Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR. THEMATIC COMMENTARY AND
ANALYSIS
This thematic narrative analysis identified the key words/phrases used by all interviewees
as:
• Psychoanalysis
• Contemporary Psychoanalysis
• Religion/Religious
• Spiritual/Spirituality
• Buddhism
• Mystical/O
• Love
Given the extent of the data (123,000 words) this has not exhausted the generation of
meanings, codes and themes and the text of the interviews is appended and available for
future research on the lived experience of religion and spirituality in contemporary
psychoanalysis. Presented here are the core themes examined within their narrative context,
where each category has further dimensions and these have been outlined, emerging through
an interpretative narrative in which they were told.
Freud’s influence casts a long shadow from his origins in the nineteenth century and his
work and ideas have a clarity and relevance (suitably contextualized) ranging from an
aesthetic experience through a textual form of engagement to a re-discovery of techniques,
especially free association, that have ongoing significance. This offers a recovery of ideas
and practices that have been overlooked by the emergence of counter-transferential
293