Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE. ‘SACRED PSYCHOANALYSIS’- A
HERMENEUTIC OF TRANSFORMATION
The engagement between religion, spirituality and psychoanalysis is viewed by many as a
transforming encounter 540 , although transformation is often used in a generic sense without
clear identification of how and what one is being transformed from and too. 541 Kovel
writes,
Can we imagine a psychoanalysis that is open to transcendence while retaining its
critical and demystifying edge? One that does not reduce the activities of the human
spirit - whether in religion, art, or radical political activity - to consolation or the
defence against helplessness and hatred? One that sees us rather as creatures who by
nature reach beyond ourselves and transform ourselves, because it is in our nature to
reject our separateness (Kovel 1990: 85).
The words used too describe such transformations are evocative and include: signals of
transcendence; mystery and mystical; acts of faith; and the divine/Other/I-Thou. These will
be examined before concluding with a focus on Bollas, who has a more defined vision of
transformation as a transition from an aesthetic to a transformational object.
540 See chapter two for a detailed examination of ways in which such transformation is understood. For Neri,
drawing on Bion, Winnicott and Tillich (briefly), this involves faith and trust. ‘It is characterized by an
interest in what lies under the surface, in what could develop but is still unknown. It belongs to that psychic
function which allows us to work with something which is not yet there … if it appears in the life of one of my
patients, it makes me very happy, and I feel satisfaction with the results achieved through our work’ (Neri
2005: 95).
541 Schlauch describes the result of a group of theologians, psychoanalysts, philosophers, artists, feminist
thinkers, and literary scholars who met at Boston College from 1993, including Meissner and Rizzuto,
interested in the dialogue between religion and psychoanalysis. ‘As our conversations unfolded, we became
progressively aware of our assumption that in some sense psychology-psychoanalysis and religion shared a
common ground, while struggling to identify what that common ground was. Psychoanalysis as an unfolding
process of discovery and achieving understanding, and with it increased inner freedom, bore some remarkable
resemblances to some religious traditions. For example, both psychoanalysis and religion assume that crucial
dimensions of reality were hidden, and the process of disclosure could only be achieved through the use of
symbolic and metaphoric language. Both understood that human beings, involved in the process of seeking to
understand hidden dimensions of reality, would in all likelihood at some point take the path of least resistance
in their pursuit and inevitably adopt the illusion or assumption that they had already reached their destination.
If so, their symbols could then be employed literally, as signs. Their idols would become gods …
transformation … an underlying thematic center (sic.) around which our conversations had unwittingly been
orbiting evolved into an organising theme’ (Meissner and Schlauch 2003: ix). All saw ongoing potential for
dialogue and transformation in the dialectic of engagement.
336