Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

Similarly,
the move out of the out of Freud’s drive model … to a really relational model is the
thing I think is most important … the idea that we are fundamentally relationship
creatures and that who we are and how we become to be who we are and what
makes … mischief in our lives and what needs to be transformed in the course of
therapy … all those things are instantiated in our relational experiences … most
central in contemporary psychoanalysis (JJ 289-297).
Consequently, the place of intersubjectivity and relationality has become a fault-line across
the landscape of contemporary psychoanalysis in the USA (Cooper 2006). In the UK,
Mollon’s development of psychoanalytic energy therapy to deal with trauma and
disassociation, identified the roots of his work in Freud’s free associative technique focusing
on growth and potential, rather than the conventional psychoanalytic focus on
psychopathology. 425
A pluralistic and spiritual ethos
A unique feature of contemporary psychoanalysis is its pluralism (Cooper 2006).
We call it contemporary psychoanalysis today. In Freud’s day it was contemporary
psychoanalysis, it will always be contemporary psychoanalysis - it’s the spirit of the
zeitgeist … the main characteristics … from whatever school, is the two-person
model … so intersubjectivity is the catch word … the analyst is more involved as a
participant in the analytic encounter, his counter-transference, his reverie, his
feelings about the patient, his patient’s feelings about him, it’s a dialogue … the task
of analysis is to … make a union - to be able to feel one’s emotions and I think each
school does that in a different way … all of the schools have so much in common
and they are speaking a common language (JG 212-228).
A relational dimension to contemporary psychoanalysis held within a more pluralistic ethos
gives opportunity for more engagement between psychoanalysis and other disciplines, such
as neuroscience, religion and spirituality, strongly advocated by some and strongly opposed
425 Marcus and Rosenberg examine the importance of psychoanalysts identifying their views on human
pathology as a key factor in determining how they work (Marcus and Rosenberg 1998).
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