The footnotes are gold. I don’t know that much about psychoanalysis other than a book by Irvin Yalom in which all psychological distress distills down to a fear of death. I’m not sure if that would be considered part of psychoanalysis…it was required reading for a palliative care subject… but I’m learning what I can about Daoism despite lacking any cultural endowment in it (reading China Root by David Hinton, exploring language and history of China)
Can you see any ways whereby psychoanalysis shares findings that also emerge from Daoism, Cha’an and Buddhism?
The flow of thought and analysis in the West has its own bugs and features, (the main of which is domination) so I don’t know if I’ve asked a sensible question. I guess I’m wondering if an ancient wisdom system validates anything that has emerged from the neurotic self-regard of Western enquiry
Those are fascinating insights, Lorren. The idea that all distress reduces to fear of death, as Yalom suggests, is a classic existentialist reading of human anxiety. But psychoanalysis—particularly in Freud and Lacan—complicates this view.
Yalom's existentialist perpsective, particularly that all psychological distress reduces to the fear of death, coming form his intellectual lineage of Heidegger, Nietzsche, Sartre and Kierkegaard, through his personal background growing up in the shadwo of the Holocaust, being part of a historically persectuted people, engaging with death as a lived reality. his work does not just theorize mortality, but emerges from a profound relationship with history, culture and identity.
But the lesson from psychoanalysis, particularly in Freud and Lacan, would complicate Yalom's existential reductionsim. What Freud uncovered in his concept of the Todestrieb (death drive) is that people are not simply afraid of death but often unconsciously drawn toward self-destruction. We repeat our traumas, sabotage our happiness, and act against our own best interests—not because we are trying to preserve life but because something in us derives jouissance (a kind of excessive, painful enjoyment) from repetition.
The fear of death model assumes that people fundamentally want to preserve life and that suffering occurs because we cannot escape our mortality. But Byung-Chul Han challenges this in his critique of “excess positivity.” Unlike Freud’s view that suffering stems from repression and unconscious drives, Han suggests that in modern capitalist societies, suffering arises from the compulsion to be productive, happy, and constantly optimizing oneself—what he calls the “burnout society.” Instead of repression, we now suffer from an excess of life, an excess of positivity, a demand to perform and self-exploit. This shifts the question from fear of death to exhaustion from living too much, too fast, too constantly.
Lacan would go even further—he suggests that fear of death is an imaginary construct, a way to organize anxiety into something coherent. The real source of suffering is not mortality itself but our conflict with language, desire (which is always mediated by the Other), and the fundamental impossibility of ever being whole. Psychoanalysis, therefore, is not about resolving the fear of death but about understanding why we are drawn toward our own destruction.
Regarding Daoism and psychoanalysis, Daoism suggests that suffering arises from attachment to illusions—a parallel to psychoanalysis, which sees suffering as an attachment to unconscious repetitions, fantasies, and unresolved desires. Daoism speaks of 無爲 (Wú Wèi), the principle of effortless action, of not forcing control, which resembles the psychoanalytic idea that over-identification with the ego creates neurosis.
But there is a key distinction: Daoism and Buddhism seek to dissolve the self entirely, while psychoanalysis does not promise enlightenment—only a way to manage the contradictions of being a subject.
As you mentioned, Western thought is dominated by domination—it tends to frame knowledge as conquest rather than coexistence. There are, of course, exceptions. Psychoanalysis itself is a critique of mastery, particularly in Lacan’s formulation of the Analyst’s Discourse, which recognizes that we are not in control of our own minds. This is an intervention against the Cartesian “Cogito, ergo sum”, the illusion of self-mastery that fuels so much of the West’s cognitive dissonance.
So instead of asking whether Daoism validates psychoanalysis, the more productive question might be: What can psychoanalysis teach the West about its own limitations—the way Daoism has always understood?
Feels like a now awkward afterthought but it was actually an extraordinary piece revealing a family’s most intimate moments and an experience in therapy. Tied together with a coherent analysis of the contradictions playing out in the same moments, without losing the music of those moments. My jaw won’t easily come off the floor
Such a reply! I will read some more about excess positivity- that well describes a tiring default mode that circulates within and around me. I can see this Substack will be a helpful reference point for finding what has been thought and found from many places and respecting their context. Very considered referencing of Yalom’s perspective in time, place and history.
The footnotes are gold. I don’t know that much about psychoanalysis other than a book by Irvin Yalom in which all psychological distress distills down to a fear of death. I’m not sure if that would be considered part of psychoanalysis…it was required reading for a palliative care subject… but I’m learning what I can about Daoism despite lacking any cultural endowment in it (reading China Root by David Hinton, exploring language and history of China)
Can you see any ways whereby psychoanalysis shares findings that also emerge from Daoism, Cha’an and Buddhism?
The flow of thought and analysis in the West has its own bugs and features, (the main of which is domination) so I don’t know if I’ve asked a sensible question. I guess I’m wondering if an ancient wisdom system validates anything that has emerged from the neurotic self-regard of Western enquiry
Those are fascinating insights, Lorren. The idea that all distress reduces to fear of death, as Yalom suggests, is a classic existentialist reading of human anxiety. But psychoanalysis—particularly in Freud and Lacan—complicates this view.
Yalom's existentialist perpsective, particularly that all psychological distress reduces to the fear of death, coming form his intellectual lineage of Heidegger, Nietzsche, Sartre and Kierkegaard, through his personal background growing up in the shadwo of the Holocaust, being part of a historically persectuted people, engaging with death as a lived reality. his work does not just theorize mortality, but emerges from a profound relationship with history, culture and identity.
But the lesson from psychoanalysis, particularly in Freud and Lacan, would complicate Yalom's existential reductionsim. What Freud uncovered in his concept of the Todestrieb (death drive) is that people are not simply afraid of death but often unconsciously drawn toward self-destruction. We repeat our traumas, sabotage our happiness, and act against our own best interests—not because we are trying to preserve life but because something in us derives jouissance (a kind of excessive, painful enjoyment) from repetition.
The fear of death model assumes that people fundamentally want to preserve life and that suffering occurs because we cannot escape our mortality. But Byung-Chul Han challenges this in his critique of “excess positivity.” Unlike Freud’s view that suffering stems from repression and unconscious drives, Han suggests that in modern capitalist societies, suffering arises from the compulsion to be productive, happy, and constantly optimizing oneself—what he calls the “burnout society.” Instead of repression, we now suffer from an excess of life, an excess of positivity, a demand to perform and self-exploit. This shifts the question from fear of death to exhaustion from living too much, too fast, too constantly.
Lacan would go even further—he suggests that fear of death is an imaginary construct, a way to organize anxiety into something coherent. The real source of suffering is not mortality itself but our conflict with language, desire (which is always mediated by the Other), and the fundamental impossibility of ever being whole. Psychoanalysis, therefore, is not about resolving the fear of death but about understanding why we are drawn toward our own destruction.
Regarding Daoism and psychoanalysis, Daoism suggests that suffering arises from attachment to illusions—a parallel to psychoanalysis, which sees suffering as an attachment to unconscious repetitions, fantasies, and unresolved desires. Daoism speaks of 無爲 (Wú Wèi), the principle of effortless action, of not forcing control, which resembles the psychoanalytic idea that over-identification with the ego creates neurosis.
But there is a key distinction: Daoism and Buddhism seek to dissolve the self entirely, while psychoanalysis does not promise enlightenment—only a way to manage the contradictions of being a subject.
As you mentioned, Western thought is dominated by domination—it tends to frame knowledge as conquest rather than coexistence. There are, of course, exceptions. Psychoanalysis itself is a critique of mastery, particularly in Lacan’s formulation of the Analyst’s Discourse, which recognizes that we are not in control of our own minds. This is an intervention against the Cartesian “Cogito, ergo sum”, the illusion of self-mastery that fuels so much of the West’s cognitive dissonance.
So instead of asking whether Daoism validates psychoanalysis, the more productive question might be: What can psychoanalysis teach the West about its own limitations—the way Daoism has always understood?
Feels like a now awkward afterthought but it was actually an extraordinary piece revealing a family’s most intimate moments and an experience in therapy. Tied together with a coherent analysis of the contradictions playing out in the same moments, without losing the music of those moments. My jaw won’t easily come off the floor
Such a reply! I will read some more about excess positivity- that well describes a tiring default mode that circulates within and around me. I can see this Substack will be a helpful reference point for finding what has been thought and found from many places and respecting their context. Very considered referencing of Yalom’s perspective in time, place and history.
Thank you 🙏
Thank you for instigating the connection and reflection Lorren.