Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

essentialist view of gender and perceives masculinity and femininity in a contingent,
relationally constructed context’ (Perelberg 2005b: 577). Chodorow has continued this
focus of her work, which has provided ongoing stimulus to psychoanalysis and feminism in
an American context (Chodorow 1994, 2000, 2005). 264 Given the emphasis on object
relations theory in a British context, concepts from Klein, Bion and Winnicott have led to a
significant engagement with feminism found in the work of many contemporary writers
including Sayers, Burgner, Laufer, Edcumbe, Pines, Breen, Rapael-Leff and Perelberg
(Sayers 1999; Budd and Rusbridger 2005; Perelberg 2005b).
Van Herik is unusual in combining feminist and religious approaches arguing it is
impossible to understand Freud’s views on religion without understanding his views on
femininity (Van Herik 1982). ‘The projective, irrationalist faith of the religious believer
(male or female), she argues, and the psychology of women are, in the Freudian scheme of
things, inextricably linked together through related inner meanings’ (Bingaman 2003b: 51).
She offers a critical re-reading of Freud’s texts, particularly Moses and Monotheism where
Freud evolves a ‘hierarchical topography of psychical positions towards the divine father’
which ‘correspond to his schema of gender attitudes towards the mental father, …
femininity, ordinary masculinity and ideal masculinity’ (Van Herik 1982: 193). To desire a
mother and to desire God are not pathological. Neither are failures to advance beyond
femininity and attain the heights of ideal masculinity advocated by Freud: rather they are the
universal privilege of all people. Van Herik’s work has been adopted by Jones, Wulff and
Bingaman who advocate sophisticated approaches to psychoanalysis and religion that
264 A helpful account of the place of Kohut and Loewald in establishing psychoanalytic foundations that
encouraged feminist engagement in relation to self-psychology can be found in Teicholz (Teicholz 1999).
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