Steven Stanley writes about three phases of cultural encounter between psychoanalysis and Buddhism. Originally published here as a response to the recent film A Dangerous Method:
We might say that psychoanalysis and Buddhism are both therapies; diagnosing and alleviating our psychological or existential suffering. But the productive, one hundred year dialogue on the margins of these traditions did not begin quite so auspiciously.
Phase 1: Orientalism
Freud and Jung famously fell out over the issue of spirituality.
