speaks of the ‘psychic interwovenness’ that occurs between the Zen master and Zen
disciple. Kopf (1998) explains Dogen’s position on this essential psychic
interwovenness by first citing Dogen’s exhortation to the Zen practitioner: ‘You
should know that there is “You attaining me,” “I am attaining you,” “attaining me
and you,” and “attaining you and me”’ (p. 282).
Here we find Dogen speaking of a kind of psychic interrelationship that is very
similar to that offered by the contemporary two-person field theorists. Dogen
describes a ‘non-individual psyche which transcends the boundaries of the individual
self’ (p. 283) as he probes the depths and levels of intimacy and connectedness that
come to exist between Zen master and disciple. One almost gets the sense that Dogen,
in these writings, suggests that something akin to projective identification exists
between master and disciple. As an aside, though, it should be noted that despite this
level of intimacy and mutual sharing of unconscious content between master and
disciple, Dogen is clear that neither party is to lose his/her individual self or character
in the master-disciple relationship. To Dogen, although the demarcation between
self and other blurs, self and other are not entirely one.^2
As psychoanalytic theorists and Zen masters focus on this interconnection (and its
transformative power) and how it is further enhanced by the right demeanor and
right attitude of sitting with the other—be it in the therapeutic milieu or in meditation
—they echo one of Horney’s central points: that the individual feels this attentive
stance (the warmth of the caring neutrality), and is moved and transformed by it.
These theorists seem to understand the profound ways in which the person is affected
by the relationship—while taking Horney beyond herself into the interrelational
aspect of shared experience. Finally, and this is a central point in synthesizing
psychoanalysis and Zen, these theorists realize that being in the presence of this
non-judging other—in this containing space (in this psychological matrix of
patient-analyst; of master-disciple)—not only enhances the growth of the individual
in some kind of reparative, developmental sense, but also augments the organization
of self-structure while furthering the individual’s ‘capacity to be alone’—and his or
her subsequent ability to experience aspects of non-self (a central notion in Zen).
The capacity to be aloneD.W.Winnicott is one of the earlier, pivotal, contemporary theorists who has studied
this two-person psychological field from a combined psychoanalytic, object-relations,
and developmental perspective. Winnicott (1958) proposes that the psychological
development of the child is initiated or ‘jump-started’ through the mother-child dyad.
First the child must be held—both physically and psychologically—by the mother.
The mother-child relational matrix must first be established. The child must be
mirrored, cared for, loved (intimately related to) so that this new, dyadic psychological
entity (the mother-child psychological matrix) will arise. This is the essential
foundation for psychological development. Eventually, the child can begin to
transition into being able to be alone—alone, by herself—once this sense of
containment (and at-one-ment) with the mother has been firmly established. The
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