Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

their absence as much as their presence. Pluralism is a particular American contribution to
psychoanalysis as a whole. This offers therefore greater scope for religious, spiritual and
mystical engagement – especially Buddhism. Yet that very pluralism also allows for the
powerful voices that reject any religious or spiritual aspect of psychoanalysis, a view found
in the UK where psychoanalysis is less accommodating of religion, which is tolerated as an
eccentricity or simply ignored – a common result of functional atheism.
By contrast, Phillips sees a fundamental imperative to believe but it is not always religion.
The capacity to believe or disbelieve is a profound aspect of being human, as fundamental
as our concerns with love, sex, power, and money.
I think anything you can love makes your life better and anything that stirs your
strongest feelings makes your life more interesting and religion clearly does. It
seems to me it trades on one’s capacity to be powerfully moved, to feel that one’s
life is meaningful, … it creates a sense of significance (AP 598-603).
Many of these aspects identified by Phillips find expression in contemporary forms of
spirituality. 496 Yet throughout the thematic analysis, despite the clear presence of religious
and spiritual views, there was a reticence to speak about God/god in most of the
interviewees. God is never fully discussed or defined and is essentially absent from most of
the interviews. Lemma refers to the faith of some of her patients, victims of torture, calling
on God which she understands as an internalized good object that offers hope. AN sees a
successful analysis as transforming a belief ‘in an all-powerful or all-punishing God and you
ended up with a more tolerant God’ (AN 568-569). One fear Christians have expressed
about psychoanalysis is that it removes faith but AN argues ‘I certainly wouldn’t think it
was a successful analysis because the person renounced belief’ (AN 569-570) as it is not
496
See chapter two for a fuller discussion of spirituality that identifies particular components of a generic
spirituality.
295