Can American Buddhism Thrive Without the Psyche?

Buddhist teachings first made contact with psychoanalysis almost one century ago. Carl Jung famously grew interested in Buddhist psychology, with its obvious resonant orientation toward the mind as an ultimate resource. Clinicians from Erich Fromm, to Karen Horney, Wilfred Bion, and many others began integrating the tradition into their analytic work. However, it took another 75 years for Buddhist teachers and spiritual mentors to acknowledge the role of psychodynamic methods and insights for students of the Dharma (Buddhist teachings). Perhaps informed by scandals among revered Buddhist teachers, who seemed to be re-enacting unworked-through trauma histories, and students who brought a full spectrum of developmental struggles, interpersonal traumas, psychiatric illness, and addiction to their spiritual pursuits, contemporary Dharma mentors began to slowly appreciate the need for more active conversation between the traditions. Today, there is widespread awareness, primarily among Western Buddhist teachers, that many Dharma students need both spiritual and psychological support. But still, there remains a struggle to more fully grapple with the impact of developmental interpersonal experience on a student’s relationship to their spiritual practice. In this paper, I will explore through the lens of both my psychoanalytic practice and my role as a Dharma teacher, how Buddhist spiritual care in the West across lineages will continue to benefit from increased understanding of psyche, and how even foundational and widely taught Buddhist methods such as mindfulness and concentration can become sources of distress, or merely ineffectual, when these perspectives are ignored. I will reference clinical vignettes of two long-term psychoanalytic patients and their evolving relationships to the Dharma as a portal into this ever-evolving conversation.