Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

and theological task of uncovering the essential private self through creating a shared
dialogue in which neither voice is dominant and neither ignored. 235
Jones’ transference and transcendence
James Jones, an Episcopal priest, clinical psychologist, philosopher of religion and
psychoanalytic psychotherapist, brings together theology and psychoanalysis (Jones 1991)
and builds on Leavy’s linguistic transforming encounter based on spoken dialogue between
analyst and patient. Following Loewald, Jones sees this as the unspoken discovery of re-
creative primary processes. Jones focuses on transference as the defining psychoanalytic
paradigm for understanding religion, moving away from Freud’s view that childhood fears
resulted in a pathological transference to an illusory God, and advocates transference as an
empathic intersubjective encounter. Jones applauds and critiques the transitional
approaches of Meissner, Rizzuto, Winnicott, Loewald and Leavy and develops a
transferential understanding drawn from intersubjective and self-psychologies. 236 Jones
goes on to develop a psychoanalysis of the sacred drawing from Otto, Bollas, Kohut,
Loewald, Tillich and Buber. Jones advocates a synthesis of human and divine transforming
encounters where human experience of the sacred is derived through transferential dynamics
found in psychoanalytic, religious and spiritual contexts (Jones 1996, 1997, 1999, 2001,
2002a, 2002b, 2003, 2006, 2008). 237 A vital implication of this approach is that it puts the
religious and spiritual dynamic more clearly in the analytic space so that they can be
235
There are times when Leavy represents his ideas in a dualistic way, in part contradicting his unifying stance
(Jones 1991).
236
‘The ways in which a person’s relationship with … sacred or ultimate serves as the transferential ground of
the self’ (Jones 1991: 64). He asks the question ‘What relationships within the inner object world are made
conscious by the language of the sacred as void and abyss’ and arguing ‘Embracing a relational model …
entails listening for the echoes of past interpersonal patterns and their affective tones in present relationships,
including relationship with the sacred’ (Jones 1991: 64f.).
237
Jones has also done pioneering work on offering psychoanalytic insight into terrorism and religious
fundamentalism.
102