Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

important but many were lost in physical translation. His response to me following the
lecture was warm, immediate and engaging, ‘That sounds fascinating. I have an hour in
July. Ring me’ and he gave me his telephone number.
On coming to edit AP’s interview the transcript finished after nine minutes while AP left his
consulting room and the transcriber missed the re-start of the recording on AP’s return. I
found myself transcribing the original interview material – a relatively new experience not
done since the original interview with DB. As a consequence this took longer during which
I was involved in two other activities that may have potential hermeneutic significance.
One was producing a digital cyanotype photograph – a Nineteenth century photographic
method that produces prints in a striking cyan/blue colour – using digital files and software
rather than the potentially hazardous potassium ferricyanide. The other was writing a
sermon on the relevance of theology today using the text from Mark 2:22 “And no one puts
new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost,
and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins” (NRSV) concluding what
is needed is less a theology of proclamation and more a theology of presence. This left me
wondering, what would I discover in the presence of AP?
Personal ontology
AP’s atheism sees humans as very clever animals searching for meaning to avoid the
discomfort that there is none. Consequently life is to be lived now with freedom or as much
freedom as we can bear and while influenced by the past not dominated by it. Being human
is to seek relationship, meaning and love and to live with the consequences of our actions
without excuse or forgiveness. Added to this is either the evolutionary drive to perpetuate
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