Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

Figure 6. Winnicott (DW1-2)
Winnicott was strongly influenced by religious background without adopting specific
religious faith (Hoffman 2004). Winnicott is located within the areas bounded by
psychoanalysis (DW1) and the unconscious (DW2), with movement in the direction of the
religious/spiritual, but some separation from God/Thou. Winnicott believed in
psychoanalysis as a means of identifying the truth about human nature (Winnicott 1988),
and of identifying the true and false self (Winnicott 1965) through ‘experiencing that is
undertaken with one's whole being, all out, “with all one's heart, with all one's soul, and
with all one's might.”’ which Eigen terms the ‘area of faith’ (Eigen 1981a: 413). Winnicott
went on to advocate a ‘third area of existing, a third area which I think has been difficult to
fit into psycho-analytic theory’ (Winnicott 1989: 57) tentatively exploring religion and the
mystical, 519 a sphere in which the true self could be found. Winnicott never defined the true
self, and ‘most likely he meant living authentically with a lambent corporeality and
unimpeded psychic life … in peaceful unison [which] cannot be described. It is the essence
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The best exposition and understanding of this dimension of Winnicott is found in the work of Ulanov
(Ulanov 2001).
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