Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

orthodoxy, and while not expelled was ignored within the wider analytic world. 223 Her
work was given less critical recognition than it deserved at the time: however, over the last
30 years it has been widely assimilated into a range of psychoanalytic debates.
Rizzuto has contributed to ‘an increasingly interesting and sophisticated dialogue between
psychoanalysis and theology’ (Carveth 1992) and god-image research (Rector 1996). She
has joined a small but influential group of psychoanalysts engaging with religion including
such figures as Zilboorg, Guntrip, Fromm, Erikson, Pruyser, Menninger, Meissner, Kakar
and Kristeva (Laor 1986; Wallace 1996; Capps 1997; Carveth 1998; Rubin 1999a; Ross
2001; Brickman 2002). Rizzuto has supplied the theoretical tools to examine the processes
of: religious belief and unbelief (Bernstein and Severino 1986; Stern 1996; Franco 1998;
Schwaber 1999); religious conversion (Cohen 2002); religious experience (Kleiger 1990);
religious identification (Eber and Marcovici 1984); religious development (Spero 1986;
Rizzuto 2001); and faith development (Rizzuto 2001; McDargh 2001). Rizzuto has also
been used to develop object relations and self psychology perspectives through the
formation of: a cohesive self (Horton 1984); self integration (Rubin 1999a); self-image and
shame (Rizzuto 1991); self-image and language (Rizzuto 1993); while further advocating
Winnicott’s intermediate area of experience (Jacobson 1997), transitional objects (Laor
1989) and illusion (Richardson 1992). Rizzuto’s work has also been used to examine:
Freud’s loss of his father (Halpern 1999); the importance of a mother imago in the
development of a god-representation (Randour and Bondanza 1987); and the metaphor of
divine space (Spero 1998).
223 Rizzuto’s work on god representations has been taken up outside the psychoanalytic community, in the
fields of Christian spirituality (Holder 2005), religious studies (Bingaman 2003b) the psychology of religion
(Belzen 1997; Wulff 1997; Loewenthal 2000; Kim 2006) and pastoral counselling (Wicks and Parsons 1985).
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