Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

worlds. ‘We’ve probably never lived in more religious times … religious fervour is all
around us. Whatever we think of it, we can’t be indifferent to it … whatever is latent in
them is re-inforced by what’s going on contemporaneously’ (AP 616-621). In failing to
address issues of religious fundamentalism, psychoanalysis fails to offer the insights it has
about the origins of fundamentalism in the inner world of the psyche becoming played out
in the external world. Psychoanalysis as a whole has failed to address the fundamentalism
inherent within its training institutes therefore limiting its engagement with wider cultural
change (including fundamentalism and the growth of spirituality) many see as essential for
psychoanalysis’ survival in the twenty-first century (Cooper 2006; Willock, Curtis, and
Bohm 2009). 464
Implicit fundamentalism has led to psychoanalysis becoming viewed as a religion (Kirsner
2000; Sorenson 2004), dominated by: a Messianic visionary and infallible founder; inerrant
and orthodox texts that cannot be questioned 465 ; a priesthood whose unique function sets
them apart; initiation into particular denominations with special rituals; a couch for
confession and absolution; and authority retained by a universal body. Deviance from
orthodox rituals and teaching are viewed as heretical, resulting in expulsion, being cast out
of paradise - the Garden of Eden - into the hostile world. 466 Echoes of this ironic account of
psychoanalysis as religion was found in over half the interviews.
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me” I mean … all things can be translated
back into religious language in terms of how orthodox they were, well that’s idolatry
464 Relational/intersubjective approaches are exceptions.
465 Although later interpretations like targums are added.
466 The metaphors of expulsion from the Garden of Eden and Lucifer falling from heaven emerged in the
scientific disputes that formed the ‘controversial discussions’ – the definitive moment in British
psychoanalysis. No attention has been given to the unconscious association of these metaphors concerning the
primal struggle between Anna Freud (God) wishing to expel both Adam and Eve from the Garden and Lucifer
(Klein) from heaven (King and Steiner 1991: 808).
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