Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

PART D. SACRED PSYCHOANALYSIS – AN INTERPRETATION
The conclusion to this thesis takes the form of a multi-layered interpretation. 503 In
psychoanalytic terms this is a key therapeutic technique, when the analyst expresses in
words what they understand about the patient’s inner world based on narratives, memories,
fantasies, fears, wishes and dreams. As the relationship between the analyst and the patient
develops, formerly unconscious material becomes known, often in fragmentary or
incomplete forms, and interpretation offers a new statement about the patient. An
interpretation requires the conscious and unconscious engagement of both to reveal new
understanding of the past and the present. Roth terms this ‘mapping the landscape’, which
captures a unique dimension of this thesis (Roth 2001). Yet interpretation also involves ‘an
inescapably subjective dimension’ used with ‘a quality of “certainty”’ (Lemma 2003: 184f.)
as I am located in the landscape as a climber, not simply a cartographer. Interpretations
arise out of ‘an intersubjective matrix in which they crystallize’ (Stolorow, Atwood, and
Brandchaft 1994: 53) and takes us into the area of hermeneutics, detailed in the following
chapter.
This research has examined the phenomena of a re-discovery of religious perspectives and
the emergence of wide-ranging spiritualities (since the late 1970s), as new developments
within contemporary psychoanalysis. How these developments, described in the thesis as
aspects of ‘sacred psychoanalysis’, crystallize and are interpreted, forms the substance of
these final chapters in answering the central question woven throughout this research, ‘Does
503 Hinshelwood talks about three levels of interpretation, with the intention of reaching a new sphere of
understanding within the unconscious and its dynamic processes (Hinshelwood 2006).
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