An editor friend was once traveling from New York to Chicago for an American Psychiatric Association convention. When the stewardess on the flight discovered that most of the passengers were psychiatrists, she decided to hold a psychiatrist/shrink joke contest. Here's the winner:

A patient enters her psychoanalyst's office for one of her regular twice-weekly appointments and blurts out, "Doctor, I've been seeing you for seven years. You haven't said anything to me, and I'm not getting any better. In fact, I think I'm getting worse, and I'd like to end the treatment. She hesitated and added, "What do you have to say?" The psychoanalyst stared at her with his usual silence, prompting her to boldly repeat, "Well, what do you have to say?" The psychoanalyst finally responded: "No hablo Ingles."

This joke is no joke when that communication characterizes many of the intentions to integrate spirituality and psychology practice. Like the interaction of the patient and analyst, they are ships passing in the night — a dialogue with no common language or comprehension.

A similar absence of meaningful communication was evident recently at a conference I attended on Buddhism and psychoanalysis. The large plenary sessions and small-group breakout sessions were high-quality — the presenters were articulate and well versed in their subjects. But there was little direct communication, or even any effort to find common ground. The Buddhists spoke Buddhism and the psychoanalytic participants spoke psychoanalysis — in other words, when facing each other it was, "No hablo Ingles."

At one of the breakout sessions, conducted by a prominent psychoanalyst and a Buddhist scholar/ practitioner from a leading university, each spoke about their domain without any reference to an interface between the two. And the questions from the audience implicitly accepted or respected the chasm by strictly addressing one or the other domain — Buddhism questions for the Buddhist and psychoanalysis questions for the psychoanalyst. Since I assumed the conference was about getting beyond "No hablo Ingles," my frustration nudged me to pose a question: "Psychoanalysis is immersed in the personal self — all the things that we experience that analysts believe largely define who we are. The same is true for many other schools of psychology. Buddhism, though, seeks awareness and consciousness beyond the personal — or put otherwise, psychoanalysis goes into mind and Buddhism, and other spiritual traditions, go out of mind. Can you bridge that divide?"

First, the analyst acknowledged that psychoanalytic treatment examines personal experience in great depth. Clearly patients understand that and, therefore, talk about every nook and cranny of their "me" experiences. And the Buddhist agreed that Buddhism had little primary interest in the personal self except to note it in meditative awareness. He then added a remarkable comment that punctuates the great divide: "A Buddhist master might work with a student for years and never know any details of his work, family or personal life — even whether or not he has children or is married." It was clear that "No hablo Ingles" would hold fast that day — and that a universal language was nowhere in sight.

Given the divergent views of self and reality that divide spirituality and popular psychologies, we must ask: Is common ground possible? If not, then what is the meaning of integration of the two domains? Will the relationship between spirituality and psychology move toward marriage or remain a friendly divorce — cordial chit-chat but no touching — and absolutely no intimacy?

These questions must be faced head-on, if we are genuine about seeking a rapprochement between spirituality and psychology. But before we can even proceed, we must ask an even more threatening fundamental question: Does spirituality need psychology, and conversely does psychology need spirituality? Need implies incompleteness. In the case of spirituality and psychology, that translates into each domain acknowledging that it doesn't have all the answers — that there are open and puzzling questions. That's easy to say but more difficult to mean, especially since many spiritual traditions and psychologies claim complete and absolute knowledge, or that they are the only path to absolute knowledge. That may be the stumbling block that begs our attention. It also suggests the starting point for meaningful dialogue — right at the outset where "No hablo Ingles" must yield to one voice.

In my recently published book I introduce the term omni consciousness, which offers a bridge toward a universal language. More next week on that and other possible solutions. I also welcome comments and suggestions on how to address the integration conundrum.

(My book "Escape Your Own Prison: Why We Need Spirituality and Psychology to be Truly Free" is now available at Amazon.com,Barnes & Noble.com and other major book outlets.)

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Bernard Starr, Ph.D., formerly professor of developmental and educational psychology at the City University of New York, now teaches "Spirituality in Film" and leads "The Spiritual Forum" at Marymount Manhattan College. In addition to his work in radio, he is a longtime contributor of commentary and opinion articles to numerous major publications. He is also the president of the Association for Spirituality and Psychotherapy and is the main United Nations representative for the Institute of Global Education that founded the Mucherla Global School in Mucherla, India. His book "Escape Your Own Prison: Why We Need Spirituality and Psychology to be Truly Free" has been published by Rowman & Littlefield. He can be reached at {email OmniCns@aol.com}OmniCns@aol.com{/email}. © Copyright 2008 by Bernard Starr.