Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

Winnicott saw transition as more important than the symbolic as it ‘gives room for the
process of being able to accept difference and similarity’ (Winnicott 1971: 6). A
hermeneutic of transition moves beyond that of translation in offering a new language, new
thought forms that still require translation, but move beyond a literal word-for-word
correspondence. Grotstein stated towards the end of my interview with him that ‘love and
god are the missing element of psychoanalysis’. What characterized this interview in
particular was just how often Grotstein used the word ‘love’ and how often the term ‘god’
appeared. Grotstein used language taken from a unique synthesis of Platonic philosophy,
Jewish belonging, Christian Science spirituality, Christian theology from the liberal
tradition, Bionian insights, Kleinian technique and a striking use of metaphors drawn from
neuroscience and astrophysics in order to develop a hermeneutic of transition. Grotstein
holds these together through various paradoxes including: when we search for O we never
find O, but in not-searching O is present; the unconscious is where we discover and create
god, but god was already there to be discovered; spirituality is to be found in religion, but
must be released from religion to be fully spiritual; and we discover the eternal unconscious
in our own unconscious and we contribute to the lives of others through the unconscious,
but we are time-bound facing the finitude of death and non-existence. Grotstein illustrates
clearly that relational engagement at depth leads to new revelations, new connections, and
new insights that epitomize a hermeneutic of transition.
Transition as evocations of thirdness
Ogden first developed the analytic third with a specific psychoanalytic understanding where
‘the unconscious intersubjective “analytic third” is forever in the process of coming into
being in the emotional force field generated by the interplay of the unconscious of patient
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