Psychoanalysis and Tibetan Buddhism as Psychological Techniques of Liberation

Although there have been several attempts to bridge the gap between psychoanalysis and Buddhism, their most important similarities have not yet been fully outlined and sufficiently discussed. There is a tradition of errors exemplified by an older article from the psychoanalytic perspective by Alexander (1923). The article is based on an outdated popular misconception of Buddhism as a self-negating asceticism or an intropunitive attempt to eradicate drive urges and withdraw from the world. Alexander interprets Buddhist contemplation as regressive and antisocial. Some other attempts by psychotherapists to explain Buddhism or to find similarities to psychoanalysis were fruitful. However, they proceeded along lines very different from the present paper. Fromm, Suzuki, and DeMartino (1960) elucidated points relevant to readers interested primarily in humanisticexistential psychology or in Zen Buddhism. Schroeder (1922) interpreted mystical experiences (feeling of cessation of time and space dimensions or feelings of infinity) associated with mystical pantheism as memories from an intrauterine situation, i.e., as prenatal memories from the time between conception and birth. Jung's commentaries to the English and German editions of several Tibetan Buddhist texts (see Evans-Wentz, 1960, 1977) were written in a manner inherent to Jungian beliefs and only partly overlap with themes of the present paper.

The emphasis of the present paper is on demonstrating similarities rather than differences. Both psychoanalysis and Buddhism offer healing which is defined as a liberation from the bondage of misconceptions and thus from the suffering this bondage entails. Although the goal is defined as a change in cognitive: structures, i.e., in the individual's theory of the world or existence, both psychoanalysis and Buddhism use very concrete techniques to induce such cognitive change. The societal context and underlying philosophical-ontological credos of the two schools of healing (or li