Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

nature of God’s involvement with people and a psychobiography of Ignatius of Loyola
(Meissner 1987, 1988, 1994, 1995, 2001, 2005). 529
Similarly, in a British context, Symington’s influential Emotion and Spirit from 1994
marked an area of discussion that he, like Meissner, returned to offering new reflections and
engagement (Symington 1998, 1999, 2001, 2004b, 2004a, 2006b, 2007, 2006a). While
others have followed, Meissner and Symington are part of a small group who were
motivated to pioneer religious, spiritual and psychoanalytic engagement because it speaks to
a vital, but ignored and neglected, aspect of being whole and being human. The risk of
entering a liminal space is always that of rejection by the establishment, yet the reward is
living at the cutting-edge of different disciplines, offering new and revealing connections. 530
Simmonds links liminality to transitional phenomena as a place of discovery (Simmonds
2003).
Rizzuto, Meissner, Symington and others enter into the pioneering spirit of Freud, in being
willing to face a sceptical audience with newly discovered ideas. 531 To confront an atheistic
psychoanalytic culture with a specific belief in an objective God known by an act of
529 Meissner also produced psychoanalytic articles and books on a wide range of topics detailed in the
reference list (Meissner 1984b, 1991, 1993, 2000, 2006a).
530 My early attempt of this form of engagement, ‘A Christian evaluation of Sigmund Freud’ adopted a
theological framework using the categories of creation, fall and redemption, reflecting my narrower
theological outlook at that time drawn from evangelical, Reformed and L’Abri traditions. This was a 10,000word
project to fulfil a probationary studies requirement for accreditation as a Baptist minister by the Baptist
Union of Great Britain. The recommendation following this was that I pursue further academic research
alongside my work as a Baptist minister. The limitation was I had not been through a personal analysis and so
was engaging with psychoanalytic theory, not practice. Such a theological engagement would not have been
deemed of sufficient merit to be heard in the contemporary psychoanalytic world, although later research on
‘Clinical Theology’ did have some impact on the areas of pastoral theology and pastoral counselling (Ross
1993). In doing this I also discovered that to offer psychoanalytic concepts to a theological world was also to
enter a liminal space.
531 Freud’s role as a lone pioneer has been exaggerated in psychoanalytic history. He often developed his ideas
through dialogue with others, often by letter, as seen in his correspondence with Fliess (Masson 1985), though
his ideas were still unique in the formation of psychoanalysis.
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