Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

psychoanalytic engagement can be seen as a new form of Gnosticism (Ostow 1982/1997)
that is enlightening (Gordon 2004) or problematic (Ostow 1995).
The re-emergence of mysticism in contemporary psychoanalysis parallels the emergence of
a pluralistic culture within psychoanalysis that embraces levels of subjectivity and
intersubjectivity that specifically include mystical tendencies, best exemplified by Eigen.
Parsons connects these to transformational approaches in psychoanalysis, drawn from object
relations and self-psychology perspectives, as well as transpersonal developments in the
wider psychotherapeutic world (Parsons 1999). 329 Discussion of mysticism in
psychoanalysis is primarily within a universal or experiential framework focused on
mystical tendencies evolving out of relational encounter in the analytic space. However the
language used to try and capture mystical experience is often beyond psychoanalysis and
held within religious traditions. Grotstein’s work offers a more profound level of mystical
engagement with the unconscious as his work spans the universal, the particular, process
and experience.
I have found it useful to add spiritual, ontological and mystical perspectives to my
thinking. By spiritual I mean those aspects of the ultrasensual, yet still experiential
dimension that merit psychoanalytic study, and … includes the unconscious capacity
for prescience or premonition … the mystic is also able to see the mysterious that is
embedded in the ordinary. The mystic does not mystify but detects and clarifies.
The analyst, without realizing it, is a practising mystic … The mystical and spiritual
perspectives are older ways of describing our attempts to ‘divine’ the ultrasensual …
I end this preface with the question I asked at the beginning: Who is the
unconscious? (Grotstein 2000: xxviiif.).
329 This links to parallel and inclusive developments discussed in the defining of spirituality in chapter two.
MacKenna offers a Christian based reflection. ‘If we are allowed to settle down and be still, and contemplate
… as an analyst might her patient, or a mystic settling into a time of prayer, or an artist contemplating his
subject; then we find ourselves connecting with them in unexpected ways and, in that connection itself,
discovering … their meaning? Our meaning? Or is it rather the ineffable experience of being in communion
with that which or, as I would prefer to say, the One who, simply, IS?’ (MacKenna 2008: 485f.).
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