Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2019, 64, 1, 28–31

Response to Helen Morgan

Murray Stein, Zürich

I am most grateful to Helen Morgan for her thoughtful response to my paper.

She raises important issues and questions, a full discussion of which would
occupy us for a long time. Perhaps it would be worth a symposium some time
to consider the essential differences between the Western and Eastern minds,
for different they are, and as Christopher Bollas expresses it, in the
quotation shared by Morgan, they lead ‘to profound differences in the way
the world is viewed’ (Bollas, 2013, p. 7). Can the gap be bridged somehow,
at least in part?
Many attempts at such a rapprochement have been made over the past
century (and more), and yet the differences remain as stark as ever and far
from resolved in any satisfactory way. Morgan speaks of the need for a
paradigm shift, ‘like the leap from an earth- to a sun-centered universe’. It is
something to think about. But I wonder if this isn’t what Jung was proposing
in relocating the psyche’s centre out of the ego to the self? Wasn’t this
precisely such a paradigm shift? Maybe we still haven’t grasped his proposal
in full. Morgan believes he made an advance in this direction but didn’t go
far enough.
What I am suggesting in my paper is that a possible way to bridge between
Jungian and Zen approaches to ‘liberation’ (to use the Buddhist term) might
be to consider the late stages of the individuation process, as conceived by
Jung, as being quite similar to the stages of development shown in the series
of illustrations of the classic Zen Buddhist Ten Ox-Herding Pictures. Both
describe a development from position ‘A’ to position ‘O’ (‘A’ standing for the
beginning of the process, and ‘O’ standing for the endpoint of the ensuing
development). Both share the notion of a developmental process. So it seemed
to me reasonable to think about how the stages described by Zen Buddhist
practitioners might correspond to experiences we have in the analytic process
and its extensions. This is what I speak about in my paper. Of course, much
more can be said about this, and in fact much has been said before by such
distinguished authors as Mokusen Miyuki (1985), himself a Buddhist priest
and a Jungian analyst.

0021-8774/2019/6401/28 © 2019, The Society of Analytical Psychology

Published by Wiley Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
DOI: 10.1111/1468-5922.12464
Response to Helen Morgan 29

Morgan flags two key issues that I would like to address briefly here. The first
is the psychological versus ontological perspectives that arise in discussions
between psychologists and philosophers/theologians; the second is the distress
Morgan feels over being ‘too shackled to this “self” we have inherited from Jung’.
Concerning the first, I agree with Morgan (and Jung) that it is important to stay
aware, in a discussion like this, of the distinction between the psychological and
the ontological. In the dialogue between Jung and the Buddhist philosopher,
Shin’ichi Hisamatsu, which Morgan cites, Jung begins by saying: ‘… you
know, Zen is a philosophy and I am a psychologist. Please take that into
consideration’ (Jung, 1992, p. 103). As is well known, Jung consistently tried
to stay within the psychological horizon and avoid metaphysical assertions,
which he considered mostly to be disguised psychological ones anyway. The
one exception occurs in his paper on synchronicity where this boundary is
deliberately breached. Personally, I think the two perspectives can be brought
together by recognizing that the psychological may approach (or avoid) the
ontological, as the ego approaches (or avoids) reality. Psychology speaks of the
human mind; ontology makes claims about non- or trans-mental reality. The
problem is that we can’t know reality as it is (Kant), and can only surmise our
nearness or distance from it, based on interactions and feedback. Jung’s
position was that to claim an ontological ground is a deception. We just don’t
know about that. It’s like the question of life after death: does it exist or
doesn’t it? We can imagine this or that, but these are suppositions and largely
projections into the unknown. So it is with ontology. There are probabilities,
but no certainties. (Jung learned about probability theory from Wolfgang
Pauli.) Hence we can ask: does Emptiness (sunyata) best describe the
ontological situation we find ourselves in as human beings? Is this the truth we
are meant to grasp? Maybe. But then, what is it? Is it, as Morgan writes, ‘not a
nihilistic absence of anything but is, instead, humming with vibrant
potentiality’? Maybe, but how do we know that? She is employing an image,
the stock in trade of the psychologist, and describing a hypothetical, a
projection. It is a way of attempting to capture an experience that Buddhists
call ‘True Nature’ or ‘True Self’, a state of clear and Absolute Consciousness,
but it is still a description of a mental state and so falls into the domain of
psychology. This can be compared with similar states of mind that arise in the
individuation process and in analytic sessions, which we as Jungians might
speak of as an experience of the self or the transcendent function.
With respect to Morgan’s problem with Jung’s choice of the word ‘self’ to
refer to psychic reality that transcends ego consciousness, this raises an issue
that is similar to the problem Buddhists have when they speak of ‘Emptiness’,
‘Original Self’, ‘No-self’ or ‘True Self’1. The terms need precise definition, and

1
These are terms used by Hisamatsu in his dialogue with Jung. In their conversation, he tries to
draw distinctions between these and Jung’s definition of his term ‘self’.
30 Murray Stein

this is not always possible. This is where the dialogue stumbles and becomes
opaque and confusing until the terms are clearly understood. When Jung was
asked to edit the transcript of the dialogue with Hisamatsu for publication, he
wrote to the translator: ‘… to reach a common understanding which does not
consist in words, but in facts, one would need at least several weeks of careful
comparative work …’ (ibid., p. 114). Following their dialogue in 1958,
several commentaries and discussions of the problems of terminology were
published2. A key issue concerned the question of ‘liberation’: can a person’s
consciousness be liberated from all psychic links? Hisamatsu presses Jung on
the point and asks if a person can be liberated, not only from the personal
unconscious (the ‘complexes’), but also from the collective unconscious (the
archetypal influences). Jung replies affirmatively, which greatly surprises
Hisamatsu and apparently others in the room as well. In his subsequent
‘Commentary on the Conversation’, Hisamatsu writes: ‘One must say that his
is an important statement, coming from a psychoanalyst. If Professor Jung’s
statement is accurate, it seems that there is an open passage from
psychoanalysis to Zen, and that the vicious circle of psychoanalysis can be
overcome and psychoanalysis itself can advance a step forward’ (ibid., p. 118).
This is what I am aiming to expand on in discussing the parallel processes
between Jung’s description of the three stages of individuation in Mysterium
Coniunctionis and the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures. It seems to me that Jung’s
discussion of unio mentalis is a statement of precisely such liberation from
personal and collective (including cultural) restrictions. As Hayao Kawai says
in the discussion, ‘What is the True Self’: ‘Such a way of thinking is to be
compared with the Zen saying that “the bottom of the bucket is fallen off”’
(ibid., p. 121).
Morgan ends her sensitive response with a moving image of ‘letting go’ of our
hold on mental constructions. She asks: ‘What if there is no self? No God, no
atman or Brahman, no “hidden variable”, or ghost in the machine,’ and she
follows this with the image of clinging fearfully to a rock face while gazing
into an ‘empty abyss … opening beneath my feet’. Certainly we all come to
this point some time in our lives if we are dedicated to the ways of
individuation, as Jung did when he took the leap into the unknown at the
outset of the Red Book experiment. Letting go of the certainties of dogma is
the beginning of the journey to the self, which we have to admit is mysterious
and without guarantees. The path is marked out somewhat by constructs like
those offered by Zen Buddhism in its teachings and stories, and those we
know from Jungian theory and clinical experience, but for every individual it

2
The following are included in Self and Liberation: ‘Jung’s Commentary on the Conversation’
(1960), ‘Hisamatsu’s Commentary on the Conversation’, ‘What Is the True Self: A Discussion’
(with Koji Sato, Hitoshi Kataoka, Richard De Martino, Masao Abe, and Hayao Kawai) (1961),
‘The Self in Jung and Zen’ by Masao Abe (1985).
Response to Helen Morgan 31

is new and filled with moments of crisis and fateful decision. Still the individual
is not alone in this undertaking. Many have gone before, and there is, as
Morgan affirms at the end of her piece, the promise of ‘liberation and the end
of suffering’. Hisamatsu declares in the conversation with Jung: ‘The essential
point of this liberation is how we can be awakened to our Original Self’
(ibid., p. 111). Jung agrees: ‘The aim of psychotherapy is exactly the same as
that of Buddhism’ (ibid., p. 111). This seems to be a place of possible meeting.

References
Bollas, C. (2013). China on the Mind. London & New York: Routledge.
Jung, C. G. (1992). ‘Self and Liberation: A Dialogue between Carl G. Jung and Shin’ichi
Hisamatsu’. Self and Liberation. Eds. Daniel J. Meckel & Robert L. Moore. New
York: Paulist Press.
Miyuki, M. (1985). ‘Self-Realization in the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures’. Buddhism and
Jungian Analysis. Eds. J. Marvin Spiegelman and Mokusen Miyuki. Tempe, AZ:
New Falcon Publications.