The Search for Happiness
Through Buddhism & Psychotherapy

by Ron Leifer, M.D.

Continued from page 1

Making the Unconscious Conscious

Freud, too, explicitly described the aim of psychoanalysis as making the unconscious conscious. In the psychoanalytic view, neurotic sufferings are caused by the denial and repression of painful experiences. Relief from suffering comes from bringing the repressed experiences into awareness and working through the painful emotions. Thus, in both Freudian and Jungian therapy as well as in Buddhist practice, the expansion of consciousness requires an inner transformation -- a realignment of character with the facts of life which leads to a corresponding softening of neurotic tendencies.

In the Buddhist view, avidya is not only the denial of facts about oneself and the world, it is also a projection onto the world of something not originally there. This state of ignorance is also called "illusion" or "delusion." From the Buddhist point of view, illusion consists of the projection of permanence and/or substantial existence onto phenomena. We can see that rainbows and clouds are ethereal, but we project the quality of enduring permanence and substantiality onto solid objects and onto ourselves. The highest wisdom in Buddhism, the wisdom which realizes emptiness, sees through these projections and understands that all phenomena, including self, are impermanent and insubstantial.

Ernest Becker (1925-1974), my dear old friend and colleague who won the Pulitzer Prize in non-fiction in 1974 (two months after he died) for The Denial of Death, reinterpreted some of Freud's central ideas in a way that brings them into harmony with Buddhist views on ignorance and emptiness. Becker proposed that both character and neurosis are shaped by ignorance, specifically, the denial of death."

The Oedipus Complex

In his early work, Becker reinterpreted the Oedipus Complex as a stage of psychological development rather than as a neurotic complex. The classical psychoanalytic myth of the Oedipus Complex is a caricature of lust and aggression in the form of a boy-child who loves and wants to have sex with his mother and who hates and wants to kill his father. Becker reinterpreted this caricature as a period of transition, the Oedipal Transition, which represents a crucial period of development of the human personality. In this transitional stage, the child's attachment to the mother and fear of the father represent the resistance to growing up -- the resistance to losing the narcissistic, self indulgent, paradise of childhood. During the Oedipal Transition sexual and aggressive drives are controlled and repressed. The child grows beyond a physical dependence on and attachment to the mother into a relatively independent adult who relates to his or her parents and others through a more mature, distanced, social relationship mediated by language and symbols.

The Oedipal Transition, which is the process of human socialization, signifies the evolution of the human individual beyond the purely animal. This process involves a denial of the body as the ground of self and its replacement by the social self. Since the body dies, the denial of the body implies a denial of death. During the Oedipal Transition, primitive, animal, and childish desires are repressed and sublimated. Many desires which demand instant gratification are denied, delayed, and projected into the future through the creation of an "Oedipal Project." The Oedipal Project is a project for the creation of self in a world of social time and meanings. It involves not only the development of the capacity to think and act in a world of conventional symbols, but also the contrivance of a system of desires, goals, and ambitions which embody the hope for future happiness. In this project of self-creation, the child's present-centered search for pleasure is transformed into a search for future happiness -- the Happiness Project.

The pursuit of happiness, thus, is a universal means for the construction and maintenance of self. Self is constructed through the denial of the body and the development of a social self-consciousness predicated on language. This state of mind, which Buddhists call "dualistic mind," conceives of itself as a social-historical entity whose existence and well being are dependent upon the achievement of future happiness. When the happiness project fails, the individual experiences a negation of self which often leads to frustration, aggression, depression, and even to suicide -- the murder of the negated self. The title of this book, "The Happiness Project," reflects the fact that the pursuit of happiness is, at the same time, the project for the construction and maintenance of self. Tragically, it is also the major source of the unhappiness and suffering we inflict on ourselves and others.

In the Buddhist view, the primary cause of suffering is attachment to self, an inborn state of ignorance which develops into ego. However, fully developed ignorance, as we have already indicated, is not merely the infantile lack of awareness of the nature of self and phenomena. It is also the projection onto existence of something which is not there. Ignorance is ego mistaking itself as real by falsely attributing substantial existence to itself. The capacity for this attribution is dependent upon language and develops during the Oedipal Transition. Language makes possible the creation of the illusion of an inner soul or a person which is then projected on to others and on to existence.

This does not mean that self does not exist. From the Middle Way Buddhist view, called Madhyamika, it is false to say either that self exists or that it does not exist. Self exists but only as a self-created fiction, a self deception. It is, indeed, a necessary deception. Becker called it a "vital lie." It is vital because interpersonal relationships and social life depend upon it. We need an ego to relate to each other, to make a living and pay our bills. It is a lie because it denies the facts of existence and attributes false substantiality to itself. This clinging to the illusion of self is, in the Buddhist view, the source of suffering we cause ourselves and others.

In a Buddhist practice known as "analytic meditation," self is unmasked to itself. The guru asks the practitioner to look within for this self. Where is it? In the body? In the head or the heart? In the mind? What part of the mind? What color is self? The reader can try this exercise. No self can be found. This self which cannot find itself anxiously fears its insubstantiality and the loss of itself to itself. Through the psychological mechanism of reaction formation, self denies its insubstantiality by asserting itself, by striving, through its various Happiness Projects, to protect, preserve, and expand itself -- here and now on earth and forever after in heaven, or through serial reincarnations. This self-created, self-deluded, self-asserting self mistakenly believes that happiness is to be found by pursuing its desires and avoiding its aversions. Buddhists know these three factors, ignorance (the creation of a substantial self), desire, and aversion, as "The Three Poisons." Taken together, they are regarded as the complex of causes of the suffering we humans inflict on ourselves and others. Desire and aversion are also known as passion and aggression, attachment and anger, and other synonymous antithetical pairs. For simplicity's sake, we shall use desire and aversion as the most general representation of these dichotomous pairs. It is important to recognize, however, that not all desires and aversions are evil. Those that cause suffering to oneself or others are regarded as vices, while those that cause happiness to oneself and others are regarded as virtues.

This should not be unfamiliar to Westerners. The antithetical pair of desire and aversion are the twin foundations of modern behavioral psychology. The basic principle of behavioral psychology is that organisms are polarized around pain and pleasure. The desire for pleasure and the aversion to pain are regarded as the basic bipolarity of mind and the basic motivations of behavior. In this respect, behavioral psychology echoes Buddhism. Add self, or ego, to the pair and one has the nexus of our negativities.

In the Buddhist view, the basic secret of happiness that we hide from ourselves is that the three poisons are the root causes of the pain and suffering we cause ourselves and each other. The three poisons are the basis of our neurosis, our negative emotions, and our unhappiness. The shocking central insight that Buddhism gives us, therefore, the secret of happiness we hide from ourselves, is that our selfish strivings for happiness are, paradoxically, the greatest cause of the suffering and pain we inflict on ourselves and others. From this point of view, the secrets of genuine happiness involve a self-transformation, including a reconfiguration of our idea of happiness itself, based on a deeper awareness of the nature of reality and a sense of values derived from this realization.

The Three Poisons

Over the past twenty years or so, Westerners have become increasingly interested in Buddhism. This is especially true of Western psychotherapists and their patients, many of whom attend Buddhist teachings. I have heard Tibetan lamas speculate that Buddhism may come to America through psychotherapy. If Buddhism is to succeed in the West, it must be compatible with Western science. The reader should be cautioned, therefore, that the interpretation of the Buddhist paradigm presented here is designed to convey the orthodox Buddhist view in a form which is acceptable to scientifically minded Westerners.

One of the problems educated Westerners have with the "wisdom traditions" is that many of us believe and trust in science for our valid knowledge about the world and the technology for manipulating it. We mistrust religion out of which the wisdom traditions have descended. It is necessary, therefore, first to attempt some reconciliation of this breach between religion and science so we can more freely and intelligently use the best of both to help us to see the truths we hide from ourselves.

This article is excerpted from the book The Happiness Project by Ron Leifer, M.D.  ©1997. Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Snow Lion Publications. http://www.snowlionpub.com

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