Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

There was a more profound unconscious encounter that occurred long after the interview but
one that was vitally linked to the interview. AN had not realized that I wished to name each
participant, despite this being a clear statement contained in my introductory material and
stated on the ethical consent form that AN signed (see appendix one). Consequently on
reading the text that I sent to him, again as part of the ethical agreement, AN rang me to say
that he had misunderstood this and felt rather intruded upon. Clearly this had not been my
intention and we therefore negotiated confidentiality as a means of retaining AN’s important
contribution. Yet while this process was occurring it felt as if it was an emotional re-
occurrence of my climb of Scafell Pike when I found I was ‘falling down a slope and
running at full speed in order to stop careering over an edge’. Thankfully, both the
conscious and unconscious events, did not lead to disaster. It has validated my reflection
that perhaps AN likes to retain control, expressed to some extent in the shape of this present
text.
Intersubjective presence
The interview gave AN the opportunity to fulfil his own ambition for psychoanalysis, which
is to broaden its scope and make links in the academic and cultural worlds as
‘psychoanalysis does not belong to psychoanalysts’ (AN 772). The interview also allowed
AN to make discoveries for himself, such as seeing how psychiatry served very effectively
as a false self at one time. It facilitated AN to ‘put one or two things together’ (AN 781) he
hadn’t done before. If anything I became the blank screen, allowing AN to project onto that
varying unconscious issues. At the end AN acknowledged that he had deliberately not
enquired about my religious background though he would have liked to hear about this if
time had been available. The interview therefore more fully reflected the style of analytic
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