Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

the psyche through making space for a sustained level of thinking, allowing meaning to
emerge, attentive to psychic processes and wrestling with complex issues by listening to
patients at a number of levels. As part of this process issues of religion and spirituality are
treated with respect as the analyst works out what this means in relationship to their
patient’s psyche. ‘The analytic attitude is a depthful, compassionate exploration of the
variety of meanings, functions or … of whatever the patient brings up’ (JR 487-490). 452 For
Rizzuto, understanding their religious background is part of assessment through asking ‘Do
you pray?’ (AMR 711), making this dimension explicit and able to be voiced. Unless these
issues are addressed ‘patients are going to be the replica of the analyst that came to me and
said “I have had a religious experience, I repress it but I never told my analyst about it.”’
(AMR 842-844).
Black and Lemma noted religious patients gave insights into religion that did not go beyond
the consulting room as the therapeutic space contains the subject. By engaging with a
patient the analyst enters into a perceptual world without adopting or believing it, but
believing they believe this is vitally important. Holding forms part of therapeutic
containment before interpreting what beliefs, symbols or practices might mean. 453 Religion
and psychoanalysis potentially offer refuge and redemption from childhood pathology
where events predate religious adherence.
452 One word slightly changed to render clearer meaning. ‘I go into the session and try to be in a meditative
state of mind by which I mean internally spacious, minimum of agendas … there’s a lightness of touch so that
I can see those agendas so they are not filtering my perception, my hearing, my affective attunement with my
own insides and with the patient and then I try to have an associational approach where I don’t assume
anything means anything ahead of time. So if a Buddhist … I don’t assume that’s constructive it could be
deadly, pathological, it could be killing them (JR 522-529).
453 Holding is a theoretical, clinical and psychological practice established by Winnicott emphasizing the
impact of the external world with the infant’s internal world and how this finds reparative parallel in
psychoanalysis.
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