ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the convergence of psychoanalysis, Buddhism, and biology in two essential human domains: the body, and the construction of subjective experience. It outlines how central elements in Buddhist thought can be demonstrated in both established and evolving notions in psychoanalysis and western psychological science. Psychoanalysis can be seen as working to integrate or synthesize conflicts, divergences, and disruptions in a person’s system of personal meanings. Psychoanalysis is often concerned with consolidating self-structures and reinforcing selected aspects of the narrative, while Buddhism tends to be concerned with articulating the experiential qualities of the present moment, including, but independent of, the narrative layering. To dwell on the cognitive–affective torrent of narrative associations is to reinforce the neuro-endocrine circuitry that accompanies it. The nature of associational sequences is such that, once activated, neuroendocrine circuits in turn trigger other neural networks of related content and emotional quality.
