Abstract
Concepts of self and self-transformation in Zen and contemporary psychotherapy appear increasingly in accord. Yet confusion over ‘emptiness’, self and ‘no self’ and misapprehension that Zen dissolves whereas psychotherapy strengthens self can appear to put both disciplines at odds.
Recent literature will be reviewed and concepts defined revealing no conflict in how Zen and psychotherapy understand and transform self. Views of psychotherapists themselves Zen masters, will demonstrate the disciplines dovetail as they co-exist in the West.
Contemporary analytic theorists and neuroscientists believe there is no structure we can call self outside of a relational or intersubjective experience that engenders an illusion of self. This enables us to more easily correlate concepts of self, ‘no self’ and ‘emptiness’.
It is the self-centered narcissistic self that appears so real but, on inquiry in both practices, is revealed to be lacking. How both disciplines transform this false self, enabling mindful lived experience and awareness of being will be discussed.
The view that both disciplines complement each other will be examined. One New York psychiatrist, analyst and Zen master offers contemporaneous Zen practice for analysands and a well-known British psychotherapist practices a fusion technique called ‘Zen Therapy’.
When we look for the self we truly cannot find it, though we search ‘from cell to soul’. Self is indeed ‘empty’. Knowing this Zen and psychotherapy attempt to liberate us and ‘free the spirit from its cell’.
