Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

as it was part of the ethical process, however the unconscious Oedipal dynamic carries
meaning related to authority and threat of what is permitted and prohibited.
JB’s inclusive views featured in another metaphor ‘soccer’ and the task of the analyst to
keep several balls moving down the pitch at the same time, not just one. The desire to
maintain multiple perspectives reinforces her inclusive perspective on life, psychoanalysis
and spirituality and distances her from dogmatic one-dimensional (one ball) perspectives
that would be commonly found in traditional psychoanalysis and religion. Soccer is very
different from the macho culture of American football, JB offering that she does not fit
within traditional societal stereotypes that are offered.
JB’s last metaphor was more complex as she used the analogy of ‘surfing’ by engaging
with the ‘third’ in a person’s psyche. There are moments of connection, exhilaration,
aliveness, a harmony of person and nature but it can all come crashing down, with the
bruising experience of getting ‘wiped out’. Getting back on the board can be hard to do.
Whether the ‘third’ is within the person that is reached through intersubjective encounter
(JB’s view) or both within and without the person to Other (AR’s view) there is no denying
the exhilaration and the bruising of the journey into the sacred. The last metaphor was
interrupted by a telephone call from a client that I only heard JB’s side of which revealed JB
to be (though she would not have been conscious of this) empathic, concerned and offering
a spiritual/psychological holding.
Intersubjective presence
How did I as the interviewer impact on JB was a question I came away with? I had
fleetingly experienced the impact of my owned spirituality on JB, so what the interview
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