Florida Psychoanalytic Center

Abstract

This talk is based on the unexpected commonality between psychoanalysis and Buddhist meditation-namely, the shared use of free association in both. Can the remarkable fat of that shared basic method be a coincidence?

These traditions will be compared to consider what they can learn from each other and illustrate my conclusions with a case example. This comparison will include the role of memory and desire in psychoanalysis and meditation. I will discuss one aspect of the work of Wilfrid Bion because he re-discovered Freud’s original idea of free association, thus bringing psychoanalysis closer to Buddhist meditation. Finally, I will propose that psychoanalysis can be viewed as a two-person meditation.

Learning Objectives

1. Explain the commonalities and differences between these two approaches to understanding suffering and its alleviation.
2. This talk will discuss Freud’s original view of free association and how later analysts changed it over time.
3. This talk will compare the similarities and differences between psychoanalysis and Buddhist meditation.

Biography

Axel Hoffer, M.D. is Training and Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and former Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School. He has served on the Editorial Board of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association and has lectured and supervised in the United States, Europe, Eastern Europe, Russia and Israel.

Born in Bohemia, in the German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia, German is Dr. Hoffer’s mother-tongue. He has published internationally on his long-standing interests in the theory behind analytic technique and on the nature of the analytic relationship. He has been particularly interested in psychoanalytic neutrality and the changing role of free association in contemporary psychoanalysis. In 1985 he was awarded the Journal Prize of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association for his paper, “Toward a definition of psychoanalytic neutrality.”