- All Episodes
- Mark Epstein. The Zen of therapy
Mar 24, 2022
Mark Epstein M.D. (private practice, NYC)
The zen of therapy: Uncovering a hidden kindness in life
“A warm, profound and cleareyed memoir. . . this wise and sympathetic book’s lingering effect is as a reminder that a deeper and more companionable way of life lurks behind our self-serious stories."—Oliver Burkeman, New York Times Book Review
A remarkable exploration of the therapeutic relationship, Dr. Mark Epstein reflects on one year’s worth of therapy sessions with his patients to observe how his training in Western psychotherapy and his equally long investigation into Buddhism, in tandem, led to greater awareness—for his patients, and for himself
For years, Dr. Mark Epstein kept his beliefs as a Buddhist separate from his work as a psychiatrist. Content to use his training in mindfulness as a private resource, he trusted that the Buddhist influence could, and should, remain invisible. But as he became more forthcoming with his patients about his personal spiritual leanings, he was surprised to learn how many were eager to learn more. The divisions between the psychological, emotional, and the spiritual, he soon realized, were not as distinct as one might think.In The Zen of Therapy, Dr. Epstein reflects on a year’s worth of selected sessions with his patients and observes how, in the incidental details of a given hour, his Buddhist background influences the way he works. Meditation and psychotherapy each encourage a willingness to face life's difficulties with courage that can be hard to otherwise muster, and in this cross-section of life in his office, he emphasizes how therapy, an element of Western medicine, can in fact be considered a two-person meditation. Mindfulness, too, much like a good therapist, can “hold” our awareness for us—and allow us to come to our senses and find inner peace.
Throughout this deeply personal inquiry, one which weaves together the wisdom of two worlds, Dr. Epstein illuminates the therapy relationship as spiritual friendship, and reveals how a therapist can help patients cultivate the sense that there is something magical, something wonderful, and something to trust running through our lives, no matter how fraught they have been or might become. For when we realize how readily we have misinterpreted our selves, when we stop clinging to our falsely conceived constructs, when we touch the ground of being, we come home.
TRANSCRIPT
Transcription:
August Baker:
August Baker:
This is August Baker, and today I'm happy to be able to speak
with Dr. Mark Epstein, a psychiatrist and private practice in New
York City. And the author of a number of books about the interface
of Buddhism and psychotherapy.
Seems to be one of the pioneers of using Buddhism in medicine
in the United States. He worked with all the usual suspects that
you learn about as an American looking into this issue; Herbert
Benson, Ron Doss, Robert Thurman, Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield,
Sharon Salzberg, not to mention the current Dalai Lama, who Dr.
Epstein met very early on, and who actually also wrote the
introduction to Mark's first book.
Today, I'm pleased to talk to Dr. Epstein about his newest
book, The Zen of Therapy: Uncovering a Hidden Kindness. Welcome,
Mark.
Dr. Epstein:
Thank you so much.
August Baker:
I will say to our listeners that I actually listened to this
book. If you're listening to this podcast, you used to listening,
and I listened to this book.
Dr. Epstein:
You listened to the book?
August Baker:
I did.
Dr. Epstein:
You heard me reading it?
August Baker:
Yes. It was it a very good way of doing it. In fact, I
listened to it twice. And it's a very enjoyable read.
As you point out, it is always interesting, there are a lot of
case examples, you're talking about actual patients and what's
going on, and those are always interesting, as you point out. But
it works well in the car.
Dr. Epstein:
That's good.
August Baker:
So to give you an open-ended prompt to start, it seems like
for this book you decided to take a look at your own process and
see how Buddhism has... You developed a style, and now you want to
step back and say, "How did Buddhism affect my style?"
Dr. Epstein:
Yeah. Well, I developed a style as a therapist. I also
developed a style as a writer. So if I can talk for a little bit, I
can sort of flesh that out, what you're bringing up right from the
beginning.
When I first started writing, I didn't really think of myself
as a writer. I knew I was a therapist, but then, I felt sort of
compelled to be a translator in a certain way, of Buddhist
psychological thought into western psychodynamic, psychoanalytic
language, which is the language of the mind, that we speak in this
country.
So I set about at the beginning, trying to make sense of the
concepts like ego and egolessness and emptiness, and what do we
mean by that on the Buddhist side, what do we mean by that on the
psychotherapy side. But when I continued writing, I found that what
enlivened the writing was if I could talk from a personal place
about my own experience.
And the first book I wrote, you mentioned it already, the one
the Dalai Lama wrote the introduction for, was called Thoughts
Without a Thinker. And the third part of Thoughts Without a
Thinker, I started writing a little bit from a personal
perspective, more around being a meditator than being a therapist.
But I thought to myself that if this meditation thing really has
affected me in any way, I should be able to describe it in some
kind of personal terms. So I sort of set that as my task, and I
think it helped the books. It made them more personal and less just
exclusively from the mind and about the concepts. So I kept that up
through a series of books until this last one.
But what I had resisted in my own writing was more writing
from inside the place of the therapist. I wrote about being on
retreats, on Buddhist retreats, and trying to be mindful, and
wishing for a piece of toast on my retreat, and then taking the
first bite of the toast, and then the toast disappeared, and who
ate my toast.I had fun with that kind of writing.
The question that people are always asking me is, "How do you
bring your Buddhist leanings into the actual psychotherapy
practice?" And I always resisted giving a good answer to that
question because I didn't really know how I was doing it. I just
trusted that if it was happening in me, it should be coming through
in some way. But-
August Baker:
Isn't that kind of a Buddhist way of looking at it?
Dr. Epstein:
It might be kind of a Buddhist... At its best, it's a Buddhist
way of looking at it. At its worst, it's a defensive maneuver to
not answer the question. I think I really didn't know. I think I
really was trusting that it must be coming through somehow. But I
had run out of things to write about, but I had one day set aside
for writing, and I didn't quite know what to do with it.
So I decided, "Okay, why don't I look at my own work? Because
mostly what I'm doing is therapy with people." So I decided to pick
out one session a week where something interesting happened. Maybe
I was bringing some Buddhist something or maybe there was just some
kind of clearing or opening. Not exactly a revelation, because I
don't think therapy works that way, but some little movement. And I
forced myself to write down the session, which I don't normally do.
In the aftermath, when the patient left, I would scribble down
notes. And then in my writing day I would try to write it up in a
sort of literary fashion. And I did that for a year. So I had a
stack of these sessions, different patients. The only real through
line was myself.
And then, I showed the stack to my editor, who I trust. And
she said, "Oh, this could be a book. I think there's something
here. But you are the only through line. So I think what you should
do is go through them and write a reflection, or a commentary. Show
us more of yourself from behind the curtain of being the anonymous
therapist.
So then, COVID happened, because I did all this before COVID,
it was the last year of face-to-face therapy, it turned out to be.
So the first year of COVID, I spent going through the sessions and
really working with them and writing about what might have been
going on inside of me during the time and so on. And I enjoyed that
process. It brought out a kind of personal voice that was
challenging, but enjoyable. And so, that's the nucleus of the
book.
August Baker:
Yeah, that's true. It was all great, but you talk about being
personal, the description of being in Maine with your family was
just really moving. And I also thought that the description of your
speech therapist when you were a kid just captured so much and it
was very vulnerable and very well taken.
Dr. Epstein:
I'm glad you listened to the audio book, because I have a
funny story about recording... It wasn't this book, but I wrote a
book called Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart, which was the
second book that I ever wrote. And that book, I did the audio
version of, and it was the first time I ever did the audio version.
The reason I needed a speech therapist when I was young was because
I had a stutter or a stammer, which I managed to learn how to deal
with. And now, no one could know that the tendency is still there.
But when I was shut up into the recording studio, which is like a
telephone booth when you're doing these audio books, I had to begin
with the actual words, obviously, in Going to Pieces Without
Falling Apart.
The trick that my therapist had taught me was that if I felt
myself about to stutter, I could change the word a little bit. So
when someone asked me my name, if I had trouble saying Mark, I
would say, "My name is Mark." And somehow, changing it at the last
minute let the words come out.
So when I was recording this book, the very first words were a
word that I knew I was going to stutter on, but I couldn't change
the first words of the book. So I was sitting... There was this
long silence where I'm in the recording studio.
August Baker:
That's great.
Dr. Epstein:
The voice of the engineer comes through my headphones and he's
like, "Dr. Epstein, is everything all right in there?" And I
thought, "Oh, here I am, the avatar of meditation and relaxation
and stress reduction, and I can't even get the words out my mouth."
So I was sort of frightened to go in and record this book, but it
came out okay, I think.
August Baker:
No, it came out great. It was very nicely done. I tend to want
to talk about the abstract, philosophical stuff, but I wanted to
start... You say early on that you characterize yourself as
spiritual but not religious, and there's a funny description of a
conversation with your mom about that, which is really classic. And
then, I felt that the way that came through for me as I thought
about the book after having read it, was this sort of playfulness.
I'm trying to think of the right word, serendipity and
openness.
A patient brings in experiences with Reiki massage, or body
[inaudible 00:10:03], or energy blocks, or Ayahuasca, and you're
conversant in that and happy to talk about it. And there were two
occasions that I thought were just so interesting. You talked with
patients about their dreams. And one with the patient Zach, and you
used something called the I Ching and-
Dr. Epstein:
The I Ching.
August Baker:
The I Ching. And the other patient, Ricki says, "I don't know,
I'm wishing for a miracle." Could you tell our listeners about
those two cases?
Dr. Epstein:
Sure. I'll start with the second one. Ricki was a woman who
was grieving, and she had lost her soulmate. And she was genuinely
grieving, except I felt like there was some bit of pretense in her
grieving. It just didn't feel completely true to me, like she was
exaggerating the grief. But at the same time, I couldn't really
feel it. So that's an uncomfortable feeling for me as a
therapist.
And I didn't quite know what to do. I wanted to help her, but
I was a little bit put off be. So I'm just in my head and trying to
be with her. And then, suddenly she came out with this, "I'm in so
much pain and I just need a..." Yearning for a miracle. And I was
like, "Oh, a miracle. You want a miracle?" And another patient of
mine who was a follower of a now deceased guru in India, who had
been Ram Das' guru, but people still go back to the ashram where he
had been, she had brought me back some, they call it Prasad, some
food that had been blessed by the guru or by the guru's disciple.
They're like sugary sweets basically, that sit on the altar and are
blessed. And then, they're given back to the devotees, and they
have a bit of the guru, a bit of the God energy in it. And she
brought me back some from India. It's like when people bring you a
little bottle of water from the Ganges or something.
And I have a ceramic vase that... My wife is a sculptor known
for her innovative use of ceramics, but I have a vase that she made
early, early on, when she was probably 20 years old, that has all
these pennies in it, that I stole from her and I keep in my office.
And I put the Prasad that my patient had brought back from India in
that vase. So it's there on a shelf in my office.
So Ricki's like, "Oh, I need a miracle. Why won't someone give
me a miracle?" "So I'll give you a miracle." So I went to the vase
and I took out the Prasad. It was in a little plastic envelope. And
I came back and stood by her side, and I took out these couple of
sugar pills that had been blessed by the guru. And I said, "Here,
hold out your hand." She's like, am I giving her LSD or something,
or an antidepressant. But I said, "No." I explained what I just
explained. And she took it gingerly and put it on her tongue and
swallowed it. And it changed the energy in the room. So there was
this moment of real contact, where I think I just totally surprised
her. So it shook her out of whatever her... It was like her ego was
doing the grief, but something was stopping it from coming from
deeper.
But anyway, we had this moment around the miracle, around the
Prasad. And then the session went on, and it was better. But then
she left. And later that night or the next day, she sent me an
email that I quoted in the book. Basically saying, "Your placebo or
whatever it was, you should give that to all of your patients." And
she misspelled patients as being patient. But anyway, it cleared
something. And it was just made this nice moment between us.
So that's not something I usually do, but the playfulness that
I think you were referring to, part of my job, I always think as a
therapist, is to try to make the session interesting for people, in
a way that possibly does shake them out of a fixed narrative that
they're telling themselves about who they are or what their problem
is or what needs to happen.
So if I can get into that in a way that-
August Baker:
Sticks.
Dr. Epstein:
... breaks that up. Yeah, then I feel like I'm doing my job.
So that was the story with her.
With Zach, he was telling me a dream that was very sexual in
nature, that maybe I won't describe all of the details on the
podcast. But anyway, one part of his dream was the sort of
mechanical sexual situation, as if he was in a porn film or
something. That it wasn't him, it was another couple in the corner
who were having sex, I think the way he thought you were supposed
to have sex, or something.
And then, he was being introduced to a beautiful woman who he
felt like he had to go down on. But he went down on her, but there
was so much pubic hair in the way that he couldn't find her
genitalia. And so, he was frustrated with her, with himself, woke
up from the dream. And so, he was asking for help with the dream. I
had some ideas, but what occurred to me was, "Maybe we should ask
the I Ching about the dream. Have you ever thrown the I Ching?" He
didn't know what the I Ching was, but I Ching is-
August Baker:
He had a little-
Dr. Epstein:
He had a little knowledge. He did Tai Chi. I thought he would
know more what it was than he did.
Anyway, I have an old copy of the I Ching in my office, and I
took it down and I showed him how to throw the... You throw three
pennies six times, and it gives you a hexagram, and the hexagram
gives you an oracle that tells you in kind of coded language the
answer to whatever question you're asking.
So we threw it together, and the oracle, the hexagram that
comes up has a title, and the one that came up was called Biting
Through. So it was exactly what this dream was. It was about biting
through the obstacles that keep you from your true self.
And so, I made a thing with him, that the performative aspect
of sex was getting in the way of the being aspect. The doing versus
the being seemed to be what the I Ching was talking about. And that
maybe he was in search of the female element, as represented by the
female genitalia that he couldn't quite find. And we had a
beautiful session.
August Baker:
The other thing that comes through is your use of poetry. And
also, I don't know if you play music in your sessions, but you talk
a lot about John Cage. And that was one of the cases where John
Cage had used that as a way to put in this, scientists would say
randomness, but serendipity or playfulness into a composition.
Dr. Epstein:
Yes. Well, to take his ego out of it, that was what he would
say. To take his choice out of the composition, so that his music
could become reflective of the ways of nature. The I Ching was
supposed to be a way of connecting to the natural world and the
natural intelligence.
So Cage, I don't know if everyone who is listening to this
knows about John Cage, but Cage was a very important figure, not
just for me, but for the whole history of contemporary art. Friends
of Rauschenberg and Merce Cunningham, and really affected the
course of modern art by challenging the centrality of the ego by
undercutting the artist's ego as the defining factor in the work.
But Cage was a beautiful man, who his own humor and his own
sensitivity managed to sneak through his own process. So I really
respect that about him.
August Baker:
And I was struck by, you mentioned his famous piece of Four
Minutes, and however many seconds.
Dr. Epstein:
Thirty-Three Seconds.
August Baker:
Four Minutes and Thirty-Three Seconds. You could tell our
listeners about that. But I also wanted to ask you, I don't recall
you addressing this exactly in the book, but I wanted to see what
your thoughts were on silence in the psychotherapy session and how
that might relate.
Dr. Epstein:
Oh, it totally relates. Cage's famous piece, it's four minutes
and 33 seconds of silence. But he performed it in an outdoor
amphitheater in Woodstock, New York, an arts and crafts outdoor
theater.
So the performance was the pianist sitting down at the piano,
opening the keyboard was the first movement, closing the keyboard
back up was the second movement. And then, the crowd coughing and
rustling and getting up and leaving and being uncomfortable was the
third movement. And all throughout, it wasn't silent, it was the
sounds of the Hudson Valley, the sounds of nature, the wind, and
the birds, and the animals scurrying through, and the people.
August Baker:
And the people trying to make sense of it.
Dr. Epstein:
The people trying to make sense of it. The people's minds
trying to make sense of it, which Cage was deliberately engaging
with.
So Cage's big, his big book that he wrote is called Silence.
And his big revelation is that there's no such thing as silence,
that there's always... He even went into these echoic chambers at
Harvard, where it's completely silent. But even in the chamber, he
was hearing his own blood rushing in his body, and his own
heartbeat, his own nervous system. So his revelation was that
silence doesn't exist, that there's always...
So as a therapist, one of the things that I've had to train
myself to do, that meditation helped me with, is not to jump in
right away when a patient first comes into the room, when it's
awkward, and when there's anxiety, because starting...
When I was a patient in therapy, I always wished for a dream.
So if I had a dream the night before, then I knew I could just
start with the dream, and then I was off the hook.
So as a therapist, to be able to wait for what's behind the
presenting words. People often make up something to start the
session with, or else they sit uncomfortably. But the trick with
therapy is to be open to whatever arises naturally, and to really
trust that what comes, even if it seems ordinary, or benign, or not
that interesting-
August Baker:
Or nothing.
Dr. Epstein:
Or nothing, that there's always something. So to be able to go
with that, unless a person is really too anxious and then needs my
support, then I'll jump in.
But that being able to wait that extra beat as a therapist
potentially allows something unexpected to emerge. And that's
always what's interesting in the therapy.And I tried to show that
in the book by just showing how ordinary most of therapy is. We're
not really talking about the deep childhood traumas that often.
We're more talking about the mother-in-law visiting, or the fight
with the wife, or difficulty with the stepchildren-
August Baker:
Bringing home the avocado toast and the soup, and getting the
sizes wrong.
Dr. Epstein:
That's my favorite story.
August Baker:
I love that. That was the man who looks very much like the
young Antonio Banderas, I believe.
Dr. Epstein:
Exactly.
August Baker:
By the way, I thought that one of the very interesting things
about your book, I haven't seen this before, is that in most books
about psychotherapy, where you see case studies, you don't...
They're a composite or they're really just the author. Like,
[inaudible 00:23:07] did that, and just two cases of Mr. Z, it's
just him. And these, I thought it was very interesting, each one,
you had the patients read over and comment on and say, "Yeah, I
agree with this. And by the way, I remember that session and this
happened." But they've all been approved by our-
Dr. Epstein:
Oh, yes.
August Baker:
Is that something you've done before? I thought that was-
Dr. Epstein:
Well, anytime I've used anything from a real patient, I always
ask them, "Will you read this over? And is this okay? And should I
change anything?" I've always done that.
But I've always been very reluctant to mine the sessions
because I didn't like having my mind in a separate place, "Oh, I
could use this." So that's when I started using myself as a
patient. In a lot of my earlier books, I write about my speech
therapy and my first therapist, my second therapist, my troubles
with my wife. I decided to use myself as the main patient. But
here-
August Baker:
As did Freud.
Dr. Epstein:
As did Freud, yes. I had a good mentor and a good example in
Freud. But here, where I was using the real patients, with
everyone, I went back and forth, "Do you remember it this way? Is
it okay to say this?" The main thing that people wanted to discuss
was what the pseudonym was, because they were like, "Why did you
call me this? That's my middle name. I hate that name." One patient
thought the name I picked was too fem and wanted a more gender
neutral name, et cetera. So I'm fine with all of that. But the back
and forth was fun. And I tried to include a little bit of that in
the narrative of the book.
August Baker:
You did. That was nice.
Dr. Epstein:
And the one you're referring to, my patient who bears a
remarkable resemblance to Antonio Banderas, in my back and forth
with him, as a sort of joke at the end of our correspondence about
the actual session, he said, "And if you would just say that I bear
an uncanny resemblance, my mother will be so happy." So I was like,
"Oh fine, I'll do that."
August Baker:
That was fun.
Dr. Epstein:
So I started the case out by describing him that way. And
then, at the end-
August Baker:
It was charming, really.
Dr. Epstein:
Yeah, I had fun with that.
August Baker:
I had never read the D. H. Lawrence poem, the Snake, that you
excerpt, and there's so much there. We could spend 45 minutes on it
or a whole semester on it.
Dr. Epstein:
That was my most fun doing the audio book, was reading that
poem out loud. I loved reading that.
August Baker:
The words he chooses are just amazing.
Dr. Epstein:
Incredible.
August Baker:
Each word, you could think, "How did that word come in there?"
But to just look at the very ending, "And so, I missed my chance
with one of the lords of life. And I have something to expiate: A
pettiness."
I'll just give you guys a prompt. You saw the whole poem as
capturing a lot of what mindfulness does and what psychotherapy
does, I guess.
Dr. Epstein:
Yeah. Both. I'm glad you're saying both. The poem is about
D.H. Lawrence in Sicily, going into his backyard, into his garden,
and seeing a snake coming up the wall, and he's captured by the
majesty of the snake. But then, also gets afraid of it and says
that his educated self wants to throw a log or throw a rock at the
snake to get rid of it. And he ends up doing that and sees the
snake scurrying away and then realizes he's destroyed the moment,
basically. There, he was, able to be in dialogue with one of the
lords of the underworld or something like that.
I didn't know the poem either. One of my patients told me
about the poem. The snake, it's been a symbol forever for
everything, from the kundalini, to the unconscious, going back to
Adam and Eve.
So I saw it as a metaphor for both, for being able to look at
the horror of oneself, as one has to do often in psychotherapy, but
also at all the raw, sometimes violent aspects of ourselves that we
come face-to-face with in deep meditation. All the ways that we've
hurt people, that when you're sitting with your own mind for long
periods of time, that's what you end up reflecting on. Or your
deepest fears, your sense of shame, your deepest cravings, your
anger, your frustration, all that stuff. There's a big tendency in
the meditation world to sort of leapfrog over that and just hope
for the bliss that's been promised to you by all the self-help
books. But that's not necessarily what really happened. So I'm
trying to make that point.
August Baker:
And the snake comes up even earlier, in the Buddha story, that
you've given earlier.
Dr. Epstein:
Yeah, the snake comes. Mucalinda is the big snake in the
Buddha story, where he comes up behind the Buddha, and he's like a
cobra, and puts his hood over the Buddha and shields him from the
rain and from the sun and so on.
August Baker:
That was the best way I could think of it also. And one of the
points you make is that when the Dalai Lama wrote the introduction
to your first book, when you got it, you write that it took you a
while to appreciate it because it said things like... He wrote,
"The purpose of life is to be happy. As a Buddhist, I have found
that one's own mental attitude is the most influential factor in
working toward that goal. In order to change conditions outside
ourselves, whether they concern the environment or relations with
others, we must first change within ourselves. Inner peace is the
key." And I thought it was very interesting. You were sort of
incredulous. Then, what clarified it for me was you said that the
Dalai Lama means by inner peace is not what we might think. Namely,
relaxation, or the state of, what do you call it-
Dr. Epstein:
Acquiescence, maybe.
August Baker:
... hypometabolic.
Dr. Epstein:
Right. Yes. Scientific, the hypometabolic.
August Baker:
Right. Could you talk about what the Dalai Lama means by inner
peace?
Dr. Epstein:
Well, what I came to believe that he meant by inner peace
when... Because I was reflecting on it for decades. At first, when
I read it, I was like, "Oh, inner peace, TM, the relaxation
response, stress reduction," all that stuff. "Is that all that
meditation is? Even the Dalai Lama, is he saying..."
But then, I spent a lot of time over the years listening to
the Dalai Lama's teachings. The more I listened, the more I
realize, "Oh yeah, he's talking about nonviolence, like inner
nonviolence. He's talking about weaponizing our own minds. He's
talking about how each one of us has destructive tendency that we
deploy either on ourselves, or on the people that we love and need
the most, or on people we perceive as our enemies, but what's that
doing for the world?"
So really dealing with our own aggression, really dealing with
our own anger, with our own rage, with our own frustration. How do
we really deal with that in a way that de-weaponizes it?
August Baker:
There were a lot of great examples about that in the book. At
one point you say, "It's not what you are thinking that matters,
it's how you relate to your thoughts that will make all the
difference." You say, "If Zach could see his negative thoughts, not
as a reflection of his inherent inadequacy, but as the
understandable misperceptions of where he was, he might not feel so
much shame."
Another patient, "Cultivate an attitude of forgiveness about a
divorce situation." The whole love thoughts, I think, captures
that.
Another time, "If I am successful with Margaret, I will get
her to mindfully observe her self hatred rather than remaining a
victim of it." There's lots of examples of this, but that seemed to
be one of the key points.
Dr. Epstein:
That is definitely one of the key, if not the only key.
Because that phrase, "It's not what you're thinking that matters or
it's not what you're experiencing that matters, it's how you relate
to it." That I stole from Joseph Goldstein, one of my main
meditation teachers, Buddhist teachers. Because every time I would
go on retreat with him, I would smuggle a little notebook into the
retreat with me, because you're not supposed to write anything or
read anything, but just in case I had a revelation. And he would
give that teaching in one form or another.
And every time I would hear it, I would be like, "Oh, that is
really the essence of everything. It's not what's going on in my
mind, it's how I relate to it. That's what meditation is giving me,
that's what it's teaching me, to relate from that place of
allowance, of forgiveness, of kindness, of generosity, with humor,"
all of that. So I would write down some version of that.
And then, every 10 years or so, I would look through this
notebook when I was trying to write something, and I would see I
had written the same thing over and over again. So finally, I'm
able to talk about it as if it's mine.
August Baker:
It really came through. Typically, we try to make these 45
minutes, and I have about a million more things I want to talk to
you about.
Let's talk about Hate in the Counter-Transference, the
Winnicott...
I'll just mention, you make the good point that Western
psychotherapy often uses the metaphor of development. That
something has gone wrong in development and that the Buddhist
approach doesn't necessarily go that way. That seemed very
clear.
Let's talk about Hate in the Counter-Transference. The word
hate is pretty strong. And one of the things he says is, the baby
can hate the mother, the mother hates the baby. And one of the
lines is, "Sentimentality is useless for parents as it contains a
denial of hate." I thought that was great. But when I mention that
to people now, culturally, it's like, "I don't want to go that
far."
And another line, I'll just give you one. He says, "However
much the analyst loves her patients, she cannot avoid hating them
and fearing them." And finally, "As an analyst, I have ways of
expressing hate." You think, "Well, no, the analyst is nurturing
and empathetic. How do they show hate?" He says, "Hate is expressed
by the existence of the end of the hour."
I would just like to hear your thoughts on that because I just
find there's a lot of reluctance for people to acknowledge hate in
themselves. It seems to be a very difficult one. You talk about
anger at the end of... Your discussion's fascinating. But anyway,
what comes to mind?
Dr. Epstein:
Well, Hate in the Counter-Transference, that's a very
important paper by this British child psychiatrist and
psychoanalyst named Donald Winnicott, who, like John Cage... I
would say John Cage and Winnicott are my two grandfather figures,
because I think Winnicott is a great Buddhist teacher, although he
didn't know that he was a great Buddhist teacher, I don't think.
But he knew he was doing something.
So whenever I'm teaching work in a workshop thing with Robert
Thurman, or Sharon Salzberg, or Joseph, or whatever, when I'm
teaching to Buddhist audiences, I have found that if I take this
paper of Winnicott's, Hate in the Counter-Transference, and read
them bits of it, that it's magnificent. Because it's making an
important point, but not one that people necessarily want to hear,
about how central anger and even hate or rage is to our psychic
experience. And if we're sentimental about it and pretend that,
"Oh, no, I'm a meditator and I love everybody, including myself,"
we're missing what meditation is really good for. What it can
really do. So this-
August Baker:
And what therapy's really good for.
Dr. Epstein:
Exactly. Winnicott's equating child rearing, in particular in
his time, the '40s and '50s, the mother's relationship with the
infant. He's saying, "No way does the mother not sometimes hate the
baby." The baby, of course, is a ball of every emotion that the
human is capable of. Desire, need, love, anger, rage. His favorite
word for the baby is ruthless. Like, the baby attacks the mother
ruthlessly with no regard for her wellbeing. Therefore, the mother
sometimes feels like, "Oh my God, get me out of here." Feels hate.
But because the maternal thing is so strong, the mother naturally
doesn't give into her hate, the good enough mother, that's
Winnicott's phrase, doesn't abandon and doesn't retaliate. Those
are the two poles that Winnicott sets up. Something in the mother,
which is her inherent kindness or her maternal aptitude stays
present with the hate, of the hate of the baby and her own hate,
stays present enough to feed, change, sing, hold the baby.
So the mother has this natural capacity and Winnicott was
always reinforcing, "Well, you don't need teaching for this. You
don't need science for this. It's there in you already. You know
how to hold..." Thich Nhat Hanh used to say, "Hold anger like a
baby." So the mother knows how to hold the range of emotion.
So when Winnicott's point is the therapist is doing something
similar, in particular when he or she is repairing early
developmental struggles, where maybe the mother or the father
didn't do it so well, did avoid or did retaliate. And so, created
some kind of reaction in the child that gets carried into
adulthood.
My point is that something very similar applies in meditation
also, that one of the things we're learning with mindfulness is how
to bring out that maternal aptitude, that ability to stay with
kindness with the entire range of our emotional experience. And
that we all have that potential. Even if we've been hurt, even if
we've been traumatized, even if we're sitting on a lot of our own
difficult emotions, we can find that observing self, that maternal
self, or now we could even say that paternal kind of mind.
And I like to use all those examples because they're not the
traditional ones that are used in Buddhism because Buddhism didn't
really have a developmental psychology the way we have developed
post-Freud.
August Baker:
Right. Well, I really enjoyed the book. I'll tell you lastly,
the image of being out in the ocean with Ron Doss was just
unforgettable, just goosebumps. It was really something.
It was really great talking with you, Dr. Mark Epstein. The
book is The Zen of Therapy.
Dr. Epstein:
Yep.
August Baker:
And it was great talking with you.
Dr. Epstein:
It was great talking with you too. I'm so glad you really read
the book and liked... Or listened to the book.
August Baker:
Listened, yes.
Dr. Epstein:
Listened and liked it. So that means so much to me. Thank you
very much.
August Baker:
Okay. Great.