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The Nirvana Instinct in Freuds Metapsychology:

The Death Drive from a Buddhist PerspectiveWithout Mourning or Melancholy
Robert E. Hanahan

The notion of a death instinct or drive, was first proposed by Sigmund Freud in his perhaps
most controverted work, entitled, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, published in 1920. Here Freud
maintained that in addition to Eros or the life instinct, there existed a death instinct -- later
termed Thanatos by Wilhem Stekel -- which he compared to the Buddhist concept of Nirvana,
mistakenly associating this exclusively with the terminative, annihilational option assumed by
the misinformed, to be the unilateral signification defining the Nirvana principle.

We propose instead an anagogic, or an elevated reading of this naturalistic interpretation,

proposed by the Founder, more in tune with the several registers, or dhatus of Nirvana, found in
the canon.

The Buddhas original intent, we will show, being cessative, as opposed to being terminal.
Rather than total extinction of the individual, or parinirvana, we shall outline a less extreme,
preliminary format where the ego-construct, this the bedrock of Freuds adaptational
therapeutic, is diminished rather than eradicated.

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The orientalist Lafcadio Hearn has written that: "there still [ in 1897] widely prevails in
Europe and America the idea that Nirvana signifies, to Buddhist minds, neither more nor less
than absolute nothingness,-- complete annihilation. This idea is erroneous. But it is erroneous
only because it contains half of a truth. This half of a truth has no value or interest, or even
intelligibility, unless joined with the other half. And of the other half no suspicion yet exists in
the average Western mind.
Nirvana, indeed, signifies an extinction. But if by this extinction of individual being we
understand soul-death, our conception of Nirvana is wrong. Or if we take Nirvana to mean
such reabsorption of the finite into the infinite as that predicted by Indian pantheism, again
our idea is foreign to Buddhism.
Nevertheless, if we declare that Nirvana means the extinction of individual sensation,
emotion, thought,--the final disintegration of conscious personality, -- the annihilation of
everything that can be included under the term "I,"-- then we rightly express one side of the
Buddhist teaching.
The apparent contradiction of the foregoing statements is due only to our Occidental notion
of Self. Self to us signifies feelings, ideas, memory, volition; and it can scarcely occur to any
person not familiar with German idealism even to imagine that consciousness might not be
Self. The Buddhist, on the contrary, declares all that we call Self to be false. He defines the
Ego as a mere temporary aggregate of sensations, impulses, ideas, created by the physical and
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mental experiences of the race - all related to the perishable body, and all doomed to dissolve
with it. What to Western reasoning seems the most indubitable of realities, Buddhist reasoning
pronounces the greatest of all illusions, and even the source of all sorrow and sin. 1
For Sigmund Freud, writing some 23 years later, the expression of the tendency toward
stability, the elimination of drive-tension and of disturbed equilibrium, is referred to -- with
proper credit to Barbara Low -- as the "Nirvana Principle." He defines this succinctly as
being, "the extinction of the tension of the instinctual needs." 2
The operative consideration here, being the annihilation of desire, and not its mere
modification. For Sigmund Freud the abolition of instinctual tension is accomplished only
through the defused, restitutional and annihilative imperatives of Todestrieb, or the "death
instinct."
Originally Freud had conflated the "Nirvana principle" and the "pleasure principle,"
explaining that the latter, "follows from the principle of constancy: actually the latter
principle was inferred from the facts which forced us to adopt the pleasure principle.
Moreover, a more detailed discussion will show that the tendency which we thus attribute
to the mental apparatus is subsumed as a special case under [Gustav] Fechners principle
of the tendency towards stability, to which he has brought the feelings of pleasure and
unpleasure into relation." 3
Subsequent inquiry exposed Freud to the " the operation of tendencies beyond the
pleasure principle, that is, of tendencies more primitive than it and independent of it." 4
Russian Psychologist Gregory Zilboorg, writing in his introduction to the publication of
the James Strachey translation of Beyond the Pleasure Principle, suggests that Freud, while
perceiving the term "mystic" to be an "expression of opprobrium [...] struggled with all the
might of his great mind against openly giving in to the attraction of the mystical aspects of
human life." 5
Elsewhere, while claiming a connection with the pre-Socratic philosopher, Empedocles of
Acragas, (b. ca 495 b.c.e), this regarding the binary configuration of the life and death
instincts --"philia" or love and "neikos" depicting strife, for the Greek -- Freud seems,
albeit, to praise the philosopher noting that "he did not recoil from obscure mysticism." 6
Being the scientific naturalist that he claimed to be nevertheless, the founder of the
Psychoanalytic movement maintains a devout resistance to the notion that his own work,
particularly regarding the death instinct, might in any way resemble the "cosmic
phantasy" 7 which characterizes Empedocles' work.
Neither, Freud insists, should his speculation regarding the Nirvana principle impute to
an "impression of mysticism or of sham profundity." 8 The animus which he directs
towards the perceived mystical elements in some of his works, leads Zilboorg to the
conjecture that Freud's defiance here may be signs of a subliminal inclination to "protest
too much." 9
Despite this reluctance, albeit, Henry Fingarette has observed that: "The mystic's fund-
amental generalizations are remarkably reminiscent of some of Freud's basic postulates" 10
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At some point in the Spring of 1919, Sigmund Freud, now plagued by the disillusions
attendant to the recently concluded Great War -- this in combination with the recent deaths
of close friends and family members - commenced to write Beyond the Pleasure Principle. It
might be said that the work changed the course of human history...
By posing the existence of a restorational urge -- a death instinct or drive -- which is seen
as existing in tandem with the life-instinct or Eros, Freud casts doubt upon the very ideas-
of-progress promoted by Hegel, Herbert Spenser and by Charles Darwin most prominently.
The primary instinct driving the psyche was not progressive as proposed by these and
others: rather, Freud maintained, it was aimed at a restitutio in pristinum statuma return
to an ancient goal.
Beyond the Pleasure Principle, (1920), written with the horrors of World War I and the
recent death of Sophie Halberstadt-Freud, perhaps his favorite daughter, fresh in mind,
reintroduces the restitutional imperative towards quiescence, first broached by Freud in
the Project For a Scientific Psychology,11 completed in 1895. Although the work was not
published until 1950, elements of Freud's later thinking regarding the Nirvana principle
are evident.
Here the "principle of neuronal inertia" is introduced -- a "neuron," therein, consisting
of those impulse-conducting cells that constitute the brain, spinal column, and nervous
system.
In sum, the fundamental tendency, the underlying, economic purpose of the neuronic
system, is to divest itself of as much excessive stimulus as possible, be the source
endogenous or environmental. 12
Based, as we have noted, on Gustav Fechner's homeostatic, "tendency toward stability--
also referred to as the 'constancy principle" -- the theory constitutes, "a fundamental
attribute of the mind, that, "derives," writes Ernest Jones, from [the] quietistic teaching
of Buddhism which is known to have greatly influenced Fechner." 13
The restorational instinct which Freud naturalizes and biologizes as the "death instinct"
resonates, we would maintain--as does Fingarette-- with the mystic's desire for requiescence.
Freuds "use of the term death instinct is unfortunate in [the] biological context," Frank
Sulloway allows, "since it generally suggests a conscious striving forward to death (an
obviously maladaptive trait) rather than a regressive compulsion to restore a primal state
of rest."14
Both perspectives, the mystic and the analytic, are, to use Plotinus' term, epistrophic,
albeit, seeking to recapitulate a lost plenum, a terminus a quo from which the elemental
being has been forcibly separated. "Taken to its logical extreme," Todd Dufresne writes,
"the idea of constancy signified for Freud the ultimate pleasure of death, that is, the
orgasmic release from self." 15
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Each of the orders, both the sacred and profane, seeks tranquility, the "stillness" of the
unconditioned. With Freud, for example, all instincts, are conservative and aim towards the
homeostatic restoration "of an earlier state of things, which the living entity has been
obliged to abandon under the pressure of external disturbing forces." 16
These external forces promote organic development, via diversions similar to the
Taoists manifest, "world-of-the-10,000-things" -- although the 'elementary living entity'
would, Freud maintains, initially have resisted these changes. 17
The primal instinct, the recapitulatory, repetition-compulsion, seeks a regressus ad
integrum, despite the deceptive illusions of change and progress promoted by Eros, or the
life-instinct. The dominant imperative here is return to an "ancient goal,"Freud insists, "an
old state of things, an initial state from which the living entity has at one time or other
departed and to which it is striving to return." 18
The Nirvana principle, as we shall see, properly interpreted, is neither annihilative, nor
suicidal, nevertheless, not a wish for death or Todeswunsch. Instead the denial sought is not
as Schopenhauer, he a student of Eastern philosophy, points out, a commentary on the
inadequacies and sorrows of phenomenal life. 19 Rather the restitutional imperative reflects
a nostalgic denial and longing for a lost plenitude.
The instinct toward restoration rejects the fragmented clamoring of the dialectic of
''becoming." Similar in this negation to Schopenhauer's "denial-of-the will-to-live," it opts
for the quiescence of pleromatic constancy.
While typically depicted as being regressive, the longing for return here infers, rather, a
disobjectalisation, the cessation of false, diachronic constructs which obscure the true
nature of the Self.
In The Analyst and the Mystic, referring to the restorational imperative, Sudhir Kakar
notes that, "the mystical quest seeks to rescue from primal repression the constantly lived
contrast between an original interlocking, and a radical rupture. The mystic," he
concludes, "unlike most others, does not mistake his hunger for its fulfillment."20
Freuds restorational imperative is a form of denial, as Schopenhauer, would propose of
the will-to-life and the delusory assumptions concerning the beatitude and the epistemic
validity of phenomenal existence. What we have referred to as Id2 is an ontological
constant, pathologized only from our profane, literalized perspectives
There exists a sense of loss, an anthropocosmic rupture, in the restorational impulse,
however it may be depicted, which requires some prevenient, ontogenetic remediation,
prior to a complete ontological reconciliation. Rather than ultimate demise, what is sought
is decathectic - release here from the skandhas, the disturbing elements, of libidinal
indeterminacy and process which generate desire. In Buddhism these represent the
aggregates of attachment or trishna -- and the con-sequential sufferings or dukkha.
Both the Sage and the Psychoanalyst, seek cessation -- Sanskrit nirodha -- "the eternal
cry," as E.G. Browne writes, "of the human soul for rest [...] an enunciation more or less
clear, more or less eloquent, of the aspiration of the soul to cease altogether from self..." 21
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"Do you know what it means to be confronted by nothingness? Do you know what that
means? And yet this very nothingness is simply a European misconconception: The Hindu
Nirvana is not nothingness, it is that which transcends all contradictions." 22
-- Sigmund Freud,

In The Economic Problem in Masochism, published in 1924, Freud admits that:

"Whatever it is, we must perceive that the Nirvana principle, which belongs to the death
instincts, underwent a modification in the living organism through which it became the
pleasure principle and hence-forward we shall avoid regarding the two principles as one. It
is not difficult, to infer what force it was that effected this modification, that is, if one has
any interest at all in following this argument. It can only be the life instinct, the libido,
which has thus wrested a place for itself alongside the death instinct, in regulating the
processes of life. In this way we obtain a series, a small but an interesting one: the Nirvana-
principle expresses the tendency of the death instincts, the pleasure-principle represents the
claims of the libido and that modification of it, the reality- principle, the influence of the
external world." 23
There are in the Buddhist canon actually two nirvana natures, two nirvana dhatus. The
one might be said to be ontological, the other psychological. The one signifying
"destruction" (Sanskrit, apratisamkhyanirodha), the other "cessation" or pratis-
amkhyanirodha.
Although the etymology of the word does suggest extinction or the ''blowing-out'' of a
flame, the word nirvana has been subject to less annihilationist interpretations, as Lafcadio
Hearn, above, insists.
Carl Becker cites the Orientalist Max Mller, who had, at one time, not only perceived
Buddhism as ''atheistic and nihilistic", but also condemned it "for hurling man into the
abyss, at the very moment [the late 19th century] when he thought he had arrived at the
stronghold of the eternal." 24
Mller, however, subsequently reached the quite different critical conclusion "that the
nirvana of total extinction was a superimposition of the later Abhidharma philosophers
upon early Buddhist teachings." 25
The original meaning of the term nirvana, according to the Buddha's representations,
signifies instead "the extinction of desires, pleasure and pain" reflecting nirodha or cessation
and not the annihilationist view adopted exclusively by the later schools." 26
Theravada Buddhism's concept of Nirvana sopadhisesa is, in fact, the non-annhilational,
enstatic withdrawal of projection, dereification and detachment from those profane
consolations offered by the phenomenal world-of-the-10,000-things. "Buddhism," writes
David Loy, "believes that genuine freedom can be actualized by becoming aware of the
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repressed mental events we have projected." 27

Nirupadhisesanirvanadhatu i.e., without ''remnant or residue" is, on the other hand,
nirvana with no remainders or aggregates (skandhas). Also called parinirvana or
''total''extinction, Nirvana nirupadhisesa consummates with the actual physical death of
the arhat, or the Buddhist adept.
Sopadhisesanirvanadhatu, by contrast, represents nirvana with residual aggregates, these
accompanied, nevertheless. by the extinction of the kilesas or the defilements -- ignorance
and egotism for example -- which profane the spirit and cause human affliction.
Consciousness and personality remain in sopadhisesa but in dephenomenalized, purified
formats. R.C. Childers sees these dhatus as being two separate stages through which the
enlightened must advance. This in contrast to Mller who had considered them to be the
product of evolutionary refinements in Buddhist thought: "The word nirvana is used to
designate two different things," Childers writes, "the state of blissful sanctification called
Arhatship, and the annihilation of existence in which Arhatship ends." 28
James D'Alwis concurs with this binary assessment, concluding that sopadhisesa nirvana
i.e., with remnants, or residue, of the arhat, or Buddhist sage, is preliminary to true
parinirvana, declaring it to be "a state of insight and calm based upon the psychological
qualifications that will enable the Buddha or Arhat to be completely extinguished upon
death." 29
Prior to the annihilationist element of parinirvana, true Buddhism provides a proleptic
respite from samsaric indeterminacy.

"It behoves us to emulate the dead in dispassion

towards good and ill and pain of every kind."
- Meister Eckhart, 30
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Relieved of the defilements [kilesas] of egotism, delusion and desire, the Nirvana of the
arhat bears no resemblance, albeit, to Eros, or the life instinct, which Freud posts in
contrast to the drive toward extinction.
Nirvana sopadhisesa, rather signifies the cessation (Sanskrit, nirodha) of the illusion of
selfhood and ego (ahamkara) which for Freud serve, to the contrary, as the bedrocks of any
possible therapeutic solution.
Although inconceivable to the Western mind (even to Jung it should be noted) the
cessation of the empirical, plastic ego is the first step toward enlightenment and the
liberation from desire and suffering which configures the Eastern mystic's ordo salutis.
As Max Mller had come to see, "Nirvana, if extinction at all, was not extinction of
existence, but only of the cravings which produce suffering." 31
Eventually-- in contrast to the nihilistic, annihilationist heresies (Sanskrit: uccheda ditthi)
- these based, as we have seen, in large part, upon later Abhidharmic metaphysics -- Mller
came to describe Nirvana as "the entrance of the soul into rest; a subduing of all wishes and
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desires [the] absorption of the soul in itself." 32

Nirvana sopadhisesa is, in psychological terms, decathectic, rather than
destructive. The objective being the extinction of desire rather than the termination of
existence.
Nonannihilational, Nirvana-with-remnant represents the same abolition of stimulus, the
same equilibrium, (Pali, upekkha) sought by the Freudian restorational instinct, with less
catastrophic exactions.
Because perhaps it is less given to metaphor than Hinduism, "the doctrine of nirvana,"
W.R. Stace writes, "not being as a rule so much glossed over by poetic phrases, has
constantly appeared as just another name for annihilation. But no Buddhist," he
continues,"will admit that nirvana means annihilation, nor will any serious Western
student of Buddhism at the present day maintain it." 33
The Buddhologist Lavalle Poussin concluded, that, by way of contrast, "Westerners
continue to think of Nirvana as a kind of annihilation, because Western thought patterns do
not enable us to conceive of blessedness or existence apart from mental and physical objects,
neither of which are present in Nirvana." 34
Liberation through Nirvana is a decremental procedure -- both purgative and
recapitulatory. Returning from samsaric wandering -- Freuds libidinal dtours -- to the
root-source, (symbolized in both Freud and the Tao ( 25) as the "mother,") sopadhisesa is
dephenomenalization-without-extinction. The dissolution of the ego-self [ahamkara] but not
the annihilation of the total personality configuration. Buddhist criticism refers rather to
the reification and absolutization of the self. 35
As such sopadhisesa is an asymptotic approximation -- a dereification without extinction,
involving instead dissolution of the ego-self, but not the annihilation of the personality or
the skandhas, these being the aggregates of persona and of attachment.
While the concept of "reification" first appears in the works of Feuerbach, Hegel, and Karl
Marx, Buddhism also, according to Robert J. Moore, particularly Zen Buddhism, by virtue
of the Mahayana concept of"emptiness" or sunyata, constitutes a dereifying perspective.36

"Reification is the apprehension of the products of human activity," Peter Berger and
Thomas Luckmann write, "as if they were something else than human products such as
facts of nature, results of cosmic laws, or manifestations of divine will." 37
Being the misapprehension of the phenomenal, sensory world as an independently
existing order, reification, is, according to Moore, the process of objectifying reality and
then, apprehending the object as an alien thing that is independent of its producer. Thus,
the active role that people play in producing their world is denied." 38
Citing Berger's 1967 work The Sacred Canopy, 39 Moore notes that, whereas most
mainstream religious institutions promote a world-affirming perspective, there are,
"religions that legitimate a dealienated and, therefore, dereifying view of the social world.
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These religions are found especially among and Eastern and Western forms of mysticism.
In general, they identify 'ultimate reality' as beyond the empirical world, and thus they
relativize the social order and its norms by asserting that the empirical world is a
conventionally sustained illusion." 40
Annihilation of the sense of lack or deficiency -- which Schopenhauer again declares to be
the source of all willing 41 -- is achieved only by the extinction of object-oriented conatus. As
with the "denial of the will-to-life", which perceives the delusional ego to be a false
partition (principium individuationis,) and as the cause of that -- ''intense suffering" which
is inseparable from ''intense willing" 42 -- Buddhist nirvana- with-residue, is devoid, of the
object-libido that is normally directed toward constructed reifications; these are recognized
as having mere conceptual existence. "Eastern cognition is interested in consciousness
itself, Harold Kelman writes, while Western cognition is interested in the objects of
consciousness." 43 The Couch and the Tree, p72
In The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis, Viennese psychotherapist Otto Fenichel, writes
that owing to their capacity to simulate a desired state of tension-free gratification,
"external objects"[Sanskrit, upadhis] 44 -- are themselves longed for.
At first they are sought for their functional-instrumental value insofar as they reinstate
tension-free quiescence. "The longing for objects thus began as a detour on the way to the
goal of being rid of objects [...] The goal of being stimulated by the external world is"
therefore, "an intermediary one, a detour to the goal of not being stimulated." 45
The Freudian restorational imperative, the Nirvana principle, when demystified of its
'necrotic' signification skews not toward the the end, or the terminus ad quem, but the
beginning, as terminus a quo -- not demise but return... the restitution of a condition from
which the elemental organism has been thrust. The Finding of an object, we are
reminded, by Freud, is in fact a refinding of it. 46 Sigmund Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality,
Translated and Edited by James Strachey, Basic Books, New York, 2000, p88
Object-libido, while skewing forward, is actually recapitulatory in focus, seeking inertial
quiescence. "If the 'regression-compulsion' in all organic life is striving for integral
quiescence, if the Nirvana principle is the ground of the pleasure principle, then,"
according to Herbert Marcuse, "the necessity of death appears in an entirely new light. The
death instinct is destructiveness not for its own sake, but for the relief of tension. The
descent toward death is an unconscious flight from pain and want. It is an expression of the
eternal struggle against suffering and repression." 47

Here the reversal of an involutional decline and entropic degeneration is sought, as

Marcuse indicates, wherein death is not perceived as an 'end' but as regressus to the source,
now absent the afflictions (dukkha ) and the sorrows of samsara or phenomenal existence .

This release sought is achieved not by accretion, but by purgation and dephenomena-
lization. Not a death-wish, (Todeswunsch) -- which admits of pathology, and promotes
aggressiveness as as by-product -- but rather the expression of the spiritual imperative... the
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geistiger instinkt common to mysticism, which requests epistrophe and quiescence. The
Nirvana principle is the simple exhaustion of upadhis, the phenomenal superimpositions or
limiting attributes.
With similar retrograde orientation the Buddhist seeks Nirvana as a process of dissolution
and subtraction. Involving neither of the Western bromides of accretion or progression -
salvation is cessative for the Sage. It seeks changelessness and constancy as these
impersonate the stillness of the lost plenum. "The Buddhist," Norman O. Brown concludes,
"does not want the creation and unfoldment, but the coming back to the 'uncreated,
unformed state of sunyata, from which all creation proceeds." 48

The 'goal', if it may be thus characterized, is emptiness, or the void or sunyata, as

outlined particularly by the Madhyamaka School of Nagarajuna, (c. AD 150-250,) in what
has come to be known as the "Middle Way" in the Buddhist canon.
In Psychoanalysis, the Ego is privileged as the administrator which regulates the
cathectic profligacies of both the id and the Super Ego. "Where id was there shall ego be."
Freud counsels. 49 New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis, Translated and Edited by Peter
Gay, W.W. Norton & Co., N.Y., 1989, p100
The heuristic, conventional, and therapeutic objective in Psychoanalysis is to strengthen
the ego against the agonistic tendencies of the other two elements of the mental topography.
Buddhist Enlightenment dereifies the ego, sundering it as the insubstantial anatman, a
nonessential, transitory delusion upon which all suffering (dukkha) is predicated. The ego-
construct, or ahamkara, is for the Buddhist sage the primary obstacle to be overcome in the
realization of Nirvana. "The Buddhist approach, writes charles Hanly, seek[s] to dispel
the 'illusory ontology of the self. 50 The Couch and the Tree, p127

Rather than a reconstitution of the ego, Buddhism recommends the deconstruction of

self-nature (Sanskrit, svabhava,) and the aggregates of attachment (upadana skandha) as
well as the consequent desires (trishna) which these provoke.

The profoundly numinous, irrepresentbility of sunya is, like the Nirvana principle,
incapable of adequate representation unless reified, for example, as thalassic (Sandor
Ferenczi) or embryonic (Otto Rank) devices. "[T]he culture of the West, W. Van Dusen
notes, teaches one to fear and avoid blankness, emptiness, and to fill space as much as
possible with our actions with objects." 51 The Couch and the Tree, p54

Disaggregation or dereification of the phenomenal world, recapitulates the emptiness

depicted in the Madhyamaka School's concept of the void, or sunya. The soteriological
orientation skews toward 'disbecoming' or abhava, this reflecting the release from the
manifest delusions of attachment, appearance and process. The liberated individual still
uses objectifications in everyday life but does so without reifying them. "When there is
clinging, the becoming of the clinger fully arises." Nagarjuna counsels, "When there is no
clinging, one is freed; there is no [more] becoming." 52
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For Buddhism, the Sanskrit term bhavasagara, literally, "ocean of becoming" signifies
the reified world of material existence as it is involved in this process, on both historical
and personal levels. Becoming or bhava is depicted in Mahayana Buddhism as a declension
from the "void" or sunyata, which the liberated seeks to recover. The goal of human life, is
for Buddhism, to surmount this unstable condition and to realize truth and inner peace.

Both Freud's restorational, death instinct and Nagarjuna's abyss, serve as primal siren-
calls, summoning the truant soul to divest itself of attachments and the libidinal
contrivances which confine it.
Although later philosophical schools succeeded in "transcendentalizing," sunya for the
Madhyamika School, the concept of emptiness reflects, in fact, the "dis-ontologizing of the
projective constructions. 53
The void is the absence of reified self-presence:"the point of sunyata is to deconstruct
the self-existence/self-presence of things," notes David Loy. Nargarjuna's main objective
is the dereification of "unconscious automatized metaphysics disguised as the world we
live in." 54
The de-automatization of these psychological or metaphysical constructs, requires,
Arthur Deikman notes, that the aspirant must seek to annihilate all vagrant thoughts and
notions belonging to the externality of things, and all ideas of individuality and generality,
of suffering and impermanence, and cultivate the noblest ideas of egolessness and
emptiness. 55
Deikman, building upon the work on autonomization of Viennese, ego-psychologist Heinz
Hartmann, along with studies of de-autonomization by Merton M. Gill, and Margaret
Brenman, has examined the degree to which the mystical experience involves a process
conduced by renunciation and meditation similar to de-autonomization.
Automatization refers to a proceduralization process wherein actions become routinized
and unconsciously habitual, requiring little conscious effort or direction. De-
autonomization, is, on the other hand, a deconstruction or a de-routinization of what might
in Buddhism be referred to as skandhas, or the five aggregates constituting mental and
physical existence.
The skandhas are, using the Sanskrit lexicon: i) rupa, which involves material
composition, corporeality and form; ii) vedana or sensation; iii) samjna, being perception;
iv) samskara, defined as constructions or mental formations; v) and vijnana, referring to
consciousness itself.
For our purposes the first of these skandhas, that designated as rupa, which includes the
concept -- found primarily in Nagarjunas Madhyamika school of Buddhist thought,
referred to as samskrita, (Pali, sankhata) -- reflects a degree of conditioning similar to
Deikman cum Hartmanns depictions of the automatization process.
Hartmann defines this as follows:
In well-established achievements they [motor apparatuses] function automatically: the
integration of the somatic systems involved in the action is automatized, and so is the
integration of the individual mental acts involved in it. With Increasing exercise of the
action its intermediate steps disappear from consciousness [] not only motor behavior
but perception and thinking, too, show automatization. 56
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The school of Ego-Psychology advanced by Hartmann, Freuds daughter, Anna and

David Rapaport, among others, follows upon the structural model of Freuds later thought,
outlined initially in The Ego and the Id, (1924) where ego was seen to be co-equal with the
drives or instincts, which Freud had earlier privileged. The health and strength of an ego
was measured by its ability to test reality, and to adapt to, and to postpone the immediate,
primary gratifications sought by the instincts. Achieving ego autonomy, from both the id
and the environment is essential. Formerly all motivations, conflict solutions and defenses
were seen as not only arising from, but also as functionally still directed by primitive id
strivings. 57
This concept of the relative autonomy advanced by the ego-psychologists, while
conceding derivations from the id, proposes that the ego can develop an autonomy,
relatively independent of instinctual demands.
The ego is therefore not simply a mediator between id and environment and the slave of
both, according to Gill and Brenman, it is a structure with energies at its disposal and as
such it has autonomy from -- that is to say, can pit forces against -- the id on the one hand
and the environment on the other. 58
Before the expansion of ego psychology, they continue, the implicit assumption in
psychoanalytic theory-building was that all human development is a direct outgrowth of
instinctual drives. 59
Gill and Brenman use data gathered in their studies on hypnosis in the service of
defending the central tenets of the school of ego psychology. It was in 1939 the year of
Freuds death! that Hartmanns discussions on the autonomy of the ego, confirmed and
ratified the findings uncovered by the field of hypnosis.
Ernst Kris theories regarding regression in the service of the ego, seemed to
substantiate the view that hypnosis itself, was such a regression, and that, the central
structural feature of such a regression is a subsystem of the ego. 60
Citing David Rapaports expansions of the concept of the egos autonomy from the id, and
from the environment, the authors, propose a theory of hypnosis which leans heavily on
the thesis of the diminution of the two relative autonomies. 61.
A distinction is introduced, between the two stages of hypnosis: induction is the process
of bringing about a regression, while the hypnotic state is the established regression. 62
Hartmanns concepts of automatization and deautomatization, are critical to an
understanding of the distinction which exists between hynotic induction and that of the
established hypnotic state. 63
Hypnosis, the authors maintain, is an induced regression, which, as it removes external
information from the subject, reveals ideational representations of formerly repressed
instinctual imperatives. These provide evidence of archaic ego states and deperson-
alization phenomena [that] appear as previously repressed material now released. This
spontaneous release, is indicative of weakening of autonomy of ego from id, as the
synthetic function of id is attenuated. 64
Fragmentation of the ego synthesis during hypnotic procedures indicates, moreover, the
weakening of Eros, this subsequent to the dissolution of the progressive, libidinal impulse
directed toward phenomenal unities, which follows the de-automatization of the integrative
functions.

Concommitant to the achievement of relative autonomy by the ego, from both internal
 12

and external sources, the process of automatization functions to facilitate this process,
by using, as Hartmann writes: somatic apparatuses to execute action. In well established
achievements they function automatically: the integration of the somatic systems involved
in the action is automatized and so is the integration of the somatic systems involved in
it."65
The stability of mental functioning and an accomodation to the overall environment, this
augmented by the reduction of overall cathectic expenditure due to automatization, are
features prominent as therapeutic goals among ego psychologists.
Doctors Gill and Brenman illustrate one of the functions of de-automatization as being,
in fact, an actual increase in expenditures of energy previously available for other uses
In other words, the energy which, as Hartmann has pointed out, is saved by automa-
tization is now once again required as a result of the de-automatization. When attention
is absorbed in this way, it is no longer available for sensory or motor exploration of the outside
world."
Withdrawal of cathexes and projections from the external world invites comparisons,
once again, with the interiorization process known as enstasis or introversion. This
movement is decremental, a disaggregation of routine unconscious mental formations,
defined in Buddhism as skandhas or aggregates, which circumscribe psychic activity.
A regressive state is defined by Gill and Brenman asone in which the balance of forces
shifts so that freer and more primitive impulses come to expression, while the control
system likewise becomes more primitive and relatively less stringent and determining of the
course of psychic life vis--vis the impulses. Regression is not only a matter of previously
hidden content coming to the fore, but also an altering in the mode of functioning of the
psychic apparatus, what we are calling here an altered state. 67
While Psychoanalysis as a whole, indeed Western thought in general, perceive
regression inclinations to be maladaptive pathologies, the de-autonomizing function,
signals movement toward the primary process. In regression proper, cathexes are
withdrawn from higher functions, some of these even being dissolved, requiring increased
effectiveness by the remainder.
De-automatization, we see, redirects projected attentions enstatically and regressively:
As energies are lost due to de-automatization, the integrative functions effected by Eros,
acting through the synthetic, libidinal tendencies of the ego, are diminished, and the
binding capacities of the ego will suffer, the result will be a more primitive variety of
synthetic function," Gill and Brenman write, "and thus the way has been paved for the re-
establishment of a more regressed state of the psyche." 68

Portrayed as the negation of routinization, de-automatization is seen to be a regressive re-

instinctualization, and a withdrawal of defensive, apotropaic projections. Those mental
formations, which in Buddhism are referred to as samskrita, bear resemblance to the
Freuds secondary process, and are constructed, as the conditioning, automatized, factors of
consciousness, -- are also further minimized.

_______________
 13

Mind, according to Padmasiri de Silva, is from the Buddhist perspective, continuously

subjected to pressure by the threefold desires, viz. sense-gratification, (kma tanh), self-
preservation (bhava tanh) and self-annihilation (vibhava tanh). One cannot fail, he adds,
to observe the parallel between the threefold desire of Buddhism and the Freudian
conceptions of eros, libido and thanatos 69
As with Oriental discourses, the Freudian primum bonum, is achieved through the
attenuation of cathectic disturbance. What he had referred to in the Project as neuronal
inertia, is both a recapitulation of the prime instinctual goal, while bearing similarity, as
well, to the mystics appeal for quiescence.
Nature seeks a state of balance, Philip Rieff comments, and Freuds is a theory of the
equilibrium toward which the emotional life tends after every disturbance, adding that:
when the inner life is not easily disturbed it has achieved what is to Freud as nearly ideal a
condition as he can imagine. Rieff concludes with the proposition that, there is something
Oriental in the Freudian ethic. 70

Bearing in mind Rieffs contention De Silva argues that comparisons are worth pursuing
in the present context. Tanh (Sanskrit: trishna,) is defined, as the desire which arises
through the contact between a sense organ and its corresponding object. Kma as a
specific form of tanh generally refers to any form of craving, including the desire toward
sensual objects. In Buddhism it is seen as one of the primary impediments to spiritual
enlightenment 71
De Silva compares kma tanh, to Eros which determines the maintenance and the
propagation of the organism by way of object-choices which, via the brief satisfactions,
(Pali: tatratatra-abhinandini) sought by the pleasure principle, simulate the the ultimate
gratification of objectless desire and quiescence. 72
Desire, of whichever register, is the origin (samudaya) of suffering or dukkha. It represents
turmoil and disturbance, intending to distract via sensual defilements or kilesa, from the
quiescent glories of emancipation, and cathectic suspension.

The Buddhist adept or arhat, is, for the most part, however, free from the dominance of
the pleasure principle, De Silva notes, taking no pleasure in sensual release. Freed from
those anxieties which augur ego-extinction, indeed even ego-compression, the arhat need
not pursue attachment -- Sanskrit: upadana -- to the compensatory, ego-syntonic,
projections constructed by Eros. The pleasure involving renunciation is the more
venerated by the sage. 73 De Silva, op.cit, p96
Although somewhat redundant, De Silvas identification of bhava tanh -- the second
form of craving in Buddhism -- with Freuds libido, offers up viable differences between
the two concepts. The impulse here is toward self-preservation, the continuance,
propagation and the unification of life, similar to Freuds Eros, which, he, late in life, chose
to refer to exclusively as libido. 74
Bhava tanh, like libido is directed toward the maintenance and perpetuation of life, more
 14

specifically the preservation of the ego-construct, which is, in Buddhism, however,

considered to be empty, devoid of ontological substantiation.
While both approaches admit the dominance of the pleasure principle, the Buddhist,
having achieved abstinence and the renunciation of tanh, is no longer controlled by desire.
The sage, De silva believes, has renounced both attachment for pleasure and repulsion to
pain. 75
Psychoanalysis, accepts desire and the pleasure principle as constants which can be
gerrymandered, inhibited, even repressed, but never conquered as is the case in Buddhism.
The pleasure principle seeks to diminish, by whatever means, the painful disturbances
activated by the dominant, all but tyrannical urgency of the ids restitutional directive.
Here lie the origins, according to Freud, of the self-preservational, projective maneuvers
which he describes as relieving and redirecting the excess, unpleasurable internal stimuli,
via strategic externalization. 76
Unlike the Buddha, De Silva writes, Freud had no radical therapy for human suffering
and his Civilization and Its Discontents suggest[s] that all this suffering has to be accepted
with resignation. 77
In fact, De Silva writes, Freud emphasized the repressed desires and the restrictions
imposed by culture and merely advocated the clearing away of social obstacles. He
accepted the life of sense gratification and merely tried to reduce the neurotic ways of
obtaining pleasure. Desire for Freud here is quit as much through gratification as through
extinction. 78

Whereas the optimal therapeutic goal is, in Freud, normative and adaptational, offering
no real hope of a transformational event or series of events, Buddhism, assumes, that
mental illness is continual until the final stage of sainthood is attained. 79
An absolute standard of mental health is hereby established for the arhat, this requesting
justification by trans-phenomenal standards, at a remove from cultural norms. The
preumption here is that preliminary to sainthood, all life, all samsaric, phenomenal life, as
it is defined by desire and suffering, is to be classified as pathological.

German Psychologist, Erich Fromm has written that, the essential teachings of all the
great religions,, could be summarized in one sentence It is the goal of man to overcome
his narcissism. 80 This summary conforms to the fundamental Buddhist proposition
which holds that in order to overcome the pervasive, ontological suffering which abides in
existence itself, the illusions which attend the narcissistic ego must first be eradicated.
In the Mlamadhyamakakrik, Buddhisms great philosopher, Nagarjuna writes that
"Auspicious is the pacification of phenomenal metastasis, the pacification of all
apprehending." 81 Metastasis, here a translation from the Greek, signifies displacement, or
transfer, an externalzation upon the object world as the sphere of sensory apprehension.

Auspicious pacification is achieved as those manifold objects upon which the ego-dystonic,
restitutional impulse has been projected, are dissolved, subtracted, and voided.
 15

"Pacification of phenomenal metastasis", invokes an enstatic recollection and the

withdrawal or decathexis of 'object-libido' from the external, phenomenal world of
projected 'object-relations' (Snskrit: vishaya) -- these actualized by the threatened ego's
response to the restorational impulse. It differs from classic narcissism insofar as the latter
is ego-syntonic, while in the former, "detachment" from the protective externalizations of
the instinct, turned now toward a regressus ad integrum, is decidedly dystonic.

Enstatic pacification augurs the dissolution of the empirical ego Sanskrit: ahamkara--
similar in some, non-pathological respects, to Andr Green's concept of negative narcissism
which represents a "return to nothing." Enstasis is not a maladaptive regression, rather a
decathexis, a disobjectalizing function differing from 'ego-libido' (which stipulates ego as
the object-choice) by being objectless, seeking minimalization of the empirical ego and
detachment of the mind from the field of the senses (nirvishaya,) aspiring instead to reduce
desire to the level zero.
"We are justified in postulating the existence of a negative narcissism, Green advises,
the dark double of the unitary Eros of positive narcissism; all object or ego-cathexis
containing within it its inverted double which aims at slipping back regressively towards
the point zero." 82
Narcissism, in Psychoanalysis, differs from the enstatic withdrawal of object-libido, as the
latter does not service the ego, but intends its provisional absorption and diminution. Ego
here is an impediment. Narcissism simulates the introjective movement, but displaces the
goal onto ego. Enstasis is not an ego-oriented internalization as is narcissistic 'introversion.'
Rather enstatic withdrawal involves ego-renunciation and self-abnegation. The Buddhist
approach writes Mark Epstein, seeks not a return to primary narcissism but liberation
from the vestiges of that narcissism. 83

With these comes decathectic release from the apotropaic consolations of attachment as
object-libido." [B]y compulsively seizing on our own objectifications in order to stabilize
ourselves," writes David Loy, we simply reinforce the delusive sense of separation. 84

Enstasis reverses or introverts phenomenal, metastatic externalization and the

superimpositions projected by the threatened Ego's defensive, surrogate responses.
The death instinct is depotentiated by being externalized and canalized, a defensive
procedure that The Lankavatara Sutra refers to as "evil outflowings" -- Sanskrit
vishayasakta -- literally, the force of the world of the senses. Vishayasakta is defined as that
mysterious power that turns our thoughts outward impelling us exoterically toward objects
of sense-perception, even when we wish to turn inward... ie, to disobjectalise.
Vishaya is a defense mechanism. Quiescence, nevertheless need not, as we have seen, be
the equivalent of extinction, however. A rough, asymptotic approximation to Freud's
neuronal inertia can be achieved -- not only through simple gratification -- but also through
the annihilation of desire or tanh.
"The goal of tranquillisation" advises The Lankavatara Sutra is not to be achieved "by
entirely suppressing the activities of the mind system. This is a mistake. What they [the
'unenlightened'] think is extinction of mind, is really the non-functioning of the mind's
 16

external world to which they are no longer attached. That is, the goal of tranquillisation is
to be reached not by suppressing all mind activity but by getting rid of discriminations
[dualities] and attachments." 85

A uroboric, turning back (Sanskrit: paravritti) as the return of the manifest to its source,
requires an enstatic withdrawal and introversion. Not, however, to the empirical,
narcissistic ego, however, rather to a point where the particularized ego, [ahamkra] is now
''dephenomenalized" and purified of the need for samsaric displacements.

"When the self is not engaged in apprehending objects," notes W.R. Stace,"it becomes
aware of itself. When stripped of all the psychological contents of objects," the withdrawn
self, is not, he adds, "another thing, or substance, distinct from its contents. It is the bare
unity of the manifold of consciousness from which the manifold itself has been obliterated.
This seems analogous to saying," Stace concludes," that if from a whole or unity of many
parts we could subtract all the parts, the empty whole or unity would be left." 86

The detached consciousness of the Buddhist sage is neither narcissistic nor sublimated.
Rather it is decathected ego, of object-less orientation. The apotropaic projections, these
being, in fact, terror-management mechanisms produced by the ego to sublimate or project
-- ie to ward off the dystonic urgencies of the restorational imperative. -- are withdrawn.

Citing William James, Stace refers to the introvertive experiences of one J.A. Symonds,
where, "In proportion as these conditions of ordinary consciousness were subtracted, the
sense of an underlying or essential consciousness acquired intensity." Leaving nothing, he
maintained but a sense of the "void," which persists "after the disappearance of the
multiplicity of empirical contents." 87

Introvertive experience is described by Stace as being "completely negative, a mere

absence... a consciousness which is not conscious of any particular existence." 86 ibid, p93
The purgative Self which remains, is freed from the delusions of reification. The experience
is one of dis-ontological termination-of-multiplicity, of number and of increment -- all of
which impede the re-unification and stability of the migrant soul. " If we never
let our mind attach to anything, we shall gain emancipation." writes the sixth patriarch,
Hui-neng. 88

Endogenous disturbance produces anxiety, causing the mind to strive to become

conscious of the existence of an external world using this projection to displace dystonic
stimuli, and revealing, as noted above, "a tendency to treat them as though they were acting,
not from the inside, but from the outside..." 89

Disturbance is exported via projection, and rendered manageable. The instinctual clamor
of the primal restitutional instinct is fused with Eros and externalized. Max Schur's
paradoxical assessment of life as a process of "homeostatic disequilibrium," suggests the
libidinal disquiet of life-perpetuating Eros. Like Benjamin's "Angel" violently thrust from
Eden, yet exhibiting a retrograde aspect we careen along, with backs turned toward
paradise, seemingly conscripted into a forced march, away from the pristinum statum of
 17

original nature. 90

Narcissism for the Buddhist is, De Silva notes, roughly comparable to the Sanskrit, mna,
which refers to -- along with the illusions regarding actual body-ownership -- a false sense
of pride or self-conceit. Withdrawal, or decathexis, to reiterate, is in Buddhism, an enstatic
movement whereby the ego-construct (ahamkara) as the source of all anxiety and repres-
sion is revealed to be inessential.

Nevertheless There are some recluses and brahmans who represent me untruly, vainly,
falsely, not in accordance with fact, saying: the recluse Gotama is a nihilist (venavika,) he
lays down the cutting off, the destruction, the disappearance, (vibhava,) of the existing
entity. But as this monk is just what I am not, these worthy recluses and brahmans
misrepresent me untruly. Formerly I monks, as well as now, lay down simply anguish and
the stopping of anguish. 91
De Silva maintains that the Buddha, does in fact, reject the view that nirvana is solely
annihilationist, contrasting this with the desire for death, or vibhava tanh, noting as we
have that, even Freud has confused the Nirvana principle with the wish for death
(Todeswunsch.) 92
The primary fallacy for the Buddhist here, being the persistent, figmental reification of
the ego-construct ie., the adherence to the delusion that there is an entity to be
extinguished. Rather as Nirvana sopadhisesa, the abolition of the kilesas, the defilements
which are impediments to emancipation, is sought.
The arhat achieves liberation through the extinction of these kilesas In this sense De Silva
states, the Buddha is an annihilationist, requesting not physical eradication but rather the
elimination of moral fault and delusion, or moha.

De Silva, however, contests the view that the Nirvana principle is homeostatic, ie, seeking
quiescent equilibrium -- this described by Freud as neuronal inertia -- nevertheless, arguing
that the objective is not an ultimate ideal of restbut of spiritual growth, for the
Buddhist adept.
Again we would argue against the proposition that quiescence in Buddhism is not, in
fact, an index of spiritual growth, inasmuch as it reflects a cessative epistemological
positioning, achieved by the sheer absence of what the West considers growth, or
progress, or evolution.
Emancipation, for the Buddhist is decremental and subtractive, pursuing emptiness or
sunya. Rather than the annihilation of instinct, the nirvanic imperative legitimates the
restorational quest for samatha, or tranquility and non-attachment to the inessential,
world-of-the-10,000-things.

Release, from the constraints of tanh for the Buddhist, follows cessation or
nirodhasamapatti. Paul Griffiths maintains that this is, at once, both enstatic, requiring
withdrawal from the outside world, and yet anagogic to the degree that "an ascending
series of altered states of consciousness," is required, "through which the practitioner
 18

passes on the way to the attainment of cessation." 93

Cessation nirodha -- is ego-death, or more precisely, ego-attenuation, the
demobilization of Eros, and the West's psychology of redemptive 'becoming,' (Sanskrit,
bhava) -- seeking instead the stillness, the undifferentiated tranquility (samatha) of the
unmoving.
"Freud postulated in his final theoretical formulations the existence of the death instinct
as a decisive force in the psyche." Stanislav Grof writes, "His biological emphasis
prevented him from seeing the possibility of psychological transcendence of death, and he
created a gloomy and pessimistic image of human existence." 94
Thanatos or the death instinct when elevated (anagoge) above the bio-physical confines
which Freud constructed, becomes in fact the nirvanic deconstruction, and the recission
(apavada) of earthly delusions (maya) and reifications (adhyaropa.)
Citing Guy Welbon's distinction between a "soteriological" and "metaphysical"
explanations of Nirvana, William Parson's notes that, "The former holds that nirvana, as a
thing-in-itself is simply beyond the ability of the mind or language to grasp. As such endless
speculation on what metaphysical reality one is delivered into is set aside in favor of a
practical therapeutic system whose aim is deliverance out of suffering." 95
"Freud's comments, [on Nirvana] gravitate toward the pragmatic and therapeutic as
well," Parsons adds, "albeit psychoanalytically rendered." 96
Soteriological, non-annihilationist, Nirvana sopadhisesa dereifies and disobjectalises,
while withdrawing cathectic projections, depriving these of ego-syntonic consolations. It
represents a state of detachment wherein the substitutional intermediaries or upadhis,
(again, literally 'additions') of object-libido are purged as hindrances to liberation. These
are replaced by a single, objectless desire, this for release from the illusion of the self and
the cessation rather than the gratification of craving (trishna).
The status of the arhat who achieves Nirvana, asymptotically, without termination, is seen
to be ethical and psychological, rather than ontological. Like the Taoist sage, he aspires not
for expiration but for stillness and the elimination of those cravings which fetter and
trouble humankind.
This movement again being cessative, requiring the quiescence of those disturbances
which foster desire. The Nirvana principle sopadhisesa, or with-remnant, seeks release
from the superimpositions, or adhyaropa, of the upadhis, these the determinations and
individuations of the manifest world -- as opposed to their complete elimination, as is the
case with Freuds terminal, death instinct.
Rather than the catastrophic termination of life, and the return to the inorganic
suggested by the literal reading of the Freudian death instinct -- nirvana sopadhisesa
concludes with the epistrophic, (Sanskrit, paravritti), turning-back, a withdrawal or abhava,
from the phenomenal, "ocean of becoming." (bhavasagara)
Release here is radically inconsistent with the absolute extermination and decease
 19

signified by the "death instinct." Instead it embodies what Forman refers to as the
attainment of cessation, the withdrawal and emancipation from the thrall of manifest
existence. 97
The ignorance and delusions, of samsara, or the phenomenal world-- these the sources of
personal suffering-- result here from the misapprehension of projected, phenomenal desires
as being ultimate in nature, rather than simulations, in fact, of the primal nirvanic hunger
for rest.
Hereby, the restorational, nirvanic imperative which seeks the absolute remission of
anxiety and suffering, is instead shifted and projected outward, toward the tactile and
substitutional quiescence provided by the material environment.

Hungarian psychoanalyst and anthropologist, Geza Roheim has observed that inasmuch
as all anxiety is, according to Freud, separation anxiety and thus to be identified with the
loss of object, "libidinal cathexis [is] the defense used by human beings to bear the
deprivation of object loss or separation." 98
The Nirvana principle sopadhisesa reflects the need to decathect and dissolve the
consolational superimpositions which obscure and divert the longing for samatha or
quiescence. This non-funereal interpretation represents cessation and restoration -- the
disaggregation of those simulant objects recruited by the libidinal cathexes to divert and
console from the terrors of the void.
"The path to Nirvana is a gradual development of virtue, meditative concentration and
insight into the emptiness of 'other-dependent' phenomena," Peter Harvey writes. This
"spiritual transition [...] is known as the 'reversal of the basis' (asraya paravrtti,)" he adds,
where the delusory nature of the phenomena are removed. "Nirvana, then," he notes, "is
the transfiguration of samsara, not its abolition." 99
In sum, what we might refer to as non-catastrophic Nirvana is a proleptic, asymptotic,
approximation, steps removed, in point of fact, from the consummate extinction of
parinirvana, and, moreover, from the exclusively literal, naturalistic interpretation
afforded it by Freud's assessment of the universal longing for restitutio in pristinum statum.

"Symbolic, iniatory death," Eliade reminds us, "is always a death to something which has
to be surpassed, not a death in the modern de-sanctified sense of the term. One dies to be
transformed and attain to a higher level of existence." 100
 20

Endnotes:
1
Lafcadio Hearn, Gleanings In Buddha Fields, (Kindle Edition) , (1897), 211-213
2
Sigmund Freud, An Outline of Psychoanalysis, New York, W.W. Norton & Co. Inc., (1949), 109
3
Sigmund Freud, Beyond The Pleasure Principle, The Hogarth Press, London (1961), 3
4
ibid, 11
5
Sigmund Freud, Beyond The Pleasure Principle, Bantam Books, New York, (1959), 6
6
Sigmund Freud, Analysis Terminable and Interminable, In Philip Rieff (Ed.), Sigmund Freud,
Therapy and Technique, Collier Books, (1963), 263
7
ibid, 264
8
Freud, 1961, 31
9
Freud, 1959, 7
10
Henry Fingarette, The Self in Transformation, Harper Torchbooks, New York, (1963), 325
11
Sigmund Freud, Project for a Scientific Psychology, In James Strachey, (Gen. Ed.),
The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud,
Vintage/Hogarth Press, London, (1966), Vol. I, 281-397
12
ibid, 296
13
Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, Basic Books, New York, (1957),
Vol. III, 270
14
Frank Sulloway, Freud, Biologist of the Mind, Basic Books, New York, (1979), 407
15
Todd Dufresne, Tales From the Freudian Crypt, Stanford University Press, Stanford, (2000), 51
16
Freud, 1961, 30
17
ibid, 32
18
ibid, 32
19
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, (Trans.), E.F.J. Payne, Dover
Publications, New York, (1969), Vol.I, 398
20
Sudhir Kakar, The Analyst and the Mystic, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, (1991), 30
21
R.C. Zaehner , Mysticism, Sacred and Profane, Oxford University Press, New York,
(1967), x
22
William B. Parsons, The Enigma of the Oceanic Feeling, Oxford University Press, New York,
 21

23
Sigmund Freud, The Economic Problem of Masochism, In Philip Rieff (Ed.), Sigmund Freud,
General Psychological Theory, Papers on Metapsychology, Collier Books, New York, (1963), 191
24
Carl B. Becker, Breaking The Circle : Death and the Afterlife in Buddhism, Southern University
Press, Carbondale, (1993), 25-26
25
ibid, 26; The Abhidharma movement in the Buddhist history of ideas sought to systematize the
teachings of the earlier sutras, (collections of the discourses and the teachings of the Buddha), into,
according to Peter Harvey, more psycho-philosophically exact language which expressed
ultimate teachings. Peter Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhism, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, (1990), 83
26
ibid, 26
27
David Loy, Lack and Transcendence, The Problem of Death and Life in Psychotherapy, Humanity
Books, Amherst, NY, (1996), 69
28
Becker, (1993), 26
29
Becker, (1993), 26
30
Meister Eckhart, The Feast of Martyrs, In Franz Pfeiffer, (Ed.), Meister Eckhart, Vol.
I, (Trans.), C. DE B. Evans, John M. Watkins, London, (1956), 205
31
Becker, (1993), 29
32
Becker, (1993), 29-30
33
W.T. Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc., Los Angeles, (1960), 314
34
Becker, (1993), 32

Reflections on Buddhism and Psychoanalysis, Adam Phillips, in: The Couch and the Tree
35

Dialogues in Psychoanalysis and Buddhism, Edited by, Anthony Molino, North Point Press, New
York, 1998, 196
36
Robert J. Moore, Dereification in Zen Buddhism, Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 36, No. 4,
(Fall 95), 699-724
37
Peter L. Berger, Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality, Open Road Integrated
Media, (2011), 88
38
Moore, (1995), 703
39
Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy, Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion, Anchor Books,
Garden City, New York, (1967), passim
40
Moore, (1995), 703
 22

41
Schopenhauer, (1969), Vol. I, 363
42
Schopenhauer, (1969), Vol. I, 196
43
Psychoanalytic Thought and Eastern Wisdom, Harold Kelman, in: The Couch and the Tree
Dialogues in Psychoanalysis and Buddhism, Edited by, Anthony Molino, North Point Press, New
York, 1998, 72
44
Upadhi: Sanskrit for an addition or a limiting attribute. Upadhis are defined as all names and
forms of ignorance consequent to identification with the body, Stephan Schuhmacher, Gert
Woerner, (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion, Shambala, Boston, (1994),
392. mind, senses, and ego. "Upadhi refers to everything that is superimposed on and conceals."
45
Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis, W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., New York,
(1972), pp 35 & 59
46
Sigmund Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Translated and Edited by James
Strachey, Basic Books, New York, 2000, p88

47
Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, Vintage Books, New York, (1955), 27
48
Norman O. Brown, Loves Body, Vintage Books, New York, (1966), 54
49
Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis, Translated and Edited by Peter
Gay, W.W. Norton & Co., N.Y., 1989, p100
50
Mark Epstein, Beyond the Oceanic Feeling, Psychoanalytic Study of Buddhist Meditation, In
Anthony Molina (Ed.), The Couch and the Tree, Dialogues in Psychoanalysis and Buddhism, North
Point Press, (1998), 127
51
Wu-Wei, No Mind and he Fertile Void in Psychotherapy, W. Van Dusen, In, Anthony Molina
(Ed.), The Couch and the Tree, Dialogues in Psychoanalysis and Buddhism, North Point Press,
(1998), 127
52
Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika, 26.7, (Analysis of the Twelve Links of Becoming)
translation, Stephen Batchelor, http://www.myspace.com/shivatao/blog/283271465

53
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Loy, (1996), 89

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Deautomatization and the Mystic Experience, Arthur J. Deikman,
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ibid., p.10
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Merton Gil, M.D. and Margaret Brenman, Ph.D., Hypnosis and Related States, Psychoanalytic
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ibid., pxxii
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ibid., pxxii
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ibid., p105
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ibid., p xxiii
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ibid., p189
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ibid., p187 Emphasis added
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Buddhism and Freudian Psychology, Lake House Printers and Publishers Ltd. Sri Lanka, 1973, p8

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Philip Rieff, Freud: The Mind of the Moralist, Doubleday Anchor Books, New York, 1961, p. 376
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Sigmund Freud, An Outline of Psychoanalysis, New York, W.W. Norton & Co. Inc., (1949), p.22

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De Silva, op.cit, 1973, p96
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De Silva, op. cit, 1973, p.110
 24

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De Silva, op. cit, 1973, p.118-19
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Mlamadhyamakakrik, 25:22-24, http://www.buddhism-
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Parsons, (1999), 193, n 35

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98
Geza Roheim, The Eternal Ones of the Dream, International Universities Press, (1945), 16

99
Harvey, (1990), 112
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Mircea Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, Harper Torchbooks, New York, (1960), 217-18
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