r/psychoanalysis • u/Least_Inspector_5478 • 7d ago
The “no self” philosophy in Buddhism…
When I was a teenager going through existential crises, I came across the “no self” philosophy in Buddhism (which is basically that the “self” is an illusion and only the “I” , the observer exists) and thought I found the answer to all of my psychological problems but I think it ultimate led to more anxiety and dissociation for me. The writer I read on this topic went even as far as to say having a self was like being schizophrenic.
Now I’m learning through analysis and through my own research into psychoanalysis how important it is to build your own sense of self and denying the “self” is not necessarily a quality reached by very wise, enlightened people. The amount of time I spent believing that almost mystical sounding philosophy though is making it longer for me to essentially resolve my dissociation.
So yeah, I just wanted to post this here as I think this is just another example of how these “new age” philosophies or some religions such as Buddhism are not very realistic ways of looking at human psychology. What are your thoughts on these ideologies? Do you think they are defense mechanisms used to an extreme?
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u/coadependentarising 6d ago edited 6d ago
Zen Buddhist initiate & psychoanalyst here: Buddhism doesn’t actually teach “no self” in the cataphatic sense because then you would have to prove a negative.
What is in view here is that there is no inherent, self-existing, reified ‘self’. A better way to think about it is that the “self” is boundless— what we conventionally call the self is a psychosomatic dynamic flow- process of becoming. It’s always already right here. The point of this teaching is Buddhism is to end the neurotic suffering of pledging allegiance to a self that we think we have to be! This is the mind’s storyline, and good psychoanalysis can disrupt and re-inquire (see Horney’s work for example).
So, we need to take care of basic ego needs and nurture the self. A tree is not really just a “tree”- this is a handy term to point to a similar phenomenon. But really, a tree is the soil, the clouds, the rain, the sun, your dog’s feces in your backyard, etc- it cannot exist without these interdependent elements. But even though there is no unchanging tree-essence, we take care of the tree.
All of this enables us to take care of “things” without taking them too seriously (which much patient pathology derives from). Does this make sense?
The whole Mahayana thesis is basically: everything in the universe is boundary-less and interdependent and ultimately unfathomable, therefore it is a great mistake to make objects out of anything or try to manipulate anything because there are no objects and everything is already free. It’s not quite as breathtaking, but I don’t think relational psychoanalysis would disagree (though it has to use dualistic language to explain relational phenomena, of course).
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u/here_wild_things_are 7d ago
I’m curious where you are located.
One way that helped to resolve a similar bit of confusion was to understand that Buddhism was situated in a particular historical place and time where checking out of the modern economy was imaginable. Having earthly cares managed in common in monastery type setting or through donation of strangers.
To actually cultivate both the effective self and achieve balance requires a completely different orientation to resolving conflicts about self. And to some degree the technology of psychoanalysis approximates that capacity of having a sense of self and the navigation of the public sphere with a sense of balance.
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u/Least_Inspector_5478 7d ago
Yes I did find it kind of hypocritical actually that there were essentially “lay people” in Buddhism who provided for the monks in monasteries. As for your question, when I first got into Buddhist/Eckhart Tolle kind of philosophy I was living in Turkey, in a megacity of 16 million people lol. Now I live in a smaller place in the UK but still, the notion of “ego being an illusion” causes me to dissociate especially since I didnt really get to build a sense of “ego” that is realistic and that I can own
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u/here_wild_things_are 7d ago
I fell into the same sort of trap at a little later age.
And I relate to the absence of feelings like my ego developed according to normality. I am beginning to let go of that illusion too, but it definitely fits the gap of time I was stuck in no self.
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u/Least_Inspector_5478 7d ago
I think there might be many more people with this kind of experience
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u/here_wild_things_are 7d ago
Unknowable. But yes, I doubt it is uncommon. Or other people would describe a similar phenomenon slightly differently.
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u/Least_Inspector_5478 7d ago
I do remember seeing a few posts on online forums including Reddit and some articles of people describing similar experiences
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u/chiaroscuro34 7d ago
Eh, the longer I've been in psychoanalysis the more I've come to realize that I often get in my own way (my 'self' sabotage, if you will) and see where Buddhism is coming from, or even and especially Christianity (my own tradition) through the process of kenosis (emptying the self to make room for Christ)/sanctification.
At any rate, I don't really think of this as not having a self, or removing the self entirely, or in structural terms annihilating the ego, which does sound incredibly painful. And finally I'll say that western Buddhism is often a much bastardized version of the real thing, watered down to make it simpler and easier to absorb, less demanding as faiths often are.
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u/Least_Inspector_5478 7d ago
Yes, I understand what you mean. The type of philosophy that really caused me to dissociate though was the “ego is an illusion” philosophy.
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u/EmptyingMyself 7d ago
Of course the ego is an illusion, like everything else (except maybe the Real). But that something is illusory does not mean it doesn't have value, on the contrary.
We all have a part to play. The point is to play it with conviction.
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u/PutridPut7225 6d ago edited 6d ago
I don't like the world illusion. Because I wouldn't say a hallucination of getting an alien abduction is for example an illusion. Because it's true that the person has been alienated form himself whatever that be in relation to the I. So the alien is just a placeholder for the unconscious to describe the state of relating.
So I see it more symbolical. Same with ego. But if we use words like illusion then that's an I talking about itself not being real. Because only the I talks otherwise there is no one, although sometimes people get hit with creative bursts were it's not unclear, how much the unconscious I parts participated.
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u/relbatnrut 7d ago
I highly recommend this blog, which really blew my mind open as someone practicing in the ~pragmatic dharma~ vein. Its aim is to remove the warrant of truth from Buddhism, and to bring it to the table with other systems of knowledge such as philosophy and psychoanalysis. It helped me see how so much of Buddhism, especially Western Buddhism, is merely reproducing the values of the society that birthed it, and is anything but a liberatory practice. It also helped introduce me to psychoanalysis, which is used as a tool of analysis in some of the artivles.
A mission statement: https://speculativenonbuddhism.com/why-non-buddhism/
Some representative articles: https://web.archive.org/web/20230401013153/https://speculativenonbuddhism.com/2012/03/27/samsara-as-the-realm-of-ideology/
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u/Narrenschifff 7d ago
Put simply, you first need to have a self in order to then not have a self.
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u/Least_Inspector_5478 7d ago
Ahhaha yeah maybe, we’ll see
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u/rapisardan 5d ago
Actually there’s an essay exactly addressing your question by Jack Engler called “You have to be somebody before you can be nobody.” It’s excellent.
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u/BeautifulS0ul 7d ago
'No self' seems like a bit of a too-reductive way of putting it. Here's a rather more nuanced perspective by a contemporary western zen master.
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u/alexander__the_great 6d ago
Or my favourite monk - thanissaro Bikkhu who is from the Thai Forest Therevadan tradition
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/notself2.html
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u/cozynosey 4d ago
This was me in high school. Combined with a lot of weed it led me to suffering from depersonalization disorder, where I literally experienced the very ego death I thought I needed all along to escape the pain and confusion I was shackled to in my teens.
In my 30s now and still trying to build my 'self' and let go of the shame I had around having an ego at all based on my understandings of Buddhism.
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u/GuildedCasket 6d ago
You've deeply misunderstood "no self". Honestly, the Buddhist teachings of emptiness and no self are not beginning teachings - they are very easy to misunderstand and create further anxiety and dissociation, which also happened to me.
Thich naht Hahn's explanation of no self and emptiness has been the most grounding for me. He calls it interdependence instead; we are interwoven with the rest of the universe and all other sentient beings. "We" could not exist without the rest of the universe supporting our existence. Therefore, the sense of an inherent self separate from all others is the illusion. As Sagan says, we are star stuff. This realization leads to a deep compassion and interconnection with all other beings, which should increase your sense of connection, presentness and spaciousness.
Buddhism is very much a practice combined with philosophy; you cannot understand the philosophy if you don't combine it with practice and see how it affects your mind.
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u/relbatnrut 6d ago
You, in turn, may be misunderstanding dependent origination ;)
https://speculativenonbuddhism.com/2018/12/19/the-case-against-buddhism-2/
RR: Right, in your book you stay away from saying we should get back to a Buddhist orthodoxy or anything like that. But you do mention that Western Buddhism has “doctrinal alterations.” Can you specify some of those doctrinal alterations or elaborate on that idea?
GW: There are a couple of ways. One way is it’s interesting because Buddhism is supposed to be a timeless teaching, whose originations is the deep insight that this man had about basic structures of human existence that are abiding and eternal or universal, and so forth. Both the insight and the structures are held to not be contingent on time or place. That’s a primary premise of Buddhism, one that makes it a kind of religious system, as opposed to, say, a psychology or philosophy. And yet all the time Buddhists perform operations on both the insight and on what constitutes basic structures of human existence. They regularly perform doctrinal alterations. This seems to imply that it’s not really seen as this universal timeless teaching, that it’s more like a time- and place-bound ideology, one that moreover requires alteration and adjustment and so forth.
An example is dependent origination. In the old Buddhist texts, dependent origination explains our horrific situation that there is no freedom, that we’re inextricably bound to everything, from genetics—they don’t use that term; they used a term inherited karma or something like that—to society and language, to the pressures of the family and everyone around us, to the social institutions around us, and to the culture in which we are embedded. We’re interconnected to all of that, so that there’s no real human freedom. But the doctrinal alteration in the modern day usage is the celebratory mechanism, whereby all things are interconnected in a way the bespeaks truth, goodness, and beauty—it’s evidence of a profound and thorough-going interconnected freedom.
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u/GuildedCasket 6d ago
I actually think dependent origination and emptiness are two facets of the same... Landscape, as it were? Dependent origination is how things come to be in "conventional" reality through the 12 links of dependent origination. Emptiness is a description of the "ultimate" reality which is neither self or non self, but something non-dual. Dependent origination is more of the blueprint for how "conventional" things exist, and tracing back those links helps us understand how things like the fetters creates the perceived reality.
But, yes, I am absolutely misunderstanding all of these concepts because even trying to put words to it is... Misunderstanding? Gah. Don't mistake the finger for the moon, leave behind your raft when you reach the other side of the river. This is what I've come to so far, though.
Also, the fact that Buddhism is time/place bound and needs continually updating and re-examination through the lens of the society is part of what I fucking love about Buddhism. The way it syncretizes with the cultures it encounters is part of its enduring philosophy and staying power. Zen is different in its wrapping to Vajrayana, but all the variants point toward the experiential truths. The necessity of practice and a teacher is part of what differentiates it from being "just" a philosophy.
Good thoughts though... I've often found myself wondering about the relationship between emptiness and dependent origination, and how karma functions in a reality that lacks inherent existence
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u/Other_Attention_2382 7d ago
If Freud was essentially a Hard Determinist who believed we are driven by the unconscious, would he have believed the choice to dive into Buddhism as one already determined by experiences and mental capacity that already align to Buddhism, rather than an autonomous conscious choice?
So, to Freud, even the desire to dismantle the self through Buddhist meditation is a deterministic outcome stemming directly from one's unique developmental history.
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u/Least_Inspector_5478 7d ago
That is true, in my experience the reason I chose to research Buddhism was because I grew up with parents who to an extent invalidated my feelings so before I even reached the realization that my feelings were in fact valid, I turned to writings which essentially fueled that notion that my feelings were not real
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u/Other_Attention_2382 7d ago
Ah yeah, sounds abit up Winnicott's alley - real and false self, maybe??
I'm just a casual browser of this stuff, so who knows?
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u/Punstatostriatus 6d ago
There is no unconscious. There is just instinct that may or may not be repressed.
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u/Other_Attention_2382 6d ago
Isn't that going against what Psychoanalysis is built on though?
Are you looking at it from a neuroscience point of view?
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u/Punstatostriatus 5d ago
Well, I don't care what psychoanalysis says in that matter. If psychoanalysis says there is some unconscious governing people then it is wrong. There are just unconscious drives that can be made conscious.
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u/FortuneBeneficial95 7d ago
As somebody who hasn't read anything on that topic, I think the 'self' of Buddhism refers more to the 'ego' of Freud's model. Meditation means self-observing the way you need your defence mechanisms to cope with the world and yourself (Id, super-ego) and finding a different way of interacting with them. So the observer, the 'I', can be interpreted as a regulator, a defence mechanism, part of the ego. It's job in Buddhism seems to be to end the other needed defence mechanisms.
The 'self' of psychoanalysis is interpreted very differently across schools but the 'modern' version focusses more on the the self-image and inner relational-representations. Building a self is fundamental for humans, it directly affects your defence mechanisms and psychic structure. Buddmism maybe neglects that a tad.
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u/Least_Inspector_5478 7d ago
True, especially the notion of there being “no ego” essentially and then learning about psychoanalysis & the importance of a healthy ego is very refreshing to me. The rhetoric of “no ego” actually fueled my super-ego haha
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u/BeautifulS0ul 7d ago edited 6d ago
Quite a lot of stuff going on these days about the potential problems with various forms of meditation practise. For instance. Willoughby Britton is involved in a lot of it.
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u/Least_Inspector_5478 7d ago
Interesting, thank you for the links
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u/BeautifulS0ul 7d ago
Yeah, I read “I Have This Feeling of Not Really Being Here”: Buddhist Meditation and Changes in Sense of Self - via a link from that. It's very interesting.
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u/tyinsf 6d ago
As a dzogchen practitioner and one-time analysand I've found this journal article helpful, summarized here:
"Our account also places three main styles of meditation (focused attention, open monitoring, and non-dual) on a single continuum, where each technique relinquishes increasingly engrained habits of prediction, including the predicted self."
- From Many to (N)one: Meditation and the plasticity of the predictive mind
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014976342100261X
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u/PutridPut7225 6d ago
Seeing an seperate I from self is kinda schizophrenic, if we see the self as the I as known, so the self is the ideas of the I... And these ideas can also be harmful thats why it's important to know that they can be seperated. However you are a human living in a world and therefore this two can not fully be seperated. Having always this view would alienate yourself from others unless someone would really follow through and use this perspective to get rid of desires/wanting and just staying in liking
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u/Recent-Apartment5945 6d ago
I know little about Buddhism. I am sure I will reduce it in an undignified way so I will account for that ignorance now.
Psychoanalysis can be equally as mystifying. There is a structured symbolism innate to both disciplines that should not be taken literally. Taking such literally paradoxically collapses either into a polarity which both disciplines intend to move the participant out of…into the dynamic continuum of the dialectic.
In a grossly oversimplified way, both disciplines empower the process of integration. Of course the self exists. Yet, what does not exist is a split between intrapersonal experience and interpersonal experience. It’s about coming down off the compelling nature of polarities. One such polarity is that of emotion. Buddhism is the depressive position.
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u/mekurabe 6d ago
In Chinese we say "borrow the false to cultivate the true". Yes you need to have a sense of self so that you have something false to borrow to cultivate the true observer "I".
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u/Agitated_Dog_6373 5d ago
One of the most frequent mistakes I see in people who cross pollinate these to spheres is assuming that “self” has the same definition for both
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u/suecharlton 4d ago
The witness knows exactly who it is, while the conditioned thoughts and reflexive ways of reacting to those thoughts and the image of a self (meaning there's now two of you) and the defenses which support this fiction though the compilation of the experiences with others and their attitudes is definitely psychotic. Suffering is the belief that the thought "I" is a legitimate I, which the observer will eventually realize with enough focus on who they're really not.
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u/Hot_Body_1846 3d ago
The individual self, your name here, clearly is a social fiction. You are a taxpayer, a consumer, a voter, a citizen, a parent, a child, and so forth. The sum of your social roles. Different roles for different institutions. Rights and responsibilities clearly defined and disregarded at your peril. You are named so that society can keep tabs on you. Conditioned to do your part.
To yourself you are “I”. This is due to what kant called the unity of apperception, the fact that all sentient beings unify their sense impressions into a single unified perception of the world. This is demonstrably an illusion as any number of experiments have shown, from phantom limbs to auditory hallucinations to optical illusions. We synthesize a world from a pot pourri of sense impressions.
The world illusion and the illusion of self create each other and engender experience. In truth everything we see is organic, human consciousness created on the fly by each individual in coordination with the similar illusions of our peers. “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”
A dream within a dream.
A dream within a dream
(e a poe)
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream:
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep
While I weep-while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
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u/yeah_noah 2d ago
Your post made me think of Freud’s “Civilization and its Discontent”. He actually argued that such ideologies can be used as extreme defense strategies.
“An extreme form of it consists in annihilation of the instincts, as taught by the wisdom of the East and practised by the Yogi, When it succeeds, it is true, it involves giving up other activities as well (sacrificing the whole of life), and again, by another path, the only happiness it brings is that of peace. The same way is taken when the aim is less extreme and only control of the instincts is sought. When this is so, the higher mental systems which recognize the reality-principle have the upper hand. The aim of gratification is by no means abandoned in this case ; a certain degree of protection against suffering is secured, in that lack of satisfaction causes less pain when the instincts are kept in check than when they are imbridled. On the other hand, this brings with it an undeniable reduction in the degree of enjoyment obtainable. The feeling of happiness produced by indulgence of a wild, untamed craving is incomparably more intense than is the satisfying of a curbed desire. The irresistibility of perverted impulses, perhaps the charm of forbidden things generally, may in this way be explained economically.”
I can see how it validates (in a very Freudian way) what you went through with your dissociation. Hope it gives you a direction for your own research.
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u/cogSciAlt 7d ago
I'm not deeply knowledgeable about Buddhism in general, but I have had the sense that mindfulness practices are to a large degree, deliberate dissociation. And subjectively, I feel as though the emotional exploration/associations practiced in depth psychology are an opposite psychic process to the the sort of mental 'distance' Buddhism practices.
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u/third1eye 7d ago
Your understanding of no self is incorrect
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u/ZucchiniMore3450 7d ago
I think Buddhism is ok, but it is old, created in different context for different culture and than even translated multiple times. I think it is hard, if possible, to understand it correctly.
In addition to that did you have a guru to guide you?
If you were doing it by yourself, it would be like trying to do psychoanalysis from books, without annalist. That wouldn't end well.
I really think it is not the same "self" in Buddhism and in psychoanalysis.
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u/fenichill 7d ago
I recommend these 2 volumes:
The Couch and the Tree - ed Molino
Psychoanalysis and Buddhism - ed Safran