Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE. ‘SACRED PSYCHOANALYSIS’ AND
HERMENEUTICS
Hermeneutics began as a discipline of interpreting biblical and classical texts but through
the work of Heidegger, Ricoeur, Gadamer, and Habermas expanded to include philosophy,
theology, social sciences, qualitative research, counselling, psychotherapy and
psychoanalysis (McLeod 1997, 2001; Alvesson and Sköldberg 2000). 505 Addison
summarizes hermeneutics as ‘trying to understand, take meaning from, or make intelligible
that which is not yet understood is not only the central task of hermeneutics, it is an
essential aspect of being in the world’ (Addison 1999: 148). It is a term used to describe the
creation of meaning by interpreting the ‘text’, where a text can be a written narrative, a
voiced narrative, such as an interview, or any other form of capturing the words of a person.
By drawing on one’s personal, ontological, philosophical, political, psychoanalytic,
religious or spiritual identity, a new discovery of meaning in the ‘text’ can be discovered.
This becomes available for the person interpreting the text, and the text or the person that is
interpreted. ‘In principle, such a hermeneutic text interpretation is an infinite process,
whereas in practice it ends when a sensible coherent meaning has been arrived at’ (Kvale
2007: 109).
Ricoeur is the name most often associated with psychoanalysis, through the impact of his
book Freud and Philosophy (Ricoeur 1970) 506 , and his desire is to see how hermeneutics
505 A helpful overview can be found in Sass’ chapter ‘Ambiguity Is of the Essence. The relevance of
hermeneutics for psychoanalysis’ (Sass 1998). Stolorow is a key figure in developing intersubjectivity theory
in psychoanalysis, who drew particularly on Heidegger (Stolorow, Brandchaft, and Atwood 1987; Stolorow,
Atwood, and Brandchaft 1994; Stolorow 2006, 2007). He was one of the sixteen psychoanalysts I
interviewed.
506 Ricoeur had previously examined atheism and psychoanalysis. ‘We are far from having incorporated the
truth of Freud's teaching on religion. He has already reinforced the belief of unbelievers; he has scarcely
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