Traditional Meditation, Mindfulness and Psychodynamic Approach: An Integrative Perspective

In the last three decades, we have been witnessing a growing interest toward academic research on mindfulness practices based on Traditional Meditation (TM) and Buddhist precepts (Pagnini and Philips, 2015). Phenomenologically, meditation is a practice that could be meant as mind focalization on objects, body feelings, emotions and thoughts. It could have religious, spiritual, and philosophical purposes, but it can just be aimed to a deeper knowledge of themselves and/or an improvement of psychophysical condition. Under a Buddhist's perspective, causes of all human sufferings should be eradicated through a progressive recognition of the real nature of the Self as impermanent and interdependent: meditation is meant as the practice aimed to achieve this goal (Dalai Lama, 1986). This process of liberation from suffering is based on Samatha and Vipassana practices, as two-sided aspects of TM. The former is a concentrative meditation; this is a “practice in which sustained attention is developed by attending to the target object to the total exclusion of all other objects and experiences” (Rapgay and Bystrisky, 2009, p. 154). The latter is an insight-based meditation; this is a practice in which awareness of impermanence and interdependence of Self and reality are obtained through observation of phenomena (Goleman, 1976). Western psychotherapy approaches have been integrating their clinical practices with these Eastern techniques and doctrines. After the rise of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program, built up by Kabat-Zinn (1990), many protocols, the so-called Mindfulness-Based Interventions (MBIs), spread out. To mention some examples among MBIs: Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT - Linehan, 1993), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT – Hayes et al., 1999), Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (Segal et al., 2002). MBIs are typically grounded on a cognitive-behavioral perspective (for an overview see Mace, 2007) and usually they use meditation as a method to improve “acceptance of” and “focal attention on” the immediate present moment in a nonjudgmental way (Bishop et al., 2004; Rapgay and Bystrisky, 2009). A number of randomized control trials has tested MBIs efficacy showing improvements in many medical and/or psychological disorders, such as depression and anxiety (Bohlmeijer et al., 2010; Hofmann et al., 2010; Piet and Hougaard, 2011; Piet et al., 2012; Thompson et al., 2015) and neurological conditions (Rosenzweig et al., 2010; Pagnini et al., 2015; for a review of the literature, see Grossman et al., 2004; Keng et al., 2011; Galante et al., 2012, 2014; van der Velden et al., 2015). Recently, TM and MBIs have been compared in order to underline theoretical and practical similarities and differences. Even if MBIs have demonstrated their efficacy, it seems that relevant components of TM may have been developed in a peculiar way, leading to a modern mindfulness concept that partially diverge from traditional, ancient one (Rapgay and Bystrisky, 2009; Chiesa and Malinowski, 2011). For examples, at a theoretical level: TM and MBIs are similar since they both refer to meditation as main method to achieve their goals, and both of them assume that a mental training, to calm mind and develop self-observation skills, is required to reach psychological changes; but they are different in their purposes, since MBIs are oriented toward psychological welfare and treatment of psychopathologies (Kabat-Zinn, 1990; Segal et al., 2002), whilst TM aims at reducing humans' afflictions through a path toward the comprehension of the nature of the Self (Dalai Lama, 1986; Epstein, 2008). Practically, both TM and MBIs use Samatha and Vipassana meditation, but in MBIs they are not taught as two different practices as in TM (Shapiro and Carlson, 2009). Moreover, some MBIs, such as the DBT or the ACT, seem to be mostly content-focused: they are oriented to a modification of cognitions, thoughts and emotions (Chiesa and Malinowski, 2011). Conversely, TM is mostly process-focused and it is mainly concerned with introspective awareness of pure perceptions (Rapgay and Bystrisky, 2009). In synthesis, meditation practices have been efficaciously integrated in Western cognitive-behavior-oriented psychology, but some features of TM had been changed or not considered in the modern concepts of mindfulness (to deepen, see Rapgay and Bystrisky, 2009; Chiesa and Malinowski, 2011).