Psychoanalysis & Buddhism
with Gerald Fogel, MD

This course is organized around Gerald Fogel’s paper, “My lives in psychoanalysis and Buddhism,” a chapter in the book, Freud and the Buddha: The Couch and the Cushion, edited by Axel Hoffer. Unlike much prior literature comparing and contrasting psychotherapy and meditation, Fogel provides detailed accounts of personal experiences over the many years he has practiced both psychoanalysis and Buddhist meditation. His evocative vignettes, like good clinical material should, allow a reader to align personal experience with the usually more abstract descriptions of the core assumptions, techniques, goals, and values of each practice.

Topics covered include psychotherapeutic effects of meditation, differences between therapeutic and spiritual goals, differences in the relationship between guide and guided in each tradition, and the emerging synthesis in contemporary psychoanalysis, with its relational, existential, and developmental emphasis. This synthesis has created theory more congenial for developing common language and integration of meditative and therapeutic points of view. Works of Bion, Bobrow, Loewald, Ogden, Winnicott and others are taken up in detail. Additional papers from Hoffer’s book are included, as well as his unpublished manuscript that asserts the radical idea that two-person psychology may create “two-person meditation.”

Learning Objectives: The participant will be able to

1. Develop the capacity to discuss with patients the psychotherapeutic effects of meditation.
2. Deepen the ability to clarify and explain the differences between therapeutic and spiritual goals.
3. Recognize and be able to explain the differences between the roles of spiritual teachers and therapists in relation to those they teach or treat.
4. Acquire knowledge of the relational and developmental advances in psychoanalytic theory that create common language to compare and contrast meditation and psychotherapy.

Where:           Oregon Psychoanalytic Center
When:            October 6, October 13, October 20, October 27 
Time:              7-8:30pm
CME Credits: 6

Package with Axel Hoffer, MD Program on Nov. 12th:  $250 (saves $85)
Registration Fee: $200.00
Professional Level Member Rate: $180.00
Students/Residents: Call for rate and to register.

Register Here