Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

there’ (JB 65). Eigen’s eclecticism integrates Freud, Bion, Winnicott and Lacan, allied to
an intersubjective spiritual dimension. While Black sees the religious dimensions of the
analyst as a counter-transferential clinical tool to engage the client and their unconscious
world, Eigen focuses on the actual clinical encounter relationally and intersubjectively –
where both analyst and patient are known and changed. Editor of the Psychoanalytic
Review, Eigen is a very influential figure and this allows him the opportunity to introduce
spirituality into the psychoanalytic domain. Eigen was also mentioned by most of the
analysts interviewed in the UK, although his influence is more limited. Phillips introduced
Eigen’s work through The Electrified Tightrope (Eigen 1993) as a vital concern for Phillips
is to help people encounter whatever ‘makes you feel alive’ (AP 686). 427
Symington has been the best-known analyst in the UK engaging with religion and
spirituality, 428 themes that recur in his work, fictional and psychoanalytic. 429 ‘Time is a real
problem … Symington said … how difficult it is trying to deal with these huge themes
when there is so much that should be read and known when actually one is spending 8 hours
427 It became immediately apparent that Eigen was the key figure in spiritual engagement within
contemporary psychoanalysis. Black, Benjamin, Jones, Rubin, Mollon, Phillips, Grotstein and Bobrow also
mentioned Eigen. I met with Eigen, we discussed my research and he invited me to join his seminar group
where he introduced me to the group as a ‘visiting academic and a spiritual person’ that he’d enjoyed meeting.
The group were exploring Winnicott’s Human Nature (Winnicott 1988). Eigen intriguingly and provocatively
described President Bush as the Devil as a symbol of the evil that occurs when a leader/society becomes so
focused on the external and the material that the internal and psychical are neglected or destroyed.
Unfortunately due to minor surgery Eigen was unable to be interviewed while I was in New York. We
attempted to have an ongoing e-mail correspondence but this lacked the relational dimension I discovered that
I realized I required. My learning is that to fully engage with a subject I need to fully engage with the person.
This also accounts for my not following up the initial attempt to have a Skype interview with Symington in
Australia.
428 Very influential in the UK in the 1980s and early 1990s, Symington emigrated to Australia and continues to
write important texts on analytic and spiritual engagement. From a Roman Catholic background and at an
early stage as a priest in training, Symington sees psychoanalysis as a natural religion by broadening the scope
of religion to embrace the deepest quests of human nature. In a recent fictional publication he writes about a
priest facing theological and psychological crises during the 1960s during the reforms introduced by Vatican
II, drawing on many of his personal experiences. Black, while mentioned by all the British analysts
interviewed is not well known in the USA, though Grotstein and Bobrow recognized him.
429 ‘Neville Symington is someone who has written a great deal about all this and I think he intends to keep
ploughing the furrow that’s my impression’ (DB 584-585).
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