Asian Journal of Humanities and Social Studies (ISSN: 2321 – 2799) Volume 01– Issue 02, June 2013 Asian Online Journals (www.ajouronline.com ) 47 A Psychoanalytic View of the Sangha: Group Functioning in Mahayana and Tibetan Buddhism Kevin Volkan California State University Channel Islands Camarillo, California U.S.A. ________________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT - The goal of Buddhism is to gain enlightenment through the realization of the psychological basis of human suffering. Like other religions Buddhists undertake this goal together in a community known as the Sangha, which, includes lay practitioners, clergy, and various symbolic figures. While, the ostensible goal of the Sangha is to help Buddhists reach a state of religious epiphany, it also functions in a psychological fashion to moderate the regressive effects of group membership. This moderation allows the Sangha to facilitate individuation for its members while they maintain their group membership. In this way the Sangha provides a practical method for applying spiritual principals to relationships with others in the group and later, to the world at large. This paper will review classical and object relations views of group psychology and then apply these perspectives to the understanding of the Sangha. Keywords: Psychoanalysis, Buddhism, Object Relations, Sangha, Group Psychology _________________________________________________________________________________ 1. INTRODUCTION The Buddhist Sangha has been variously described as a community of enlightened beings, Bodhisattvas, monks and nuns, and lay practitioners of Buddhism. However, the Sangha is constituted, it exists is to further the tenets of Buddhism, with the ultimate goal of helping all people (in and out of the community) to gain enlightenment. The journey of the Sangha is primarily a psychological one in which community members help each other to recognize the Buddhist conception of the ‘true’ or ‘original’ nature of mind, while simultaneously becoming cognizant of the mental roots of human suffering. Once this recognition commences the Sangha provides a ‘training ground’ for applying this spiritual awareness to relationships with others. Later, these Buddhist principles will be extended beyond the group to the world at large. While the Buddhist Sangha as a group of individuals displays many of Freud and his followers’ principles regarding groups, its unique ideology, based in a psychological conception of reality, meditational technique, and its emphasis on the ideology of compassion, provides some interesting variations to the psychoanalytic perspective. 2. FREUDIAN GROUP PSYCHOLOGY Freud wrote extensively about groups of people in his work on Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921). He specifically wrote about two examples of groups that had a leader – the Catholic Church and the army. In both of these groups, the leader is presumed to love all group members equally and according to Freud both of these groups would dissolve if the illusion of this equal love was lost. A libidinal bond to the group leader and other members of the group binds each individual in these groups. Freud postulated that this dual tie of the group member to the leader and other group members is cause for the alteration and limitation of the group member’s personality. The group member, therefore, gives up personal freedom in order to remain a group member. Freud was one of the first writers to note the importance of the leader to the life of a group. He said that the loss of the leader or even doubt about him could lead to panic among the group members and dissolution of the libidinal ties they have for each other. In religious groups, Freud supposed that the result of the dissolution of these libidinal ties was not panic or dread but the release of hostility towards other. Even when the group is intact and the libidinal ties to the leader and among the group members are in place, this necessitates a withdrawal of libidinal ties to those outside the group. This leads to the conclusion that religious groups –even those based on love - must by necessity be hard and ruthless to people outside of group membership. According to Freud people have ambivalent feelings toward one another in general – love exists along with aversion and antipathy in human relationships. The formation of a group is the antidote to this. Once a group is formed, and while it exists, its members feel as equals and tolerate one another better – the byproduct of the libidinal ties of the group members and a limitation of their narcissism. As Freud (1921) says “Love for oneself knows only one barrier – love for others, love for objects” (p. 56). Libidinal ties between the group members and group leader take the form of identification and object choice – i.e. the group members want to become the leader and at the same time they want to love and be loved by the leader. The