Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

and psychoanalytic discourse by developing a concept that can be meaningfully translated
by both.
Meissner begins from a theological perspective and examines the development of grace,
faith, and hope as central aspects of the Christian tradition. He examines these through a
psychoanalytic lens, including more recent developments in ego psychology, and identifies
a vision of human personhood.
The therapeutic task, therefore, on both an individual and a religious level, is to
oppose and eliminate what is infantile and destructive, but at the same time to
respect and respond to the ideal … the ideals, values, faith, and hope that are the
lifeblood of society (Meissner 1987: 302).
Earlier Meissner identifies the ideal as God, and here and in his later work, he holds
together the religious and therapeutic dimensions by translating the language of a Christian
vision for the individual and society (Meissner and Schlauch 2003; Meissner 2009).
While both Rizzuto and Meissner have a specific theological background and a vocabulary
to aid translation (Rizzuto 2004b), McDougall, a psychoanalyst well known in British and
French psychoanalytic worlds, did not. As ‘a humanist open to everybody's religious
beliefs’ she was invited to meet with the Dalai Lama who asked ‘what is the essential quest
of the psychoanalyst?’ (Molino 1997: 79). Both agreed that ‘discovering the most intimate
and deepest truths about oneself’ could come about through psychoanalysis and meditation.
While there was agreement, ‘We did find a Tibetan word for the unconscious - alia - which
the Dalai Lama described as a deep current that links all humanity together (a little like the
Jungian unconscious)’ at times the translators struggled to find Tibetan words for
305