Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

central therapeutic task (Ulanov 2001). AL and I are engaging in play that involves the
liminal place of new discovery, objective facts and subjective feelings/emotions – no one of
which was consciously imagined prior to this encounter.
In preparation of the final text of the transcript, line 6 should have read ‘the purpose of this
research’ but instead read ‘the purpose of this search’. The unconscious typing error reveals
that this research is not an objective quantitative analysis, rather it is a search - in the sense
of discovery of the new - for the sacred in psychoanalysis or the search for the soul/sacred in
the subterranean depths of the psyche being undertaken by me in conversations with others.
I found it difficult to be objective with AL because from my very first meeting I
instinctively liked her and wondered what could be happening at an unconscious level? In
one way it is a human-to-human encounter where you meet someone and it works, there is a
fit. Applying psychoanalytic insight what else might be happening? It could be a positive
transference on my part as I now realize that there is a capacity in me to idolize people I
have interviewed. Transference begins in my immersion in their writing and subsequent
interviews give opportunity for my transference to become enacted. Another aspect linked
to positive transference is that this may be an instance of an erotic transference on my
part. 375 It may be that there is a positive transference on AL’s part because I am a minister
of religion and in recent times such a figure has been important to her. It could be a
combination of all three where I am in a parallel process in that AL sought as analysts
people that inspired her and I sought as interviewees people that inspired me. AL said she
wanted to do the interview as she had really enjoyed the day’s training she did for me at the
375 I do not know what AL thinks/feels and probably don’t want to know either in case it breaks my illusion.
Her ideas about erotic transference are found in (Lemma 2003: 246-249).
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