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Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

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Reactions and Reflections<br />

Religion evokes powerful positive and negative responses. The phrases used by the<br />

interviewees demonstrate the impact and depth <strong>of</strong> strongly held thoughts and feelings found<br />

within contemporary psychoanalysis. 441 The words ‘religion’ or ‘religious’ communicate:<br />

‘Simple-minded’ (DB 285)<br />

‘Someone wacky’ (DB 620)<br />

‘Avoiding addressing the reality <strong>of</strong> the world’ (DB 687)<br />

Something that can be ‘quite uncritical and quite unreflective and that’s always jarring to<br />

me’ (JJ 694)<br />

Existing in a ‘compartmentalized … defensive split’ (JJ 793-794)<br />

Seen by analysts as ‘A definite sign <strong>of</strong> pathology … but the environment has s<strong>of</strong>tened a bit’<br />

(JR 367-371)<br />

‘A certain primal horror <strong>of</strong> it that people just don’t like to deal with’ (AMR 35)<br />

As a religious person ‘Officially it is as though I do not exist’ (AMR 183)<br />

‘I think a lot <strong>of</strong> analysts … react with some anxiety, hostility even scorn’ (PM 382-383)<br />

‘I hear “religion” and I stiffen up because I … was introduced to religion as a … straight<br />

jacket, a … harsh super-ego’ (AL 287-289)<br />

There is ‘no ultimate being, ultimate core’ (AN 178)<br />

Religion ‘approaches delusion’ (AN 595) and ‘any promise <strong>of</strong> a happier life up there, I<br />

consider to be a delusion, and a dangerous delusion’ (AN 719-720)<br />

‘This subject worried me’ (AN 752)<br />

441 Some were made with American right-wing fundamental Christianity in mind.<br />

264

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