Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

never in conflict and had the potential to strengthen each other especially at the early stages
(Coltart 1993c; Molino 1997: 202). The first four steps in common are: recognising an
anguished state of mind; looking at how the past has shaped the present; the use of free
association to explore this; and the recognition of the inherent morality of a therapeutic or
spiritual relationship. Coltart believed that religious beliefs and values retained in the
unconscious both shape and change the analyst, allowing these to shape and change client
work, without imposing a morality on the patient.
Coltart saw Buddhism enhancing psychoanalytic skills in three ways: firstly, to pay more
attention to clients’ inner worlds almost as a form of meditation, ‘With my thought
processes in suspension, moving towards what Bion called “O”: a state which I see as being
“unthought out,” involving a quality of intuitive apperception of another person’s evolving
truth’ (Molino 1997: 204). Secondly, to clarify her counter-transference ‘from the
insidiousness of projective identification’ (Molino 1997: 204). Thirdly, to open ‘up the
space for something which the patient is busily trying to lodge into you’ (Molino 1997:
204). By adopting samatha meditation the mind can become quietened and by utilizing
vispanna meditation, a form of internal detachment, the layers of thought can be examined.
Coltart believed that despite Symington’s ‘immensely readable and thought-provoking
book’ (Symington 1994),
I have no doubt at all that the whole notion of spirituality, anything tainted with the
very word religion creeping in under the cracks of the door of psychoanalysis, is still
very much a taboo subject. I would certainly say that in the British Society, you do
get islands of interest ... odd people here and there, who obviously have religious
temperaments, or an interest in some form of spirituality ... One or two … have also
gone deeply into Judaism and its practice. I certainly know of at least one practising
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