Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

fulfils Meissner’s vision for a ‘meaningful cross-disciplinary dialogue’ where ‘psychic
dynamics and religious realities are conjoined and intermeshed’ (Meissner 2006b: 244f.). 516
Returning to the interpretative framework in figure 1, the dashed line acts as a semi-
permeable or porous boundary that has sufficient strength to contain, yet allows a movement
of ideas and experiences into new spheres or an emergent synthesis. This interpretative
framework retains the dynamic nature of the human psyche that is an essential part of
psychoanalysis that is ever evolving and revealing, through the presence of the unconscious.
At the core of this framework is a ‘space’ composed of four dashed lines representing sacred
psychoanalysis. Spero adopts Kristeva’s hermeneutic task of textual encounter, in an
attempt to ‘carve out a space’ drawn from ‘the mysterious exchange between Moses and
God depicted in … Exodus 33:13-23’, which he terms ‘divine space’ (Spero 1998: 457).
Applied in a clinical context Spero sees this metaphor of space illuminating the patient’s
narrative and recasting ‘the meaning of the metaphor in a way that transcended her own
personal text’ revealing new ideas of greater and potentially universal significance (Spero
516 Autobiographical accounts revealing the desire for, and the tensions concerning this dialogue, are found in
Psychotherapy and Religion. Many paths, One journey (Weiner, Cooper, and Barbre 2005).
315