Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT. ‘SACRED PSYCHOANALYSIS’- A
HERMENEUTIC OF TRANSITION
The transitional concept is grounded in Winnicott and has been adopted widely as a form of
engagement between psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, religion and spirituality, as seen in the
work of Rizzuto, Meissner, Pruyser, Capps, Jacobs, Ulanov and others (Pruyser 1968, 1974,
1983, 1991a, 1991b; Jacobs 2000; Ulanov 2001). 536 An often-unasked question, however,
is what is the transition from and to, and how does this happen? Two particular forms of
transition can be found that answer these questions, transitional space and the evocation of
thirdness.
Transition as transitional space
In Winnicott’s thought transitional phenomenon were the means by which a baby is able to
separate from a mother, yet at one level the mother comes to be internalized within the baby
as it moves from dependence to both independence and inter-dependence. Alongside this
Winnicott offers that part of this transition is a creative place, an intermediate place of
experience where one can create and play as a unique self, not simply an expression of a
mother. As such the transition is not just that of movement to, but of presence within
through acts of creativity that Winnicott finds analogous to those found in art and religion.
Winnicott … opens for us the spaces we reconnoiter (sic.) throughout our whole life,
entering ever more deeply into contact with ultimate reality …We gather up in these
spaces the spirit of hope that is the governing texture of religion … This is the space
of human beings who desire an interior life. Winnicott opens the space, and the
result is a living metaphysics (Ulanov 2001: 6).
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The transitional concept is still used in analytic understandings and is subject to ongoing thought
(Cancelmo 2009).
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