Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

conscious of how much I do not know, yet willing to own that there is much I do know that
came across in the interview.
The initial focus was on their understanding of contemporary psychoanalysis, which some
thought too general (JB, AP, AN) and others engaged with well giving them a chance to
speak and find their voice (PM, AL, JG). As the previous chapter showed, this question
elicited diverse responses revealing the complexity of contemporary psychoanalysis that
contextualized the later focus on religion and spirituality where all the participants were able
to share with me aspects of their religious past or present.
What is striking from this analysis is that three interviewees chose to tell me about their
children. JB, AL and AP spontaneously talked about their children: JB spoke with obvious
pride about her son’s academic achievement; AL about her child’s future potential relational
and spiritual choices; and AP’s about his daughter’s artistic endeavours proudly displayed
on his wall. AP was unique in being the only person to ask me if I had children as if I too
was being drawn into sharing this important space to think and feel about those closest to
me as if this is what it is all - psychoanalysis, religion and spirituality - about. My
interpretation of this is that children are a symbolic representation of hope, love and the
future. Children are our concrete forms of eternity, forms of life that go beyond us, that we
have created and are often the focus of our love. From the atheistic perspective adopted by
AP this is all there is, for JB with an intersubjective perspective that encompasses the
other/Other they are part of the little/Big energy of universal existence and for AL, a world
full of potentials and choices informed by internal and external relationship that offer hope.
Children therefore share symbolic forms of meaning with those found in religion and
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