Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

neuroscience and the growth of religion and spirituality. Yet the term is rarely used in the
UK where theoretical evolution is essentially linked to Klein. 423
British psychoanalysis has become a bit moribund … A lot of contemporary
psychoanalysis I feel is rather deadly … very dogma bound … preoccupied with …
a very unfortunate kind of … Kleinian shadow that’s fallen across the whole of
British psychoanalytic thinking … which leaves many analysts to focus on very
negative parts of … human beings, … and I think … very little space for …
communication about spiritual concerns or higher strivings of human beings (PM
48-60).
Others see contemporary psychoanalysis in the UK as ‘a much broader church’ (AL 47).
‘There is a greater openness and … I think that psychoanalysis is beginning to be a bit less
rarefied’ (AL 52-53). Similar views were expressed by interviewees in the USA where
contemporary psychoanalysis indicates an openness to evolve unlike the perceived rigidity
of classic psychoanalysis.
Revolution not evolution
Contemporary psychoanalysis developed an understanding of the clinical encounter where
the analyst draws on a wider range of feelings found within the room in an intersubjective
rather than a counter-transferential encounter. 424 Benjamin saw the relational trend as
‘revolutionary because it is so much more egalitarian and respectful’ (JB 280-281), whereas
an ‘insidious lack of respect … crept into the old psychoanalysis … Obviously it goes along
with the idea that the analyst is a participant, that the analyst can’t avoid going into
enactment with the patient … as the real clue to what is going on’ (JB 291-294).
423 This is disputed by those in the Independent tradition including such contemporary figures as Casement
(Casement 2002, 2006), Symington (Symington 1986, 1993a, 1993b, 1994, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2004a,
2004b, 2006b, 2007; Symington and Symington 1996) and Black (Black 1993a, 1999, 2000a).
424 ‘Not just about five times a week on the couch, it’s actually about trying to reach patients who are hard to
reach … I think the sort of patients who present for help these days of necessity demand that psychoanalysis
revisits some of its … cherished assumptions in terms of practice and how its delivered and gradually I think it
will challenge some theoretical assumptions too but at the moment I think the greatest challenge is more at the
level of applicability and technique’ (AL 54-60).
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