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In the last twenty years there has been a small explosion of work relating psychoanalysis and various schools of contemplative Buddhism. The volume under review here covers that work thoroughly. Probably the most important determinant of this phenomenon is that there are now many psychoanalysts who have achieved mastery, if not formal certification, in Buddhist teachings. Paul Cooper's lucid book is both a contribution to that literature as well as a comment on it. Much of the writing on Buddhism and psychoanalysis starts from a platform of Theravada or Insight Meditation and relational psychoanalysis. For many Western rationalists, Theravada Buddhism offers the most accessible gate to Buddhism because it presents the teachings as a very straightforward phenomenological method. This has been a blessing, I believe, to Western psychotherapy of many schools, not just psychoanalysis, as evidenced by the practical incorporation of “mindfulness” into many forms of treatment. Mindfulness meditation has become a way of branding Buddhist attentional practices without the religious associations. Indeed, mindfulness has become an acceptable notion among many evidence-based clinicians. Cooper's book is a passionate and skillful corrective to these trends both in Buddhism and in clinical work.
There is, of course, not one Buddhism, any more than there is one psychoanalysis. Cooper is quite specific about his preferred psychoanalytic and Buddhist lineages. He locates himself as an analyst squarely in line with the most mystical aspects of Bion and Matte Blanco by way of Eigen. Awestruck inquiry into ourselves, not symptoms relief, defines psychoanalysis for Cooper. His selection of Rinzai Zen is similar. Rinzai Zen is the Zen most associated with Zen koans and a radical project of postconceptual transformation. Some Zen teachers have expressed concern that the therapeutic appropriation of meditation entails a loss of deeper possibilities in meditation practice, and Cooper shares t