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Object Relations Theory, Buddhism, and the Self

1990; Philosophy Documentation Center; Volume: 30; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5840/ipq199030149

2153-8077

Edward G. Muzika,

Child Therapy and Development

WHAT IS THIS STRANGE ENTITY known as the which is the object of investigation of most current psychoanalytic thinking? Object relations theory, ego, and self-psychology all suggest different concepts of the self, its development, and the developmental arrests leading to adult personality disorders. Each school presents different treatment modalities based on diagnostic and developmental considerations, as well as differing ideas about what cures in therapy. Other, non-analytic, therapies often avoid developmental issues, but have implicit or explicit models of the embedded somewhere in their theories. This same has also been a focal point of nearly 5,000 years of Eastern metaphysical and religious investigation. The Eastern effort emphasizes phenomenological investigations of the as present experience, followed by interpretations of that experience based on traditional metaphysical systems. The self's personal history and infantile origins are ignored. The Eastern approach lacks a clinical tradition as we know it, and self is often used to denote non-personal, special states of consciousness ordinarily regarded as mystical in the West. The Hindu has two levels: Jiva, or the individual soul, and Atman, its universal and spiritual aspect, the experience of which is found in enlightenment. Buddha denied that either existed, and maintained that the experience of Emptiness was the ultimate phenomenological substratum of both the and the world. Buddhism attempts a radical resolution to all psychological illnesses by ending their source, the self, and expanding consciousness towards an identification with all of reality. Efforts have been made to integrate these fundamentally different concepts of and their derivative therapies,' without a great deal of popular acceptance. Current transpersonal syntheses employ the notion of invariant stages of progressive ego development and suggest using different types of therapies for different levels of developmental arrest. This differs from psychoanalytic thinking only in the assumption of developmental stages far beyond the Oedipal stage (see table on pages 65-66). I will argue that an alternative synthesis, combining Eastern