The Signifier Pointing at the Moon

The Signifier Pointing at the Moon
Author: Raul Moncayo
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2018-05-08
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0429907958

Within the context of a careful review of the psychology of religion and prior non-Lacanian literature on the subject, Raul Moncayo builds a bridge between Lacanian psychoanalysis and Zen Buddhism that steers clear of reducing one to the other or creating a simplistic synthesis between the two. Instead, by making a purposeful "One-mistake" of "unknown knowing", this book remains consistent with the analytic unconscious and continues in the splendid tradition of Bodhidharma who did not know "Who" he was and told Emperor Wu that there was no merit in building temples for Buddhism. Both traditions converge on the teaching that "true subject is no ego", or on the realisation that a new subject requires the symbolic death or deconstruction of imaginary ego-identifications. Although Lacanian psychoanalysis is known for its focus on language and Zen is considered a form of transmission outside the scriptures, Zen is not without words while Lacanian psychoanalysis stresses the senseless letter of the Real or of a jouissance written on and with the body.

The Signifier Pointing at the Moon

The Signifier Pointing at the Moon
Author: Raul Moncayo
Publisher: Karnac Books
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2012
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1855754762

Within the context of a careful review of the psychology of religion and prior non-Lacanian literature on the subject, Raul Moncayo builds a bridge between Lacanion psychoanalysis and Zen Buddhism, that steers clear of Reducing one to the other or creating a simplistic synthesis between the two. Instead, by making a purposeful "one mistake" of "unknown knowing", this book remains consistent with the analytic unconscious and continues in the splendid tradition of Bodhidharma who did not know "Who" he was and told Emperor Wu that there was no merit in building temples for Buddhism.

Prescribing the Dharma

Prescribing the Dharma
Author: Ira Helderman
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2019-02-08
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1469648539

Interest in the psychotherapeutic capacity of Buddhist teachings and practices is widely evident in the popular imagination. News media routinely report on the neuropsychological study of Buddhist meditation and applications of mindfulness practices in settings including corporate offices, the U.S. military, and university health centers. However, as Ira Helderman shows, curious investigators have studied the psychological dimensions of Buddhist doctrine for well over a century, stretching back to William James and Carl Jung. These activities have shaped both the mental health field and Buddhist practice throughout the United States. This is the first comprehensive study of the surprisingly diverse ways that psychotherapists have related to Buddhist traditions. Through extensive fieldwork and in-depth interviews with clinicians, many of whom have been formative to the therapeutic use of Buddhist practices, Helderman gives voice to the psychotherapists themselves. He focuses on how they understand key categories such as religion and science. Some are invested in maintaining a hard border between religion and psychotherapy as a biomedical discipline. Others speak of a religious-secular binary that they mean to disrupt. Helderman finds that psychotherapists' approaches to Buddhist traditions are molded by how they define what is and is not religious, demonstrating how central these concepts are in contemporary American culture.

Psychoanalysis and Zen Buddhism

Psychoanalysis and Zen Buddhism
Author: Seiso Paul Cooper
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2023-03-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1000838951

In this book, Cooper brings together psychoanalysis and Zen Buddhism by offering a comprehensive and integrated model, described as "The Realizational Model", that is consistent with the core concepts of Soto Zen Buddhism and psychoanalytic practice. Focusing primarily on Soto Zen Buddhism as presented in the original writings of the Japanese scholar monk Eihei Dōgen (1200-1253), and supported and elaborated by relevant contemporary scholarship in relation to the writings of the British psychoanalyst, Wilfred Bion (1897-1979), this book addresses the issue of how can one understand, assimilate, and integrate conceptions of the human mind that originate in the 13th and 20th centuries, as they are visited and inflected by the unconscious preconceptions of a 21st-century perspective. Expressing authentic Buddhist tradition within the frame of psychoanalytic thinking, and supported by online guided audio meditations that accompany the text, this work offers a uniquely interdisciplinary perspective of invaluable clinical significance. Case material garnered from 35 years of psychoanalytic practice as well as examples from daily life support the abstract concepts discussed in the text, rendering it equally relevant for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, as well as students of Zen wishing to explore its practical applications.

Lacan and Chan Buddhist Thought

Lacan and Chan Buddhist Thought
Author: Raul Moncayo
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 112
Release: 2022-12-23
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1000780449

Lacan and Chan Buddhist Thought provides a close reading of how Lacan mobilizes concepts from Chan Buddhist philosophy, culture, and practice in his later teachings. The book emerged from the three co-authors’ engagement with Lacan’s 1962–1963 Seminar on Anxiety, and the significance of Lacan’s original interpretation of the Buddhist principle that desire is the cause of suffering. The book reads key Lacanian concepts – such as the objet a, jouissance, the real, Nirvana, and the mirror – through ancient Buddhist teachings and koans. With this focused exploration of psychoanalysis and Chan Buddhism, the authors offer a philosophically grounded cross-cultural approach to the theory and practice of psychoanalysis in Asian countries. Lacan and Chan Buddhist Thought will be a rich resource for psychoanalysts, academics, and students interested in Lacan and religion, the intellectual and cultural relationship between Asian and Western thought, and Mahayana Buddhism more generally.

The Direction of Desire

The Direction of Desire
Author: Mark Gerard Murphy
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2023-10-27
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 3031331079

This book examines Lacanian psychoanalysis and Christian mystical theology demonstrating the former’s potential for reinvigorating spiritual direction. The author outlines how current methods of spiritual direction become saturated with self-help psycho-pop methodologies, and that desire has therefore been foreclosed in these practices. He suggests that the root of this is a focus on ‘positive affective experientialism’, which means spiritual direction must focus on emotional wholeness, healing and positivity. Finally, he argues that a new dialogue between John of the Cross (a mystic whose writings on spiritual direction formulate part of the core of the Catholic spiritual tradition) and Jacques Lacan can open the way for a spiritual direction beyond the confines of experientialism. The book concludes that we can only escape the experiential commodification of spiritual direction by critiquing the drive to experience in and of itself. This novel work will appeal in particular to students and scholars of psychoanalysis, religion, philosophy and critical theory.

Reimagining Zen in a Secular Age

Reimagining Zen in a Secular Age
Author: André van der Braak
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2020-08-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004435085

In Reimagining Zen in a Secular Age André van der Braak uses Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age to describe the encounter between Japanese Zen Buddhism and Western modernity. He proposes how Dōgen’s thought offers resources for a reimagining of Zen.

Belonging Through a Psychoanalytic Lens

Belonging Through a Psychoanalytic Lens
Author: Rebecca Coleman Curtis
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2020-12-29
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1000331652

Watching people protest, one hypothesis is that underlying these actions for specific justifiable causes is a sense of wishing to belong, of wishing not to be alone. Recent knowledge from patients and empirical research shows the importance of belonging to groups to both psychological and physical well-being. The problems of many students, minority group members, immigrants, terrorists, and lonely people are linked to an insufficient sense of belonging. Whereas psychoanalytic theory has focused on the need for a secure attachment to a primary caretaker, it has failed to note the importance of a sense of belonging to the family group, a friendship group, a community, a religious group, a nation-state, etc. This book demonstrates the difficulties faced by those who immigrate, those who never feel a sense of their true selves as belonging in a family or a cohesive professional group, and the difficulties of psychoanalysts themselves in knowing where they belong in patients’ lives. The problems of breaking up marital and professional relationships as well as our relationship with the Earth are also discussed. Freudian theory rejected the idea of a sense of "oneness" with humanity as being infantile. Recent developments regarding the similarities between meditational practices and psychoanalysis have questioned Freud’s idea. This book shows the importance of an interpersonal/relational psychoanalysis focusing on real relationships and not simply one that examines inner conflicts. It will be useful to psychologists, other mental health practitioners, social scientists, and anyone with normal struggles in life.

Zen Insight, Psychoanalytic Action

Zen Insight, Psychoanalytic Action
Author: Seiso Paul Cooper
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2018-07-17
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0429858221

Drawing from original source material, contemporary scholarship, and Wilfred Bion’s psychoanalytic writings, Zen Insight, Psychoanalytic Action: Two Arrows Meeting introduces the Zen notion of "gūjin," or total exertion, and elaborates a realizational perspective that integrates Zen Buddhism and psychoanalysis. Developed by the thirteenth century Zen teacher and founder of the Japanese Soto Zen school, Eihei Dogen, gūjin finds expression and is referenced in various contemporary scholarly and religious commentaries. This book explains this pivotal Zen concept and addresses themes by drawing from translated source material, academic scholarship, traditional Zen kōans and teaching stories, extensive commentarial literature, interpretive writings by contemporary Soto Zen teachers, psychoanalytic theory, clinical material, and poetry, as well as the author’s thirty years of personal experience as a psychoanalyst, supervisor, psychoanalytic educator, ordained Soto Zen priest, and transmitted Soto Zen teacher. From a realizational perspective that integrates Zen and psychoanalytic concepts, the book addresses anxiety-driven interferences to deepened Zen practice, extends the scope and increases the effectiveness of clinical work for the psychotherapist, and facilitates deepened experiences for both the Buddhist and the secular meditation practitioner. Two Arrows Meeting will be of great interest to researchers in the fields of Zen Buddhism and psychoanalysis. It will also appeal to meditation practitioners and psychoanalysts in practice and training.

Psychotherapy, Mindfulness and Buddhist Meditation

Psychotherapy, Mindfulness and Buddhist Meditation
Author: Tullio Giraldi
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2019-09-17
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 3030290034

This book critically examines the development of mindfulness, tracing its development from Buddhist meditation to its variety of popular applications today, including the treatment of mental disorders, wellbeing and improvement of performance. The book begins with a chapter on the meaning of mindfulness, then moves on to chart the spread of Buddhism into the western world and examine the development of Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). The second half of the book considers some of the growing concerns related to mindfulness such as the loss of the moral and communitarian values of Buddhism, and the psychologicization and medicalization of existential problems into a capitalist society.