Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

Thirdly, as human beings we also have destructive and negative aspects that can damage,
traumatize and shame others. PM’s vision is to help people who have experienced such
damage to recover their uniqueness, not denying their traumatic or shameful experiences,
but neither being dominated by these nor false selves that hide them. This requires a
radical ‘beginning with where people are’ rather than fitting them into a theory –
psychological, psychoanalytic, religious or spiritual.
Fourthly, we evolve out of a time-bound context limited by the language, images, metaphors
and understandings; therefore language as used to describe being is always provisional.
Consequently life always has a sense of mystery through which we engage with our
‘spiritual strivings’.
Fifthly, PM locates himself as an outsider speaking about areas/subjects that he knows
others will disapprove of, personally and professionally. He is happy to be an ‘independent
voice’ and not part of any group so that free enquiry is not constrained in any way.
Conscious encounter
The experience of engaging with the opening page of the transcript is that it seems
disjointed as the lines are continually split by PM’s verbal ‘hmn’. Inevitably we are both
settling into the interview and he was perhaps more nervous than I had anticipated. As a
consequence I rather ‘drive’ the interview and am much less passive than in other
interviews. PM’s verbal prompts tell me he is with me and felt far less intrusive in actuality
than they appear in their textual form.
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