Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

me had been ‘more important than you can imagine’. 377 It felt, outside the interview
context, that JG was speaking from a deep place. Reflexive and narrative honesty help me
acknowledge that Jim with his passion for Scotland (the same name as my Scottish father)
felt closer to me in those moments than my own father ever has. Was this an unconscious
projection on my part? Was Jim a recipient of my projective identification that he had acted
into? While there are multiple realities and no one single causal explanation the experience
fits with JG’s own theoretical development and one of his distinctive contributions to
psychoanalysis – the transcendent position.
JG stated towards the end of the interview that ‘love and god are the missing element of
psychoanalysis’ (JG 1865) and what characterizes this interview in particular was just how
often he used the word ‘love’ and how often the term ‘god’ appeared. What JG has created
is a unique synthesis of Platonic philosophy, Jewish belonging, Christian Science
spirituality, Christian theology from the liberal tradition, Bionian insights, Kleinian
technique and a striking use of metaphors drawn from neuroscience and astrophysics. Many
of these strands were present in this interview, though some come from my earlier reading
of his work but were held in mind during the process of the interviews. JG holds these
together through various paradoxes including:
• When we search for O we never find O, but in not-searching O is present
• The unconscious is where we discover and create god, but god was already there to
be discovered
• Spirituality is to be found in religion, but must be released from religion to be fully
spiritual
377 These were not recorded as they formed part of our final departing conversation.
226