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Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

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a whole range <strong>of</strong> thoughts and feelings that would <strong>of</strong>ten be edited out. Reflexivity is a<br />

costly process and something that it is easy to pay lip service to at the start <strong>of</strong> a research<br />

process. The reflexivity presented here is a long endeavour to remain honest, open and seen<br />

to be fallible or flawed by others who may <strong>of</strong>fer different perspectives. This was one <strong>of</strong> the<br />

main results <strong>of</strong> the qualitative research day - the willingness to expose one’s deepest<br />

thinking and feeling and embryonic ideas with others and open oneself to their scrutiny and<br />

implicit approval or disapproval. In doing research interviews with a psychoanalytic<br />

dimension I have ‘staked’ myself as the investment which was far more than I had thought<br />

possible at the start. Little wonder I found myself anxious at times, particularly when I<br />

turned up at JG’s and due to a misunderstanding he was not expecting me. However the<br />

result was one short interview (45 minutes) and one long interview (90 minutes) the<br />

following day with the opportunity to dream in-between thus allowing more space for my<br />

unconscious processes to <strong>of</strong>fer insight. It is an investment that has ‘paid-<strong>of</strong>f’ as these<br />

reflexive comments show and it has changed my understanding <strong>of</strong> contemporary<br />

psychoanalysis, religion and spirituality. Had such interviews not taken place my<br />

theoretical engagement with the subject (examined in part B) would still be valid and<br />

valuable. Yet I would have missed the aliveness <strong>of</strong> being that is a central feature <strong>of</strong> this<br />

research on psychoanalysis and the sacred, that analysts, philosophers, and theologians<br />

strive to capture in words, ideas, rituals and experiences.<br />

Fourthly, the interviewees were all busy people, yet not so busy that they were unable to be<br />

interviewed. I had approached thirty analysts and a number declined which reveals to me<br />

that, consciously or unconsciously, the interviewees wanted to be interviewed. Theirs were<br />

voices that wanted to be heard, beyond the confidential analyst-patient encounter, in the<br />

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