The Ultimate Rx: Cutting Through the Delusion of Self-cherishing
Western and Buddhist psychologies acknowledge the significant role distorted self-narratives play in poor mental health. But these two disciplines hold divergent views on the utility of “cherishing the self.” Western psychology claims high self-esteem is
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Lisa Dale Miller
Introduction Western and Buddhist psychologies acknowledge the significant role distorted self-narratives play in poor mental health. But these two disciplines hold divergent views on the utility of “cherishing the self.” Western psychology claims high self-esteem is a requirement for self-confidence, happiness, and success. Buddhist psychology asserts wisdom and compassion are the forerunners of genuine confidence and sustainable personal and collective well-being. It further states that endemic selfcherishing—the habitual reification of distorted hyper-egoic self-narratives—is a primary source of mental and emotional affliction. Yet, Buddhist psychology also affirms the innate capacity of all human beings to awaken from avidyā, the mental suffering of self-cherishing. This chapter explicates Western and Buddhist psychological models of self, Buddhist theories of not-self, and conventional and ultimate selfcherishing, and outlines a clinical approach that help patients recognize self-cherishing mentation and lessen its deleterious effects. Reducing cognitive–affective fixation on self-narratives of exceptionality or brokenness increases capacity for accurate self-evaluation and self-regulation. This clinical method focuses on imparting the following skills: cultivating greater meta-awareness
L.D. Miller (&) Los Gatos, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected]
and mindful self-reflectivity; engaging in dialogic inquiry to distinguish distorted inner narratives from experiential reality; and sustaining awareness of the actuality of experience through intentional use of embodied presencing. The dialectic, somatopsychotherapeutic, and experiential quality of these skills make them easy to learn and self-apply. As the chapter’s patient accounts illustrate, cutting through self-cherishing is particularly beneficial for individuals struggling with depressive, anxious, trauma-related symptoms, chronic illnesses, and addictions.
Western Psychology on the Self William James’ seminal chapter “The Consciousness of Self” (1890) launched psychology’s phenomenological study of the self. That approach was eclipsed in the early twentieth century by psychoanalysis and behaviorism (Leary and Tangney 2003). It took several more decades for innovators from object relations psychology (Horney 1950; Adler 1964), self-actualization psychology (Maslow 1973), and cognitive behavioral psychology (Beck 1979) to reignite investigation into the characteristics of a healthy self, and explore the role distorted self-narratives play in neurosis, anxiety, depression, and psychosis. By the late twentieth century, three new research methods—systems modeling, examining the self in context, and seeking the neural
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 R.E. Purser et al. (eds.), Handbook of Mindfulness, Mindfulness in Behavioral Health, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-44019-4_22
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correlates of self—led to the current consensus view of self as a constructed, process-oriented, and context-adaptive system (Damasio 2
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