Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

elationship to others and live out their internal psyche/soul narratives. 524 My evolution of
an interpretative framework combining each of these dimensions, offers a form of
theoretical containment and allows for the specific location of different theorists to be
identified. This interpretative framework of sacred psychoanalysis, also offers the
opportunity for new unfolding, new being, new connections, new intersubjectivities to
emerge, variously described as translation, transition, and transformation. 525 How these
forms of engagement are lived out in contemporary psychoanalytic experience is the subject
of the interviews that are dealt with in the following chapters.
524
Kovel locates psychoanalysis within a broader spiritual context. ‘Once the authenticity of spirituality is
recognized, the oceanic experience takes on a new aspect as well. For, the reality of interconnectedness is not
all there is to the oceanic experience … the first spiritual experience is also necessarily a material and bodily
experience. Because of this, the spiritual will continue to be realized in the material through life. Spirituality
is no illusion; the illusion, rather, is to think that spirit is divorced from matter, or that the care of souls can
take place without the care of bodies. In other words, the world is not to be fled from but transformed, if the
spirit is to be realized. As the ecological crisis painfully brings home, a spiritual transformation will be
necessary for survival as a species’ (Kovel 1990: 85).
525
Franco describes the purpose of psychoanalysis to help religious experience develop from man-as-God to
man-with-God (Franco 1998).
323