Discussion on "Therapeutic Models for Meditators"

Everythirdthought asked some really good questions on the article I posted on the sidebar... I wanted to reply here and hopefully draw in other's thoughts.

EDIT: here is the link: Therapeutic Models for Meditators

By the way, this is my absolute most favorite thing to discuss. For me, the whole issue of being wounded and making progress in meditation is endlessly fascinating and frustrating. I've thought a lot about it. And frankly, right now I'm considering researching even more and writing a book that has a title like "Authority, Wounding, and Awakening".

Hi Shargrol, thanks for this (I didn’t know you were developing your own model) – I’m interested in what you mean when you use the term ‘therapeutic.’ Could there be a meditative model or path that was not therapeutic? How does the ‘therapeuticness’ of these models align/interact/differ to psychotherapy ‘therapeutic-ness’? Does this have any relationship to ‘multiple axes of development’ type theories/ideas? And if so, can or should we take into consideration the actual life of the model developer (Trungpa would be the most obvious example here) when asking whether something is therapeutic or what its therapeutic-ness is? (in a way that might be different or similar to how we would do so if we were to frame something as a ‘method for awakening’ rather than a ‘therapy’)?

I used therapeutic to distinguish from a more pure noting or pure "just sitting" approach to meditation. With those two approaches, as long as you can bear what is happening, then the instructions are "just note" or "just sit". For 90% of sitting time, these practices simply work. Progress is made by the natural awareness-wisdom of the mind, so to speak.

I also used "therapeutic for meditators" because these models are a bit different than (my understanding of) pure psychological therapy. Psychology has it's own metaphysics (as do these 'therapeutic models for meditators') but psychological models tend to be more materialistic about mind. In other words, there are psychologically real objects (like repressions, like neurosis) that have particular and necessary effects. In the world of meditation, it's a bit more ambiguous about what "is". These models tend to see what is happening as "displays of mind" or something like that. One of the main features of these approaches is that as the meditator starts breaking through, the models tend to fall apart or the model's distinctions tend to blur together --- and that's a good thing. Reality is known to be other than the model. The model is just a tool.

So the challenge is how to deal with stuff in this ambiguous state.of things being a "hindrance" but also knowing that hindrances are just that -- not real blocks, but things that are temporarily blocking but aren't inherently blocks.

All of these models are ways to "split" experience into some components which on their own are better able to be experienced. Once the pieces are experienced, the totality, the gestalt can be experienced as is... which basically sends the meditator into pure noting or pure sitting again.

I've really gotten a lot out of each one of these models. They were useful to me in a very sequential way (first fenner combined with "RAIN", then six realms, then Stages of Insight, then biocognition, then 5 elements, then six realms again, then more general cautions like the last stuff that combines past/present/future and biocognition).But my big question is how much this is particular to me, or if there is just the chaos of what resonates with people at a given time. I don't know.

I distinguish all of these approaches from methods for awakening because I see them as very limiting, despite their usefulness. One problem that happens a lot in psychology and new age type circles is they completely confuse the model with reality. Models of reality need to be used and then jettisoned. So these "therapeutic models for meditators" only exist, in my mind, to help people during hard spots, when "just sitting" or "pure noting" simply cannot be done.

One thing that Hokai and Ken McL talk about a lot is the level of energy for different practices. Basically if a wound or hindrance is a problem, that means that one's level of awareness isn't high enough to see both object and ground. It sees the whole of reality a being the truth of the wound or the truth of the hindrance or the truth of the lower-energy state. So all of these models/methods are a way of doing some exercise to build up the capability to really see the truth of what is happening.

The thing that makes this endlessly fascinating to me is that wounds themselves are stair-steps of strength. They are the playing field where we work out what is needed to move along, to move up, to keep going. So while I (really do) hate the whole "wounded identity" that befalls us --- so limiting, buying completely into the weakest idea of who we are --- I also see that honoring the idea of wounding allows us to work on what is needed and move onward with a bigger perspective and a bigger capacity for.... well, it's hard to say, but there is something powerful and paradigm shifting from moving beyond woundedness. For ourselves and others we meet.

Anyway, I think that answers most of your questions.

I guess the one question I didn't answer is "multiple axes of development"... I don't really resonate with that kind of thinking. I'd love to hear a passionate expression of it. On the face of it, it seems kinda fetishized, as if there really are true axis of development --- are there? I really don't know. I tend to focus more on "blocks" or "wounds".

I hope others will respond with their own thoughts on any of this. I think it's one of those areas that could just be explore until the end of time... but that might just be my own fetish!

I find the way we engage with memories, identities, fears, and such in our spiritual practices really interesting. The very individual nature of the engagement fascinates me (in the sense that one doesn't "deal with wound type X during stage Y" but rather one engages with these things whenever they come up, which can be now, yesterday, tomorrow, or years from now).

I am exceedingly non-technical so may not have much to add that is not merely anecdotal and intuitive and all that jazz. But I am enjoying your enthusiasm. Glad you started a thread, as I kept forgetting to go check the comments on the article.

In the broadest sense it does seem that what Hokai and Ken M point to is spot on. When fear arises around something, the useful exercise seems to be that - engaging with it, but with exercises that either zoom in to break it down into parts or step back to frame it in a broader space of experience, defusing the overwhelming quality that otherwise pushes one to try to escape or fight. I had in some recent situations been using the wording of "becoming comfortable with the fight/flight response" - either by breaking it down into body sensations, or by recognizing it as a perfectly valid biological response to triggers. In either case point being to try to defuse the secondary reaction (another fight/flight response in reaction to the initial fight/flight response) and get more and more comfortable being with that reactivity... thus making some space to explore how these reactions are arising, what's going on in the mind and body, exploring it with more curiosity, and giving it space to untangle itself.

Anyway, I look forward to your ongoing brainstorming and sharing here.

Thanks Shargrol! Interesting stuff.

I've always done psychotherapy alongside my practice, but at various times I've conceptualised it differently - earlier on I characterised it as about content whereas practice was about process, and psychotherapy, as Daniel used to put it, was endlessly workable-upon without an endpoint whereas process-oriented meditation was about a defined point of awakening. So psychotherapy seemed good and useful, even life-saving, in the same way as doing exercise or eating healthily, but it wasn't the main game and was qualitatively separate from the main game.

In the last few years I've had a 'return to marketplace' where the rejection of the psychological (which I feel is where that woundedness happens or sits) seems like, for me, a particular stage, maybe necessary, but also denying or blocking off certain aspects of humanness.

This is complicated though - and here's where I would have a difference with your model - because in a noting or bare insight practice, it can very much seem that one is not denying or repressing anything that arises - it is seen for what it is, not run away from either in body or mind, and one experiences mindfully whatever suffering arises in relation to it - yet at the same time there is or can be some kind of deeper denial there because process is privileged above content and the aim of the practice is to suffer less from that content (of course, the latter is really the paradox of all spiritual practice).

But that's where, these days, I wouldn't privilege the kind of practices you're describing as 'therapeutic' as 'less advanced than' pure contemplation practices, which is what I'm picking up from the above. Now I would see that distinction itself as artificial.

What is defined as 'progress' I would say is also different in light of what you're practicing and what you want. We all know that there are people who may be very 'spiritually awake' but extremely 'emotionally immature' - this is why I asked about the 'axes of development' idea (so that the psychological woundedness may be on a different axis than the spiritual awakeness) and also whether teachers who might be good role models for the spiritual awakeness axis might be terrible role models for what I would characterise as a 'therapeutic' axis (e.g. Trungpa)

What I find in terms of the wounding issue is that on my own path, there's this frustrating but beautiful process whereby psychological 'stuff' begins to fall away (I have talked to Ona a lot about this and she has some great ways to describe it). Issues are 'seen through.'

But the things that this happens to earliest are the least deep or seemingly least important, and the ones that are then left hanging around in full, ugly view are the ones which are deepest - which makes sense, but is also frustrating because they're the ones that you most want to have transform. And they may come into higher, more painful relief BECAUSE the other stuff is sloughing away, in the same way that sometimes you feel distressing emotions more harshly on the contemplative path.

I'd add, any model of reality is a model, but also we don't have anything but models. 'Just sitting' and 'just noting' are just as much models. (as you may be able to tell from this, I am in a place at the moment where what is very prominent for me is that there is no such thing as manipulation and non-manipulation - doing a complicated technique based on a complex metaphysics is just as much an expression of causes and conditions, and as 'natural,' as bare awareness or natural state).

I am very much seeing my own victim identity flickering on and off at present. Which of course is one of those things that teachers say that sounds impossible at best ('don't tell me suffering is a choice, I'm trying so hard!') and at worst a way to individualise and detach from social conditions a la the worst of new age or The Secret (Zizek's critique of meditation as passivity). But that starts to make sense, on and off, for me at least. Because there is also that paradox about the wound that one wants it to heal but it can't be a desire for it to be gone, scarless, a desire for a fantasised wholeness that's the opposite of real wholeness. Indeed 'healing' may be acceptance that the wound is there rather than it being healed the way we imagined - though if the latter is to happen the former is the best way that it will, by keeping it in the corner of our eyes rather than running straight at it - as one of the Burmese Theravada monks said, 'if you want it you can't have it.'

Those are my various ponders , thanks for a great topic!

Where did the "axes of development" terminology come from? I get the idea, that you can divide people's "maturity/ability" in various parts of their life. It may be useful and true - I'm not sure it's not. But it may just be more categorizing in an area that doesn't need categorizing, or it may have been someone's attempt to model stuff in a way that helped them explain things in their own practice/life that weren't making sense. In other words, it may be about this: "I am super awake. Trungpa was said to be super awake. But he did things I consider immature and unethical and don't want to have associated with me. So I have to come up with an explaination how we can both be super awake without me having to associate myself (in my or others' minds) with those icky bits. Ah - axes of development! That'll solve the problem."

Anyone know?

As far as I know but I may be wrong, it comes from Ken Wilber (and then I think Daniel and/or Kenneth picked it up in a big way at one point?) I am generally not at all a fan of Ken Wilber or of totalizing systems so I don't have a huge truck with it -

But then I was always one to generally think that teachers who behaved in ways that were highly problematic pretty much invalidated them as teachers (not necessarily the truth of what they taught per se), which is a POV a lot of people don't subscribe to

(of course the flip side of this is either expecting a teacher to be YOUR perfect idea of a saint, or to have no flaws - but there's a big difference between that and people who are alcoholics or sexual abusers or whatever). In AA they say, when you're looking for a sponsor, find someone who's got what you want

The 'axes' thing can also work not only from a position of considering oneself awake, but (more commonly in my observation) from a position of someone who is or considers themselves early on the path. What it does here is allow reconciliation of the positions of respecting someone's teaching and/or awakeness, while recognising that they did unethical stuff (as I said I'm not really into this, and there's always a question of HOW unethical, but that's another need I think it serves). It does seem to be true that people have big openings in one aspect and they can't necessarily see that there are other places where lots of work needs doing - perhaps this relates to Adyashanti's stuff in End of Your World ?

Anyway that's a slight diversion from the Wilber and axes theory, but does go to the question of what is 'progress' and how does that relate to psychological 'stuff,' and acting it out. But it seemed to me that Shargrol's model posited, if not different axes, different levels, or something similar, inasmuch as there is on the one hand the question of psychological wounds to be addressed with techniques that posit a heuristic model of reality, and on the other a truer practice that is beyond these, to which those models and practices are useful but which they're ultimately subsumed by. But I may be wrong in this interpretation!

I know for myself, I can say that I got to a point with vipassana practice where it was like that had developed enough that everything was able to be observed, but this didn't seem to be acting on psychological suffering as I'd imagined (lol) - I described it as like, instead of being a character in a horror movie, being locked in a box watching a horror movie. A bit better but not much.

So in that sense I did feel I guess like one axis or skill or POV was developing (detached insight) but another wasn't (emotional equanimity, except in periods of EQ cycle), and for a while I was confused by that because of the totalising claims of Mahasi vipassana. Bhante Sujato whose group I was involved with to advised me to just stop doing vipassana and only do metta, but of course I didn't listen

Hopefully this isn't going too tangential, too, but your last line ("of course I didn't listen") is exactly the definition of a blind spot. And if others point them out, we can't hear the advice, because the 'problem' is invisible to us. And that's applicable to all people all the time, I think, not dependent on "stage of awakening" or some such. If/when we do perceive some habit or behavior of our own as problematic and in need of change, then it can be addressed, but until it surfaces, there's nearly no point in bothering to address it.

One challenge in modeling all this stuff (and I think this applies in nearly any field of study, not just regarding psychology or awakening or such things) is that the more we learn, the more our evaluation of things changes. So the thesis you wrote when you were 26 will seem short-sighted when re-read at the age of 40. This being applicable to choosing a teacher/sponsor/therapist - one who resonates with you and is helpful to you at point A may no longer fit at a later date, when your views, interests, understanding and tendencies have changed (as have theirs). One may be in a place where a teacher who seems very countercultural, rebellious, rule-breaking and so on is very appealing because he/she represents shaking off limitations in ones own life. Or one may be in a place where those qualities seem self-centered, silly, hurtful or counter-productive, and instead prefer a teacher who represents and models good judgment, virtue, conformity to social norms (in ones sub-culture), and so forth. Or many other combinations of traits relevant to what's coming up for you at a given period in your life.

(This a bit of hindsight from my own life trajectory, where I found for many years a sense of freedom and power in associating with methods of practice (and life activities) that seemed 'not boring!' (Santeria, magick, drug use, exotic travel, having weird friends, etc.), whereas I'm now not bored being someone who my 20 or 30 year old self would see as the world's most boring person ever (rather conservative church lady who mostly does housework).) Maybe not applicable to anyone else.

The axes thing resonates with me, particularly the awakening and psychological axes, but I guess as someone else said, it's just another model. Also the specific axis of neurological development, i.e. cessations and jhanas, that I'm not sure has to happen for awakening proper, although it seems damn useful.

I suppose my model is to emphasize getting the awakening thing down, and partly because of the heavy influence of pragmatic dharma I have downplayed the psychological axis. It worries me, for instance, that people are spinning out and indulging in psychological thought on the cushion when they could be waking up. I suppose that therapy can help one to see certain things as they are, it just seems very slow to me. To my way of thinking, you wake up, and EVERYTHING starts to fall away.

Then again I did tons of psychotherapy up front, about 15 years worth, so that by the time I got around to the awakening thing, maybe that axis was doing okay. And I worked thru a similarly huge portion of psychological territory with psychedelics, which I think could be reasonably modeled as some kind of meditation-therapy on steroids. Very fast.

But clearly, not everyone goes thru all of that first.

You could think of wounds or blocks as responses to trauma, say. But it's all just conditioning, which presumably was useful at the time of origin, maybe less so as an adult. I'm just trying to think of those things as maybe not coming necessarily from a negative or victim mentality.

To me, it's about learning to be okay with everything that's happening, seeing things as they are, letting everything else fall away, erode, or atrophy.

Wow, there's a lot being discussed all at once and that's great! Hopefully if people have a particular something they want to discuss they'll keep bringing it up, so it doesn't get lost!


I think several people have pointed out something important about victim mentality versus awakening/wisdom mentality. This is the pivotal distinction that has to keep being made. A victim mentality fundamentally believes in a flawed/wounded/victimized sense of self. A wisdom mentality says, what am I trusting if I think I'm flawed/wounded/a victim? Apparently I trust myself to "know" that I'm flawed, therefore part of me isn't so flawed afterall. This is such a critical point that I wish I could say it better.

There is always some aspect of intelligence that can be worked with regardless of the flaw/wound/trauma.

The starting point for therapeutic models of meditation is confidence that it is possible to cultivate this already perceptive, already discerning mind. I tend to think that just sitting and just noting practices are an expression of this. Simply providing dedicated time for the body-mind to experience the body-mind without being engaged with any other project.

If someone really doesn't have that starting point, then my best guess is therapy is more important than meditation. Not to say it can't go along side it, but the therapy seems to have a higher priority. Meditation has a way of sometimes/often throwing gasoline on a fire, so it may not always be a wise thing to do.

I would also suggest that if the stereotype of psychological stuff ruining meditation is someone who dwells endlessly on their stories without applying insight practice, that that weakness also exists in the context of therapy - one can go to therapy and just endlessly rehash ones stories, not applying the therapeutic method being used.

The opposite extreme, though, of somehow separating "meditation practice" from "psychogical stuff" seems to me untenable. It would be like going to a therapist and being told you can deal with ONLY psychological problems, and are not allowed to bring up any other part of your life. Where on earth is the line? We are human beings living in relationship(s).

every3rdthought wrote: I wouldn't privilege the kind of practices you're describing as 'therapeutic' as 'less advanced than' pure contemplation practices, which is what I'm picking up from the above. Now I would see that distinction itself as artificial.

I think the closest analogy is Kenneth's model of "downshifting" from third gear to second gear to first gear practices. (Just sitting to witnessing to noting). None of the gears are priviledged, but rather the important thing is to know when to shift gears.

My sense is that being capable of recognizing when we are able to just sit or just note is one of the most important meditation skills to develop. That recognition of natural "mindfulness". It isn't that just sitting or just noting is more advanced, but rather it is the baseline practice.

I'd add, any model of reality is a model, but also we don't have anything but models. 'Just sitting' and 'just noting' are just as much models. (as you may be able to tell from this, I am in a place at the moment where what is very prominent for me is that there is no such thing as manipulation and non-manipulation - doing a complicated technique based on a complex metaphysics is just as much an expression of causes and conditions, and as 'natural,' as bare awareness or natural state).

Could you say more about manipulation and non-manipulation? I suspect I'm not fully understanding. I'm inclined to think that just sitting and just noting are truly much less manipulative.

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Because there is also that paradox about the wound that one wants it to heal but it can't be a desire for it to be gone, scarless, a desire for a fantasised wholeness that's the opposite of real wholeness. Indeed 'healing' may be acceptance that the wound is there rather than it being healed the way we imagined - though if the latter is to happen the former is the best way that it will, by keeping it in the corner of our eyes rather than running straight at it - as one of the Burmese Theravada monks said, 'if you want it you can't have it.'

Yes, this is really important stuff. The nature of healing these kinds of wounds never plays out in the same dimension in which we think about or "own" them. When a wound heals, it is often associated with an even darker truth than the wound (life is even more hard and dangerous than we ever imagined) and it often exposes our own pride of having a wound (which is it is "my" wound and I'm uniquely able to suffer this way). Yet, even though these things could hurt worse than the original wound, there is also a perspective and freedom that makes it almost trivial. Old wounds can seem childish with enough time. But wounds hold us into a state where we can digest the trauma and grow the freedom around the identity of being wounded. So it simply seems to be necessary, a necessary aspect of growing beyond our current limitations.

Eric wrote: ...
I suppose my model is to emphasize getting the awakening thing down, and partly because of the heavy influence of pragmatic dharma I have downplayed the psychological axis. It worries me, for instance, that people are spinning out and indulging in psychological thought on the cushion when they could be waking up. I suppose that therapy can help one to see certain things as they are, it just seems very slow to me. To my way of thinking, you wake up, and EVERYTHING starts to fall away....

I suspect that any "speed" in ones growing ability to be with reality as it is can only exist in relation to ones ability to hear and resonate with teachings (whether coming from a therapist, book, life event, or dharma teacher or whoever). A person with intense anxiety "could" break it down with noting, for instance... but only if they correctly apply the practice, which their conditions may not permit. A person who is a compulsive liar "could" come to realize the manipulative game they are playing, but only if/when they are ready to recognize that the game exists and apply a practice/therapy to sort it out. No technique is a magic bullet, because no technique "works" unless/until a given person is in a place where it makes sense AND they are able to do it. Which is why it makes (to me) little sense to say "I floundered around wasting time for 40 years before stumbling on method X, and BAM woke up in 8 months". The 40 years was part of the development, too. My view of the moment anyway.

Just a fly-by remark on a topic that deserves much more attention(later, when I have time)-- wrt "identity" (political, social, sexual, psychological-- for this purpose, makes no nevermind)...

I read a great anecdote of the proverbial Zen smack in a book about Seung Sahn: a very feminist, politically aware student/teacher-in-training once complained to him about other Zen dudes who said women couldn't wake up. He shocked her socks off by saying, "It's true: 'a woman' can't wake up."

She started protesting mightily, reminding him of all the encouragement and affirmation he had given her over the course of her study. He interrupted her with a piercing look, and the question: "Oh, so, you're 'a woman'?"

(keep in mind: this is the teacher who always said, "Keep 'I don't know'; go straight.")

Eric wrote: To me, it's about learning to be okay with everything that's happening, seeing things as they are, letting everything else fall away, erode, or atrophy.

The interesting thing about the "therapeutic models" is most of them are things that you actually need to work with or cultivate in order to get results. For example, it takes a lot of work to see the world as one of the six realms or to feel the different flavors of reactivity as one of the five elements. So in a way, it takes a 180 degree course to "seeing things as they are" -- by applying an artificial construct, but I've found it helps find and break through weird perception blocks which otherwise would be overlooked. Sorta like how stretching might help you achieve better strength, because part of your muscle is knotted but you don't even know it.

Another meditation teacher/practitioner heard from: www.huffingtonpost.com/lodro-rinzler/med...0.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

Let me throw another couple of questions into the mix. Should a meditation teacher be able to recognize and suggest when psychotherapeutic counseling is appropriate for issues arising as a result of meditation? What would it take for a meditation teacher be qualified to make that judgement? The following quote is from Ken Wilber's recent article, " Toward a Fourth Turning of Buddhism" and is meant to stimulate further conversation.

Roger Walsh, M.D., PhD, is a psychiatrist, philosopher, and Buddhist teacher. He recently told me that in the meditation retreats in which he has participated, of the questions he is asked by meditators during their meeting sessions, approximately 80% of his responses are psychotherapeutic in nature, and 20% are directly meditative. And neither Buddhism, nor any other of the great meditative systems, have hardly any teachings on the nature of the repressed unconscious and its "shadow" material. There is much very useful information on the afflictive emotions, how to handle dysfunctional states, what we would today call "positive psychology," and so on. But as for material that is explicitly forced out of consciousness and into unconscious areas of the mind, from there to be displaced, denied, projected, or otherwise repressed—leaving in their place painful neurotic symptoms—we have very little. And meditation does not necessarily access this material, although in some cases it can certainly help. But it can also make matters worse as well. Many neurotic symptoms come from a dis-owning and dis‑identifying with unwanted impulses or desires; yet much of meditation is a type of "dis‑identifying" or letting go of personal identity, and if that attitude is taken directly with material that has already been dis-owned, the result will only make matters worse, and the dis‑owned material is further dis-owned. This material must first be re‑owned, then integrated with the psyche, and then—and only then—let go of, dis‑identified with.

But of this type of action, we find little in the meditation literature. A few simple psychotherapeutic techniques—such as identifying repressed material, re-owning it, integrating it, then letting it go—would help to handle that nearly 80% of the problems that seem to arise during meditation. But until then, the only advice most meditation teachers have for their students is, "Intensify your efforts!," exactly what is not needed.

Chris Marti wrote: To me the issue is domain expertise. A meditation teacher should always be alert to psychological/medical issues. A psychiatrist shouldn't be teaching meditation. I have personally experienced a number of cases of folks who very earnestly wanted to meditate their way out of serious psychological illness. Those folks, if they're working with an experienced, awakened teacher, are told to do the right thing and get psychiatric help. Meditation really isn't medication, and vice versa. These are two distinct domains that overlap a bit and that overlap confuses some folks. That, I think, is a shame.

Agreed. The problem does appear to me to stem from the overlap.

My impress is that the issues that Roger Walsh talks about do not present as highly obvious and flagrant. The individuals probably seem like "normally adjusted" people to their friends, co-workers, and retreat center admissions staff. So, how would a meditation teacher know enough to be alert about psychological issues and suggest alternatives to meditation? Would a teacher at a major retreat center typically be trained in this?

shargrol wrote:

I'd add, any model of reality is a model, but also we don't have anything but models. 'Just sitting' and 'just noting' are just as much models. (as you may be able to tell from this, I am in a place at the moment where what is very prominent for me is that there is no such thing as manipulation and non-manipulation - doing a complicated technique based on a complex metaphysics is just as much an expression of causes and conditions, and as 'natural,' as bare awareness or natural state).

Could you say more about manipulation and non-manipulation? I suspect I'm not fully understanding. I'm inclined to think that just sitting and just noting are truly much less manipulative.

So essentially, my take at the moment is that everything that happens, including our actions, is a result of previous and present causes and conditions. We have very little agency, though we need to behave as if we have more than we do. Reality is reality - things are as they are, and that includes our consciousness, our meditation practice and our history.

So reality can't be manipulated (if anything, reality is manipulating you ) - to suggest that it can suggests a basic separation between 'you' and 'reality' which to me at the moment seems the opposite of true. And to suggest that we ever could be able to manipulate experience or reality (and hence that we have a choice, and we shouldn't) seems like a massive overestimation of our own capabilities and role.

Reality includes whatever meditation technique you're doing, and all the reasons you're doing it. If I'm doing a complicated technique based on a complicated metaphysic, it's as real and natural as just sitting or just noting. If we say that there's a bare awareness or natural state or however we want to call it which is closer to reality or less manipulative, we're splitting reality and experience into bits and saying some are more desirable and truer (and vice versa) - and I, the agency-holding self in the middle, is able to make these qualitative calls on separated chunks of reality, and induce the ones that I like (that are 'truer,' more 'real,' etc).

So the long and the short is, for me at the moment the question of manipulation is a 'does not apply.' I would add a qualifier that for me I think it was very useful to start off doing just sitting/noting practices and obviously at that time I didn't hold the opinion I express above, so if someone had put it to me then it may not have been useful. But I can't say that this trajectory would be true/helpful for everyone...

Meditation gets sold as a self-help technique, even in contexts where it is intended to be sold as a method for waking up. Think about how "ending suffering" can easily be interpreted to mean "never be anxious, get over the insomnia, get along better with others, have more self-esteem, like oneself better, be confident and popular..." After all, what is the "suffering" one is hoping to end? Often a person will list life problems in answer to that question.

Besides that there's the heavy marketing of meditation as a way to calm down or be more productive...

There are some dysfunctions that can really impede a productive student-teacher relationship, too, that aren't about danger to the student's life, but simply make it impossible to work together. Heavy duty narcissism, lying, total lack of self-awareness, and other things that impede honest communication make it impossible to work together. I've seen some inappropriate drama/conflict at a variety of retreats that might have been prevented by some form of pre-screening, though in a large-scale retreat I'm not sure how that could be done. In a small scale retreat the teacher can pre-interview applicants, or have it only open to people already known by the teacher.

Some reflections on the various articles people have posted:

The problem with dealing with psychological wounds might also be a problem of our own culture, and the place Buddhism has in it.

The idea that there is a repressed unconscious I would say is not a universal truth but a model that our society uses, culturally located. It may be useful, and it may even have some relationship to a particular way of life (specifically, bourgeois modernity) but I wouldn't say it's 'missing' from other practices in a universal way. Psychotherapy however was originally developed on this model of truth, though as Foucault noted it also emerges strongly from the role of the confessional and the self in Christianity.

Sticking to Buddhism rather than other traditions, IMHO the Buddha's original program for fulltime practitioners did include forms of meditation which works on people's emotional-psychological 'stuff,' including for example metta, so I don't agree that meditation cannot touch these things (but maybe vipassana alone can't).

However what meditation on its own cannot teach fully (again IMHO) is interpersonal relationships through practice and modelling. The Buddha's rules for monastics dealt with this aspect of the question in his time - but in the modern day in the West, being a monastic is not the model the majority want from a dedicated practice, so that aspect can then drop off (though lay practitioners do of course often pay close attention to precepts, etc, but there is not the structure of a community within which this is done as per the Sangha).

One of the great things about psychotherapy is that it can deal with this interpersonal realm through modelling and practice in a way that doesn't happen through standard meditation. But of course how one does interpersonal stuff will be informed and shaped by a meditative practice.

So if wounding is related to and plays itself out interpersonally, which I tend to think it always does, then it's useful to deal with both through the kinds of models Shargrol outlined (and which, as I said, I personally wouldn't see as 'lesser' than other practices) and also through e.g. psychotherapy.

Are there not also Buddhist practices like Chod, which (from account of a serious practitioner-friend who has done that practice with a traditional teacher) very clearly deal with what Westerners would term repressed unconscious stuff? Santeria deals with such things via spirit work, too, and (anecdotally from film material and third hand accounts) Asian shamanism seems to address things similarly. From talks and films at the Tendai center I got the impression Japanese culture seems to have shamanic practices that co-exist with Buddhism (or may be integrated with it?). Different model, but I think it copes with similar territory to what we call repressed stuff and shadow stuff. It's not like millenia of people were all terribly neurotic until modern psychology was developed, and now we are all better yay. And interesting that modern psychology has even in the West a limited range of cultural acceptance/use (it's certainly not widely available or acceptable here in Brazil, particularly among the rural and poor, for instance, who will go to indigenous or African shamans, or to pastors or priests to work out problems. A lot of educated people also use these methods. I know several professionals of middle class upbringing who went to indigenous healers and used ayahuasca in a ritual setting to try to deal with trauma/crisis stuff, and considered it to have been very healing and helpful.)

(ETA: this in response to the upriver quote about Buddhism not offering therapeutic support and Rowan's response to it.)