Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

CHAPTER FIFTEEN. PATTERNS OF ENGAGEMENT – MYSTICAL
PERSPECTIVES
Of all religious experiences or states, the mystical is the most complex and intriguing found
throughout the history of religions (McGinn 2005). The same paradox appears in
psychoanalysis where despite ‘any sustained interdisciplinary dialogue’ (Parsons 1999: 3)
mysticism continually reappears in various guises (Merkur 2009). It can be: inclusive using
abstract, generic terms to encompass the experience; exclusive as ‘historical and religious
phenomena that cannot be defined without recourse to a total religious matrix’ (Parsons
1999: 5); unifying, where the experience of the transcendent finds different expression in
different religious traditions; 313 distinctive, where the identity is unique to a specific
religious tradition; spontaneous, where it is not an experience that is sought but is rather an
‘episodic, ecstatic, intuitive encounter with the divine’ (Parsons 1999: 7); 314 and searched
for in processes related to acquiring mystical experience through rituals, prayer, meditation,
drugs, breathing and altered states of consciousness. In many religions this has become
formalized as in the Christian mystical tradition that offers a developmental process moving
from the purgative way, through the illuminative way to the final unitive way, following a
pattern taken from St. John of the Cross. 315 Each strand is held in tension by a ‘dialectical
interplay’ 316 offering: experience and process; knowing and unknowing; spontaneity and
313
This allows for both a commonality of mystical experience that links religious traditions (Suzuki 1957;
Merton 1967).
314
As advocated by Otto’s influential work (Otto 1917) and in contemporary liturgical context (Ross 2008)
reflecting my personal experience. Otto used the term numinous to convey the ‘nonrational manifestations of
the sacred’ (Agnel 2005) which included: a sense of creatureliness (for a theological discussion of this concept
see Macquarrie 1966); ‘mystical awe (tremendum), a presentiment of divine power (majestas), amazement in
the face of the “completely other” (mysterium), demonical energy, and paradox’ (Agnel 2005).
315
St. John of the Cross is only one example of an enormously wide range of Christian mystics. See
McGinn’s series (1990-2006) On the presence of God: a history of Western Christian mysticism, volumes 1-4.
316
This term was first used by Khan in a review of Milner’s Not being able to paint (1950) and taken up by
Milner and used in her later works Hands of the living God (1969) and The suppressed madness of sane men
(1987). Milner’s contribution on mysticism and psychoanalysis is part of a later section of this chapter. The
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