Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

3. Relational engagement gives the opportunity for new narratives and stories to emerge.
When stories collide, dialogue ensues and new stories are formed. ‘Freud's principal
contribution to human life was to inaugurate a gigantic effort at exploration of the
inaccessible fastnesses of the unconscious, but every step of the journey must be undertaken
by way of the simplest of all human encounters, the dialogue’ (Leavy 1980: xv). Orsi adds
following Berger ‘the world hangs on a thin thread of conversation, on the rounds of
intersubjective engagement that make and sustain any social world. To interpret a culture
means to join this conversation, alongside and together with the people already engaged in
it’ (Orsi 2004: 169f.). This research enters into the world of the psychoanalyst to have a
conversation about religion and spirituality and to return to tell the story of these encounters,
from their viewpoint in the interviews and in my reflexive accounts. Adopting Denzin and
Lincoln’s metaphor of the researcher as bricoleur and quilt-maker (Denzin and Lincoln
2005: 4), the fabric of this research is an examination of the tapestries and threads that are
‘spun, woven, knitted, quilted or pieced together’ (Kruger 2008: 12) to form a tapestry that
embodies ‘a universal narrative of humanity’s sacred and secular practices and beliefs’
(Kruger 2008: 11). 340 The sacred was identified in chapter one of part A, as a constructive
and containing term that accounts for social and cultural, religious and spiritual systems,
beliefs and practices focused on the ultimate sources of power, identity, meaning and truth.
A second and linked question arises: ‘Is this one researcher’s reflexive account?’ or are
there patterns of the religious and spiritual that allow other people’s experiences, ideas,
theories, and structures to encounter each other? At the start of my research both were
340 Williams offers another understanding of the bricoleur that also resonates with this research. ‘The
bricoleur is a hybrid who identifies unconscious themes in liminal space and who uses a mythical [or sacred]
narrative to invoke an alternative psychological perspective’ (Williams 2007: 348).
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