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Conceptions of the Self in Western and Eastern Psychology
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Yozan Dirk Mosig
University of Nebraska at Kearney
Abstract
The concept of the self in Western psychology derives primarily from the work of Freud, Jung, and Rogers. To
some extent Western formulations of the self evidence a
homunculus-like quality lacking in some Eastern conceptions, especially those derived from the Vijnanavada and
Zen Buddhist traditions. The Buddhist notion of self circumvents reification, being an impermanent gestalt
formed by the interaction of five skandhas or aggregates
(form, feelings, perceptions, impulses, consciousness).
Each skandha is in turn a transient pattern formed by the
interaction of the other four. The fifth skandha includes
eight consciousnesses, one of which results in the experience of the ego or self as homunculus, which Buddhist
psychology rejects as delusion. Implications for psychotherapy and everyday life are discussed.
The concept of the Self takes many forms in Western psychology,
but invariably involves to some extent a dimension of “thingness,” the
reification of a homunculus assumed to reside within the individual,
who is the thinker of thoughts, the doer of deeds, and the feeler of
feelings. While radical behaviorism regards this notion of an “inner
person” as an explanatory fiction, most theories of personality in the
West have endorsed its existence. The psychology of Buddhism, on the
other hand, rejects the notion of an inner self and proposes a radically
different view, where thoughts exist without a thinker, deeds without a
doer, and feelings without a feeler. This paper will compare and contrast these differing views emerging from Western and Eastern psychology, and examine their relevance for psychotherapy and everyday
life.
The origins of the notion of an inner self in Western psychology and
philosophy are found in the idea of the soul in the Judeo-Christian
tradition, which notion was actually derived in part from the writings
of Philo, a Jewish theologian, and Plotinus, a pagan neo-Platonic philosopher. The theological dimensions of the concept of soul were elaborated by Augustine of Hippo as well as by Thomas Aquinas, from
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where it passed into the hands of Rene Descartes, and from there,
almost unchanged, but referred to as “mind,” into the realm of 19th
and 20th century psychology. Essentially the soul, mind, or self was
viewed as an inner substance or entity, different from the body, in
charge of volitional processes, essentially a “little man inside of the
head,” a homunculus within the individual, ultimately responsible for
the person’s thoughts and actions.
Sigmund Freud (1940) offered a complex model of this inner self in
his tripartite analysis of the human personality into id, ego, and superego, which became a distinguishing feature of his psychoanalytic theory. While the unconscious and non-rational id stood for the biological
component of the personality, and the superego, another non-rational
agency, for the internalized social dimensions of the individual, it was
particularly the rational ego, who functioned as the homuncular executor of the personality. The ego in turn served as the model for the self
in a number of theories developed by those who wrote in the wake of
Freud.
Alfred Adler (1927) proposed the notion of a “creative self” which
interpreted both the innate abilities and the experiential components
of the individual, developing a style of life to compensate for perceived
inferiorities and achieve a degree of personal competence and superiority under the influence of an innate “social interest” or Gemeinschaftsgefuehl. Karen Horney (1950) distinguished between the “real
self” and the “idealized self,” the former being regarded as a unique
central inner force common to all people and the latter as a fantasy
resulting from social pressures and expectations. According to Horney,
the congruence of the “real self” and the “idealized self” is the hallmark of a healthy personality. Erich Fromm (1964) specified unique
human needs that must be satisfied in order to achieve self-fulfillment,
and argued that no human society had yet been developed that successfully met the needs of the self. Gordon Allport (1961) made an
interesting distinction between the self-as-object and the self-asknower, asserting that the former could be approached with the
descriptive tools of psychology while the latter was to remain a subject
for philosophical speculation, outside of the realm of science. Since it is
the self-as-knower that labels and classifies the characteristics of the
self-as-object, it stands for a homunculus whose own inner self cannot
be reached without infinite regression into absurdity. It was precisely
this inner self that was rejected by B. F. Skinner (1971) and the radical
behaviorists as “explanatory fiction.”
Perhaps it was Carl Gustav Jung (Jacobi, 1942) who provided the
most significant expansion of the homuncular thesis in psychology. He
did so by distinguishing between the ego as center of consciousness
and the self as the emergent integration of the polarities of the personality. With Jung the self, transcending the ego, became ultimately iden-
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tical with the whole psyche. The self-realization of Jung became the
model for the concept of self-actualization in the humanistic psychologies of Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers, and it was the latter who
added a phenomenological dimension to the self. Rogers (1951)
defined the self as “an organized, fluid, but consistent conceptual pattern of perceptions of characteristics and relationships of the ‘I’ or
‘me,’ together with values attached to these concepts.” However,
despite emphasizing a pattern-like notion of the self, his allusions to
the “self-structure,” as well as the suggestion that the self can actually
revise or modify the structure of the self, retain a homuncular quality,
albeit not as sharply drawn as that of his predecessors. The fuzzier
Rogerian self does offer some points of commonality with the Eastern
conception of the non-self, as will be clear from the discussion that
follows.
Although some Eastern conceptions of the self, most notably those
derived from Hinduism, which center on the Vedic notion of the atman
or soul, are similar to Western ideas of the self, Buddhist psychology
provides a radically different interpretation. The Buddhist notions of
the self are derived from the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, better
known as Shakyamuni Buddha, or simply Buddha (“the one who is
awake”), after his experience of enlightenment under the bodhi tree
over 2,500 years ago. The psychological commentaries of the Buddha,
collected in the Abhidharma Pitaka, were further elaborated in India
by Vasubandhu nine centuries later, providing the basis for the Yogacara or Vijnanavada conceptions of consciousness and the self.
Reification is the process by which the mind makes a thing (res), or a
material object, out of a concept or an abstraction. By extension, it is
making a thing out of a form, a shape, a configuration, a Gestalt, a
perception, or an image. It is to “thing” an event or a phenomenon, to
transform an ongoing, fluid process, into a frozen and static spatial or
temporal cross-section of the same, endowing such construction with
the qualities of reality and separateness. Vasubandhu understood that
every single object differentiated by the mind out of its global and
holistic experience is created by this process, including the concept of
the individual self, the “I” or “me.” Reifications are little more than
delusions, and refer to momentary states remembered from the past
experience of the person (whose concept of himself or herself as a separate individual is itself a reification). People constantly act, behave,
and live out their lives as if reifications were actually real, separate
entities, rather than the delusory constructions of the mind.
Language has developed as a system of communication for myriads
of reified concepts, and consequently consists primarily of reified
labels. These labels tend to perpetuate the illusion that reified concepts
are actually real, existing objects, for their reality seems to be attested
to by the very fact that labels exists for each of them. Language auto-
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matically fosters further reifications, in a vicious cycle which prevents
the individual from effectively communicating in a non-reifying, nondualistic manner. This is one of the reasons why “ultimate reality” is
essentially “ineffable.” As Lao Tze put it, “the tao that can be told is
not the real Tao.”
Buddhist training consists largely of short-circuiting the reification
process, by using non-verbal, non-labeling experiential practice (such
as meditation) to become “awakened” to the “as-it-is-ness” of inexpressible reality. Because of the delusory nature of any labeling process, with its consequent reifications, any attempt to offer a name for
the unnamable Reality must always fall short, although sages have
offered terms such as Thusness, Tathagatagarba, Buddha Nature,
Dharmakaya, Suchness, the Big Self, the Absolute, or the Tao.
According to Walpola Rahula (1974), “Buddhism stands unique in
the history of human thought in denying the existence of a [separate]
soul, self, or atman. According to the teaching of the Buddha, the idea
of a [personal] self is an imaginary, false belief which has no corresponding reality, and it produces harmful thoughts of “me” and
“mine,” selfish desire, craving, attachment, hatred, ill-will, conceit,
pride, egoism, and other defilements, impurities and problems. It is the
source of all the troubles in the world, from personal conflicts to wars
between nations. In short, to this false view can be traced all the evil in
the world.”
It is important to realize what is meant by the “self” rejected by the
Buddha as illusory. Not only are human beings declared to lack a soul
or self, but so is everything else: rivers, mountains, this paper, and your
pencil, all lack a separate self. What this means is that they cannot have
any existence except in terms of the interconnected net of causal conditions that made their existence possible. All things (including human
beings) are composites, in other words, they are composed of parts,
and have no real existence other than as temporary (impermanent)
collections of parts. They are essentially patterns, configurations, or
Gestalten rather than objectively existing separate entities. They possess no separate essence, self, or soul that could exist by itself, apart
from the component parts and conditions.
Consider, for example, an automobile. Does it have an essence or a
“soul” when separated from its component parts? Does it have any
real existence apart from its parts? One could try the following mental
exercise. Removing one of the tires of the car, one could ask oneself, is
this the car? Successively taking away the windshield, a door, a piston,
a bolt, the radiator cap, and continuing until the last piece of metal,
plastic, glass, or rubber has been removed, one would never find the
part which, if removed, transforms what remains into a non-car. Such
part, if found, would have represented the essence or the “soul” of the
car, and yet it was nowhere to be found. Now all we have is a pile of
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parts—where is the car? At which point did the car disappear? If we
reflect carefully we are left with the realization that there never was a
car there—all that was there was a conglomerate of parts temporarily
connected in a certain way, so as to result in a particular mode of functioning, and “car” was just a convenient label to designate this working
arrangement. The word “car” is nothing but a label for the gestalt
formed by the constituent parts, and although it is true (as realized by
Wertheimer and the other Gestaltists) that the whole is more than the
sum of the parts (one cannot drive sitting on any of the separate parts,
or on a random heap of them, but driving is possible when one puts
them together in a certain way), it is equally true that a gestalt cannot
continue to exist when separated from its parts. The gestalt, the
“whole,” cannot exist by itself; it does not have a separate self or
“soul.”
But what about a person? According to Buddhist psychology, what
we call a “person” is the composite of five groups of elements or
skandhas. The skandhas are form, feelings, perceptions, impulses, and
consciousness. Just as an automobile is a temporary collection of car
parts, a person is a temporary arrangement of these five aggregates or
skandhas. There is no separate, independent self or soul that would be
left if we removed form (which includes the body), feelings, perceptions, impulses, and consciousness. While these aggregates are
together, the functioning gestalt we call a person exists; if they are
removed, the gestalt ceases to be. For this reason, the self can be said to
be “empty” of reality when separated from its component aggregates—a view of the self radically different from Western perspectives.
But it is not only the self that is empty, and cannot exist by itself; the
skandhas themselves are also empty.
The five skandhas, like everything else, are dependently arisen, and
cannot exist by themselves. Take the form of one’s body, for example.
What would remain of it, if one removed one’s perception of it, one’s
feelings about it, one’s impulses to act on it or with it, and one’s conscious awareness of it? Form is empty of reality when separated from
perceptions, feelings, impulses, and consciousness. And what about
feelings? They also cannot exist by themselves. Feelings are feelings
about something, about one’s body, one’s perceptions, one’s impulses,
one’s state of consciousness. The same is true of the remaining
skandhas—each one is composed of the other four. They are in a state
of interdependent co-origination, they inter-are (Hanh, 1988).
The teaching of “dependent origination” is at the core of the Buddha’s teaching or Dharma. In its simplest expression, dependent origination is a law of causality that says “this is, because that is; this is not,
because that is not; when this arises, that arises; when this ceases, that
ceases.” Despite the apparent simplicity of this formulation, it is a farreaching principle, that leaves nothing untouched, and, in fact, causally
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connects everything in the universe, for it implies that all phenomena,
whether they be external objective events or internal subjective experiences, come into existence depending on causes and conditions without which they could not be. These causes and conditions can
themselves be either internal mental states or external events.
Borrowing an example from Hanh (1988), consider a piece of paper:
it can be, because a tree was, since the tree had to be in order to be cut
down to make the paper. This same piece of paper, is also because
there was rain and sunshine, for without them the tree could not have
grown. The same is true for the seed and the fertile soil, and for the
logger who cut the tree down, for without them, the tree would not
have been there for the paper to be. But for the logger to be, his parents had to be, and the food they consumed, and all the conditions that
made their lives possible, and those lives upon which theirs in turn
depended, and on, and on. There is no end to this causal interconnectedness. Everything in the universe is connected to this piece of
paper through a web of causal conditions. If the component conditions
are regarded as elements, we can say that this piece of paper is composed of non-paper elements, or, in other words, that conditions other
than the paper itself are necessary for the paper to exist. Stated differently, the paper cannot exist by itself; it lacks a separate self, soul, or
essence. The same is true for anything else in the universe, including a
person. It is also true of cognitive or mental states, because for every
emotion, for every perception, for every thought, there are necessary
causal conditions without which they would not have come into being.
Everything is dependently arisen, everything exists only if the necessary conditions are there. This means that nothing is ever truly independent or separate from everything else.
The interconnectedness, or “interbeing,” of everything in the universe, implied in the principle of dependent origination, finds an elegant expression in the metaphor of the jewel net of Indra, in the
Buddha’s “Flower Ornament” sermon (Avatamsaka Sutra). In this
sutra, the universe is likened to an infinite net, stretching out in all
directions, in which at every intersection of two strands is found a precious jewel. Each of these jewels reflects the whole net, so that the
entire universe is contained in each part of it (Loy, 1993). The Buddha
conceived of the universe as composed of an infinite number of dharmas, which are described as “point-instants” having infinitesimal
extension and only momentary duration, somewhat analogous to the
particle-waves of quantum physics (Soeng, 1991).
The following exercise makes the same point experientially. Close
your hand into a fist and look at it. What do you see? A fist. Is it real?
It certainly seems to be. Now open your fingers. What happened to the
“real” thing called “fist” that was there a moment ago? Where did it
go? Now consider your self, your ego. Is it real? Certainly. Or is it?
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What would remain of it if you removed form, feelings, perceptions,
impulses, and consciousness? Just like the term “fist” is a convenient
label to designate a particular (and transient) arrangement of the fingers, the term “self” or “I” is nothing but a label for an impermanent
arrangement of the skandhas. There is no little man inside of the head,
no thinker of thoughts, no doer of deeds, no inner ego or self, other
than the temporary gestalt formed by the skandhas. This is the Buddha’s concept of anatta, and this is why the Buddha declared the self an
illusion.
But the concept of anatta does not negate the person, nor does it
diminish it. On the contrary, it empowers the individual by erasing the
boundaries of separateness that limit the personal ego or self. The person becomes transformed from an isolated and powerless individual
struggling against the rest of the world, into an interconnected integral
part of the universe. The person’s boundaries dissolve, and the person
becomes the universe. This is the realization known as enlightenment,
the emergence of the big self, the Self with capital S, which is boundless. In the words of the Zen Master Sekito Kisen (700-790), a sage has
no self, yet there is nothing that is not himself (Mosig, 1998).
This can be grasped best with another metaphor, often found in
Buddhist literature. Consider a wave in the ocean. It has no reality
separate from the water, and although its form seems to last as it continues to move on the surface of the ocean, it is composed each
moment of different water particles. It seems so real, and yet, if we
look deeply, we can see that there is no thing called “wave” there at
all; all there is, is the movement of the water. The wave has no separate
“self,” no reality apart from the water. But now look again: where are
the boundaries of the wave? Where does the wave end and the rest of
the ocean start? In reality, it has no boundaries, the wave and the
ocean are one, the wave is the ocean, and the ocean is the wave—the
separation was just an illusion created by our perceptions and by the
words we use to describe them. Now stretch your imagination, and
assume for a moment that the collection of elements forming the wave
had resulted in the phenomenon of consciousness. As long as the wave
was unaware of the nature of the ocean, believing itself to be separate
and independent of it, it might develop attachments and aversions,
fears, jealousies, and worries about its size, its purpose, its importance,
its possessions, or its destination. Clearly any such concerns would vanish instantly upon realizing the water-nature of the ocean, and its oneness with it. In the same way, all human problems and suffering
disappear when the illusion of a separate self is eliminated.
The exhilarating and liberating effect of dissolving the illusion of the
“I,” “me,” or “self” is reflected in these words by Achaan Chah:
Hey, listen! There is no one here, just this. No owner, no
one to be old, to be young, to be good or bad, weak or
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strong. . . no one born, and no one to die. . . . When we
carry a burden, it is heavy; when there is no one to carry
it, there is not a problem in the world! (Kornfield &
Breiter, 1985, p. 174)
Since upon realizing the universal oneness of all, the “selfless Self,”
everyone and everything is oneself, this transcendent wisdom generates universal compassion and caring of everyone as oneself. To hurt
another becomes to hurt oneself; to help another is to help oneself.
True wisdom is automatically manifested as universal compassion, just
as true compassion manifests itself as wisdom. Wisdom and compassion are dependently arisen, they “inter-are.” In the final analysis, wisdom is compassion, and compassion is wisdom (Mosig, 1989).
The psychological insights of the Buddha were explicated by a number of commentators after him. One of the most important ones was
Vasubandhu, an oustanding Buddhist scholar living in the 4th century.
He was a founder of the school known as the Vijnanavada (“path of
knowledge”) or Yogacara (“application of yoga”), and the author of
one of the most important books of Buddhist psychology, the
Abhidharmakosa.
According to Vasubandhu, all that can be experienced to exist is
“mind only,” or the mental processes of knowing. There is experience,
but there is no subject (no atman) having the experience. Vijnana, or
“consciousness,” the last of the five skandhas, is a multi-layered concept, including both conscious and unconscious aspects. There are
eight consciousnesses, not just one. The first five correspond to the five
basic sense fields, and share the same level of depth. They are the consciousnesses of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. Below
is the manovijnana, the integrating basis of the five sense consciousnesses, which has functions such as knowing, evaluating, imagining,
conceiving, and judging. It is essentially a perceptual and cognitive
processing center. Next comes manas (“mind”), where complex thinking and awareness takes place based on the information processed at
the previous level. It is here where the illusion of a subjective “I” or
“ego” arises. Being aware of the phenomenon of awareness results in
the mistaken notion of an inner perceiver who is having the awareness
and who is separate from it. This false sense of self or ego-individuality
defiles the first six consciousnesses and is the source of all sort of psychological problems and delusions. Finally comes the vast unconscious
alayavijnana, or “storehouse consciousness,” which is the passive or
potential ground out of which emerge the other seven consciousnesses.
It is the repository of all potential activities of the other consciousnesses. These potentials exist in the form of “seeds” (bija) (Hanh, 1974,
Epstein, 1995). These “seeds,” upon development, produce all sorts of
mental phenomena. Furthermore, in the alayavijnana, the “seeds”
affect each other in various ways. These “seeds” are “watered” by con-
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scious activities, so that, for example, engaging in kind or compassionate thoughts makes the seeds of compassion ripen and grow (i.e.,
become more powerful), so that it will be easier to think compassionately next time. Allowing oneself to indulge in anger or hatred waters
the corresponding seeds, so that it becomes easier to grow angry and to
experience hate. This is why mindfulness of thoughts is so important,
and why the “right effort” aspect of the Eightfold Path deals with cutting off negative or destructive thoughts as soon as they appear, while
nurturing positive ones. This develops positive mental habits rooted in
the seeds of the alayavijnana, and has far-reaching effects on the life
and well-being of the individual.
The alayavijnana is a vast unconscious realm, which is often compared to a stream, constantly flowing and renewing itself. If the individual is likened to a wave in the ocean, then the alayavijnana is the
unconsciousness (or subconsciousness) of the ocean, providing the
continuity of the karmic process. Jung’s collective unconscious is the
closest concept in Western psychology, with the archetypes being
somewhat analogous to “seeds,” but the Buddhist concept is vaster and
more dynamic, allowing as it does for the “seeding” of the unconscious
(Hanh, 1991). Although the archetypes in the Jungian collective
unconscious manifest themselves in dreams and visions, the individual
cannot modify their character. The “seeds” of the alayavijnana, on the
other hand, can be made stronger or weaker through selective attentional and reactive phenomena.
The eight consciousnesses should not be conceived as separate, but
rather as eight manifestations or functions of an ongoing process.
Think of a room illuminated by seven lightbulbs. The illumination is
one ongoing phenomenon, integrating the contributions of the individual bulbs. In this example, the electricity that activates them is the
equivalent of the alayavijnana. There are eight consciousnesses, and
yet these are ultimately one (Epstein, 1995).
The psychotherapeutic applications of Eastern and Western psychology have been examined by a number of authors (e.g., Watts, 1961;
Goleman, 1981; Loy, 1992). Both aim at effecting a positive change in
the mode of functioning and the lifestyle of the individual. However,
Western psychotherapy is designed to effect such change in persons
experiencing psychological or behavioral disorders, while Eastern disciplines affect primarily the practical everyday life of normal or healthy
individuals. Buddhist psychology is concerned with the alleviation of
the unnecessary suffering caused by the delusion of the separate self in
human beings in general. The delusion of separateness results in cravings, grasping, clinging, greed, selfishness, hatred, fear, feelings of
alienation, loneliness, helplessness, and anxiety, which afflict those
“healthy” as well as “unhealthy.”
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Western psychotherapy, in its efforts to heal the neurotic individual,
attempts to strengthen the ego, or to foster the development of a
stronger “self,” and yet it is this very notion of self which Buddhist
psychology sees as the root cause of human suffering. Eastern psychotherapy attempts to dissolve the experience of the self-as-separateentity and replace it with a feeling of interconnectedness, the non-self
or selfless Self implied in the Buddhist concept of anatta. This radical
change is seen as the key to liberation from dukkha, the dissatisfaction
and suffering of human existence.
Nevertheless, it is not enough for the healthy, liberated individual to
eliminate the delusion of the separate self. While understanding universal interconnectedness and absolute reality, the emptiness or nothingness of Buddhism, the person needs at the same time to experience reality in the relative sense, where individual identities exist. The
integration of the two levels of awareness, the absolute and the relative, is essential for the normal functioning of the healthy human being
in society. When crossing the street, it is not enough to contemplate an
approaching car and to realize that we are one with it. Although it is
true that the car, the road, our bodies, and everything else are nothing
more than temporary collections of countless particles (or fluctuations
of energy, at the quantum level of analysis) and that all there is, is an
ocean of energy, where car, road, and person have no more reality
than the transient shape of a wave on the surface of the ocean, unless
we act in the relative plane, and get out of the way of the car, the
collection of skandhas that allows this awareness to occur will be
promptly dissolved. What is needed is appropriate action in the relative world, while maintaining awareness of the big picture. This larger
awareness guides the individual in compassionate action, and eliminates unnecessary worries and suffering about impermanent events,
which can now be accepted as the momentary contents of reality.
The different conceptions of the self in Western and Eastern psychology have clear implications for psychotherapy and everyday life.
Despite their differences an integration of Western and Eastern
approaches may be possible or even necessary. It could be argued that
the self needs to be strengthened before it can be abandoned. Culture
may play a critical role in this process. The delusion of the separate self
is likely to be stronger in individuals raised in individualistic societies,
such as those of Europe and America, and may be weaker in collectivistic societies, such as those of China or Japan, where the harmony
(wah) of the group takes precedence over the needs of the individual.
Western approaches may be extremely valuable in giving the person
(primarily in individualistic societies, but to some extent also in collectivistic ones) sufficient self-confidence and maturity to discard egocenteredness. This in turn prepares the individual to transcend the isolation of the separate self through the realization of the universal inter-
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connectedness stressed by Buddhist psychology as the gateway to
wisdom and compassion.
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Author Note
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to
Yozan Dirk Mosig, Department of Psychology, University of Nebraska
at Kearney, Kearney, Nebraska 68849. E-mail: mosigy@unk.edu