Mixing minds: Interpersonal relationships between Tibetan Buddhist lamas and their Western students, and psychoanalysts and their analysands: A study in contrasts

In the contrasting healing traditions of psychoanalysis and Buddhism, there is a shared belief in the potentially ameliorative impact of interpersonal relationship between designated healers and those seeking wellness. It is for this reason that both traditions, despite widely divergent methodologies and overarching purviews, privilege the process of revealing one's inner life to a primary healer. In this work the author examines how these intimate relationships between psychoanalysts and their analysands, and Buddhist teachers and their students, evolve and differ, with emphasis on the methods and end goals they consciously and unconsciously utilize. Through this comparative examination, this work seeks to encourage a growing interest in and respect for healing modalities that are unique to each tradition and healing couple.;Through the psychoanalytic theories of Freud, Winnicott, Bion, Kohut, and Horney, the author examines how contemporary Western students steeped in both Eastern and Western traditions may experience relationship to their Buddhist teachers. The reader is asked to consider how such students may bring culturally specific psychological content to their Buddhist teachers. So too, the author explores the growing number of Western Buddhists who wish to examine their religious experience and relationship to Buddhist mentors, in their psychoanalytic healing efforts.;The author proposes that these historically distinct traditions have begun mixing minds through this growing demographic of Western lay Buddhists who seek to examine both psyche and spirit in their respective healing journeys and relationships. Just as psychoanalysts and their patients, and Buddhist teachers and their students, exchange psychic content through their intersubjective experience, so too, these larger traditions have begun to cross-pollinate. This work searches for the boundaries of each tradition, so that practitioners and healers may consciously pursue their wish for healing with increased sensitivity to the limitations of any given healing system and relationship, and with an augmented curiosity for the methods and means through which healing transpires in the contrasting yet mutually informing worlds of psyche and spirit.