Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

ideas anticipated many aspects of the underlying ontology of contemporary psychoanalysis
(Jones 1996). 49
Implicit in this research is an understanding of ontology that views human personhood
through ‘being’, ‘being in relation to’, and ‘other/Other’, connecting metaphysics,
philosophy, psychoanalysis, theology and the sacred. Being is experienced in a dialectic or
dialogic form of reflection, that connects the self with Other, where Other precedes the
other/object involved in conversation. The very transcendence of Other, experienced as
apartness from the other/object, adds a different dimension to any dialogue. It became
important in this research to identify the components of my ontology and these can be found
in appendix four. In summary these statements form a personal reflexivity based on
ontology of connection that comes via dialectic revelation: the unconscious and the
conscious; the past and the present; the present and the future; the inner and outer;
immanence and transcendence; self and other/Other/God; psyche and sacred; and
word/conversation and seeing/vision. This in turn shapes the epistemological form of
enquiry to that of relational and reflexive seeing/revealing. This awareness allowed me to
engage more fully with the interviewees, my analysis of their interviews and the reflexive
impact on me seen in part C.
49 One problematic use of Buber that appears in contemporary counselling and psychotherapy literature is a
false dichotomy between I-It and I-Thou, where the I-Thou appears to exclude the many I-It encounters
understood solely through the understanding of relationship. ‘To deal with God from a nonrelational, detached
or invulnerable position is to relate not to God at all but only to an idol, a finite thing put in place of God - a
concept, an abstract principle, a transitory feeling. Thus philosophy and theology, no matter how pious,
become for Buber the first step toward atheism, for they approach God as idea or concept rather than as a
personal presence who can be encountered only relationally’ (Jones 1996: 73). Buber believed psychoanalysis
‘oversteps its limits and overestimates its strength … which fragment an individual into a plurality of
interacting systems … one does not “meet” the other, one cannot change or be changed by the encounter’
(Burston 2000: 556f.).
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