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Joseph Bobrow, PhD, has dedicated decades of his life to reducing suffering through the use of both depth psychology and Zen. He observed, and with a nod to Bollas, “we seek ‘objects’ that help us release our own distinctive idiom. We learn about it après coup, as we live our life” (p. xxiii). This book is Bobrow's après coup in which he attempts to explain, differentiate, and synthesize the wisdom and fruits of both psychotherapy and Zen spirituality.
It is Bobrow's view that we need to develop both psychologically and spiritually to most fully embrace what it is to be fully alive as a human being. He believes that
all of us desire to feel connected to our deepest nature, to one another, to our family, to our community, to grow beyond our small, preoccupied self. We also desire to actualize our unique potentials, to represent our idiom, and contribute to the world. (p. xxxiv)
It is the author's view that both psychotherapy and Zen have their own type of “gold,” and that if we bring the gold of each tradition together, we facilitate an unusual alchemy which may help create the possibility of Liberation. Throughout these chapters, Bobrow casts a wide net of inspiration and wisdom from both paths. Here, we see him apply Winnicott, Bollas, Bion, Milner, Matte Blanco, to name a few. We encounter artists such as Whitman, Piercy and Gaughin, and Zen masters spanning centuries: Dogen, Bodhidharma, and Nan-ch'uan among others.
Bobrow indicates that psychotherapy brings various gold pieces to enrich the Zen tradition.
He makes an unsurprising observation that psychotherapy optimally helps forge a differentiated person, with their own voice, with strong ego capacities, resilience, and the capacity to represent their own idiom (pp. xxx-xxxi). He also acknowledges that psychotherapy usefully mobilizes or allows aggressive tendencies, which are often glossed over by spiritual traditions. In his view, each individual “presents the universal, differently” (p. xxxi).
He also honors both