Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

postulated by theologians and philosophers - but the private creation of that individual’
(Rizzuto 1979: 221). Thirdly, she addresses the origins of religious experience and belief in
the psyche, not objective belief in God. While this may have reassured her psychoanalytic
and scientifically biased audience (Rizzuto 1979: 84, 211) it limits Rizzuto’s work to a
‘parallel line’ engagement as seen in Meissner.
From these foundations Rizzuto begins by identifying the complex heritage Freud had given
to psychoanalysis and religion. He helpfully recognized the link between parental figures
and the idea of God, but his illusionary view of God that became orthodox belief in
psychoanalysis resulted in,
generations of psychoanalysts who ... dropped whatever religion they had at the
doors of their institutes. If they refused to do so, they managed to disassociate their
beliefs from analytic training and practice, with the sad effect of having an important
area of their own lives untouched by their training. If they dealt with religion during
their own analyses, that was the beginning and the end of it (Rizzuto 1979: 4).
Paradoxically Freud was baffled ‘with the problem of human religiosity and belief in the
Divinity’ (Rizzuto 1979: 11). Rizzuto focuses on Freud’s statement ‘all of the child's later
choices of friendship and love follow upon the basis of the memory-traces left behind by
these first prototypes’ (Rizzuto 1979: 6f.). 218 Rizzuto establishes that Freud postulated an
early form of object relations theory, 219 then utilizing current psychoanalytic theory, 220
answers the question ‘why do early imagos evolve into a God?’
218 Found in Freud (1914) ‘Some reflections on schoolboy psychology’ SE 13.
219 Later developed in Britain by Fairbairn, Guntrip, the Balints and especially Winnicott, as well as ego and
self-psychology developed by Hartmann, Jacobson, Mahler, Kernberg and Kohut. The history of the
development of object relations theory can be found in Greenberg and Mitchell from an American perspective
(Greenberg and Mitchell 1983) and Gomez from a British perspective (Gomez 1996). Kernberg offers an
overview of both traditions (Kernberg 2005).
220 Image formation, symbolization, internal objects, primary process thinking and the emergence of self -
embracing object relations theorists, developmental theorists, ego-psychology theorists and self psychology
theorists.
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