the reality
of interdependence and compassion through methods that have already been
mastered by the teacher.
74 POLLY YOUNG-EISENDRATH