Emptiness, Therapeutic Zen, and the Treatment of Personality Disorders
All is emptiness.
This is one of the basic tenets of all Buddhist philosophy. It springs from the concept of
no self, the denial of the ultimate existence of a self separate from the rest of reality, that
was the key insight by Siddhartha Gautama on his way to becoming the Buddha.
Emptiness is a very difficult concept to wrap one's mind around in a Western context. My
interpretation of the doctrine of emptiness is that our own precepts, cognitive constructs,
and constructed ways of viewing the world, our complex cognitive paradigms for
interpreting reality, are all at their essence illusory. They are self-creations that lack an
independence existence. They are in some respects illusory, and can be significant selfdelusions. They are insubstantial and intangible.
Our cognitive constructs are impermanent and have no lasting independent existence.
Does this mean that one ignores the perceptions and cognitions related to the real world?
Hardly. But what it does mean is that one can successfully deal with an understanding
that our cognitive construction of the world is, at its heart, empty while at the same time
successfully dealing with all of the tasks, obligations, joys, sorrows, and actions
presented to us by life.
This is a difficult concept for us in our society. We value cognitive constructs. We see the
only reality as those cognitive constructs and understandings that we share, value, pursue,
ruminate about, write of, and cherish or despise, be they illusory or not. For many of us,
or our lives are entirely spent pursuing the rational thoughts, beliefs, and conventional
perceptions we have of the world. We tend to see ourselves as too busy, too worried, too
important, too bothered, to do anything else. Occasionally, we take a vacation and step
back, for a few seconds contemplating ultimate reality, our destiny, and our ultimate fate.
These flickers are quickly extinguished, as we go back to the driven behaviors and
anxieties of modern life.
Emptiness appears to be a negative concept, but in reality it is one that is filled with near
limitless possibilities. The ability to perceive the illusions in day-to-day life is
exceedingly powerful, and puts one in control of emotional issues that might previously
have been deemed to be uncontrollable.
Dealing with the rational, somewhat illusory, driven, time-intensive cognitive constructs
that make up everyday life actually works for many of us. We are productive. We are
invested. In the face of the anxieties we create, we are steadfast. We are able to harness
our emotions, deny our emotions, or medicate our emotions such that dealing with only
one pole of reality is possible. We work hard, traveled through stages of life, become
deemed less valuable as we age, and eventually succumb hopefully feeling we have
generated some positive things in her life. Productivity and generativity are the standards
by which we measure ourselves.
This works for some people. It does not work for all. For some individuals, living solely
in this realm of this driven reality, have emotions generated by cognitive constructs that
are poorly managed and that have negative behavioral manifestations. These problems
generally come in two types. There are individuals who are clearly delusional, whose
understandings of reality are severely influenced by psychosis. These individuals respond
fearfully, angrily, aggressively, bizarrely, dejectedly, to a variety of psychotic perceptions
or beliefs.
The more difficult to treat are those whose difficulties are illusory, not delusional. These
are the individuals who are caught up in their own cognitive constructs, their own
paradigms of life, such that they are reactions are dysregulated, their emotions are out of
control, and they behave as a result in ways that are self-destructive, histrionic, and
hurtful to others. The tendencies displayed by this second group have their beginnings in
negative, unpredictable, and hurtful childhood experiences. They generally make up the
patients we state have some form of cluster B personality disorder.
It is for this second group that insight into the ultimate emptiness of our imaginings and
our perceptions of the world and insight into the basic concept of the self as an illusion
can be extremely powerful and helpful. These understandings can drain away the strong
emotions tied to everyday events. They can allow a reorientation, an understanding of the
dual nature of reality, the reality of everyday obligations with which one must deal and
additionally the ultimate reality of everything is changeable, fleeting, and also essentially
empty of substance.
Thus, all is emptiness, but emptiness can be, in fact, therapeutic.
My belief is that much of behavior is ultimately driven by basic impulses and at the root
of many of our behaviors is the fear of our ultimate fate. A deep understanding of the
impermanence of all things can be helpful in dealing with these basic fears, and can allow
one to transcend immediate stressors that are creations of our own way of viewing things.
The self, such as it exists in our mind, is completely impermanent. It is like a flame that
burns, always changing, a stream of thoughts, perceptions, and emotions that, while
displaying tendencies, displays no tangible reality. Everything changes. If one looks at
the productions of even the most famous and influential individuals in history, they are
ultimately dust.
If everything is devoid of permanence and all the mental constructs are essentially
insubstantial, this also opens up a world of possibilities. It means that in an ultimate sense
anything is possible in regard to personality, within the limits of biochemistry and
physicality. Although not easily change, it is ultimately possible to change the stream of
consciousness, to vastly alter the tendencies, to change the value placed on cognitive
constructs, to empty those constructs of their power in regard to eliciting dysregulated
emotions, to learn to quiet the mind, and to allow the negative perceptions, clutter, and
difficulties we create for ourselves to drain away. This process, like ultimately
apprehending emptiness, is not easy. But it can be exceedingly powerful in reducing
dysregulated emotions, changing histrionic reactions, reducing hyperbolic responses, and
generally allowing one to lead a more quieted contemplative existence.
It represents an eloquent and powerful exit from the emotional rollercoaster, one that has
a long, long track record of success.
This does not work for all who are emotionally dysregulated, given where they are at in
regard to their personality disorder. This is where some therapies that rely on Eastern
concepts can fail. There are powerful aspects of personality disordered behavior in which
individuals have investment. They would not engage in behaviors if this was not so. For
those with a great investment in their pathology, these techniques can become just
another illusory pursuit, part of the “therapy game” many have played for years. For
individuals who receive compensation for their symptoms, either monetarily or through
the manipulation of their environment, these techniques will be totally ineffective until a
realization of the true meaning and power of the personality disordered behavior in
confronted and clearly recognized by the individual, and furthermore change will require
that the individual sees a more powerful alternative in giving up these symptoms and
behaviors.
Therapies that ignore the power of personality disordered symptoms are doomed to fail.
One cannot expect to do anything about these powerful problematic behaviors if one does
not confront the behaviors and the ultimate reinforcers that lie behind them. It may also
help to understand the origins of these behaviors in terms of early family environment,
although this can be used as an excuse for hanging on to these behaviors. Therapies that
attempt to help the personality disorder patient by "going with the flow" are ultimately
destructive, as they tend to reinforce the patient's psychopathology. Therapy is that create
concepts such as "repressed memories", alternate parts of self, or disjointed aspects of
personality are also politically unhelpful as they substitute one set of illusory concepts for
another.
Therapy that is illusory is ultimately ineffectual, at least in terms of helping one to
transcend the dysregulated aspects of a personality disorder. These therapies may be
effective in other ways, but these ways mostly have to do with meeting the needs of the
therapist as opposed to the patient.
As we go forward, we will examine in depth how one goes about studying concepts from
Zen in the contest of western psychotherapy, how hurdles to these understandings in the
regard to the personality disordered patient can be overcome, how the application of these
principles can bring about a reduction in the emotional dysregulation, and how these
powerful techniques can maintain their potency over time. We will discuss in depth he
perceiving of the great illusions in life, and the power of maintaining one foot in the
world and it’s precepts and the other planted in the understanding of the powerful Zen
concepts of no self and emptiness.