Buddhism and Psychotherapy:
A Healing Partnership
A BCBS Path Program with Pilar Jennings
December 15, 2022 - December 17, 2023
This program explores the meeting point of Buddhist psychology and Western psychotherapy. For more than half a century, there’s been a growing interest in the relevance of Buddhist meditation and psychology to psychodynamic treatment. Carl Jung, along with Karen Horney, Nina Coltart, and many others across clinical orientations, have explored how a Western psychotherapeutic approach to healing could be enhanced by a Buddhist understanding of suffering and its end. Together we will explore how these contrasting traditions approach the roots of personal and collective suffering, and how their complementary though divergent methods offer increased opportunities for healing when used in tandem.
For clinicians, this program will provide an exploration of how the clinical treatment of common psychological struggles including depression and anxiety, as well as more complex forms of trauma, may be supported by Buddhist insights and methods for both patients and therapists. For meditators, this program will offer ways to address the psychological content that can arise in spiritual practice through a psychotherapeutic approach to inner life and its development. Together we will consider the foundational concepts addressed in both Buddhist and psychotherapeutic teachings, including the nature of self, identity, loss, and efforts at healing.
Program Overview
Prerequisite Some prior exposure to Buddhist meditation and the healing arts
Residential Course dates December 15 – 18, 2022
June 9 – 12, 2023
December 14 - 17, 2023
Duration 12 months
Tuesday Zoom Gatherings 7:00 – 8:30 PM Eastern Time, 4:00 – 5:30 Pacific Time Monthly 90 minute live small group discussions
Continuing Education Credits 10 CEs have been applied for per retreat
Time commitment outside of retreat: Participants are encouraged to develop an on-going meditation practice that may include mindfulness breathwork, prayer and mantra recitation, or visualizations. This practice can accommodate all work schedules, so that it becomes something easily incorporated into daily life. During the retreats, instruction and texts will be provided to support this practice. Additional moderate time commitment for readings to be explored during monthly zoom meetings.
Participation Expectation: In order to create an experience that is inclusive and healing for all retreatants, participants are encouraged to bring a sense of friendly curiosity and respect to the material we explore, and to the divergent responses from fellow retreatants. In this way, we will mutually support an optimal environment for learning, self-reflection, and generative engagement.
Prerequisites: None, although some prior exposure to Buddhist meditation and the healing arts will be helpful.
Buddhism & Psychotherapy Path Program and Schedule
Buddhism & Psychotherapy I:
Working with Self & No-Self: An Integrated approach to subjectivity
December 15–18, 2022
Residential
In this module, we will explore the Buddhist teachings of anatta, or no-self, in conversation with a Western psychological understanding of self and its development. We will read classic Buddhist texts and their commentaries, alongside developmental and psychoanalytic texts exploring how selfhood is formed within the parent/infant dyad and in family systems. With an emphasis on the need for a well-developed sense of personhood, or subjectivity, we will explore the model of spiritual mentor/student, in contrast with the therapist/patient model in in psychotherapy. Themes will include the Buddhist and psychotherapeutic understanding of mind, as the foundation of selfhood, and how it is shaped in the context of relationship.
Tuesday Zoom Gatherings
7:00 – 8:30 PM Eastern Time, 4:00 – 5:30 Pacific Time
First Set
Jan 17, Feb 21, March 21, April 18
Topics will include:Self and self-experience from a Buddhist psychological perspective
A developmental and intersubjective understanding of self
Buddhist & psychoanalytic methods for mindfulness and reflective function
Clinical supervision for contemplative psychotherapy
Exploration of healing dyads
Buddhism & Psychotherapy II:
Compassion & Working with Difficult Emotions
June 9 – 12, 2023
Residential
In this module, we will explore the role of compassion in the Buddhist and psychotherapeutic traditions with an emphasis on our emotionality. In the West, it is common for people to pursue Buddhist spiritual practice in order to better understand and heal their relationship to powerful and challenging emotions, including anger, despair, envy, and fear. Similarly, most patients pursue treatment having struggled with these emotions and their contribution to feelings of depression and anxiety. In both traditions, there are far-ranging and divergent methods for responding to the suffering of our emotional lives predicated on the ability to care about emotional suffering and respond with patience and skill. We will read Buddhist commentaries on the critical role of compassion in restoring our well-being, alongside psychoanalytic authors who emphasized compassion as a central healing modality in clinical work, including Sandor Ferenczi, Bernard Brandchaft, and Donna Orange.
Tuesday Zoom Gatherings
7:00 – 8:30 PM Eastern Time, 4:00 – 5:30 Pacific Time
Second Set
July 18, Sep 19, Oct 17, Nov 21
Topics will include:Relationship to Affect - a Buddhist and Psychotherapeutic approach
Explorations of aggression and anger
Working with depression and anxiety
The role of compassion in therapeutic listening
Complexity of self-compassion
Clinical supervision
Buddhism & Psychotherapy III:
Obstacles and their Resolution on the Healing Path
December 14 – 17, 2023
Residential
In this last module, we will explore the various obstacles faced when pursuing healing in these traditions. Bringing a Western psychological lens to meditation practice, we will examine the unconscious dynamics that can impede a meditation practice, including the role of unworked through struggles with self-esteem, dissociative tendencies, and efforts at control. We will also explore the difficulties both patients and therapists face in psychotherapeutic treatment, including enactments, transferential dynamics, and protective defenses. We will read contemporary authors conversant in both traditions, including Jack Engler and Jeffrey Rubin, to better understand the role of common obstacles, and the noble efforts to resolve them.
Program Fees
Buddhism & Psychotherapy I:
Working with Self & No-Self: An Integrated approach to subjectivity
December 15-18, 2022
Supported Mid Level Sustaining Benefactor
$327 $417 $537 $687
Buddhism & Psychotherapy II:
Compassion & Working with Difficult Emotions
June 9-12, 2023
Supported Mid Level Sustaining Benefactor
$372 $462 $582 $732
Buddhism & Psychotherapy III:
Obstacles and their Resolution on the Healing Path
December 14-17, 2023
Supported Mid Level Sustaining Benefactor
$372 $462 $582 $732
Participants in the Path program commit to attending all three residential retreats as well as the online components in between. Fees for online components are included in the cost. Payments may be split as above and are due before the start of each of the residential modules.
Total
Supported Total
Mid Level Total
Sustaining Total
Benefactor
$1071 $1341 $1701 $2151
Program fees do not include payments to the teacher.
Students are invited to support Pilar with Dāna (generosity) at the end of each residential module.
Financial assistance may be requested on the registration page.
Register Here
Dr. Pilar Jennings is a psychoanalyst in private practice based in New York City with a focus on the clinical applications of Buddhist meditation. She received her Ph.D. in Psychiatry and Religion from Union Theological Seminary, and did her prior graduate work in medical anthropology at Columbia University. She has been working with patients and their families through the Harlem Family Institute since 2000.
Dr. Jennings is a Visiting Lecturer at Union Theological Seminary; Columbia University; and a Faculty Member of the Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science. She is also a facilitator of a Columbia University Faculty Seminar addressing topics related to slavery and memory, with a focus on the inter-generational transmission of trauma. She has given workshops and retreats internationally on the Buddhist and psychoanalytic approach to trauma, the relevance of spirituality in clinicians, and the unfolding conversation between Buddhist and developmental psychology.
Her publications have included “East of Ego: The Intersection of Narcissism and Buddhist Meditation Practice,” “I’ve Been Waiting for you: Reflections on Analytic Pain,” “Imagery and Trauma: The Psyche’s Push for Healing,” and Mixing Minds: The Power of Relationship in Psychoanalysis and Buddhism released through Wisdom Publications. Her most recent book: To Heal a Wounded Heart: On the Transformative Power of Buddhism & Psychotherapy in Action, is a psychoanalytic memoir exploring her entry into clinical work as a practicing Buddhist.
