The Humanistic Psychologist, 39: 289–304, 2011

Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN: 0887-3267 print/1547-3333 online
DOI: 10.1080/08873267.2011.618061

ARTICLES

A Buddhist–Lacanian Perspective on Lack

Ronald E. Purser
San Francisco State University

The historical and contemporary dialogue between psychoanalysis and Buddhism is examined to
advance theories of self-representation. This theoretical foundation provides for a reinterpretation of
Lacanian psychoanalytic theory as it applies to the unconscious lack that haunts human subjectivity.
The inevitable failure to construct an enduring and permanent sense of self is linked to a chronic feeling
of lack and cultural malaise. Drawing upon the work of Buddhist philosopher David Loy, the article pro-
poses that this feeling of lack is symptomatic of a more fundamental and primary repression: a fear of
no-self, or egolessness. Both the Buddhist tradition and Lacanian methods rely on unconventional
and indirect methods for circumventing the will of the ego. Such unconventional methods are employed
to decenter our familiar and common modes of representational discourse in order to deconstruct the ego.

The burgeoning dialogue among psychoanalysts and Buddhist teachers over the last 50 years has
explored a wide range of insights about human development, conceptions of ego and identity,
and their implications for health and freedom from suffering (Bobrow, 2003, 2009; Engler,
1998; Epstein, 1995, 1998, 2007; Fromm, Suzuki, & De Martino, 1960; Molino, 1998a; Rubin,
1998; Safran, 2003; Suler, 1993). The strong links and sustained mutual curiosity between these
two traditions can be understood in that both have (a) a shared concern with mental and emotion-
al suffering, (b) developed sophisticated theories of mind and its dysfunctions, (c) devised
unique methods for intensive experiential investigation of the mind, and (d) focused on treat-
ments and practices to achieve a greater degree of well-being and freedom. Although there
are many similarities and significant common ground between psychoanalysis and Buddhism,
these two traditions diverge in terms of their basic conceptions of self-representation. Moreover,
the psychoanalytic tradition has historically been wary and suspicious of religion, determined to

I thank Dr. Raul Moncayo for taking the time to provide helpful insights into understanding the intersection of Lacan
and Zen Buddhism.
Correspondence should be addressed to Ronald E. Purser, Department of Management, San Francisco State
University, 1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94132. E-mail: rpurser@sfsu.edu
290 PURSER

establish its claim as a scientific method. Buddhism has been viewed as a religion, but upon clo-
ser inspection it is essentially a pragmatic philosophy and experiential method for attaining
enlightenment or liberation from human suffering. Indeed, some Westerners have described
Buddhism as a ‘‘psychological religion,’’ for its ‘‘entire philosophy and the medical system that
adjoins it, is based on the analysis of mind’’ (Clifford, 1984, p. 215).
Fromm argued that psychoanalysis was a response to the Western spiritual crisis, and that
even Freud’s vision of his own system was not limited to merely a therapy for mentally ill
patients, but was deeply concerned with human salvation. According to Fromm et al. (1960),
many of Freud’s ideas were deeply resonant with Buddhism, particularly the principle that
‘‘knowledge leads to transformation, that theory and practice must not be separated, that in
the every act of knowing oneself, one transforms oneself’’ (p. 82).
Psychoanalysis has excelled at mapping out the early stages of identity formation, or what I
refer to in this article as self-representation. Buddhist traditions, on the other hand, have focused
attention on deconstructing or decentering the consolidation of self-representation from the ego-
centrism of early development to gain insight into no-self nature of identity (Engler, 1998). A
central tenet of Buddhist teachings is anatman, or no-self, which informs the Buddhist path
of meditative insight. Buddhist meditation is a somatic and mental practice aimed at liberating
the misperception that the self is an enduring, abiding, independent entity. In this respect,
psychoanalysis and Buddhist traditions are situated theories and practices that are focusing on
different stages of human development.
Another key difference between psychoanalysis and Buddhism is in their understanding of
the unconscious. Freud considered the unconscious as the repository of repressed desires, urges,
and instincts. Classical psychoanalysis undertakes an archeological dig into the hidden recesses
of the unconscious to bring to conscious awareness libidinal forces and other latent content that
has been repressed. The Buddhist perspective recognizes that habitual patterns of thinking and
behavior can be traced to latent mental and emotional content, but it also views the deeper layers
of consciousness as a potential source for awakening from ignorance.
Given the growing convergence and ongoing dialogue between these two seemingly different
traditions, this article examines how the Buddhist perspective on the self calls into question
fundamental assumptions upon which identity is constructed. This critique will build upon the
Lacanian view that the conscious ego is driven to compensate for an unconscious lack (Driver,
2009b). However, as I explain later, the Buddhist perspective developed here views lack as
symptomatic of a more fundamental and primary repression: a fear of no-self, or egolessness.

HISTORICAL INTERFACES OF PSYCHOANALYSIS AND BUDDHISM

It is well known that Freud maintained a ‘‘hermeneutic of suspicion’’ toward religion (Ricoeur,
1970, p. 30). For Freud, religion was an illusion that substituted a dependence on a deity for the
original dependence on a benevolent or punitive father. Such dependence, Freud theorized, kept
humanity bound to an infantile state. Interestingly enough, both Freudian psychoanalysis and
Buddhism share an affinity in that they both do not submit to a belief in a deity. With its many
aphorisms—such as ‘‘If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!’’—Zen Buddhism, in parti-
cular, is known for its iconoclastic, antiauthoritarian, and irreverent attitude toward even its own
pundits, or to any displays of scholastic knowledge that are not grounded in direct, embodied
 A BUDDHIST–LACANIAN PERSPECTIVE ON LACK 291

experience. Similarly, both traditions rely on a guide who has studied and trained in their
respective methods.
Although Freud had no contact with Buddhism and limited knowledge of its meditative prac-
tices, he displayed great interest in trying to understand the psychodynamics of the mystical
experience (Jones, 1957). Shortly after his publication of The Future of an Illusion, Freud began
a 13 year correspondence with the French poet Romain Rolland, who was a devotee of Hindu
gurus of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, and who had described his mystical experiences to Freud
in great detail (Freud, 1930). Based on Rolland’s accounts of his mystical experiences, Freud
offered his explanations in Civilization and Its Discontent. According to Freud, the ‘‘oceanic feel-
ing’’ present in mystical experience are regressive attempts at recovering the ‘‘bliss of primary
narcissism, the unambivalent union of infant and mother at the breast’’ (Epstein, 2007, p. 164).
Following Freud’s lead, the traditional analytic view has subscribed to the notion that mysticism
and meditative experiences are attempts at fusion or merger of ego and ego ideal. However, this
reductive and pathologized interpretation of meditative experience as a narcissistic yearning for
the lost perfection the infantile state is only descriptive of more Hindu-oriented concentration prac-
tices (and preliminary Buddhist stages of meditation). Meditative practices based on the path of con-
centration fixate and narrow attention on a single object to develop stability, quiescence, and
one-pointedness (Epstein, 2007). Such practices are conducive to feelings of oneness, bliss, and
absorption or trance states. In the Buddhist tradition, concentration practices are preliminary to the
path of insight, or meditative practices based on developing mindfulness. Thus, concentration and
mindfulness are two distinct attentional strategies (Goleman, 1977). Until recently, the psychoana-
lytic community has not undertaken a serious investigation of meditative states that take into account
the insight-oriented and mindfulness practices that are unique to Buddhism (Rosenbaum, 2009).
It took several decades before Western translations of Buddhist texts made it into the psycho-
analytic community. C.G. Jung was deeply interested in and sympathetic to Buddhist doctrine,
yet also wary of its dangers of being transplanted into the Western cultural context. Jung
published numerous psychological commentaries on Buddhist texts (Jung, 1958), including
an introduction to the German translation of D.T. Suzuki’s Introduction to Zen Buddhism. As
Jung (1978) notes, ‘‘It was neither the history of religion nor the study of philosophy that first
drew me to the world of Buddhist thought, but my professional interest as a doctor’’ (p. 5). And
he goes to state, ‘‘In our sphere of culture the suffering of the sick can derive considerable
benefit from . . . the Buddhist mentality, however strange it may appear’’ (p. 5).
With the exception of Carl Jung and a few others, it wasn’t until 1957 that perhaps the first
organized dialogue between these two traditions occurred. D.T. Suzuki, a Zen Buddhist master
and scholar, was the guest of honor at a groundbreaking workshop on Zen Buddhism and
Psychoanalysis, convened in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Nearly 50 psychoanalysts attended, including
such notable figures as Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Ira Progoff, which resulted in a
collection of essays and seminal publication (Fromm et al., 1960).
Both Fromm and Horney were intrigued by the potential of radical personality change that Zen
Buddhism offered, especially because its principles could not be accounted for within the tra-
ditional paradigm of Freudian psychoanalysis. Particularly for Fromm, Zen Buddhism offered
an alternative for moving psychoanalysis away from its focus on illness and pathology to a new
focus on well-being, or what he called humanistic psychoanalysis. In contrast to the Freudian
patient who was concerned with the removal of specific neurotic and hysterical symptoms, the com-
plaints of Fromm’s clientele were much more vague in nature—depression, insomnia, unhappy
292 PURSER

marriages, dissatisfaction of their work, and similar troubles. Fromm argued that this cultural mal-
aise was only the conscious or surface symptoms whose roots could be traced to a much deeper
causes—alienation from oneself, and fear of life and death. As Fromm et al. (1960) note, ‘‘For those
who suffer from alienation, cure does not consist in the absence of symptoms, but in the presence of
well-being’’ (p. 86). A humanistic psychoanalysis needed to transcend the limits of the Freudian
system with its orthodoxy based on libido theory and awareness of the hidden Oedipal situation.
The analytic goal of making the unconscious conscious, of replacing the Id by Ego as a therapeutic
means to cure a particular symptom, did not address the pervasive culture malaise and challenge of
overcoming alienation and the subject-object split in perceiving the world (Fromm et al., 1960). For
Fromm, the full recovery of unconsciousness by consciousness required a much more radical
approach than the psychoanalytic orthodoxy of the Freudian paradigm. Noting the relevance and
utility of Zen Buddhism to psychoanalysis, Fromm et al. (1960) state:

The knowledge of Zen . . . can have a most fertile and clarifying influence on the theory and technique of
psychoanalysis. Zen, different as it is in its method from psychoanalysis, can sharpen the focus, throw
new light on the nature of insight, and heighten the sense of what it is to see, what it is to be creative, and
what it is to overcome the affective contaminations and false intellectualizations which are the neces-
sary results of experience based on the subject-object split. In its very radicalism with respect to intel-
lectualization, authority and the delusion of the ego, in its emphasis on the aim of well-being, Zen
thought will deepen and widen the horizon of the psychoanalyst and help him arrive at a more radical
concept of the grasp of reality as the ultimate aim of full, conscious awareness. (p. 140)

Fromm’s long-time association with Buddhism led him to postulate that psychoanalysis needed
a ‘‘trans-therapeutic’’ function that would go beyond the restricted understanding of bringing to
conscious awareness repressed libidinal forces, and reducing the individual’s ‘‘extra suffering’’
to the more socially acceptable level of suffering, or ‘‘normalcy’’ (Fromm, 2005, p. 64).
With the exception of a small psychoanalytic community of ‘‘underground of Buddhaphiles,’’
interest in Buddhism among the existentialist brand of psychoanalysts in the 1960s was followed
by a long hiatus (Safran, 2003). Recently, however, there has been a marked resurgence of
interest in Buddhism in the psychoanalytic community, evidenced by numerous conferences, dia-
logues, and publications (Aaronson, 2004; Brazier, 1995; Brown & Engler, 1986: Claxton, 1986;
Eigen, 1996; Epstein, 1995, 1998, 2007; Finn & Gartner, 1992; Fleischman, 1998; Magid, 2008;
Molino, 1998a; Moncayo, 2003; Rubin, 1998; Safran, 2003; Suler, 1993; Unno, 2006; Watson,
1998). This burgeoning interest parallels the exponential growth both in translations of Buddhist
texts and publications by Western Buddhist teachers, and in the fact that significant numbers of
Westerners have adopted Buddhism as a spiritual path.

THE BUDDHIST DECONSTRUCTION OF SELF AND IDENTITY

The goal of the Buddhist path is to transform the mind to be free of self-generated suffering.
Different schools of Buddhism take different paths, but all are founded on facilitating and
embodying insight into the empty nature of the self, which is fundamentally void of any inde-
pendent existence, essence, or enduring substance. Such insights are usually developed through
intensive meditation practices and study in conjunction with a teacher or guide trained in the
tradition. The goal of insight meditation is not intellectual understanding, an exceptional altered
 A BUDDHIST–LACANIAN PERSPECTIVE ON LACK 293

state, a rare peak experience, or a fleeting epiphany—but a ‘‘permanent and irreversible

reorganization of self-structure’’ (Engler, 2003, p. 65). Jack Engler describes this as a fundamen-
tal shift in the locus of subjectivity from representations of self to awareness (nirvikalpa) itself.
Psychoanalysts are particularly interested in what Buddhism has to offer in understanding
how illusory representations of the self are constructed and deconstructed. As Aaronson
(1998) points out, the Buddhist critique is aimed at deconstructing the belief in an ontological
self. The self that is the target of Buddhist analysis is not the psychologically differentiated self
of psychoanalytic theory, nor the Western conception of the self as a highly autonomous indi-
vidual (Engler, 2003, p. 50). Rather, the Buddhist doctrine of anatman, or no-self, maintains that
the feeling or belief in an independent, substantial, and enduring sense of self is a misperception.
This mistaken case of identity, what Stolorow and Atwood (1992) refers to as the ‘‘myth of the
isolated mind,’’ is at the root of self-generated suffering. This myth perpetuates an alienation
from nature, from social life, and from subjectivity itself. The cumulative product of the isolated
mind perspective is both self-centeredness and egocentricity (Magid, 2003).
The Buddhist path goes against the grain of what appears self-evident in everyday experience.
Our conventional way of representing self is deeply embedded in both our language and psyche.
As Engler (2003, p. 88) notes, it is ‘‘the tendency to regard every object of experience or per-
ception as a separate entity or ‘thing’ having its own separate concrete existence and identity and
only secondarily related to other ‘things’.’’ Insight or mindfulness meditation is a technique for
observing moment-to-moment elements of experience—a form of analytic inquiry to determine
whether such a self as it is ordinarily represented in human experience can actually be found.
Mindfulness meditation develops and refines the ability to discriminate and observe the succes-
sive arising and dissolution of the contents of the mind.
In Buddhist terminology, each constituent of experience can be categorized as belonging to
one of the five skandhas, often translated as heaps or aggregates—form, feeling, perceptions,
mental formations (including cognitions and emotions), and consciousness. Self-representations
are built up and sustained through constellations of perceptions and images, constituted by the
skandhas. However, the skandhas are not things either, but perceptual-cognitive-affective
events—constantly changing configurations—that appear to the untrained observer to be con-
tinuous and substantial. Through sustained analysis and concentration, Buddhist insight medi-
tation allows the practitioner to observe directly how experience of a self that appears as a
substantial, enduring, and independent entity is rapidly constructed moment-by-moment, with
no sense of permanence or ground. Meditative inquiry enhances the powers of observation
and the ability to see clearly that experience is fleeting, arising and passing away, an endless
fluctuation without continuity. The realization of selflessness occurs through direct and repeated
disciplined observation aims at trying to find a solid I or self in or behind the stream of experi-
ence. Describing the advanced stages of insight (vipassana) practice, Engler (2003) states:

I can observe how individual, discrete moments of consciousness and their ‘‘objects’’ arise and pass
away together, are constructed and deconstructed moment by moment without remainder—without
any ‘‘subject’’ or ‘‘self,’’ even an observing self, existing apart from the process, enduring behind it,
or carrying it forward to the next moment. (p. 75)

Buddhist insight into the ‘‘illusory ontology of the self’’ (Hanley, 1984, p. 255) may come
gradually or suddenly (in Zen, kensho or satori). In either case, such insight entails seeing clearly
294 PURSER

that our ordinary experience of self is basically a fiction and illusory in nature—a conceptual
designation or imputation—which we normally represent and mistakenly take to be real. Even
Freud recognized that the ego (das ich) can impute to itself its own independent existence and
treat itself as an object (see Sterba, 1934). Buddhist practices weaken attachment and identifica-
tions to such false self-representations, revealing the self as being empty of any self-nature,
essentially exposing the groundlessness of identity.
Far from being a ‘‘mystical experience,’’ or a regressive return to primary narcissism by basking
in oceanic feelings of oneness, recognition of no-self is often profoundly disturbing, evoking feel-
ings of terror, anxiety, and fear (Epstein, 2007, p. 30). This is why preliminary concentration prac-
tices are used to develop a strong somatic foundation of stability to counterbalance the effects of
these destabilizing insights. In contrast, psychoanalysts have warned that such pursuits could lead
to a catastrophe (Bion, 1963), triggering psychic fragmentation or disintegration, or even touch what
Eigen (1989) describes as the ‘‘psychotic core’’ (p. 1) within each individual. It is important to point
out that insight into the empty nature of the self does not eliminate the self—but only reveals that it
never existed in the first place. As Gyatso (1984) clarifies, ‘‘Selflessness is not a case of something
that existed in the past becoming non-existent; rather, this sort of ‘self’ is something that never did
exist. What is needed is to identify as non-existent something that always was non-existent’’ (p. 40).
The psychoanalytic community is only now learning through dialogue with Buddhists how the
dissolution of self-representations can be liberating, rather than destabilizing and pathological.
Many strands of psychoanalytic theory use the term self interchangeably with the concept of
self-representation (Rubin, 2003). However, self-representations are mental constructs, impres-
sions, and images of the self. Thus, the target of Buddhist analysis is specifically on the experi-
ence of I, or the sense of self that feels itself to be permanent, unitary, and under its own power.
In other words, the I is ‘‘a self-representation as agent, as an image, abstraction, or simulacrum’’
(Epstein, 2007, p. 47)—conceiving of itself as existing under its own power, and as concerned
with it maintaining its ongoing survival (Gyatso, 1984). The process of constructing and identi-
fying with self-images—which is what self-representations are made of—is usually an unobser-
vable and unconscious process. Indeed, I agree with Almass (1996), that this deep structure of
identity—or the sense of self—experiences itself from within the self-representation.
The true self of Buddhist awakening is, as Magid (2003) points out, more of a recognition of
an ‘‘absence rather than a presence of something’’ (p. 270). Western psychotherapy and psycho-
analysis, particularly Kohut’s (1971) school of Self Psychology and its offshoots, do not ques-
tion the ontological status of the self. A common misconception of selflessness is that it is
equated with the loss of personhood or the denigration of psychological functions (Aaronson,
2004). For example, many New Age spiritual movements that have been influenced by Eastern
traditions often resort to such exhortations that a person has to get rid of, or lose, their ego. Bud-
dhism, however, does not negate mental functioning, denigrate the ego, nor eradicate functional
life-skills. These simplistic interpretations of Buddhist teachings are committing the extreme
error of nihilism. What is lost is the erroneous conception of an inherently existing ontological
self. Buddhist practice does not resort to repression, denial, or fantasy; all that is lost is a mis-
conception. Thus, the object of negation in Buddhist meditation is not the psychological self, but
the illusory nature, and seemingly real sense of a metaphysical self. In other words, the psycho-
logical self does not disappear with a realization of selflessness; a person still uses the word I,
still has a name and a unique historical identity—but the person is no longer fixed or
overinvested in representations, self-images, habitual reactions, or a sense of metaphysical
 A BUDDHIST–LACANIAN PERSPECTIVE ON LACK 295

substantiality (Aaronson, 2004). In fact, there is nothing problematic in having a unique identity,
‘‘so long we realize that there is no one who’s having an identity’’ (Fenner, 2009, p. 63).
The fruition of seeing the emptiness of self-nature or shunyata—what Buddhists have often
referred to as the unborn, uncreated, or unconditioned—is seeing and acting unselfconsciously.
This act of seeing is not a philosophical exercise, but an insight that is embodied in lived experi-
ence and wholeheartedly expressed in daily affairs. This mode of being could be characterized as
being unmanaged, in the sense that thinking, feeling, perceiving, and acting can all happen without
an agent or self that needs to defend and maintain its position as the doer (Finngarette, 1958). The
dissolution of an internal manager or controller actually is conducive to, as Engler (2003) points
out, to everything happening ‘‘much more efficiently and without anxiety and conflict’’ (p. 64),
freed of the burden of representing self and constructing experience based on false images.
For Buddhists, the existence of a metaphysical self is deeply problematic. Although many psy-
choanalysts and psychologists may admit that their notions of identity are mental or subjective
constructs on a theoretical level, more often than not, these are conflated or viewed as
synonymous with the existence of an ontological identity. Similarly, object relations, ego psy-
chology, and self psychology schools of psychoanalytic thought privilege the importance of
developing an integrated, coherent, and unitary ego=self-identity. For example, Winnicott
(1965) subscribed strongly to the view that there was a true self. And although the self psychology
of Heinz Kohut (1971) also considers the self as an abstraction, Kohut still adheres to an essenti-
alist view in his insistence that at the core of the individual is a ‘‘nuclear self’’ (p. 126).
From the Buddhist perspective, the end to all self-generated suffering, the dissolution of ego-
centricity, is through insight into no-self nature. Insight into no-self nature leads to the cessation
of clinging to false images of self-representation. Mindfulness, or insight meditation, differs
from psychoanalytic methods which focus almost exclusively on interpreting the contents of
thoughts, associations, dreams, fantasies, and slips of tongue. Instead, Buddhist meditative train-
ing sharpens the powers of concentration and observation in order to clearly attend to how such
contents are constructed and deconstructed—how they arise and pass away–in moment-to-
moment experience (Fleischman, 1998). This is a direct seeing into the transitoriness and emp-
tiness of such constructions, and the ultimate futility of the identity-building enterprise, that
allows for a way of knowing to emerge that is at home in groundlessness.

JAQUES LACAN AND BUDDHISM

Jaques Lacan was deeply interested in Buddhism, making two trips to Japan to learn more about
Zen. In fact, in his first published Seminar I, Lacan opens with his identification with Zen and its
use of shock tactics as a way of instilling students to seek their own answers (Lacan, 1977b;
McLellan, 2008). Lacan is also notorious for challenging the 50-minute hour with his introduc-
tion of the short session, which some speculate that he adapted from his study of the iconoclastic
Zen dialogues between teacher and student. Clearly, Lacan was well aware of Zen tactics of
teaching through denial, the use of paradoxical dialogue via koans, and its use of nonsensical
responses to counter the rationality of the ego. Lacan states in one of his seminars, ‘‘What is
best in Buddhism, is Zen; it consists to that, my little friend, to answer you back with a bark
(possible translation of katsu). It is what is the best for people when they want naturally to
get out of this infernal affair, like Freud says’’ (Miller, 1998, p. 115). Thus, it appears likely that
296 PURSER

Zen Buddhism may have offered Lacan alternative ways of theorizing the relationships between
desire, the unconscious, knowledge, and subjectivity (Samuels, 2002). Although there are sig-
nificant similarities between the psychoanalytic theories of Lacan and Buddhist doctrine, there
are also clear points of departure.Given the limitations of space, I attend to only a few salient
points of intersection.
The Buddhist insight that the self is lacking any inherent or substantial nature (explained
earlier), resonates with Lacan’s view of the ego as an imaginary construction (Moncayo,
1998a). However, the Buddhist critique of self lacks a psycho-historical retracing of ego identi-
fications and early object relations. Lacanian analysis focuses deeply on uncovering the dynam-
ics of psycho-historical development, but still does not affirm the existence of any substantial
ego. For Lacan, the ego is the seat of resistance, which put him directly at odds with American
ego-psychology.
Lacan’s (1977a) theory is a remapping of Freud’s Oedipal process from a symbolic and linguis-
tic perspective, an area which Buddhism is silent on. According to Lacan, the Imaginary register of
experience is tied to the development of a fabricated image of a substantial ego. This occurs in
what he refers to as the mirror stage, when, between six and eighteen months, the infant sees a
coherent and unitary body-image in a mirror as the object of the mother’s desire. Because this
self-image is imaginary, the genesis of the ideal-ego is also characterized simultaneously as a
méconnaissance. In this prelinguistic, pre-Oedipal domain, the subject is already alienated. In
short, Lacan offers a penetrating critique of the imaginary homogeneity of the ego, showing
how self-images of mastery, autonomy, omnipotence are fabrications woven of fantasies.
Although offering different systematized theories, Buddhism and Lacan converge on the obser-
vation that in becoming aware of being aware, ‘‘the ego simultaneously posits itself as the object
of its own knowing’’ (Molino, 1998a, p. 292). Constituting itself as the ‘‘one who knows,’’ the
ego is considered a delusion in Buddhism, and a ‘‘move in a fictive direction’’ for Lacan.
Both Lacan and Buddhism confront the fact that the human condition is an endless encounter
with lack. The first noble truth of the Buddha is that, ‘‘Life is suffering.’’ Moreover, Buddhist
doctrine identifies sentient beings as caught in the realm of samsara, which is recognizable by
the three marks of existence, namely, dukkha (suffering or dissatisfaction), anatman (no-self),
and annica (conditioned states, or impermanence). Similarly, Lacanian psychoanalytic theory
characterizes the symbolic order as marked by lack, due to the loss of the Real, which is beyond
language. The imaginary ego is alienated by the loss of the Real, and that such loss cannot be
regained from within the linguistic confines of the symbolic order. In addition, Buddhism and
Lacanian theory both postulate that human consciousness is divided or split, and that this con-
dition is structural, rather than personal in nature (Lacan, 1977b). Buddhism identifies this split
as a basic duality between subject and object, which is the byproduct of ignorance (avidya). In
Lacanian theory, there is an inherent structural division between the self and the unconscious—
and such a division will inevitably produce disruptions and failure of desires.
Lacanian theory and Buddhist doctrine also converge on the enslaving role of desire. The
second noble truth of the Buddha is that cause of suffering is desire, or more accurately, craving
(tr¸ şņa) and its concomitant clinging (upadana). Desire for conditioned things cannot be fully
satiated or satisfied, due to their impermanent nature. Clinging to conditioned things which
are of an impermanent nature also implies an inevitable loss or lack. Moreover, desire and cling-
ing to the idea of a ‘‘self’’ is a delusion, because there is no abiding self or identity. For Lacan,
‘‘desire is a fundamental lack, a hole in being’’ (Sarup, 1992, p. 13). Desire is always expressive
 A BUDDHIST–LACANIAN PERSPECTIVE ON LACK 297

of a lack because it is tied to the limitations of language, since we can never fully express what it
is that we really want (Fink, 1995). This keeps the subject locked into a perpetual movement of
seeking the lost object, but with an impossibility of ever achieving lasting fulfillment (Sarup,
1992). Lacanian desire is linked with fantasies of being filled by the Other that are impossible
to fulfill, expressed in his famous aphorism ‘‘I always find my desire outside of me because what
I desire is always something that I lack, that is other to me’’ (Lacan, 1988b).

A BUDDHIST REINTERPRETATION OF LACK

Lacan’s work theorized how identity is illusory, as it is constructed from an imaginary order. In
this section, I build upon much of Lacanian theorizing, which argues that identity discourse is
also an attempt to deal with unconscious lack. However, rather than accepting lack as a perpetual
struggle and a stopping point for inquiry—what Lacan referred to as jouissance—Buddhism
views lack as a symptom of a more fundamental and primary repression: a fear of noself, emp-
tiness—the fear that the core of who we are is not real, but groundless (Loy, 2000). In response,
Buddhism offers an alternative to continuously circling around our fundamental lack (Lacan’s
jouissance and Buddhism’s samsara, often translated as the wheel of suffering or a wheel off
kilter). Rather than avoiding and repressing our fear of groundlessness—the therapeutic solution
of Buddhist practice is to become nothing. Paradoxically, by fully embracing the fundamental
lack, that is, by becoming completely groundless in body and mind, abiding in no-mind and
in nothing, we become grounded in the totality of all things. As Loy (2000) aptly points out,
‘‘This reveals that from the very beginning there has never been any lack, because there has
never been any self-existing self apart from the world’’ (p. 53).
In articulating a Buddhist perspective on lack, I turn to the major theoretical works of
Buddhist scholar and Zen teacher, David Loy (1998, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2008). The pragmatic
emphasis within Buddhism is to put an end to dukkha, or suffering, which encompasses the basic
anxiety and dissatisfaction that is pervasive in human and social experience. Although there is a
wide range of conditions and forms of suffering (physical, emotional, and mental), there is also
an ongoing sense of dukkha that is derived from a basic awareness of impermanence (Loy,
2003). In addition, another form of dukkha, which is not usually consciously apparent, arises
from a repression of an unconscious fear that ‘‘our sense of subjectivity does not correspond
to any real ontological self,’’ and that deep down there ‘‘is a suspicion that I am not real’’
(Loy, 2003, p. 22). This latter type of dukkha, essentially a repression of anatman (no-self),
underlies the desire and compulsion we have in trying to make ourselves real—continuous
attempts to objectify, secure, and ground our fragile sense of self—in other words, to become
self-existing. Lacan (1977a) also called into question the homogeneity of Cartesian subject.
Through his analytic techniques, Lacan deconstructed the Cartesian subject, by reconstituting
the classic ‘‘I think, therefore I am’’ as an expression of the ego, which he reformulated as
‘‘I think where I am not.’’ As Moncayo (2003) points out, such a formulation is equivalent
to Epstein’s (1995) ‘‘thoughts without a thinker’’ (p. 41).
Loy reinterprets the Freudian Oedipal process by arguing that our primary repression is not
libidinous-sexual urges, nor the fear of death (the position existentialists take), but of anatman—
no-self—the fear of emptiness, or egolessness. Drawing from the existentialist works of
Norman O. Brown, Ernest Becker, and Ludwig Binswanger, Loy explains that the Oedipal
298 PURSER

complex is tied to a realization that the child is separate in consciousness from the mother, which
generates an attempt to become one’s own father. Essentially, a desire to become one’s own ori-
gin amounts to what Brown (1961) renamed as the Oedipal project. For existentialists like
Brown and Becker, the Oedipal project was linked to a primary repression—a denial of
death—which was compensating for by engaging in symbolic immortality projects. Becker’s
(1973) thesis on the repression and denial of death is extended to the Buddhist lack of self,
the repression of the groundlessness of the sense of self right now. Psychoanalysis tends to focus
on the past, on early object relations, and developmental fixations and the working through of
repressed memories and conditioning. In contrast, Loy’s thesis is concerned with a universal
conditioning that is the result of a deeply rooted méconnaisance: a delusive sense of self that
takes itself as separate, independent, and permanent entity. Commenting on his reinterpretation,
Loy (2003) states:

In this way Buddhism shifts our focus from the terror of death (our primary repression, according to
Becker) to the anguish of a groundlessness experienced here and now. The problem is not so much
that we will die, but that we do not feel real now. . . . In Escape From Evil Becker argues that society
is a collective immortality project. Can it also be understood as a collective reality project, a group
effort to ground ourselves? (p. 22)

Of course, without a mindfulness practice to heighten the groundlessness of the self, most
people do not suffer consciously from ‘‘derealization.’’ Rather, a culturally accepted sympto-
mology appears as various modes of overcompensation—an obsessive pursuit of fame, power,
wealth, or youth; compulsive additive behaviors; and other attempts at perpetually reconstructing
our habitual ways of perceiving and acting. In Lacanian terms, there is a clinging to the ideal ego
as a means of defending against an absence or lack. In this respect, dukkha is not only personal,
but also collective—a form of culturally conditioned suffering—which is the basis for egocentric
organizing. The problem with the Oedipal project, as Loy points out, is that it never succeeds.
All attempts at objectification of the self are ultimately doomed to failure. All reality projects,
which are symbolic ways we try to make ourselves real in the world, are compulsive substitutes
and displacements that can never fulfill our desires. For Lacan, human action is defined by lack
in the symbolic order, with its function to convey laws, values, myths, and the rules of language.
As Moncayo (2003) notes, ‘‘The core of being and of the subject is this lack of being as well as
desire to recoup the loss under language via unconscious phantasy’’ (p. 376). In this respect,
discourse and actions aimed at objectification will ensnare us in a Lacanian struggle with lack,
with no way out, except to romanticize it as a creative pathology (Driver, 2009b)—akin to the
metaphor of the tragic and struggling artist.
For Loy, however, the origin of lack is due to a primary repression that nature of the self is
fragile mental construction and is not real. The miscognition, or Buddhist méconnaissance, is
that we falsely experience our own perceived groundlessness as a lack (Watson, 1998). Loy
(2000) cogently explains his thesis:

The consequence is that the sense-of-self always has, as its inescapable shadow, a sense-of-lack,
which it always tries to escape. It is here that the theory of repression becomes so valuable, for
Freud’s concept of the return of the repressed—that what-has-been-repressed returns to conscious-
ness distorted into a symptom—shows us how to link this fundamental yet hopeless situation with
 A BUDDHIST–LACANIAN PERSPECTIVE ON LACK 299

the symbolic ways we try to overcome our sense of lack by making ourselves real in the world. We
experience this deep sense of lack as the feeling that ‘‘there is something wrong with me. (p. 12)

It is important to point out that the ego cannot escape or absolve itself of its own lack, because
the ego is a mirror image of lack—or to put it another way, the self is dukkha (Loy, 2008).
Self-identity is inherently haunted by a sense of insecurity and lack, with a gnawing feeling
and core assessment that something is missing. These experiences are palpably real as they
are supported by complex identity discourses, or stories, that validate this core assessment of
lack. Such narratives serve to bind identity, establishing a self-referencing system of meaning
that render our assessments true and factual to us (Fenner, 2007). For example, the feeling of
lack for academics could manifest as gnawing sense that one is not recognized enough among
their scholarly peers, that one needs to publish and read more, pursue more grants, apply for
endowed chair positions, go to more conferences, and so on. Such reality projects are ultimately
unsuccessful because they amount, in Lacanian terms, as imaginary projects of being or becom-
ing something. As Loy (2002) points out, ‘‘No object can ever satisfy if it is not really an object
that we want’’ (p. 5). From a Lacanian framework, this is so because reality projects are based on
fantasies of the ego-ideal; unconscious attempts to resolve lack by seeking it in the other. And
according to Moncayo (2001), ego-ideals ‘‘are still ways to attempt to suture rather than open up
the emptiness at the core of being’’ (p. 12).
However, Buddhist lack, as Loy has described, has a different etiology from that of Lacan’s.
For Lacanians, such as Driver (2005, 2009a, 2009b) and her colleagues (Arnaud, 2003; Harding,
2007), lack is unresolvable and something for which there is no cure. Such a tragic conclusion is
due to Lacan’s view that the origin of lack is the result of an unconscious trauma and loss of the
undifferentiated primal subject prior to language. Lacan does acknowledge, however, a register
of experience beyond language—and beyond dualistic concepts such as absence and presence.
The subject desires the One of the Real, but the symbolic order and imaginary register are struc-
turally incapable of accessing the Real to the subject. The Real for Lacan is a plenum, in which
there is no lack-‘‘the Real is absolutely without fissure’’ (Sarup, 1992, p. 97). Within the Laca-
nian framework, the subject is ‘‘caught in the exhilarating, tragic, and unending dance of Desire
and jouissance,’’ forever in ‘‘pursuit of petit object a, Lacan’s little-other-objects’’ (Molino,
1998b, p. 299).
Interestingly, Lacan actually opposed jouissance to desire. In his earlier works, Lacan com-
pared jouissance to mystical and religious experiences (Homer, 2004). What desire actually
seeks is the unconscious feeling-tone of jouissance, which is the consistent underlying sense that
there is always something more available. We are driven by the insatiability of our desires, and
continually disappointed, but we sense that there is some underlying potential, that there is
something more than the ephemeral desires of our ego-self. As Homer (2004) puts it, ‘‘We
do not know what it is but assume that it must be there because we are constantly dissatisfied’’
(p. 90). Lacan also linked jouissance with the production of symptomalogy and with a paradoxi-
cal situation where patients appear to enjoy their own illness or symptoms.
Driver (2009b) suggests that embracing the repeated failures of imaginary identity discourse
can allows us to reflect on how powerful we are as subjects of the unconscious. According to
Driver (2009b), because there is no escape from the lack inherent in the symbolic order, the best
we can hope for is a bitter sweet type of enjoyment, or jouissance, which at least allows us to
catch a glimpse of the creative powers of the unconscious. Based on Driver’s reading of Lacan,
300 PURSER

liberation resembles a form of ego surrender or resignation that requires a coming to terms with
the limits of desire and lack, which, in her estimation, ‘‘provides opportunities for the experience
of creative and liberating struggles with lack’’ (Driver 2009b, p. 65). However, such a formu-
lation assumes the ego is capable of such voluntaristic renunciation.
For Buddhism, implied in its third noble truth is that the struggle with lack, itself, can be lib-
erated because it is symptomatic of a primary repression of our groundlessness. In this respect, we
can never secure a sense of self or identity, because the very nature of the self does not exist—it is
fundamentally insecure, and that insecurity is experienced as a lack. The Buddhist méconnais-
sance (avijja, translated as ignorance, delusion, confusion, misperception) is that we falsely
experience our inherent groundlessness as lack, and then attempt to flee from it by trying to objec-
tify ourselves in various sorts of reality projects. Buddhist diagnosis shows how investments in
self-identity is a case of misperception, resulting in delusion and confusion, leading to a desire
to cling to phenomena that are in reality impermanent (annica) and insubstantial (anatman)
(Soeng, 2004). Pointing out this fundamental error, Watson (1998) notes, ‘‘For Buddhism this
sense of lack or deficiency arises directly from misperception, and is an unreal lack, a lack of
something which never existed and never will exist, a permanent autonomous self’’ (p. 230).
In a Derridean sense, we are clinging to a myth. From this perspective, lack becomes an invitation
for opening up to the groundlessness at our core, a potential source of creativity. Paradoxically, by
embracing groundlessness, rather than fleeing from it, we develop a fluid capacity to be or not
be anything. In some respects, the fluidity of emptiness resonates with the approach of
D. W. Winnicott, a British child psychoanalyst, whose concept of going on being and his notion
of unintegration described a healthy state in which there is an uninterrupted flow of the child, a
freedom from a fixed identity (Craig, 2008; Epstein, 2008; Winnicott, 1965).
Buddhist practice and Lacanian psychoanalysis both concede that the ego is seat of resistance
and any reliance on conventional thought and empty speech only keeps us circling endlessly within
the labyrinth of our imaginary and symbolic constructions. In this respect, both traditions rely on
unconventional and indirect methods for circumventing the will of the ego. Buddhist methods
include primarily meditation, but also discursive practices such as the nondual deconstructive logic
found in Madyamaka; debating the enigmatic, absurd, and paradoxical koans in Rinzai Zen; to vis-
ceral shock tactics (Taylor, 2009). What these unconventional methods have in common is that
they are employed as a means to decenter our familiar and common modes of representational dis-
course, effecting a deconstruction and deflation of ego. Raul Moncayo (2003), who is a Lacanian
analyst and scholar, as well as a Zen Buddhist practitioner, concurs as he states:

Both could be said to converge in the Zen formula that ‘‘true self is no-self’’ or the Lacanian-
informed formula that ‘‘true subject is no ego.’’ Both formulas illustrate the realization that the true
subject requires death or deconstruction of imaginary ego-identifications and representations. It is the
experience of no-self, of the subject as metaphor, emptiness, and quiescent energy, that grounds and
constitutes what has been called the analytic attitude, the therapeutic stance, or what Lacan calls the
subjective position of the analyst. As such, the subjective position of the analyst, as representing
no-self, the power of metaphor, and bound energy, points in the direction of the evocation of a
different state of mind than that associated with ordinary ego-experience. (p. 349)

A Buddhist-inspired Lacanian therapeutic stance is in the direction toward this extralinguistic

level of experience, the unknown Real of the unconscious which, according to Moncayo (1998b)
 A BUDDHIST–LACANIAN PERSPECTIVE ON LACK 301

‘‘signifies an ontology of a nondual being-non-being’’ (p. 185). The unconscious is a structure

‘‘with neither an outside nor an inside’’ (Sarup, 1992, p. 113), which explains why Lacan
resorted to representing it using the image of a Möbius strip, especially as a visual means to con-
ceptualize the return of the repressed.1 For Lacan, the language of the unconscious, as expressed
in the form of symptoms, is a way that the It (Das Ding) speaks (Moncayo, 2008). As previously
pointed out, the Buddhist perspective described how our repressed sense of no-self and ground-
lessness also returns to consciousness as a symptom as a feeling of lack.

CONCLUSION

Loy’s (2003) study of lack describes how our primary repression is not death anxiety, which
Becker and other existentialists have proposed, but the hidden anguish that within the core of
our being we are essentially groundless, and that fear is not in the future, but right now. From what
I have suggested so far, the Buddhist reinterpretation of lack, as Loy so eloquently points out,
argues that identity is inherently an ungroundable construct, and at this juncture joins forces with
Lacan: We can never resolve our own sense of lack by trying to become real within the symbolic
order. Because we have continuously struggled with lack—whether in a dysfunctional or so-called
creative manner—we have immunized ourselves against an inquiry into the ontological status of
the self and identity. The liberation from our struggle with lack is synonymous with becoming that
which we fear most: dwelling in the Real of no-thing-ness, groundlessness, egolessness—that
which can never be objectified or symbolized, but can be realized and expressed. Here we see
that the Buddhist Real, shunyata, is a dynamic function of emptying everything, including itself,
and should be understood as a verb, not some static state of vacuity (Abe, 1995). And because
shunyata cannot be represented or thought about conceptually, it requires an experiential radical
deconstruction of all views, carried to the point where there is no longer any desire to cling to
or reconstruct representations of ‘‘what is’’ or ‘‘what is not.’’ In the open space of no-thing-ness,
there is a freedom from having to be something or somebody, and no sense of lack.
This is not a meaningless, nihilistic nothingness, but a no-thing-ness, that is, an opening or
hole in being that goes beyond the dualism of existence versus nonexistence. It is the register
of the Buddhist Real, or shunyata, where emptiness is form, and form is emptiness (Streng,
1967). Not a nihilistic emptiness, but a dynamic unknowing knowing of all constructs that
appear as being independent, self-existing, or permanent. Not a mere void, but a radical fullness
and nonconceptual openness, in which mutual relativity and dramatic interdependency is real-
ized. In the end there is not nothingness, but compassion, wisdom, and social virtuosity.

REFERENCES

Aaronson, H. (1998). Review of psychotherapy and Buddhism: Toward an integration, by Jeffrey Rubin. Journal of
Buddhist Ethics, 5, 63–73.
Aaronson, H. (2004). Buddhist practice on western ground: Reconciling eastern ideals and western psychology. Boston:
Shambala.

1
Soto Zen master Dogen (2004) distinguishes between thinking (shiryo), not thinking (fushiryo), and nonthinking
(hishiryo). Nonthinking is no mind (mu shin). Nonthinking is not, not thinking. Dogen describes zazen as ‘‘Thinking
of not thinking.’’ When asked how to do this, he writes, ‘‘By non-thinking.’’
302 PURSER

Abe, M. (1995). The impact of dialogue with Christianity on my self-understanding as a Buddhist. In S. Heine (Ed.),
Buddhism and interfaith dialogue (pp. 52–62). Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Almaas, A. H. (1996). The point of existence: Transformations of narcissism in self-realization. Boston: Shambala.
Arnaud, G. (2003). A coach or a couch: A Lacanian perspective on executive coaching and consulting. Human Relations,
56(9), 1131–1159.
Becker, E. (1973). The denial of death. New York: Free Press.
Bion, W. R. (1963). Elements of psychoanalysis. London: William Heinemann.
Bobrow, J. (2003). Coming to life: Creative intercourse of psychoanalysis and Zen Buddhism. In C. Spezzano (Ed.), Soul
on the couch: Spirituality, religion and morality in contemporary psychoanalysis (p. 79). London: Routledge.
Bobrow, J. (2009). Zen and psychotherapy: Partners in liberation. New York: Norton.
Brazier, D. (1995). Zen therapy: Transcending the sorrows of the human mind. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Brown, D., & Engler, J. (1986). The states of mindfulness meditation: A validation study. In K. Wilber, J. Engler, &
D. Brown (Eds.), Transformations of consciousness. Boston: New Science Library.
Brown, N. O. (1961). Life against death: The psychoanalytic meaning of history. New York: Vintage.
Claxton, G. (1986). Beyond therapy: The impact of eastern religions on psychological theory and practice. London:
Wisdom Publications.
Clifford, T. (1984). Tibetan medicine and psychiatry: The diamond healing. York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser.
Craig, E. (2008). The human and the hidden: Existential wonderings about depth, soul, and the unconscious. The
Humanistic Psychologist, 36, 227–282.
Dogen, Z. (2004). Beyond thinking: A guide to Zen meditation (K. Tanahash, Ed.). Boulder, CO: Shambala.
Driver, M. (2005). From empty speech to full speech? Reconceptualizing spirituality in organizations based on a
psychoanalytically-grounded understanding of the self. Human Relations, 58(9), 1091–1100.
Driver, M. (2009a). Struggling with lack: A Lacanian perspective on organizational identity. Organization Studies, 30(1),
55–72.
Driver, M. (2009b). From loss to lack: Stories of organizational change as encounters with failed fantasies of self, work
and organization. Organization, 16, 353–369.
Eigen, M. (1998). The psychoanalytic mystic. London: Free Association Books.
Engler, J. (1998). Buddhist psychology: Contributions to Western psychological theory. In A. Molino (Ed.), The couch
and the tree: Dialogues in psychoanalysis and Buddhism (pp. 111–118). New York: North Point Press.
Engler, J. (2003). Being somebody and being nobody: A reexamination of the understanding of self in psychoanalysis
and Buddhism. In J. Safran (Ed.), Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: An unfolding dialogue (pp. 35–79). Somerville,
MA: Wisdom Publications.
Epstein, M. (1995). Thoughts without a thinker. New York: Basic Books.
Epstein, M. (1998). Beyond the oceanic feeling: Psychoanalytic study of Buddhist meditation. In A. Molino (Ed.), The
couch and the tree: Dialogues in psychoanalysis and Buddhism (pp. 119–130). New York: North Point Press.
Epstein, M. (2007). Psychotherapy without the self: A Buddhist perspective. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Epstein, M. (2008). Going on being: Life at the crossroads of Buddhism and psychotherapy. Somerville, MA: Wisdom
Publications.
Fenner, P. (2007). Radiant mind: Awakening unconditioned awareness. Boulder, CO: Sounds True.
Fenner, P. (2009). Nondual teacher training resource manual. Palo Alto, CA: Timeless Wisdom Press.
Fink, B. (1995). The Lacanian subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Finn, M., & Gartner, J. (1992). Object relations theory and religion. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Finngarette, H. (1958). Ego and mystic selflessness. Psychoanalytic Review, 45, 5–40.
Fleischman, P. R. (1998). Therapeutic action of vipassana: Why I sit. Kandy, Sri Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society.
Freud, S. (1930). Civilization and its discontents (J. Riviere, Trans.). London: Hogarth Press.
Fromm, E. (2005). The art of being. New York: Continuum International.
Fromm, E., Suzuki, D. T., & Demartino, R. (1960). Zen Buddhism and psychoanalysis. New York: Harper and Row.
Goleman, D. (1977). Varieties of the meditative experience. New York: E. P. Dutton.
Gyatso, T. (1984). Kindness, clarity and insight. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion.
Hanly, C. (1984). Ego and ideal ego. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 65, 253–261.
Harding, N. (2007). On Lacan and the becoming-ness of organizations=selves. Organization Studies, 28(11), 1761–1773.
Homer, S. (2004). Jacques Lacan. London: Routledge.
Jones, E. (1957). Life and writings of Sigmund Freud, Vol. III, The last phase 1919–1939. New York: Basic Books.
 A BUDDHIST–LACANIAN PERSPECTIVE ON LACK 303

Jung, C. (1958). Psychology and religion (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Jung, C. (1978). The collected works of Carl G. Jung. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Kohut, H. (1971). The analysis of self. New York: International Universities Press.
Lacan, J. (1977a). Ecritis. New York: Norton.
Lacan, J. (1977b). The four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis. London: Hogarth Press.
Lacan, J. (1988a). The seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book I: Freud’s papers on technique 1953–1954. New York: Norton.
Lacan, J. (1988b). The seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book II: The ego in Freud’s theory and in the technique of psycho-
analysis 1954–1955. New York: Norton.
Loy, D. (1998). Nonduality: A study in comparative philosophy. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.
Loy, D. (2000). Lack and transcendence: The problem of death and life in psychotherapy, existentialism, and Buddhism.
New York: Humanity Books.
Loy, D. (2002). A Buddhist history of the west: Studies in lack. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Loy, D. (2003). The great awakening: A Buddhist social theory. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications.
Loy, D. (2008). Money, sex, war and karma: Notes for a Buddhist revolution. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications.
Magid, B. (2003). Your ordinary mind. In J. Safran (Ed.), Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: An unfolding dialogue (pp. 35–
79). Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications.
Magid, B. (2008). Ending the pursuit of happiness: A Zen guide. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications.
McLellan, A. (2008). Lacan’s encounter with Buddhism in the seminar on anxiety. Retrieved November 10, 2009 from
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/16529744/LACANS-ENCOUNTER-WITH-BUDDHISM-IN-THE-SEMINAR-ON-
ANXIETY
Miller, A. J. (1998). On feminine sexuality, the limits of love and knowledge: Encore, the seminar of Jacques Lacan Book
XX (B. Fink, Trans.). New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
Molino, A. (1998a). The couch and the tree: Dialogues in psychoanalysis and Buddhism. New York: North Point Press.
Molino, A. (1998b). Zen, Lacan and the alien ego. In A. Molino (Ed.), The couch and the tree: Dialogues in psycho-
analysis and Buddhism (pp. 290–306). New York: North Point Press.
Moncayo, R. (1998a). The real and symbolic in Lacan, Zen, and Kabbalah’. International Journal for the Psychology of
Religion, 8(3), 179–196.
Moncayo, R. (1998b). Psychoanalysis and postmodern spirituality. Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and
Society, 3, 123–129.
Moncayo, R. (2001). The couch and the tree: Dialogues in psychoanalysis and Buddhism [Book review]. Journal of
European Psychoanalysis, 12–13.
Moncayo, R. (2003). The finger pointing at the moon: Zen practice and the practice of Lacanian psychoanalysis. In
J. Safran (Ed.), Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: An unfolding dialogue (pp. 331–386). Somerville, MA: Wisdom
Publications.
Moncayo, R. (2008). Evolving Lacanian perspectives for clinical psychoanalysis: On narcissism, sexuation, and the
phases of analysis in contemporary culture. London: Karnac Books.
Ricoeur, P. (1970). Freud and philosophy: An essay on interpretation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Rosenbaum, R. (2009). Empty mindfulness in humanistic psychotherapy. The Humanistic Psychologist, 37,
207–221.
Rubin, J. (1998). Psychotherapy and Buddhism: Towards an integration. New York: Plenum Press.
Rubin, J. (2003). Psychoanalysis is self-centered. In C. Spezzano (Ed.), Soul on the couch: Spirituality, religion and
morality in contemporary psychoanalysis (p. 79–85). London: Routledge.
Safran, J. (2003). Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: An unfolding dialogue. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications.
Samuels, R. (2002). Emerson, Lacan and Zen: Transcendental and postmodern conceptions of the Eastern subject. In
Y. Hakutari (Ed.), Postmodernity and cross-culturalism (pp. 157–167). Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickison University
Press.
Sarup, M. (1992). Jacques Lacan. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Soeng, M. (2004). Trust in mind: The rebellion of Chinese Zen. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications.
Sterba, R. V. (1934). The fate of the ego in analytic therapy. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 4, 459–469.
Stolorow, R., & Atwood, G. (1992). Contexts of being: The intersubjective foundation of psychological life. Hillsdale,
NJ: The Analytic Press.
Streng, F. (1967). Emptiness: A study in religious meaning. Nashville, NY: Abingdon.
Suler, J. (1993). Contemporary psychoanalysis and Eastern thought. Albany: State University of New York Press.
304 PURSER

Taylor, E. (2009). The Zen doctrine of No-Method. The Humanistic Psychologist, 37, 295–306.
Unno, M. (2006). Buddhism and psychotherapy across culture: Essays on theories and practices. Somerville, MA:
Wisdom Publications.
Watson, G. (1998). The resonance of emptiness: A Buddhist inspiration for a contemporary psychotherapy. London:
Routledge.
Winnicott, D. W. (1965). Ego integration in child development. In D. Winnicott (Ed.), The maturational processes and
the facilitating environment (pp. 1–295). New York: International Universities Press.

AUTHOR NOTE

Ronald E. Purser is Professor of Management in the College of Business at San Francisco State University
and past division chair of the Organization Development and Change division of the Academy of Management.
He is co-author and co-editor of five books, including The Search Conference (Jossey-Bass, 1996), Social Creativity,
Volumes 1 & 2 (Hampton Press, 1999), The Self-Managing Organization (The Free Press, 1998), and 24=7: Time and
Temporality in the Network Society (Stanford University Press, 2007). His past work has focused on temporality in
organizations, social creativity, organizations and the natural environmental, sociotechnical systems redesign of
knowledge work, organizational learning, and democratic self-management. He has published in such outlets as
Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Journal of Organizational Change Manage-
ment, Journal of Managerial Psychology, and Journal of Humanistic Psychology. He is a long-time student of
Tarthang Tulku Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist lama, and is currently a Zen student under the instruction of
Albert Low of the Montreal Zen Center.
Copyright of Humanistic Psychologist is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied
or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission.
However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.