Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

Rizzuto’s major contribution was to offer a new clinical theory that demonstrated the
implications of Winnicott and object relations theories for psychoanalytic thinking and
practice and that accepted religious and spiritual experience through god-representation as a
normal part of psychic development (Finn and Gartner 1992). Religious and spiritual
beliefs and experiences form an integral part of what it is to be human and Rizzuto
championed a unique psychoanalytic understanding of this. This trend of an object
representation of god/God in psychoanalytic perspective, with particular use of Winnicott’s
concepts (McDargh 1986), came to be a central strand in the emergence of religion and
spirituality in contemporary psychoanalysis and is based on the substantial foundations
established by Meissner and Rizzuto. 224
224 Meissner and Rizzuto are still actively contributing to the engagement between religion and psychoanalysis.
Rizzuto has written a chapter ‘One hundred years after Freud declared that religion was a universal obsessional
neurosis’ and Meissner ‘Religious conflicts in psychoanalysis – a case study’ both published in Belzen’s
edited book (Belzen 2009).
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