Nina, Anatta and ‘No-Self’

This short contribution to the memory of Nina Coltart is concerned with an aspect of the influence of Theravada Buddhism on her clinical work and, to some extent, her life, which has, in my view, certain implications for the work of psychoanalysts and psychotherapists which have remained largely unnoticed. This is the concept of anatta (‘no-self’). A history of the idea of anatta is beyond my capacity and the space here to provide, so a brief definition only is possible for the purpose of orientation towards its relevance for psychoanalysis. The linguistic term ‘self’ is translated in Pali as atta and in Sanskrit as atman. There are many related, conventional uses of the term atta (including to represent ‘conscience’), and these co-exist freely with the doctrine of anatta or ‘no-self’. It is at the level of psychological analysis and the Buddhist pursuit of ‘ultimate truth’ that atta is problematized, and it is this particular aspect which interested Nina. In a monograph on the relationship between psychoanalysis and religion, Nina cited the Buddha's Three Signs of Being (which are common to all peoples) in order to draw attention to the apparent contradiction between anatta and our use in the West of the terms ‘self’ or ‘ego’ (Coltart 1993). The Buddha taught firstly that all beings suffer ‘whether crudely or subtly, whether on a small or a grand scale’ (Coltart 1993); secondly, that all human experiences, including thoughts and feelings, are transient and impermanent; and thirdly, that there is no Self. To the Western mind attuned to a Christian, socio-political and psychological emphasis on the primacy of the individual, not to mention the orientation of the practising psychoanalyst or psychotherapist, this is a startling and rather difficult notion. In her usual constructive and insightful way, Nina disentangles the paradox by referring to the quality of illusion and transformation common to both Buddhist and psychoanalytical discourses. In mutative psychoanalyt