Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

exclusivity’ (Richards 1999: 1024). A key feature is adoption of a paradigm of multiple and
fragmentary engagement with other disciplines, including religion and spirituality. 21
Freud’s notion of ‘unexpected relations’ has come into being in contemporary
psychoanalysis. Stein and Stein asked a range of analysts the question ‘Is it possible for
religious thinking and psychoanalytic thinking to coexist?’ (Stein and Stein 2000) and
obtained very diverse conclusions, but identified important issues that run throughout this
thesis. 22
2. Personal context
The genesis of this research dates from 1989 when I attended lectures organized by the
Institute of Psychoanalysis (London) introducing the work of Donald Winnicott, Anna
Freud, and Melanie Klein. At that time my focus was on the relationship between theology,
psychiatry and psychoanalysis in Clinical Theology (Ross 1993). At lunch I bumped into
Bridget 23 , a consultant psychiatrist I had previously worked with when I was attached to the
chaplains’ department at Claybury psychiatric hospital in Essex (Martin 1962). Bridget was
Irish and came from a Roman Catholic culture and a religiously devout family. 24 She
rebelled against this background, which had occasioned great debates in our previous
meetings, yet neither knew of our respective interests in psychoanalysis. 25 Bridget asserted
I could not possibly understand psychoanalysis because I hadn't experienced it as a
21 The development of spirituality can be seen as a zeitgeist within contemporary culture (Lynch 2002; Tisdell
2003; Orsi 2004; Heelas and Woodhead 2005; Holmes 2005; Lynch 2005).
22 Detailed responses can be found in appendix eight.
23 Name changed for reasons of confidentiality.
24 For the influence of Catholicism in Irish culture see (Cleary and Connolly 2005).
25 My post-ministerial probationary studies resulted in a 10,000 word dissertation on ‘A Christian evaluation of
Sigmund Freud’ which led to the research degree I was then completing.
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