Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

Christian psychoanalyst … there’s still a lot of foreclosure in the field-at-large
(Molino 1997: 205f.). 287
Coltart offered a personal integration and engagement between psychoanalysis and
Buddhism, utilizing aspects of one to enhance the other in a reflective balance described as
‘an emancipatory amalgam’. 288
Black sees Buddhism as a means of creating a space for reflection, and develops the concept
of a ‘contemplative’ position. 289 Like Coltart, part of the Independent tradition, Black in
his earliest psychoanalytic articles focuses on the religious dimension of object relations
theory (Black 1993a, 1993b, 1993). Black examines Freud’s relationship with Rolland and
his dissatisfaction with Freud’s account of religion in The Future of an Illusion (Freud
1927), that explores the term ‘oceanic feeling’ (Parsons 2000). 290 He offers a different
account using Winnicottian and Buddhist ideas, 291 making comparison between ‘religious
objects’ and ‘internal objects’ which although different, serve the same purpose in making
287 Coltart can think of only one person who identifies their Christian belief as a psychoanalyst out of a
membership of around three hundred psychoanalysts in the British Society. This fits with Coltart’s earlier
comment, ‘it is rare to encounter an analyst who actually believes in God, or practises a theistic religion’
(Coltart 1993c: 115).
288 ‘At the level of metapsychology Nina provides a philosophical bridge which renders the concept of anatta
more manageable to the psychoanalytic mind … She worked in the Western tradition but lived according to
Eastern philosophical and religious teaching … Her response was, characteristically, to appropriate the
therapeutic virtues of both in an emancipatory amalgam of her own’ (Coltart 1993b; Williams 1998: 527f.).
289 Having studied comparative religions, particularly Hinduism and Buddhism (Stein 1999), Black continued
in the same comparative vein in training as a Jungian analyst before training to be a psychoanalyst (Black
1997). Much of Black’s early work was with the Westminster Pastoral Foundation (WPF) that grew out of a
Christian foundation offering psychotherapy and training, as well as attracting therapists and clients
sympathetic to this religious tradition (Black 1991).
290 ‘Freud sent psychoanalysis on a false trail in relation to religion’ with the ‘general assumption ... that
psychoanalysis was by its very nature antithetical to religious belief’ (Black 1993a: 614). ‘Analysts such as
Ernest Jones and Melanie Klein prided themselves on their repudiation of religion’ as ‘to be religious in any
way was tantamount to being neurotic in public’ (Black 1993a: 615). Kovel offers a perceptive critique of
Freud’s The Future of an Illusion and his limited understanding of ‘oceanic feeling’, referring to further
insights to be found in Buddhism (Kovel 1990).
291 Black also makes reference to Hinduism and the Judaeo-Christian tradition.
130