Abstract
This paper presents a clinical case involving a patient suffering ‘depersonalisation’ who had a psychotic episode at a Buddhist retreat. Recent writing on possible psychological risks of meditation has discussed problems of depersonalisation associated with misunderstandings of the Buddhist conception of non-self (anātman) and emptiness (śūnyatā). Drawing on the work of Winnicott and Bion, this article helps us to realise some of what is at stake in the failure to achieve and maintain an effective sense of self. What does Buddhist talk of non-self really mean? What conditions enable a creatively engaged and meaningful relational life, a sense of aliveness, human flourishing and a capacity for alterity?
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Notes
All identifying details have been changed to protect anonymity Eve is an anonymous, fictionalised amalgam of patients suffering disorders of self.
Those who have taken bodhisattva vows incur a major root downfall if they teach scriptures relating to śūnyatā to those who are not ready, causing them to be terrified and then fall away from the path (Goodman 2016, pp. 64–65). The bodhisattva vows derive from the Ākāśagarbha Sūtra via Shantideva’s Shikshasamuccaya. A bodhisattva is one who, out of compassion, undertakes to bring all beings to the state of perfect Buddhahood.
This phrase is an allusion to the third of Descartes’ Meditations (1664), concerning the relation between the res cogitans and the infinity of God.
Holiness as defined by Rudolf Otto is ganze andere–wholly other.
Empathy, as I understand it, has a complex linguistic history. Einfühlung was originally coined by the philosopher von Herder (1744–1803), in his text This Too a Philosophy of History for the Formation of Humanity (1774). Herder argued that it requires imagination to feel one’s way into another via Einfühlung 'feeling-with' or 'feeling into' what is different. Difference is the critical word here, for empathy is not based on identification but is heteropathic. Einfühlung as an inter-personal activity can be seen as an imaginative act that seeks to cross the divide between different forms of self-consciousness, different view-points, different cultures. Theodor Lipps extended Einfühlung to interpersonal understanding, viewing it as the primary mode by which we are able to feel our way into another’s reality. Lipps saw Einfühlung and sympathy as synonymous. Yet the American psychologist Titchener (1867–1927) held that Einfühlung and sympathy were not the same, so in 1909 coined the term ‘empathy’ to translate Einfühlung. Empathy came to be used extensively to depict our capacity to feel into another person’s experience. Sympathy came to be regarded rather derogatorily as a lesser capacity tinged with sentimentalism.
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Acknowledgements
I acknowledge invaluable contributions from participants at the original presentation at the Centro Incontri Umani in Ascona in July 2017, and in particular to Geoffrey Samuel for on-going critique and encouragement.
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Pickering, J. ‘I Do Not Exist’: Pathologies of Self Among Western Buddhists. J Relig Health 58, 748–769 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-019-00794-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-019-00794-x