Psychoanalysis and Zen Buddhism by Erich Fromm

Author:Erich Fromm [Fromm, Erich]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-0207-2
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-02-19T21:42:00+00:00

VI. DE-REPRESSION AND ENLIGHTENMENT

What follows from our discussion of psychoanalysis40 and Zen as to the relationship between the two?

The reader must have been struck by now by the fact that the assumption of incompatibility between Zen Buddhism and psychoanalysis results only from a superficial view of both. Quite to the contrary, the affinity between both seems to be much more striking. This chapter is devoted to a detailed elucidation of this affinity.

Let us begin with Dr. Suzuki’s statements, quoted earlier, about the aim of Zen. “Zen in its essence is the art of seeing into the nature of one’s being, and it points the way from bondage to freedom. … We can say that Zen liberates all the energies properly and naturally stored in each of us, which are in ordinary circumstances cramped and distorted so that they find no adequate channel for activity. … It is the object of Zen, therefore, to save us from going crazy or being crippled. This is what I mean by freedom, giving free pay to all the creative and benevolent impulses inherently lying in our hearts. Generally, we are blind to this fact, that we are in possession of all the necessary faculties that will make us happy and loving towards one another.”

This description of Zen’s aim could be applied without change as a description of what psychoanalysis aspires to achieve; insight into one’s own nature, the achievement of freedom; happiness and love, liberation of energy, salvation from being insane or crippled.

This last statement, that we are confronted with the alternative between enlightenment and insanity, may sound startling, but in my opinion is born out by the observable facts. While psychiatry is concerned with the question of why some people become insane, the real question is why most people do not become insane. Considering man’s position in the world, his separateness, aloneness, powerlessness, and his awareness of this, one would expect this burden to be more than he can bear, so that he would, quite literally, “go to pieces” under the strain. Most people avoid this outcome by compensatory mechanisms like the overriding routine of life, conformity with the herd, the search for power, prestige, and money, dependence on idols—shared with others in religious cults—a self-sacrificing masochistic life, narcissistic inflation in short, by becoming crippled. All ‘these compensatory mechanisms can maintain sanity, provided they work, up to a point. The only fundamental solution which truly overcomes potential insanity is the full, productive response to the world which in its highest form is enlightenment.

Before we arrive at the central issue of the connection between psychoanalysis and Zen I want to consider some more peripheral affinities:

First to be mentioned is the ethical orientation common to Zen and to psychoanalysis. A condition for achieving the aim of Zen is the overcoming of greed, be it greed for possession or glory, or any other form of greed, (“coveting,” in the Old Testament sense). This is exactly what the aim of psychoanalysis is. In his theory of the

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